Snow day
We had the biggest snow dump I’ve seen in Dunedin city during 2011. Here are snaps from my camera from that day. Justine and I went to Poppas Pizza’s before going to see some snowboarders and skiers having a lot of fun on the hills.
Posted on 2012-04-11 by
Railway station
I took this Panorama of the Dunedin railway station on my friend Anna’s camera. We were walking around town while I helped her figure out how to use it. The railway station’s a block and a half from my apartment.
Posted on 2011-12-02 by
Shoulder surgery tweets
For those of you unaware, I had shoulder surgery last week. I recall finding it incredibly amusing watching @ninjalikescheez tweeting immediately following surgery, so I decided to follow suit and risk public embarrassment and shame by doing likewise. Some would call posting your inner thoughts on a public timeline whilst drugged out of your mind crazy and stupid. I don’t disagree … but I did it anyway because I figured it would be amusing 
I’ve posted highlights below for your amusement and so that I can reflect back on them in future without having to rifle through thousands of other tweets to find them.
Oh, and if you aren’t following me on Twitter already, please do so
Posted on 2011-11-21 by
Pleasant view from the hospital ward
I’m currently blobbing out on my bed at Mercy hospital after having a Laterjet procedure performed on m shoulder yesterday morning. I went for a walk earlier and took these photos out the ward windows on my phone.
Posted on 2011-11-16 by
Attempt at last skate of the season
After Dave Young’s stunning find of ice at the Lower Manorburn dam on August 17th, I decided to do some investigating for the 2011 ice skating season.
After feeling a rather large earth quake at 4:38am, I decided to bust a move up to Swampy Summit, about 9 km from my home in Dunedin. I’ve had a theory for a while now that some of the small ponds up there would freeze in the winter months. We didn’t have any major frosts this winter so I didn’t bother inspecting, but last night there was at least a chill in the air so I figured I’d go check it out to at least confirm if there was any ice whatsoever and if so, how much there was. There was absolutely no sign of frosts anywhere in the suburbs, even up on the hills, so signs were looking highly unpromising for any ice. After dodging a few trees which had presumably been knocked over during the quake, I made my way to the bottom of the access road to Swampy Summit. Unfortunately it is not possible to drive all the way there, so I had to walk up the hill. The walk should have been 4 km in and 4 km out, but I stupidly took a few wrong turns and it ended up being about 13 kms instead! If you make the trip yourself, ensure you take plenty of water as although it’s not a steep climb, you will gain about 650 m in altitude, so it can be a little tiring.
The view from the top was terrific. It was still very early when I arrived (~7:00am) and my cheapo Canon camera struggled with the low light conditions. The temperature was zero degrees Celsius, but there must have been a heck of a wind chill factor as it was blowing a gale up there.
View towards Mosgiel from on top of Swampy Summit
The largest ponds at the summit had no ice on them unfortunately. This was entirely expected though as the temperatures hadn’t been all that cold lately.
The largest pond on Swampy Summit.
However some of the smaller ponds did have sections of ice on them. Not a lot of ice, but enough to at least prove that there is serious potential for skating to be done on the summit (when the conditions are right). The maximum thickness of the ice was about 5 mm, but even the best frozen ponds had only 30% of their surface frozen.
Edge of one of the smaller ponds on Swampy Summit
Ice, but too thin to be useful.
So … there was no chance of skating today, but I’ve at least shown that there is promise of potentially skating up there some time in the future.
Posted on 2010-09-03 by
The Mighty Feroza
Pierre-em and I went 4WD’ing in his mighty Feroza on the weekend.
The first section of terrain was also one of the trickiest. We actually got stuck a few minutes before I took this photo but thankfully Pierre-ems skilled driving (ie: he planted it while in reverse) we managed to get it un-wedged
The driving was much more leisurely from there on and despite a few bangs and bumps going over some of the bigger crests it was all smooth sailing
And here’s a short video clip from the end of our journey and back onto a real road!
Posted on 2010-04-12 by
Otago University from CFI
I took the following photo from the roof of the Centre for Innovation today. My office is on the ground floor.
Original picture is available here.
Posted on 2010-02-07 by
Julia's visit
Julia Rinck who I met in Germany last year came to visit our lab for four months. I picked her up in Christchurch and on the way back we visited the Baby Blue penguin colony in Oamaru. It was quite late before they came ashore and we weren’t allowed very close, so unfortunately the photos are barely visible.
A week later we headed to the top of Mount Cargill to see the city, but in typical Dunedin style a cloud came through and blocked the view 
Posted on 2009-04-01 by
Lightning does strike twice!
Remember my post about being run over by a car? It happened again!
Except this time it happened to my flatmate, and by ‘it happened again’, I mean literally. Mary was mowed down by an evil man at exactly the same corner, on exactly the same side of the street and going in exactly the same direction! Conveniently she also wasn’t too badly injured either, just some aches, pains and bruises.
Posted on 2008-09-30 by
