Wednesday 31 December 2003

Iran tragedy

Kudos to the BBC World reporters for their coverage of this horrible event.  It's one thing to see the wide shots of areas reduced to rubble, and the digging, and rows of shrouded bodies being buried, but when they tell the personal stories of individuals it brings a lump to my throat and a tear to my eye.  And once again I realise how fortunate I am that I live where I do.

Tuesday 30 December 2003

The view from the top

Being a determined soul, I went back up the Makara Peak track yet again with fully-charged batteries in the camera - I'm getting to know this climb quite well now.  This picture shows how the road stretches enticingly onward into the distance. (Note: In case anyone's wondering, this is not the top of Makara Peak itself - I'm not that fit yet. It's an easily accessible lower outcrop of the hill.)

Monday 29 December 2003

Today I went back to the Makara Peak track, as promised.  My reward was to see a pair of tui feeding on flax flowers; one of them flew away before I could get my camera out, but this one stuck around long enough for me to get a few shots.  This is the best one I got - a little fuzzy because I was zoomed right out.  I did't want to move closer in case I scared it away.  Alas, I still can't show you the view from the high point of the track, because the camera batteries went flat.

Friday 26 December 2003

I can see your house from here...

I'm feeding K's cats while she is away on holiday.  And because her house is within spitting distance of an entrance to the Makara Peak Mountain Bike Park, guess where I went walking.  It's one serious climb...  er, in walking terms that is, not mountaineering (crampons? pitons? carabinas? what are they?).  I had been partway up before, but this time I got to the point where it stops going up and starts going down for a bit (I'm sure there's more "up" further along the track).  From there you can see all of Hawkins' Hill, Wright's Hill, and the Brooklyn wind turbine. . And if you know where you're looking, you can see Stewart's house, Lloyd's house, and Helen and Peter's house.  I'm going back with the camera sometime in the next few days.

Thursday 25 December 2003

Obligatory Xmas post

Xmas turned out to be a reasonably nice day for a walk around the neigbourhood.  I wanted to find a good pohutukawa tree since it's kind of our national Christmas icon-tree.  Lo!  It comes already decorated.  Although, you can't cut one down and have it in your living room because they're protected and it's illegal to cut them down - you wouldn't to anyway because those flower stamens would be worse than pine needles - much better to admire them in their natural habitat.  So anyway, I went down to the main road because I know there are some there... turns out the best specimen in the vicinity is actually the one outside the neighbours' place, so here's the second-best.

Wednesday 24 December 2003

Scary stuff

A close family member has been found to have excess blood-sugar levels in two consecutive tests, and therefore almost certainly has diabetes.  From my point of view, of course, that means that my risk of contracting the same disease has just taken a major hike, so my need for exercise and fitness has taken on an extra level of urgency. I found another way through to Broken Hill Rd.  There's not a lot in the way of picturesque subjects in that rather sad-looking industrial area, but one of the businesses has a row of young bottlebrush trees along the boundary which provide a welcome splash of colour at this time of year.  I persuaded one branch to hold still while I took a close-up.
I still have a few retrospective posts to finish off.  Why bother? Because this is my way of keeping tabs on my efforts - one day I'll be able to look back and say "this is where I started and that's what I did".  Plus, I took the photos, what else am I going to do with them?

Tuesday 23 December 2003

Progress report

I'm churning through the updates - up to Nov 23 now, which actually means Nov 29 because that's the next day I have photos for. The Tall One left for [undisclosed holiday destination] today, he'll be gone for two weeks which is long enough for me to wreak havoc on the house - tee hee! This is the second day in a row that's been too grotty for walking.  Much more of this and I'll have to clear a space in the lounge and do some yoga, 10BX and suchlike.  Now, where did I put those hand weights?

Sunday 21 December 2003

A quick plug

I've just read this book - it is inspirational.  The author dropped out of the rat race, took a year off work altogether, and transformed himself from a massively overweight advertising executive to a real person, by getting lots of exercise and e.a.t.i.n.g right.  Three cheers for Paul Jeffreys, let's hope he's started a trend.  It makes fairly light reading (I read it in less than 24 hours) but it chronicles a significant achievement. Um, no walking today, dance practice plus Xmas shopping was enough to wear me out.

Friday 19 December 2003

Broken Hill Rd

At the cul-de-sac end of our street there are several vacant sections, and one of these has a long dirt driveway.  Today I found that there is also a path that goes from the end of the driveway to the road above, which is in the industrial area on Broken Hill Rd.  Hmm... Broken Hill... sounds like it should be in Australia really; I don't know if it's named after the well-known Broken Hill or if somebody thought they saw some sort of brokenness about the hills in the area at the time.  Anyway, its a Good Thing (TM) that I can get through to that area on foot, because that means I can get to my favourite stomping ground of Colonial Knob Scenic Reserve without taking the car, if I have enough time. I didn't take the camera, so here's a photo from a previous excursion to Colonial Knob.  This is one of two reservoirs that used to supply water to the hospital in days gone by.  The other one is no longer there, its dam collapsed about this time last century (don't quote me, I'll have to check the date) and this one has a purely picturesque function these days.
(Posted retrospectively)

Thursday 18 December 2003

Somewhat less strenuous

Sue and I went for a stroll in the Botanic Garden.  It was quite a contrast to the effort of two days ago!  I didn't take any photos this time but here's one I prepared earlier (from one of my previous visits).  Although we didn't go and look at this sculpture we did get fairly close to it.  It's on the top of a place called Druids' Hill (don't ask me, there are no Druids there that I can see) and it's like a giant ear-trumpet, looks as though it's made of coiled tube, and mounted in a swivelling frame so that it can be swung around.  It's large enough that even a stout person such as myself can stand with head and shoulders inside the bottom of it, I imagine that if one was to shout it would make quite a noise.  According to a nearby plaque it's a "Listening and Viewing Device" created by Andrew Drummond in 1994, a joint project between the Wellington Sculpture Trust and Wellington City Council.  It's kind of interesting and I like that it can be played with, but somehow I still don't really see the point.  Maybe that's exactly what the point is.
(Posted retrospectively)

Tuesday 16 December 2003

A longer expedition

I'm rather pleased with myself for successfully completing this one. I went with Dad and Judy on a walk from Pukerua Bay to Plimmerton.  We left my car at the Hongoeka Marae which is at the Plimmerton end, and carried on to Pukerua Bay in their car to start the trek.  The first part, to Wairaka Point, is easy.  At the point itself is a gate that hasn't been opened for a good number of years, judging by the amount of driftwood piled up against it.  It has a built-in stile, but as you can see in the picture below, that's been made redundant by the said pile of driftwood.  [Aside: This is the area where Peter Jackson filmed parts of Bad Taste.] Shortly after this the going gets more difficult - you get onto a long shingle beach that goes for miles.  It appears that there was once a track just above the beach, but large parts of it have been obliterated over the years and the bits that remain are a bit hard to find.  Consequently we found ourselves walking on the difficult shingle most of the way. At the end of the long beach you get onto the quarry road which also seems to go on forever and is less interesting, but at least it's easier walking.  By this time my feet were getting rather sore and I was very glad indeed when we came to the quarry buildings and then the marae where my car was parked.  We felt we'd earned an ice cream by then!  After that there was just the rather anti-climactic drive to Pukerua Bay to pick up the other car.
(Posted retrospectively)

Tuesday 25 November 2003

Home again!

After four days of doing family things and about another four of playing PC mechanic, I'm home, contemplating unpacking and catching up on all my many activites including blogging.  I'll do some catchup posts soon and once they've been up a few days I'll change the timestamps to make them appear on the dates when they should have been posted, and I guess that will make the first few disappear into the archives. Andy said he would read my blog if I mention the World Cup Rugby.  Well, you could fit everything I know about rugby on the back of a postcard in a 16-point font, but I do think it's nice that the rugby superpowers let England win it this time around - it's only good manners to share your toys with your friends after all.  I do have an opinion on one thing though, the "sack the coach" exercise which seems to have become an annual event for the All Blacks.  For heaven's sake!  You can't win all the time! Even with the most brilliant coach in the world, you are still going to lose sometimes, it's a fact of life.  What's worse, having a coach who isn't actually God, or replacing the coach every five minutes?  Plus, it's only a game, guys! [END RANT]

Sunday 23 November 2003

Blenheim Sunset

I went walking around the streets of Blenheim.  I saw in the distance what I thought was a bunch of teenagers messing around with a rugby ball in the middle of Scott St - how irresponsible, I thought in my best Concerned Citizen style, Scott St being a fairly significant (for Blenheim) thoroughfare and all.  As I drew closer I saw that they were no teenagers, more like thirty-somethings, and they seemed to be letting the cars get past okay.  Oh well, they're old enough to know what they're doing. An hour or so later I snapped this sunset from my Mum's place.
(posted retrospectively)

Friday 21 November 2003

Wither Hills

I took a short break from PC-fixing to go for a walk on the Wither Hills.  Summer has barely started at this stage but already the hills are becoming brown and dry; the sheep are covered in dust.  I made it all the way up to the lookout (visible on the nearer hilltop) and back in an hour.
(Posted retrospectively)

Incommunicado

So here I am in Blenheim. Just about the first thing that happened when I got here on Monday, I switched on Mum's PC and got LOTS of nasty scandisk errors, then it won't boot Windows.  Uh-oh, guess what I'm going to be doing later this week.  I have my laptop with me, and I bought a modem for it last week, but I can't get the modem to work properly (it's a weird fault).  So now I'm using my uncle's PC from Nelson which Mum and I borrowed, it has a working modem but no USB drivers for my camera.  It also has no firewall, and I won't be installing one because it only has 32MB of memory and it's running Win2k. [Update: I did install ZoneAlarm, I had to because of course it got hit with a worm as soon as I dialled up.] So what I'm trying to say is, this week's blogging will happen retrospectively when I get *something* working properly.

Thursday 20 November 2003

Another re-run

This was the day I started getting busy with PC repairs in Blenheim and I didn't do any significant walking.  So here's another photo from Nelson - the flax bushes were in flower too.
(posted retrospectively)

Wednesday 19 November 2003

A walk in Nelson

I was staying with my sister Esther and her family, who currently live about halfway up a hill in Nelson.  So of course I went walking further up the hill.  There are steps that take you directly up to a road that runs along the top of the hill, and near there I found a cabbage tree in full flower.  It's funny, most of the time I don't notice cabbage trees, but when they're in flower they can be quite eye-catching.
(posted retrospectively)

Tuesday 18 November 2003

Nelson

This was the day my nephew Liam turned five, and the first time I've been there for his birthday.  I didn't do any walking - the only "exercise" I got was dancing to the Hooley Dooleys at Liam's insistence.  Here's a picture of the young man himself with one of his presents - it's Diesel 10!
(posted retrospectively)

Sunday 16 November 2003

I'm off!

Off to Blenheim in the morning.  There aren't many hills there, and I'll be doing family stuff so I may not post much this week.

Excuses, excuses

It's horribly windy out there, and very grey too.  Besides, I've been to dance practice today and done a moderate amount of exercise there. This photo is from the Botanic Gardens last weekend.  I'm not particularly fond of the standard forestry-issue pinus radiata, but here's what it looks like when it isn't destined to be turned into timber.  It's also known as Monterey Pine.

Saturday 15 November 2003

A pair of knobbly trees

After being slack yesterday I thought I'd better make a proper effort today.  But where does all the time go? It was nearly 5 by the time I got to the carpark at Elsdon so I only spent about an hour - and I got rained on, that wasn't supposed to happen!  It was getting a bit dark for good pictures but this one seems to have come out okay.  I don't know what this variety of tree is called but now that I've noticed them it seems there are quite a few of these knobbly ones around.

Friday 14 November 2003

Guilty, yer honour

Okay, I confess.  I didn't go walking today because I was working obsessively on my laptop upgrade.  It's mostly finished now - I've learned a few lessons in the process by the way:
  1. Make sure you get the right type of memory, don't just guess that any old SODIMM will do.
  2. If you clone your NT4 operating system to another partion on the same disk, make both versions think that their own partition is the C drive.  This requires messing around in disk administrator and about three reboots, but it's necessary.  Otherwise, when you uninstall software in the second version it just messes up both copies.
  3. Write your CD Key on a sticky notepaper and put it some place where you can read it easily.
  4. You have to uninstall Nero before you run the operating system upgrade.
Note to David and other zealots: Yes I am going to install Linux as well eventually, not this week though. So anyway, here's another picture from yesterday's walk in Spicer Park.  It's a view of part of the park, looking down from Orientalis Way.  I'm rather pleased with this one, I think I'll use it as wallpaper on the laptop and it might remind me to go walking.

Thursday 13 November 2003

Today I went to Spicer Botanical Park, which is right next door to the Colonial Knob Scenic Reserve.  It's a good place for a short walk, as long as the wind is northerly and you don't get the charming odour of the nearby rubbish tip.  I like to go up the Ridgeline walk to the lookout point - a clearing on a high point where you can see across to the native bush, or up to Trash Palace where you can offload your old household junk or buy somebody else's old junk very cheaply.  The lookout would be a great spot for a picnic if only there was a toilet facility nearby. The park has a lot of exotic tree varieties, planted out in areas according to their regions.  Today's photo comes from the Europea Way.  I have no idea what variety of conifer this is, but the two-tone green effect is very pretty.

Wednesday 12 November 2003

Town and around

I spent the afternoon doing genealogy research at Internal Affairs, National Library, and National Archives.  This involved a bit of walking from one to the other, but not much in the way of hills: Boulcott St, Molesworth St, and a couple of flights of stairs. On the way I found this litany of questions painted on the footpath outside Parliament, signed "B.C.".  All very mysterious.
Still working on the laptop, it crashes when I try to upgrade NT4 to Win2K.

Tuesday 11 November 2003

Tech talk

It's been "upgrade the laptop" day today.  I have installed a new hard disk and transferred the contents of the old disk to it, and now I'm preparing to upgrade the operating system.  I've been playing "hunt the compatible memory" with Paradigm PCs and I think they've found some I can safely order.  I went looking for a cable to use with the PCMCIA modem, didn't find one, but CBS (who don't seem to have a web site!) sold me a secondhand modem complete with cables, probably cheaper than tracking down and ordering a cable for the other one. So I haven't done any walking today. Naughty girl - no chocolate ration.

Monday 10 November 2003

The plumber duly came and went, and I was able to escape.  It was another windy day and by the time I had done my errands it was getting late, so I settled for a short foray into the Porirua Scenic Reserve.  This is one end of the Colonial knob track that starts next door to the Elsdon Youth Camp.  According to the papers, there are bellbirds in this reserve for the first time since the 1950s, thanks to a campaign of possum control.  I didn't hear the bellbirds today but I heard and saw several tui.

Trapped!

I have to stay home and off the phone until the plumber arrives, which means no walking and no long internet sessions because he's supposed to ring and arrange a time.  I dare not be incommunicado because I don't like having to use a bucket to fill the toilet cistern every time it needs flushing.  So I have to resort to doing things that don't involve going out or using the Internet.  Such as housework...

Sunday 9 November 2003

No walk today, so here is another photo from yesterday. This the Toyota Prius that belongs to the New Zealand branch of WWF ( that's the wildlife group, not the wrestling mob).  Their headquarters are at the Botanic Gardens and I encountered the car during my meanderings yesterday. This car uses a hybrid petrol-electric drivetrain to enhance its performance at the same time as cutting down on the nasty emissions, which has to be a good thing.  It would be even better if it was possible to fill up the battery by plugging into the mains, but alas this is not possible.  Instead it runs only on petrol, and the battery is charged in the same way as a normal car battery.  The Prius has been available in the USA and Japan for about five years I believe, and now it is finally being made available in New Zealand.  By a "strange" coincidence, so is Honda's rather similar hybrid Civic.

Saturday 8 November 2003

Which path would you take?

The botanic garden is a great place for walking up hills, with many intersecting paths to explore, trees to look at.  At the height of summer it gets pretty crowded, but right now most people are just getting used to the idea that summer is arriving so it wasn't too busy today.  I wandered around, not entirely randomly but taking the uphill path at each intersection.  Including the one in the photo - but then I've always preferred the road less travelled.  One of the great advantages of this place is you can't really get lost - when it's time to leave, just go downhill.

Scandinavian heritage

It's official, I'm one-eighth Swedish.  I've known for many years that my great-grandfather came from either Sweden or Finland, but today I received my grandmother's birth registration details and found out more about him.  His name was Simon Hanson and he was born in Gothenburg in about 1863.  I don't yet know when he came to New Zealand, but he married in Temuka, South Canterbury, in 1898.

Friday 7 November 2003

Colonial Knob - the gravel road

It's a dull cloudy day today, so it should be perfect for walking on the open hillside on Colonial Knob - but no, there's a strong northerly blowing. You can see the dust being stirred up in the photo. I should have gone for the bush track instead. At the very least I should have tied my hair back. I measure my progress by the marker posts on the side of the road, which seem to be spaced at intervals of about 100m. When I'm fit enough I can get past #1 before I have to stop for a breather, and I managed it easily enough today. I carried on up to #6, which is kind of my minimum standard for that road.

Getting a charge

Finally!  The car that was parked inconveniently close to the driveway has gone so now I can move my electric car there and plug it in.

Thursday 6 November 2003

Mapuia Walkway

Since my feet were still sore after last night's effort (although luckily the threatened blister does not seem to have eventuated) my walk today was a bit of a token effort.  I found a track called "Mapuia Walkway" and explored the beginning of it for about 15 minutes.  It's a bit steep at the start for my liking, with lots of steps up from the road which is at sea level, then it levels out for a while and you get a good view all the way from Evans Bay to Point Jerningham.  Alas, there are lots of baby gorse bushes along this part of the track, and I think it will be impassable by Christmas.

A word about diets

Jenny sent me an email in which she said "...from some research results I've read people aren't constructed to be able to stay on restrictive diets, even if lots of people do say they work. I think they dont." I agree absolutely, and that's part of the reason why I set up this blog. I'm hoping to become living proof that exercise and eating sensibly without actually doing the diet thing is the way to go. The reason calorie-restricted diets don't work, in a nutshell, is because they put your body into starvation mode, in which it uses the calories from food more efficiently in order to still be able to store some as fat.  Your metabolism slows down and you have no energy.  And then, when you go off the regime because you can't stand it any more, you're still in starvation mode, and lo, you put on more weight than you ever took off through the diet!  This effect is known as yo-yo dieting.  Don't do it! Note: I am not a medical practitioner or expert of any sort. My opinion is gained through years of experience and some reading. For a proper explanation of this by a proper expert, look for this book.  It has the words DON'T DIET written in large friendly letters on the cover. (Written by Dale M. Atrens, Ph.D., published in 1988 by Bantam Books and Schwartz Publishing. The ISBN for the edition I have is 0-86753-402-8.)  I don't think it would be an exaggeration to say that this book saved my life - at the very least, it saved me from becoming one of those unfortunate people who don't go out because they can't get through the door. Oh, and guess what annoys me most of all... because I mention the D word in my blog, the banner ad at the top of the page is automatically picking up ads that specifically promote the very type of attitude that causes all this grief for people like me and Jenny. But I have a technical solution in mind... if/when it works, you will see a different type of ad up there.

Pyrotechnomania

So I went off to the fireworks as intended, walking as briskly as I could manage from the railway station to the Overseas Terminal where I was meeting Stewart, David and Steve.  It took about half an hour, and sadly I think it's given me a blister on the ball of my foot.  Walking on flat ground just isn't the same. I took lots of photos and I've chosen four reasonably good ones to display here.  I think the yellow-ish one is the best.  Click to see a larger version.

Wednesday 5 November 2003

This morning I was just going to go for a short walk, because I'll be doing more walking tonight when I catch the train into town to see the fireworks.  I thought half an hour would do... but the thing about walking up hills is that you want to keep going higher, because you can.   So I ended up spending about an hour, and I found an empty section where I could look down on the street where I live.  It's not a very good picture so that'll be the last time I use "basic" quality on my camera.

Our place is at the top of the street.  It's a cul-de-sac so that means if I go walking from home I have to finish with a steep uphill climb. That's not my preferred option, I'd rather finish with a nice downhill cruise.

By way of introduction

So, why a blog, and what am I trying to achieve with it? Well, I've been fat all my adult life, and I've tried various things to get rid of the fat, but my problem is I lack self-discipline, and keep giving up.  Perhaps if I make a public record of my current efforts, it will become an obligation that will help me keep to it.  My focus is on going for daily walks and eating sensibly without going on diets, so I'm going to record comments about those things. Another possible is objective is to share comments about diets and stuff that I have tried in the past, and why they didn't work. And I can always just use the blog as a soapbox if I want.