News You Can Bruise

One of the advantages of having a digital camera that fits in your pocket is that you can take a picture whenever your arms are not paralyzed. I kind of had this when I had the Hiptop (That reminds me: I got rid of the Hiptop because it never worked for me. I now use a cheap old reliable cell phone with no features beyond Tele-Talk^TM), but my time trials indicate that it takes about ten seconds for me to take my camera out of my pocket, turn it on, take a picture, turn the camera off, and put it back into my pocket. I don't think I could have taken a picture with the Hiptop in 10 seconds. Plus you can actually see details in the camera pictures.

All that was seemingly a big lead-up to the fact that I've had to start putting up "misc" directories to contain pictures that don't correspond to a "big event, better take the camera" thing. Here they are for February and March. These sets include hilarious moments like At least they didn't park in the handicapped space.

Bonus for Joe: this Ad campaign for New Zealand found near the Apple store which opens up new fields in tautological advertising. "Don't even come," it says. "We won't let you in."

Bonus bonus for everone: for some reason they're ripping up all the greenery around the building where I work. I assume they know what they're doing. Anyway, I call this picture set The Scouring of the Shire, and it should satisfy those of you who were hoping Return of the King would be even longer.

This is an Exclusive You Can Bruise! I asked Joe for his take on this Slate article, about the gala Return of the King opening in Wellington, New Zealand. Since I'm always proud to put up stuff on this site written by other people, here's his response:

The article is actually a pretty good description. The local paper has talked of nothing else since NZ lost the semi-final of the Rugby World Cup three weeks ago. For the first movie it renamed itself the Middle Earth Post but didn't go that far this time.

I do know more than a few people who worked on the films in some part, but the closest I get to actually knowing an actor would be that I used to work with someone who is in a band with the guy who played an elf in the Rivendell scene in the first movie (fans dubbed him Figwit).

The only exaggeration in the Slate article is the decription of Wellington as "a collection of high rises at the foot of green mountains" - mountains my arse. They're hills and it's quite possible to ride a bike up them.

I went down to the celebrations quite late. I missed the parade, but my gf Joanne saw it and thought it quite magical, especially the people dressed as elves and orcs. The makeup is apparently really good even in broad daylight.

It's sort of a shame to see the Rings stuff finished, it was nice to have a common sense of purpose with others in the city. Then again apparently work on King Kong will start soon...

Joe

New Downhill; the main new features are a much larger dataset and improved speed. Phil responded to my friendly email by putting up newer copies of the ecosystem data and mentioning me in his weblog, complete with link to embarrassing sophomore-year-in-college first NYCB entry. I've even got my own category now.

Hey, everyone from New Zealand that I've met has been cool and friendly. Are there any right jerks in New Zealand at all? Do you keep them down on the farm where they can't harm nothin'? Or have I just been fortunate?