Tēnā koe: 05/30/10

Sunday, May 30, 2010

1820 - First European plough used in NZ

1820 First European plough used in NZ

The missionary John Butler turned the first furrow at Kerikeri, recording: 'I trust that this day will be remembered with gratitude, and its anniversary kept by ages yet unborn.'

Butler, New Zealand's first ordained resident clergyman, arrived at the Bay of Islands in August 1819 as superintendent designate of the Church Missionary Society's mission. He was accompanied by his wife and two children, and James Kemp, a lay missionary, and his wife. The Butlers and Kemps took up residence at Kerikeri, which became Butler’s headquarters as the superintendent of the mission.

Butler's journal of his years at Kerikeri provides not only details of his contacts with Maori but also an insight into contemporary Maori culture. A key aspect of the missionaries' work was the introduction of European practices − including agricultural methods − that would help ‘civilise’ Maori and prepare them for conversion. On 3 May 1820 Butler wrote:

‘The agricultural plough was for the first time put into the land of New Zealand at Kideekidee, and I felt much pleasure in holding it after a team of six bullocks… I trust that this day will be remembered with gratitude, and its anniversary kept by ages yet unborn. Each heart rejoiced in this auspicious day, and said, “May God speed the plough’”.

It's Great to be a Souf Efrikan!!!

This is a great country because…
1. You can eat half dried meat and not be considered disgusting.

2. Nothing is your fault; you can blame it all on apartheid.

3. You get to buy a new car every 3 months and the insurance company even pays for it.

4. You can experience pathetic service in eleven official languages.

5. Where else can you get oranges with 45% alcohol content at rugby matches?

6. It's the only country in the world where striking workers show how angry they are by dancing.

7. You're considered clumsy if you cannot: use a cell phone (without car kit), change CDs, drink a beer, put on make-up, read the newspaper and smoke, all at the same time while driving a car at 160 kph in a 60 kph zone.

8. Great accent. (!!!)

9. If you live in Johannesburg, you get to brag about living in the most dangerous city in the world.

10. Burglar bars become a feature, and a great selling point for your house.

11. You can decorate your garden walls with barbed wire.

12. The tow-trucks are the first on the scene for most major crimes, without being called.
The police you have to call about three times.

13. Votes have to be recounted until the right party wins

14. Illegal immigrants leave the country because the crime rate is too high.

15. The police ask you if they must follow up on the burglary you've just reported..

16. A murderer gets a 6 month sentence and a pirate TV viewer 2 years.

17. The prisoners strike and get to vote in elections!

18. The police stations have panic buttons to call armed response when they are burgled

19. Police cars are fitted with immobilizers and gear locks!

20. Condoms for free - shopping plastic bags for sale
Ja nee!! Dis lekker hier!!

Run Rabbit Run!

My favorite tune (although not original vocalist)

Who invented the "Chain"?

Wolf2 in 35 Truly Dramatic Examples of Animal Photography

Hopefully that chain is nailed to something solid and the dog will escape by the skin of his teeth!

Blind Sky Diving....

Blindly Sky-Diving
A blind man was describing his favorite sport - parachuting. When asked how this was accomplished, he said that things were all done for him: "I am placed in the door and told when to jump. My hand is placed on my release ring for me, and out I go." "But how do you know when you are going to land?" he was asked.

"I have a very keen sense of smell and I can smell the trees and grass when I am 300 feet from the ground," he answered.

"But how do you know when to lift your legs for the final arrival on the ground?" he was again asked.

He quickly answered "Oh, the dog's leash goes slack."

Skydiving.......

The First Jump
A man goes skydiving for the first time. After listening to the instructor for what seems like days, he is ready to go.

Excited, he jumps out of the airplane. About five seconds later, he pulls the ripcord. Nothing happens.

He tries again. Still nothing.

He starts to panic, but remembers his back-up chute. He pulls that cord. Nothing happens. He frantically begins pulling both cords, but to no avail.

Suddenly, he looks down and he can't believe his eyes. Another man is in the air with him, but this guy is going UP!

Just as the other guy passes by, the skydiver -- by this time scared out of his wits -- yells, "Hey, do you know anything about skydiving?"

The other guy yells back, "No! Do you know anything about gas stoves?"

James Blundell Bankrupt

James Blundell is broke and living with his parents.

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James Blundell files for bankruptcy
Back home living with parents
Australian Idol girlfriend sticks by him

AT the age of 45, multi-award-winning country singer James Blundell has been forced into bankruptcy and back home to live with his parents.

Blundell, who has penned nine albums over the past 23 years and sold more than 400,000 copies of them, filed for voluntary bankruptcy late last month.

Bankruptcy trustee Jason Cronan, of SV Partners, said he believed Blundell had personally financed a series of albums, but poor sales and mounting debts had forced his hand.

Blundell is thought to owe at least $290,000 to six creditors, mostly finance companies, but the debt is expected to increase substantially when his main lender comes forward.

The divorced father of two is living back on his parents' 1900ha sheep and cattle station in southern Queensland.

After two decades in the music industry, his only listed assets are $5000 worth of memorabilia.His girlfriend of three years, former Australian Idol contestant Jesse Curran, has continued to stand by her man. Blundell made headlines in 2007 when he left his wife of nine years, Lidia, for the young wannabe star.

"I heard Jesse singing at the Broken Hill races, and she just floored me," he reportedly said. "You can find great talent in the most unexpected spots."Blundell's financial fall is a long way from his heyday as the darling of rural Australia, touring with the likes of Keith Urban and Kris Kristofferson and enjoying the backing of music giant EMI.He met Curran, 20 years his junior, while performing at Broken Hill that year.

The singer/songwriter won nine Golden Guitars and received four ARIA award nominations over his career, before releasing his ninth album, Portrait of a Man, in 2008. His last album, although a critical success, was a commercial flop.

Despite his financial woes, Blundell has continued to tour, playing at last year's Gympie Country Music Festival and Woodford Folk Festival.

His first marriage, to former manager Louise, lasted 10 years before they parted ways. He has two children, Travis, eight, and Briar, 12, with Lidia.

Blundell came to prominence following the 1987 release of Gidgee Bug Pub Song, for which he won a Golden Guitar for Best New Talent.

He followed up with two albums before hitting a chord with mainstream Australia with 1992'sThis Road, which sold more than 145,000 copies and featured one of his best-known songs,Way Out West, a collaboration with James Reyne. Blundell was not scared to take his music to the political stage. In 2003, he wrote Postcards From Saigon, protesting against the war in Iraq.

He was also the voice of a multi-million-dollar 1997 Qantas commercial, singing Peter Allen's hit I Still Call Australia Home with other local stars.

Blundell also collaborated with the likes of Cold Chisel's Ian Moss and INXS's Kirk Pengilly. But by 1999, album sales were sliding and his third album, Amsterdam Breakfast, managed only 8000 sales.

It is not the first time Blundell has faced financial ruin. In 1996, disillusioned with the music industry, he left for Europe and travelled around in a van, earning money by busking.

"It sent me stone, motherless broke, but I'd do it again tomorrow," he said later.

Blundell was most recently nominated for Heritage Song of the Year in the Queensland Country Music Awards for Riding Into Town.

Blundell's management did not return calls
.

HP developing a 'Dick Tracy' wristwatch

By John D. Sutter, CNN

May 19, 2010 -- Updated 1719 GMT (0119 HKT)

HP has developed a process for creating flexible plastic displays that could be used in a number of gadgets.

STORY HIGHLIGHTS

HP is developing a wristwatch with a plastic display
The company says the watch will be useful to the military
It runs on solar power, is light and won't break easily, HP says
The company expects to have a prototype in a year

RELATED TOPICS

Palo Alto, California (CNN) -- Hewlett-Packard says it's developing a next-generation wristwatch for the U.S. military.

The printing and computer company says the watch will have a flexible display that shows maps and other strategic information to soldiers in remote combat fields. The watch's screen will be made of plastic and it will run on solar energy, making it less likely to malfunction or run out of power in a tense scenario.

"We call it a Dick Tracy watch," said Carl Taussig, director of information surfaces at HP Labs in Palo Alto, California, in a reference to the comic-strip detective whose high-tech wristwatch doubled as a two-way radio.

HP expects a prototype of the watch to be ready within a year.

The U.S. military plans to use the prototype with a small group of soldiers first before deciding whether to expand its use of the technology, Taussig said. The watch may eliminate the need for soldiers to carry cumbersome technological gear and backup batteries.

A U.S. Department of Defense spokeswoman said she was not familiar with the project, so it's unclear exactly how the watch would be used by the military.

HP makes the watch's display screen out of plastic, rather than the glass that is the norm for most computer displays on the market today.

"It doesn't break. It's thin. It's potentially flexible," Taussig said of the plastic display.

Flexible solar panels also will be printed onto the watches, using a technology developed by a company called PowerFilm. That company also has developed solar-powered tents for the military, according to its website.

All kinds of consumer electronics may start incorporating plastic instead of glass screens in coming years. The plastic screens have the advantages of being light, using less power and being less destructible. They also use 40 times less raw material than glass displays, Taussig said.

HP said its plastic-display technology could also be used in laptops, e-readers and commercial signs.

Other companies are working in this space, too.

More than 20 million flexible plastic displays are on the market today, according to Sriram Peruvemba, vice-president of marketing for E Ink, the company that developed the low-power display technology for the Amazon Kindle and many other e-book readers.

So far, all those screens are very small. "These go into wristwatches, they go into memory sticks, they go into shelf labels -- things like that," he said.

Peruvemba expects flexible plastic displays to get larger in coming years, to the point that they can be used in e-book readers and laptop computers.

Taussig said the military watch will be one of the first real-world tests of the technology. He expects the next commercial applications also to be relatively small in terms of screen sizes. Grocery stores, for example, may use plastic screens to display vegetable and fruit prices in the near future, he said.

The screens don't use much power, and store managers could update them more quickly than paper price tags, he said.

HP Labs has been developing a process to "print" the plastic display components for 10 years. The company originally intended to use the technology in portable memory drives, but creating larger screens out of plastic turned out to be a more economical and feasible venture, Taussig said.

The secret to the screens is in what's behind them: a thin strip of metal-coated plastic that's only 50 microns thick -- about half the width of a human hair -- and wraps around a spool.

That layer of material is printed with transistors, the components that tell the screen to display certain images. It is treated with various acid and metal coatings to make it conduct electricity and create clear images. In some ways, the system mimics newspaper production.

"We had to actually build all of the equipment to do this stuff, and that's because no one's ever done it before," Taussig said.

Dennis Hopper dies.

LOS ANGELES (AP) -- Dennis Hopper, the high-flying Hollywood wild man whose memorable and erratic career included an early turn in "Rebel Without a Cause," an improbable smash with "Easy Rider" and a classic character role in "Blue Velvet," has died. He was 74.

Hopper died Saturday at his home in the Los Angeles beach community of Venice, surrounded by family and friends, family friend Alex Hitz said. Hopper's manager announced in October 2009 that he had been diagnosed with prostate cancer.

The success of "Easy Rider," and the spectacular failure of his next film, "The Last Movie," fit the pattern for the talented but sometimes uncontrollable actor-director, who also had parts in such favorites as "Apocalypse Now" and "Hoosiers." He was a two-time Academy Award nominee, and in March 2010, was honored with a star on Hollywood's Walk of Fame.

After a promising start that included roles in two James Dean films, Hopper's acting career had languished as he developed a reputation for throwing tantrums and abusing alcohol and drugs. On the set of "True Grit," Hopper so angered John Wayne that the star reportedly chased Hopper with a loaded gun.

WTF?

Beer

THURSDAY, AUGUST 6, 2009
Best Beer of All
After the Great Britain Beer Festival, in London, all the brewery presidents decided to go out for a beer.

The guy from Corona sits down and says, "Hey Senor, I would like the world's best beer, a Corona." The bartender dusts off a bottle from the shelf and gives it to him.

The guy from Budweiser says, "I'd like the best beer in the world, give me 'The King Of Beers', a Budweiser." The bartender gives him one.

The guy from Coors says, "I'd like the only beer made with Rocky Mountain spring water, give me a Coors." He gets it.

The guy from Guinness sits down and says, "Give me a Coke." The bartender is a little taken aback, but gives him what he ordered.

The other brewery presidents look over at him and ask "Why aren't you drinking a Guinness?" and the Guinness president replies, "Well, I figured if you guys aren't drinking beer, neither would I."