My video has been up on the site for a little while now but those of us not lucky enough to every get listed as the most-recent applicants are struggling to get anywhere near the number of views those lucky few are receiving. Two days on the front page can bring in thousands of votes. So, I’m putting out a second post to encourage you to watch my video and give me a vote. I’ve heard that one New Zealander is guaranteed through to the next round and if you’re here to thank me for my software or after follwoing any of my travel blogs, the best thing you can do for me right now is a 5 star rating, and telling your friends about it too.

To try to drum up publicity I’ve created a page here on my site that I’ll keep up to date and voting progresses and a Facebook group that you’re welcome to join.

Here are those links again
Video: http://islandreefjob.com/applicants/watch/dF_InB2rFvY
Facebook group: http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=48534483691

I don’t generally forward on chain emails, let alone post them on my site, but I really like this one.

 

I work, they pay me. I pay my taxes and the government distributes my taxes as it sees fit.

In order to earn that pay cheque, I work on a rig for a drilling contractor.
I am required to pass a random urine test, with which I have no problem.

What I do have a problem with is the distribution of my taxes to people who don’t have to pass a urine test. Shouldn’t one have to pass a urine test to get a welfare cheque because I have to pass one to earn it for them?

Please understand that I have no problem with helping people get back on their feet. I do on the other hand have a problem with helping someone sit on their ass drinking beer and smoking dope.

 

 

Could you imagine how much money the government would save if people had to pass a urine test to get a welfare cheque?

There are a few changes going on in my life, chiefly a new (ish) job, moving in with my girlfriend and soon we’ll be house hunting. The beginning of a new year gives me a good reason to sit back and do a bit of planning and thinking about the way I am heading. What do I want from life and how do I go about getting it. With the financial trouble that providing the newspapers with fresh doomsday headlines almost every day it occurred to me that it’s time for a rebalance. The commercialised and consumer centric society has had it’s day while the retailers were wailing about the public not spending “enough” this Christmas I was glad that the holiday season may return to being that, rather than the buying season it has become. So the retailers may go out of business, millions of jobs get lost. How can we cope? How about doing it ourselves? Tania and I are growing a few vegetables now and when we do buy a house we’re going to dedicate a large chunk of garden to feeding ourselves. It’s green and economical. My parents are doing the same after years of having an unproductive compost heap they now grow a full range of veges and my younger brothers are taking up fishing. This doesn’t quite stack up to Ayumi’s ideal of living in a fully self-sustainable community but it’s a good step along the way.

There are obviously people out there who are further down the track. My good friends The Noodleheads are two of those and have recently pledged to buy nothing new for a year, except essentials for hygiene & safety (think toothpaste and brake fluid). I’d like to get to that stage but with the potential for owning my first house this year and not having a lot of kitchen wear I doubt I’d be able to keep to the pledge. I can still do my part. I cycle to work now and only use my girlfriends’ car vary sparingly, thus reduction the amount of pollution I cause. I have only bought two shirts and a few pairs of socks in the last year, it’s not like I’m growing and my trousers haven’t quite worn out yet. I’m reusing shopping bags and those plastic boxes that (my flatmates’) takeaways come in and our recycling bin is filled quicker than the refuse one.

When we do get our house you can expect a few posts on the measures we’ll be installing to lower our impact on the planet and our wallets. Water troughs for the vegetable garden. If only solar panels were cleaner and cheaper to produce. I’d love to drop of the grid.

After releasing Geotagger 2 I’ve taken a break from Mac programming and branched out into making apps for iPhones. I’ve been officially accepted into the programme and I’ve got most of the logic sorted on my first game. What’s missing now is the real spit an polish to make it a seller, something that people will show off to the friends and earn me another sale. Yes I’m now charging for my apps.

There will be more about that in a coming post, about sustainability, about my coding projects and about the cool new geotagging in iPhoto.

I’ve spent this morning setting up my new MacBook’s dev environment to match what I had before. I’m now ready to get back into coding and polishing up the donationware items I released in my former life as a developer. The last two years have seen a lot of my personal time devoted to getting my body and mind into shape for months of isolation and hardcore exercise that comes with crossing countries on foot. Now I’m back on solid ground, thinking about arranging millions of 1s and 0s in a row. It’s an entirely different challenge and one I welcome. I haven’t decided if I can announce where I work just yet. Not that it’s a state secret but I’m not sure on their policies of personal blogs. Rest assured that it’s something I’m really looking forward to in a field I can be pretty happy I’m working in. I’ll try not to bang on about it at parties though

I’ve a week of induction and set up. Then once my brain is back in gear it should flow through to my own projects, if I’m not busy moving house, which I will be.

I got an email last week from “an aspiring traveller” and it’s a question I’ve been asked a few times so I thought I’d share it.

Dear sir,
I am just curios as to how do you continue your travels and have ample budgets for your expeditions. I aspire to do just what you are doing now. I would like to know how do you earn your expenses along your journey.

and my response

Hi James,

If there’s a secret to my travels it’s being careful with my money and being prepared to be very uncomfortable. I take it you’ve seen both my American and Japanese walking sites. For those adventures I had almost no accommodation costs by sleeping in a tent, in temples in the occasional abandoned tunnel. The last 6 weeks of OneManWalking was traveling in a different style. Having a girlfriend along changes things because I wouldn’t want to put her in the position of sleeping in public toilets (a big fancy disabled one with my tent’s ground sheet below). So expenses went up dramatically. When I’m back home I try not to spend too much on things I can do free. I eat in as much as possible and rarely see movies at the cinema. I was really lucky to get cheap rent about 4km from my job so I walked that every day. It was good exercise and it saved me money.

In neither case did I deliberately earn expenses along the way. Once in America I was given a free room for helping spread wood chips at an inn-keeper’s prayer park and in Japan the locals were incredibly generous. Some people stopped and gave me fruit, some bought food from convenience stores and handed it straight to me and some even handed me cash. I never asked for it but they felt like doing a good thing for someone taking the time to see their country in a different way. There’s a similar phenomenon on the PCT called “trail magic”, people leaving chilli-bins (coolers) in the forest full of drinks and snacks, or doing other good deeds just because they like to. You should never get to a point where you rely on these things, be self sufficient, but be open to the idea that things usually work out pretty well.

If you do go traveling and write about it, let me know, I’ll be needing some good travelblogs for next year.

~Craig

I’m settling back in pretty well. On the job/house hunting circuits. I haven’t yet dug back into my code, I haven’t even gotten the latest version of Google Earth. But I will, and I’ll post updates to both projects when I can.

Chemistry by Semisonic available in the iTunes Music Store

I remember when I found out about chemistry
It was a long, long way from here
I was old enough to want it but younger than I wanted to be
Suddenly my mission was clear

So for awhile I conducted experiments
And I was amazed by the things I learned
From a fine fine girl with nothing but good intentions and a
Bad tendency to get burned

All about chemistry
Won

   Everyone on the net has heard about the recent US Supreme Court Ruling (MGM Studios Inc. et al v Grokster Ltd. et al) that went against the companies that make the file-sharing software, basically holding them accountable for the illegal actions of their users.

Justice David Souter wrote: “We hold that one who distributes a device with the object of promoting its use to infringe copyright… is liable for the resulting acts of infringement by third parties”.

Has anyone considered how this might effect gun manufacturers?

(more…)

My car has a radio with Japanese frequencies, thus I limited choice in the stations I listen too. I tuned into News Talk ZB today, and heard them debating the flag. Someone recently called for it to be changed and the presenter, and every caller was lashing into them for being unpatriotic and forgetting the so many NZers died for the flag. I disagree. I think they died for our right to self govern, not to be ruled but other countries and to ensure that every country has that right.

I called up and said such. I mentioned that Great Britain is only a part of the heritage of some of the people here. And that the % of people it represents is rapidly decreasing. What we need is something that represents the country, so I brought up Mr Hundertwasser’s design.

haha The next caller on is thinking the same thing. Agreeing with my points. “the previous caller had a really good point about the cultures represented”, and how people fight for the country not the flag.

We’ll see how long that lasts.