iCraig » Uncategorized

New Year’s Resolutions

craig — Mon, 03 Jan 2011 08:01:47 +0000

Get back into running
Build a set of outdoor furniture
Publish my iPhone app
Sort my photos from Japan
Clear the land beside the driveway
Handstand pushups
Write on this blog more
- Lego Moasic
- DIY furniture, composter
- Scrolling Javascript
Write up the PCT for The NZ Herald

EyeTV EPG for NZ TV

craig — Tue, 04 May 2010 08:09:57 +0000

Just a quick note for people who use Elgato’s EyeTV on their Macs in New Zealand. I’ve got an Automator script here that will fetch a TV schedule and load it into EyeTV. It takes care of deleting the file it downloads but you might need to open it (use the Automator program) to change where it downloads to.

EyeTV nz epg downloader

As noted below by Darren you need to change the channels in your guide to xmltv.

Happy Ayumi Meegan Day!

craig — Tue, 20 Apr 2010 06:53:28 +0000

Today is International Ayumi Meegan Appreciation Day. I’m not quite sure which year it started on, but it’s been going for almost 30 years and always falls on April 20th.

Ayumi, Paul, Tania and Craig atop My Fuji

Why? Well she’s cool that’s why. I first met Ayumi in 2007 in San Francisco but I’d been reading her blog for a long time before that. Every other day she shares a little bit of her perspective on the world and it makes great reading. She’s also a published author and very talented vocal musician as you can see in as she sings Ella Fitzgerald’s “How High the Moon”.

So go check out and AyumiMeegan.com and drop her a line, she’s one of the nicest bloggers I know with an amazing imagination and it’ll add a bit more sparkle into your life.

Emails are not charged per letter

craig — Tue, 30 Mar 2010 04:48:41 +0000

In the land of Twitter and text-messages I can understand the need to shorten words, use TLAs or even resort to txt spk. But emails can be as long and verbose as you like. So why do people feel the need to bring the limits of Twitter to other forms of communication? Case in point: I’m trying to sell a car at the moment so I put it up on TradeMe.co.nz, NZ’s equivalent of eBay. I got a response from someone.

Hey, Dis is —-. I jst had a look at ur Curren. Nice car. I am interested in this. So may I plz knw dat does it have any major or minor problems, and what’s the last price you are looking for? Plz mail me on ——- or txt me on ——–. Thanx

So I responded, and told them we’d listed the car for $3600 and they could call if they wanted to see it. No response. Then a week later they emailed again. Same email, but this time using their surname.

Hi there, Dis iz —. jst had a luk at ur vehicle, looks nice. If its stil there, I am interested in it. So, may I knw dat does it have any problems(major or minor). And may I knw d last price to offer. Frankly saying, I’ve got only $2400 at d moment as I hv jst sold my car. So if u r ready, can I hv a luk? Thnx

Really? I mean “Rly?”. Do people really expect be to drop the price of the car by 1/3 just because they don’t have the cash? A car is worth what ever it is worth and if you can’t afford it don’t send me your illiterate msgs trying to get some special deal, because I don’t know you and I don’t care and I am not willing to effectively give you $1200.

Hi —/—-,
Stl no mjr probs, stl sme mnr paint dmg on bmpr. We r stl xpcting ovr $3k 4 it though, lke I sed lst tme, we lsted it @ $3600 so cme bak 2 us whn u’ve got d cash.

Doing it ourselves

craig — Mon, 03 Aug 2009 00:03:09 +0000

It’s been over two months since Tania and I moved in to our first home, and as expected it is taking up a lot of our time. Due to the previous owner’s expansionist tendencies quite a few of our weekends have been spent under the house digging a trench into which new foundations can be poured. Together with a bit of help from my brother we shifted 9 cubic meters of dirt and now the builder has set out the boxing to shape the concrete. It’s a long process, only working on weekends, but we’re planning to be in this house for a long time so we want to do it right so we can live in it, not just palm it off to the next person.
Along side that we’ve each taken on little tasks around the house to make it more our own. Tania has got the vegetable patch started, I’ve removed some tree stumps. Tania made a pin board and hotwater bottle covers, I’ve made some shelves and installed network cables to my hidden backup harddrive. Together we made a photo wall. All in all it’s been a very productive time, but I’m still looking forward to summer. Due to my northern hemisphere trips over the last two years I’ve managed to miss winter since the beginning of 2007 so the constant rain and cold that has been hitting Auckland shocked me. If I wasn’t kept busy with little projects I’d have gone stir crazy. At a gathering of people just made redundant from my previous employer I was asked about my next adventure. I’ve got some things I’m interested in doing but so long as I have this mortgage I won’t be taking six months off to walk across another country, or the Okavango Delta . In the meantime I do intend to update this blog more often with some little things we’re doing to personalise our house. Starting with the floating shelves I made.

Doing it myself

craig — Sun, 17 May 2009 02:18:27 +0000

In just over 24 hours I expect to be picking up the keys to my first house. I expect it will be my only house for the next couple of decades. Not only is selling/buying houses expensive, it can also be extremely frustrating when solicitors forget to tell you things or print out vital documents that means taking the afternoon off work was a complete waste of time.
But come tomorrow that’ll all be over and Tania and I will be moving our belongings to the suburb of Birkdale where a number of friends have already bought houses. While we’ve been living in Point Chevalier with our friends Peter and Andy, Tania has been doing a lot of gardening. So it was by happy coincidence that while looking at a cardboard laptop stand I stumbled upon an excellent system for growing plants in reclaimed gutters along the side of a house devised by Suzanne Forsling. I’ve come up with an addition that’ll save some water and time. A bit of old piping laid along behind the gutter with holes drilled down the length of it would disperse water better than just watering one end of the plants, and if that pipe were fed from the downpipe of the roof-top guttering then it’d mean the system pretty much takes care of itself.
I’ve continued browsing the web for DIY projects and found lots onLifeHacker.com and GreenUpgrader.com.

A few of my favourites are:

From a Taranaki oil rig worker

craig — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 06:53:01 +0000

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?