A Break from the Quake

Yikes - what a week (or so). I've not got much to say about the terrible Christchurch earthquake, other than a) all my friends and relatives are ok, unlike some, and b) I can't decide whether I'd rather be here in Wellington away from the chaos or down there getting stuck in and lending a hand.

Anyway - it's so easy to become transfixed by the news as it slowly updates on stuff.co.nz, but to keep a healthy outlook it's important to limit your viewing of images of tragedy, especially when there's nothing practical you can do to help (apart from donate of course.)

So - assuming you HAVE given some money, here are a few random items of interest to take your mind off things:

Firstly, here's something I picked up that was blowing around the local supermarket carpark today:

Great use of the word "all" I thought. Cute drawing too. Interesting to consider from the point of view of visual symbolism. Fat people are stick figures with massive tummies. The only distinguishing feature between the different characters, apart from height, is their hair. They're all fat though. I wonder if the author had specific people in mind as she (I'm guessing) drew them? This particularly appealed to me because I have recently started a fairly focussed attempt to lose about 12kg. (2 down, 10 to go!) Thanks for the timely reminder, mystery author!

I recently had the experience of playing a support slot for Sting's Synchronicity show at The Mission in Napier. I was a hired hand, as was most of the rest of the band, and we managed to present a fairly convincing performance despite being quite under-rehearsed. The highlight of the day though, is summarised in this photograph...

 Don't we all look pleased with ourselves?! From left to right: Me, Matt Parlane, Shelley Hirini, Sting, Dean Barcham and Iain Riddle. The only people missing from this photo are Rod Williams (who we were backing along with Shelley Hirini), and Iain's wife Carrol who was behind the camera, and to whom we owe our thanks. Without her tenacity we would have missed the photo opportunity altogether. Sting was very approachable and friendly, as were the rest of the crew.

Once our work was done, we were able to enjoy the main show thanks to the hospitality of Howard Page - Sting's front of house engineer - who invited us to watch the show from his mix position. Top fella!

I've been recently enjoying watching the live video feed from the International Space Station as the space shuttle Discovery undertakes her final mission. She is currently docked to the ISS and tomorrow the first of two EVAs (spacewalks) will be undertaken to do various maintenance tasks around the space station. The video feed is almost live (maybe 30s delay?) and seeing the earth slowly rotating below brings back lots of childhood memories of dreaming about spaceflight. I never imagined back then that I would one day be able to just turn on my computer and see the view outside the space station's window, or even chat with the astronauts (via Twitter). How's this for an office window view?

Here's the best link I've found to the live video - on USTREAM. Here's the live mission audio only, if you don't need pictures. And here's a link to Soma FM's 'Mission Control' radio station which blends the live nasa audio feed with ambient electronic music for those so inclined... :-)

You can also subscribe to an RSS feed of potential ISS flyover times for your location. Go to this page and click on 'Sighting Opportunities'. I got up at 5:15 this morning and watched it fly over Wellington. Beautiful. :-)

And as a segue, here are a couple of photos of Christchurch taken from the ISS after the quake.

Ok... time to get back to the latest headlines from Christchurch.