Trees can be rebels too

Stickin' it to the man, yo. Well, to the humans at least. Steel means nothing to to the inexorable expansion of the lateral meristem! This photo doesn't show the whole tree, so you can't see that it's a cabbage tree. It's one of a few of them growing in these cage things on Wakefield street, but it's the only one making an escape attempt.

"Guy on the bus", or "Learning to drink coffee - Day 3"

Went to the orthodontist today. After missing the train and having to walk there, I arrived exactly on time, had my teeth looked at, and was free ten minutes later (I don't have braces, but might in the future, depending on how my teeth behave over the next few years). I still had lots of time until I was meant to be back in school, but needed to get some lunch, so I headed to Columbus to grab a sammie and a coffee (three days in a row - pretty good for someone who doesn't like it. Not sure if I've noticed any caffeine side-effects yet).

I bought a "ham roll" (which despite having avocado and being made of some tasty bread, was rather smaller and less satisfying than expected), and a "mocha latte" - advertised as being a "chocolate flavoured latte with chocolate foam". Well, it barely tasted like chocolate at all. It was definitely stronger than boarding house coffee, but was nicely warming on the way down, so I kept drinking it.

After catching the bus back to Ranfurly, I bought a Whittaker's Sante bar (dark chocolate) for it, to try and add some chocolateyness to the drink. The Whittaker's bar usually make very nice hot chocolates - simply dissolve one in hot milk. However, by the time I got to the Ranfurly dairy, bought the chocolate and put it in, my coffee had cooled down significantly. The chocolate melted in sludge without dissolving, and then solidified once more as the coffee reached lukewarmness. I was going to microwave it in the common room once I got to school, but was intercepted by Sinead, who told me in no uncertain terms that it is a sin to microwave coffee. So I drank it cold and sat in the library scraping the solid chocolate out from the bottom of the cup with my fingers.

But! That is not the point of the story! (despite being the third instalment of the coffee saga)

The most interesting thing that happened between the orthodontist's and school was that there was a very cute fellow at the bus stop. Tallish, but sort of small and slim at the same time, without looking especially young - his face looked... not old, but worldly. He could have been anywhere between seventeen and thirty-five. Stripey shirt. Sort of smiley. Scruffyish dark brown stubble, little sideburns and fluffy light brown hair. The sort you want to ruffle.

Anyway, when I came up to the bus stop (well, patch of pavement outside Bivouac), he looked up just as I was checking him out and made eye contact. I looked away. Might have blushed. Pretended not to look at him until the bus came - or buses, seeing as two arrived at once. I got into line for the first one, and he walked over to the second one. I looked in the window of my bus, and saw that there weren't many seats free (I'm one of those people that really prefers not to sit next to strangers on the bus or train), and decided to hop on the second bus. Because, you know, there were more seats free. Not to ogle him or anything (*nonchalant whistle*). I sat a few seats back from the front, on the left, and he sat in the first seat on the right.

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So maybe I did ogle him a little. Well, his hair at least, seeing as that was all I could really see. As I ogled I thought, the way I am wont to do when I see interesting strangers out and about. It's quite fun to look at people you see around in the city and try to imagine what their life is like, where they are going and what they are doing. Although he had two seats to himself, he was sitting in the aisle seat, unlike most people (myself included) who would sit in the window seat so that they can stare out the window and pretend to ignore their fellow passengers. I wondered if he was in a hurry to go somewhere, and wanted to leap out of his seat and out the door as soon as the bus came to his stop.I never did find out whether this was his intention, as I got off the bus before he did. Ah well. He fulfilled my eye candy quota for the week.

Something Interesting About Mobile Networks, or Adventures in Foodtown Continued

If you're not from New Zealand, or live under a rock, you should know before reading this that we have three cellphone networks here - Vodafone and Telecom, the two ancient rivals, and 2 Degrees, a relative newcomer.

I've been meaning for a while to get a 2 Degrees sim card, because you can pick them up for $2 at the supermarket, they fit into a Vodafone phone (which mine is), you can call people in New Zealand and 21 other countries for 44c a minute, and you can text people for 9c a text instead of Vodafone's 20c. I'm on Vodafone's txt2000 plan thingy, which means 2000 texts to other Vodafones each month for $10 a month, but I have some friends on Telecom, especially two lovely boys I know who don't live in Auckland.

I don't know why, but something about being female and living in Auckland means you just automatically have a Vodafone. No exceptions. I think it's because of the txt2000 thing - it works best if everyone's on the same network. I know one or two in-Auckland-males with Telecom phones, and one or two out-of-Auckland-females with Telecom phones, but in general it's the out-of-Auckland-males that are the worst offenders. Shout-out to Jack and Paul!

Anyhow, it turns out that 2 Degrees sim cards are actually free! Free, I tell you! Sure, one pays $2 for the actual sim card, but it comes with $2 credit on it, so it's... free. So I grabbed one at the supermarket yesterday, while on a quest with Sinead and Conall to find cannelloni (that's where the photo of me looking all crazy in the supermarket on yesterday's post came from). So now I had a new free sim card! I sent some celebratory 9c texts to Jack and Paul, but then stopped so that I didn't chew through my hard-earned $2 too quickly. And then I got bored, so I put my Vodafone sim card back in and texted Sinead.

This wasn't really all that interesting, come to think of it. I'm just excited that I got a free sim card. FREE SIM CARD! Take that, Rhys Darby!

"Lifestyle" Drinks, or Adventures In Foodtown

I just moved some photos off my phone and thought it'd be worth sharing some of them. These were all taken in the Foodtown near my school, but on different occasions. Foodtown: it's where all the cool kids take photos on their phones. Here's the first, and the cause of the post title:

Lifestyle drinks. I don't know why "lifestyle" is a euphemism for sex, but people always talk about "lifestyle shops" and "lifestyle expos" and "alternative lifestyles" - I find that last one particularly irritating. Being gay or into BDSM or anything like that isn't an alternative lifestyle, it's an alternative sex life. An alternative lifestyle would be living in a treehouse. Which would be really cool. But anyway, lifestyle drinks. For the person who has everything; sex drinks now available in the beverage aisle of Foodtown! Unfortunately not. They just turned out to be "alternative" (read: cranberry/tomato) juices and sports-type drinks. Alas. Way to get our hopes up, Foodtown.

Of course, Foodtown is concerned for the wellbeing of peanut allergy sufferers:

No, really? Foodtown, you're not actually suggesting that chocolate peanuts contain PEANUTS, are you? Shop here if you have a peanut allergy and can't read small writing. They'll be sure to make it obvious.

Last of all, me. Posing quite spectacularly. That mark on my right shoulder is the scar from collarbone surgery mentioned in a previous post.

I love that whole split-personality thing my face is doing. Sinead said that this photo was scary. Can't imagine why.

That's all folks!

Something Interesting About managingmusicfilesonyourcomputerandpersonalmusicplayer

Why thank you, Geoffrey.

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Today, I proudly informed my friends on Facebook, I gave into "the strange obsession that my peer group has with Disney music", and loaded the Lion King soundtrack onto my mp3 player. When I inserted the cd, a box appeared asking me what I'd like to do with the cd. All well and good. I was given the options of opening it to look at the files, not doing anything, or to listen to it or rip music from it with Windows Media Player, iTunes, Creative Centrale or Nokia Music Manager. These programmes all have their own pros and cons:

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Windows Media Player - usually just doesn't work. I gave up on it in 2007 or 2008. Sometimes I use it when I accidentally double-click on a video (when I should have right-clicked to select Open with PowerDVD) and it comes up and plays in Media Player. But most of the time I just never use it.

iTunes - I don't actually have an iPod, but I use this for most of my music needs. It works and I'm used to it. The only problem is that although I don't have an iPod, my sister does, and most of the songs shown are hers. And of those, only a fraction are actually on my computer - the majority ask me to find the file manually when I try to play them. Half of them are by Slipknot, so I don't mind.
Creative Centrale - this is the music programme that came with my mp3 player (a Zen Mozaic - I have the black one. Yes, it looks even more emo in real life). It's good in that it automatically finds music on my computer, and doesn't display all the songs that aren't there like iTunes does. Sometimes I find little gems on Creative Centrale that I didn't know I had - for example, today I realised that Bittersweet Symphony was on my computer, this being a song that had been on my "songs to get" list for months. I use this for putting music onto my mp3 player, even if I take it from a CD with iTunes.
Nokia Music Manager - part of Nokia PC Suite. I don't actually listen to music on my phone, because the last time I tried it took me about three hours to get one song on.

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So I selected "Import songs with iTunes". After the Lion King had finished importing I inserted "Housework Songs [Disc 1]", and then realised that I could set up a sort of production line, where as one CD was importing on iTunes, the CD that was imported before it would going onto my mp3 player. In this manner, I copied 16 CDs onto my computer, most of which I also copied onto my mp3 player. Now I've got lots of new songs to listen to, some of which I've never heard before.

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The way I organise my music is that everything goes on my laptop. Not literally everything - I don't go out and hunt down things like cheap, crappy modern hip-hop just because it's there. But if there's a chance that I might want to listen to something, or email it to a friend in one of my send-people-random-music sprees, I put it on the laptop - and not just the song, but the whole album, even if I only want one song from it.

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From there, it's narrowed down to the music I have on my mp3 player. I tend to listen to my mp3 player on "shuffle all", so if there's an album that I only like one song from, usually I'll just put that song on - though you can discover good music that you didn't know about from listening to the rest of the album that you got for the one song. I found "The Best of Blur" on my computer once (a leftover from my sister), and the only song I knew was Song 2. Everyone knows Song 2. But I listened to the rest of the album, and decided that I liked Country House, Charmless Man, Coffee & TV and Tender waaaaaaaaay more than Song 2.

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Since refreshing my mp3 player with this new music ("new" is relative - the CDs are all from my parents' collection), I've come to especially enjoy the addition of the greatest hits albums from The Eagles and The Beach Boys (don't laugh! The Beach Boys are the soundtrack of my childhood!).

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If only I didn't now have "Fun Fun Fun" stuck in my head.

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And she'll have fun fun fun till her daddy takes her T-bird away...

An Interesting Way To Get Around

The YikeBike is an electric minifarthing - the minifarthing being a small, foldable and portable bicycle based on a penny-farthing. The designers say they originally considered an electric unicycle, but thought that the difficulty of balancing on a unicycle wouldn't make it terribly efficient. I think the best thing about this is that it was invented by New Zealanders, but there are a few other benefits - and downsides, too.

For safety, it is limited to a top speed of 20km/h - even when you're going down a hill. With full tyres and a full battery, it weighs 10kg - but it carries a maximum weight of 100kg, including the rider and their personal effects. So if you weight 95kg, you're not allowed to ride it wearing a 10kg backpack, and if you weigh 101kg, you're not allowed to ride it at all - unless you want to just ride it anyway and to heck with the warranty!

The range of the YikeBike, with a fully charged battery, is 9km. The creators invisage it as being used by commuters to travel short distances to work - when it's too short to drive, but too far to walk, and cycling would get you all hot and bothered in your suit and tie. If you can charge it at your workplace, great - but tough luck if you can't, cause you'll have to live within 4.5km of your place of work, unless you integrate public transport into your journey - more on that later.

The FAQs make me laugh. In response to the question "What happens when I brake hard?" the website says: "The YikeBike is the first in the world to have electronic anti-skid brakes, giving smoother braking and a shorter stopping distance than a bicycle. It is likely that you will jump off the front of a YikeBike in an emergency braking situation – this is very easy as there are no handle bars in the way." Sounds just like a unicycle in that respect!

As an answer to "Does the YikeBike come with a lock?" they say "No – because you can fold it up and take it with you there is no need to leave it outside where it can be stolen." I disagree with this. Just because you can fold something up and take it with you, that doesn't mean you should. I see the advantage of it folding up to be that you can carry it on public transport (in Auckland you have to buy a "cycle ticket" to take convential bikes on trains and they won't let you take your bike during peak hours - the YikeBike, being the size of a large bag, escapes this rule), or to carry it into your place of work/destination to charge it up for the return journey. Say you rode your YikeBike to a job interview. Would you fold it up and carry it under your arm into the interview room? Possibly. It'd be a great conversation starter. But even though it's the size of a large bag, there are lots of places where I would take a bicycle but not a large bag, because I can lock my bicycle outside.

I do admire the way it folds up. The front wheel goes back into the frame, and the rear wheel turns 180 degrees to rest inside the front wheel, while the seat and handlebars fold down on top. They say that it takes 15 seconds to fold up or unfold - but I'm sceptical of that. I know that it takes about two minutes of tugging and swearing to unfold a fold-up scooter, including locking all the moving parts into place so that something doesn't collapse once you're at terminal velocity. The Yikebike website doesn't specify whether their 15 seconds includes setting all the parts rigidly in place ready to be ridden (say that five times quickly!).

In conclusion, it's definitely interesting. We'll just have to wait and see how, and if, it takes off - although I suspect it might just be a gimmicky fad, like the Segway it was inspired by.

Afterthought:

If you thought this was mildly interesting, you may also find recumbent bicycles worth a look. I had never heard of them before today.