Marking Time

The Last Post?

Thu, 19 Nov 2009 01:12:49 GMT

I've reached the point of pointlessness where LiveJournal is concerned. Everyone's gone to FaceBook. My sister Cathrine rang me yesterday morning, to see how JB was—Anna is one of her FB friends. I told her that she (and others on FaceBook) are probably more up to date with Anna's news than I am, even though I see her every day. I have a superstitious dread of FaceBook, as I understand it is a favourite target of spammers and virus merchants.

I'm not going to close my LJ, as it is my main point of contact with some people, but lack of (pertinent) response to some of my recent items makes it an exercise in futility—not even the Celtophile (Galatophile?) contingent took note of the last one, which I thought was exciting—and I don't think I'll do any more posts. I will still comment on others.

Nō reira, ka kite anō, e hoa mā!

Who knew...

Tue, 17 Nov 2009 12:53:11 GMT

...that there is a primary school where students are taught solely in Manx?

Rotating Tesseract

Fri, 02 Oct 2009 13:23:47 GMT

Urrk!

...again, or, instead

Wed, 09 Sep 2009 11:43:44 GMT

Okay, I invented enenēkosioienenēkontaenneamania on the analogy of hexakosioihexekontahexaphobia. But of course the hex word refers to the number 666, six hundred and sixty-six, and the mild hysteria that surrounded June 6, 2006, which was probably largely media-inflated ("Okay, guys, there's got to be a few looneys out there making a stir about this; let's go find 'em!"), is about the digits as digits. Whereas the 9/9/9 thing is just about the date, with no reference to the digits of the number. So instead, I give you—

trisenneamania

Enenēkosioienenēkontaenneamania

Mon, 07 Sep 2009 15:27:59 GMT

Tomorrow is 9/9/9. Last chance of writing a three-digit (truncated) date in the lifetimes of most of us. Next one is 1/1/0. (Don't think I ever did write 0 for 2000.)

Depending on which Wikipedia article you read...

Thu, 27 Aug 2009 02:13:16 GMT

I just found out that we're in the same taxonomic suborder (Eupelycosauria) as Dimetrodon and Edaphosaurus. Apparently we're closer to the Dimetrodon, which means that Dimetrodon is more closely related to our Permian ancestors than it is to the Edaphosaurus.

Kua mau te wehi!

Sun, 23 Aug 2009 07:00:34 GMT

TV3 Sports News tonight carried a report on an ice hockey game between New Zealand and Australia. Guess what the Ice Blacks, standing on the ice in their uniforms and skates, did at the beginning of the game?

Wed, 12 Aug 2009 13:26:12 GMT

I've spent a little time this week sorting out some of the 2000 or so books in my study. I find I have read quite a lot of them, and referred to quite a lot more. I was astonished to find an Oxford text of Demosthenes' Orations. I definitely haven't read that. Must have got it at a Regent Book Sale.

Away to Waipara for a songwriter's retreat on Friday. The program looks scaryish. I'm mainly going because there's such a huge stretch otherwise between the Whitestone Folk Festival at Queen's Birthday (early June) and the Cardrona Folk Festival at Labour Weekend (late October). From the program, it looks as if they're going to make us write songs for groups to sing. Up early Saturday morning it says. It's not strictly a festival, so early may not mean 10.45 am.

Mon, 03 Aug 2009 01:01:23 GMT

I pānuitia katoatia e au te Rongopai a Matiu i tērā wiki.

Māori Language Week

Mon, 27 Jul 2009 12:30:57 GMT

Ko tēnei rā te tīmatanga o te Wiki o te Reo Māori. I pānuitia e au e rima ngā ūpoko o te Rongopai a Matiu. Ka pīrangi au ki te pānui i te pukapuka katoa i te wiki nei.

Things I noticed about Australia on my first trip there

Wed, 22 Jul 2009 15:37:14 GMT

Yachts. Looking down on the harbour as the plane flew into Sydney—huge numbers of yachts crowding every little indentation of coast for miles and miles round the harbour.

Trees. On the trip to Katoomba—trees, trees, trees. So much of the landscape in and around Sydney is trees, mostly eucalyptus. They have trees there like we have grass here. West of the Blue Mountains, you see farmland like that in New Zealand, as far along the line as Dubbo anyway. We didn't travel through Dubbo going west on the train; from Orange we took the line through Parkes for Broken Hill. We got on the train at Parramatta at about 10 to 7 on Monday morning (July 13) and arrived at Broken Hill at about 8 pm. Along most of the line there were trees for mile upon hundreds of miles of flat land—many of them eucalyptus, but not all of them. Occasionally we came to comparatively treeless sections, where we could see to the horizon in all directions with not a hill in sight. We found out the next morning that the landscape had actually changed shortly after nightfall to something more pastoral as you get up around Menindee. The area around Wilcannia and White Cliffs, and along much of the route we travelled by car and bus to Dubbo on Friday (July 17), is desert.

Birds. Down near Sydney Harbour, ibises wandering around among the crowds, picking up food scraps. On the trip west and back again, flocks of startled galahs flying out of the trees as our train went past; occasional emus moving around singly or in twos or threes. At Broken Hill and in the desert area around Wilcannia and White Cliffs, crows, lots of them (and plenty of stones handy!) At The Entrance, a popular beach town near Gosford, north of Sydney, pelicans wandering along the waterfront, accepting food thrown to them—one sitting in the water was tightly hedged in by several dozen seagulls, who had worked out that this was the place for a hungry bird to be.

Lambs and calves. In mid July! In New Zealand there is a definite lambing and calving season. Northern New South Wales presumably doesn't get the frosts or (in some upland and southern areas) snow that we do. I am guessing that Victoria and Tasmania are more seasonal in their farming practices.

Number plates, some with V, I or O in them. V disappeared from New Zealand number plates around the late 60s or early 70s. FV was the last letter combination with a V in it. Since we went from two-letter to three-letter number plates, I and O have been lacking as well, except that AI (I think) has been the only case where the second letter was an I. The old number plates (from 1964 onward) were in the pattern AB3456; the current series is in the pattern ABC456. In Australia, number plates are differentiated by state. New South Wales has several different patterns. There is an older series of the ABC456 type, black characters on yellow background, mostly with the first letter from the last few letters of the alphabet, though I did see one or two as early as L. There is a newer series, black on white, of the type ABC45F, mostly beginning with A, although I saw a few later ones, including a few Ds and even the odd F. There is another newer series, black on yellow, of the type AB·34·EF, beginning with A, or with BA or BB. I could see nothing that distinguished vehicles with one type from those with the other. There were other styles as well—I saw an occasional white on black one of the type AB3456. I think number plates from other states were all of the ABC456 type. In Sydney, Katoomba and Gosford, I saw Queensland and Victoria plates; around Broken Hill I also saw South Australia ones.

Bricks. There is a far higher proportion of brick houses in Australia than in New Zealand.

Corrugated iron. In Broken Hill and the surrounding area, many houses have their outer walls as well as their roofs made of corrugated iron. In New Zealand only sheds are built that way.

Troglodytes. I went to Australia to visit my 86-year-old birth mother in her own home and found her living in a hole in the ground—not a nasty, dirty, wet hole, filled with the ends of worms and an oozy smell, nor yet a dry, bare sandy hole with nothing in it to sit down on or to eat: it was an old opal-miner's dugout, and that means comfort. The living room was partly dug out and partly built out at the front; the two bedrooms were dug out. The dugout parts had smooth, white-painted walls. We actually stayed with my sister Cree and her partner Lindsay in their much more elaborate dugout, with walls rough and nobbly, and coated with a thick whitewash-like substance. The rooms (unlike those in Althea's house) are more nearly circular than rectangular. I counted five bedrooms, one off the back of the living room, the others off a longish curving passage that ran from the kitchen to the bathroom. Cree has about as many books as I have, but most of hers were bought new. In both houses, skylights with corrugated perspex at the top provide some or all of the daylight in some rooms. Lindsay is working on a much bigger dugout for him and Cree. This has a very large built-out living room, and an absolute labyrinth of passages behind it, in two stories, with rooms off them. There is an octagonal viewing room at the top.

Lindsay mines Opal, both in White Cliffs and in Queensland. Cree cuts and polishes the stones. When their friend Brian, another miner, came around and sat chatting with Lindsay about work, they sounded like a couple of farmers talking about winter feed and lambing.

The people of White Cliffs are amused by the misconception of some outsiders that they have to go down into their houses by ladder. Dugouts are caves rather than pits, and have doors like other people's houses. But it is an amazing place. How many adoptees have found their birth mother living in a cave?

Uruwhenua

Fri, 26 Jun 2009 08:33:11 GMT

My passport arrived by courier this morning!!

How to insult your grandfather: If he shows you his passport photo and asks, "Do you think it's a good photo?" say, "Yes."

The good, the really good, and one bit of the other stuff

Thu, 25 Jun 2009 13:13:55 GMT

Waiting, waiting...

Last week was a mixed one for me. On Wednesday 17th I went to Polly's graduation from her five-month DOC (Department of Conservation) course. A senior DOC man opened proceedings, speaking in Māori first, before switching to English, and introducing himself as David Mules. I went up to him later and said, "I am certain that you are the David Mules who was at New Plymouth Boys' High in 1964." And he was. He was a boarder; I was a day boy. We were in the third form together until he left the school – I think at the end of the second term. If he had stayed, he would have seriously challenged my position as top student in Latin, French and maths in the top-stream third and fourth form. He did in fact beat me in the mid-year French exam, because, like a good number of my other classmates, I lost ten points on one exercise because I translated the French sentences instead of putting them into the plural. Otherwise (if my memory serves me right), we would have been first equal. I remember feeling regret that he'd gone, though we had not been friends (or enemies – there just wasn't a lot of socialising between boarders and day boys). Even at that age I liked the idea of having a really good rival, and I think we could have been good friends in our senior years. David moved south about seven years ago, and lives out at Karitane (40 km, 25 miles, north of Dunedin, on the coast).

Later that day, I picked Isaac up from school and walked him home. Anna told me the book she had ordered for me from Amazon (I think) had arrived. This was Mathematics and the Imagination, by Edward Kasner and James R. Newman. It was in the NPBHS library when I was there, and I loved it. It was a major influence on my becoming a Christian. I hadn't seen it in over 40 years. The copy Anna got me is a 1989 paperback reprint in stunningly good condition. Two old school acquaintances renewed in one day!

Thursday morning. I went with Isaac's class to Te Araiteuru Marae in Kaikorai Valley. His first visit to a marae. I gave him the taonga to wear that I bought for him when he was three months old – the first time he has worn it. It was great to be back at the marae; it's been too long since I was last there.

Thursday 18, in the evening: Sandra handed me a letter from Internal Affairs. I opened it in some excitement, expecting it to contain my passport. Instead, it contained the last pair of photos I sent them, and saying it wasn't suitable for passport purposes. This is the second lot they've rejected, and the third lot I had done. I lost the first lot (as I have mentioned here previously), the second pair was rejected because of light reflecting off my glasses. The third lot have been rejected because of too much light on the face. I sent another lot off on Friday, and am still waiting. I'm more than half expecting these to be rejected as well. We are supposed to leave for Australia on July 10. If the new photo fails, I've got one more chance, and then I'll have to cancel my ticket. This exercise has cost me more than $50 so far, not to mention angina brought on by stress.

What makes a song a good song?

Wed, 03 Jun 2009 04:46:02 GMT

Barry (surname Clubb, I think, or possibly Chubb) and Marguerite are organising some sort of songwriters' school in Christchurch for one weekend in August. They were among those who had lunch at Oamaru's Criterion Hotel on Monday, and they both seem quite keen that I should come up. I'm not convinced that my songwriting would benefit from such a school. I think I already know, or can extrapolate from what I do know, all the good advice on the topic that's going.
On the other hand, it's in August—two and a bit months after Whitestone, and two and a bit months before Cardrona—and would be a welcome break in the bleak four-and-a-half-month stretch that this time of the year normally is.
And I'd quite like to get to know Barry better.
[Don't answer yet—I have to go and cook tea]

Tue, 02 Jun 2009 13:46:22 GMT

Whitestone was great. Excellent concerts from Anna Heinz, Native (versatile Dunedin acoustic band with Hamish Mepham doing vocal leads, and featuring some weird and definitely wonderful instrumentation) and Little Green Men (Brad and Chrissie). I sang my new song—first in the Friday night session (with Sue Harkness sitting right in front of me) and then in the Saturday afternoon invitation concert, where I got a gratifyingly enthusiastic call for an encore (I couldn't oblige because of time pressure). Paddy and I did They're coming to take me away, ha! ha! in the Sunday night concert, accompanied by young Chris the fiddler on bongo (played at heart-beat rhythm) and with Paddy doing tambourine on the on-beat.
.
The lights have all gone out down in the big marquee,
But we'll keep the music playing deep into the night
With mulled wine and toasted sandwiches by candlelight
In the coffee bar
With laughter and good cheer, and in good company,
We while away the time until somebody sings
You sit here at the table tuning up the strings
On your guitar

Now play your sweet music to me:
Send tender words across the strings and touch my heart.
Beguile me with a song, and I will play my part
And listen

With voices all in harmony we close our eyes,
Caught up in joys and sorrows that are not our own
Just borrowed ones that other singers' hearts have known
In other days.
Singing songs of peace and war, and tales of lovers' lies,
Or riding from Chicago on a south-bound train,
To New Orleans across the Mississippi plain
In the early morning haze

Now play your sweet music to me
And take me on a journey anywhere you please
Down little country roads or over stormy seas
To the session's end

Our circle now is smaller than it was before,
As wiser folk have said good night and slipped away.
Not long now till the birdsong summons in the day
Over Silverstream.
But though we've sung a hundred songs, we've still got heart for more,
And the night will run its course whether we will or no.
The time of our own choosing is our time to go,
And our time to dream.

So play your sweet music to me
As the last note of the morepork fades into the dawn,
And the bellbird tells the bush another day is born,
Come on and play your sweet music to me..

Personal down-side for me was that I didn't get round to requesting a cabin next to a bathroom in the days leading up to the festival, and by Friday I figured that it probably wouldn't matter anyway, since most of the cabins were in blocks with bathrooms in them, so it would be a matter or only a half-dozen extra steps. The theory was sound, but Murphy never sleeps, and didn't see why I should either. I got the cabin without a bathroom attached, which meant a mad sprint (after disentangling my self from my sleeping-bag liner, pulling on trousers and unco-operative boots and wrapping a blanket round myself) several times a night. On the last night I went to bed at 4 am, and had to get up at 5, 6 and 7, before getting up for the day shortly before 9. All my trials, Lord, soon be over (till the next time).

Kept falling asleep during Dr Who on Monday night (dammit!)

Sorry jexia, I didn't read your comment on my previous blog before I left.

Thu, 28 May 2009 09:47:03 GMT

33 radiotherapy sessions down, 4 to go. Checkups later in June, heart checkups in July, then I'm ready to face the next health crisis, whatever it may be.

Thu, 28 May 2009 01:31:24 GMT

It is a logical impossibility to prove to an illogical man that he is illogical.

Fri, 22 May 2009 16:01:14 GMT

The following was on a friend's blog, and is far too good to be kept secret

The geek way to tire your child out:

Let him type a message in Skype to Daddy. Make him run to Daddy's laptop to make sure it got there. Repeat ad infinitum.

Fri, 08 May 2009 12:59:09 GMT

My first ever passport photos, and I lost them within ten minutes of getting them done. Mind you, this may not be a totally bad thing. A neatly trimmed beard is probably a better thing to present to officials in Sydney than the Death-to-America mugshots that went missing.

'Tis the season to be silly...

Mon, 04 May 2009 05:26:04 GMT

May the 4th be with you.

Fri, 24 Apr 2009 01:54:49 GMT

Can I please ask my Kiwi friends to read this article from the Otago Daily Times, and write to Tony Ryall, the Minister of Health, using the email form on his Parliamentary web page. It would be good if it could be spread around. I suggest everyone putting a time limit on it in their communications, as these things have a way of circulating for years after the original issue has ceased to be one. I suggest May 4. If a resolution is announced, we should circulate everyone again.

I have sent the following email to Mr Ryall—

To:
Mr Tony Ryall
Minister of Health

17 Chambers St
North East Valley
Dunedin

Phone numbers:
03 473 8200
021 142 5763

Dear sir

This morning’s Otago Daily Times carries the story of Mr Joe Noon who is being denied funding to be prescribed Infliximab, a drug which has the potential to relieve his chronic extreme pain and allow him to live a normal life. The story is online at http://www.odt.co.nz/news/dunedin/52728/no-access-drug-crohn039s-disease-sufferer
.
The following is the text of a letter I have sent to the ODT editor—

"In 1973 I had Crohn’s disease. It was the most extreme pain I have ever experienced. Very luckily I got it in the appendix, and it was quickly removed. If Joe Noon (ODT 24/4/2009) is suffering long term what I suffered for only two or three hours, then whoever is making the decision denying him funding should be prosecuted for torture. If this decision really can't be made at regional Health Board level, it should go straight to the Health Minister, and funding granted at once."

While the sentiment expressed here is extreme, it is not exaggerated. I am asking you, sir, please make a decision quickly on Mr Noon’s case, and move things so that he can have funding for this pain relief as soon as possible—within hours if at all possible, rather than days or even longer.

I do not know Mr Noon personally. I did recognise him by his dress as a patient I have seen in the lobby of the hospital a day or two ago when I was there for treatment.

Yours truly,
Neil Copeland

Think about it

Wed, 22 Apr 2009 12:13:18 GMT

I'd love to be a ventriloquist—I'd go to a lot of funerals.
—quote from ventriloquist's dummy on tonight's Late Show

Scandentia

Tue, 24 Mar 2009 11:51:53 GMT

Tree shrews are not true shrews.

Wed, 11 Mar 2009 08:50:06 GMT

Not the kick-off of radiotherapy after all. Just a consultation. Only, the hospital's new i-soft computer system was down, and after telling me how embarrassing it is to be put in the position of asking a patient, "What are you here for?" Dr Costello asked me what I was there for. It didn't even occur to me to give him the real answer, which was, "Because I have an appointment to see you." We muddled through the time somehow, and I will presumably be notified soon when treatment begins.

A day to celebrate

Thu, 05 Mar 2009 10:16:32 GMT

Yesterday, Wednesday: Isaac's sixth birthday. Also the day of my CT scan. I now have an appointment for next Monday with Shaun Costello, the radiologist, and I think this will be the kick-off of my radiotherapy. According to the lady in charge of the scan, it should be pretty much life as normal—folk festivals included.