It’s finally come to an end. Zombipod has ceased to be resuscitable. I currently don’t have a working mp3 player¹. The drive spins up and clicks angrily before trying again. I may be able to replace the drive, but I’m not sure it’s worth the effort of finding a new microdrive. On the other hand, I still have a problem with my cracked LCD display. My phone needs help, my ipod needs help, neither of which will be fixed.

The answer will be to go shopping. I’ve been getting into the mindset that dumping out money for new gadgets is a bit silly. Sure, the new iphone is coming to New Zealand, but it’s more gadget than I need or want to pay for. It actually makes more sense for me to look through the resales on TradeMe and see if I can find something being tossed away.

The use case has already been defined – I’ll need something that can be a phone and be a music-player. Storage capacity will be important – 2GB of capacity is mandatory if I’m going to use it for both music and podcasts. I’d like to stay away from the Windows Mobile platform, though. It strikes me as asking for trouble, regardless of how stable or light-weight it may actually be. Nokia seems like a safe choice, but I’m unfamiliar with their recent product lines, although the N73 seems to measure up well. I have some research ahead of me and, hopefully, some smart shopping. In any case, I need to be able to get files to and from it from linux and it would be preferable if I could manage contacts and messages with gammu

I hope I’m not asking for too much all at once…

¹ That’s only mostly true. My phone has a media player built in, but with only a few megabytes of memory available for media storage, I only get a few short podcasts on there before it’s full.

Just days past the winter solstice, the weather kicked in. The rain came down hard while I was waiting for the bus after work today, further proving my theory that there is a correlation between bad weather and late buses. Stories of road closures are filtering through the local news; it’s the time of year to check the weather reports before leaving for work or for the weekend. And finally, I had to move one of my trees from the balcony into the living room. The leaves were beginning to dry out in the constant wind and it was looking pretty sad. It’s come back from worse, though.

Yesterday was all about skateboarding. Somehow, this translated to a full-on event at Kilbirnie Rec Centre with inline skates, roller-skates, skateboards and scooters. There were demonstration hockey games and a best-trick skateboard competition, with free public sessions for anyone to try out any of the gear. Kids made up the bulk of the population, with some parents to watch and help out, and in some cases, to try to keep up.

Over the course of the free-sessions, I’d helped a couple kids and a couple parents with their skating. The kids, backwards and stops; the parents, getting started. One of the parents thanked me for helping out with everything and we started talking a bit. She wants her daughter to be able to skate (inline) to school when she’s improved enough. I think that’s great. It’s nice to see that people consider skating as a viable option for getting school.

I was keen to watch the roller hockey demonstration. It looked quite different to inline hockey – probably more related to field hockey. The net was smaller, leaving the goalie on his/her knees nearly full-time. The best part was watching a player stop. Instead of stopping forward, players spin and stop backwards, using breaks on the toe of the skates. Weird and cool.

Edit 2008/06/24: Fixed image orientation. Apologies for not noticing.

Three topics concerning drivers nation-wide are being discussed at the moment. The media has latched onto a couple of them, but the third surprised me with media silence.

Firstly, the government is considering a ban on cell phone use while driving. I’ve seen many drivers texting away while on the motorway. It’s not rare; it’s barely even uncommon. Yes, we live in a fast-paced, real-time, must-have-now culture. But text messaging is far from unconscious activity. Studies show that using the phone while driving is dangerous. I support the government on this.

Secondly, there is a renewed push to lower the blood-alcohol limit allowed by law. The Auckland Regional Transport Authority and the police are recommending this, while the AA is opting for the wait and see approach. I’d like to see the government pick this up and mandate it for the whole country.

At last, there is a discussion document and submission form available on the Ministry of Transport website regarding compulsory third-party vehicle insurance. I’ve been hoping for something like this to come to New Zealand for quite some time. Like everywhere else, everyone thinks they’re a great driver. Also like everywhere, they’re wrong. The problem is that one quarter of those drivers are uninsured for the damage they cause. I fully support passing this one, too.

There will be those who moan and cry about how New Zealand is becoming a nanny state. I’m pretty sick of hearing it. I want the nanny state and I want a damn good nanny. Drivers acting like children should get punished like children.

A couple articles have crossed my radar about reusing energy that’s already been used in one form. The first talks about thermoelectric conversion, which can generate current based on a temperature differential. In the second story, a Canadian company has started to market its waste hydrogen as an energy source. It would be otherwise vented off, but it’s a valuable resource to those willing to use it.

The tales of woe continue – ZombIpod is failing in a new way. Instead of always needing to be taken apart and have the cable reseated on the disk, sometimes a reboot will suffice in bringing it back to life. There has been a couple instances over the last few days where a song would pause for a moment and continue; I assume that a read error occurred and the audio buffer underflowed. Finally, it stopped playing this morning while I was at the gym, requiring surgery to resuscitate. I don’t think this is a new mechanism, just a slightly different death vector. My guess is that there have been intermittent errors, and crashes, leading up to a normal failure this morning.

I hope this doesn’t mean that the hardware is getting worse. I don’t want to have to replace this thing just yet. It still does what I need it to do, so long as it doesn’t get dropped or bumped. I know better to store stuff on there that isn’t also somewhere else, so if it dies, I shouldn’t be too put out. However, I don’t want to buy a new gadget. I’ll have a look through the used market if I need to replace it.

On the other side of the sync cable, there is another problem. Debian BTS lists part of the problem, but it goes further than that. I’ve just discovered that letting kernel 2.6.25–2-686 touch the ipod causes an I/O error that hangs all my terminals. Nothing of significance hits /var/log/syslog either. Bummy. It looks like I am going to have to bring home my USB cable instead. Until the new firewire stack is more stable, I need to stay away from using it for my ipod.

¹ I may actually tie this together with a new phone, since my cracked LCD refuses to fix itself…

I have to admit it – I’m pointing and laughing. I saw the sign from my bus ride home from work today: petrol jumped again. I wish I had statistics for how far commuters are travelling each week; it would provide adequate perspective. At this point, I can only guess at who drives from point A to B every day, and how much more it costs them.

For those who can’t imagine getting out of their cars, this one’s for you. $0.12/L more this week than last week. For a 50L tank, that’s $6 more. I just hope you’re not starving yourself (or your family) in order to afford your car’s thirst.

But it’s not all funny for me. Greater Wellington Regional Council approved transit fare increases? in order to accommodate the rising costs of operations. I don’t mind the fare increase too much, but I hope the system is being run without a profit-at-any-cost mentality.

I’ve been a bit slack on my skate maintenance. The bearings have been noisy and I know they need to be cleaned, wheels rotated. While I was in town today, I picked up some new laces, since one of mine is on the edge of breaking already, figuring that I could use the excuse to get into gear on the rest of the stuff.

I may have been slightly overzealous. I pulled the frames from the boots after I stripped the laces and the insoles. I wanted to check for any damage while stripping them. The frames are a bit scuffed, but nothing worrying. However, I did notice something after a few minutes.

There’s a rivet missing. It allows the cuff of the boot to pivot at the ankle. I don’t know how long it’s been gone. I may have been skating that way for ages. It’s on the left foot, which tends not to get stressed the same as the right, but I’d hope that I would notice something like that. There’s no evidence lying around to indicate where I lost it; it’s not in the house. If I knew where, I may be able to piece together why, but that’ll likely remain a mystery.

Now for the next problem: what do I do now? Can I get the rivet replaced? I have no idea who to get in touch with to find out. I’ll have to start with K2 directly and see what they say. I’ve had factory work done in Christchurch on some K2s, so I may be able to get this dealt with. If all else fails, I may have to beg the machine shop at work to fashion something for me. I don’t want to buy a new set of skates at the moment. I like my Soul 7s and I’d like to use them for a while longer. Having said that, I probably wouldn’t complain if someone gave me a pair of Frontmans.

Here’s a project that has come out of New Zealand research: wave power generation. Although I didn’t know before reading the article, it’s a joint project between my employer, Industrial Research Ltd, and NIWA. It’s a nice idea and I hope they have all the structural problems worked out. I’d hate to see the power systems falling over when a southerly blows in and the swell gets big.

A moment of cynicism: I just took a look at Metlink’s website and ran across a news item regarding World Environment Day.

Tranz Metro are showing support for World Environment Day on Thursday 5 June 2008 with a $1 day promotion. The $1 ticket covers all services operating between 9am and 3pm excluding the Wairarapa services.

This little token gesture manages to avoid being useful for anyone who may travel for work. There isn’t even a bus that would take me to work after 8am.

A special $1 World Environment Day ticket will be available to give people a souvenir of the day.

Instead of doing something useful to try to encourage use, they offer souvenir tickets. With the giveaways coming from Auckland Regional Transport Authority, one has to wonder who’s in the marketing department at Metlink.

Having said that, I hope some people see the promotion tomorrow and make use of it. I’m interested in seeing patronage rise and service improve. This is my vote for a $6 weekend STARPass?.

World Environment Day is on June 5th. That means this Thursday. Wellington is playing host and many of the sites around downtown have already started dressing up. Walking from Civic Square through to Waitangi Park, I couldn’t help but get excited about the green-ness:

• Poster-boards listing events
• An opening ceremony of some sorts with nicely dressed people in City Hall
• A proudly sponsoring message on the stock exchange ticker
• Shell’s¹[2] World of Performance at the waterfront
• Brightly lit displays along the promenade at Waitangi Park

Apologies for the cynicism… While that list reads out a little half-hearted, this is about raising awareness. Not just for people who are concerned about environmental issues, but for the average person and their average kids. When people hear about climate change or sustainability, they think they are being preached to, that they have to give everything up or be labelled a heretic. Most of the benefits actually come from making little changes to everyday habits. Big changes are hard, little changes are easy. I’ll start preaching after they buy into phase one…

The list of events is pretty impressive – check out the brochure. As noted at Texture, even though the name implies a 1-day event, there are activities going on all week long. With exhibits for children and for adults, everyone should be talking about possibilities. With luck, we can get them thinking about priorities.

Read more about it at the government website and see what you can do to kick the habit.

A couple other tidbits:

• Auckland transit giveaway
• Christchurch has its own program
• Land Transport New Zealand is starting to advertise sustainability. Watch the video.

¹ No, the irony is not lost. There is a Formula 1 demo car on display during a sustainability festival. Really…

² Shell isn’t really entirely evil. They are doing a bit of planning ahead.

I was in Auckland over the long weekend and took the preceding Friday off for good measure. With a lunch date just after noon, I had opted to trust my arrival to Auckland’s public transit system. The short version is this: I made it, but only just.

The trip started just before 11am, with a target time of 12:30. I needed to get from Ellerslie to St. Heliers. Google has a nice driving map. Given that it listed a 13 minute travel time, I was reasonably sure that I could make it in 1.5 hours. With a hand-drawn map to get me to the starting point, I was set to go.

Upon arrival at the bus stop at Ellerslie-Panmure Highway, I checked the time. 11:02 by my phone. The bus schedule put me in between two buses: 11:00 and 11:05. Since I’d just seen a bus pass the stop as I was walking up, I was hopeful that timing was going to work in my favour. Not so – the bus I saw must have been an early 11:05, which left me waiting until the 11:25 arrived at 11:30. Interestingly, 3 buses arrived at basically the same time, and we leap-frogged each other all the way into Auckland CBD. Lesson: scheduling is pretty poor.

With the half hour trimmed from my available transit time, I boarded the bus and asked the bus driver if he thought it would still be possible to make it to St. Heliers by 12:30. He said yes, so I asked for a transfer to get me from start to finish on a single ticket. He had no idea what I meant and fudged his way through counting the number of zone boundaries that I’d cross to get there. 6 zones and $7.50, by his count. The bus rumbled away with me on my way, heading into town – quite contrary in direction to where I needed to go.

It was nearing noon when I got to Britomart. I knew which stop I needed to depart from and hurried my way over. The driver of a waiting bus told me that the quickest departure was in 10 minutes, but only going as far as Mission Bay, about 3km short of where I needed to be. Luckily, I had my skates with me. At 12:10, I was back on the road.

The easiest part of the trip was the last 10 minutes. The skates were on and I was off within a few minutes of getting off the bus. I landed at St. Heliers at 12:31, about a minute before my lunch-date arrived. I’d made it, but not by the virtue of the system.

Back at the computer, MAXX offered a travel plan for my requirements. The suggested route involved 2 transfers for a total travel time of 56 minutes. There was no mention of the price that would have been charged, but that’s slightly less important than the time taken. It would have gotten me there in time, so long as I hadn’t missed the first available time for the first leg of the journey. It would have fared no better otherwise. The 13 minute drive is a 1-hour bus journey. Lesson: journey planning is very limited.

I shouldn’t be too quick to point fingers, though. First, there seems to be a new direction for transit in Auckland. Second, Wellington is a much smaller city to try to cross and we have a lot of work to do before we host a public transportation utopia.

Thou shalt never leave thine keys in an open pocket on a checked bag.