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There is something oddly delightful about this strangely-worded blog post about deserted islands. It’s interesting, informative and impeccably illustrated, but the text of the article gradually becomes quite surreal. “People on this beautiful island godforsaken lives a little bit” “Geographically, it belongs to the Hawaiian Islands, an administrative – not: The United States annexed it to [...]
I’ve been involved in a very worthwhile project called The Ripple Effect, check it out!
A speech I gave at Toastmasters recently. This was Speech 7, ‘Research your speech’, and my goal was to explain the basics of how nuclear power plants work to a lay audience, using the Fukushima Dai-Ichi nuclear power plant as the prime example. Also the word of the day was’perturbed’. :-) Note: My aim here [...]
Wellington City Council has released a list of Wellington buildings considered to be at risk in a major earthquake. I’ve made a simple webpage which uses the data in that list to build a map of the earthquake-prone buildings in Wellington. Check it out at quake.howison.co.nz
A while ago we (Phil, Leanne, Jess and I) went on a great trip to Matiu/Somes Island with our sister, making it a four-Howison outing! I took a few panoramas. What can I say, it’s just kind of my thing I guess! :-) View over Wellington overlooking the lighthouse View of Petone from the WWII [...]
I don’t post much technical stuff here, but I’ve been into Linux (specifically Ubuntu) for a long time. I’ve been geeking it up tonight installing Chromium OS on my netbook, and decided a head-to-head boot-up speed test was in order. I measured how long it took for each OS from pressing the ‘on’ button to [...]
Panorama of the day: Balaena Bay, Roseneath, Wellington on December 5, 2010. Taken from the footpath after a swim. There was a yacht race going on in the bay.
A quick little panorama (stitched together from 3 photos using Hugin) taken today on my way down Pope St to the Plimmerton train station. We’ve had beautiful weather for several days in a row … it’s getting dangerously hot and sunny, time to start wearing sunscreen and silly hats I think.
Another speech which I gave at my Toastmasters club. This is for Speech 6: Vocal Variety. In retrospect the topic didn’t really suit the vocal variety goals I was meant to aim for, but I think I did succeed in slowing down, speaking louder, two things I have been trying to improve on. Clutter. Mess. [...]