Category: Self-ish

And now for a word from our sponsor… well not really, but this is a promotional post, because if I can’t support family in my blog then what’s the point of it?
So I want to send some love to Car Therapy, the best car workshop in central Wellington. It’s tucked away in the parking building on Boulcott Street, just off the Terrace, just up from Willis Street. It does fantastic work. My uncle and his team will service and repair your car with a smile and without fuss. Highest recommendation, for sure. If you work in the inner city, drop your car off in the morning, pick it up again after work. Easy.
Car Therapy has been going for over 25 years. More people should know of it, for it is good.
And heck, if you want more recommendation, how about I let slip that Illicit artist Simon Morse, renowned for his demented car-themed strips, is a friend of the Therapy and was a consultant on their recent redesign? If the creator of Straitjacket NInja and Chopper Chick is a lover, then you know they’re doing something right.
Thus endeth the endorsement. We now return you to your regularly scheduled nonsense.

The knot-tying that will happen in January all comes back to this little advertisement. This is the ‘flatmates wanted’ ad that was answered by strong_light.
If I use my imagination, I remember our first meeting in just as much detail as she does.

My first evar poetry publication? Yes it is, and more.
Urban Driftwood is a collection of writing (poetry and prose) by some young Wellington-based Kiwis. It’s about the journey from being young to being less young in a city where the wind always blows. I’m one of the four writers, which should tip you off that this has been in the works for a long time: nine years, in fact, since Dan (of Freshly Ground) decided he was going to assemble it.
So this is writing from a decade ago. Best guess is that I was 18 when I wrote the earliest piece and 22 when I wrote the latest one. When Dan was finally bringing UD into being earlier this year, I bravely resisted the temptation to revise or censor anything, so it is an authentic snapshot of me and my voice a decade back from now. There is still much to like – in fact, I think my favourite piece of mine was the aforementioned earliest one, a short prose piece called “Tyrage” that made its debut on the Victoria University electronic bulletin board system when I was a wee first-year.
The collection is a nice blend of voices, which was always Dan’s intent – he, Jane and Stephen all bring distinctive rhythms and styles and they balance each other well. Jane’s meditative simplicity, Stephen’s shaggy-dog shrugs of tone, Dan’s thoughtful density and my whatever. I am pleased to say that it lives up to Dan’s initial hope that we four writers together would be more than the sum of our parts.
So I commend to you, Urban Driftwood. Well done, Dan, on getting it done!
Urban Driftwood is available on Lulu, the lovely net-based print-on-demand service. For US$10 (plus freight) a copy will be printed and bound and dispatched to your door.

Specifically, the joy of devising a new password that meets minimum safety requirements (6 characters, mix of letters and numbers, doesn’t contain any dictionary words) that I know I will always remember.
I have a pool of about 15 passwords in my head – I mostly remember which ones go with which applications, and if i don’t I usually get it on the second or third try. All of these passwords have been with me for about a decade and a half (hey, that’s about one a year!), moving from place to place and institution to institution. When I have to change a password, I swap it for another of my golden fifteen. There’s a lot of double ups – I think I have about forty or so logins in different places around workplaces and the internet.
Many of my 15 passwords are acronyms. Take the first letter of each word in a saying, song lyric or movie quote, and you’re underway. Mix it up a bit – some letters you can replace with numbers because they look similar or the words they reference are actually numbers. Mix case up and down if your password is case-sensitive; put the emphasis words in capitals. Easy as pie to remember, and very much uncrackable. (e.g. a password devised from that song from Grease “You’re the one that I want” => “Yt1tiW”)
And now, using a variation of the above scheme, I have come up with a new password. It delights me because it is so simple and so memorable yet still quite safe. It is a strange thing to take pleasure in, but there you go. I’ll probably still be using this new password in another fifteen years.
So. Got passwords? How do you manage to remember yours? Do you discard old passwords forever or keep them around in your head to use in other places?

I’ve been going to bed at 10.30 for over a week now, in a drastic change from my traditional bedtime of 12.30-1am. Initially it was because 40+ hours of travelling caught up on me, but now it is dangerously close to becoming a habit. Going to bed early is nice.
How on earth am I going to complete this Masters if I’m going to bed at 10.30? *panics*

From a November 2003 email about 8 August of that year:
“On Friday Cal and I were wandering near the Student Union building, Teviot, and were offered free tickets to a show by Irish comedian David O’Doherty. Despite our worrying [earlier] experiences with the alleged Cream of Irish Comedy we signed on, and got an interesting show – mostly consisting of O’Doherty sitting with a keyboard on his lap playing and singing amusing ditties about
how miserable and crap he was. Not bad at all, actually, and at that price how can you go wrong?”
From a Guardian report four days ago:
“David O’Doherty has taken home the main prize at the if.comedy awards – formerly known as the Perriers – in Edinburgh, the most prestigious accolade of its kind.”
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From my blog, March 9, 2004:
“I discovered today that my NZ-rock-gods-to-be Two Lane Blacktop have split up. Sucksville.”
From the Guardian on June 9:
“We’re going to stick our necks out on this one and predict that Ladyhawke are going to be massive. Or rather, “is” going to be massive: Ladyhawke (the title of a 1985 fantasy film starring Sarah Jessica Parker’s hubby; not to be confused with Ladyhawk, a Canadian indie-rock band) is the vehicle for the giant (alter) ego that is the New Zealand-born Pip Brown [formerly of Two Lane Blacktop].”
(The first and only time I saw them play was at Indigo during the Cuba Street Carnival in Feb 2002 – Our Sophie was on the door and I popped up to see her, and stuck around to watch because the band was amazing. Sophie chatted with me about Pip afterwards; we were both well impressed. Hmm, a quick google reveals the Ladyhawke Lady herself announcing that gig on NZMusic – so it was on Feb 22.)
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Anyway, this clearly shows that my taste in everything is chronologically superior to your taste in everything. Sorry about that.

Train from Edinburgh to London Kings Cross
Tube on Circle line to Paddington station
Train from Paddington to Heathrow
Plane from Heathrow to Hong Kong
Plane from Hong Kong to Sydney
Plane from Sydney to Wellington
Automobile from Wellington to Lower Hutt
Much-needed shower
Automobile from Lower Hutt to Wellington
Much-needed sleep.
Now back to work!

It is Monday morning in Edinburgh. The last two weeks have been packed with stuff. I am on a bit of a bliss rush from seeing so many wonderful people in such a short period of time. But real life is clawing me back and in a couple hours I get on the train to London, then the plane to Hong Kong, then to Sydney, then to Wellington.
This is my second time leaving Edinburgh. I’ll be back to do it again.