the inkspot

a little work, and a little play

nobody@vox.com(Tintenfisch) — Tue, 15 Jul 2008 20:13:35 +1200

have i mentioned before that i love the south island?

the conference went well - good talks, well organized, good food. always nice to catch up with others in the field and make some new acquaintances. in this case, some of whom could be imminently useful career connections, but we won't dwell on that.

just to do things out of order, i'm posting weekend photos first, even though there will be a whole separate entry about friday's activities. but i've had a request for banks peninsula pics, so here they are. we were not lucky enough to have snow (probably a good thing, given our stunner of a rental car, whom we soon dubbed 'craphonso'), but i can't really complain about the weather.

Akaroa harbour

Calm harbour

Banks peninsula farmland

it was perfect for holidaying at our friends' bach in wainui, being both cool enough for a wood fire most of the time, and sunny enough for that classic kiwi holiday pastime, backyard cricket.

six!

it was also good for observing local wildlife, some of which was pleasantly minding its own business, and some of which drew our attention by flying into the window. i'll let you guess which was which.

Spider

Waxeye, Zosterops lateralis

luckily the little guy was all right - when we first checked him out, he wouldn't move one of his feet, but we gave him a rest in a safe, warm spot and he gripped strongly with both before we released him into a local grapevine.

Waxeye

Released

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a-schmoozing we will go

nobody@vox.com(Tintenfisch) — Mon, 07 Jul 2008 08:31:43 +1200

not that a week's absence seems require explanation, given my poor track record this year, but i'm off to a conference in christchurch. rumor has it that there was snow down to sea level there over the weekend and i am ridiculously excited at the possibility of normal, wintery, non-mountain snow. SNOW! eeeeeeeeeeeeee
... ahem, anyway, should be some good stories and incriminating photos when i return. :)

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guest bug

nobody@vox.com(Tintenfisch) — Sat, 05 Jul 2008 09:34:51 +1200

today we have a guest appearance from my dad, who is a far more established and prolific photographic talent than i. he spotted and shot this wonderfully bristly robber fly (family Asilidae) in northern minnesota a few weeks ago.

Robber fly

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'cat' found

nobody@vox.com(Tintenfisch) — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 09:25:06 +1200

Cat found

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back on the horse

nobody@vox.com(Tintenfisch) — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 12:37:34 +1200

i went riding again yesterday - same place, different horse. the weather was rotten all weekend (much like the rest of last week) and our original plan to ride on sunday was foiled by hail and thunderstorms, but luckily our visiting itinerant canadians flew out late enough yesterday to squeeze in a morning ride. and the day was glorious.

Pastoral

we were greeted as we drove up by a cute clydesdale foal keeping guard at the gate, all shaggy feet and whiskers, and by a fiery little stallion about a hand shorter than the clydie, and separated by a strong fence.

Baby clydie

as before, we rode sedately down through the farm valleys, amongst cows (including a crazed calf that charged my horse) and wild turkeys.

Bucolic

there were a few slippery spots due to the recent heavy rains, but apart from walking down any sort of incline in a ridiculously exaggerated zigzag, my horse bert behaved himself.

the beach was clear of footprints, scoured by a chilly wind coming off the substantial surf.

The beach

Misty cliffs

i had been warned that bert had a penchant for rolling in soft sand, but he didn't seem interested in giving me another close enounter, so we stayed upright. and in spite of the recent storms, the sand was largely clear down by the tideline, and the sand was firm underhoof. further up the beach, however, we found a variety of interesting tidecast objects.

there was evidence of historic debris, too.

Jandal trees

we had a nice walk north along the water, then came back to the starting point and divested ourselves of fragile and flapping objects before heading off for our canter. this was my first ride since the fall, so i was a little nervous, but tried not to convey that to bert. and he was very good to me - he wanted to gallop, but consented to the canter and even dropped into a trot when asked. he wasn't a huge horse, so even the canter was a little bumpy, but i stayed put and didn't have too many panicky flashbacks. and it felt great to get another uneventful run under my belt. i was never planning to stop riding, but i guess the first time after a spill is always going to be a little tense, especially if it's been a few weeks.

we returned at a leisurely pace along the beach to the shelter and had morning tea before starting the climb back up to the farm. the horses were enjoying the fine weather as much as we were, although i think bert was hamming the uphills a little with his emphasized puffing and sighing. the only other moment of note came when we crossed a creek where the normal sloping bank on the other side had caved in, leaving a cutaway at about the height of the horses' chests. bert thought he wanted to jump the bank at a spot that was more like the level of his chin, so we had a brief battle of wills and wits, but he ended up seeing reason and we took the more sane route, still getting a good jump out of it. no more rogue cattle challenged us and the horses were unperturbed by the flock of noisy paradise ducks that accompanied us through several fields, and we returned to the yard on schedule about three hours after departing. bert and the other horses got thank-you carrots before we headed back to town, and i feel good about going back in the future.

Seahorses

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scaly colleagues

nobody@vox.com(Tintenfisch) — Sat, 28 Jun 2008 23:32:15 +1200

in the wake of thesis submission, i have a few projects on the go. however, i'm hoping to enjoy just a few weeks of leisure followed by gainful employment - i've applied for a collections technician position at the local museum, which seems like it would be both a valuable experience and good fun in the interim between finishing up all my phd stuff and heading off on the next adventure. i've had an interview already and will know more by the end of next week. in the meantime, i can dream of being able to visit these guys during morning tea every day...

nz green gecko

another one

and, um, a brown gecko

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squid vs trees

nobody@vox.com(Tintenfisch) — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 12:23:11 +1200

The thing

this is what four copies of a 265-page thesis on squid looks like, immediately prior to submission.

that is all.

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insert sound effect here*

nobody@vox.com(Tintenfisch) — Mon, 09 Jun 2008 18:24:17 +1200

* the sound effect intended is the collective gasp made by westley and buttercup as they emerge from the lightning sand, but that was way too long a title. thank you.

so, here we all are, nearly a month after the horse-trampling debacle. i could say that the leg turned out to be much worse than anyone suspected, became gangrenous, and ultimately had to be amputated, thus providing a handy excuse for my absence. but that would be a lie. i did develop some spectacular bruises, my knee is still a little stiff and i actually still have a hoof-shaped and -sized patch on my shin that is completely numb, but other than that i can't really complain. as i said, i count myself very lucky. i do intend to go riding at the same place again in a few weeks when our pet canadian returns to nz for a visit, so i'll let you know if anything else of excitement transpires.

mostly what's happened to me in the last month is: theeeeeeeeeessssssiiiiiiiissssssss. i managed to get the whole thing assembled into a first draft, submit it to my poor supervisor, receive the first round of comments, respond and update accordingly (a process that ultimately drove me to a college-worthy near-all-nighter just to get the damn thing finished again), and now it's in his hands for round two. should go to review in the next couple of weeks.

there have also been various visits from out-of-towners, toings and froings within auckland and surrounding counties, dress parties, concerts, the purchase of a suprising number of potential wedding garments, sick kuhli loaches and a small but persistent obsession with season 3 of boston legal. now we've moved on to flight of the conchords. there have been sweepings of autumn leaves from the driveway as our japanese maple does its annual shakedown of all leaves (whomping willow-style). there have been the usual cat-cuddlings and spider-feedings. and i have applied for a couple of jobs, but more will not be revealed until more is known. (enjoying the cryptic statements? plenty to go around!)

in any case, in the relatively chaos-free interlude that marks the final throes of my phd, i will try to maintain more of a presence here, so i don't have to condense weeks into paragraphs again. and if that all falls apart, well, there will be photographs of the next trip in a little over 6 weeks. :D

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the taste of sand

nobody@vox.com(Tintenfisch) — Mon, 12 May 2008 09:57:17 +1200

Horses!

when i was little, i used to eat sand, and many other yummy, crunchy, outdoor mineral-based things. (and it hasn't done me any lasting damage at all, twitch twitch). i thought i was over the habit, having had no sand-cravings whatsoever in the intervening 20-odd years, and even joked about it a couple days ago with some friends. little did i know.

yesterday some friends and i went to check out a horse trekking place about an hour south of auckland. we were booked in for a three-hour ride, and were joined by a fourth rider plus the guide. the first stages of the ride took us down through beautiful farmland and valleys to the beach, on the west coast of the manukau harbor's south head. the cliffs were misty and green, and the sea was pounding blue and brown, making for a spectacular landscape. ours were the only hoofprints on the beach. the horses knew as soon as we got to the sand that the best part of the ride was coming up, so although we kept them at a walk partway up the beach and back, they were dancing at the bits and raring for a run.

my horse, a dun mare named kahlua, turned out to be a speed demon. as soon as i gave her her head, we were off up the beach like a shot, although to my surprise she preferred to run up in the driftwood line, and nearly unseated me jumping a log. i guided her back down to the water's edge, where the real excitement started. we had a fantastic gallop for a few hundred meters, until kahlua aimed to overtake the horse in front of us, but instead of passing politely, headed right up her tail. i guided her off to the left, but she immediately shied at a rock, this time tossing me out of the saddle for real. i slid down her right side (lightly clunking my head on the way down, probably against saddle or hoof) and into the deep black sand... with my right foot still stuck in the stirrup.

well, if kahlua was spooked by a stationary rock, she really didn't know what to do with a flailing body trailing off her right side. so she kept running. i was dragged for probably a few dozen meters, in which time i flipped myself over from back to stomach a few times to try to free myself and to see if any other rocks were approaching that i might get dragged over. in the end i opted for stomach - fewer pounding hooves in front of my face, and i probably didn't want to know about oncoming rocks anyway. and did i mention eating sand? yeah, lots of that.

in seconds, or minutes, or years, i came free and came to rest on my side. at this point i knew i was fine - not dead and pretty sure nothing was broken, so the next few minutes were probably the worst for the onlookers, as i lay in the sand unmoving. shortly i was able to take stock of my limbs and found that although my left leg, which had been flapping around under the horse, was very sore, nothing else seemed painful, including the foot and knee that had been snagged in the stirrup. i was too dizzy to sit or stand for a while, but was otherwise completely fine, to my own and everyone else's amazement. i did catch a ride back up the hill in a truck instead of on horseback, but other than the developing bruises on my leg nothing seemed amiss. i spent the rest of the day with a light headache, icing and elevating my leg, and sleeping, and today can confirm that i actually i did get off with only bruises. they even cover the normal day-after discomfort of sore infrequently used muscles.

the most lasting effect, in fact, seems to be the sand, which i expect will gradually dislodge itself from my ears and eyebrows over the course of some months. maybe i'll even be sandless again by the time i next go riding. :)

Farm valley

On the beach

Beach ride

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singing in the rain

nobody@vox.com(Tintenfisch) — Mon, 05 May 2008 10:50:11 +1200

i will get some reflections posted about the colossal squid stuff one of these days, but in the meantime, i want to share something else. this fine fellow is a tui (Prosthemadera novaeseelandiae) and he's been sitting in a big tree above our back patio singing his heart out for the past two days, in spite of heavy rain and generally wretched weather. last week was fun and exciting, but the tui's bubbly whistles, squawks and constant chatter have also made me glad to be home.

Tui

Tui song 1

Tui song 2

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