Daffodil Day

“Daffodil Day, the Cancer Society of New Zealand’s flagship annual event, is one of the most important fundraising and awareness campaigns in the country.”

If you haven’t donated already and want to, there are several options at the daffodilday.org.nz website.

Some Star Wars Randomness

The good, the bad and the ugly, or rather some geek goodness, a bizarre mashup and some plain silliness…

Firstly the geek goodness – some Star Wars USB flash drives modelled on characters from the films – namely Darth Vader, R2-D2, a Stormtrooper and Chewbacca. These fun little drives are from mimoco and also available through the official Star Wars shop. If Princess Leia trusted R2 with the Death Star plans, I’m sure you could trust a little R2 with your important files…

Second up is a bizarre mashup. Star Wars is awesome and Transformers are cool, but together…? Hasbro has come up with a Darth Vader transformer, with the Dark Lord of the Sith transforming into… wait for it… a Death Star. But of course! Available via Amazon (and loads of toy stores no doubt).

Finally the silliness. To honour the 30th anniversary of the release of Star Wars, the space shuttle Discovery will carry Luke Skywalker’s lightsaber to the International Space Station later this year. Good grief! That’s one big publicity stunt – there must be some big fanboys at NASA! The shuttle is scheduled to blast off on 23 October… (via Gizmodo and bizjournals)

Blood Moon

In case you missed the total lunar eclipse last night, here’s a composite as seen from the Carter Observatory here in Wellington (via stuff.co.nz)

Don’t be mislead by the images on the top row – the moon’s disc was never actually obscured as it moved into the earth’s shadow. In reality it looked more like the images on the bottom row with the bright full moon dimming from the bottom up. The top three obviously had a lower exposure to reduce the brightness of the full moon.

And in case you’re wondering why the moon goes red during a total eclipse here’s a quick explanation… Even though the moon moves into the earth’s shadow, some light is refracted (or bent) by the earth’s atmosphere and still reaches the moon. As the sunlight passes through the atmosphere the shorter blue wavelengths are scattered out by dust particles leaving more of the longer red wavelengths in the light that reaches the moon, hence the reddish tinge (the same process that leads to red sunrises and sunsets).

Four down, five to go…

Lives for our cat Felix that is!

1. When we rescued him as a stray and wild kitten
2. When he got clipped by a car on Sutherland Road
3. We forked out a pile of cash to replace his hip following #2
4. Getting injured while fighting last weekend, spending a night at the vets and another pile of cash from us

I had sympathy for him when getting clipped by a car, but I draw the line at getting injured while fighting. That’s just plain stupid and earns no pity from me!

He’s one lucky cat, but he’s using his 9 lives a little too quickly…

Social networks one month on

It’s now been one month since I joined both Bebo and Facebook, with Facebook getting most of my attention, primarily because I have more contacts on Facebook (3 to 1 over Bebo) but also in large part due to the third party apps which add loads of interactive features including games. 🙂

While Bebo still claims to be the largest social networking site in New Zealand, that could well change sometime in the future given the incredible growth rate of Facebook here. One month ago the New Zealand network passed the 40,000 mark and today the number of members exceeds 59,100 – a staggering growth of over 19,000 members (or almost 50%) in a month. Don’t take those numbers as gospel however, as you can have a Facebook profile without joining a regional network, so there is most certainly more NZ members than above.

As I mentioned in my last post, if you’re jumping on the social network bandwagon you’re probably going go to join the network where your friends and family hang out. If you have a choice though, Facebook has a lot more to offer – at least until Bebo gets third party developers on board.

My first rubgy ball

In timely fashion Matt has learned to hold his first rugby ball in one hand – a replica 2007 World Cup ball of course.

Just need to get him to run with it now…