rachel.blog

insignificant ramblings of a 50-something woman

  • In possession of one iphone 4s

    I have an iphone! …and as you can see, I’m very happy about it. Now I can ditch my suddenly very old-fashioned Nokia phone. It is very timely because in upgrading Xcode (the Apple development environment), I have rendered my old ipod obsolete and it is no longer recognised. So I would not be able…

  • I bought Elizabeth some face paints….

  • My first iphone on its way!

    I have ordered my new iphone and it’s on its way! Thank you very much to my readers for their generous donations. I have been overwhelmed and managed to raise $813 in the end. I bought the iphone 4s for a total of $899, with Ben making up the difference as his gift to me.…

  • Unique and eccentric = good

    Daniel is better this week. The tics are still there but less pronounced and with longer periods of relaxation between them. I told him late last week that it was absolutely fine for him to have his tics and that he could do them as often as he wanted at home and I think this…

  • Tourette’s Syndrome

    It has been a tough week. We suspect Daniel has Tourette’s syndrome. He’s always had a tic – involuntary movement – of some sort, and over time, it has changed. But the tic has never really been a problem until this week when it became much more vocal and almost constant. The vocal aspect consists…

  • The lurid shopping mall

    I have been highly critical of the urban shopping mall of late and I thought it might be worthwhile exploring how this monstrosity came into existence. The very first shopping mall, Southdale Mall, was opened in 1956 in Edina, Minnesota as the creation of an Austrian-born architect name Victor Gruen. With a Jewish background, he…

  • The biggest public health problem of the developed world

    Governments the world over are making leaps and bounds in the fight against smoking. Australia recently banned brand labelling on cigarette packets, the UK is running a campaign called Stoptober next month and there are increasingly fewer and fewer public spaces in which a smoker can light-up. But is smoking really the biggest public health…

  • Fumbling my way forward

    I’ve just submitted my EruptNZ app to the app store for review. This app reads the RSS feed from Geonet New Zealand and reports back the current alert status for all of New Zealand’s volcanoes. I thought this might be useful for tourists visiting New Zealand and also for people living near or on the…

  • What’s wrong with urban sprawl?

    One of my complaints about Auckland is its urban sprawl. But Auckland is not alone in possessing this, there are many other cities in the world with this characteristic flaw, like my home town of Brisbane, and I am equally critical of those places. I disklike urban sprawl and in this blog post, I will…

  • Two years on

    It has been just over two years now since we were rudely awoken at 4.35am in the morning of 4th of September 2010 at the start of the Cantberbury earthquake sequence. How do I feel now, two years on? I would say that on the whole, I’m pretty good. I don’t register a change in…

  • Could Auckland be hell?

    If hell is featureless suburbia, concrete motorways and soulless shopping malls, then Auckland is it.

  • Making money

    Daniel and Elizabeth have lately been playing with the little girl who lives next door. She’s about Daniel’s age and she comes to our house and the three of them play mummies and daddies. Yesterday during their game, Daniel went off to the play area and left his friend alone in the bedroom. We naturally…

  • The Auckland Harbour Bridge and computer science in New Zealand

    I was driving over the Auckland Harbour bridge last week and thinking, I don’t really trust New Zealand engineering. This is possibly because I got to witness the catastrophic collapse of two New Zealand buildings in Christchurch not long after they’d been deemed safe by engineers. Although it has since transpired that the so-called engineers…

  • Hobsonville Point

    There’s a very interesting development towards the west of Auckland called Hobsonville Point. It overlooks Waitemata Harbour from the west and was a New Zealand air force base for almost 100 years, providing a crucial role during WWII. Now it is the site of a planned community or township with a ferry service to Auckland…

  • At last, acceptance at the App Store!

    At last my app got accepted into the app store. It’s called SoniaClock after my friend, Sonia. It does have a minor bug which I found last week but I didn’t want to remove the binary from the queue since it takes so long to get reviewed. If I remove it and fix the problem, I have…

  • Elizabeth and her accessories

    Elizabeth loves accessories. In particular, she loves her hat and “sunnies” – as she likes to call them – and never leaves home without them. She always wears her goggles at the pool, even though she never puts her head under water and is often seen decorated with an assorted mix of necklaces, bangles, rings…

  • Conversations with Elizabeth and I want an iphone

    Me: I love you Elizabeth. And we love Daniel. And we love Daddy. And we love Freud.Elizabeth: And we love the computer. That’s my girl. She’ll be programming iphone apps in no time. Speaking of iphone apps. I desperately *need* an iphone. It’s tricky learning how to program for the iphone when one is not…

  • Paying for air

    I met a woman here this week who moved up from Christchurch following the February 2011 earthquake. Not long before that quake, she and her husband bought an inner-city apartment in Christchurch. The entire building got red-stickered shortly after the earthquake and has since been demolished. While their apartment has now gone, the mortgage has…

  • A new feature for my app

    My clock app was rejected by Apple again. I was kind of expecting this since I really hadn’t added much in the way of features to it so I’ve been brewing another really cool feature which is now up and running. Now my app displays the time, day of week and the current alert status…

  • Monogenetic volcanic fields

    Auckland sits above a monogenetic volcanic field. This means that rather than having one visible mountainous crater, there is an assorted mix of craters, lava flows and scoria cones spread out over a large geographic area. While each vent tends to be smaller in size than if there were just one vent, they can pop…