Main Event

Paris RWC Final - 20/10/07

2007-11-07T22:36:00.000Z

Again, aside from the result, a thoroughly good time. We checked out the Catacombs of Paris, which if you haven't been is a must. Really really crazy walking through underground tunnels with the bones of millions (6 to be exact) of people lining the walls in cynical patterns. Supposedly there are 300km of these tunnels under Paris!

Other than that, shopping was done, rugby was watched and baguettes were bought. Paris is always good.

Athens & Santorini - 15/10/07

2007-11-03T18:45:00.001Z

Athens and Santorini. Have been wanting to go to Greece for a while now after hearing many good things so Gabe and I devoted the week in between the rugby world cup semi finals and final to a bit of sun and relaxation.

One whirlwind day in Athens was spent climbing foolish mountains to view scaffold clad history and then some unbelievably fine dining at Spondi, which, Gordon Ramsey's Pétrus, actually found hard to beat.

A fully berthed 9 hour ferry trip to Santorini then took up most of the next day with us arriving in time for some incredible sunset action. The views from Santorini's caldera are nothing short of stunning but due to our unparalleled fatness we couldn't really tell you much about anything outside our hotel. Tan, book and lounger me over.

All Blacks in Cardiff - 05/10/07

2007-10-27T02:15:00.000+01:00

Yeah well. Doesn't bear too much mention. The unbelievable result here not only dashed the hopes of a nation....again......but also cut short our world cup trip that we had been planning since February.

As a minor consolation the Aussies crashed out just as unceremoniously as us but for first prize, I randomly managed to bump into Fitzy.....definitely the highlight.

All Blacks in Edinburgh - 23/09/07

2007-09-29T15:03:00.000+01:00

The first of our planned world cup games. We thrashed Scotland 40 - 0 in a handling error ridden game but it was fun nonetheless. Have never seen one place so overrun with Kiwi's in my life. Oh and can we change our flag?

Zoom In Photography Course - 06/09/07

2007-09-29T14:25:00.000+01:00

I've just finished a 4 week photography course (3 hours, once per week) and as such have uploaded the results. Some of the photos, whilst they aren't the best compositional shots, do demonstrate some interesting aspects of photography such as the effects of perspective and colour filters on monochrome images.

My favs are without a doubt the Thames Festival fireworks shots.....some great annoying tripod action to get those. Sorry punters!

Speed Updating

2007-09-28T23:17:00.000+01:00

Ok so here goes. Now that I've got my entire photo library up to date and where it should be, there's pretty much a years (although meagre) worth of photos and good times for you to check out.

27/08/07 Notting Hill Carnival - As per usual, the most free festival fun you can have in London.

08/06/07 Berlin - Yock was over again for more of his scientology bothering so Aidan and I met up with him in Berlin for the weekend. Cue crazy nightclub / bar / hostel / hippie commune / impromtue documentary accommodation and general spreading of democracy. Don't worry if that doesn't make much sense to you either......I'm still trying to figure it all out too.

30/03/07 New Zealand - Christie and I took a month off and spent 3 weeks in NZ and 1 in Aussie. Of the many highlights, hiring a campervan and driving from Auckland to Wellington was one.......me playing a starring role as Bridesman at Ruthie's wedding was definitely another.

03/03/07 Wales - Just before our big trip to NZ we took off to Wales for the weekend. Cheap hire cars are a great great thing.

05/01/07 Amsterdam - Still not sure about this place although the Heineken museum is a must.

21/12/06 Toronto, Niagara Falls & New York - I'm sure we're still paying off this trip even now. A magnificent week in Toronto for Christmas followed by a train through Niagara Falls and New Years Eve in Times Square. Yeah.....NYE in Times Square....don't go for the fireworks......I've had bigger displays in my back garden. Go for the sheep like pens they herd you into, go for the 8 blocks back view you are going to get if you turn up 6 hours before midnight and go for the no alchohol, no toilet breaks, standing in the freezing cold fun of it. Go so you can say you have been. So rubbish it was hilariously good.

Feedback

2007-09-28T21:03:00.000+01:00

So to give some feedback on the GX100 and Aperture. The new camera is fantastic, I enrolled in a camera techniques course to give me an understanding of the manual controls of the camera and found it incredibly worthwhile. The camera itself I would wholly recommend. It's lens is quite wide to begin with but with the addition of the wide angle lens attachment (16mm!) it enables some amazingly creative shots.

Aperture, Apple's pro photo workflow application (think glistening insane octane iPhoto), is nothing sort of a workhorse. It's features are very geared towards photographers who take hundreds of photos for each project and need a streamlined way of narrowing them down to then adjust and apply keywords. Considering I took just on 1000 photos over the 4 weeks of my photography course it's made my life just a little easier.

New Camera Action and Aperture

2007-08-12T21:54:00.000+01:00

You may have noticed that I almost ceased taking photos in 2007. I've been putting this down to my camera boring me to tears but never fear, exciting times ahead. I've purchased a new Ricoh Caplio GX100 which among other things is going to attempt to restore my interest in snappies.

As part of that, I have migrated my entire library from iPhoto to Aperture. A few glitches along the way but Aperture is definitely better suited to me. Quite a bit more powerful and scalable.

Smoke Free UK!

2007-07-04T19:38:00.000+01:00

Holy Fuck. It has finally arrived. Pubs and Bars are back on the menu....a most sincere single finger to all of those who have kept me out of them for many past years.

Fuck off outside into the cold and kill yourselves with your cancerous crutches.

Sailing in Croatia - 10/09/06

2007-06-01T14:06:00.000+01:00

Aidan, Eve, Mike, Spoon, Chad, Tanya and I boarded our mighty ship for a week of fantastic weather, initially uneventful sailing and some hilarious confrontations with our underage captain.

Where!

2007-05-20T12:32:00.000+01:00

So have been away from this blog for 8 months. There's a mountain of stuff to catch up on photos and words wise so for the moment I'm going to concentrate on photos.

First up was our Scue Records Launch Party: With a bar down stairs selling cocktails for £1, clientelle suited and records being played all over the place. Was one hell of a party.

Last.fm

2006-09-11T17:03:00.000+01:00

I discovered Last.fm last week.....seems to be the perfect medium for finding new music and networking with people interested in similar stuff.

I've signed up as Scue_Records and have uploaded tracks and info for both our Scue artists, Ryan Prebble and THE iNKLING.

Man is the website well designed too with loads of little extras and tools. You can even now get a very recent idea of what I've been listening to.....check down the sidebar of this blog...Go on...That's it.....just down there.

Jicken

2006-09-01T01:30:00.000+01:00

August has been expectedly hectic. Loads has become of it though, especially in the Scue department. We launched both Ryan Prebble's and THE iNKLING's new albums in the UK and also hosted a massive release party to that effect.....The party went off. Categorically.

We've also got some really exciting prospects for the digital distribution of our music.....more on that next month when it's finalised.

The carnival rolled around for another year....totally love that place. Two portions of jerk chicken, one on entry and one when leaving, combined with red stripe all day and more sound systems than you can possibly imagine. After 4 years it's STILL my favorite event in London.

Finally, discovered last.fm a couple of days ago. A magnificent site.

Dr Chill & Black Steel

2006-08-06T23:04:00.000+01:00

Fairly weird title for a post but valid nonetheless. Last week, due to the continuing heat wave, the fact that my room acts as a South facing Kiln of Doom and my personal heat driven frayed ends of sanity insomnia, I was left with no option whatsoever to go out and purchase a 12,000BTU Portable Air Conditioning Unit. Portable, at 45kg's, it is not, but it definitely does the job and I have duely named it Dr Chill.

Also,as I am doing a bike ride for charidy it was clear I needed to purchase a bike. Black Steel is her name and she's a screamer. Half road half Mountain Bike......a Hybrid I'm told......great fun and can't believe I didn't get one sooner.

Birthweek!

2006-07-29T00:38:00.000+01:00

As you may or may not be aware it was my birthday last week. As you also may or may not be aware, I, inline with previous years, extended my birthday to "birthweek". Contrary to it's moniker, it is actually possible for Birthweek to run for longer than just the one week and it was certainly my intention that it do so.

Also, technically, as this year is a leapbirthweekyear, birthweek commenced a little earlier and is due to finish tomorrow, in keeping with the traditional rules.

What a birthweek it was too......far too much drinking, FAR too much sushi. Enough excess to send me into hibernation again for certain. Went to Lovebox which was great....a well organised little festival that one. Aidan and Eve took me to the Farnborough airshow too......how great is that place!

Ridiculous jets flying about trying to get as close to one another as possible......and not least......the new A380 in action.....what a fucking flying machine that thing is.

Got a great video of it taking off.

Scue Stuff

2006-07-23T00:26:00.000+01:00

We've just gone live with our brand spanking new Scue site at www.scue.co.uk. We've got our releases up there, bio's on our artists, a swanky little blog and a new warm home for Aidan's widgets, who incidentally, deserves one big helping of credit for building the site up too.

We're also really close to our first release, Deluge, by The iNKLING. We found a designer in NZ who has helped us immeasurably with the marrying of our branding to the album artwork and other little tweaks.....It's currently with the printers, so all going well, it should be delivered via a large stalk, very early in August.

Roll on August.

Gobble Gobble

2006-07-22T01:23:00.000+01:00

Ok, so, so much has happened since I was last here: England crashed out of the world cup unceremoniously to a blushingly theatrical Portuguese side; Australia crashed out of the world cup more than ceremoniously to a sickeningly theatrical Italian side and Zinedine Zidane nutted some Italian turkey in what was possibly the most exciting moment in the entire tournament. Apart from the cringeworthy dives and the shin clutchingly good dramatics though, a great time was had by all.

Outside the cup: we went to see the Foo Fighters; queued with the worst of them at Ascot; Simon, incomprehensibly, didn't arrive and Nadia, our new flatty, did.

Last weekend was Glade festival. Pretty much a two day Homelands with a higher Hippie count. Still enjoyed it though with no small part being played by our snap excursion to Thorpe amusement park due to Eve's stark admission that she had failed to ever board a roller coaster......Luckily help was well at hand.

En-ger-land!!

2006-06-09T09:15:00.000+01:00

So the world cup starts today and I've got to say that I'm pretty stoked about it all. When I arrived here just over 4 years ago the cup and certainly the English supporters served as a ridiculous induction into English football culture. They are fucking mental for it basically and there's no other period of time when this place goes so crazy.

In lieu of a Kiwi team I'm definitely supporting England and amazingly I'll also be supporting Australia against Brazil simply because, in the history of life, there's never been more of an underdog. Only the one game though obviously....I sincerely hope they crash out of the cup promptly after that. Ozzie! Ozzie! Ozzie?

Rock AM Ring '06

2006-06-07T07:45:00.000+01:00

Seeing as the line up was so insane and combined with the added bonus of it being Europe's largest Metal festival, Rob, Tanya and myself decided to fly dirty RyanAir from even dirtier Stansted to Germany, rent a little Mervy and navigate our way up to Frankfurt's Formula 1 track the Nurburgring where 70,000+ metal fans were decending.

We also thought it a great idea to buy VIP tickets at almost double the price which may seem extravagant but well, WELL worth it. We had a separate camping and car parking area close to our own private entrance to the festival. Access to the F1 members lounges, an elevated view of all the concert proceedings and direct entry to right in front of the stage.

There was over 100 bands playing during the 3 days with the highlights being Paul Weller, Morrisey, Goldfrapp, Guns & Roses, Depeche Mode, Tool and Metallica.

Metallica was absolutely a stand out performance playing the entire Master of Puppets album and then encoring with every single hit off every album they've ever done. They played for over 2 and a half hours and basically I was so happy with it I could have cried.

Check out the carnage here

Scue:r

2006-05-22T22:51:00.000+01:00

So today Aidan and I kicked off our plan for a new Scue website to incorporate all of our little projects under one brand.

First up we've replaced the main page with a blog to keep everyone updated on what we're up to whilst we're working on the new site......so head over there and check it out!

Stuff

2006-05-21T09:36:00.000+01:00

It's been a busy time over the last two weeks.....have managed to exercise a little bit more and eat a little bit better with the hope of losing a little bit of insulation I managed to pick up due to the combined effect of winter and free food at work. It's going all good.

Tanya and Kirsten are moving out of the house so we've been holding some oh so comical flatmate interviews....as expected we've had a fairly substantial quota of freaks around, all mirth and no moving in. We have however found a seemingly non stereotypical Librarian, who seems to be a bit of a laugh. Naomi moves in today.

Unbelievably our cleaner, Tinka, has been asked by the Queen to leave this fair land.....where does that leave us Queeny!?!!? So now, in addition to flatty searching, the hunt for a new cleaner also begins. She better be as good as Tinka!

Aidan and Eve finally made it back to the UK after over 3 month gallivanting in the Southern hemisphere too. There was a gigantic question mark over whether visa applications would be accepted but it's all sorted now....stoked to have them back!

And finally, congrats to Finland for winning the Eurovision 2006 song contest with this spectacular piece of work!

Barcelona with Yock!

2006-05-08T23:09:00.000+01:00

I thought a surprise trip to Spain whilst Yock was here was most definitely in order so duly booked flights to Barcelona for 4 days. Man, what a city! So different compared to other parts of Spain I've been to and find it very easy to say I like!

We got a room with a view of Las Ramblas which is a ridiculously long street whose length is surpassed only by the amount of laughable tourist entrapment and dodgy salacious goings on. Brilliant fun both day and night.

We also steadfastly limited our tourist attraction to day ratio to 1 per, preferring instead to adhere to a strict regiment of meal upon siesta upon drink upon meal upon meal upon siesta etc etc.

Barcelona seems like it has it all.....even pudding boy cops attempting to coral upwards of 30 Nigerian sunglass / fake Louis Vuitton bag selling merchants across the harbours edge. Pure entertainment that was.

Check Photos Here!

Yockham in London!

2006-04-30T23:34:00.000+01:00

Yockham arrived for a 10 day long catch up / tourist action / blow out trip after spending a month touring Universities in the US giving seminars on his Asthma research back in NZ.

It's only been a few days but we've managed to cover many a base! Fabric, Mark Rae at Cocoon, BBQ turned top shelf clearing session and also De La Soul at the Jazz Cafe! More to come for sure.

Arsenal v Tottenham Hotspur

2006-04-22T18:00:00.000+01:00

Mike and I managed to get some great seats for this second to last ever match at Highbury. Electric atmosphere, loads of chanting and a fantastic game! Thanks Grant at All Tax UK for the tickets!

Easter in Bath

2006-04-18T14:00:00.000+01:00

Just got back from a great weekend in Bath with Tanya. Stayed in a weird yet classy establishment, drank wine, ate good food and made a poor attempt at doing the tourist thing....oh and drank wine. Oh! and went to Stonehenge! For the record potential hengers...there ain't nothing you can see for the £5.90 entrance fee that you can't see from over the fence. Damned rockworshippers.