Shot Alive

(With complete instructions for how to get from Here to There and back again) (new)

In flickr there is a really fun group that I really shouldn't tell the world about in case too many tourists come. Promise not to tell before you go on!

It is called Vogon Poetry Appreciation Club.

Unlike many groups in flickr that try to bolster photo popularity, this one exists for the poor photos that got overlooked. To qualify the photo has to have been looked at less than 25 times in a month. Once it is viewed over 25 times is is unceremoniously booted from the group as no longer qualifying. I have tried really hard, but cannot get a picture to stay in Vogon Poetry. Of course the whole idea comes from Douglas Adams books, and Vogon Poetry is really shockingly bad. You can probably work the rest out on your own.

To understand more about this try the first and only issue of Vogon Poetry group pictures every published.

To see the contents of the magazine.

Anyway, I wandered all over the place and have just arrived somewhere where I was intending to get...

A recent photo was posted to the group "Gate to nowhere" by Eva the Weaver. She added: …except that when the path is flooded the alternative is to struggle through here.

Here's another gate to nowhere. I'm not making a set for just two.

The various wits of the group (yes, I am one) added funny comments ... you need to visit the picture to see these. By the time I returned, the discussion had taken a twist from why you needed alternative paths to get to nowhere, and was now about finding nowhere and elsewhere through google maps!

I had to be quick or I would miss out! I searched to see if I could find somewhere with google maps and to my surprise it was just out our window! I already knew that the book Erewhon was about NZ and that there is a place here called that. "Erewhon" is the name of a book by Samuel Butler and is more or less "Nowhere" spelled backwards.

New Zealand fared better in Butler's book than in recent comments by John Cleese, but NZ had its revenge. See my recent blog post Balmy and Palmy becomes Mount Cleese.

Breaking News ...

Note added later... Eva the Weaver has found that you can get map directions to get from "Here" to "There". The really odd thing is that they are both in France!

Map showing the route from Here to There.

This is a calendar for the rest of 2007 being June to December. You can save each months picture and print them if you want. The slight chunkiness of the lettering is due to reducing to squeeze into my blog width, and will disappear if you save them. I recommend Irfanview for displaying, indexing viewing and printing pictures.

Flickr is a place for storing your photos and allows each member to keep track of their favourites by other people. These are some of my many favourites, and you can click on them to see them larger:

We think of the cold as not so pleasant, but there can be great beauty in it too. "Frozen" by bashaspix and "Church" by falln_angel.

Living things come in so many forms and yet we can still find thin gs about them to identify with and appreciate. "Poaka or Pied Stilt" or Himantopus leucocephalus. Seen in the geothermal hot waters of the Frying Pan Flat, Wai-O-Tapu, Rotorua. The birds do not seem concerned about the temperatures, and indeed nest on an island in the middle of the flat. Added to the Cream of the Crop pool as most favorited. "Banded mongoose" by gerhard3 taken at Vienna zoo.

Spectacular scenery, "Yosemite 10-04-05" and "So Many Tarns" by mickrange.

Having been to India when this festival is on, I can only say that I am grateful that they do not include foreigners as targets when they throw the dye at each other. So much more fun to just watch them - "Well Holied" - Holi is the festival of colours. It is maybe the biggest festival at least in the north of India. "At hand's reach" by le_jhe - Jour de fête @ Grand Palais. There are a few things I like on this one. First, the hand and the light. Then, I tried to recreate verticality with the acrobats legs angle (as the real vertical is defined by the diagonal). I also like the man standing just behind the scene, which I found intriguing.

Sheep on the island of Helgoland, April 2006. "Let sleeping bears lie" by captain_oblivious. I guess that's a comfortable rock

I read somewhere that you should not lick your computer screen. It was fortunately just before seeing this. ;-) "Pink chocolate covered strawberries, by jlynnwalter. Made for my friend's baby shower. I can't get over how pretty they are. "Sand Sculpture -Junkyard Dog....." This Junkyard Dog was really enjoying his piece of the yard........ Taken in Boston, Mass. while we were visiting there in the Summer of 2006. - This Sculpture were really great-lots of detail! Got to the beach just before sunset-just before they judged the sculpture's. Captured these in Boston, Mass. this past summer on vacation.

The bird seems to be enjoying the view along with us. Untitled, by Shitao. "Aspen Trees at Lake Tahoe" by moosehead.

I used to play go, and was NZ champion and representative in the World Amateur Go Champonships 3 times. So it was a delight to find some Go photographs on flickr. "Go (Wei Qi) Board, by vineyardcafe". "Immortals in the Mist" by sundarban. Thick fog enveloped the Tian Tan Buddha and the statues of the immortals around him.

See also:

My Favourite Pictures taken by Others (1)
My Favourite Pictures taken by Others (2)

In the 1970s and 1980s I lived in Northcote and it was my local shopping centre. Then in the 1990s and since, the Asian population of Auckland has exploded and many of them live on Auckland's North Shore. Northcote shopping centre has become Chinatown, or Asiatown to be more accurate. There are multiple Asian supermarkets, many Asian restaurants, an Asian Food hall, Asian vegetable shops, Asian health practitioners and many other Asian shops. The signs and the food are in a mixture of Chinese, Korean, Japanese and English with perhaps a few other South East Asian flavours also.

Now we live in Birkenhead, the adjacent suburb to Northcote, and we eat at the food hall in Northcote on an almost weekly basis. Being vegetarians, it allows us a good selection from the 12 vendors: Chinese, Thai, Indian, Japanese and so on.

This is a little photographic tour of Northcote.

The food hall has a great variety of tasty food at very reasonable prices. Or you can go to the individual restaurants.

Shops range from beautiful decor to signs falling apart ...

... but the contents is still excellent, whether packaged or fresh.

The people are very friendly and the service is good.

Signs are everywhere, and in the food hall their is a bewildering array of menus, perhaps as many as 400 to choose from.

After we have eaten there are still some shops open, but signs of the owners cleaning up and closing up. It is still very colourful though.

Dogs might be man's best friend, but cats are also our constant living companions. Unlike dogs, they are just selfish bludgers, but somehow we enjoy their company. Our front door mat reads

The cat and its house keeping staff live here.

and that pretty much sums up our relationship with cats. Our cat is named Ebony and she is, like the rest of the household, mature in years and set in her ways.

More pictures of Ebony

The following pictures of cats have been saved from random places around the internet without me keeping bookmarks. If your picture is here and you want me to remove it or put a link to your page please let me know and I will do that.

Coming soon ... dogs.

When I was younger, I used to quite often build piles of rocks and see how high I could get them. My best effort was about 3 m and I had to build another strong pile to stand on to reach the top. I am not sure if I have any photos of these old structures, but never mind, there are lots of other people that like doing this same thing, and today there is a lways a digital camera or cell phone handy to take a snap.

These pictures are on flickr, and you can see larger versions by clicking them.

Balanced stones at the Lake Constance in Germany.

Birling Gap Balance, by andy-mac.

My creation on the beach on Saturday.
The white rocks are actually chalk boulders from the white cliffs near Beachy Head in east Sussex. I used the Flickr maps to see which would be a good beach on the South coast of England with good size rocks to balance and found Birling Gap which was superb with these rounded white rocks.

It balances really well as you can see from this 10-rocker.

I don't think anyone else on the beach had seen rock balances and one guy thought I'd drilled a hole through the middles and stuck them on a pole (which I seemed to recall was my reaction when I first saw them on Flickr).

Rock Balance 2, by andy-mac

Here is my 2nd ever balance seen here behind my 1st ever balance. These were done on the causway that connects Isle Oronsay to the main Isle of Skye at Ullinish at low tide looking west toward Loch Bracadale and Wiay Island.

These two balances would just about get wet at high tide and I'd love to know if any of them still remains.

Rock Balancing, by citril

Rosemarkie Beach, Black Isle

The tide was out today, so I had a greater choice of rocks - these are the ones I felt drawn too, and they stayed put! The bottom/first one was (obviously) in place already - the third one I rejected twice because it had an anemone on it, but then I positioned it away from the sun, knowing the tide would soon be coming back in. I did think about pulling the seaweed off ... but it was there first!

Huge thanks to bebalance for such encouragement and fantastic guidance! And to Trentretro for introducing me to rock balancing!

rock balance, by juleslewis2000

A rock balance at Porthleven, Cornwall. I liked the contrast of the white rock and the abundant seaweed...

Quadruple Counter Balance, by rocker

Crissy Field SF 2003 - all 4 Rocks were counter Balanced against each other - this is 100% opposite to Straight UP Balance. In straight up balance, You place the Rocks upward from the start using Your two hands holding the Rocks one by one to Balance the formation. In counter Balancing, when You are positioning the Rocks upward - You have to hold the Rock one handed - place it on the intended point connection while Your other hand, pick up another rock to put on top of that other rock earlier. At this moment You have to find a`way to Balance those 2 rocks altogether - it is even harder if You are using very small contact points . . . it is even harder when You put two more Rocks on top of that . . . all counter Balanced . . . . Wow . . I didn't Know how I was able to do THAT - especially doing it outdoor near the Golden Gate Bridge . . . a lot of Wind . . . [ en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Dan ]

These are more in the way of pet rock balancing :-)

Rock balancing first attempt - IMG_5963, by tomcox

Inspired by Dave Gorman who amongst other things said this about his rock balancing habit: "In short, rock-balancing was to my tour what basket-weaving is to residents of certain institutions."

Rock Balancing, by mutephotoblog

Rock balancing on Queens Quay in Toronto.

06 11 24 rock balance

At Lake Constance in Germany - best viewed large
'06 11 24 rock balance' On Black

Rosemarkie Rock Balance, by citril

Rosemarkie Beach, Black Isle

This is my first attempt to really try and counter balance rocks that ordinarily I would have assumed would NOT balance together. Not as spectacular as the pros, but it was fun doing it!

Huge thanks to bebalance for such encouragement and fantastic guidance! And to Trentretro for introducing me to rock balancing!

And nature too can do rock balancing! It gets the second to last word on it.

Balancing Rock, by srjacobs

Probably the most photographed rock in Utah, this is "Balancing Rock" at Arches N.P.

But the last word in rock balancing goes to Bill Dan!

Rock Balancing by Bill Dan, by calanan

Rock Balancing by artist Bill Dan
Crissy Field
San Francisco, California

I got started in this madness when I came across someone else's efforts using Big Huge Labs Captioner and so tried it out myself. The earlier ones here are done with that, but in the end I found it easier to caption the photos myself.

It all started with getting a digital camera:

My son, Derek, and his friends do medieval battling and this looked like a good one to try out:

In India there are often scenes that are very funny to westerners. Sometimes the westerners are very funny to the Indians at exactly the same time. While we were laughing at and pointing to the cows looking in the shop, the locals were laughing at us and pointing to us, "Haven't they ever seen a cow shopping before?" ... Well, everyone was happy:

Our cat, Ebony, decided to sleep under the Christmas tree with the kids presents. Originally I only got one tiger, but another grandchild saw it and really liked it, so I had to go back for another.

If called by a panther
Don't anther - Ogden Nash (I think)

We also have a front door mat that reads "The cat and its house keeping staff live here", which is about right. If I wasn't a vegetarian I might come back as a cat in my next life.

This last one was a bit more work. It resulted from a challenge in the digital challenge group in flickr. Each person starts with a supplied picture, in this case just the sheep, and adds some extra stuff to make a more interesting picture. Everyone then votes for the best one. So far I haven't won a single challenge ... well actually I haven't received a single vote! You aren't allowed to vote for yourself. But this is my latest entry, and I am hoping to get at least one vote:

Auckland's subtitle name is City of Sails on account of it having so many yachts and marinas, and the highest ownership of yachts per capita of any major city. It also has two harbours, the Waitemata harbour on the shore of which Auckland central city is found, and the Manukau harbour to the South. The tides in these two harbours are 3 hours different, an unusual situation for a single city in a country as small as New Zealand.

Yachts in Auckland's Waitemata Harbour

It is late Friday afternoon, and the Yachts have gathered for a race, but the starter has them waiting because the wind is too light.

Ready to go

Just waiting for the starters gun.

Auckland Central Business District

The view from Northcote Point, just below the harbour bridge.

To the right is seen Shoal Bay through the pillars of the Auckland harbour bridge as it descends to Northcote point.

"The Auckland metropolitan area or Greater Auckland, in the North Island of New Zealand, is the largest urban area of the country. With over 1.2 million people it has over a quarter of the country's population, and demographic trends indicate that it will continue growing faster than the rest of(the country. Auckland also has the largest Polynesian population of any city in the world. In Māori its name is Tāmaki Makau Rau, or the transcribed version of Auckland, Ākarana.

Auckland straddles the volcanoes of the Auckland Volcanic Field. The 50 volcanic vents in the field take the form of cones, lakes, lagoons, islands and depressions, and several have produced extensive lava flows. Most of the cones have been partly or completely quarried away. The individual volcanoes are all extinct, although the volcanic field itself is merely dormant.

The most recent and by far the largest volcano, Rangitoto Island, was formed within the last 1000 years, and its eruptions destroyed the Māori settlements on neighbouring Motutapu Island. Rangitoto's size, its symmetry, its position guarding the entrance to Waitemata Harbour and its visibility from many parts of the Auckland region make it Auckland's most iconic natural feature. It is eerily quiet as almost no birds and insects have settled on the island because of the rich acidic soil and type of flora that has adapted to grow out of the black broken rocky soil." (Wikipedia article on Auckland)

Rangitoto Silhouette

Looking through Northcote boat yard and Shoal Bay and its marina with Rangitoto Island beyond. In Auckland's North Shore, New Zealand.

Reflecting on Auckland

Auckland, "City of Sails", Sky City and boats in the late afternoon Sun, along with reflections of them all in the side of a yacht up on Northcote boat yard.

City of Sails

Auckland, "City of Sails", seen from Northcote boat yard. The seagull is catching the last bit of Sun as it disappears behind Northcote Point.

Mt Eden watches over Waitemata

Mt Eden, one of many volcanic cones, is a popular viewing spot in Auckland. The yachts are in front of Westhaven marina, one of about half a dozen around the Waitemata harbour.

Gold in the City, Gold in the Sails

The late afternoon Sun lights up a golden building and a golden sail in Auckland.

Peaceful Waitemata

A little too peaceful for these Friday night would be racers as they await the starters gun. He awaits the breeze. Auckland city as seen from the North Shore at Northcote.

Yachts in the Waitemata

Beyond the harbour are the many masts of yachts in the Westhaven marina.

Background (before the new stuff)

For those highly protected people who have not yet heard of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, it is an invention of the mind of Bobby Henderson, concerned citizen. In a moment of pure creative insight in 2005, Bobby wrote:

Open Letter To Kansas School Board

I am writing you with much concern after having read of your hearing to decide whether the alternative theory of Intelligent Design should be taught along with the theory of Evolution. I think we can all agree that it is important for students to hear multiple viewpoints so they can choose for themselves the theory that makes the most sense to them. I am concerned, however, that students will only hear one theory of Intelligent Design.

Let us remember that there are multiple theories of Intelligent Design. I and many others around the world are of the strong belief that the universe was created by a Flying Spaghetti Monster. It was He who created all that we see and all that we feel. We feel strongly that the overwhelming scientific evidence pointing towards evolutionary processes is nothing but a coincidence, put in place by Him.

It is for this reason that I’m writing you today, to formally request that this alternative theory be taught in your schools, along with the other two theories. In fact, I will go so far as to say, if you do not agree to do this, we will be forced to proceed with legal action. I’m sure you see where we are coming from. If the Intelligent Design theory is not based on faith, but instead another scientific theory, as is claimed, then you must also allow our theory to be taught, as it is also based on science, not on faith. ...etc etc

All this and the following details of often remarkable discoveries are recorded on the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster web site.

Now there are 1,220,000 web sites devoted to FSM according to google (that means over 10,000 at least) and it has an entry in wikipedia. The domain name flyingspaghettimonster.org has been taken and this shows a good animation of something like Bobby's original drawing.

Not long after Bobby Henderson's original letter, very ancient almost petrified noodles were discovered in China, a sure sign that if God exists he has a good sense of humour. People have reported seeing FSM everywhere and sent photos to prove it. Today I bring you some of the best of FSM from flickr.

Believe, by sidereal & Touched by his noodly appendage, by sidereal"

Flickr spaghetti monster, by oskay & Flying Spaghetti Monster Plush, by firevixen

Lenore is visited by the Flying Spaghetti Monster, who reassures us that yes, Flickr will be back soon. & The Flying Spaghetti Monster, flying.

FSM At Atlantis, by wilwheaton & FSM2

This monument to the Flying Spaghetti Monster is in the middle of the casino at Atlantis. Ramen. (left photo)

And now for some really cute kiddly cuddly FSMs...

Flying spaghetti monster by alltoomuch & Wave by kateremenwait

Creepy and cute! be touched by his noodly appendage!(left) & And appears to be most comfortable waving his noodly appendage at us. (right)

Construction information: He was made with a few miles of knitted 4-stitch I-cord with Lion Brand Wool Ease in cream. These were draped and tacked over a stuffed knitted sphere made from the same yarn. Meatballs were spheres fashioned of Lion Brand Suede yarn in a deep chocolate brown (it isn't easy finding meaty-colored yarn...). Two google eyes were attached to the short noodles and some of the noodles, including the eye stems, were wired with craft wire.

Flying spaghetti monster & Flying Spaghetti Monster appears in Coffee Foam, by pizzabytheslice

Ancient cave painting, south eastern Australia (left).

That last must be even much more ancient than the Chinese Noodle discovery (although admittedly that was genuine).

Well with that name I suppose we had to eventually get around to some real Noodly stuff.

I ate Flying Spaghetti Monster for dinner!, by cyberspace &

So, in honor of the (sucks pinky) ONE MILLION DOLLAR intelligent design prize at boing boing, I got a major yearning for some spaghetti.

So, what was I to do but make Flying Spaghetti Monster for dinner? :)

We made pasta salad (yummy cold sesame noodles) for a party. To complete the look, we baked rolls with long pretzel rods embedded in them. After baking, we poked holes for the olives. At the end of the party, all that was left was a lonely pair of eyestalks...

He was good, especially paired with a nice Merlot.

In all seriousness, I think that these words of Pope John Paul II say it best:

"In his encyclical Humani Generis, my predecessor Pius XII has already affirmed that there is no conflict between evolution and the doctrine of the faith regarding man and his vocation... Today, more than a half-century after the appearance of that encyclical, some new findings lead us toward the recognition of evolution as more than an hypothesis. In fact it is remarkable that this theory has had progressively greater influence on the spirit of researchers, following a series of discoveries in different scholarly disciplines."

Touched by His Noodly plush Appendage, by firevixen

The Flying Spaghetti Monster touches Mike with his noodly plush appendage.

And one more really cute one before we get serious:

Baby Pastafarian, by witchietaitai

Bridget in her new Flying Spaghetti Monster hat!

Here it is the serious on, I warned you ...

Flying Spaghetti Monster Ministries - Religious Tract, by pizzabytheslice

Whilst strolling downtown, along Hope Street near the rescue missions, a young, eager Pirate -- I knew him to be such given his manner of dress -- rode past on a bicycle, cutlass clanging an enchanting rhythm against the spokes. He thrust this tract into my hands, “ar-harrhed”, and bidding me well, rode off down the street.

Many more sightings of the Flying Spaghetti Monster and of people being touched by his noodly appendage can be seen at:
Most Interesting FSM at flickr

Most Recent FSM at flickr

STOP PRESS

While this article was actually being written another sighting...

FSM 5206, by dougnaka

And I looked up, and behold, the heavens parted, and he who is noodly, and without too much sauce, came forth and I beheld him. Lo I did taketh up mine camera digitalis, and I didst snappeth upon thine earth this pictureth. And there was much rejoicing. yayyyy.