Just Imagine...

Thu 24 Nov 2005, 21:31 GMT

Thanksgiving at the American Book Center: the spoils

Cross-posting between the message board and the weblog, so a short intro for non-messageboard people: English science fiction and fantasy books are somewhat scarce in regular bookstores in the Netherlands. Yet there is one place to go to, one place which makes up for it all. The American Book Center imports directly from both the US and the UK, and as such has a collection that many people from both the US and the UK have mentioned to be larger and more diverse than anything they know. It's right up there with the Forbidden Planet in London, the SF-bokhandeln in Stockholm and the Galaxy in Sydney. Members of the ABC and students get a 10% discount. And every year at Thanksgiving, they add another 10% discount on top of this. (20% discount is a big deal in the Netherlands, especially with the lack of choice.) And so there's a yearly pilgrimage to stock up on all those books that everyone's been meaning to buy for a long time now...

So, another year, another thanksgiving. And this time I think I've more than made up for my absence during the last two years. :)
Without further ado, I give you the spoils:

* Tony Daniel - Metaplanetary and Superluminal. (He has a quote by Zelazny: Remember his name, and keep watching for whatever he does., and another one by Bear. Despite the slightly tacky (albeit shiny) covers, and the very space-opera-ish coverblurb, I have high hopes.)
* Charles de Lint - Waifs and Strays. (Trade paperback; Been on the list since I first learned of its existence: I just absolutely love his short story collections; if only they weren't so hard to find here.)
* Peter F. Hamilton - Pandora's Star. (Been on the list since it was published; this is the Del Rey edition, which looks a whole lot thinner, even though it still has 988 pages; one wonder how the spine will hold up.)
* William Gibson - Pattern Recognition. (One of those books that slipped through the cracks due to the travelling.)
* Robert A. Heinlein - Have Spacesuit, Will Travel. (I must shamefacedly admit that I've never managed to read this yet.)
* Ian Irvine - The Way Between the Worlds. (I'd bought the first three long ago; never read them yet, and they're at the bottom of the pile based on anti-recommendations, but thought that if perchance I'd like them, I'd better have the entire series, hence now buying the fourth volume.)
* Paul Kearney - The Mark of Ran. (Sounds like a standard fantasy trilogy coverblurb, but unless I'm terribly mistaken, Erikson recommended him, and I'm willing to put some trust in that.)
* C.S. Lewis - The Chronicles of Narnia. (Trade paperback; Given the upcoming movie, I really couldn't put off buying and reading this far too long-ignored classic any longer.)
* Ken MacLeod - The Cassini Division and The Sky Road. (With the same style new Orbit covers as the first two books in this fall revolution series - finally!)
* Ken MacLeod - Newton's Wake. (More of him is always good; fun and easy reads.)
* Patricia A. McKillip - The Tower at Stony Wood, In the Forests of Serre and Ombria in Shadow. (Don't like these weirdly sized editions, and they have black marker on the pages, but they were dirt cheap and it is McKillip after all...)
* Chris Moriarty - Spin State. (Has recommendations from Baxter and Brin; the coverblurb made it sound like an interesting universe.)
* Robert Reed - Down the Bright Way. (Marrow impressed me sufficiently that I want to read more form him)
* Kim Stanley Robinson - Fifty Degrees Below. (Hardcover; continues where Forty Signs of Rain left off, with a now shockingly believable premise. Robinson is buy on sight for me, and luckily I finally spotted him now, after having been looking for this for the entire month.)
* Robert Silverberg - Roma Eterna. (First learned about these stories in Silverberg's Far Horizons anthology - I just love a well crafted alternate history like this.)
* Dan Simmons - Ilium. (Comes very highly recommended, and I'm a fan of his Hyperion cantos.)
* Charles Stross - Singularity Sky and Iron Sunrise. (I've picked up these books dozens of times and never bought them, but read an interview with him in last August's Orbit eZine, and he described his universe in such a way that I *knew* I had to have these. (Fortunately I've forgotten any and all details from the interview already, so I can go into the books unencumbered.))
* John C. Wright - The Last Guardian of Everness. (Fantasy, and with a coverblurb that doesn't appeal - but his Golden Age was sublime, so I'm going to give it a try.)

So, the total tally comes to 23 books. That should keep me reading for a while. ^_^


I also picked up (with thanks to Marion for alerting me of its existence) the new Enya at Fame (after querying them on if this was a real CD and not infected with DRM for a while, I felt guilty about it and decided to just cough up the premium of buying there; I really do like that store, if only they weren't so darned expensive!) and a really old Sally Oldfield album at the Plaatboef. Definitely a productive trip. :)

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Tue 8 Nov 2005, 21:38 GMT

Bloglines bot stops misrepresenting its number of subscribers

So I have this nasty habit of regularly checking my server logs, always wanting to see what's going on. One of the things I noticed through this is that when I signed up for a bloglines account to test some functionality (and subsequently discovered what I think was a security problem, that I probably should some day go and check up upon to see if it's still present, or if they silently fixed it without acknowledging my email), and subsequently unsubscribed, it didn't lower the number of subscribers to my atom feed. It happened a second time, too, and so I've since been taking the number with a grain of salt (though realizing it was mostly accurate, as people almost never seem to unsubscribe in real life).

Just now, however, I noticed the following two lines in my log:

code:216.148.212.188 - - [08/Nov/2005:16:56:30 +0000] "GET /atom.asp HTTP/1.1" 200 2894 "-" "Bloglines/2.1 (http://www.bloglines.com; 7 subscribers)" 65.214.39.151 - - [08/Nov/2005:19:42:38 +0000] "GET /atom.asp HTTP/1.1" 200 2894 "-" "Bloglines/3.0-rho (http://www.bloglines.com; 5 subscribers)"

Looks like they have a new version of their bot, and that it has changed from stating the number of "all subscribers who ever signed up" to just the current number. (At least, I consider it as unlikely that someone else signed up twice in the hour interval that I unsubscribed as I consider it that 29% of my bloglines-audience unsubscribed just as they changed to a new version of their bot.)

I wonder if this'll have any noticeable effect on the various online statistics of feedreader marketshare.


2005-11-22, update: Bloglines for now has gone back to using the 2.1 version of the bot, and the security problem briefly mentioned is indeed still present, as I finally went and checked up on given that Phil just made public a similar problem.

2005-12-27, update the 2nd: After going back and forth between the 2.1 and 3.0 versions of the bot, the latter has now been running for a solid week, so I guess it's been toggled for real. Bloglines changed it so that it continues to misrepresent the number of subscribers though. :/ (For that matter, most of the security problems we found over at Phil's are still present as well. Bad Bloglines! No cookie!)

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Fri 28 Oct 2005, 18:06 GMT

Tripreport: 2005-03-03 - 2005-03-13: I could swear I'd seen this place before

*looks around at the once familiar surroundings of his weblog*
*surreptitiously blows off a layer of dust from the tab bar*
*whistles happily as he tidies away some dead links*

Ah yes... Tripreports. These ephemeral signs of life from this being known, amongst some of those who have specialized in the noble Art of Knowing, as the Aanimal; World Traveler Extraordinaire, Slacker amongst slackers, for whom all the world is but a destination.
What then, dear readers, has this most austere being been spending his time on in the months since we last spotted him? A surprisingly mundane period in his life, it would have to be said, although highlights included mingling with the rich and mighty at Dragon*Con, stalking the Tad in Chicago, heroically fighting to fit the complete St. Louis Arch into his viewfinder, and roasting hotdogs and marshmallows on a camping trip amidst trees gone absolutely wild with pretty fall colors.
Oh yes, and very occasionally editing some pictures, the result of which can now once more be seen in this next installment of the ever less up to date tripreports. :)

So, onward we charge. When last we saw our noble hero, he had embarked upon the dangerous crossing of the Cook Strait, separating the Northern sheep of Kiwiland from the Southern sheep (it is written that if ever these two flocks combine, they will form a menace so terrible that not even the great Aanzie-baa could stand against them). Accompanying him was his trusty sidekick redNathalie, as yet unaware that the scenery around Picton was deemed to be perhaps the most boring bit of New Zealand outside of Gore, and so at length extolling the virtues thereof.
Fortunately for our hero, the Village Bakkerij was having one of its rare days on which it was not closed. This meant that dutch buttercake could be introduced, while talk was swiftly shuffled off stage right.

Once every last crumb of the buttercake had disappeared, our dynamic duo hopped into their chosen mode of transport (a tiny Toyota Echo, in which the levers for window-wiper and turn-signal had surreptitiously switched places compared to those in the Ford Ka they had abandoned that morning), and zoomed off into the distance. Short stops were made for especially pretty surroundings, such as those of Buller Gorge, but otherwise the journey was uneventful all the way to the West Coast.

Ah, the West Coast of the South Island of New Zealand: Home to untold marvels, wonders beyond compare, sights unimagined... and a lone tourbus, standing by the roadside with a blown tire, a gaggle of backpackers around it, flagging down the occasional passing car.
Although not as glamorous a job as fighting evil overlords in their volcano-lairs, our heroes quickly rose to the challenge of helping out those in need. Heroically shifting about their oversized luggage until one half of the backseat could be raised again, they transported one lone traveler onward to Punakaiki, from where a phonecall to a nearby garage could be made. This traveller conveyed onto them tales of misery and woe; apparently this was the fifth bus belonging to the tour company he'd been in since he started out in Auckland - all had broken down.
At Punakaiki, our dynamic duo set out to see the mysterious pancake rocks in all their glory. Alas, today's tide was not all that high, and on its way out already, so they could not be astonished by the astonishing blowholes, but it was a worthwhile stop all the same.
Onward, the journey went, now with a different traveller from the same destitute tourbus in tow; the tourbus was deemed beyond repair for the day, and so each of these bedraggled backpackers had to make their way to the final destination for the day, the much-talked about center of West Coast civilization: Barrytown.
Alas, if only our heroic heroes had looked back in their rear-view mirror, a short time later (after passing two houses and half a cow) they might have seen the placename sign for Barrytown receding in the distance (why the "town", if such it could be called, didn't have a sign on the other side will forever remain a mystery). Or if only the hotel that this traveller would stay at would actually display a sign with the name of this hotel, rather than a completely different name. Yet dwelling on such might-have-beens has never done anyone much good, and so, darkness swiftly descending upon our intrepid group (accompanied by a most marvelous sunset), it wasn't until the Aanimal recognized the distinct shape of Point Elizabeth that they knew that had journeyed on too far. And so they backtracked once more, and after much trials and tribulations finally delivered their backpacker charge at her destination, to then turn around and once more make their way over the winding roads of the West Coast.
Sadly, the hostel at Greymouth that was their chosen hideaway from the horrors of the night closed at the early hour of 20:30, as our heroes discovered when they stood at the locked door thereof. Much wailing and gnashing of teeth and declaiming on how no good deed ever goes unpunished was only narrowly averted by a resident of the hostel which unlocked the door for them after fierce knocking on the windows. Inside, an envelope with instructions on how to find their room and the key thereof was waiting for our heroes. All's well that ends well, so they exclaimed, and celebrated with some gourmet cheese sandwiches.

Well rested for a day of more good deeds, our turbo tourguide and his smashing sidekick set off to walk the Point Elizabeth Walkway, which was as gorgeously green as ever.
Onward they journeyed, over rackety one-lane bridges, where a fierce lookout was kept for any approaching trains, past untold turtle-like campervans and through green rainforest beyond compare, ever onward to Franz Josef Glacier. Having checked in here, our noble heroes decided to go and walk a trail as yet unknown, that leading past Peter's Pool to Roberts Point, although the hour was such that this final destination would most probably not be reached. Of course, perhaps they could've reached it if it wasn't for the sight that greeted them a mere five minutes away from the carpark, mesmerizing them for untold minutes with its stillness, reflecting beauty like Snow White's mirror. Verily, it was Peter's Pool, putting on a rare show of unsuspected quality, such as no photograph could ever hope to capture.

Yet perhaps it was for the best that Peter's Pool assaulted them so early on in their tribulations. For whose wise soul would be able to sing out in surety, sharing knowledge of how our noble heroes would've handled the overwhelming green-ness of the rainforest which came shortly after, if they had not been thusly prepared? Babbling brooks and waterfalls cascading down betwixt bemossed boulders, ferns shooting up and strangling vines hanging down all around, and everywhere the green light filtering through to set it all alight. Truly, it was a marvel to behold, and few things exemplify more that it was the true stuff of legends which our heroes were made of, than the mere fact that they came back from this fairy world to tell the tales thereof.

After many hours of being thus captivated, our noble adventurers emerged from the rainforest onto the gravel at the bottom of the glacier, from which they could observe that the glacier was as dirty as ever. The walk back once more took them through the beauty of the rainforest and past Peter's pool, and it was only the lure of a pasta dinner with cheese and wine that managed to eventually lure them back to civilization.

After the short drive from Greymouth to Franz Josef, the next day once more saw our heroes facing a long drive ahead of them. Ever up over the winding roads through Haast Pass (with only a few choice words for the lack of engine power of their chosen vehicle), past Thunder Creek Falls, skirting Lake Hawea, and on into the Kawarau Gorge, where the madness of rope swinging, jetboating and bungy jumping was observed.

Upon arriving in Queenstown and discovering that all tours to Milford Sound for the following day were closed or booked full already, our heroes set out on a noble quest for Hokey Pokey icecream. The completion of this quest made the heroes realize that this crushing defeat was merely a minor setback. The rare gift of sleep (!) could now be enjoyed, as well as a breakfast including american style pancakes at a nearby american diner (when in Kiwiland...). Moreover, the joy of souvenir shopping could now be experienced.
When in the afternoon the rain that had been accompanying our dynamic duo since Franz Josef abated, they swiftly set out to walk part of the One Mile Creek, as the Aanimal had previously enjoyed the surroundings of this walk.

And indeed, the waterpipe still pointed true; rare beauty could be observed here. Moreover, coming back down from the mountain, the most sublime and surreal light was playfully putting on a performance over the hills at the other side of the lake, leaving our heroes quietly grateful for having been fortunate enough to observe such a wonder.

As the next day broke, change could be felt in the air. A sense of anticipation hung over the land, like fog on an early winter day. Slowly, the truth of today's coming endeavours spread, rustling through the grass, cascading over the rocks, until it permeated all. A reverent hush fell over the world as it witnessed our heroes embarking upon a pilgrimage to the most beautiful locale of all.
Up, they laboriously struggled, until they reached Lindis Pass.
Onward, they continued, to the wide plains of the Mackenzie Country.
Outward, they gazed here, looking over the milky blue waters of Lake Pukaki, a tiny Mt. Cook shimmering in the distance.

They lingered for a while at the Canals, paying homage to these lines of power, transporting vividly colored water from one lake to the next...

...and then they journeyed on.
And so at last, in the fullness of time, they arrived at the holiest place of all, Lake Tekapo itself.
What can one say about this place that hasn't already been said?
Our heroes, for once, are at a loss for words, and just slowly walk by the edge of the water, drinking in the tranquility, and trying not to explode from total beauty overload.

Times flies by in a blur, and before our heroes know it, the following morning has arrived. A fierce wind whips up the lake into a frenzy of waves, and any plans of taking a helicopter flight over the mountains are quickly squashed. Our heroes are helpless before this onslaught of nature's power, and can do no more than to huddle behind the windows of the hostel (big and gorgeous as ever) as rain washes over them in waves as unending as those on the lake. (Alas though, the once familiar manager of the Lake Tekapo YHA, Andrew, has taken off, and the new manager has seen fit to install a television device. Although our heroes did not observe this atrocity to be on during their stay, things just aren't the same anymore. Luckily the true owner of the hostel remained, in the form of Nefertiti, imperiously strolling around like always.)
As nature's fury abates, and the clouds disperse, our heroes take a gamble, and set their sights on the lofty peaks of Mt. John. Little do they know that here a menace awaits them unlike any they have faced before.
Slowly they make their way up through the forest on the south side of Mt. John, until they emerge from this green protection to the eternal tussock grass that covers most of the Mackenzie Country, including the top of Mt. John. And it is here that they first come face to face with the woolly menace which has in recent years become the true power in Kiwiland. An entire flock of them is making a concerted assault on the pinnacle of learning and wisdom which has since times unknown nestled here upon the very top of Mt. John, and this flood rolls over and around our heroes as if they weren't even there, effortlessly scaling the heights, while our heroes are reduced to following the loop track, knowing in their hearts of hearts that they cannot reach the entrance of the observatory in time to stop this threat.
They are left with no choice but to gaze longingly over the promised land, knowing that its beauty has been forever claimed by these marauding hordes of doom.

And indeed, once our heroes finally reach the very peaks of Mt. John, they can do naught but to gaze upon the entrance to the Mt. John observatory, and see it cordoned by a vast army of sheep, content to starve the inhabitants with their relentless siege.
Mourn, ye people of the world! Mourn for wisdom lost to their cloven clutches!

Meanwhile nature has not yet played out its part, turning the climb up Mt. John and the subsequent walk around its loop track into a most invigorating experience. Ordinarily our heroes would be happily battling the piercing wind for hours, but their spirits had been dampened by their inability to repel the woolly menace. And so, after a few more minutes observing eternity, they hurriedly made their way back to planes more suited to mortal existence. Managing to bypass the many duck sentries which had obviously been placed at the bottom of the hill by the cunning sheep hordes, our heroes returned to the outpost of human civilization. And it was here, gazing upon the eternal Church of the Good Shepherd, that they were granted a sign from the heavens. Even in the face of the most crushing defeat, gorgeous light can still exist; and verily, even the never-abating tourist hordes can for a magical few minutes be absent.

Thus revived, and filled with new hope, our noble heroes made their way to Pepe's for that truly miraculous gift from the gods: Carbonara Pizza. Long they deliberated that night, until finally a plan had been forged cunning enough to throw off even the insidious sheep.

At 05:30 the following morning, our heroes woke from their slumber, and most carefully crept out of the hostel. Through the deep dark night, they slunk, once more past the duck sentries, through the forest, evading the creaking trees lunging at their hair with their tangling branches, until finally they arrived at the top of Mt. John.
For a moment, then, our heroes experienced elation. Not a single sheep was to be seen. Yet, they were too intelligent to be so easily fooled. The absence of the sheep could only be explained by the fact that the sheep were hiding. Cunning masters of disguise, the sheep had probably infiltrated the observatory, and were at this very moment observing our heroes from within. Now and forever more, our heroes would have to be on their guard, never knowing if the next random passersby was truly a person, or but an ill-fitting costume for one of their woolly adversaries. Yet they could not let the sheep know that they now knew, and so they stayed there on the top of Mt. John, strutting around victoriously, and exclaiming in loud voices over the colors of the dawn, which had at this time decided to reveal themselves in all their glory, shooting out over the nearby hills, to set the crowns of the faraway Southern Alps aflame with heavenly colors. Yet when this spectacle was over, our heroes still swiftly made their way back down to the village under the guise of being chilled to the bone by the cold weather, and here regathered their strength with a delicious pancake breakfast.

As the forecast for the day still was not good for helicopter flights, our dynamic duo decided to leave this place of woe for the day, and to rest their souls with vistas of the lofty peaks of Mt. Cook. Alas, Mt. Cook itself was barely visible behind the clouds, but beautiful light was still playing over nearby mountains, and so the unsealed road to the Tasman Glacier and the Blue Lakes was taken, and the souls rested on such beauty as might be found there.
Our heroes lingered over a traditional cup of pickwick tea at the Hermitage, and our trusty tourguide proved his worth in tourguiding by having his smashing sidekick try some real New Zealand meatpie. It is unknown if she has yet forgiven him for this. :P

Yet another day was spent in the wondrous environment of Lake Tekapo, with a brewing storm changing the colors to be even more surreal than they already were. Of particular note on this day was a drive up along the east shore of the lake, with the storm following closely in the footsteps of our noble heroes. More carbonara pizza was done justice to that night, along with delicious cheesecake and icecream. Yes, life truly was good for our heroes.

A final day was spent in Christchurch, filled with cheesecake and exploration of the Botanic Gardens, and then the sad time had arrived when our heroes would part. Yet it is written that as long as the menace of the sheep lies over the world, they will find ways to reunite, and together protect humanity from such nefarious plots as the ubiquitous woolly villains might be hatching.

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Mon 10 Oct 2005, 22:16 GMT

Switching the Google Maps sidebar back to the right

Recently, Google Maps came out of Beta as Google Local. And the one big change compared to its previous iteration is that the moved their sidebar - you know, the big white space that's usually devoid of content - to the left.
Now, I *know* I'm not the only one who's finding himself always being thrown off by this. Plus, the entire page just look unbalanced.

Luckily in this day and age, browsers give us the tools to make websites look and act like we want them to, so it was the work of mere minutes with the DOM-Inspector before I had my Google Maps once again looking like I want it to.
Since I figure I'm not the only one who was annoyed at this change, here's how you do the same:

1) Use a recent Mozilla-based browser. Firefox 1.0.x and Mozilla 1.7.x are too old, but more recent products like Mozilla 1.8 alpha builds, SeaMonkey 1.0 alpha (the successor to the Mozilla Suite) or Firefox 1.5 beta 2 should be fine.
2) Locate your profile directory. (The default location for Firefox on Windows XP would be: C:\Documents and Settings\[Windows user name]\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\[Profile name]\ - Note that the "Application Data" directory is hidden by default on Windows.)
3) Go to the "chrome" subdirectory of your profile.
4) Create a new textfile called userContent.css here, or open it if it already exists.
5) Paste the following lines in this file:

code:@-moz-document domain("maps.google.com") { body > #page > #map { margin-left: 0 !important; margin-right: 20.4em !important; } body > #page > #panel { left: auto !important; right: 0 !important; } } @-moz-document domain("local.google.com") { body > #page > #map { margin-left: 0 !important; margin-right: 20.4em !important; } body > #page > #panel { left: auto !important; right: 0 !important; } }
6) Restart SeaMonkey/Mozilla/Firefox, and observe the silly sidebar back at the right side of the screen where it belongs. :)


If you're still using Mozilla 1.7.x or Firefox 1.0.x, and would rather not upgrade to an alpha or beta (even though the quality of both is very high), you can still get things looking like they used to, but you'll run the risk of messing up other pages which use similar naming for their elements, as the @-moz-document rule to apply styling to just a single site wasn't present yet back then, and so the same CSS will be applied to all websites.
We can reduce the risk of messing up other websites by being as specific as possible with our selectors, and so step 5) would become:

code:body > #page > div.noscreen:first-child + div#map { margin-left: 0 !important; margin-right: 20.4em !important; } body > #page > div#map + div#panel.noprint:last-child { left: auto !important; right: 0 !important; }

Opera also has a user-stylesheet mechanism, with which you should be able to apply the same CSS rules, but I couldn't offhandedly find instructions on how to do this. Safari appears to have a user stylesheet selector under preferences, advanced, but I'm unable to test it at present. (And needless to say, if you use IE you're out of luck.)


update: Fixed selector in the second case to actually work.

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Sat 6 Aug 2005, 13:13 GMT

Tripreport: 2005-02-24 - 2005-03-02: Wait, wasn't I here before?

When living life selfishly, as I have been doing for these last two years, it is often easy to forget about one's audience. Worse still when I myself am the audience. (I know I have quite some devoted readers in many of you, but at the heart of it all, I am like Steven Brust. I write things that I want to read. I am my primary audience.)
How easy is it, after all, to forget oneself and dive headfirst into experiencing?
To have a blood-churning encounter with the fearsome platypus, or to edit photographs into shape?
To have lunch, sitting in the middle of a rainforest, or to arrange words into not too-displeasing sequences?
These aren't questions, these are answers.
Yet these aren't answers to the question, what took you so bloody long? There are many reasons and causes - none of which include forgetting about either myself or any of you - but at the heart of it all is one simple word, which although not completely truthful, is true enough. Work. Even when living on a backpacker budget, money supplies need to be replenished every so often, and all these other projects and activities and communicatings have to vie for the diminished amount of remaining time. Moreover, when I've been stuck on a particularly annoying problem as part of that work, and feeling as if I waste days not accomplishing anything, it's hard to then during a different part of the day get my mind back on a productive track. And when a good solution has finally been found, lost time needs to be made up for, and ongoing projects suffer.
Still, as it was in the beginning, so it is now, and I am here once more. (And although the next tripreport won't follow immediately, it shouldn't be more than a month away either. *knock on wood*)

So, what has happened in the realreal between the thenthen and the nownow, in sentences of four words or less:
Work in Melbourne. Adelaide book forum meets. Continuum 3: Neil, Robin. Flight to East Coast. Rainforests around Cairns. The Great Barrier Reef. Rain on Magnetic Island. Platypuses near Mackay. Staying with Gandalf.
The Good Dreamer has truly been dreaming me well. :)
Less than a week now before I leave the mysterious land of Oz. On the way back home I shall once more set down in the US of A, to go and spend lots of time in the company of good friends, attending Dragon*Con and simply having the best of all times. And then early/mid November, it will be time for Son of Food. Those of you who know who you are, mark your calendars. ^_^ (I'll email in the next few weeks.)

Now, some inconsequential number of months and days ago, when I finished my previous tripreport, I was just flying off to New Zealand. Flying Emirates Air, this time around. Very 'luxurious,' with a tiny touchscreen giving access to hundreds of movies and games for everyone. Me being who I am, it took me only half an hour before my screen displayed:
code:svgalib: Signal 11: Segmentation fault received. Log: 35and I decided that I should go and read a book instead. :)

Joop and Tini once more were gracious enough to come pick me up from the airport and offer me a very nice dinner, before subsequently dropping me off at the YHA. Being the only one in the dorm room that night, I slept very well, although distractions in the form of a big basement sale at Real Groovy (the spoils: six CDs), the usual internet cafe, and some after-midnight grocery shopping (yay for 24-hour supermarkets!) meant that said sleep didn't start until quite late at night.
The following day started with doing laundry and getting a haircut. Yes, truly. I was back in New Zealand for two and a half weeks, and this was how I started off my first full day there. A bus deposited me in Botany Town Center, where I'd worked during my time in Auckland the year before, to do some more preparatory grocery shopping. Nice to surprise old colleagues: Aren't you supposed to be in another country?

Quickly bussing back, I got to hang out with Shadar and Leanna again. Always good that. After the customary time spent browsing the books at the local Borders, we had dinner at the bottom of the Skytower, and wandered over to the Lantern Festival happening that weekend. The many shiny lights that people wore up on their heads quickly pointed us to the horrendous conclusion that aliens were mating inside people's brains. It was the only logical explanation for why some lanterns were lit up, and others weren't. And once we'd seen the devil sheep, our worst fears were confirmed.
Yes, good to hang out with them again. :)


For those who didn't know: I truly have the most awesome of friends. Not just one, but two of them came flying over to my part of the world with at least the partial goal of hanging out with me, and both gave me the excuse to return to New Zealand. I do not think it can get more awesome than that. :)
And so now the day had arrived when the first one of these friends would arrive. Smarch's very own redNathalie, fidgeting Mantis extraordinaire. Many moons ago, I'd written to her in one of my many longwinded emails that as flying between Australia and New Zealand was as cheap as it is, I was thinking of escaping part of the worst of the Aussie heat by returning to New Zealand for a short time during the summer. My photographs and tripreports from this most marvelous of countries had already weakened her defenses, and so now the injustice of me going there for the second time in such a short period, while she herself had never been there, grew too much for her. As these things go, an absolutely crazy idea, that really, was quite insane to even think about, grew, and before we knew it, it had been decided I would play tourguide and we'd go and visit the best bits of New Zealand, to end up, as all things must, at Lake Tekapo. Ah yes, my insidious master plan for getting all the world to come to this most gorgeous place and make them my mindless slaves through sheer beauty overload was proceeding as planned. ^_^

A few short words, meanwhile, for those of you who don't know redNathalie. For the last few years she's been one of my best friends, despite knowing her only by her emails and smarch posts for most of that time (though of course, one can learn a lot from such). I met up with her shortly in Chicago back at the start of my current trip, and learned that her real life self was quite close to her online self, and that the friendship existed in real life as well. (Something which is definitely not always a given; I know both people who I like way more irl than online, and vice versa.) More than any other person I know, myself included, redNathalie is someone who can appreciate anything, see beauty everywhere. She is open to whatever life has to offer, and vicariously enjoys those things that life offers others. She's also a silly Mac user, and claims that she's no geek, but hey, nobody is perfect... :P
*g* These things I knew before travelling together with her for two weeks. Perhaps the most surprising new thing I discovered about her, which I hadn't noticed in Chicago, is that she has the same kind of slightly over the top absurdist humor that I have. I know it's something I often (partially) suppress, as not everyone appreciates it (for one, it's quite often annoyed my father), but thinking back, it was definitely there.
Of course, in a country like New Zealand, with a sheep joke hiding on every other hill... ^_^

So, on this, the twentysixth of February, I woke up at some insanely early hour to go and take a bus to the airport, and meet her there. The things we won't do for friends... After bussing back to the YHA and properly waking up with tea and Almond Fingers (for the dutchies: "Kano's" - perhaps the best thing about New Zealand: the ready supply of Dutch cookies), we wandered down Queen Street. Arriving at the Princes Wharf, we started out on the Coast to Coast Walkway. This walking route snakes its way from the Waitemata Harbour to the Manukau Harbour, and thus from the east coast of New Zealand to the west coast of New Zealand. Although I'd walked parts of it during my months in New Zealand, this was the first time I'd get to walk it completely. Finally, 15 months of carrying the map of this walk along with me was proving to have been worthwhile. And so, after barely two blocks of the walk, I looked at the map and said, nah, let's head this way instead, there are much more interesting sights here. We read the poems on the streets (a new addition to Auckland, and one I highly approve off - I wonder if they're still there), and wandered over High Street and through Albert Park, to then once more join the real route. Through the university grounds, on to the Auckland Domain, and then once more deviating from the route, for it completely bypassed Parnell, lunch time was here, and I happened to know this little chocolate shop (the Chocolate Boutique) in Parnell, and redNathalie, being the Dessert Goddess, would have to inspect this place most meticulously. While I happily munched on some cheesecake, she did this thing, and found all in order, and so we once more climbed up to the museum (not easy, with our stomachs that much heavier, let me tell you!) and stuck fairly close to the ordained route from there on.

The climb up to Mt. Eden is always good, for the top seems to perpetually lie just beyond the next rise, and you never know how much further you still really have to go - unless of course you're accompanied by an accomplished tourguide who knows these things and can gleefully inform you that the worst is yet to come. Yes, I am quite sure red appreciated my expertise in this matter. ^_^ But at last we reached the actual top, and were able to look into the volcano and behold the pretty views over Auckland.
The road went ever on and on, down from one volcano and up to the next, this time being One Tree Hill. We'd obviously not eaten enough chocolate for lunch, as I was growing quite hungry by this time. Luckily I knew there was a restaurant near the bottom of One Tree Hill.
Sadly, the restaurant was closed.
Instead we rested on the grass, hiding from the clouds that had been following us all day in the shade of some trees (and behold, the clouds disappeared!) - and I became one with the earth, and drew sustenance from this. Thus refreshed, we veritably floated up the hill (which really wasn't all that high at all), and were there treated to stunning 360 degree views. And, after a few dozen tries, I was even able to take a picture of the spire without the lady in the eye-stabbingly orange t-shirt ruining the composition.

It was quite obvious that Auckland had been suffering a drought, as the grass wasn't nearly as green as it should've been, but even yellow grass in New Zealand is greener than it is at home:

After One Tree Hill, the Coast to Coast Walkway took us fairly swiftly to the end of the route, from where we hopped onto a bus and zoomed past an entire day's walking in just half an hour.
A nice dinner later (out of necessity - there is only so much pasta from package you can stand, even as a backpacker - I have learned to cook a few simple meals), we went to check up on the conquest of mankind's brains by the aliens living inside the lanterns in Albert Park, only to find that they had been very successful, as nearly all lanterns were lit, and the most insidious kind of victory dance on stilts was being performed to further torture the mindless audience. (To make matters worse, a small retaliatory attack was taking place in the form of karaoke Britney Spears, proving once and for all that the ends do not justify the means.)
We wandered on shortly to the prettily lit-up Skytower, to take pictures of this, and then retreated to the hostel for a last cup of tea, ending the first of many long and rewarding days in New Zealand.


The next day started with more time spent in Real Groovy's basement, as wandering down Queen Street the day before, I'd made the mistake of mentioning the sale there to red. There's just too much good kiwi music. 's not fair!
After we had fled this place, and had poured some coffee into redNathalie, we hopped on to a ferry to Devonport. Pretty views all around from North Head, as well as a secret underground base in the heart of this volcano. (Of course! What self-respecting volcano does not have this?)
The village of Devonport itself was eeeevul, particularly in its bookstores, as I found both a hardcover of David Zindell's Neverness (with the awesome Mick Van Houten cover, not the silly Bantam one), and a first edition trade paperback of Steven Erikson's Deadhouse Gates, both in pretty decent shape! And then I'm not even mentioning the Danish icecream.

Back in Auckland proper, we went up the Skytower (another first for me; despite all the months I'd been in Auckland, I'd never been to Devonport, nor up the Skytower - I guess it's always good to keep some things behind to do when you return) to watch a mostly unimpressive (but still very good) sunset, and see thousands of shiny lights come on all over the city.

Dinner at the bottom of the skytower was completed with a most delicious cheesecake (sometimes it's good to travel together with the dessert goddess) ^_^, after which we went to see the Lantern Festival come to an end, a pretty nearly full moon shining down over it all.


The following day we woke up an atrociously early hour early, for our rental car pickup didn't happen until 10:00, where we'd expected it at 09:00. Despite this case of communication gone wrong (they'd reached the hostel to let us know, but the hostel hadn't reached us), I have been so pleased with the service of this rental car company (I used them again a month and a half later when travelling together with Arnoud) that I will now take the unusual step of not only recommending them, but sharing some of my pagerank: Ezi-Rent Car Hire - highly recommended if you need some cheap car rental in New Zealand. (The cars are on the old side, and have a few dents and scratched everywhere, but this means that they barely even glance at the car when you return it, and the general service and them doing pickups and dropoffs is quite excellent.)

Anyway, after we'd finally gotten the car, and done more grocery shopping, we zoomed off down south, me only triggering the window-wipers instead of indicating direction a scant few times. It was scary how much of the places alongside the road I remembered, just from having driven past them once or twice a year or more earlier. Reaching Matamata, we discovered we were just in time for the 14:30 Hobbiton tour, and so zoomed off to that. I distinctly remember thinking that - despite the drought - Hobbiton was still quite green, but I just compared my pictures with those from January 2004, and youch, that's just no comparison. It was sooo much greener back then.
Still, the essence of Hobbiton's rolling green hills remained present, and although the Hobbit holes had obviously suffered under another year of wear and tear (they weren't meant to survive for more than half a year after all), as the one and only remaining LotR movie set this was still a destination that was more than worth a visit. I quite liked the added touch of a field of wildflowers planted nearby. New Line (which still owns the movie set, despite it being built on privately owned land) won't allow recreating any part of the movie set as it was, but these bright flowers definitely added to the Hobbiton atmosphere, even if they weren't in the movie.

After Hobbiton, we sadly had to decide that it was too late in the day to still head to Te Awamutu (the birthplace of the Finn Brothers), and so turned toward Ohakune, our final destination for the day, instead. On the way there, we drove through Pureroa Forest Park (we think, going by the map), right as its rolling green hills and massive boulders were lit up by the late afternoon light and turned this most absolutely awesome gorgeous golden color, which absolutely demanded an immediate roadside stop to properly marvel at the stunning beauty of it all. I do not think I have ever experienced a more perfect moment.

It was 21:00 by the time we finally arrived at Ohakune. We'd originally planned to attempt the Tongariro Crossing the next day, but the day had been so full and exhausting that being awake and ready for the 07:30 shuttle to the start of the track simply didn't happen.
Instead we had a leisurely morning, and drove to Whakapapa early in the afternoon, to walk the Taranaki Falls track, which I remembered my mother being enthusiastic about (she'd walked this last year while me and my father did the Tongariro Crossing), and which was recommended to us over the Silica Rapids by an American couple we met at the carpark there.
Great views to Mt. Ruapehu from various points on the track (as well as a few of Mt. Ngauruhoe), and the waterfall itself wasn't half bad either. (Don't try to figure out from the last picture where I was standing to take the next to last one. It wasn't that close to the edge. Seriously. ;) (And the proof is this: I am still alive to type this.)) ^_^

The following day was our last full day on the North Island already, and so we drove off to Wellington. On the way there, however, was a stop at Palmerston North to have a secret Mantidinae Conclave with Damon. He unfortunately had to deal with a rescheduled class, and so had to make do with showing us around the campus grounds for the first hour, and leaving us to the fun task of rearranging the luggage in our tiny car to make space for him to fit in for a ride into town during the second hour, but after that we got to have lunch (with cheesecake!) near the Square (always the highlight of any visit to Palmy), and to admire his book shelves and just have a generally good time hanging out at his place.
Dropping him off back at work a few hours later, we made our way to Wellington, where we had a most excellent dinner at Theo's (still the best Greek restaurant on this hemisphere that I'm aware of). The following morning we dropped off the car, and hopped onto the ferry to the South Island. But that's an entirely new batch of unedited pictures, and as such a tale that will have to wait a while yet before it'll be told.

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Mon 20 Jun 2005, 08:22 GMT

setRequestHeader(), Opera 8.01 and ColdFusion

Another one for google, primarily of interest for all ColdFusion developers who care about Opera and use XMLHttpRequest (buzzword: AJAX). Uhm, that would be all one of me, probably.

Opera 8.00 implemented XMLHttpRequest incompletely. It didn't have the setRequestHeader() function, so although you could do a POST operation, you couldn't give it the right Content-Type to have it recognized. No worries, you'd test for the presence of setRequestHeader, and if it wasn't present, use GET instead. It has a limitation of 10,000 characters (bytes, actually, I assume), but that's good enough for most uses.

code:if (typeof(req.setRequestHeader) == "function") { req.open("POST", url, true); req.setRequestHeader("Content-Type", "application/x-www-form-urlencoded; Charset=utf-8"); req.send(data); } else { req.open("GET", url+"?"+data, true); req.send(null); }

Enter Opera 8.01, released two days ago. The changelog claims Improvements to XMLHttpRequest support, added support for XMLHttpRequest.setRequestHeader. Joy!
Except not quite. Rather than sending the Content-Type header as set by the setRequestHeader function, Opera 8.01 sends this:
Content-Type: application/x-www-form-urlencoded; Charset=utf-8,text/xml; charset=utf-8

ASP laps it up as if nothing is wrong - I can happily loop through Request.Form and get all the data. I think that's pretty much right, too. I didn't look in depth, but a cursory reading of RFC 2616 (the HTTP 1.1 specification) makes me think that this should be read as mediatype: Content-Type: application/x-www-form-urlencoded with parameters Charset=utf-8,text/xml and charset=utf-8. (Although I didn't see a definition of "token" anywhere, so it's still possible that a comma should be treated special.)
PHP plays nice as well, and the $_POST array works just like always.

And then there's ColdFusion (MX 7, in my case). Which stubbornly refuses to acknowledge the existence of any POSTed data, no matter how much I try to loop through form.fieldnames. Worse, it throws an nice server error. Now, depending on my reading of RFC 2616, that's a bug in ColdFusion... but before that it was a bug in Opera 8.01, which really shouldn't have appended that extra content-type.

I've tried reporting the bug to Macromedia, but all I got was a lousy Delivery Status Notification (Failure) email back. Luckily the Opera team was a bit more responsive, and one of their developers has confirmed my bug report. I'm crossing my fingers that it'll be fixed in 8.02 and that we can just accept Opera 8.01 being a lone version which doesn't do autosave - but if this isn't the case, and just in case I'm not the only ColdFusion developer finding himself in this position - the workaround would be to go parse toString(GetHttpRequestData().content) into name/value pairs and work from there.

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