Mushrooms

Today's post is about my dinner - mushroom caps in red wine sauce. You'll also get to see my kitchen.

Garlic, onions, chives, and a spot of ginger - sauteed.

Our Kitchen. Very spacious.

A little red wine as a base for the sauce.

The other side of our kitchen.

Cook them for 20ish mins.

Eternal Life

I was reading a book the other day that raised an interesting question. The story is about Death, and in the story Death only comes to people who don't want to live. One man decides he doesn't want to die, so he goes on living forever. Hundreds of years pass and the man watches his friends and family grow old and die. His fortunes rise and fall, and Death visits him at his highest and lowest moments of life always asking if he is yet ready to die.

It made me think. Do people want to die? If given the opportunity, would you choose to live forever?

Of the few people I've asked, all have said no.

Update

I haven't been traveling at all because I've been too busy.

I got a job working as an American Express sales rep. I'm one of those annoying people you see in the mall shouting at you to learn about special rewards and promotions. It's been an experience. I've met some really interesting people though. My co-workers are all Asian, and they've been teaching me Hindi, Chinese, and Malay. I'm working on finding another job, but for the time being it's nice to be working. I do like having money coming in.

As I said earlier, we moved into a basement flat in Remeura. It's NZD$250/week for the place including water. I haven't uploaded pictures or anything because, until 3 days ago, we had no internet. I was leeching off of one of our neighbors. Unfortunately, NZ ISPs charge per gigabyte of usage, so I didn't want to leech too much.

We have our own now, but it is abonimable. I'm getting about 300kbps (compared to your typical cable internet of around 6000kbps). My torrents are taking days and weeks to download. I know it's possible to get decent speeds here, my generous neighbor is getting about 3000kbps, so I got in touch with the ISP (tech support here is only available during business hours!) and they are "sending someone out sometime."I'll upload pics when I'm feeling less lazy.

The Brain Mouse.
I'm really excited about a new gadget I discovered today - the OCZ Neural Impulse Actuator. Yes, it's as cool as it sounds. It's a brain computer interface device that uses biopotentials from your forehead to interface with your computer. It's basically a combination electro-encephalogram, electro-myogram, and electro-oculogram. The NIA detects the electrical activity in your brain, upper facial muscles, and eye muscles and matches the "movement" with a preset command on your computer. It reads your mind and puts it on your computer (sort of).

It can't read direct thoughts like "go up" or "shoot", it only measures different levels and locations of electrical activity. So, you couldn't shoot a gun in Half-life by thinking about shooting a gun, but you could by blinking or twitching your eyebrows. Furthermore, the NIA can detect Alpha and Beta brain waves, so hypothetically, you could scroll down by relaxing.

This thing is pretty much my dream come true, one step closer to plugging my brain into a computer, Matrix-style. I'm getting one asap. Unfortunately, it's not available in NZ for some reason, so I'm going to have to smuggle it in.

Here are some links (in order of interestingness):
Hot Hardware's Review
OCZ nia Official Site
AnandTech (source of hokey picture)
Wikipedia

Another, similar device is coming to market around Christmas called the Emotiv Epoc.

Finally, here is a link to the full gallery of images from my previous trip to Rotorua and Taupo. Let it never be said that I am not generous.

Cheers.

Chess by Email

From the site:

Red Hot Pawn supports turn-based online chess with thousands of people from all over the globe. You choose who and when you play. Games don't have to be finished in one sitting - your opponent doesn't even have to be online as you make your moves. You can also play multiple simultaneous games.


I'm on as nilvyn. Join up and challenge me.

The Rock

On the way back to Auckland we came across this bluff. It's the second time we've passed it; there is nothing like it around. The rock juts out of the landscape like some sort of ancient monument. The whole scene is quite impressive.


It's bordered by a river and surrounded by a forest.
We followed a really lovely track through the woods that we found along side the river, opposite the bluff.


I would love to have had a kayak...

Wairakei-Tauhara Power Plants

Nearby Lake Taupo is a gigantic geothermal power plant. It supplies 5% of NZ's total power requirements (which is really not very much when you think about it), and is the second oldest geothermal plant in the world. It looked like something out of a sci-fi movie.

The Wairakei-Tauhara geothermal system includes the Wairakei geothermal field located 8 km north of Taupo and the Tauhara field to the southeast, with the boundary between the interconnected fields placed at the Waikato River. The Wairakei field is exploited by the Wairakei,Poihipi Road, and Wairakei Binary power stations.

The Wairakei station was first commissioned in 1958 and is now owned by Contact Energy. The field has been a consistent and reliable producer, with annual generation averaging 1250 GWh equivalent to a load factor of 93%. Present output is 140 MWe. At least 150 wells have been drilled in the field. The maximum temperature measured at Wairakei is 271 °C, but wells generally produce fluid at temperatures between 209 and 261°C. About 5300 tonnes of fluid per hour is currently taken from the reservoir for this station. Of this fluid, about 1500 tonnes per hour is steam and 3800 tonnes per hour is water at a temperature of about 130°C after separation in surface equipment. Some of the steam is taken directly from shallow dry steam production wells (up to 500 m depth) and piped to the turbines. -NZ Geothermal Association

A New Source of Energy

We also saw a chicken.

Finally found a place

We finally found a place to live. It's in Remuera. Details to follow...

J'en Ai Marre! - Alizée Jacotey

The One.

Lake Tuapo

On the way back from Mt. Ruapeho we dropped by Lake Tuapo. It has this nifty waterfall/rapids that leads to the lake. Fortunately, the place is well provided for - it has lovely bathrooms for $2/visit... This country is unbelievable sometimes.

Fortunately, the tree was free...

It also has a field of thermal mud and steam vents called "Craters of the Moon", we went there, but they wanted like $8/person for a 20 min hike, so we left. We went to the glass honeybee hive. But the hive was closed. So we went to the geothermal powerstation...

Tramping Mt. Ruapeho

The day before we went skiing, Taylor and I took a trek on the lower part of the mountain. About half the journey was on a nice clear, paved trail. But eventually the trail degraded into a series of orange stakes, and the "trail" was covered in snow up to our thighs.

It was absolutely gorgeous, albeit cold, wet and miserable as well.

There are too many pictures to post here so follow this Link to the Album.

This is the mountain, adjacent to Mt. Ruapeho, that served as the model for Mt. Doom.
The beginning of the trail.

Hail Taylor! King of the Rock!

The top of the waterfall.

The Waterfall.

Behind the falls.

Stuck in the snow.

The end of the trail.

Skiing Mt. Ruapeho

Ski Masks - not just for bank robbers anymore.

Finally! After ten years of waiting, I got to go skiing again - and on the slopes of Mt. Doom no less. The weather has been miserable for a month, so the entire North Island came out to ski this weekend. The slopes were packed. But, I had a great time nonetheless. It took me a few rough falls to get my skillz back. But by the end of the day I would've been willing to try a black diamond, had I spent the money for an upper mountain lift ticket...

For the snowboarder punks...

Very, very crowded.

This is the slope I skied the most.

River Hike

While driving around the outskirts of Rotorua, we found a trail along the river that leads to the lake. Along the river we came across a cave, a set of really powerful rapids, and an old, rusted hydroelectric powerstation.

Makes you want to get an inflatable raft, no?


The path down the cliff to the cave.

The cave. In wartime, the local Maori tribe used to lower their families by ropes to this cave to hide them.

The remains of the power plant and a rusted turbine. This plant was built alongside the river, rather than as a dam across the river. The water shot along the raceway and powered several turbines.

Some shots along the trail, and a few from quite a ways off the trail: