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.