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Monday, July 30, 2012

Talking through your glasses...

Glasses provide a live language translation...
Here’s the scene: you’re traveling, and you walk into a little restaurant and the menu is entirely in a language you don’t understand, without pictures. You’ve got a couple of choices. You can leave, and try to find a place with English translations. You can try to hack your way through a conversation with the waiter, who also doesn’t speak your language. Or, you can point randomly at the menu and live with the consequences.
Well, in the future there will be another, better, answer. Live, realtime translation built into your glasses. Enter: Project Glass. British hacker and DIYer Will Powell has built a pair of glasses that can (albeit roughly) project a translation of your conversation onto your glasses. Here’s what it looks like:
http://www.smartplanet.com/blog/science-scope/glasses-provide-live-language-translation/13184?tag=nl.e662
http://huttriver.blog.co.uk

A new CBD plan for Christchurch...

Rebuilding a new Christchurch CBD after the devastation from earthquakes since 2010...

http://www.3news.co.nz/CGI-video-of-new-Christchurch-CBD-VIDEO/tabid/309/articleID/263215/Default.aspx

Wednesday, July 25, 2012

Somebody has hacked into my Hotmail email account...



Somebody has hacked into my Hotmail email account...

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:**::roll:Somebody has hacked into my Hotmail email account and could be using it to send spam to my contacts, and to others. It was done briefly a few weeks ago, but was soon rectified.
This is my main online email account, but I don't use it for personal communications - I use my Xtra.co.nz account for that.
It is causing me inconvenience more than anything - I can't use the account and I presume incoming emails could also be interfered with.
I wondered at the motive initially, but have realised since that it could be being used to send spam. Now this could be the crux of my problems with blog.co.uk - my password. I will contact Admin and change my email, Probably change it to Gmail.
I can continue using this site as long as its through Google Chrome.

Monday, July 23, 2012

Share this story and the old man's poem...



Last post for the night peeps, enjoy this wonderful gift. Everybody has a story worth knowing... nighty, night, dream big & sleep tight

When an old man died in the geriatric ward of a nursing home in an Australian country town, it was believed that he had nothing left of any value.

Later, when the nurses were going through his meagre possessions, They found this poem. Its quality and content so impressed the staff that copies were made and distributed to every nurse in the hospital.

One nurse took her copy to Melbourne. The old man's sole bequest to posterity has since appeared in the Christmas editions of magazines around the country and appearing in mags for Mental Health. A slide presentation has also been made based on his simple, but eloquent, poem.

And this old man, with nothing left to give to the world, is now the author of this 'anonymous' poem winging across the Internet.

Cranky Old Man

What do you see nurses? . . .. . .What do you see?
What are you thinking .. . when you're looking at me?
A cranky old man, . . . . . .not very wise,
Uncertain of habit .. . . . . . . .. with faraway eyes?
Who dribbles his food .. . ... . . and makes no reply.
When you say in a loud voice . .'I do wish you'd try!'
Who seems not to notice . . .the things that you do.
And forever is losing . . . . . .. . . A sock or shoe?
Who, resisting or not . . . ... lets you do as you will,
With bathing and feeding . . . .The long day to fill?
Is that what you're thinking?. .Is that what you see?
Then open your eyes, nurse .you're not looking at me.
I'll tell you who I am . . . . .. As I sit here so still,
As I do at your bidding, .. . . . as I eat at your will.
I'm a small child of Ten . .with a father and mother,
Brothers and sisters .. . . .. . who love one another
A young boy of Sixteen . . . .. with wings on his feet
Dreaming that soon now . . .. . . a lover he'll meet.
A groom soon at Twenty . . . ..my heart gives a leap.
Remembering, the vows .. .. .that I promised to keep.
At Twenty-Five, now . . . . .I have young of my own.
Who need me to guide . . . And a secure happy home.
A man of Thirty . .. . . . . My young now grown fast,
Bound to each other . . .. With ties that should last.
At Forty, my young sons .. .have grown and are gone,
But my woman is beside me . . to see I don't mourn.
At Fifty, once more, .. ...Babies play 'round my knee,
Again, we know children . . . . My loved one and me.
Dark days are upon me . . . . My wife is now dead.
I look at the future ... . . . . I shudder with dread.
For my young are all rearing .. . . young of their own.
And I think of the years . . . And the love that I've known.
I'm now an old man . . . . . . .. and nature is cruel.
It's jest to make old age . . . . . . . look like a fool.
The body, it crumbles .. .. . grace and vigour, depart.
There is now a stone . . . where I once had a heart.
But inside this old carcass . A young man still dwells,
And now and again . . . . . my battered heart swells
I remember the joys . . . . .. . I remember the pain.
And I'm loving and living . . . . . . . life over again.
I think of the years, all too few . . .. gone too fast.
And accept the stark fact . . . that nothing can last.
So open your eyes, people .. . . . .. . . open and see.
Not a cranky old man .
Look closer . . . . see .. .. . .. .... . ME!!

Remember this poem when you next meet an older person who you might brush aside without looking at the young soul within. We will all, one day, be there, too!

PLEASE SHARE THIS POEM (originally by Phyllis McCormack; adapted by Dave Griffith)

The best and most beautiful things of this world can't be seen or touched. They must be felt by the heart!

:) kindest Boris





Sunday, July 22, 2012

Kiwi environment groups mounting last ditch effort to protect the marine environment...



Kiwi green groups mounting a last ditch effort to modify new legislation to protect the marine environment from mining exploration

Green groups are reportedly mounting a last ditch effort to modify new legislation governing New Zealand's vast exclusive economic zone to protect the marine environment from carte blanche offshore oil, gas and mining exploration. The present John Key-led National Government is totally obsessed with deep-sea  mining possibilities and appears to have lost focus on the bigger picture -  any environmental disasters could totally destroy New Zealand's marine environment. Neither New Zealand or the international community has the ability to mount a defence against such scenarios.

The Environmental Defence Society (EDS) along with Forest and Bird, WWF-New Zealand and the Ecological Society have issued an open letter outlining their collective concerns.

http://www.3news.co.nz/Green-groups-attempt-to-change-ocean-bill/tabid/1160/articleID/261898/Default.aspx 

Sunday, July 8, 2012

Around the world today there are many species threatened with extinction. Frogs, bats, sharks, parrots, tigers, owls, rhinos, and dolphins are struggling to survive on the fringes of a human world. It would be unfair to argue that any of these species is inherently more valuable than another. However being a New Zealander, and a freediver with a natural admiration of dolphins, I've been trying to make a difference for the Maui's and Hector's Dolphins, the world's smallest and most endangered dolphin species.
To be honest, if you were to choose a species to try and save then this has to be the easiest pick, for a variety of reasons:
1. Appealing nature
They are cutely sized, beautifully marked and intelligent creatures, and they are mammals like us. It's a species that we feel a natural affinity towards, and therefore naturally want to protect.

2.
We're 'green', right?
They live in a country that depends heavily on a reputation of being 'green' and eco-friendly. An extinction of such a species would do to that reputation and the tourism industry built on it what Moby Dick did to the Pequod.

3. We can afford it
New Zealand isn't a third-world country, and so protective policies should be easy to enforce (compare to African nations where poverty compels poachers to hunt species to their extinction).

4. Decades of research
There has been more peer-reviewed research on the Maui's and Hector's range, habits, lifespan and population decline than almost any other species of dolphin. This has been conducted over a period of 20 years, so there is no need to wait for further research or appraisal.

5. Easily fixable
There is only one major threat factor to their population: by-catch from net fishing. Unlike some of the pressures that threaten other species, this one is very easy to isolate and eliminate (compare to the Polar Bear whose salvation may depend on the reversal of global warming).

6. The Law says "We can!"
There is legislature in place within New Zealand's constitution that allows for immediate protection through the use of emergency powers afforded to the Minster of Conservation.

And yet, and yet … Despite all this, despite tens of thousands of petition signatures, individually written letters to the ministers and prime minister, despite the schoolchildrens' handwritten poems and carefully-coloured dolphin pictures, despite dozens of damning international press articles, all efforts and results for which I am sure the readers of this blog have played a large part… despite all this, Hector's and Maui's dolphins are no more protected than they were five months ago.

Why?
New Zealand's government is contemptuously playing a waiting game. They are waiting for the outcry over a spate of net-scarred dolphin carcasses that washed up on the beaches last summer to die down. They are waiting for the furor over the latest Maui's population estimate - lower than anyone possibly feared - to subside. They are an entropic government, waiting for entropy to have its way.

And meanwhile, while they waver and defer, while they shelve and consult, in the winter seas of New Zealand's west coast a population of now less than 55 animals, who represent the entirety of their species, swims every day in a territory that overlaps with the unscrupulous set nets and trawlers that have brought their number to the verge of annihilation.


I know I'm not alone in saying that I will not wait or be content until they are protected and their numbers begin to increase. In the second half of this year, several documentaries and features including one with CBS's 60 Minutes, the most viewed and respected television journalism program worldwide, will air, telling parts of my story and showing the world the dark side of NZ's shameful treatment of these dolphins. By exposing the truth and threatening the multi-billion dollar business of tourism and fisheries, perhaps we can finally convince the NZ lawmakers into making the right decision.

Tuesday, July 3, 2012

The 'Doggerland' of Europe....

 
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B)
uk2008Britain's own "Atlantis" has been located at the bottom of the North Sea - it was a huge undersea world finally swallowed by the sea 6500 years ago.
"Doggerland" was a huge stretch of land ranging from Scotland to Denmark. Prehistoric Britain was connected to mainland Europe. It was not an island like it is today. Great hairy mammoths and other large animals roamed freely there. It has been described as the real heartland of old Europe, populated by tens of thousands of human beings. But the effects of natural climate change saw a general warming that melted the iceflows and led to rising sea levels. It was slowly submerged by water over a period of time from 18000- 5500 BC. As the land was revealed by the melting ice it would have been utilised by those early Europeans tens of thousands of years ago.
In recent times a team of climatologists, archaeologists and geophysicists have mapped the underwater area using new data from oil and gas companies drilling in the North Sea. Their divers have revealed the full extent of that lost land once roamed by mammoths - the submerged "Doggerland" was once larger than many of the modern European countries. Old Britannia settled and named by the Romans has a history of tens of thousands of years earlier than the invading legions of Julius Caesar. It also dwarfs the legendary Atlantis in comparison.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2167731/Britains-Atlantis-North-sea--huge-undersea-kingdom-swamped-tsunami-5-500-years-ago.html

Kiwipete