(2003)
For those of you who have not heard the situation was basically as follows:
At approximately 12.30pm Club members were enjoying relaxed celebrations at the Club
when a”scantily” clad, tall thin person was observed entering the surf.
About 1.00pm Mike Schrader, Errol Hunter and others became concerned as the
individual had swum slowly some 400m offshore in the middle of the bay.
Dave Loveridge and Michael Hamilton (recently qualified 16yr old Lifeguards) went
out on Malibu boards to the Patient who at this time was clinging to a marker buoy. A small
motorboat appeared and and met Dave at the buoy .with the patient being taken aboard the
boat in a bad way.
Dave couldn’t find a pulse and performed CPR and when the patient semi recovered
was brought inshore aboard the boat along with Dave and his board.
With a moderate surf running the decision was made to transfer the patient to the
Malibu board for the last 50m to shore. Michael Hamilton and Matthew Hunter assisted
Dave in returning the patient to shore.
Emergency services were contacted and the patient stretchered to the First Aid Room.
Bach owners Sandra Anderton and Murray Thomas came to the assistance with blankets and
Doctor Kim Palsey provided much needed medical care.
The patient who wanted to swim with the dolphins, slowly recovered from
hypothermia and confusion thanks to efforts of Linda Hamilton, Anna Loveridge, Matthew
Hunter and others.
The semi recovered patient was transferred to the ambulance, then lost it. Again Dave
stepped in to assist Ambulance officers to restrain and calm the patient. Police assistance was
requested to transport the patient to hospital for treatment and subsequent transfer to
Hillmorten Hospital.
CONGRATULATIONS to Dave Loveridge, Michael Hamilton and all those responsible for
the good outcome to the result of the rescue. David and Michael have only recently qualified
as lifeguards and their skill and maturity under a lot of pressure was incredible. We are very
proud of you.

and as the rescuee, i have to say, thanks very much too!

partial ref from online

“Hokitika’s self-styled high priestess is out of harmony with the police.

Flow Ir In, previously known as Sunshine, claims she drove her “magic taxi” to the Hokitika police station to report a businessman for allegedly having child pornography on his computer.

Finding the station closed, she went looking for the nearest patrol car to report her news, but picked on the wrong car.

The Highway Patrol constable was more interested in the fact she was not wearing a seatbelt, giving her a $150 ticket instead of the sympathetic ear she had expected.

The high priestess was offended. Her magic taxi (a car) had been busy in the Golden Bay and Hokitika areas relocating stranded spirits from this …
”
anyone hgave the original?

The phenomenom whereby you wake up in the morning with a girl who had seemed quite pretty the previous night under the influence of alcohol but now she seems ugly. The idea is that the “magic taxi” came to take her away. Especially used in Southern England.
“..Then I woke up and I was like, oh dear, magic taxi…”

CASORIA CONTEMPORARY ART MUSEUM

has played the alien trilogy. keep on travelling, beautiful tunes!

well, that was a fluff.
i was trying to set up a span desktop on a nvidia geforce 5200 fx
two identical viewsonic va2226w lcd panels (not my kit, unfortunately).
we wanted to run at native resolution (1680×1050) on each.

man, nowt but touble., updatred the drivers, tried the omegas (they crashed the system) but no luck. 1680×1050 and 1600×1200 was all i could get (ie one of them out)

then i had a moment of inspiration. yep. one was on analogue, the other on digital (d-sub vs dvi)

and it was the dvi that couldn’t cope.

changing them both to analogue using a dvi to dsub converter solved the problem, now they are both running at native.

i’ve blogged this so some other poor person desperately trying to fix thier similarily failing dual headed 1680×1050 / 3360×1050 lcd geforce nightmare gets saved a few hours.

i’m trying to implement prologic II encoding, so i can use it as a vst plugin in ableton.

what i’d liek to be able to do is create a nicely encoded stereo output that i can either pipe straight to a prologic decoder, or export to file, and make prologic encoded music. one day i aim to own a 5.1 dance rig, so i want to get this right, so fellow producers can use the tech.

well. i’m using reaktor 5, since its got some handy core cell stuff, like fft available.

i spent ages messing around, working out the phase from the real and imaginary components, deriving the magnitude, changing the phase, calculating the new sign, sending it back through the ffts and it was nothing but trouble. the arctan wasn’t precise, neither were the sin or cosines and it made horrible rackets. i tried all sorts of flow control methods to check for zeros but i kept getting dc. ouch.

then i got out a pencil and paper. what does +90 degrees look like? a few triangles later and i spotted the obvious.

in k-space, +90 degrees is equivalent to setting r=-i, and i=r
-90 is r=i and i=-r
that’s done simultaneously, not sequentially.

so, toss the trig out the window and do a few multiplications by 1 or -1 (to keep the calculation path length the same, just in case) and voila! the signal shoots back to the rear channel. as will any signal when you invert its left and right.

there is a formula i got from several sources on the net:

Dolby Pro Logic II matrix encoding (2:5)

Encoding matrix Left Right Center Rear Left Rear Right
Left Total 1 0 sqrt(1/2) j sqrt(2/3) j sqrt(1/3)
Right Total 0 1 sqrt(1/2) k sqrt(1/3) k sqrt(2/3)
j = + 90 degrees phase-shift, k = -90 degrees phase-shift

so i implemented it.

one problem, the rear channel separation isn’t perfect. i get audible signal from both, and i can’t localise in one speaker. now is this a fault with my method, or is this a feature of prologic?

i’m not sure how dolby does its actual phase shift, but looking at the manufacturers of the chips they use, i bet they are using fft. its easy in digital.

i took my handy zoom h4n to the regional brass band competition this year. a hard environment. we’ve subtle horns, blasting baritones and deep basses.

and the air con from hell. the hall is modern, but when the air con switches on, it sounds like a freight train is passing by outside. literally, the floor rumbles, plus an annoying higher pitched hum. OUCH.

so the recordings up on line at http://tiny.cc/2QucJ have been heavily modded, with noise reduction courtesy of adobe audition.

i tried recording straight to mp3, which was GREAT, but i felt i needed more detail to deal with the aircon, so i switched to 24 bit 44.1kHZ. first i tried with mic level set to 1. as it turns out, far far too low, but the 24 bits saved me, as can be checked out in the early “solos with piano”
i then tried using the auto level on its own, which is how all the premiere solos were recorded (at a distance of about 7 meters).
for the “light” program i turned on the limiter, set at concert level, with the auto level.

it was amusing to watch the level keep dropping during the recording, but a bit of a pain. as i wasn’t there to actually control levels or even do a sound check, i’m more than happy with the results. if i’d used the pcm-d50, unless audition did some magic with clip restoration (which it has done before), the sony would have missed the mark, as the awesome level control it has wouldn’t have coped. as it was, it ended up back down at one with a full band 4 meters away.

my only gripe was the battery usage. i had to change batteries twice. NOT GOOD. zoom – please make an external battery pack, pretty please?

there is a submission request for artworks for ‘transmediale’ (sounds like me). the bio came out like this:
imagine you were an alien, young, made purely of energy. you had a chance to come to earth. a host offered you their body – would you take it?
flow did; and, after a brief period of adjustment, now brings to the world its unique blend of ultra-complex meta-programming, designed to subtly shift its audience’s belief systems and allow the gaian systems upgrade to proceed as requested.
listen, watch, relax and surrender.

i appear to be becomming more assertive.

i grow this on the west coast of the south island, nz.
we get hot summers, cold winters and a lot of rain.
i have an outdoor ‘mother plant’ and raise a steady stream of indoor cuttings.

my experiences differ from the other guides. here’s what i did:

for the outdoor momma, i took my purchased cutting, and grew it indoors for a few months, kept moist with a tent, watered infrequently, kept out of direct sun.

when it got going, i split it into more cuttings, and did the same. eventually i had 4 plants, going strong, but a lot of fuss.

i planted one outside, in the summer. i gave it a diffusing shade of white plastic, with a jury-rigged ‘greenhouse’ of an old window, plastic front and top, and an open easterly side. the plant got morning sun, but was protected from midday and afternoon rays by a tree. i filled a whole lot of milk bottles with water and placed them on the ground around it, to protect it from the winter frosts.

it rewarded me by bushing out, growing about 6 foot tall, after 3 months, the plastic disintegrated in the UV, and the plant made beautiful purple flowers, and grew 3 inch, sturdy leaves, quite pale. i trimmed it back for winter and it survived, and flourished in a hardy way again. and we had a terrible year. out of season frosts, little sun, tons of rain. so its tough.

the indoor ones get left in kitty litter trays of water, constantly wet. they LOVE it. the one that gets full morning sun goes well, as do the ones in strong diffuse light. the ones in low diffuse light are a bit weedy, but otherwise fine.

cutting i grow in milk bottles with water in then, just stick the cut stem in, until it grows a beard of roots, then pop it into potting mix, water it well, and then keep watering it every few days.

since i got busy, i usually only water them once a week, and a lot. at least an inch of water for them to stand in. they go great. only problem is whitefly and aphids, but i remove them mechanically.

i do remove leaves, if they look past it (that’s the whole point, after all)

oh, and they get a lot of respectful hard love.

so there you go. salvia? easy….

my brother bought me one of these, and filled it with music. a nice present, but usb is no place for music.

so armed with a thin, flat blade, i tried to open it.
it was easy:
take off the rubber end covers, and you are left with an aluminium case with black plastic ends. insert the blade into the short side , and lift – they are only held at the ends – and the black plastic comes out. inside is the drive plus electronics. pushing from the non-electronic end, the whole lot slides out, leaving you with a SATA drive, with standard sata connections, and a USB to sata converter. handy.
the drive now lives inside my pc, on a sata channel. nice.