Monday 28 July, 2003 at 7:22PM (Nereus)  ::  permalink  ::  comments (4)

I've been wondering why often I suffer from slight nausea and / or headaches (sometimes pretty bad ones) since I came to NYC - today I seem to have both. One theory is that the dramatic and rapid changes in air pressure here cause the headaches. I'm used to a more temperate climate (New Zealand) where the variation between highs and lows in air pressure and temperature (and seasons for that matter) are substantially less than that in New York, both in strength and speed of change. For short term periods I always seem to have been fine in any environment, but living here long term maybe not. Basically (going by this theory) I'm in an alien environment and my body has not fully acclimatized yet (if ever). This could well be true, but what about the nausea?

Well, it could be air pollution, although I'm frequently told NYC has comparatively little air pollution (comparative to other US cities that is, which is true - I've been to Los Angeles - now there's some serious air pollution), but I don't see many stars in the sky at night here, even on the clearest of nights, and there's only one reason for that (well, besides light pollution). There's also the question of bovine flatulence in NZ, but I won't go there. *cough*

Here's my latest theory though: preservatives and GE (genetically engineered) food. They're really into that crap here in a big way, particularly preservatives. NZ on the other hand is strongly against GE foods and avoids preservative type additives as much as possible. Am I slowly being poisoned? hmmm. One of the foods I like the most here is watermelon. Strange that it's also one of the few foods here that aren't loaded with preservatives.

People who have been eating these unnatural substances all their lives apparently don't have a problem (at least not yet) because that's the sort of punishment their bodies are used to, although I'm now wondering about the long term effects. I mean, genetically engineered food (or animals we eat like poultry that are fed GE grains and steroids etc) have not been around all that long. If I'm coming from a country that is relatively GE and preservative free (except for KFC chicken, which is another story altogether) and come to NYC and start feeling mildly nauseous after eating it all the time here, what does that say to you?

To me it says one thing: this stuff ain't as harmless as the general populace is led to believe. Sure, the effects may well be negligible, even over a whole lifetime, but what about a couple of generations down the track? It's useless saying "nah, it's fine, they don't let things like that out without thorough testing first." Well, (a) who are you trying to kid? and (b) my point is that it hasn't been around long enough for anybody to really know for sure the long term effects (if any) of eating genetically enhanced food and huge amounts of preservatives. I dunno ..sure as shit doesn't sound to good to me. I smell a conspiracy!

I had a discussion with IceQueen along the similar lines recently. I theorized that if you took a Nomad from the heart of the Sahara Desert and an Eskimo from the coldest igloo at the North Pole and swapped their environments, they'd both be farked within a few days because they were different in how their bodies operated due to their environment (acclimatization).

IceQueen quite rightly argued that the Nomad would be tall and have little body fat which helps him/her stay cooler in the desert (bigger surface area and less solid mass), whereas the eskimo would be shorter and have a layer of body fat to insulate him/herself from the cold, so therefore of course they'd be farked, but it was a question of body type rather than acclimatization.

I then proposed that if both had the exact same height to weight to body fat ratio, they'd still be farked because their bodies individually are used to a particular climate and naturally operate in differing ways as a direct result. Eventually they could get used to it with some help (acclimatization), but if they lived in the exact same circumstances as the other, they'd be farked.

Damn, I just lost my train of thought here because the phone rang, but believe me, I was getting to something so stunningly mind-bogglingly convincing that you probably would've been down on your knees repeating "I'm not worthy!" at the sheer brilliance and logic of what I was about to say.

I guess you'll just have to trust me on that.

Maybe it's because I haven't had a surf for so long. Maybe it's because there are NUKES here, whereas NZ is blissfully nuclear free. Maybe there's an alien probe inside me that's causing damage... or not.

Of course this entire entry could be a load of bollox and this nausea could just be the result of that over-buttered popcorn we ate last night while watching Lara Crofts latest Tomb Raider movie at the local theater.

junk mail and spam filters

      Thursday 24 July, 2003 at 6:22PM (Nereus)  ::  permalink  ::  comments (5)

Yup we all hate it - junk mail, also referred to as 'spam'. There's a few points worth noting before you go loose with your email spam filters though, the main thing is this: many spam filters don't work (at least not 100% as they should).

I've used and/or tested hotmail, lycos.com, mail.com (which I think lycos.com uses anyway) and a few others fairly extensively. Particularly with lycos and hotmail, I found in both cases their spam filters don't live up to what they claim, not by a long shot.

I discovered a disturbing problem with lycos back in April after having used their service for about a year, and wrote about it on this entry. In my case, even though the spam filter was set to 'low' (there was no 'off' option, believe it or not, just low, medium or high filtering), I found that their spam filter was diverting some of my incoming emails into the 'junk mail' folder that were definitely not junk mail. To add insult to injury, on the highest filtering setting, a significant percentage of spam was still getting through to my inbox anyway. What was even more frustrating was that their server automatically deleted mail in the junk mail folder after 5 days, so who knows how many emails from friends and from job applications had been diverted in there and subsequently deleted without me ever being aware of them?

Lycos also had an option so I could specify email addresses not to be filtered. I tried it. It didn't work, the emails sometimes went to the junk mail folder, sometimes not, filtering seemed pretty much arbitrary. With hotmail the same thing happened - emails from the same sender were not consistently filtered - some went to the junk mail folder, some to the inbox, and there appeared to be no logical reason as to why.

Here's some interesting info I found more recently though: it appears that some particular styles of writing and vocabulary are so similar to spam messages (according to the filter) that even a smart filtering program can't tell the difference. Some programs will look for keywords and filter based purely on that. Others work off an international database of known email spam addresses and filter on that. That database option in theory is a good idea, but there's a problem - the spam email addresses are suggested by users of the system. This means there may be a company who has been classed as spam, but you are applying for a job with them, or they are emailing you to let you know of an overdue account etc.. so what happens? The filter spits it into the junk mail folder and you never see it. The result is you don't get the job you applied for, or don't get the overdue account advice and end up paying additional fees etc.

Of course this can get much more personal. What about a friend or family member trying to contact you urgently while you're travelling or not reachable by phone? This could (and no doubt has) resulted in some very bad or embarrassing situations.

There's a number of people I've emailed (or replied to their emails) over the past months who have never replied. I can't help wondering - did my email get filtered to their junk mail folder, or are they just not interested in talking to me? Have I offended them in some way? Maybe they did reply, but the reply got junked as spam at my end. This just SUCKS.

There is only one apparent solution if you're using one of these free mail services, and I strongly suggest you take my advice on this - have a scan through your junk mail folder every couple of days. Look at the senders email address and the email subject (although spammers are getting more and more creative with their email subject headers now, so that may not be the best way to scan). You'll be surprised what ends up in that folder.

Also use an email name that friends or associates will recognise, this will make it less likely that they'll shoot your email to the trash folder thinking it's just more spam.

Last but not least, think twice of who you use for your email provider. Users of popular providers such as hotmail are well known to field at least 100 junk emails or more a day (in fact, one person I read about when researching this on the internet claimed to be receiving up to 1400 junk mails a day on hotmail!).

This entry was 'inspired' after reading another blogger's venting at their email woes, which reminded me of the problems I also experienced. I hope it is of some use to you. For further info and solutions, refer to the internet security section on this site.

sons of saddam nailed

      Wednesday 23 July, 2003 at 3:33AM (Nereus)  ::  permalink  ::  comments (6)

Apparently Saddam Hussein's sons Odai and Qusai were nailed yesterday in a big firefight in northern Iraq.. I'm wondering what the results of this will be. The US military are saying that it will give a clear message that progress is being made and should instill some confidence in the Iraqi citizens towards the US and that the US military really do intend to see this through to the end and make sure Saddam does not return. This I guess is quite possibly true. I have to wonder how Saddam loyalists will react though.

If Saddam Hussein has the means to do it, I can fully imagine this provoking a no-holds-barred blitz from him. I mean, it appears Saddam envisioned his sons taking over from him eventually and I'm guessing he foresaw his own 'immortality' in the form of generation after generation of his family running Iraq. Now that has been taken away, it's quite possible he will just go all out to take down as many coalition forces as possible until he's killed, and if it means wiping out half of the Iraq citizens along with them, then so be it. Why would he start caring about them at this late stage?

The only thing that I can see that would stop this happening (assuming he has the means to do it) is his self-centred ego. Yeah, he'll be pissed that his sons have been taken out, but would he be pissed enough to risk sacrificing his own life in exacting vengeance? Interesting huh.. we'll see what unfolds over the coming weeks. If there's no reaction at all, then maybe he is long dead after all. Either way, it's likely going to be pretty tense over there over the next few weeks.

Unrelated, check out this site thingsmygirlfriendandihavearguedabout.com. Pretty damn funny.

If you're into writing websites/blogs etc, I've just added a list of iso8859-1 character codes in the resources section. You can even use these in most instant message utilities as well. If you're wondering what the hell I'm talking about, it's those funny little characters you come across every now and then on the web and wonder what sort of messed up keyboard the person who wrote it has.. things like: © ™ ® ½ ë § ..y'know what I'm talking about now, right? That's all for now.

a walk in the park

      Tuesday 22 July, 2003 at 2:59PM (Nereus)  ::  permalink  ::  comments (6)

We had a great weekend. As mentioned in the previous post, we went back to Prospect Park on Saturday as planned. We walked for about 5 hours all around the park - it's pretty damn big. I started wondering if it was bigger than Central Park until we looked at a map of NYC in the subway - Central Park is about four times the size of Prospect Park ..wow, that certainly changed my perspective of Central Park, it really is huge.

They have a small zoo in Prospect Park, but I'm close to thinking I liked it more than either the Central Park zoo or the big Bronx Zoo. They have meerkats. They have prairie dogs. If they had weasels and river otters as well then they'd rule, no question about it. IceQueen took a heap of pictures, the meerkats seemed to be posing for her, just hope the pics come out ok. The camera has a tendancy to occasionally focus on things entirely different from what it's being pointed at, so we'll see. The meerkats were indoors which was kind of strange, maybe they can't handle the winters here? It was the prairie dogs that had the outdoor enclosure, complete with little perspex domes you could stick your head into and look at the animals up close ..they have the same thing for the meerkats at the Auckland zoo (New Zealand). Oh, they have kangaroos and wallabees as well! Who would've thunk?

The weather was amazing - hot and sunny with a light breeze so you didn't undergo a complete meltdown. We wandered throughout the park, there's a few ponds, a lake, paved 'bush' trails and stone bridges winding all over the place through the forest - actually it's pretty easy to lose your bearings, but that's not necessarily a bad thing. You can also go for horse treks through the park, and the lake has boats you can rent out ..and all this time we had absolutely no idea about this place! We were going to continue our walk through the large botannical gardens but decided to save that for next time.

We intended to go to the soundshell to watch another concert after the walk, they had slide guitarist Derek Trucks, the Tony Trischka Band and Scrapomatic playing one after another, but by the time we walked back to the soundshell we were both pretty knackered and decided to head back to the apartment for some salad and fruit (it was that kind of day).

Sunday was lazy day. We sunbathed by the swimming pool for a few hours, having the occassional swim when we felt overheated - yup it was another hot sunny day with the temp above 30°C as usual. Eventually we headed back upstairs to our apartment and reflected on what a good weekend it had been. It was at about this same time that we realized we had both scored a rather good sunburn. Ouch.

Yesterday and today have been a little cooler but incredibly humid with mostly overcast skies and occasional rain and thunder storms ..in fact there's thunder rumbling as I write this. I looked out the window last night (actually about 3.30am this morning) and watched a pretty active lightning storm cutting loose. I really enjoy watching nature flex its muscles.

Almost forgot to mention, on Friday night during the concert there were a couple of bugs flying around fairly close by. As I was watching one of them, it suddenly glowed a bright neon green colour for a few seconds - it was a firefly! We don't have fireflies in NZ that I'm aware of (although we have glowworms.. does that count?) so I was pretty excited to see them up close and personal. Very groovy.

The thunder storm outside has suddenly intensified in a big way so I'm going to check it out for a while. See ya later.

north korea has nukes already?

      Monday 21 July, 2003 at 11:26PM (Nereus)  ::  permalink  ::  comments (0)

Some not-so-good news, the following articles from CBSnews and USnews state that North Korea has announced that it now has nuclear weapons, and plans to build more of them (that's from the CBS link). The US news states that Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld has ordered U.S. military commanders to devise a new war plan for a possible conflict with North Korea. Elements of the draft, known as Operations Plan 5030, are so aggressive that they could provoke a war.. and this is after North Korean leader (dictator) Kim Jong II has already stated he would not hesitate to use nuclear force if provoked. This is not looking good people.

concert at the prospect park bandshell

      Friday 18 July, 2003 at 11:50PM (Nereus)  ::  permalink  ::  comments (2)

What a great start to the weekend! IceQueen had the day off work today so we just kicked around the apartment until later in the day, then we headed to Prospect Park to see a couple of bands play at the soundshell (Prospect Park is only about 15 minutes away on the subway). 2003 is the 25th anniversary of 'Celebrate Brooklyn!', one of New York City's longest-running, free summer outdoor performing arts festivals (there's concerts and other things every weekend and week days for about 2 months straight! Check out the schedule). Although this concert was free, there was a $3 contribution request at the gates, which I think would be viewed as something like not tipping if you didn't make the contribution - it's not mandatory, but you'd be frowned upon as a major tightass if you didn't.

There were two bands playing which we checked out on the internet before we went. The first was Shannon McNally backed up by The Five Points Band. Wow what a voice she has, really really good - she has toured with the likes of Stevie Nicks and John Mellencamp to give you an idea of what level we're talking here. Some of her music is slightly 'countrified' (the songs we heard anyway), but not to the extent of being classed as stereotypical country music, not by a long shot (fortunately, heh). Capitol Records signed her in 1997 and wanted to turn her into the next Allanis Morissette, but she went with her own style and wouldn't sell out. Good to see.

You can check out her website at shannonmcnally.com, the site is in flash so takes a while to load if you're on dialup, but it has some of her music on it so you can get a taste of how she sounds.

The second band was Stephen Malkmus with The Jicks - a bit of a legend in the indie rock world. They were really good, and obviously pretty popular. Malkmus founded the band Pavement that were real big in the late 90's (in the underground indie scene anyway), which may ring a bell for some of you. Unfortunately it started to rain fairly heavily with thunder and lightning (although still humid as all fark - summer storm) so IceQueen and I decided to bail about halfway through their set. I'll add that the rain had little effect on most of the crowd though, a testament to how good the music was.

IceQueen found their website before we left the apartment and played one of their songs so we knew what we were in for; she immediately said to me, "Wow, this is definitely your kind of music!". I tell ya what, when they came on stage and started playing, it was just like being back in Dunedin at Otago University again (more than a decade ago) and hearing some of the better garage bands that have culminated into what is generally known in NZ as 'The Dunedin Sound'. They reminded me a lot of The Verlaines, one song in particular that sounded like one of Verlaines best songs (imho) called 'Death and the Maiden', complete with the tempo change in the middle with the keyboard music before reverting back to the original tempo of the song. Weather permitting, we're going back to Prospect Park tomorrow.

fun with javascript

      Thursday 17 July, 2003 at 11:47PM (Nereus)  ::  permalink  ::  comments (6)

Just playing around with a very basic javascript. If you click the link below, you should experience a ..umm ..just click it ok.

Shake It Up!

..and how about this one?

What is the Matrix?

Note: some browsers wont play nicely with these scripts, in which case I guess you'll forever be wondering what they did ..or perhaps you could download the free Firefox browser.

pirates of the carribean

      Tuesday 15 July, 2003 at 11:51PM (Nereus)  ::  permalink  ::  comments (29)

Ice and I decided to go to the movies last Sunday evening, and found a small privately owned theater complex about 30 minutes walk away on Coney Island Ave where 'Pirates' was screening. I'll tell you about the theater first. It's a triplex (three theaters in one building) with each theater being fairly small. The tickets are sold from a little booth actually outside the doors on the street. When we walked in, the girl serving behind the refreshments counter also doubled as ticket-taker and usher. We both liked the place immediately. It reminded me of a theater in Mt Eden, Auckland NZ (Crystal Palace I think it's called) that showed a lot of alternative and Cannes Film Festival type movies, as well as surfing movies. At that theater, you could buy a coffee and you actually got a real cup and saucer to take into the theater. Classy. The other good thing about this Coney Island Ave theater is that it's cheaper than the major theater complexes in NYC, as well as having a half-price night every Wednesday. Bonus.

Ok so we saw Pirates of the Carribean starring Johnny Depp, Keira Knightly and Orlando Bloom (Orlando played Legolas in Lord of the Rings). It's a thumbs up. The movie was a little shallow in the sense that the characters could've been developed a little deeper, but the overall effect was a light and enjoyable 'dark' fairytale (which maybe was the intention) that I'd be happy to see again.

The storyline was good, the acting top notch, and the effects were really well done. The cursed pirates of the Black Pearl (ship) appear in skeletal-like form when in direct moonlight, and in their swashbuckling human form when not. There are scenes where they are moving in and out of direct moonlight while fighting, and the back and forth between human flesh and skeleton is almost seamless. Really impressive, and not those superimposed fake-looking skeletons that you sometimes come across in movies walking around like they're spastic. You know the ones I mean? They just don't blend like they were actually on the set while filming. In Pirates, there is none of that crap, they look like they were actually there. If you're stuck for something to do, I recommend you go check it out.

On the Saturday evening we headed to IceQueen's parents apartment and then headed out for dinner at the Indian Passage. We don't even have to order there now, they know exactly what we want - salad, rice, chicken tandoori and naan with this yummy sauce to dip into. They make an excellent chicken tandoori, in fact all of the food is always good there. Afterwards we went back to their apartment where IceQueen's Dad (The Lemur) proceeded to thrash both of us at a game of monopoly (he did say beforehand he was going to hammer us as revenge for last time we were there, and he certainly was true to his word). The Cat (IceQueen's Mum) brought us delicious plates of fresh fruit and made sure we were too stuffed full to do much more than waddle out to the car service by the time we left at about 3 or 4am. A good evening. A good weekend actually.

cybersex?

      Monday 14 July, 2003 at 11:43PM (Nereus)  ::  permalink  ::  comments (6)

Damn this had me laughing. If you've spent some time on MUDs or are into RPGs (role playing games) you'll find this really funny. If not, you'll probably just raise an eyebrow. If you ever see someone use the line "I put on my robe and wizard hat" you'll now know what they're talking about. Thanks Bard for sharing.

One day in cyberspace...

bloodninja: Baby, I been havin a tough night so treat me nice aight?
BritneySpears14: Aight.
bloodninja: Slip out of those pants baby, yeah.
BritneySpears14: I slip out of my pants, just for you, bloodninja.
bloodninja: Oh yeah, aight. Aight, I put on my robe and wizard hat.
BritneySpears14: Oh, I like to play dress up.
bloodninja: Me too baby.
BritneySpears14: I kiss you softly on your chest.
bloodninja: I cast Lvl. 3 Eroticism. You turn into a real beautiful woman.
BritneySpears14: Hey...
bloodninja: I meditate to regain my mana, before casting Lvl. 8 chicken of the Infinite.
BritneySpears14: Funny I still don't see it.
bloodninja: I spend my mana reserves to cast Mighty F*ck of the Beyondness.
BritneySpears14: You are the worst cyber partner ever. This is ridiculous.
bloodninja: Don't f*ck with me bitch, I'm the mightiest sorcerer of the lands.
bloodninja: I steal yo soul and cast Lightning Lvl. 1,000,000 Your body explodes into a fine bloody mist, because you are only a Lvl. 2 Druid.
BritneySpears14: Don't ever message me again you piece of ****.
bloodninja: Robots are trying to drill my brain but my lightning shield inflicts DOA attack, leaving the robots as flaming piles of metal.
bloodninja: King Arthur congratulates me for destroying Dr. Robotnik's evil army of Robot Socialist Republics. The cold war ends. Reagan steals my accomplishments and makes like it was cause of him.
bloodninja: You still there baby? I think it's getting hard now.
bloodninja: Baby?

The next day...

BritneySpears14: Ok, are you ready?
eminemBNJA: Aight, yeah I'm ready.
BritneySpears14: I like your music Em... Tee hee.
eminemBNJA: huh huh, yeah, I make it for the ladies.
BritneySpears14: Mmm, we like it a lot. Let me show you.
BritneySpears14: I take off your pants, slowly, and massage your muscular physique.
eminemBNJA: Oh I like that Baby. I put on my robe and wizard hat.
BritneySpears14: What the f*ck, I told you not to message me again.
eminemBNJA: Oh ****
BritneySpears14: I swear if you do it one more time I'm gonna report your ISP and say you were sending me kiddie porn you f*ck up.
eminemBNJA: Oh ****
eminemBNJA: damn I gotta write down your names or something.

who says new zealand doesn't get big surf?

      Saturday 12 July, 2003 at 1:38PM (Nereus)  ::  permalink  ::  comments (3)

This shot and following story from srosurf. Goes to show just how big NZ waves can get if you know where to look. To see some of my personal NZ surfing shots, go check out the photo section of this site.

Some unbelievable footage is about to hit television stations around the country and the world. In the quest in this years Oakley/ASL big wave awards surfers have tackled New Zealand's South Island in monstrous surf. Waves of up to forty foot high were surfed with Australian Ross Clarke-Jones, a man who has more broken bones in his body than one of Mike Tysons opponents, took it on like there was no tomorrow. West Australian surf videographer Ric Riffici was on hand to capture the mayhem.

"It was unbelievable, some of the biggest waves I've shot. It was so crazy trying to get out to the lineup with the shore break near the river mouth pushing eight foot closeouts though. In the end the jet skis had to be dropped into the water by helicopter, because you couldn't get out to the lineup because of the shore break" said Riffici.

Papatowai breaks near a river mouth and combined with the cold water from the river and the cold water from the New Zealands South Island the only thing that was missing from the line up were a few Polar Bears, there were plenty of Penguins though.

I woke up earlier today and got cramp in my left calf muscle just as I was getting out of bed - fark it hurt. I think I may have pulled the muscle as a result, it's damn sore to walk on. Must go scarf down some bananas (high potassium level which helps stop cramping. At least that's what I've believed for years and always seems to have worked for me to stop cramping up while out surfing).

every kitten has its day

      Friday 11 July, 2003 at 4:29PM (Nereus)  ::  permalink  ::  comments (4)

"See my friend behind me? He doesn't know it yet, but I just farted!"

Classic shot.

celeb deaths and other things

      Monday 7 July, 2003 at 11:28PM (Nereus)  ::  permalink  ::  comments (6)

Wow whassup with the sudden rash of celebrities passing on recently? First Katharine Hepburn, then Barry White, now Buddy Ebsen. You're probably saying right now, "Buddy who?" ..this should jog your memory: Jed Clampett, the redneck patriarch who struck oil and took his clan to the big city in the tv series 'The Beverly Hillbillies'. Got it now? He was 95 so I guess that's a pretty good innings. He also played opposite Audrey Hepburn in Breakfast at Tiffany's. Hmm.

Was just checking out my visitor information (yeah, that means you). Many of the search words and phrases used (mostly via google.com) are looking for the resources section, the urban scrawl font (I should probably make a zip file of that font available from the site), or else one of the games I have on the site. Here's a few search phrases people used that were ..well, different:

• 'transexual phone line in connecticut'
• 'break walls with your massive cock'
• 'I like dogs too. Let's exchange recipes'

I think any comment I could make at this point would be anticlimactic. Hard case. In other news, there apparently is surf in New York! I'll probably write more about this later because there's a fair bit to tell, but it's good news. I don't know about the quality (I'll try not to get my hopes up, especially after so many years of surfing Raglan) but if I get wet, it's better than nothing.

more scares in nyc

      Wednesday 2 July, 2003 at 3:58PM (Nereus)  ::  permalink  ::  comments (16)

Not sounding too good.. IceQueen just rang me from work to tell me the downtown Manhattan subways have been shut down. Apparently a duffel bag full of white powder and some threatening note has been found at one of the underground stations. I've just switched on the news (tv) but no details yet, all they've said is specifed which train routes are currently stopped due to 'police action'.

Given that info only, I think this is very likely a hoax using flour or something like that to simulate anthrax, probably by some disgruntled MTA worker. If there was any 'real' terrorism involved you can be sure they wouldn't just leave a bag full of crap sitting there with a note attached - they'd be spreading it around to take out as many people as possible, and claiming responsibility later.

Also a car has been left in the middle of the Brooklyn Bridge. The guy who put it there apparently said someone paid him to drive it to the middle of the bridge and abandon it there. Police are checking out the car now. Gotta wonder about the guy though, he must be one major dumbass to actually do that for a handful of dollars.. I mean, hello? Think about it...

News just said the powder tested negative for anthrax and is non-hazardous, they think it's probably corn starch. They aren't saying what the message was, other than it was regarding MTA. Subways are now being reopened. No mention about the car on Brooklyn Bridge at all. I'll update if anything more comes of it.

new hb sunglasses

      Tuesday 1 July, 2003 at 6:44PM (Nereus)  ::  permalink  ::  comments (0)

Late last year a pair of sunglasses were meant to be sent to me from Hot Buttered Surfboards & Surfwear in Australia. I won some about a year or so earlier than that for writing what they judged as the 'post of the month' on their international website forum. Those ones I didn't get to choose and was sent a pair of silver 'aliens', which although pretty kewl, did not look right on me.

Late last year I found some bugs with their new forum and emailed the guy who wrote the script and the website (contracted to HB). To cut a long story short, I effectively ended up beta testing it until it worked correctly, and Blake Foss who was the programmer mentioned it to Terry Fitzgerald, owner of the HB franchise (yeah, the T.F. - legendary surfer etc). Terry was apparently kinda stoked and said for me to pick out a pair of sunnies from their range and they would send them over to me. Sweet! Somehow the email went west and I never received the sunnies. After a few more emails back and forth more recently, I now have in my possession a brand new pair on HB 'species' sunnies!

This is the style. The ones I got (by request) are black frames with the blue mirror-type lens (like in the inset). Really lightweight, very comfortable (no marks on the sides of the nose after wearing them for a while either) and styling big time imho. They almost feel custom made to be honest, they're that good, and just in time for summer too! Great timing as my old Dirty Dog 'Weapon' sunnies were on their last legs as well, so to speak. Yeah, so I'm stoked about that. Big thanks to TF & Liv at HB and to Blake. Cheers guys.

Still waiting for the surf videos I won from surf.co.nz, although they said it would take a few weeks at least. Maybe I should enter these competitions more often ..I seem to win a lot (relativity check: the surf.co.nz one is the only comp of any sort I've entered this year). That's all for now, just sweating it out in the heat here.

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