I heard about the death of Rod Donald as I drove down the Clyde hill on the way back from Queenstown.

Very sad.

As a libertarian I have a great deal of respect for many green policies and, of course, a great deal of disdain for others. The thing about Rod Donald though was that he wasn't a typical politician- he had principles and he genuinely stood up for them. I think of all the politicians in the house left or right, up or down, his Green collegues included, Rod Donald had to be about the most uncompromising of these principles.

Anyway. Linz has written a bit on his passing and it sums up my fealings fairly well. http://solohq.com/Articles/Perigo/Daily_Linz_18_-_Rod_Donald,_Green_Convertible.shtml

OK.... so wiffle has ben living in Wellywood for the past six months. Of course I am lonely... and of course we text each other a lot.

I hope her new phone supports Blouetooth becase I might buy here 'The Toy'...

“The Toy is a hi-tech vibrating bullet. Connected to a mobile phone with Bluetooth it becomes an intimate, silent connection between two lovers, regardless of distance. Custom designed for your pleasure, it is intelligent, sophisticated and invented for bliss.

The Toy is worn internally, linked to a mobile phone and controlled by sms text messages sent to the phone. Once read, the message is transported automatically to The Toy, which turns it into vibrations - with a huge range of movements, depending on what you have written. Just say what you feel, The Toy will do the rest.”

Via DPF

Had a morning surf session @ Do Little Do Nothing (Kauwarau River, Dog Leg Run) on Sunday morning. Herewith the photos.

Some rock towers @ the takeout. Wish I had my SLR and 50mm f1.8 for a better depth of field.

Me looking bright and 'butt' bouncy......

Me doing something in the foam pile. I have no idea what... but it must have been something cool.... honest.....

Nikki having a romp.

Nikki spends some time in the white room......

Robin throwing down a Helix.

Nikki putting the pedal down.

”Back Up!”

Robin Blunting.

Liz out on the green

So you have an ordered list of things you want to put into two columns via XSLT.

I've always done this a very hard way in the past using recursive stack popping logic.

Here's a super easy way to do it.

<tr>

<td width="50%" valign="top">

<xsl:apply-templates select="item[(position() mod 2) = 1] " mode="child-categories"/>

</td>

<td width="50%" valign="top">

<xsl:apply-templates select=“item[(position() mod 2) = 0] " mode="child-categories"/>

</td>

</tr>

Now this will be about the first and only time I post a friendly link to a Christian Web SIte.

But, one of my team mates here @ Kognition is a keen member of the Christadelphian church here in Dunedin and has put together a pretty kick ass wee site for his church in ASP.NET 2.0. He reckons it's childs play to use.

It even picks up the bible readings off a web service!

Anyway... take a look. Feel free to ask in the comments how any of it was done.

Be sure to check out the Joseph Movie:

“just for a little fun, one weekend we decided to travel down to Gore and film our rendition of the famous Bible story of Joseph.”

The past few months have seen a number of GREAT changes to Nat radio.

Gone, for the most part, are the stuffy old fogies 'music' shows on weekday afternoons. Far more great documentary content.

Was listening today and, AT LAST, they have launched a new website with live streaming and archives of all their shows for at least 7 days.

And they have RSS feeds that you can podcast off

Maaaarvelous!

OK... so we use the Developer Express Components in some of our projects and we recently found an issue with their reporting library. They had it resolved and a patch delivered to us within a week....

IMHO that's pretty impressive service.

Well done Dev Express.

Our work with the National Poisons Center www.toxinz.com has been published as a MS Case Study

http://members.microsoft.com/CustomerEvidence/Search/EvidenceDetails.aspx?EvidenceID=13423&LanguageID=1

This is not just any old boring case study... becuase The Finalizer is a .NET Powered Battle Bot. As seen @ PDC.

So. I've kind of plateaued on the weight front but am still seeing pretty good body shape changes.

Currently sitting around 103.5 kgs.

I've decided to lift my intensity for a phase of about 4-5 weeks. This means:

• Twice a day, every day exercise. Ideally around an hour on most days. Trying to lift my proportion of time in my MAX heart rate band (170 bpm +)
• More weights. I'm focussing on pushing reasonably high reps still.
• Pretty intensive supplementing reigime*. I started a creatine loading phase on Sunday night. I'm doing twice a day protein shakes (Gymeez OEM stuff). I'm also back on the thermogenics (I know, I know!) but they do give you a kick in the pants.

Anyway. Will be trying to blog about progress a bit more. Eating well at the moment which is good. Probably still need to lift my fluid intake. Anyone got any tips to enforce good water drinking habits?

* In case you think I'm just replacing one breed of processed shit with another I am easting well for main meals.
Typical day:

Breakfast
4 Weetbix, Fresh and Fruity Yogurt, Protein Powder. (Need to add more fruit and veg here)

Lunch
Sachet of Seafood Chowder (not too creamy and fatty variety), chopped cooked lean chicken breast.

Dinner
Ultra lean venison, green slad, corn and bean salad.

Snacks
Nuts- Walnuts, Almonds, Hazlenuts, Pecans, Brazil Nuts
A bit of Gatorade Energy Bar

...is...
The two new 'In everything but name' Ministerial posts.

Jeanette Fitzsimplesimons is the new Minister (in everything but name) of Solar Water Heating and Rod Donald is the new Minister (in everything but name) of Buying New Zealand Made.

As John Cambell would say....... Maaarrrrvelous.

So the WWF tools for VS.NET 2005 have some 'issues' that can rear their head as strange build errors.

The symptom is that your solution, which has no syntax errors at all, sometimes fails to build and just spouts random bollocks.

What seems to be happening is some wierd caching of types by the designer- reason being is that the designer has to build your custom activities at design time so that you get a nice design experience.

So here are a few tips if you are seeing wierd build errors.

#1. If you are closing VS.NET and/or your solution, make sure that all designer and code documents are closed.

#2. If it's behaving strangely have a crack and building some of the key projects (communication service interfaces, services and activities) individually.

3#. If none of that works, close all your documents, close VS.NET, reopen and rebuild the solution as soon as you re-open.