Podcasts

A couple of years ago when I first got an iPhone I downloaded from iTunes and listened to an aviation podcast. I was not impressed as the speakers were amateur enthusiasts who were clearly not that well informed.

I then started listening to EconTalk, a series of excellent podcasts by economist Russ Roberts from GMU in Virginia (he also blogs at Cafe Hayek). Each week he interviews at length a distinguished economist in a manner that is not overly technical.

For lighter relief I have been listening to the Friday Night Comedy from BBC Radio 4. These generally take the form of a quiz or short monologues focussed on the latest political news from the UK.

More recently, I have been listening to a couple of much more professionally done aviation podcasts.

• Airplane Geeks (@AirplaneGeeks) - from the USA
• Plane Crazy Down Under (@pcdu) - from Victoria, Australia

They have turned out to be excellent with coverage of civil and miltary aviation, including aviation history and technology. I have been listening to older episodes and have even sent off a couple of possible "Grill the Geeks" questions to the USA.

These have all been great listening while walking our two dogs.

Our Standard Poodles enjoy their 15 minutes of fame

Morgan and Bree, our two Standard Poodles, along with my wife Wendy and I feature in a Rugby World Cup-related article and photograph on the second page of Wellington's main newspaper the Dominion Post on Saturday, 17 September 2011. The dogs had All Blacks and England team logos applied to their fur when they were groomed on Friday.

Morgan does actually watch the television, although he tends to prefer watching quadrupeds rather than bipeds, and Bree is obsessed by balls.

The start of the Iditarod dog race in Alaska - Standard Poodles banned!

The 2009 Iditarod dog race is just starting in Alaska with Reuters reporting competitor numbers down because of the recession. The Anchorage Daily News provides comprehensive coverage.

The race commemorates the transport of urgent medical supplies to Nome in 1925 following an outbreak of diphtheria in the days before bush flying. A web site, Balto's True Story, has more details.

One interesting fact about the race is that in 1989, 1990 and 1991 a competitor, John Suter, raced a team of Standard Poodles and achieved credible results. The breed was subsequently banned perhaps more for image reasons than anything else? Blatant discrimination?!? Okay, I have to concede that their fur coats are probably not as well suited as the "northern" breeds and dogs have died out in the cold on this very testing race.

Using Twitter

I have been playing around now with the increasingly popular social networking site Twitter for a year having set up a Profile and linked it through to my Facebook page. Twitter asks "What are you doing?" and limits postings to 140 characters. Among other things, it can be used with TinyURL to give short pointers to other web sites. Mashable has a posting dated 24 May 2008 with information about additional Twitter tools.

I recently came across a good posting on Shane Richmond's blog at the Telegraph dated 6 January 2009 about how to use Twitter better.

As well as being useful for quick pointers from some aviation writers (for example, Jon Ostrower) I am following for the latest happenings, postings that have grabbed my attention have included:

• From English comedy actor Stephen Fry currently visiting New Zealand while making a wildlife documentary: "A kakapo tried to shag the back of my leg. Mark was roughly shagged on the back of his neck. It's mating time for kakapo: anyone'll do x" and "Leaving Codfish Island this morning and heading for Queenstown. Kakapo made 1 last alarming attempt to ravish me on way to loo last night x"
• From the software programmer Mike Wilson a.k.a. 2drinksbehind who attracted media attention after sending out a message on Twitter having just survived his second air crash, this one on the Continental B737 that burnt at Denver in late 2008: "Holy [Two expletives deleted] I wasbjust in a plane crash!" He has subsequently advised that although his laptop was destroyed he was able to extract data off its hard drive.

Just don't expect anything too profound to appear as part of my twitterings.

New Zealand beats Australia in the Olympics medal tally

The per capita statistics from NationMaster has New Zealand at #11 just ahead of Australia at #12 on the all-time Summer Olympics medal tally (see previous post).

It is not just that New Zealand beat Australia, with 116 countries listed it is that New Zealand just beat Australia that I find so interesting.

Herman from Belgium (producer of a brilliant set of small flags that I use) also has a table setting out the recent results (for 2008 he combines Beijing and Torino).

Beijing Olympics 2008

The 2008 Summer Olympic in China are underway so it is time to have a few links to follow the sporting action. But first some great Olympics-related interactive graphics are available from the New York Times, such as a bubble chart on the medals awarded at every modern summer Olympics (click on the bubbles).

Now for some links:

• The official web site of the Beijing 2008 Games
• Television New Zealand's Olympics pages
• NZ Herald's Olympics pages
• stuff.co.nz Olympics pages
  
• NBC Olympics
• Yahoo!7 Olympics pages from Australia
  
• BBC Sport's Olympics pages
• International Olympic Committee
  

With more and more people turning to the web for their news and entertainment I am expecting great things from creative web designers.

As for the aviation connection, on 18 July 2008 Air New Zealand started operating non-stop services from Auckland to Beijing.