Lunar eclipse won't be visible again in NZ until 3 years later

Yes yes yes...happened to read upon this article at work on Friday!!! : P

A lunar eclipse will be visible in NZ night sky next Tuesday! (And it won't be visible again until 3 years later!!!)

"A lunar eclipse occurs when the earth passes between the sun and the moon, blocking the light from the sun reaching the moon's surface. The moon will pass through the shadow of the earth.

The eclipse on Tuesday, August 28 will start at 7.52pm, but won't be noticed until around 8.51pm, when the moon enters the full shadow of the earth.

The moon will be fully eclipsed by the earth's shadow from 9.52pm to 11.23pm, with the eclipse over by 1.22am."

From the NZ Herald article: Lunar eclipse to be visible from NZ

我的第一張駕駛罰單...(亦是最後的!)

今晚我收到了我的第一張 (亦是最後一張) 超速駕駛罰單 (speeding ticket)! ><" 都是自已唔好, 敗在個「趕」字! 以後唔敢啦!!! : O

Intro:
So the incident occurred in Glen Innes....the streets were so dark (just the right spot for catching speeding cars...like me! ><"). It was all because I didn't want to waste time, so tried to take a shower before I go off to my guitar lesson....and hence i was RUSHING!!! BAD BAD BAD! (the worst thing anyone can be on the road is to be 'rushing'...the reason behind a lot of accidents!)

The Experience:
Anyway, it was the very very very first time I had ticket issued to me by a police! He firstly came up to my car to check my warrant of fitness, before he came to my window to spoke to me, telling that I over speed on a 50kph limit road! He then asked for my driver license and asked if the address on my license is the right address. Then he went back inside his car to get down the records and issue me 'the ticket'!

(For those who r rushing when you are driving...seriously it's not worth it to be caught by cops....one reason being....THEY TAKE QUITE A BIT OF TIME to get down your records and issue you the ticket...and by then while u r sitting in your car....all you can do is to watch each minute of the clock go by....they do take some time! trust me!)

Anyway, the policeman came back with the 'ticket' and my license. Then told me how much I over speed. haha He even asked if I wanted to look at the radar data (-.-" no thank you I need to get to my destination...arghh!). And funny enough, after the policeman when back to his car... a minute later he turned on the siren and before I knew it...they were chasing after ANOTHER CAR which just turned into the street. As I drove past....the cops were in their action again!!! (so fast! -.-" i'm sure they must be sensing 'other cars' while they were writing up my ticket or something!!!!)

The Result:
Well, I really had no idea that over speeding by 15kph will costs $80 plus minus 20 demerit points!!!! I 'totally' deserve this! As dad said, if I don't get the ticket this time...sooner or later I'll get it anyway! : O Stupid me!!! (If you are a driver who 'may' over speed...or if one day you over speed.....I hope you can learn from my blog post here and drop that speed of yours.....I hope no one have to experience it themselves! Don't follow my track!!!! : O)

A fine of $80 really does 'hurt' my wallet! -.-" And I actually want to say 'thank you' to them for giving a fine so high....so that people like me will 'think twice' b4 they over speed again!!!!

Conclusions:
Will watch my speed from now on! Especially at night when police cars are lurking in the dark on the streets of our neighbourhood!!! Amazingly I didn't feel scared at all when the police came....all I know is that I deserve it! : O

So......I will definitely try to 'never ever to' rush when driving from now on!!!! (even if I will be late!) And -.-" most importantly....I need to 'watch my time' from now on......and start to be punctual again!!!!! (I realised my record gone BAD nowadays.....not sure why....and apologies to those who had to wait for me! ><" APOLOGIES!!! will try to get rid of bad habit now!!!!) No more Ridiculous Over Speeding from now on!!!!!!

*P.S. - For those who like to know (and watch out for) police cars....I was caught on Tripoli Road in Glen Innes!

*P.P.S - For the record....seriously I normally don't over speed ga!!! Only when I'm 'rushing' or 'late' to something....will never ever made myself 'rush' again on the roads!!! : O

*P.P.P.S - Of coz something just for fun (below)! (Real life is never as good!!! ahha so slow down!)

iGoogle - A centralised stop off point

I have been wanting to blog about iGoogle for 'quite' a while now (back a few months time when there were some news about the revived Google Homepage)!

So essentially iGoogle is your own customised Google Homepage (formerly called 'Google Personalised Homepage' hahaha).

Personally I found that it is 'similar' to netvibes, where I can subscribe to various sources of news by adding a 'Gadget' to my page (I have actually added them on another tab called 'News').

But what's more is that I can add 'other' gadgets...e.g. Horoscope, Garfield stripes, weather update.....as well as gadgets that sync with my other Google software, e.g. Google calendar and gmail. This is what my Home tab looks like (enjoy!):

My iGoogle Home page

Another thing I found that is very neat is that Google has allowed its users to pick a theme for their iGoogle page. For the theme that I've picked I noticed that it changes according to your local weather!!!!! @.@ hehee See the following:

Sunny day:

Rainy day:

Now I thought this was pretty neat of Google to add this in! It really does give their user a nice surprise! : )

So all-in-all, iGoogle have managed to create one centralised place for me where I can just stop off to check:

• If I have new emails
  
• Upcoming appointments
• To look at news around the world
• Or just to chill out for a minute or two (by looking at 'jokes of the day' or 'Garfield comic stripes' and other gadgets)! : P

I still don't use it constantly or perhaps as frequently as Google would expect for their average user. May be I'll use it more frequently now that I have add it onto my Firefox bookmark toolbars! : P Definitely worth a try!

MSN Message Censorship

I happened to read upon an article from Slashdot. I had no idea that MSN censors the messages (going down the memory hole) that we sent and blocks it if it contains certain words e.g.

• .info
• profile.php? (including ‘?’)
• download.php? (including ‘?’)
• gallery.php
• pics.php
• ListAllTopics.php
• .scr (source)

Microsoft said that the reason behind this is "because they may be URLs to exploit Windows or Microsoft Windows Live Messenger security holes." (-.-" So it's only due to Windows bugs!)

So the next time you see the text "Could not send; a connection error occurred", it could quite possibly mean your message has been censored and blocked! (Previously, it didn't alert the user at all and just block the message without notification! -.-" Bad usability!)

Reference article: MSN Censorship

Nuffield Street Mac's Brew Bar

Prelude:
Back in the month of June (the 12th to be exact), my 'Silly' friend and I went to watch the free screening of "Bridge to Terabithia" - which was based on Katherine Paterson's Newbery Medal-winning children book talking about friendship with a somewhat "unexpected" ending.

After the movie, with leftover popcorns, we decided to leave the popcorns in 'peace' (in the bin hehe :P as they were no longer fresh) and headed over to "Nuffield Street Mac's Brew Bar" which I have patiently waited a long long time to try it out!

Review:
Let me see....I quite like the atmosphere and the settings of the room! Right on Nuffield Street, with the lights up on the tree, we pushed open the door. We found ourselves a quieter area, towards the back of the room, sitting under the man-made 'wooden' tree, and enjoyed ourselves the night there. : P They also have a wood fire place with LCD in place, the room was dark-ish with tiny lights lighted up to glow around the room. So it kindda gave a 'classy' bar feeling!!!

On to the food, we tried (excuse the dark coloured photos, as the place was dark-ish hehe):

Pan Fried Fish, with rice cake and stack of green veges

Eye fillet top with (red wine?) chocolate sauce, mash potato and veges

To finish it off, we had the Beer ice-cream chocolate pudding!

To be honest, the food didn't really 'wow' me. It was decent and presentation was excellent! (The veges were stacked very nicely, the eye fillet has deep fried noodles stuff on top and the beer ice-cream sat on a candy-made basket). For me I definitely enjoyed the presentation and the creativity of the dishes (they have better description than mine in the menu).

But in terms of the tastiness of the food, it was only 'ok'. The portion are not big at all. They placed too much soya sauce at the bottom of the stack of veges, so that it was too salty. The chocolate pudding was as if it was bought from elsewhere and microwaved to heat it back up (and it was over-cooked too -.-"). And to my disappointment, I couldn't taste 'beer' in the ice-cream! ><" However, I did enjoy the eye fillet the most! The eye fillet was definitely soft and tender. This was the first time I had chocolate sauce on a 'main dish'. Amazingly the sauce blended quite well with the beef and it definitely made it quite special for me.

Conclusions:

All-in-all, I'll say the food are 'ok'. Will definitely give points to their creativity, a classy bar environment with lovely settings and artworks. hehe It was worth a try (go if you haven't, good atmosphere there). But I think if I do go back, it'll probably be for a drink + some lighter food rather than a proper dinner.