October 2008 - ActiveSteve

Change is Good!

Howdy everyone, and welcome to ActiveSteve 3.0! Yup, it was time to throw the switch on the things I’ve been working on in the background for a while with respect to this website. In celebration of the fact that ActiveSteve has essentially been reborn as a result of getting the clean bill of health, I decided to get my portal re-vectored in anticipation of my future adventures 🙂 Although I’ve always been pretty happy with the site that I had, it was time to try some new things. Well, that and the fact that my server host has been sort of trying to get me to upgrade my underlying content management system (CMS), Drupal specifically. Of course I’m sure you’re not all that interested in the boring techy side of this. You’re probably just interested in finding out what exactly I’ve changed, what’s new, and what you can do here at the new ActiveSteve. I’ll keep is relatively short, but if you’d like to actually read about what’s new, rather than just messing around yourself, click the link to read more.

Pictures from the Trip

Holy Cow! Where do I possibly begin to describe the simply amazing sights and experiences of the entire trip? Well, how about with two albums of my very favourite pictures of the trip? Even with my selective chopping, I’m still ending up with a ton of pictures. For the North Island, I culled it down to 732 images, and for the South Island, I couldn’t get below 1,024 pictures. Well, I’m sure I could, but that’s no fun. Note that I haven’t touched up any of these pictures. However, I am providing them to you in full resolution, so should you ever want to print some up for whatever reason, go nuts.

Without further ado, here are the links to the ‘Best of the Best’:

Best of North Island Pictures

Life in General Travelogue

There’s a Chill in the Air

Yes my dear friends, it’s that time of the year. The air is turning cold, and the leaves have all changed colour and are fluttering to the ground. You know it’s going to happen, but you’re reluctant to admit it, and would just rather keep running in shorts and a tank top. Unfortunately, it’s becoming readily apparent that something does have to give here. I don’t have a really deep or meaningful story to share with you this time, but just a brief update on what was up on the weekend for me. The main event of the weekend was supposed to be a wine and cheese soiree downtown, but the host ended up falling ill, which meant we had to put the kaibash on that plan at the last second. Not to fret, there’s always plenty to do, right my friends? Read on for a couple Seinfeldian paragraphs about ‘nothing’ to keep you entertained for a few minutes. You can also gander at some pictures that we snapped on Saturday.

Travelogue

Custom Cycling Maps of the Trip

One of the great aspects of this trip for me personally was the fact that I lugged a lot of technology with me the entire way. Three of my key pieces of gear were my digital camera (waterproof, shockproof, dustproof Olympus 790SW), my GPS (Garmin Forerunner 305) and my ultramobile PC (ASUS R2H). With these three things, I was able to make the trip come alive for people all around the world. Below is a list of links to all the rides that I did in New Zealand (starting with the last ride and finishing with the first). Also, I’ve put together two ‘mega-maps’; one covering my North Island adventures, and one covering my South Island adventures. All these maps have daily stats, as well as a selection of pictures from the day. (Warning: The mega-maps take a while to load in… be patient!)

Scuba Steve is Born

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Yee haw! Well, after a 6-week course comprising of classroom, pool, and open water training, Jody and I now have our PADI open water dive certifications. Yup, we can now go pretty much anywhere in the world where there is scuba diving and do some diving either on our own, or with other people. We can rent gear, get tank refills, join charters, etc. etc. Yippee! We’re hoping to put that to the test when we go visit Andrea, Patrick and Helena over in the Magic Kingdom over the holidays. Guess that means I’m part of the Scuba Squad now. Overall, I’d have to say that if you’ve ever thought about getting your scuba certification, there’s really no reason not to. The price is pretty reasonable (well, if you don’t count the fact that you’ll need to spend money on gear and every time you dive!), and the course not all that difficult. If you’d like to see some pictures from our open water dives, head on over to the folder I put up on flickr. After that, read on for a little more about the weekend fun.