Hi Adam,

Best write-up I've read so far! I fully agree. Their iPhone prices go nicely along the lines with what they've been doing for years. Sad. -- Marek

Hey Marek, glad to see you stop by! It is sad isn't it? I'd like to say I expect better, but I don't think I'm actually that hopeful. Gimme a yell next time you're in town, I'd love to catch up for that beer! -- Adam.

I was very naive to start updating iPhoto keywords to all my photos thinking that "naturally" it would put this information into file iptc metadata. Now Im doomed to use iPhoto, cant move to Lightroom or any other software since all my tags are in the iPhoto keyword library and I cant export 8GB of photos and loose all my albuns, collections and organization.

If you really want out of iPhoto with your metadata intact, my recommendation would be to buy a copy of iViewMediaPro. It will do a full export of all your photos, albums and metadata from iPhoto into it's own catalog which is based on IPTC/XMP. -- ?AdamShand

Are you absolutely positive that IPTC-data should be visible in the Finder's Get Info window? I can see my IPTC data with exiv2 but definitely not in the Get Info window (on 10.5.2)

I'm not positive of anything, but it shows up for me as you can see in the screenshot. I'm guessing it's a side effect of another piece of software I have installed. I'll try and track down which bit of software it is, my guess is Graphic Converter. -- ?AdamShand

This better come to Portland as well as NYC and LA! -- GeneMerrill

Hey! My first blog comment, yay! -- AdamShand

natural building

i've been mesmerized by the same story. id like a chance to build such a house some day. the 'village building convergence' in portland does similar work in the city boundaries. -- donpdonp on 25 January, 2007 - 18:29.

Round House in the US

I have seen some of these other round houses on the coast, not nearly as cool - but still fun to look at. -- legallygreen on 4 March, 2007 - 07:22.

Couple it with free (and high-quality) DNS hosting from EveryDNS.net, and you've got quite a combo. I'm using it for one of my domains, and I especially like the fact that they can pull a zone transfer from a dynamic IP (as long as it's got a Dynamic-DNS hostname that's consistently the same). They run on donations and by volunteer effort. -- royce on 5 January, 2007 - 05:50.

yowza ... cool! i didn't know about that, good tip, thanks! - adam on 6 January, 2007 - 10:09.

After using OpenDNS for a couple months T started to report that "the internet was very slow". Unfortunately this coincided with me traveling and also changing ISPs so it took a while to figure out exactly what the problem was.

The symptom was that certain web sites took a very long time to load (5+ minutes for a single page). The main sites T noticed this with were MySpace, Yahoo, Flickr and the Anchorage Daily News. Anyway after much too'ing and fro'ing it turned out that getting rid of OpenDNS made the problem go away. It doesn't entirely make sense to me because the sites did resolve, and you'd think they'd be locally cached after the first lookup, but regardless removing the OpenDNS name servers fuxed it.

It took me a while to figure out why this only affected T and didn't seem to effect my computer ... and then I realized that I spend most of my life VPN'd into work and am obviously using their DNS servers. Doh.

adam on 21 March, 2007

Jayne and Sean's Experience

I've had a running conversation with Jayne and Sean which resulted in this feedback from them. I can't personally vouch for the information (and I'm sure they don't want to) but it sounds about right. I have made some minor changes to the wording so typos may be mine.

I'm not sure if you want to add this bit, but the easiest way to get in is to get in as Skilled Labour. I've so far not hit a part on the skilled labour form that asks you about money in the bank. The process goes something like, you need:

• A passport
• Birth certificate number
• Full or pre-assessment of college degrees
• A skill that fits into a labour shortage category, future area of growth category (ie: IT), or belong to a "cluster" (there are four companies listed)
• Be under 55

If you don't have a 4 year or better college degree, or another certificate (nurse, mechanic, etc), it's probably not worth going this route.

You then fill out an Expression of Interest. You cannot file it until you've reached 100 points. It costs approx NZ$335. Note that this is what it takes to get into the pool and they draw from the top, so if you have 100 points, you will probably not get drawn within the 3 months. After 3 months, you must refile your Expression of Interest (and pay for it again). To go this route most successfully, you will need a job offer. This is worth 100 points, so along with the other things, it will almost guarantee being picked. The cost is per application rather than per person. You can receive points for a partners skills, so if you both have university degrees (usually 50 pts for a 4 year) you're set.

Assuming you are accepted, you will need:

• NZ$550 to file an application
• A full assessment of your college degrees - approx NZ$400
• A criminal background check by the FBI - file this now I filed two months ago and am still waiting
• A medical exam

Keep in mind that the order in which you actually do these things (as opposed to when you need them) is different. The medical exam expires in 2 months, so it shouldn't be the first thing you do. However, some processes take a very long time and you should initiate them long before they are necessary. A full assessment (about 2 months) is one of them, though we've chosen not to do this (we got a pre-assessment) as you can expedite the assessment for $150 NZD. Hopefully this will not come to bite us in the ass.

All the forms and lists I mentioned are available on the NZ immigration site, except for the assessments, which are handled by the NZQA. I also assumed that there are not extranneous issues such as non-english native language, proving common-law marriage, children, etc.

I'm very sad your teacher did this. A good teacher is not an authority. Maybe your teacher should hunting for another job, e.g. a king?

You shoud not have told your teacher that s/he was wrong. S/he didn't deserver your correction. Just let s/he believe hir wrong idea, and let every other laught at hir for hir life time!

-- weakish

Thanks for you comments but I wasn't being literal. I wasn't actually that student, I just could have been very easily ... -- Adam.