Author: brian

Do take something like a leatherman/swiss army knife, in checked luggage.
Be aware of all of your batteries, camera, powerbanks, torch, etc not in checked luggage.
Deepseek, chatgpt etc mean you can talk to anyone.
eSIM in China was up to the task (Holafly) My Alipay connected to my bank all the time, could browse anywhere.
There are a lot of people in China, a lot!
There is a lot of life going on up the alleyways.
Robots are coming, delivering your dinner, cleaning the street.
The plain old electric taxis can sure accelerate!
It is hard to take a good photo out of a train at 250 km/h

Crash outside the kitchen window the other morning

Local council election time too

Art in the park worth a visit.

And down to Te Akau and Raglan with Darryl today.

Nice that the weather is getting friendlier.

So I have still been here, and do have some projects underway

Been thinking about images of Auckland like the below

And walking further that night a dairy

Maybe should have caught the girl in colour

But at least I have finally started getting on with the Canon T90 thing that I bought a dead T90 and lens for.

I ended up with dead T90s otherwise but still

It is actually silver in colour, that’s primer, I am planning for it to be mostly white. I have been a bit sloppy with the epoxy resin to immobilize it, but …

Still working on responsive robot things too.

A minimal viable product coming soon I hope.

There is more

Some of the new Lynn locals

Some of the wild life

And the weather lately has been cruel! Cold and wet too much

I am still here, had a bit of a play at generating images with AI

For the birds, the 3 prompts to get there were

1. generate an image of two birds in conflict rising from the ground in a corkscrew path

2. more abstract and with blackbirds

3. in the style of Jean Michel Basquiat

And I was pretty impressed with the result

Asked for red fish blue fish after that.

It seems to know what I like now.

So here I am

And I can now get these in NZ, yay oh boy!

I have to go out of my way a bit,but still.
Moira is older

And Yiming has been singing

Otherwise

Auckland has been looking in decline.

Last weekend I end to see the Wildcards and Otis Mace Combo.

Was quite the trip down memory lane in some ways.

Great to catch up with Otis and David.

Was talking to Dan a bit, he had been travelling quite a bit, lived in Germany too. And he was quite blinged.

Just some of the pica I have been taking on the T90. Took a while to get through that film.

I have had a little play with AI, asking it to create an image of a BMW F800 GSA in the style of Jean-Michel Basquiat.

This is what I got

And then asking for some grey and more abstract, got to the below.

Interesting and impressive what the free version of chatgpt can do. Usually though my use for it is answering technical questions.

It is pretty good at coming up with Python code too I have found out.

This weekend just gone I went to offthegrid.nz with my brothers for the weekend. It is in Te Akau where we grew up, out side of the time we were at boarding school.

Our parents lived there until I was 21 I think.

Left this halfway out the track to the bach, as it wasn’t quite so cross country as my bike and Allans ute.

Got there and got settled in and had dinner.

We didn’t end up managing to get the BBQ going, but the gas stove inside worked fine.

In the background of the one sitting drinking beers, note the west coast wind effect on the trees in the background.

In the morning down to the beach. Karioi down by Raglan in the background.

Then we drove of around Te Akau a bit and to Raglan.

Once back lunch

Then back down to the beach.

The place we stayed you can just make out up that valley.

I love those limestone rockforms in the Northwest Waikato too.

Mussels at the beach too, took some back but I was the only one to eat them.

Then dinner prep time

Not really sure what I was trying to convince Allan of there.

A good weekend away

And what is really my sort of landscape.

Goodnight.

I have a plan, have had it for a while really, making an art work.

Thinking it will look a bit like the below, but it will be alive!

Hope to get a chance to progress soon.

Starting with Moira, and the beginning of playing around acting. A friend of hers got a grant to make a movie, a documentary, but there’s a Desperate Housewives subplot, and she gets to be that.

In the other pictures she was looking comfortable with a wine glass in front of her.

In front of our house is a not yet large Magnolia, one day it will be I guess, might not be here then.

More flowers, not winter yet!

We went to Tauranga, and on the way called in on my brother Allan, and took a picture of the painting brother Kevin did for him. Kevin was navigating in rallies with him back when I was in Germany.

As kids we used to be at Mount Maunganui quite often I think, it has great appeal.

The beach

And the Mount, Mauao

Those fellas flying around there bring Hanspeter and others to mind, that have died doing that sort of thing. I can see the appeal though.

The place we stayed in Tauranga was great, maybe the best all round Airbnb place I have ever stayed in.

After we checked in, we wandered over the ridge into the CBD, to check it out.

Nice public art there, and a great railway bridge

Lots of interesting bits and pieces too.

We had a mission though, climb Mauao!

So the next day. Starting down on the port side

And up to encounter this dystopic entity

The water pressure of Mt Maunganui.

It was a 45min to an hour walk to the top, no idea why I have never been there before, maybe the access/ownership was different back then.

Looking out to the west over Matakana Island.

And a reminder that it is a little steep in places.

Once you get to the top though, there are great views.

It was a bit of a hazy day, but below looking North.

Then down

To sit and have coffee and cake and chat away with Jeff.

The next day we headed home, via Cambridge. Where they had a pic of Billy T. James, who was from Leamington.

He was a funny guy and a great Kiwi comedian. Also featuring on lamp posts in Balmoral. Not sure I under stand this

But then not sure I understand the Cambridge horse either

All in all a great break. That Airbnb was good, going up Mauao was great, not too challenging, with forest and views, should do the walk around it too.

Back home and back at work now. More breaks coming soon.