Well, mostly horrible, anyway. I spent half of my long weekend in Ward 97 of Auckland Hospital. Before you panic, I was fine. They put a drip in my arm and administered potent antibiotics every 8 hours, and took my temperature every 4 hours. I felt a bit ill and when I went to see my doctor for what was meant to be a routine check (!) and I had a temperature over 28.5 and my doctor panicked a bit, and so off I went with what was supposedly a post-op infection.

The main problem was not the food, nor being interrupted or woken every few hours. It was not having to listen to the girl across the way weep because she was in so much pain after her surgery (something I’m grateful I didn’t have to have), nor was it being poked or prodded by needles that spilt my blood all over the bed like a fountain (see the fake-cheerful photo for the post ‘where’d all my blood just go?’ experience, above), or getting bruises because the blood pressure machine thought my arm was smaller than it was. The WORST part about spending my weekend in hospital was the sheer boredom. And I’d even come prepared.

I watched the new episodes of this weeks shows multiple times, and played the ALL games my laptop had to offer (which includes World of Goo and Civilisation: Beyond the Sword – games which passed many hours). I read the magazines on hand, wandered the halls when I thought I could get away with it, and spent a long time playing with the hydraulic bed. But after a while that gets old. Really really old.

Lucky I had my own personal superhero. The Boy came and suffered in boredom with me. And when he wasn’t around, The Fourth Quarter was. Without them, my stay would have been UNBEARABLE. So, on your next stay at hospital, forget your ipod and laptop, pack your PEOPLE! Perhaps I should publicly, to The Boy and The Fourth Quarter <3! Love you guys!

World Animal Day is celebrated on the 4th of October every year, originally used a way of highlighting the plight of endangered species it has since grown to encompass all kinds of animal life and is widely celebrated in countries throughout the world.

Boston.com has again rocked out a large selection of gorgeous, gorgeous animal photography for the occasion:

Sangworn, a mahout (elephant driver), stands with his 13 year old elephant, Bussaba, at his temporary camp September 26, 2008 in Bangkok, Thailand. While the elephant is a symbol of Thailand, it is a fairly common site to see the unemployed and homeless animals roaming the city streets begging for food. The tame elephants dodge the traffic as their mahouts sell sugar cane by the bag to tourists who then feed them. Thai officials frown upon the practice and have passed laws banning elephants from roadways but the mahouts still come risking fines in order to survive. Elephants have been big business for the country for centuries but now they are reduced to a major tourist attraction. Elephants are trained to paint, play musical instruments, and even kick soccer balls. Until Thailand banned logging in 1989, many Asian elephants were laborers working in the jungles. (Photo by Paula Bronstein/Getty Images)

Green Sea Turtles in the waters of Bora Bora, Tahiti are seen in this undated photograph from an exhibit titled “Irreplaceable: Wildlife in a Warming World,” recently shown at the Peerless building in downtown Providence, Rhode Island. The exhibit showcased animals most threatened by global warming, such as green sea turtles. The gender of sea turtle eggs are determined by temperature, which means global warming would upset the natural gender balance (Photo by Michele Westmorland).

Narwhals seen along the floe edge in Arctic Bay, Canada. The whales are pushing under the ice to feed on cod. They come up in seal holes and rotten ice in order to catch a breath. This undated photo is part of an exhibit titled “Irreplaceable: Wildlife in a Warming World,” recently shown at the Peerless building in downtown Providence, Rhode Island. (Paul Nicklen/National Geographic Image Collection)

Fantastic, right?

Consolidated Skateboards is all about Love. Loving your local skate shop, loving the skate industry and promoting the ‘damn the man’ attitude that comes with rocking your own style in your own way. It’s all about giving power to the little man. And it looks like they are jumping the battle into the snow industry just as Nike are dropping in on the scene.

As Hyperbeast said “Core snowboard brand, Rome SDS [Rome Snowboard Design Syndicate], has teamed up with Consolidated Skateboards to create a premium boot with a subversive agenda. Though the approach is playful, the issue is not to be taken lightly. Consolidated Skateboards first launched the Don’t Do It Army in 1997 to keep big sporting goods brands out of the skateboard industry, and now, together with Rome SDS, they are bringing the campaign into the snowboard arena. Taking Rome’s popular Libertine silhouette and incorporating their signature Banana logo, Don’t Do It slogan, and Drunk namesake, Consolidated looks to stir up a conversation about the big sporting goods company who recently made their debut in the snowboard scene.”

In truth, I think the boots are pretty sick, and I love that it’s in keeping with snowboarding’s history, and true rocking style.

As they said on the inside tag:
“We could argue all day long about where snowboarding came from: skateboarding, surfing or even skiing. But there’s one thing we all know: Snowboarding sure as hell didn’t come from baseball, basketball, football, jogging or golf. So if you let a jock ball-sport company just waltz in and take over this industry because they’ve got the big bucks, you’re helping to destroy its soul. If your favorite company gets brought out by some suit-and-tie who has never even stood on a board of any kind, and you’re still thinking about buying their products . . .

DON’T DO IT.”

Don’t destroy snowboarding’s soul, hey. Avoid the Nike bandwagon. The industry has enough of that crap already.

A couple posts back I mentioned the Zoom tours that Auckland Zoo offered. Well. As a part birthday celebration/part cheering-up adventure, The Fourth Quarter and I went on the African Zoom Tour, which involved feeding a Giraffe, a fantastic 49 year old Hippo named Snorkel, patting a TWO TONNE Rhino, and feeding two, quite large lions. LIONS!!

It was an amazing experience, and I was stoked to find out that at least half of the (hefty) ticket price was put towards conservation efforts to protect the wild brethren of those we got to meet.

I was blown away by the privilege of being so close to such fantastic animals. All of which had amazing personalities unique to themselves – that’s not something your often privy to when you visit the zoo. The Hippo, for example, was incredibly stubborn and toyed with us until bribes were offered. Once she was fed she offered her chin up for a rub! The Rhino was the same, once recovered from the shock of actually TOUCHING a Rhino, if you slapped him hard enough, he would lean into the wooden posts the same way a dog would lean into your legs if they enjoyed the contact.

The Lions were AMAZING, on learning the meat (delivered with tongs in case our fingers resembled meat) was all gone the second in command growled his displeasure. And it was such a FANTASTIC bass-y bellow!

But the best bit? The best bit was walking past the signs that said ‘Authorised Staff Only’, and getting to see the back end of the Zoo. How things were run, the pipes and little things that keep the Zoo turning. It made the Zoo alot more *real* for me, and I was just blown away by how much work and effort goes into providing the best possible life for these animals. How much effort goes into running a sustainable business – they aren’t connected to the mains, and collect their own water. They recycle approximately 85% of their waste, and are incredibly environmentally aware. Props to them, I say!

It was such an amazing day, well worth the price tag and an experience that I would recommend to anyone. It really was that fantastic!

Last week I faithfully accompanied The Square along to one of those random things that crop up. That week, it was fire play. With actual fire.

We went into one of the many inner city parks, where the slinky sounds of shapeshifter were rocking, and in the midst of a circle of rocks, people were playing with fire. Fire Staffs, Fire Poi, Fire Juggling Sticks, even a Fire Hula Hoop – it was pretty impressive.

I got to twirl the Third Quarters flaming staff, and a guy tried to teach me fire poi (without the flames, which is lucky cause I hit myself with them more than once).

Photographic proof that I twirled, and twirled, and twirled.

I was impressed with the atmosphere – everyone was there to have a good time, some people were rocking out with musical instruments (the Third Quarter brought her didjereedoo, which was a huge hit) and everyone was happy for everyone else to have a go. Multiple people tried to teach me how to be coordinated, which was extremely nice of them. It had a slightly hippy feel to it, but as the smell of weed wafted through the park I figured it was just another added bonus to the atmosphere. After all, you don’t often find the straight and narrow housewives twirling fire poi’s around, now do you?

This is JB, the fire twirling master extraordinaire, the Third Quarter, and me. Despite reeking of kerosene, and shivering in the cold, it was a completely awesome night :)

Last weekend, as part of a cheering-up exercise, the Fourth Quarter and I made a spontaneous trip out to the Auckland Zoo. I’d forgotten how much I like the zoo, delighting in the tigers with their big paws and lazy demeanor. We watched the otters scavenge for food (often using gravity to help them get the food down quickly). We saw the elephants, and a single (!) sad dejected monkey. We saw a hippo chomp his way through some hay, admired a giraffe’s long neck and the muscles it has to keep it’s long neck upright, and a single kiwi who looked a little bit mad. It was all very, very exciting.

What wasn’t so exciting though, were the signs that said ‘Keepers Only’. I did lots of peering to see what was behind them. Often it was nothing exciting, just the hidden parts that make the zoo go round. Pipes, cleaning equipment, etc etc. Still, it made me curious, and after some hunting on the web, I found this:

Auckland Zoo Zoom Tours.

ZOOOOM tours! Behind the scenes experiences! Meet the animals – and feed them! The Lions, and Hippos and Lemurs! Clean the Elephants, Hang with the tigers!

And best of all? Getting to go past the ‘Keepers Only’ signs.

I’m *ever* so excited :) Me and the Fourth Quarter have already booked our places in the next ‘African’ Tour. Can’t wait!

David Friedman is a fantastic photographer. He recently shot a Photo Essay at a factory that ‘distressed’ high-end fashion jeans. You know the kind; ripped, worn and faded in just the right way. Often people scoff at buying jeans that have had their character ‘manufactured’, but as David Friedman said:

“Then I saw just how much work goes into distressing jeans, and I realised that these people are artists. You can’t just have any loose threads, you have to have the right loose threads. They can’t just be faded. They have to be the right color. A lot of work goes into making these jeans look just right.”

Anyway, I digress. What I was most excited about was not the insight provided into distressing jeans, the artists that make them that way, or even the calibre of the images but the STYLE that rocks this factory.

Check it:

This factory, with all its distressing equipment, dirty benches and big bins has been given enough thought, care and attention to deserve a bright red, stylish chandelier.

I’m impressed with their style, but as they are creating high-end fashion products perhaps that’s just how they roll.

So you may have noticed in the last post I embedded an mp3 player so you could play Christopher’s songs without flicking to another page. Having waded through many MANY mp3 players, I thought it might be helpful for others to have this exploration stored somewhere.

I had a few requirements:

- Free
- Must be easily embeddable
- Must not be ugly
- No branding

After looking through a few of these players, I added a few more requirements:

- Volume adjustable
- Able to play multiple mp3s
- Able to view to the track name

The last three are features you’d expect from any player that you would use to listen to your sounds on a regular basis. I didn’t think I’d have to add them as requirements, but there you go.

The first couple don’t meet my requirements at all, but as not everyone is as fussy as I, maybe you’ll find this useful.

1. Odeo MP3 Player

This MP3 player is easily embedded. Simply copy/paste some code into the html, and point it to where the MP3 file is stored. You’ll need to define the duration for it to calculate how far into the song it is, but otherwise it’s fairly simple.

Unfortunately, its branded, will only play one track, and is not volume adjustable. Still, its pretty cute and super easy to use.

The Code:

You will need to replace ‘MP3_URL’ and ‘DURATION’ with the appropriate values.

2. Google Reader

This player is as easy to use as the Odeo Player, but better. It has volume controls, is branding free, and automatically detects the duration of the MP3 file.

Not particularly pretty though, is it. And it still only plays one track, and there is nothing to let you know what the track name is.

The Code:

You will need to replace ‘MP3_URL’ with the appropriate value.

3. Yahoo! MP3 Player

When I first came across this player, I liked what I saw. It’s customisable, so you can make it as pretty as you like. It has volume control, shows the track and has those handy next/previous arrow buttons, so you must be able to point it to multiple MP3′s, right? And be able to play multiple mp3′s?

Uhh, not quite. You can set set ONE MP3 track. If you’d like to make use of that handy multiple MP3 file functionality, you have to go to Easy Listener and have them crawl an html page looking for mp3 files. Not so handy when you don’t really want the files to be available from an html page, and you can’t point it to a directory either.

Still, it’s easily embedded. Like the other two players, you simply copy/paste the code and point it to the MP3 file. Unfortunately it’s branded, and still doesn’t play more than one track easily.

The Code:

You will need to replace ‘MP3_URL’ with the appropriate value.

4. Audio Player WordPress Plugin

Here the players start to get a little more complex, but not so much. This particular Plug In is from 1pixelout. It requires uploading a javascript audio player and flash player into the directory where the mp3′s are stored, and then it’s just a matter of copying and pasting the appropriate code into the html.

Unfortunately I’m not going to provide those files for you, but you can get them here, along with a pretty sweet tutorial and a working example. Here is a pretty picture for you, though:

While this solution is easily embedded, and is super cute (just look at the sliding action!) it’s still not what I’m looking for. While the tutorial suggests you can add more than one MP3 file, that is not actually the case, and there is still no track name. Alas.

5. Fabricio Zuardi’s Music Player

This MP3 is similar to the WordPress Plugin, in that you will need to upload some files to your server. Again,I’m not going to provide the files – you can find them here courtesy of creativetechs.com.

This player has all the features I was looking for (apart from the Not Ugly one, still, it could be worse!) and more – it allows you to upload cover art for each MP3 file. Unfortunately it doesn’t load one if none are playing, but as it’s an extra I let it slide.

The only real problem I had was that embedding it was slightly tricky. I had issues reading in the playlist.xspf file, but by changing the format to playlist.txt and altering the appropriate embedded html code it worked fine. Also, the cover art won’t show unless it is exactly 130x130px.

While this player is fine for here and now, if I ever decide to use something similar for a clients site (say, like christopher-reed.com then I think I will simply build my own player.

If anyone else comes across a nice, not-ugly MP3 player that meets my requirements let me know!