Yesterday in Electronics, the teacher was updating the school websites snow day page. This was so that when it snowed, the principal can ring him up and get him to put the page up so people know what is going on. This was when I first heard that we were expecting Snow today. The last time we had snow in Dunedin was 23rd July 2007, this exact time last year.

When I woke up in the morning, there had been no snow at ground level. There was a light dusting on some of the hills around Dunedin, but not enough for school to be closed, or delayed. I was a little bumed because I would have enjoyed a Snow Day. Throughout the day, it was cold and windy, but it didn’t look like there could be snow.

well to my surprise, during the afternoon the weather was starting to turn. I went on through my last classes as per usual and as I left to go home, there was a little bit of snow fall. It was not much, and it quickly passed. Then later on when I got off the bus, it started to snow again, this time a big more. Although it didn’t last very long either, but more than the previous falling. A fair bit later, it started to snow pretty kinda heavy. I managed to get the snow fall on video. This lasted a reasonably long amount of time, but the snow didn’t settle

On another note, this was the first time I have tried out Flickr for video. I still think that Flickr should be for photos only. Although this case could be an exception, where a photo wouldn’t be quite the same as a short video. I suppose short clips you have taken with your camera are alright. The video service is pretty good, nothing revolutionary, but it ties in with Flickr pretty well. I may consider using it again for video where a photograph just wouldn’t show what a video could.

Despite yesterdays awful weather, both of the year 13 Geography classes went on a fieldtrip down to the beach. The purpose of this trip was to see human interference on coastal processes. This is important because the information we will collect and the things we will see will help us with an internal assessment later on in the term.

So anyway, when I woke up that morning, I could hear the rain hitting the roof of the house. I was a little disappointed because I had hoped for better weather because I would rather stay warm and dry than cold and wet. I was sure they wouldn’t cancel the trip so I went up school prepared, with pens, paper, lunch and a camera. As I got to school, the rain had settled, although it looked like it could start again at anytime. Regardless, down at the beach was going to be wet and icky.

Everyone got on the bus, and we were off on the trip. Our first stop was down to the Dunedin City Council where we would meet with a lady that will talk about Coastal Dunedin. Oddly, she was Australian and had only been here doing the job for 5 weeks, although she did seem to have a fair bit of knowledge. She talked and there was a slideshow on the projector, but I couldn’t see that. I did have a look and touch of some plants that are down there.

After that, we started heading down to the beach area. But before we went there, we stopped outside McDonalds for people to get (and eat) lunch. It was only quarter to 11 so it was a very early lunch. Me and my mates decided to walk down the road a little bit and get Burger King instead. I got a BK Chicken Value Meal. It was really good, much much better than anything McDonalds could offer.

Then it was time to go down to the beach. We went down the St Clair beach and walked along it. We looked at the water and what the beach looked like. Everyone took heaps of pictures so we could look at them and refer to them later on. During this walk, the weather was starting to get worse. It didn’t pour down, but it was starting to drizzle. We then got back into the bus and drove further along the beach. At this point, it was raining. The teacher decided that we would stay in the bus and not go outside and do what was originally planned.

Driving around for 2 hours was interesting but started to get boring. Then we got back to school and I went home. I don’t know if it is a good thing or a bad thing that the weather was bad, but at least we didn’t have to go out in the rain and get cold and wet. If it wasn’t raining, we would have been collecting data of the beach such as measurements, calculations, sketches and pictures of the beach, so I suppose we got of that work. The trip wasn’t that bad because it meant a day of school. I can’t wait for the next Geography fieldtrip later on in the year, we’re going to Queenstown!

Geography Beach Fieldtrip Photographs are at http://flickr.com/photos/yum9me/sets/72157605209611191/

One of the things that Vista comes with is the sidebar. The sidebar can be filled with all sorts of widgets… erm… I mean gadgets, that can do various things. I have eight gadgets currently on my sidebar and they each have a use for being there. Here I am going to tell you what gadgets I use, as well as providing links to where you can download them from. So here is my list from top to bottom.

The gadget at the top of my sidebar is called Simple Date. I tell you now, it is far from simple. It can do a lot, not only tell you the date, but also the weather and temperature. It also has buttons so you can open task manager, and even shutdown and restart your computer with it. This gadget can do a bit more than what I have just said, I just don’t use half the functions it has. I only use it for the basic time and date, as well as the weather. The gadget is also highly customizable, to the way the type is displayed, the the background and colours.

Multi Meter Dual Core is an essential gadget that every sidebar user should have. Basically what it does it tells you your CPU usage, as well as your RAM usage. It is very interesting to see how much of your computers processor and memory you are using as well as knowing if you are using too much memory or if your processor is doing a heavy task.

Is really useful, and good to know how much hard drive space you have used and how much you have left. Multi HDD Meter is the gadget that can display this information. Keeping track of how much hard drive space you are using is essential so you know when you need to clear space for new data, or possibly even require more space. Having this easy to read indicator on your sidebar makes keeping track of hard drives simple.

This is another must have gadget, but this is for notebook users only. It is Some Life, and it shows information about how much charge your battery has. Not only does it show you that, it also shows you what the battery is doing, if it is being used, if it is charging, and when your battery is full and not being used. It is much easier just looking at the sidebar than clicking the battery icon in the taskbar.

Uptime Meter is a fun little gadget that displays your computers uptime. It shows your computer current uptime, your record uptime, and even your total uptime. It also has a clock on the gadget. This has no real use but it is cool too see how long you can keep your system up without restarting it (or before it crashes. )

If you connect to the internet using wireless, then iStat Wireless (Mod) is a must have gadget for you. It displays your signal strength in a graphical form, as well as showing the strength percentage. It also has the name of the access point you are connected to, and the IP address of the computer in the network, and even your external IP address.

This is a another non-essential gadget but it is always exciting to countdown to a certain date, and Count Down does that for you, right on your sidebar. You tell it the name and date of an even and it will count down the days, hours, minutes and seconds till that point in time. This could be your birthday, a holiday, or even the date of that next episode of your favourite television show, Heroes :p

These are all the gadgets I use, except one, and that is the analogue clock gadget that comes with the sidebar. It is nice to have an alternative view of the time form the old digital display that computers do. The top five gadgets come from the same place and all have the same (or similar) skins as each other so the gadgets look like they belong in the sidebar together, which makes it look more polished and nice. Do check out these gadgets and tell me how you like them, or if you have a better gadget that functions the same as on of the ones here.

Yesterday evening I had planned to watch the lunar eclipse. The 4 days building up to Tuesday were perfect, no clouds and warm weather. On the day of the event, the weather changes, rain and clouds! 30 minutes before the event I went outside to look for the moon. Lucky for me, I could see the glowing ball in the sky. I got the camera set up and took a few pre-eclipse photos of the moon.

Just before the time it was going to start, the clouds came in I couldn’t see the moon! About 20 minutes later the clouds cleared and i saw the moon, being slightly shadowed. I was hopeful of seeing the spectacular event. But no, thing couldn’t turn out right, the clouds came back. Why do the might gods smite me?

As time went by, the clouds didn’t clear. I though I was going to miss out. Just before I was going to call it a day and hit the sack, I looked out the window to see a faint red glow in the sky. It was the moon. As I watched, I could see the clouds around it clear and could see a clear sky, full of stars. I tried to get a picture but I couldn’t hold the camera steady. I needed a tripod. I didn’t get the picture I was looking forward to taking but I guess there is always next time, in 10 years or so.

Here are three pictures I took. Better luck next time.

• Pre-Eclipse
• Shadowed Moon
• Blurry Red Lunar Eclipse

For other people’s pictures of this amazing event, go to the Lunar Eclipse Flickr Group

• Lunar Eclipse - Aug 28th 2007 (Pool)