ALIKATNZ.COM

All the wellywood peeps vanish from IRC in suspicious circumstances:

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This is a Grumpy Alikat

Last Tuesday evening on my drive home, I saw a large plume of black smoke on the horizon and lots of fire trucks heading in the general direction of Mt. Wellington. As it happens, Corporate Consumables was engulfed in fire.  Being a geek and having a loose association with the emergency services, I snapped a pic of this smoke plume and twitpic’d it hoping that my firemen friends could give me the skinny on what was happening. I was hoping like hell it wasn’t a friends business premises which was in the same vicinity.

In the next 20 minutes it took me to drive home, it got retweeted a couple of times here and here among others. But you could imagine my horror on getting home, I checked out the NZ Herald website, and my photo was already on there with someone elses name taking credit for the photograph.

I saw red. I saw more than red. I had that red mist that racing drivers talk about. I immediately emailed the NZ Herald telling them that it was my photo and they should be crediting me, not the person who emailed it in. To their credit, they quickly fixed it up and apologized. Nice considering it wasn’t their fault. Read more »

On Wednesday night, I attended the Vodafone Get Smart event at their HQ in Auckland. Traffic was a nightmare, but I got there on time. I have a thing about being late. I commence anxiety attacks if running just slightly late. I was offered a free car park by Hamish Sansom via Twitter. According to his twitter profile he’s the head honcho for mobile data at Vodafone. Nice. I found my way through the carpark, to the elevator and then to reception. They had name tags, but I didn’t. But of note, they had a name tag there for someone who I knew was attending the event in Christchurch. I could have stolen it and pretended to be Andy Ghozali for the evening. But I’m the wrong gender for that. Never to mind. They made me a label. Read more »

Ok. Its been a wee while since my last post, but I thought this would be something worth blogging about. I haven’t ceased in my quest of geekdom, instead, I have been more involved in it than ever. And I can blame certain people, but they won’t be named here.

1. Twitter

Fantastic time waster. Brilliant. But I found out how really handy it can be today. I was having some trouble signing up to Vodafone Broadband Lite (more on that further down) and getting no where with customer services. So I twittered a tweet to @vodafoneNZ and the lovely man there asked me for a DM (Direct Message) with my mobile number and within 5 minutes, I was sorted. This is verses the 20 minutes I had ripping my hair out with their customer services desk the old fashioned way.

2. Dandy Warhols

Dear Vodafone, please change your hold music. They were a one hit wonder and 10 minutes of the same song, Bohemian Like You, is too much and drove me near suicidal. Thank you.

3. Vodafone Broadband Lite

I have noticed an increase in my mobile broadband data useage. I am lucky enough to have a nice Nokia 6121, while not the coolest phone, and lacking QWERTY sophistication, it does the few things I want. Lately I have noticed more and more, I rely on Mobile Broadband. Be it accessing my facebook page while I’m at the racetrack, using IRC while travelling to Hamilton (NOT while driving… ), or uploading funny photos to Flickr. Yes. I have become so internet addicted that I can get it all on my mobile.

Now until Vodafone brought along this nifty new plan of 100mb of Data for $10 a month, I was using their casual useage plan of $1 / Day, limited to 10mb. This was all good, but I rarely use 10mb a day, but I use my mobile interwebs most days a month, resulting in bills of around $20/month for mobile data. At least now I have the added bonus of not having to pay for expensive hotel data when on the road as well. Doubly awesome!

So from now until eternity, or whenever I buy a laptop with bluetooth, I will have to ensure I travel with my Nokia Data Cable!

4. Firefox

How I lived so long without this browser, I have no idea. I have a fantastic add on called ‘Yoono‘ which sits on the left hand side of my browser window and updates me with new tweets and facebook happenings like pokes and status changes. I can also use MSN Messenger on it, check and read my gmail and it also gives me my RSS feeds – something I was looking at useing to keep up with the play. I haven’t had a look at any other Firefox addons, but I will soon.

5. Ubuntu on the Acer Laptop

I took the plunge and gave Ubuntu its own 10gb partition on my Vista “powered” laptop. I put powered in quotes as running vista, it is a complete dog. Its very slow and painful and whilst I disable most of the pretty vista features, it was not designed for Vista. But just for booting up for an internet surf, quick internet check, Ubuntu serves me just fine. I’m still attached to MS Office tho. Read No. 6

6. Kudos to Warehouse Stationery

I got a flier in my local paper last week from the Papakura Warehouse Stationery. $49.00 to buy a copy of Microsoft Office Home & Student Edition. Limited to 15 copies only. So I was there before the store opened. I got one of those 15 copies and am now very chuffed to finally own a legit copy of Office. I will save up now to buy a legit copy of Outlook.