“The Point England Walk is approximately 11.25kms long (a four hour walk) and is intended for all ages, consisting of easy strolling pathways with surfaces suitable form normal walking shoes.”

Michelle & Brian discovered the Pt England walk. Reconnaissance was required. So Saturday afternoon was an epic exploration of Auckland City’s eastern suburbs, parks, beaches, waterways, wildlife, culture and commerce.

We kind of missed Glover Park on the way in, but followed the route through Churchill Park, explored the Tahuna Torea wildlife reserve with the sand-spit at the mouth of the Tamaki river. Through Wai-o-Taiki nature reserve, and Pt England reserve where Kilikiti was being played. Into G.I. town centre to purchase icecreams, up Apirana reserve to the ridge and St Helier’s Bay Rd. Then back down through St Helier’s and Glendowie, through Glover Park this time where the English style of cricked was being played. Out to the car which we’d parked on Cliff Rd near Ladies’ Bay.

Burkhard’s page
City Council page (the name of the walk has changed to Point-to-Point Walkway)

I’m writing this using my new toy, a Lenovo X200s. Which is lightweight ultra portable ThinkPad.

As it doesn’t have a CD ROM drive I installed Linux using the the livecd-iso-to-disk method described here. I’d used the same method to install Linux on Dad’s Eee Box (something I haven’t had a chance to blog about yet).

With Fedora 12 due out in 9 days I’m going to be reinstalling soon, but didn’t want to wait that long. I’ve already had to wait 6 days for it to be delivered. It would have been good to have had it in time to take to the Kiwi PyCon, but oh well, have it now with plenty of time to set it all up before LinuxConf.

I will write more about it later, but for now I’ll just say everything I’d read in the reviews seems true. It is a well made little machine. Good quality to be sure, but compared to my old T61 Thinkpad it feels quite plasticky. Part of that will just be the ultra light weight, but also as others have said: the battery seems a bit loose,, the keyboard feels a bit soft, and the escape key has a bit of give with a click when it is pressed hard. Still I’m very happy. I’ve, perhaps, found a tool to use in my dream of tramping and coding in New Zealand’s bush . Just need the solar panels, and to solve the internet connection problem.

Day#2 of Kiwi PyCon notes.

Day#1 of Kiwi PyCon notes.

Flew down to Christchurch, where I will be attending the Kiwi Python Conference. Fantastic day and beautiful scenery on the way down. Ended up at the Twisted Hop which was also hosting the pre-Conference drinks, but with Dave and Andi. Andi was hassling me about there being a “whole conference just for a scripting language”, but then both he and Dave admitted they both do a bit of Python and had been thinking of attending some of the sessions, but it is now sold out.