It’s Friday morning and before leaving for Te Aroha I decided to update WordPress to 2.6.2.  This has broken my theme .  There is WiFi at the motel, maybe I’ll get it fixed down there.  Not going to do anything more on it right now, so you’re stuck with the default theme.

I’m going to take Friday and Monday off work. Going down to Te Aroha on Friday, to do some walks there.

I seriously looked at renting a camper van. The best deal I could find was with Britz, but it was still too much. $95/night for 5 days minimum, for a camper van with a shower and toilet. So like a motor home, but hopefully not as slow. $95/day seemed ok .. for something I’ve never done and have always been interested in doing.

But then insurance is a killer. There’s a $7500 bond and they want to take it off your credit card before you leave and my credit card only goes to $2000. To remove the excess off I’d have to pay an extra $38/night + $50, taking the whole thing up to $715.

So, I decided instead to book a motel unit for $80/night. I would have taken the tent but it is going to pour down. (Heavy rain warnings for Friday). A unit will be snug and dry, and it has broadband.

I’ve heard though, that they need the motor homes brought back north, so you can just about get them for free if you go one way in that direction. I’ll have to look into that later.

This blog post was extracted from a GTalk conversation. I should write a Talk2Blog plugin for WordPress to do this automagically.

Moonworts or Satin Pods
Scientific Name: Lunaria annua
Other Common Names: Annual Honesty, Honesty, Honesty Plant, Money Flower, Money Plant, Moonwort (though Botrychium lunaria is also called Moonwort), Satin Flower, Silver Dollar Plant, Silver Plate, Tuinjudaspenning, White Satin Flower. Honesty can be bought for $2.50 a packet.

Sir Keith Park
Sir Keith Park, born in Thames NZ, Air Vice Marshal led RAF No. 11 Group responsible for the fighter defence of London during the Battle of Britain.

Irish Political Parties
Fianna Fáil’s name is traditionally translated by the party into English as “Soldiers of Destiny”, although a literal translation is “Soldiers of Fál” (a pre-Christian personification of Ireland).
Fine Gael, means “Family of the Irish” or “Tribe of the Irish”.
Sinn Féin, is Irish for “ourselves” or “we ourselves”.

The Golden Ratio
Two quantities are in golden ratio, if the ratio between the sum of those quantities and the larger one is the same as the ratio between the larger one and the smaller. The golden ratio is approximately 1.6180339887 represented by the Greek letter phi φ (though phi can stand for other things as well).

Dr Pepper
Dr. Pepper was invented by Charles Alderton, a young pharmacist working in Morrison’s Drug Store in Waco, Texas. At first the drink was called by customers “the Waco”. Wade Morrison (owner of the store) named the drink “Dr. Pepper”. The Dr Pepper Museum says “the origin for the name is unclear”. Wade Morrison had worked for a Dr. Charles Pepper in Virginia who seems likely to be the inspiration of the name. One story says Wade Morrison was in love with the doctor’s daughter, but Snopes says the daughter would have been only 8 when Mr. Morrison worked for Dr Pepper. Another story is Dr. Pepper was a customer of the drug store. Yet another urban legend claims that it was called “Dr Pepper” because it tastes like medicine.

New Zealand
Abel Tasman named New Zealand as “Staten Landt” (after the Staten-Generaal?). The name New Zealand originated with Dutch cartographers, who called the islands Nova Zeelandia, after the Dutch province of Zeeland. No one is certain exactly who first coined the term, but it first appeared in 1645 and may have been the choice of cartographer Johan Blaeu. British explorer James Cook subsequently anglicised the name to New Zealand. There is no connection to the Danish island Zealand. There are also a couple of English hamlets called New Zealand.

Thirteen Colonies who declared independence

1. Province of New Hampshire
2. Province of Massachusetts Bay
3. Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations
4. Connecticut Colony
5. Province of New York
6. Province of New Jersey
7. Province of Pennsylvania
8. Delaware Colony
9. Province of Maryland
10. Colony and Dominion of Virginia
11. Province of North Carolina
12. Province of South Carolina
13. Province of Georgia