South Island Photos Part 3/3

Dunedin
Originally uploaded by tkw954

I finally uploaded the last of my photos from our South Island trip. Click the photo to view them. This is the Dunedin Municipal Chambers.

North American Driving Times

As a follow-up to "Driving Times in NZ", I am pleased to present the equivalent chart for North America, centred on Saskatoon.



Notice that it takes over 80 hours to get to some parts of Newfoundland and Labrador. Also notice that Google seems to think that it's possible to drive from the middle of the Pacific.


View Larger Map

Here is a comparison of the North American and New Zealand driving time charts, using the same map and shading scales.



Be sure to click the images to see the high-resolution charts.

More South Island Photos

Daredevil
Originally uploaded by tkw954

I've uploaded the second batch of my photos from our trip to the South Island, including Kea, Kaka, Seals, and Amy doing her "Danger Stick Figure" impression.

Driving Times in NZ

After our trip around the South Island, I got to thinking about how long it takes to get everywhere in this small country. So I made this map of the driving time from our house in Auckland to everywhere in the country. The driving times come from a Matlab script I wrote that queries Google maps, and the mapping functions are from M_Map for Matlab, using shoreline data from GSHHS. Click it for higher resolution.

Succulents

Succulents, originally uploaded by Amy Templeman.

If anyone knows what this plant is, please let me know.

Also, check out my flickr pics.

I'd blog about something interesting, but I'm not very interesting at the moment. Beach, beach, more beach, sewing, watching TV shows online, football, netball, cooking and cleaning. Oh ya, and working for 8 hours a day. That's all I've been up to.

I did, however, find an interesting website for those interested in laser cut designs. It's a NZ company called Ponoko. Check it out.

Stop Motion

Here are some stop motion videos I shot this week. The first is the opening of a Pōhutukawa flower. This is from a flowering tree endemic to New Zealand. Their bright red flowers are everywhere this time of year, so Kiwis associate them with Christmas. You'll have to excuse the choppiness, this was filmed over a number of days and my camera's batteries needed to be charged periodically.


The next is a video of a sunset from our front balcony.