Ticketing 2

Posted on 15 January 2013 by SkepticaLee

Hen’s teeth. Screenshot from Jan 17, showing three (!) free places on the Milford. Ready, set, go!

Well, it turned out opodo had its disadvantages after all. As I suspected, there was no Rail&Fly for the return leg; half an hour of telephone queue was necessary to order one, with a special “late fee” added. All in all, R&F might have advantages for the traveller and the environment, but in practice it sucks massively, and a discounted train ticket for the journey to Frankfurt and an ordinary ticket for the return are not much more expensive. As some research on opodo’s booking system shows, R&F can be automatically booked for a “simple” return flight, but as soon as there is a leg outside Germany (as in a Y-flight), R&F is no longer available for subsequent legs, even if they do end here. Hey, no worries, the internet was only invented yesterday, right? Continue reading →

Kiwi II, 2009

Posted on 25 December 2012 by SkepticaLee

Weka dietary education: Milford Track

The second journey in the late summer of 2009 started with my arrival in Auckland on Sunday, February 1. After picking up a small camper, a Toyota Lucinda, which was named “Juicy Lucy”, I visited my school friend Tom and his family, then it was by way of Kawhia to New Plymouth where I made my first attempt at climbing Egmont. A couple of nights at the old motorcamp in Stratford to discover the Forgotten World and make a second – still unsuccessful – attempt at Egmont from the south and then on to Wanganui and Waikanae to visit Don and Sally Matheson who were giving me their holiday house for a couple of days in March. Continue reading →

Battle of the Bulge

Posted on 21 December 2012 by SkepticaLee

Original. In particular, straight lines will be curved under distortion.

A common form of photographic distortion is barrel distortion and its counterpart pincushion. Straight lines such as architectural features become curved and this is distracting, not only for viewing buildings, but also in portraiture, where the barrel distortion will easily make you 5 or so kgs overweight. Photographers will compensate for this by using the zoom to reduce the amount of distortion (and this, as it turns out, is true, although not the whole story). Continue reading →

Panoramas and an Unsuspected Solution

Posted on 18 December 2012 by SkepticaLee

Canon provides its cameras with software that is intended to cause baldness. ZoomBrowser EX is an insidious piece of software that plays around with the EXIF data on the camera, and PhotoStitch will join up your panoramic images like magic. Yeah, right. And then another 19 (nineteen) programs (!) install themselves on your machine, none of which have any use whatsoever. Continue reading →

Bracketing

Posted on 14 December 2012 by SkepticaLee

A major drawback of digital photography, and one that I have been aware of all along, is the lack of dynamic range, the difference between how dark is going to finish up as black, and how light will result in pure white. The closer these two values are, the greater the contrast, but there will be no detail visible in light or dark sections. The eye and its brain have an extraordinary dynamic range which allows us to see details both in the very dark and the very bright at the same time. Continue reading →

Kiwi I, 1974-75

Posted on 7 December 2012 by SkepticaLee

Author, ca. 1976

The first trip to New Zealand was my first trip overseas at all, and my first flight. In those days passports were not necessary for travelling across the ditch (even if it meant it was a little tricky getting through the international airport that Tullamarine surely already was). From Tuesday, December 10, 1974 to Friday, January 31, 1975, starting in Christchurch we completed an almost figure-of-eight of the two islands. Continue reading →

Playing with Food

Posted on 4 December 2012 by SkepticaLee

Companions true

Long distance tramping is always challenging when it comes to balancing taking everything that you need with taking only what you need. I have a couple of formulas that I use to calculate how much food I need to take, but there is a more pressing question when most of the food you take is dehydrated in nature: How much fuel do you need to carry to cook it. My favourites of rice, instant noodles and surprise peas still need to be softened for their nutritional value to become available. Continue reading →

Booking the Flights

Posted on 30 November 2012 by SkepticaLee

Last week’s goal was to book flights from somewhere close by (perhaps Frankfurt) to Auckland, with a week’s stopover before heading on to Christchurch and returning to Frankfurt from there. Continue reading →

Travel Diaries

Posted on 28 November 2012 by SkepticaLee

“My Trip” Diary 1974-1978

For a long, long time, I have kept travel diaries. The oldest one still in my possession is a dedicated travel pocket diary (9 cm x 15 cm, 90 leaf, left: cover, “My Trip”; right: excerpt) given to me by my grandmother in 1974 to record the 74/75 two-month New Zealand round tour in. Continue reading →

Green Light

Posted on 24 November 2012 by SkepticaLee

Koru – the fern leaf spiral

The go-ahead for the new adventure came late last week, after a couple of weeks of prelegal danse macabre. Anyhow, it’s there now, and the final preparations can begin in earnest.

For begun they have well before this time last year, when I was originally planning this trip. There have been plans and preparations, and prices to compare and check again. One of the most comprehensive questions covered was that of photography, although that was no longer a question of what camera to take, but rather how to deal with all of the eventualities that hacking the current set of three cameras has brought with it. Continue reading →

Kiwi IV 2013

Voyage to Te Wai Pounamu

Category Archives: New Zealand