The Kepler Track

So my big adventure in the days leading up to X Mas (right up until X Mas eve in fact) was embarking on one of the big essential New Zealand hikes (or as they call them tramps).

Here is a brief photo accompanied account of the journey... you can also get the same, yet different story, from Clare's blog.

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Day 1

We set off on the circle trail loop from this point here. The control gates. They are only one part of New Zealand's largest hydro electric generation system (this is just one of two lakes involved!).

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It was at this point that I seemed to set the trend for myself on this hike. Which was less than brilliant.

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Immediately I lost my hoodie getting out of the car, and caused a 5 minute delay to retrieve it. This made sense as I had been an idiot and just threw the thing into a loop on my pack. I didn't tie it or anything. Everything else was nice and secure and the hike could now go on with no incident... Or so I had thought.

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Somehow Clare's waterproof bundle fell off about 2 metres from where we noticed the hoodie incident. This was quite puzzling and infuriating. I had specifically tightened this bundle and my own quite tight. Yet somehow it had gotten loose. Worse yet it took us about a kilometre to realize it. So I had the opportunity of seeing the first km of the trail 3 times as I had to go and retrieve it.

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Fortunately for the rest of day 1 there were no more incidents. I was mistaken at the time in hoping there'd be no more the rest of the hike...

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So much of day 1 was us hiking through lovely kiwi forest like this. I just love it. On most levels my favourite part of the trip.

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There is a whole Traumador storyline in the works for later in 09 that was shot here during this hike, but I shall reveal nothing more for now...
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Here is Clare. Doesn't she look happy she is in the forest.

We had a lot of the forest to enjoy. Some 4ish hours of it. All the while we were heading steadily uphill.

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When we set out we knew that there'd be a lot of uphill involved on Day 1, but knowing it and walking it are totally different things...

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Finally we made it to the 3/4 marker the Limestone Bluffs. They were cool, but sadly slightly diminished due to our being slightly worn out and tired by this stage.
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As you climbed past the bluffs suddenly the forest changed into a more lichen filled Beech forest (compared to the earlier fern dominated one below).
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Despite the unrelenting upward marching the landscape continued, if not slowly, to change and thus show we were making progress. Here we finally made it into the Alpine range, and mercifully the Hut was only an hour into this.
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This was our concluding view on Day 1. We were at the top of the Te Anau area. The end of the "worst" day was over. Setting our packs down, and claiming our bunks we decided to wander off to see the cool side attraction by the Hut.
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Just 10 minutes away from the Hut was a limestone cave that you could go explore. Apparently the cave goes for about 2km, but 1.75 of that you have to crawl/squeeze through some pretty tight spaces. I was having trouble enough due to my height and beer belly with just some of the slight obstructions in the open part of the cave (though my legs being really tired didn't help either).

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I worry that the climbing around in the cave may have contributed to the next day's problems. As on the walk back to the Hut my knee started to unbearably hurt during the last 200 metres of the walk.

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Day 2

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The weather of the first day had been perfect, and we were slightly sad to see clouds on the morning of the second day.

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However within 20 minutes of resuming walking it cleared up. Revealing some amazing views. These were indeed the best part of the day, and are certainly the reason to do the trail. I still love the forests the most, but I'd already done them as day trips in "winter" (remember NZ winter is opposite to back home). The views of day 2 are the reason to do the full hike if you're thinking about going. In other words check to make sure the weather lets you see around you or there's not much point!

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A lot of the scenery of day 2 lent itself to a very Middle Earth feel. Despite New Zealand being the land of Lord of the Rings, it is often difficult to see/feel it. Due to the digital manipulation in that film, I've been to places they filmed at and you can hardly tell.

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In the movies mountain ranges were changed or added to chots, sky and plant colours were tweaked and adjusted (a process called digital grading... oh how I want it bad!) that makes them look totally different than real life, and there is typically signs of modern civilization visible (this is more cause I'm lazy and stick to easy to access sites).

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This was one of the first times and places I truly could have believed that I was suddenly transported into Middle Earth. Though not really anywhere significant (minus a few Rohanian feeling spots) other than some of the incidental locations from the fellowships travelling montage in the first film.

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Sadly for me troubles began in the first half an hour. You see despite what we thought we'd understood about the hike, the second was far from an easy flat walk. It turned out to be as much uphill as the day before. If not more!

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If you look carefully in this picture you can see the trail we're on winding up the mountain on the left. Clare and Anne are there in the foreground, for uh scale I guess...

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If you couldn't see the trail before, here is a closer zoomed shot. The tiny specks you see along the trail in the distance, those are people.

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This was the first major uphill, about a kilometre from the first Hut we left behind. It was at that point on the right side of picture where the trail disappears into the cloud that my knee COMPLETELY gave out!
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I have never had so much trouble walking in my life. The joint just refused to bend, and even when I limped it so it swung around unbent the act of bearing any weight caused me to make involuntary yelps of pain. I nearly just collapsed there, done for the day.

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That is if not for the kindness of strangers. Which I have to say immediately, if there is an activity that brings out the best in people, it would seem to be hiking. As everyone who passed me not only noted my gibbled knee, but expressed concern and a desire to assist me.

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One rather nice woman by the name of Susan went a step further. Seeing my anguish she selflessly insisted that I take her walking sticks to ease the weight on my knee. It was a grand gesture, and I was in no shape to refuse it. Though on account of the fact she too had bad knees, and I was unaccustomed to using sticks I only borrowed one for use on my bad side.

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I'm certain I wouldn't have been able to go much further without it.

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Despite the stick it was tough goings to put it lightly. Honestly the only thing making it worthwhile was every time I stopped to let my throbbing immobile knee have a break, the scenery about me was spectacular!
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Simply breathtaking.

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The only bonus of the injury, was taking plenty of breaks I used them as excuses to take TONS of pictures (990 of them in fact!). So I can roughtly reassemble most of the key points in the journey...

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The poor ladies, Clare and Anne, though. They had to take a lot of really long breaks so I could catch up.

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Which is a funny side note. In all my years of outdoor work, summer camp and tour guiding, I every session (or two weeks tour guiding) would have one of my participates suffer a leg or foot injury. I'd affectionately dub them peg leg as I helped them limp on.

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It was interesting being on the other side of the equation (though for the ladies sake I immediately recognized my condition and dubbed myself peg leg for them!).

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The thing was the trail just bloody well kept going up and up. Don't believe me look at it!

As I walked on, a new problem developed. My good knee was beginning to suffer under the burden of having to do all the work of both knees... Yet I kept trucking on.


At the point where we reached the "top" of the trail, and prepared to make our way down for the first serious distance in the day we hit this highlight. The most Lord of the Rings thing I've been too in New Zealand. I fought off the urge (which with my legs was sadly too easy) to jump under these rocks and hide from a swarm of evil crows...

Though they look the part, had I run up to get underneath them, sadly these rocks were hobbit scale. If I were in the photo bent over my back would be JUST lower the top of these outcrops! Still they fit the bill in this photo, and I stick to my guns here.


So there we were. We'd walked for 6 hours along the top ridges of 4 or 5 mountains, and to finish this day off we were going to head down. Right down. In this picture the I was as high up as that yellow point of the mountain on the right. I was going to have to walk down the equivalent distance of to nearly the lake in this photo!

There were a set of some 16 stair cases right off the bat on this downhill turn (that I neglected to take a picture of... no doubt due to the most pain I've ever experienced from my legs in my life!) that did my knees totally in. Seriously. For the rest of the trip I just couldn't bend them!

It took me till Dec. 28th before I could bend them both properly again.

Day 3

The last day proved the easy walk we'd hoped the previous day would be. Despite a few slight ups and downs overall day 3 proved a conceptually pleasant walk. The only thing against us was distance. We had the distance of both days 1 and 2 to walk, and me and Clare (though me especially) were not in prime walking condition anymore.

My knees had both ceased to function as they should. Which most of the time wasn't an issue.

Though you'd be surprised how critical bending is to going up even a small hill. Clare was having trouble going down the hills. Meaning we played a funny game of grow apart and than catch up as the up and downs of the terrain played out. The worst point of the day was climbing a naturally staircase of roots around a landslided part of the track. With the steps occasionally being nearly a metre high I was crying out in pain by the last 1/3.

Now before you think I didn't enjoy myself, I did, but this trip was the strongest case of "no pain no gain" I've ever experienced. The two were nearly equal while walking (especially on day 2).

I immensely enjoyed the company of my two hiking mates, the scenery was awe inspiring, and I got the heart warming experience of seeing the decency in people, that is often lacking in civilization, when many other hikers expressed concern over my knee (as they passed me).

At the same time I've done it, and to be honest I think its one of those kiwi experiences that I'll be more than will left done simply once!

Good Riddance 2008!

Well it's finally over. The year of constant irritation.

Gone (hopefully) is the year where every small that could go wrong went wrong.

Don't mistaken me, some stuff has gone right in 2008. I did manage to graduate with my education degree. I did make it back to Canada twice to catch up with peoples long left behind.

Yet this was also the year that saw me have immigration problems of the dumbest sort, develop a cholesterol problem, not get paid for months and months in a row, and failing to get jobs that were easily in my capabilities and experience (namely Dinosaur Park and 4 at the Otago Museum!)

Finally as though a conclusion to this year today my labtop tried to commit suicide! I was able to save the puter part and all my (mostly unbacked up!) photos, 3D files, and Traumador content. That having been said I did have to buy a $350 monitor to sub in for it now completely dead LCD screen! Meaning it is not so much a labtop as so much as a top... or is that a lab?

No worries as these pictures will attest. It is over. In with 2009 I say, and hope that it is a year of a different sort!

Being in one of the first countries in the world to experience the new year is kinda neat. I write this from 2009 while most of you are still asleep in the early morning of new year's eve.

Rhonwyn and I had a fairly mellow New Year's evening other than heading out to watch the fireworks at midnight (I write this literally seconds after getting home).This was on account of none of our friends having very concrete plans (or being out of town) which suited me and and my rather diminished mood just fine. I was in a grumpy state due to my puter's near death experience this morning (which for the record tends to sour one's mood I've discovered).

As you catch up to me in the "wonderful" world of the future I hope you all have Happy New Years, and I'll catch you on the flip side. Yo.

Hopefully this year is a lot better than the one just leaving!

One Tough Dino

This post's title is a deliberate pun. Not only were the Ankylosaurs tough due to their armoured hides, but that also makes them tough as to make in 3D!!!

After 5 times the effort of a regular Dinosaur I present the complete Euoplocephalus...


Man I'm not looking forward to posing anything to do with the neck or tail! So it probably won't make too many appearances on Traumador.

X-mas Panorama Style!

Merry X Mas!!! Which I've already had, on account of New Zealand being in the future compared to most people.

What a crazy and hectic couple weeks its been... It took the shut down of all things civilized, due to the holiday day, for things to calm down!


For starters I made it back safe(ish) and sound from my hike along the Kepler Track. Not that is wasn't without incident, but I'll be posting on the whole trek in more detail soon (probably tomorrow). Enjoy this sample pic of the hike for now.

You'll note the professional quality style panorama nature of the shot. This is the result of today's funny X-Mas story.

Rhonwyn and myself spent X-Mas day with our friends Paul and Laura. Somehow Paul got to showing me his really amazing panorama software which blew me away. When he saw how psyched I was about it, he whipped out its DVD and installed it on mine and Rhonwyn's machines. Next thing you know EVERYONE was at their respective computers for an hour making panorama shots! Not the typical X-Mas activity I know, but we all had fun and now have amazing products to show for it!

To give you an idea, here is one of my own hand made panoramas (you may recall from 2007) in which you can see the lines and lighting differences of the various photos I stuck together in photoshop.

This is the result of the new and improved program. What blows me away is the program stretches and colour balances it all perfectly, and it only takes literally 1 min per panorama! My photoshopping efforts could take up to 45 min (more due to the size of the photos I was cutting and pasting).

Anyways hope you and yours have a happy holiday, and find something equally fun to do (whether it be conventional or non-conventional)

Busy Week with... Fossils!

Well tons has been happening lately. It really deserves several posts.

The skool year just ended down here, and as a result so has work for a little while. There was a degree of poetic justice to my last teaching gig of the year. It was at the skool I started off in at the beginning of the year. So that was nice seeing all those kids again (and getting paid for it... I had planned to pop in on their last day, but this way I didn't have to). As I wasn't in their room it lead to the funniest skool yard duty I've ever had with that whole room worth of kids following and swarming around me during my rounds.

I'm leaving Salmond after two years. So packing has had to occur in the bits and pieces of time I've had throughout the week. I hate packing, but it'll be nice to be in a real place again. Hopefully I never have to live with any first year uni students again (that alone over a hundred of them).

I write this on the cusp of departing for a big hiking trip that will see me gone until X-Mas eve. Update you on that when I get back.

This week's big news has been what kept me out of the house...
I finally have gotten to head out and do some palaeo field work here in New Zealand! This was a big week for it too.

Last weekend I took one of the vice principals in town and his kids out fossil hunting, and found my first bone in New Zealand. Turns out it was from a Moa, which was cool.

This was quickly followed by correspondence from Dr. Ewan Fordyce of the Otago Museum inviting me to join him on a field excursion. It was really productive, and I learned a brand new excavation technique that I've been told by my Canadian contacts should get written up. So I might look into that, with permission from the inventor of the technique Dr. Fordyce of course.

Anyways Traumador will probably have a TON to say about the outing once we get his Drumheller exploits over and done with (which have barely begun... I need to get the whip cracking over there).

Funny story related to all this, that I have been meaning to post, but haven't managed too till now.

Like my shirt?

Well about a month ago I discovered many other people did. While out shopping for groceries at the local farmers market I was suddenly stopped at one point by a gentleman who spotted my shirt. His immediate question upon stopping me, I assumed I'd dropped something, was to ask if I'd been there in regards to my shirt. Alerting to not only that I had, but that I'd helped in field work up there we had a nice 15 minute chat about all things Burgress Shale and Cambrian.

Than about 5 minutes later I ran in Dr. Fordyce who also noted the shirt, and this conversation (as an extension of an ongoing internet exchange we'd been having for about a week previous) triggered this week's field outing.

So the lesson dress for success, I guess. Geeky success anyways!

Last thing is an update on the Ankylosaur model. Okay, to answer Peter, technically a Euoplocephalus model.

With everything going on this week I only really managed a day after my last post to work on him. This is by FAR the hardest Dinosaur model I've worked on. I've had to rework the body armour 5 times, and I'm not totally happy with this version. It is a compromise that allows me to pose him when I'm finished. I had one variant that probably would have been amazing, but unposable. Thus requiring me to remodel the whole thing if I wanted a different position.

Anyways I'd love to sit here and update you some more, but I just halfway through that last paragraph have been informed we're leaving. So catch on my return, and merry X-Mas!

The Toughest of Dinosaurs

The list of general Dinosaur types I haven't built a 3D model for is shrinking by the day.

Two particular families of plant eater have intimidated me for a long while, but I finally bite the bullet today (my first day of work less holidays). I present one completed armoured Dinosaur, and one in progress.

First off the completed Stegosaur. I had planned on an elaborate solution to the plates, but I just ended up modelling them standard and manually placing them. So I got the model done quick(er), but posing it might prove slightly annoying. Fortunately it's only half of the plates that are in moving parts.

Here it is properly lite (not posed mind you).

Here is the start of my next, and probably hardest Dinosaur type. The armoured Ankylosaurs.

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I'm happy with the top dome armour, but not sure about the bottom. I may rework some BIGGER armour for the top and swap the current dome stuff to take the place of the bottom "bubbles". Let me know what you think.

A New Record

With the winding down of the skool year down here (the last day for primary kids is next Tuesday) I'm finding I have a lot more time. Awesome.

So one of my big projects as of late is building up a much larger army/stockpile of CG Dinosaurs for use in my various projects (mostly Traumador).

One of the problems with Dinosaurs is they take a lot of time to build. Even now with a nice inventory of them to modify into missing type it takes me typically 4-6 hours just to make new textures for them.

Today I pulled off a record though. Not only did I do 2 new textures in a day (I have done this once before), but I remodelled two of my existing Dinos into two totally brand new families!

Would you believe this Ostrich mimic used to be a Velociraptor (whose shader I completed, and than I started tinkering with the model and eventually made this!)? He still needs some work, but considering how MUCH different the two are, I'm claiming a achievement for one day.

This Stegoceras (aka bonehead dino) was a big huge MEGA breakthrough. I'd been thinking how I might tackle the difficult dome on these guys. Due to all my 3Ding as of late this sort of challenge, even though doing my head in for about 30 minutes, are becoming easier and easier to solve. I'm getting intuitive with how my modelling window works, and even though it doesn't respond logically often I'm starting to instinctively know how to coax into doing what I want.

So now the only really big Dino families I'm in need of are the, very frightening, Ankylosaurs and Stegosaurs. Keep you posted (and they are coming!)

An actual interview!

Well this is the 4th or 5th time I've applied for a position at the local Otago Museum. Unlike all my other attempts I actually got an interview this time!

The position is basically just one small step up the totem pole from what I was doing at the Tyrrell, but it is exactly the sort of job I was aiming to get with my education degree.

The interview was today around lunchtime. However ever since the absolute joke that was my DPP interview results (again I quote "need more experience working with children") my confidence on these sorts of things is completely shot. I can't say how it went. Probably not as bad as I'm feeling at moment. The DPP thing has felt like an Albatross around my neck all year, and thus made me weary about this sort of stuff.

If I don't get the position it'll suck, but at least I do have a job next year to fall back on. So it won't disrupt life if they pass up on me.

In trying to keep up a positive face, how could they resist a museum veteran like me though? ;p

Man Wikipedia Needs Improving

Who knew Wikipedia could be so frustrating. All it took was one line and now my whole Saturday has become a giant side project. Granted on with very cool results, but still.

The announcement of a Palaeo Art competition in Europe with some pretty hefty prizes had me thinking of submitting a 3D piece or two into it. As one of the criteria the judges would smile on favourable are illustrations of Portuguese species I decided to apply try and use my kung fu Mosasaurs.

Which is where Wikipedia came in. In my efforts to find out if there were any Portuguese Mosasaurs (which I couldn't confirm or deny... I'm suspecting not, but does anyone know for sure?) I hit a sentence that really pissed me off.

Many of the 'dinosaur' remains found on New Zealand, a volcanic island chain that was never connected to any of the continents, are actually mosasaurs and plesiosaurs, another group of Mesozoic predatory marine reptiles.

You'll note the highlighted and italicized section. What they were saying about most Kiwi Mezesoic fossils being marine reptiles is completely true. However the author thought they were being clever by hypothesising why. They'd heard New Zealand was volcanic, and as it was an island it must be like say Hawaii. Makes sense right? Sure, except they're completely WRONG!

Now I'll admit I on occasion try to connect dots like this myself, but typically I'll have tried to find the answer first if I'm putting it up on the web. This person clearly didn't bother to look it up at all!

If they had they'd have found out about this...

The thing is New Zealand was very MUCH attached to the other continents before it became a separate island "chain". In fact it was connected to two of them! Australia and Antarctica. When it originally separated from them it was a continent itself, Zealandia as geologists call it, which was half the size of Australia!

However due to Zealandia's relative thin continental crust it sank shortly after separation, and most of it sank with the exception of what would become modern New Zealand and the few other surrounding islands.

Now I was so infuriated by the Mosasaur sentence I actually went into Wikipedia and edited it. So you won't find that version. I was gracious enough to leave the original sentence minus the offending aside (which wasn't needed anyway). Now that I've seen how easy it is to change things on Wiki I'm going to be a lot more doubtful about stuff I read on there!

However I was left with both a residual sting of annoyance, and a need to show off my knowledge of this apparently specialized geologic history. Especially given no one had ever illustrated it before!

I'd been wanting to learn how to do this anyway.

I was going to create a realistic continent!

The only reference I had of Zealandia was this topographic map.

If you weren't able to make out which parts were Zealandia here it is outlined.

Through some photoshopping of a high resolution globe of the modern Earth I was able to steal bits and pieces of various modern continents to make a pretty convincing ancient Zealandia. The great thing is though we know roughly what its outline was, no one can tell me I got the details wrong. The only thing we know is that it was a very flat place, and that modern New Zealand's mountains are a pretty recent geologic event.

As this creating land from "nothing" technique I'd thought of a few months ago (but never tried) worked in the first go I decided to take some more time to throw a few comparative pics together.

I was going to get around to trying this anyway, just hadn't planned on today, as Traumador will soon be going into more New Zealand palaeo stuff. With a possible "trip" of sorts where he might explore it closer...

Let me know what you think.

We go way back...

So long before I worked at the Tyrrell Museum (though I'd always dreamed I would... just not the way it happened), I'd been visiting it nearly every year.
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Here is the ONLY photo of me at the museum pre-2003. Despite this lack of photographic evidence I had been there throughout the years (it helps that its only a 1.5 hour drive from cowtown).

Though there are few photos of me there, I still accumulated evidence I'd been there. Trace fossils as it were. These are two pins still in my pin collection.

There are of course many stories and memories I could relay. Frankly I'm a little out of steam today (I actually had marking to do... remember I'm a freaking sub! Since when am I supposed to do marking?!?).