Malcolm's Blog
Rugby sevens parade
Rugby sevens parade today so it must be summer... at last. Huge turnout again with office workers scrambling for giveaways. Matt resplendent in his kilt rattled his way on the side drum ahead of the Pump girls - all credit to him, he was totally focussed on his drumming!
You can't beat Wellington on a good day
There is no better place to be on a good day and that is what Saturday was! Us Wellingtonians seem to make the most of any fine weather and this "summer" especially! For about 750 this meant an ocean swim at Oriental Bay and Gabrielle was among them, resplendent in a pink cap. 
Starting in the third wave of swimmers, the goal was to get among the yellow caps ahead and go as close to the one hour mark as possible. Always a strong swimmer, she of course made good on these, finishing in around 58 minutes! Well done Gabrielle!!! It seems that next year it might be a yellow cap, although the pink does go well with the wetsuit...
Anxious to make the most of the day in the face of an approaching southerly storm, Andrew and I made for Makara Peak on our bikes and completed a circuit of Koru, Sally Alley, Missing Link, Aratihi, Zac's, Varley's and home via Wahine. A good, hot, dusty summer ride and about 25 degrees and a beer well earned!
New web site
I now have a presentable web site, thanks to Matthew and the open source community who have developed Silverstripe - the content management system that I use. Things have come a long way since I set up my old site and had to wrangle HTTP to make it all work. Quite frankly it wasn't worth the effort of maintaining it and like many sites it lay stagnating for longer than I care to admit. A really cool feature of Silverstripe is the ability to render photographs that are stored on a flickr site into galleries. Have a look here.
Close but no cigar
I missed out on landing the Manhire Prize - as the governator said - "I'll be back". Consolation comes in the form of lunch at Logan Brown with the birthday clubbers Annette and Jane.
Also on a positive note is young Andrew scoring an analyst position at the Ministry of Fisheries. Woot! as they say on vorb. Fantastico!
Manhire prize shortlist!
Well fancy that - I have made the Manhire Creative Science Writing shortlist (non-fiction). This is good news as it is a step towards a free lunch at Logan Brown with Annette and Jane, my fellow goal-setter lunch afficionados. Astronomy title was always going to be a bit of a challenge, but the research was great fun. Winner will be announced on 18 November. I think I said something about a bottle of Veuve Cliquot if I land the big one. You can read my entry here. Thanks to those of you who have encouraged me in my writing!