stuart test blog

Here’s a photo I took of my brother in Amsterdam waking Elliot up. I set up the notebook and webcam with Skype so that Andrew could see her and she could hear him. It was so funny listening to him call out, “Elliot….. Elliot… Elliot…”, trying to wake her up for the 10pm feed!

Schmap the online travel-guide website just got a little better… That’s because they’ve included two of my photos in their guide to the ‘Western Suburbs’ of Wellington. I’m not too sure that Hawkins Hill should be classified as being part of the Western Suburbs but it does border on the Karori Wildlife Sanctuary so perhaps that’s why.

I took the two photos on a mountain bike ride up to the radar station.

You can view my photos on if you click on the Hawkins Hill link on the Schmap site. And it looks like other Wellington bloggers are in the guide too.

It’s not the first time I’ve been published internationaly, but this is kinda cool!

Hi Stuart,

I am writing to let you know that two of your photos with a Creative Commons license have been short-listed for inclusion in the third edition of our Schmap Wellington Guide, to be published mid-August 2007.

www.schmap.com/shortlist/p=95555995N00/c=SE51022406

Clicking this link will take you to a page where you can:
i) See which of your photos have been short-listed.
ii) Submit or withdraw your photos from our final selection phase.
iii) Learn how we credit photos in our Schmap Guides.
iv) Browse online or download the second edition of our Schmap Wellington Guide.

Our submission deadline is Wednesday, August 8. If you happen to be reading this message after this date, please still click on the link above (our Schmap Guides are updated frequently – photos submitted after this deadline will be considered for later releases).

Best regards,

Luke Ritchie,
Managing Editor, Schmap Guides

I’ve been noticing this a lot more recently – Google seems to be indexing web pages in near-realtime. I posted a blog entry at about quarter past two on Windows Script Host 5.7, and less than 45 minutes later that post showed in Google’s results for “Windows Script Host 5.7” This is impressive when you consider that in the “old days” Google and other search engines used to index once a month or longer.

And if you’re wondering how I noticed that it had turned up in Google’s index so quick… I have to confess – I’m an Egosurfer and have set up alerts on Google so that I know when my name is mentioned!

Rowan Simpson just linked to this article which removes the extra step when adding feeds to Google Reader from within Firefox. Usually you’re presented with a choice to subscribe to the feed with either Google Homepage or Google Reader. If you only ever use Google Reader, this step is unnecessary and can be removed by following these instructions:

Type about:config in the address bar, and change the following two entries as follows:

browser.contentHandlers.types.2.title = Google Reader
browser.contentHandlers.types.2.uri = http://www.google.com/reader/view/feed/%s

I met Gonzo Will at the bloggers meetup last night and clicked through to his site via Mauricio’s post earlier. He’s got a great blog with some straight-up and witty writing. I especially enjoyed his post on the ups and downs of Facebook – well worth reading.

My favourite bike shop now has a website. Unfortunately, although it looks good, it has no products or pricing – just links to their suppliers. Hopefully they’ll sort this out soon, but it’s worth checking out though: www.crankworks.co.nz

They’ve also got a good blog, which is also worth subscribing to, called: crankwords

The guys at Eventfinder just added RSS feeds for favourite events and events I’m attending. So I’ve created a widget in the sidebar (look to the right*) that lists the events that I’m attending and each one links back to the Eventfinder site.

*obviously if you’re reading this in a feed reader, you’ll need to visit the site to see the sidebar.

Auckland based site, Eventfinder, have been rolling out heaps of new features recently with a focus on the social networking aspects of finding and attending events. Each registered user gets a profile page and can add friends to their network to keep up to date with what events their friends are attending.

This is a great use of social networking and they make it very easy to keep track of the events you and your friends are attending.

There are lots more features planned too, such as RSS feeds for your favourite events and the ability to publish the events you are attending directly to online calendars such as Google Calendar, as well as other social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace. You can view my profile through the link below and if you add me as a friend you’ll be able to keep up to date with the events I’m attending.

My profile: Stuart Maxwell User Profile | Eventfinder