With the good luck of being laid off ;) and the wonderful support of Maaike (practically pushing me out of the house to enjoy this month off) I decided to do the Hump Ridge track. I’d originally planned on just doing the St. James for the n’th time, but, Maaike said why not try the hump ridge, so, I did :)

It’s a really long way down to the start (about 9 hours of driving) so I decided to split it in half and head down the coast to Dunedin and catch up with my old flatmate Mark Tynan.

Lovely drive down past omaru and stopped off at Moeraki for a quick walk on the beach

Got there around dinner time with a bottle of wine and some chocolates to add to the mix. Stéphanies dad sister and brother were in town too, so I got to dust off some very very rusty French.

They’ve been busy prepping the place for a build. They’ve got in a house-by-flatpack from Eastern Europe and are planning on doing a bunch of the work themselves. Mark even bought a digger and learned how to use it. Amazing.

It was a really lovely evening and chance to catch up. Just wonderful.

I’ve been working for vibrant planet for almost 2 years. It has been quite the insight into Startup life. I really really enjoyed working for the company. The team was excellent, we were working on Climate change related tech (with a wildfire resiliency focus). It was using Elixir & Phoenix some tech I really wanted to get into, and it was fully remote and well paid…. a really excellent mixture!

Unfortunately, it was decided that all the development was going to be on-shored into the US. This was, as you might imagine, extremely unsettling. It’s a very weird time out there at the moment, Trump and his tariffs and just generally volatile nature (Iran war now). AI coming in and upending pretty much the entire jobs landscape, and definitely for developers. I have many friends who are out of work recently and the competition is fierce for those positions. It’s hard.

I got really lucky however, a friend was leaving a startup that he co-founded and which was bought out by TradeMe, so, his position became free and I was deemed a good enough fit that I skipped through the interviewing process. Really feeling incredibly lucky and privileged at the moment. Now I just need to actually deliver.

I have a few weeks to work out, then a blessed month off between jobs, and then start the new one towards the end of March. Very lucky.

This weekend we headed up towards Arthur’s pass to camp for the weekend.

We had pretty decent weather (this summer has mostly been a washout). There’s a lovely circuit the cass lagoon which we just did the first part of. Once you’re up towards the saddle there are some tarns up there and we’d been told there were some decent camping spots, so off we went.

It was a decent old hike up hill for Anna. Approx 600m of elevation gain and some boggy parts to navigate. She did really well and basically didn’t complain (the second day was a slightly different affair, but, on the whole really good!).

We had to look about for a good camping spot. Down by the tarns 43°03’01.0″S 171°35’49.1″E was where we setup.

It was a lovely evening, just great to be out in the fresh air. Maaike was extremely brave and went for a dip, and Anna went in too. A little bit too much cold-wind blowing about for me to jump in too. Maybe next time ;)

Maaike made me a Dutch Apple pie for my birthday. It was delicious as ever

We’ve had miserable weather of late, which put a slight dampener on some of the buskers festival (but only for a few days). Anna totally enjoyed getting on stage and doing her pukana.

A couple of trips to willowbank where we had “El Gregore”‘s magic show. Always a firm favourite.

I’ve started reading “Swallows and Amazons” to Anna, and she’s totally enjoying it. My Aunt Mary who works in a bookstore keeps an eagle eye out for any in the series I don’t have. This one – “We didn’t mean to go to sea”, well, it so happens that the boat in that was Arthur Ransome’s own boat, and it’s still available to be sailed on, and it’s close to where the family gathering is in the UK later on this year. I’m hoping to get to sail on it (nothing set in stone yet however). There’s a really lovely video if you have ten minutes to spare. For some reason brought a tear to my eye (but I’m a terrible softy)

p.s. I’ve migrated to a new server, let me know if you notice anything weird.

There was an exhibit of Banksy in town.  I love his stuff.  No idea if this was “sanctioned” or not, I suspect not but it’s hard to know.  Anyway, it was very cool seeing a bunch of his stuff in one place.  I particularly liked some of the quotes, including:

To not realise you have power is the first step to losing it

My colleague Janet (our principle engineer) was in town visiting. She stayed at ours for a week, we did some walks, went to Banksy, played a bunch of games (she loves games). We played wingspan a couple of times. She won with the best score I’ve ever seen (on her second play!). Probably a reason she’s the principle engineer and worked at Facebook (and many other places) as an engineer. We also went to Hinewai Reserve which is this lovely spot where the guy just basically bought a bunch of land and just let it regenerate (i.e. just left it alone!). It’s lovely now and free to visit. There’s a video here if you want to learn more.