This weekend we managed to get away from ChCh and off tramping. It was certainly one of the more adventurous tramps that I’ve done, and certainly just with Maaike. It was off to a place I’d heard quite a bit about – Brass Monkey Biv. It’s here

We parked the van at the St. James carpark (and hoped we’d see it on return – never like parking there). Up the ridge, along the ridge – following the route in the map above. We made one, slightly wrong route choice and went down a gully that was a little steeper than it needed to be (see route in red in pic below)

Still, it wasn’t too bad, and we picked our way carefully. Still, not optimum.

It was about a 6 1/2 hour walk for us to make the hut. Mist was threatening to come in all the time, but our navigation was good (no tracks to follow this time!), and we had a tent anyway just in case everything went to pot. If you look very carefully (and imaginatively) you can see the biv in the middle of this pic – it was a welcome sight.

Lovely place to spend an evening. The mist was coming in all the time though, and we woke up to pretty thick fog. It cleared up enough, and I think our navigation would have been up to the challenge anyway, but it does make me think about getting a GPS and an PLB (personal locator beacon – ping a satellite and they send a chopper your way). I’m all for personal responsibility, but I’m also for stacking the odds in your favour.

Anyway, mist.

And then it was out to the road where we had to wait about 5 minutes before getting a lift from some venture scouts coming back from Nelson!! Fantastic – saved a 10 km uphill walk.

Also, here is a short video which really won’t mean much to anyone outside of ChCh, but it’s a skit on the earthquake recovery efforts… The jacket is the “Parka of Power” that our Mayor (Bok Parker) wears all the time… and it’s evil and makes you power hungry it seems.

He’s talking about a glider which is coming – a reference to Richy McCaw the NZ All Blacks captain who arrives at the end of the skit (and can walk on water.. but that’s a whole different story!)
Really really good skit – hadn’t laughed so much in ages.

So. This is a picture of Lenny – the sockbear.

Lenny lives in The Netherlands with Maaike’s sister… and this year, in conjunction with Maaike, he set me a series of challenges. Starting a week before my birthday.. I’ll admit that I loved 85% of it… but was surprised how much I learned about how badly I deal with having odd problems thrown at me.. and asking friends for help! I do neither of these things well it seems!. On with the tasks..

Task 1: whanau is important
a) please draw Maaike’s whakapapa, 4 generations back.
b) you need to collect some more information about 3 people (at least one on paternal side and one on maternal side)
– what is their DOB?
– what kind of person are they or were they?
– how do/did they make a living?
c) you can collect bonus points if you do 5 generations…

It took a couple of days, and I’d not realised that Whakapapa goes forward as well as backwards in genealogy.. at least according to Maaike (final arbiter on all things!).

Next were some climbing questions… that I found pretty tricksy..

Once that was complete it was (finally!) onto a question that I actually found doable on my own and didn’t have to ask help for :) I loved it. That’s not to take from the other questions.. It just being my area I quite enjoyed it.

First of all.. I had to work out what the question was!…

A long time ago before we had computers that were really much
smarter than us, computer programs and data were stored using
paper tape.

The tape reader was made up of a toothed drive wheel, a light
source and 8 light sensors.

As the tape progressed on the drive wheel, the light would
shine through holes in the tape. If the sensor on the other side
detected the light, a binary ‘1’ bit would be registered. Where
there was no hole, a binary ‘0’ bit would be registered.

This can be shown in a bit of ASCII art using the message “Hello
World”, and how it might be encoded:

Holes for toothed drive wheel
|
V
___________
1st byte | O :O | => 0100 1000 => 0x48 => ‘H’
2nd byte | OO : O O| => 0110 0101 => 0x65 => ‘e’
3rd byte | OO :OO | => 0110 1100 => 0x6C => ‘l’
etc. | OO :OO | => 0110 1100 => 0x6C => ‘l’
| OO :OOOO| => 0110 1111 => 0x6F => ‘o’
| O : | => 0010 0000 => 0x20 => ‘ ‘
| O O: OOO| => 0101 0111 => 0x57 => ‘W’
| OO :OOOO| => 0110 1111 => 0x6F => ‘o’
| OOO: O | => 0111 0010 => 0x72 => ‘r’
| OO :OO | => 0110 1100 => 0x6C => ‘l’
| OO : O | => 0110 0100 => 0x64 => ‘d’
___________

And here is your challenge. Can you solve a little bit of computer
history trivia?

___________
| O :O |
| O O: |
| O :OO |
| O : |
| O : OOO|
| OO :OOOO|
| OO :OOOO|
| OO : OOO|
| OO :OO |
| OO : O O|
| O :OO |
| O : |
| O :OO O|
| OO :O O|
| OO : OO|
| OOO: O |
| OO :OOOO|
| OOO: OO|
| OO :OOOO|
| OO : OO |
| OOO: O |
| O : |
| OO : O|
| OO :OOO |
| OO : O |
| O : |
| O : O|
| OOO: |
| OOO: |
| OO :OO |
| OO : O O|
| O : |
| OO : O|
| OO :OO |
| OO :OO |
| O : |
| OO :O |
| OO : O|
| OOO: OO |
| OO : O O|
| O : |
| OO :OOOO|
| OO :OOO |
| OO : O O|
| O : |
| OOO: O |
| OO :O |
| OO :O O|
| OO :OOO |
| OO : OOO|
| O : |
| OO :O O|
| OO :OOO |
| O : |
| OO : OO|
| OO :OOOO|
| OO :OO O|
| OO :OO O|
| OO :OOOO|
| OO :OOO |
| O :OOO |
| O : |
| O O: OOO|
| OO :O |
| OO : O|
| OOO: O |
| O : |
| OO :O O|
| OOO: OO|
| O : |
| OO :O O|
| OOO: O |
| OO:OOOO|
———–

After quicky extracting the punch cards into actual ASCII.. it was (overkill) but a fun half hour working out the Ruby code to give me the answer..
here’s the binary and the ruby follows…

class String
def convert_base(from, to)
self.to_i(from).to_s(to)
end
end

test = File.open(‘binary.txt’)
output = “”
while line = test.gets
output

The answer to task 3 was “Garage” … which was where the next clue was. I had to work out what the following meant:

Which led me to a place well known to me (admittedly first guess was out by ~50km…) where I got task 5

This was another fun but tricky one.. had to work out the amount of cash it would be if you covered NZ in $1 coins. I was out through excitement by about a factor of 100 the first time… but quickly corrected (yes, discovered I get quite excited and jump to an answer without thoroughly checking my workings.. I’d be a rubbish scientist!) ($639,429,962,458,034 was the number I got, but I measured the coin as 22mm… I didn’t look it up to see it was 22.5mm… so was probably out by a few billion)

Then it was onto a questionnaire..oh.. and I had to bake for my colleagues (that Lenny is a hard taskmaster!)

Then I got a picture of some cat food… and had to go round to the cats I’d looked after for some friends to solve the final puzzle. Well, final but one..

I have misplaced the last puzzle (which was an excellent one)… had to do some social engineering.. well, work out the sorts of places that Lenny might have gone to.. Will put it up in a bit!

All in all… lots of fun (and some frustration too.. which was silly on my behalf!). Thanks to all who helped contribute to the puzzles – and to the answers (I’d have been lost without you all), and thanks especially of course to Lenny. You’re a hard taskmaster! but a good one :)

After the Gillespie pass circuit, we headed to the West Coast, and then North to glacier country. Just South of Fox Glacier is the Copland Track… which has the wonderful Welcome Flats hot pools at the end of it.

View Larger Map

It’s a nice enough walk up the valley to get to it. It’s funny, I remember the first time I did this walk thinking it was *amazing*… now I think it’s not so exciting – but the hot pools *do* make it worth the trip. Definitely. I think I’m just spoiled by so many other tramps :)

DOC operates a volunteer programme and we met this lovely man – Petia – walking in to take up his position as a volunteer for two weeks.

The man was an absolute horse – his pack had food for two weeks in it. I could hardly lift it – let alone walk with it for 7 hours. He caught up with *us* and kept with us most of the way, he said the company made it easier! Once we got to the hut he offered us a swig of his gin to say thanks. Gratefully accepted!

The next pic is Sjoerds – it’s of Heleen (his lovely partner) standing next to the hot pools.

They really are wonderful to soak in. And really really hot. I can think of worse places to be a volunteer for a couple of weeks!

Back down to ChCh. We’d had a sister (Sara) of Maaike’s good friend Eefje (yes, Maaike only has friends who have double vowels in their name) staying in the house, and we fortunately got to see them. Michael (Sara’s partner) was a photographer.. and had been to some very interesting places… seen things that I’d definitely not like to see too!

Then it was off South to Wanaka, where Maaike and I had a days climbing. It was so great to be back out on Real Rock again… I’d almost forgotten what it was like. Definitely planning on getting my climbing skills up a little this year.

We also had time for a little game of mini golf. I think Maaike must have been a little off form that day, as usually I’m defeated badly when we play, but this time I prevailed in fine style. Not that anyone’s counting of course. Ehem. And yes, I do wear a funny hat.. otherwise I just bake in the sun (sun does seem more… vicious.. down here)

Then it was off to Cromwell to meet up with Sjoerd and Heleen, and to stay at our friends Clare and David. Had a very relaxed New Years there. They’re living on a lifestyle block – so all? the fruit on this pavlova was from their garden (and it was yum)

Next it was back to Wanaka, and then headed North towards the coast, taking in a 3 day tramp (the Gillespie pass circuit)

It was an excellent tramp, but I must say, my feet (and the rest of me) were knackered by the end of it. I’m not quite sure why I fared so badly, as I’m not actually feeling that unfit at the moment, but yes.. tricky enough.

Definitely a good tramp, and one I’d like to get back to again as we missed the side trip to what’s supposed to be the highlight – a hanging glacier lake. Unfortunately we ran out of time.

After that it was off to Gillespie beach (just who was this Gillespie chap anyway) for the night.. we lit a fire on the beach, it was great.

Finally, managed to video this utterly weird phenomenon of a cairn building itself on a beach. Weird.