The weblog of Matthew Walker: MatthewWalker.net.nz, Otautahi, Aotearoa / Christchurch, New Zealand  
  • Sunday, 17 January 2010

    • 2009 highlights

      Due to the nature of the year, this will be a short list.

      I released a new verson of tramper.co.nz which was about 5 months in the making.

      I bought a new suit, but regretted it afterward due to the condescending nature of the salesperson.

      I took up ceroc classes but then the rest of life got in the way.

      I purchased a house in New Brighton, by the sea, in the tsunami zone, and imminent threat from rising sea levels. The garden has had a gang of starlings, a family of fantails, grey warblers, a hedgehog, a visiting chicken, and even a rabbit.

      I went to Waiheke Island, mountain biked the Queen Charlotte Track, and cut a campsite out of deep spring snow at dusk in Lewis Pass.

      I struggled to keep a group of developers in work through a challenging economic time.

      I read Frank Wilczek's Fantastic Realities and gained an appreciation of where mass comes from along with some insights into the extreme strangeness of the quantum world — including concepts such as asymptotic freedom, virtual particles, screening and anti-screening, nonabelian gauge theories. My enthusiastic attempts to share these ideas have been met with scepticism. 

      My father died suddenly. I spoke at his funeral and it was easy. I came to better understand the nature of loss and the permanence of sadness. My world is poorer. The remainder of the year collapsed in rubble.

      I shared all this with Caren, and we survived.

Recent photographs

Smallness
Ocelot
Black
Stina and square
Royal spoonbills
Bachelor's button
Mimulus repens
Sea primrose
Saltmarsh ribbonwood
Eelgrass
Mudsnail
Selliera and glasswort