Latitudea and longitudes are not universal: they depend on the datum you are using. The earth is not a sphere, so different datums are used to model it. Each of these datums give different figures.  

This morning I am converting NZGD49 coordinates (New Zealand Map Grid) to NZGD2000 coordinates, which are almost identical to WGS84, which is what GPS and Google Maps use.

This has been a fascinating process as it uses a lot of math I haven't touched in years.

There is an invaluable document available called Where in the world are we? which describes how to do this. Here are the steps:

1. Convert NZGD49 eastings and northings to latitude and longitude (this involves adding, multiplying and dividing complex numbers in an iterative formula).
2. Convert NZGD49 latitude and longitude to Cartesian coordinates (X, Y, Z) (this involves basic trigonometry).
3. Convert NZGD49 Cartesian coordinates to NZGD2000 Cartesian coordinates (this involves matrix multiplication).
4. Convert NZGD2000 Cartesian coordinates to NZGD2000 latitude and longitude (more trigonometry).
5. Say voilà! (this involves speaking French, which I never learned: tricky).

If anybody would like the ColdFusion functions for this, get in touch. Oh and big thanks to Google for being the most convenient tool for converting seconds of arc to radians!

Yay for the Lego store stocking Lego brick ice cube trays. Boo for $40 shipping. Clearly, the Danes hate New Zealand.

Why is it that certain types of store still do not have decent websites? The toy, chain and department stores just can't get their act together.

Rocking Horse Road is the long straight road along the spit south of my house. It takes me exactly an hour to jog out the door, down Rocking Horse Road to the end of the spit and back again.

As a child I would gaze at this long road with the playful name and its intersecting stumps of road that were all named after birds, and I would wonder what it all meant. I lived deep in the suburbs, away from bodies of water. Now I'm all grown up, I get to live out here and understand something of what it means.

The seaside suburbs have a certain sense of community. People decorate their houses in beach themes. People say hello. Everything is a little bit sandy. These suburbs have a distinct sense of place, that I don't think any other suburb in Christchurch have. I like it.

Carl Nixon has published his first novel, Rocking Horse Road, about a fictional murder in the neighbourhood. I'm not a huge fan of fictional murders (although they're better than real ones) but I shall have to check it out.

"When we began the project it was to prove the relationship of the extinct Haast's Eagle with the large Australian Wedge-tailed Eagle. But the DNA results were so radical that, at first, we questioned their authenticity."

The results showed that the New Zealand giant was in fact related to one of the world's smallest eagles the Little Eagle from Australia and New Guinea, which typically weighs under two pounds.

"Even more striking was how closely related genetically the two species were. We estimate that their common ancestor lived less than a million years ago. It means that an eagle arrived in New Zealand and increased in weight by 10 to15 times over this period, which is very fast in evolutionary terms."

It's official - the godwit makes the longest non-stop migratory flight in the world.

Unlike seabirds, which feed and rest on long journeys, godwits just keep going.

One godwit fitted with a satellite tracking device flew 11,500km non-stop in 8 days to arrive at Miranda in the Firth of Thames Monday.

You can see the maps of the tracked godwits' flights and even download into Google Earth here.

Meanwhile, in Christchurch, a pectoral sandpiper has arrived at Travis Wetland, the first recording of that species at the wetland.

The moment of resolution is a moment of alienation. I grieve for the termination of those possible, now impossible, futures. I grieve for a past that seems differently now. Like an ice shelf, I crack and float away, perhaps to circle around the pole one time or two, departed but directionless.

A mossy sloping land.

A beautiful spot near Maruia Springs. A variety of animal prints in the snow, several leading out across the blue ice.

I've just been learning to make this cocktail. It's pretty good and tastes like summer.

Place 4 mint leaves in a tall glass. Add 30mL lime juice and 1 tsp icing sugar. Muddle with a muddler, or improvise. Add crushed ice then 30mL white rum. Stir. Fill with soda water.

Angus and Julia Stone, the Sydney siblings, have released their first full length album. It's so new they haven't even updated their website yet. Nevertheless, you can hear one or two tracks streaming. If you like folk music, you like this.

Speaking of folk music, the best album I have heard in ages is Folk Off! This is a twin disc compilation from US and UK modern folk artists. It features marvellous stuff like...

• "Blue parsley" by Listen with Sarah;
• "The Pioneers" by Tunng;
• "Woozy with Cider" by James Yorston;
• "Famous Blue Raincoat" by Marissa Nadler;
• "Bees" by Laura Cantrell;
• "Snow Lion" by Readymade FC and Feist.

So I just released a product. I had fun making up colours for the skins. My original list of grey, blue, purple, orange, red, and green became silver, cornflower, lavender, burnt orange, crimson and lime. Those colours are more delicious and also more precise.

I think colour name awareness is very low, perhaps due to the simple fact that there's no good objective reference. So, fun.