Matt & Kat

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This post originally appeared on Matt’s Musings (Matt’s computer focussed blog).

Firstly, thanks to all who responded to my previous rant. It turns out exactly what I wanted does exist in the form of a ID-000 format smartcard combined with a USB reader. Perfect. No idea why I couldn’t find that on my own prior to ranting, but very happy to have found it now.

Secondly, now that I’ve got my keys and management practices in order, it is time to begin transitioning to my new key.

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Yes, baby #2 is due on the 30th of August. We’re very excited to welcome another little person to our family!!!

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It’s been a while since our last update here. Life’s been good. We’ve been setting up our new home in London, returning home for family celebrations, watching Olympics, and enjoying long summer days filled with park walks, swims, BBQs and picnics.

We arrived in London mid May and stayed in a temporary apartment in central London while we got settled and started looking for a permanent home. It took several weeks to get our bearings, decide on an area we liked and hunt down the ideal house. The rental market in London is expensive and fast moving. The good places are often listed and taken a month or more before they’re actually vacated and available to move in to.

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We had Micah’s final (1yr corrected age) check-up at the hospital this morning.

The doctor was very pleased with his progress and pronounced him a normal 1 year old baby. He didn’t see any need for us to get referral letters for any specialist follow-up in London.

There was a medical student sitting in on the consultation and the doctor was telling her how 20ish years ago a baby like Micah, born 10 weeks early, would have had less than 20% chance of survival. To go from that to being indistinguishable from other babies at 1 year old is a pretty awesome advance in medical technology, and apparently much of the research and pioneering improvements in premature care happened in NZ!

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This post originally appeared on Matt’s Musings (Matt’s computer focussed blog).

I’ve written before about my initial investigations into the Kindle, and I’ve learnt much more about the software and how it communicates with the Amazon servers since then, but it all requires detailed technical explanation which I can never seem to find the motivation to write down. Extracting reading data out of the system log files is however comparatively simple.

I’m a big fan of measurement and data so my motivation and goal for the Kindle log files was to see if I could extract some useful information about my Kindle use and reading patterns. In particular, I’m interested in tracking my pace of reading, and how much time I spend reading over time.

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Life is full of surprises.

3 months ago we had our sights set on a 2012 return to New Zealand. We imagined setting up home in Hamilton and “settling down”, putting our adventuring days behind us. Then at the end of last year Matt was offered a move to Google’s London office, a new location and a new set of challenges and opportunities. In short, a very tempting offer.

My first reaction was an absolute, no-holds-barred, with-all-of-my-being “NO”. But after a short time to process the news, it was clear we needed to give this some consideration. We couldn’t return to NZ if either of us would be feeling disappointment about the opportunity we’d passed up. So we spent some time considering. We weighed up all the pros and cons, we researched, we made a short scouting trip to London, and after much consideration we made a decision. We are moving to London.

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Reading back, we seem to have begun every recent post with a comment on how quickly time is passing, but it really is an accurate description of how this year, 2011, the year of Micah Brown, has felt for us. It has been a good year, rocky at the start with Micah’s early arrival and stint in the ICU, but extremely rewarding and enjoyable towards the end, particularly visiting NZ and introducing Micah to his extended family and friends. The little chap has never seen so many new faces and had so much excitement compressed into 3 weeks before and probably finds life terribly dull now that we’re back to our quieter routine in Dublin!

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This post originally appeared on Matt’s Musings (Matt’s computer focussed blog).

It’s general election time again in New Zealand this year, with the added twist of an additional referendum on whether to keep MMP as our electoral system. If you’re not interested in New Zealand politics, then you should definitely skip the rest of this post.

I’ve never understood why some people consider their voting choices a matter of national security, so when via Andrew McMillan, I saw a reasonable rationale for why you should share your opinion I found my excuse to write this post.

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We’re safely back in New Zealand for our semi-annual visit and we’ve all adapted to the change in time zone without too much issue. Micah was very well behaved on the flights. The only minor hiccup was explosive residue being detected on Micah’s stroller and food as we transited through LAX (worst airport in the world, by the way) but we managed to get that resolved without too much of an issue…

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