Skating Poolburn

Thanks to Dave Young, Alan Knowles and Dave Patchett for taking me along on their ice skating trip to Central Otago. We had beautiful ice, up to 10 cm thick, at Poolburn Dam. We circumnavigated the entire lake (~20 km), most of which was beautifully smooth near-black ice. There are a lot more photos to come, but here’s a few quick snapshots from the weekends activities until I find the time to process the rest of them.

Here you can see the "crazy squares" effect in the ice. The rocks you can see in the background are common throughout the lake and make for a terrific view across the huge expanse of ice.

There were a lot of Canadian Geese in the area. Their droppings are somewhat of a hazard on the ice as not only are they large and gross, but they ice tends to melt wherever they land.

Dave Patchett striding across the ice after we made a quick jaunt over to the dam face around lunch time.

For more information about the trip, check out Dave Young’s blog post.

Louis Pasteur: The Space of Life

A photo of mine from the Heidelberg Castle has been used in the documentary “Louis Pasteur: The Space of life“. The image used is from the chemistry laboratory at the castle and was used as the background for the laboratory of Jean Baptiste Biot, the man who discovered the chiral nature of tartaric acid.

As you can see below, they’ve zoomed in, then shrunk it, flipped it horizontally and used it as a background for scenes showing Louis Pasteur and Jean Baptiste Biot. It seems ironic to me that they used a mirror image for the background of a documentary about chirality :p

Louis Pasteur and Jean Baptiste Biot

Jean Baptiste Biot

Jean Baptiste Biot

heidelberg_lab2

My original photo from Heidelberg Castle

The documentary can be viewed on the LaRouche website:

My photo can be seen in the background between 6:20 – 7:46 and 19:58 and 22:02.

Killer Keas

The Killer Keas ice hockey team, bronze medalists in the Dunedin Ice Hockey League Autumn season.

Clockwise from top left: Ben Wallis, Edward Waite, David Richards, Peter Wallis, Ryan Hellyer, Bret Dougherty, Señorita León de la Barra, Elizabeth Roberts, Jaydee Cabral, Hernisha Fakir, Sonja Woods,

Thanks to Jaydee Cabral for providing the photo and Anna Craw for taking it.