October 27, 1995, last letter October 16, 1995
Righty-o,
In my mail today was this item which concerns us from the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC)who's listserv I subscribe. This item is about junk mail on the internet--just what we need now. I have written a letter as this article suggests and I urge you to do the same.
======================================================================= [3] Your Net Activities for Sale (and what you can do) ======================================================================= The Marketry company of Bellvue, Washington is now selling email addresses of Internet users obtained from Newsgroup postings. From the company's press release: "These are email address of individuals who are actively using the Internet to obtain and transfer information. They have demonstrated a substantial interest in specific area of information on the Internet. They are regularly accessing information in their interest areas from newsgroups, Internet chats and websites. . . . The file is anticipated to grow at the rate of 250,000 E Mail addresses per month, all with Interest selections." What are the interest areas currently available? "Adult, Computer, Sports, Science, Education, News, Investor, Games, Entertainment Religion, Pets." The release notes that "additional interests areas will be added, please inquire." Activities of US and non-US Net users will be included in the Marketry product. The Washington Post reported that the president of Markertry, Norm Swent, would not disclose who the actual owner of the list is. "That really is confidential information," Swent said, "and we are obviously bound by confidentiality agreements with the list owner." WHAT YOU CAN DO: (a) Sit back, let your newsgroup postings get swept up by the data scavengers and watch the junk email pile high on your system, or (b) Send email to Marketry and tell them to STOP SELLING PERSONAL DATA GATHERED FROM THE NET. Send email to: listpeople@marketry.com and tell your friends to send email. And tell your friends' friends. It's your name. It's your mailbox. Think about it. ============================================================================In other mail today I learnt that the nps.mcmurdo.gov FTP server will likely be down until I return to keep an eye on it in January so the link in my page that goes there for the Black Island picture will not work.
Diamond's friend Sue has a car so she was elected to drive us over the
pass to Lyttelton, Canterbury Settlement's first town. Lyttelton is the
major South Island port however the nature of its location precludes the
development of any industry. The town is situated in the crater of a long
extinct volcano that opens on one side to the South Pacific Ocean and the
steepness of the surrounding hills has kept the town small. There is a
tunnel the ridge that forms Godley Head that provides road access to Christchurch
and Evans Pass Road goes over the ridge to provide a scenic route. Godley
Head forms the north arm of the harbour and is today mostly populated by
sheep; at an earlier time the head was riddled with tunnels and gun emplacements.
The area is a park now criss-crossed by tracks and fences. On a hill above
the town there is a Timeball Station; one of five still working in the
world today. The timeball, by being raised and lowered above the top of
the castle tower, provided ships in the harbour with the correct time.
The R/V Nathanial B. Palmer has visited Lyttelton Harbour on her cruises
between Palmer and McMurdo stations. While we were watching, the Wellington
Maru, a Japanese flag container vessel, arrived and two tugboats scurried
out to meet her and nudge her up along side a jetty that had two large
cranes ready to move containers.
Supper at the Cave... New Zealand has the highest suicide rate in the world among 16-25 year-olds. (Is that really so?) Datura grows wild around here--makes a nice tea--and makes one feel invincible. Does that explain the suicide rate?
Today I think I will stay in, sit by the fire, write letters.
There is not enough wind to lift a kite but the beach is not crowded
so there is some good exploring. Diamond finds a quiet rock for a nap (I
find a nest in the tall grass) while Tim and Sue play catch in the surf.
The water is too cold for anything more than wading in the shallows. After
a while we head back up the ridge. 
At Birdings Flat there is a most marvelous beach made entirely of perfect
skipping stones. I wanted to carry away a bucket load of them but settled
for two handfuls. Too bad one cannot recover a well skipped stone... There
are agates here too. Bev of Christchurch is an amateur agate collector.
She said she has piles and jars of them at home when I ask'd her to show
me what they looked like. --You dig down into the wet stones just below
the surface, when the stones are wet you can see the markings so much better.
She mucked about with a trenching tool and poked at the multifarious small
rounded stones on the blade. --There's one! and another, two more. It is
easy to get infected with this sort of treasure hunt and in a minute I
had set aside my camera and found a large flat pancake of a stone to use
as a shovel to scoop away the dry top layer. 
Moments later a new buzz of excitement went through the agate hunters when someone said --Whales! and someone else said --Sharks! Well... is it whales or sharks? This is not a beach for swimming anyhow, the under toad is rather ferocious, so it really didn't matter but for the point of order. There were at least five, maybe seven, black shadowy shapes just at the surface beyond where the waves broke on the steep shingle beach. Whale or shark. We all finally agreed the black shadows just beyond the surf, the occasional fin or flipper seen black above the green water, must be basking sharks; whales would have blown by now.
One reader responds to the complications of viewing the pictures I have started including with these letters with "Should I no longer be satisfied with text, but now need pictures?" It is said... --A picture is worth ten thousand bytes of text. But I will try to include the ephotos as a bonus and not reduce the verbosity of my letters. Another correspondent writes: "[...] However I perceived a slight against AOL in the wording of your letter that spoke of how some services truncate messages and can't handle UUencode, etc.
"That may have been true in the past. At the present time AOL does handle large files. Will automatically UUdecode AND unzip files AND display that file when it is received. "
Well Ok. I take back some of the bad things I said about AOL. I suppose
to be really objective about this discussion I would have to sit in one
well wired location and get myself an account on each of these services
and try them all out on the same computer. Or maybe make a point of visiting
each person who has a problem with a particular operation and figure it
out IRL. Sending images has open'd up Pandora's Box. I could easily get
carried away with it as far as the homepage version of OTRA. It is so easy
to tag an ephoto and send it along. And I am so easily impressed with the
gadgetry and sparkle of pictures. . o O (what a tourist, eh?) Well I have
to get my money's worth out of this investment. 
Perhaps I have mentioned that Christchurch is known as the Garden City--today
I went for a walk in the garden. The Botanical Gardens are in Hagley Park
and consist of a rose garden, art museum, lots of diverse trees, a greenhouse
of tropical plants, several fountains and sundials, and beds and borders
of all sorts of flowers. Spring is well on here, the tulips are a riot
of colour and I recognise pansys and dandylions too. The roses are still
asleep, they will be blooming in January when I return. Each plant or group
and each different tree has a small sign to elucidate that plants origin,
proper and common names. The garden is a wonderfully theraputic place for
the toasted WinterOver. Mitch was there. You might remember Mitch from
some of my previous letters. He arrived at McMurdo before me last season
and stay'd later. Talk about toast. 
It is generally not easy for one toast to see it in another but he look'd
bad when I left MACtown two weeks ago; the past week for him has been one
of getting up every morning to go through the process of dressing to travel,
packing and checking out of the Hotel California, and then wandering around
waiting for the call to All-Aboard. And the plane does not come. At the
Christchurch end the plane will not fly south in the face of bad weather.
Then when it does get off the ground it turns around at the slightest provocation
before the point of no safe return. An engine hiccups--Turn around. Static
on the radio--Turn around. Yesterday there was an hydraulic oil leak, the
cabin filled with smoke--Turn around. Mitch was really hurting. I wonder
if I looked that bad when I finally got off. Well its nothing a few days
of smelling the flowers and playing on the beach won't take care of. Eating
food that has not spent the past year in a freezer from a plate (rather
than one of those compartmented plaxtic trays) also helps. 
Cathedral Square is frequently crowded with carts of food vendors from many lands, jewellery-clothing-handicrafts, jugglers and mimes perform, kids play hacky-sac, orators orate. Painted on the brick of the north side, by the tram, are the alternating black and white rectangles of a game board and under a three tier bleacher are all the pieces of two chess armies. The queens and kings are over a meter tall. By the statue of Godley, founder of Canterbury and for whom Godley Head is named, there is a sign: Cathedral Photographs. There are a bunch of traditional photographers (cameras with *film* in them) who hang out here in front of the cathedral taking pictures for a fee of tourists who pose formally. I could do that with my fancy new ecamera and provide a floppy disk with your ephoto thereon for you to email from the Internet Coffee Shop.
Rave reviews are pouring in for OTRA. From Glenn at Palmer:
>--ajo: you don't know me, but i feel as though i know you. your "on
>the road" letters are a joyful romp in a peculiar world.
Thanks Glenn.
and from William at maroon:
>[...] I did want to tell you how much you enrich my life with your
>travels and updates ... I REALLY enjoy them.
Thanks William.
Mitch and me take the train, the TranzAlpine, from Christchurch through Arthur's Pass to Greymouth at the mouth of the Grey River on the west coast. After lunch of whitebait and chips (whitebait is a small sardine like fish, only lighter, a local delicacy) at the Hotel Royal and a look at the sea the train returns us to the pass. On its way west from Christchurch we cross three plains--Darfield, Sheffield and Springfield--before entering the mighty Waimakariri Gorge. There are nineteen tunnels in the 231km route and the pass is 737m MSL. The Otira Tunnel is five and a half miles long with a grade of 1:33. On the way west it is downhill so the diesels are only coasting through the tunnel but on the way east, up hill, they are augmented by three electric engines for that portion.
When I was last on these New Zealand railroads, in 1988, Devonshire Tea was served by the conductor from a stainless tea pot in a china cup at your table. Today the tea was in a plastic cup, the jam was in single serving blister paks and you have order it from the servery and carry the tray back to your seat. The trains are clean and on time as I remember them and the staff are friendly and courteous but still there is something missing. Ahh! I remember. No tipping. That's it. Same as in the restaurants. I spoke with the present condustor, he has been with the railroad 32 years and remembers the china cups for Devonshire Tea. --It was not only the changing economy of the railroad that drove us to plastic, the china cups were always being carried off by the passengers; we were constantly having to replace them.
Next time I will remember to bring my own china cup. And spoon.
I was expecting the pass to be less springlike but for an afternoon
walk to the Devils Punchbowl Waterfall I was obliged to doff my jumper
and tuque in the warmth. The falls are 131m tall and about a half hour
walk; the track goes up the side of the Bealey River and over two footbridges
before zig-zagging up steps through the mountain beech forest to the waterfall's
base. Almost there and a barricade advises against further passage; there
is a danger of rock fall around the base of the waterfall. We go on. We're
both wearing our hardheads. Gentle gusts of wind blow at the falling water
from the side, the mist wets us and the sun setting over the tall snow
cap'd ridge creates a bow of intense colour across the punchbowl. Good
thing I left my ecamera back at the inn, now I'll have to come up here
again tomorrow. 
Back at the Arthurs Pass Village it was time for soup. At Oscar's Haus
we found some made of pumpkin. There was a man asking Oscar for a length
of wire to open the door of his car, he said he'd locked the keys in. But
I tried to tell him his carkea was right there on the roof. You really
had to have been there. 
Anyhow... by this time the sun had moved over the ridge enough to shine
into the Punch Bowl so with eager anticipation we scurried along upstream
against the flow of a group of bus tourists. No bow of colour today but
the falls were spectacular nonetheless.
The train ride from Arthurs Pass east to Christchurch seemed to go faster than the ride up the day before--partly the been there done that syndrome maybe, partly that we were looking at the ephotos in my computer and talking about what next for our respective plans. Mitch is going to Akaroa for a few days of sea kayaking; I am going to spend a couple of days getting my pack sorted out and minimised. On some of the flights I have over the next couple of months there will be a fourty pound limit--the last thing I want to leave behind is all the toilet paper I am taking to India.
The grass in Hagley Park is showing worn spots now and the Lone Oak has a bark fungus from my fondling. Only a few more days and I will have to trade in my sandles and shorts of summer for the boots and breeches of wintbrrrr.
Next week Oso con Migo meets Bishopdale Bear.
A.J.Oxton, OA, OO, OAE, k1oIq
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Copyright © 2003, A.J.Oxton, The Cat Drag'd Inn , 03813-0144.