3 Years On - Christchurch Quake Anniversary

Today is the third anniversary of the deadly February quake in Christchurch that claimed the lives of 185 people in 2011. It's also quite a strange day, with the temperature shooting up over 30 degrees before lunchtime (having only gotten down to 19 deg C overnight - a very rare occurrence in Christchurch indeed).

Relics of the Past - The dome of the "deconstructed" Edmonds Rotunda (a restaurant) lies abandoned on the ground beside it's former home. Across the road stood the pancaked PGC building, which was the site of the 2nd deadliest collapse following the quakes.

Road cones are rather ubiquitous around town, with various road works projects on the go at any time. These ones were put out for traffic control for the memorial service held today. On one of these, there's a floral tribute - a tradition started 1-2 years ago...

Rebuild under way - Though progressing rather slowly, there are signs of the rebuild activity in various places (especially down Victoria St), with various new buildings starting to spring up. Here is the new "Stranges Building" being constructed on the corner of Lichfield and High Streets.

In the meantime, transitional projects, such as the quirky "Pallet Pavillion" pictured here have sprung up in empty lots which would otherwise be home to the plague of "Wilson's Carparks" popping up all over the place. This venue acts as a concert venue and bar/dining area, with other projects from the Gap Filler project located beside it.

Firefox Tip: Easier navigation when browsing the source code for pages

One of the things which has annoyed me about Firefox's "View Source" feature for a while is the lack of a back button (and perhaps an addressbar for good measure). This is most noticeable when you've jumped into one of the stylesheets or scripts linked into the page, and you now want to go back and check exactly how that gets used in the main page.

Sometime over the last year or two, I eventually stumbled across a way involving the use of the Backspace key, which apparently does do this. I suppose it's ok in a pinch, but there's got to be a nicer way (or at least some addons which do this!)

After a brief search tonight, I found the answer here. Apparently, if you just append "view-source:" in front of the URL for the page you're trying to check on, this will display the source code for that page within the browser window itself, allowing you to use all the standard controls you're used to. Sweet!

Quick Tip - Filter by Name in Animation Editors

Just a quick tip about the animation editor filtering options which you may/may not be aware of, but which came up in #blendercoders this evening.

(I can't remember whether I've documented this before, so I might as well do so now; repeating this for anyone who may have missed it the first time may do some good anyway)

Kite Day 2014

A few weeks earlier, another event on the "Summertimes" summer-time events calendar here in Christchurch also took place on New Brighton beach: Kite Day.

Christchurch 3rd Annual Sandcastle Competition

This afternoon, the 3rd annual sandcastle competition was held here at New Brighton beach. For more info about the event, check out their official site. Although the forecast for today had predicted rain, it turned out to be a fine day out at New Brighton for the event, with mostly clear skies and sun (though patches of cloud did drift overhead from time to time, making white balance/exposure tricky at times due to the frequent shifts). Here are some personal highlights:

 

Adorable Pair of Silvereyes Grooming

This afternoon, I came home to see a pair of silvereyes in the tree snuggled together grooming and preening each other...

Aww...  So cute!