..idle writings from an idle mind..

• Qantas Platinum privileges are very, very nice indeed. Premium check in, express immigration cards, First lounge access, exit row seating, seats blocked next to you – no better way to start or end a trip!
• The Skycity hotel is OK – certainly better than Rydges, which is where I stayed last time – but still pretty bland. Skycity Grand hotel is much nicer, but definitely comes at a price premium. Internet access is obscenely expensive (NZD10 for two consecutive hours with a 20 megabyte data limit). Would I stay there again? Probably not, unless I got a really good deal.
• Friday night was rounded out with drinks at Suite bar, which served up some outstanding cocktails and introduced me to St-Germain elderflower liqueur. Finding a bottle of the stuff may turn out to be harder than I thought… none to be found duty free and Vintage Cellars don’t know what it is. Hmm.
• Auckland Zoo was heaps of fun. The Kiwi birds I saw are bigger than I thought. I tried to take photos, but they didn’t work out (bad lighting). Highlight of the visit were the Meerkats – completely adorable, I want one of my own!
• Saturday night was massive. Gin fizz’s to get things started, followed by a late dinner at dine by Peter Gordon – some outstandingly good tortellini, a v tasty Sauvignon Blanc (that I completely forgot to get the name of) and a few glasses of Perrier Jouet. Yum. A few of us kept going at Honey for some tasty cocktails, and then on to another bar on K Road. This is where memory starts to get hazy … though apparently I am a messy drunk! Still, I held it together enough to not disgrace myself, get thrown out, lose anything or do anything I might really regret..
• Sunday was hangover central and flight home. Probably the first afternoon/evening flight in a long time where I’ve been completely sober and not at all tempted to have a drink of anything!

A successful weekend!

- zac.

So, it seems that Mail.app helpfully prevents you from using an expired or otherwise invalid digital certificate (for the purposes of digitally signing and encrypting e-mail). I went to encrypt a mail to my work address and found that the digital signing and encryption options that were previously available had … vanished. No immediately apparent reason, just simply gone.

It turns out I had cleverly ignored an e-mail from the CA I use telling me the certificate was due to expire and I should probably get a new one. Ergo – certificate expired, no valid digital signature, no signing or encryption options.

Simple enough, just annoying that the answer wasn’t immediately obvious.

- zac.

So, I was looking for a nice way of creating a CSR and private key in Windows for a customer that didn’t involve icky command line stuff or installing more useless server software (read as: IIS) – Googling lead me to My Certificate Wizard, which is a seriously neat little utility for exactly this purpose.

Even nicer – it’s hippy software open source, so it’s completely free (though donations are encouraged).

- zac.

I was searching for recommendations on running DOSBox on my Mac, and Google directed me to Boxer instead. And it’s freaking awesome.

- zac.

http://www.taste.com.au/recipes/7695/hot+cross+buns

Pretty good recipe. I’ve changed a few things – halve the number of raisins and top up with sultanas, add some cinnamon along with the mixed spice – but otherwise, yum!

Getting the cross right is tricky. The paste needs to be exactly the right consistency – too runny and it goes everywhere in the oven, too viscous and you can’t pipe it on to the buns.

Speaking of ovens, the 20-25 minutes will overcook them (this is in an electric fan-forced oven). Just over 15 minutes did the trick for me.

- zac.