i’ve been checking out google maps versus yahoo! maps, evaluating the best nz coverage

google gets cred for a hot flight sim built into google earth and for not lying to dutch tourists about opanuku road joining up with scenic drive. when dutch tourists are deceived, they end up breaking their rental cars on the bullbars of my clunkery old diesel, and that sux. -10000 points to some nz mapping providers for their mapping badness.

but today we’re looking at yahoo!, who are predicting (note contrast between coastline in satellite pic and inlay) either severe global warming, or a catastrophic dambreak at the huia dam

what else have we learned from the mapping madness?

yahoo has ok pics, but responds to requests for specific nz addresses with “do you mean waitakere, or waitakere?” then it sends you to waitakere township either way
yahoo has lots of black areas across nz, and pretty much no street map … maybe this whole yahoo!xtra thing will change that … but would you trust xtra for directions to the corner store?
any mapping provider gives better results than nz posts postcode finder, which still insists that piha doesn’t exist, try paihia. i cannot find a single piha road that nz post know about. such a pity, given what a nice chap the postie is …
google maps are pretty damn good so far!
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Canonical List of Evil Baby Names

The Canonical List of Evil Baby Names

Do you want your child to become an evil genius when he or she
grows up? Perhaps you can prepare for this by giving the child the
right name to begin with. Here is a list of names which mean dark,
deadly, spooky or just plain neat meanings.

Girls
Boys

Name

Meaning
Name
Meaning

Adriana
dark one

Adrian
dark one

Adrienne
dark one
Blade

knife

Airlia
ethereal
Braeden
from the dark valley

Aislinn
dream
Bran
raven

Aiyana
eternal blossom
Brend
little raven

Akuji

dead & awake
Brendan
(little) raven

Amara
eternal

Brone
sorrow

Amaris
child of the moon
Condon

dark-haired wise man

Amaya
night rain
Corbett
raven

Ariel
ethereal
Corbin
raven

Artemis
goddess of the moon
Corey
raven

Ashling

dream, vision
Crevan
fox

Asta
star

Daray
dark

Astra
like a star
Darcy

dark

Astrid
star
Daren
born at night

Belinda
beautiful snake
Delano
of the night

Brenna
raven maid
Donovan
dark warrior

Cassandra

she who is […]

Apparently the new postcode for Piha is 1232, if anyone feels like sending mail(snail).  Nova is particulary keen to recieve things addressed to her. […]

In a flash of inspiration, NZ Post decided to change the postcodes for a lot of new Zealand’s mail delivery. And to solve the confusion, they installed a Very Flash Postcode Finder on their website.
According to NZ Post’s website, Seaview Road, Piha … does not exist. Or rather, it is not located in any of the following towns or cities:

Piha
Auckland
Waitakere

Searching the very high-tech but not very accurate NZ Post PostCode Finder in order to get a correct address for your mail results in this:

If you think you live in the cities of Auckland or Waitakere, you’re sadly mistaken:

Luckily for them, Brad - our marvellous postman - refuses to acknowledge their denial of our existence. We still get our mail.

Update: NZ Post only recognise this address if I state it as being in New Lynn, 30km away.

If I give it correctly, stating the name of the actual town, NZ Post gets it wrong by 272km.

[…]

discovered this completely delicious panoramic pic of piha from lion rock yesterday, which is probably WAY too big to download … but what*eva … so if you click it, you’ll get a window that you can pan around in …

its from wikimedia commons and shot by gadfium (thanks mister! drop us a line when you next swing by!)

ps. you might need to click the magnifying glassies to zoom in and pan around, my browser scales the image to fit my window by default […]

[…]

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