Nearly two full months into the ol' 2024, and already I've managed to crank out the same amount of art that I did in all of last year - both of them comic pages, no less! So hopefully the creative hiatus has done me some good and allow me to get back into it. Eastwind Rising My new HP laptop "Eastw…
Well, Christmas has come and gone and the year 2023 will be ending here in UTC+13 land in a few short hours, so here's a quick update of stuff that has happened at Te Whare Mayfurr since my last posting. Holiday House Guests Our Shelties Anton and Lexi have been joined by two Sheltie houseguests fo…
... according to the writers of "Star Trek: Voyager", that is. New Zealand is the location of the penal colony that Tom Paris is recruited from by Captain Janeway in the pilot episode "Caretaker", presumably because there was an Australian writer on staff who was sick of all the Aussie 'penal colon…
Finally, some good news at Te Whare Mayfurr after a somewhat depressing couple of months: at long last I've got a new machine to replace Vixen-IV, my sixteen-year-old Windows Vista-vintage potato of a desktop computer. Well, a relatively new computer, anyway - I have inherited by late father-in-law…
Over the last few weeks I've been experiencing video issues with my home desktop computer, requiring multiple restarts to prompt the video output to go to the monitor. While I could theoretically look at repair or getting a new video card (if that's the root of the problem), considering "Vixen-IV"…
Well! Already two months into the new year! It doesn't seem that long since I was raising a dram at midnight on January 1st, hoping that 2023 might finally turn stuff around a bit from the happenings of the last few years. The non-return of the global jetsetter What also takes a bit of getting used…
"... COVID-19." :-( In other words, after nearly three years of the pandemic the damn lurgi has finally caught up with Yours Truly, forcing me to hand in my official "COVID-dodger" card. It seems that Mrs Mayfurr (probably) picked up COVID from a dog show event last week, testing positive for the b…
So after coming down with the first cold for nearly three whole years and taking a few sick days off work to recuperate (it wasn't COVID, thank god), I've had plenty of slack time to peruse various YouTube videos such as dramatisations of WW1 German Naval commerce raiders, clips from "Yes, Prime Mi…
It's that time of year again... the time to mark yet another birthday in my life, another day surviving this upside-down inside-out world of the 2020s and another year closer to retirement :-) It was a pretty quiet celebration, but still quite enjoyable even though we seem to be having unseasonable…
Hi everyone, Well, the last few weeks here at Te Whare Mayfurr have been... interesting. In the old Chinese proverb sense, unfortunately. "It's official: August hates me" Once again Fate has decideded it's " kick Mayfurr in the nuts" time, as following on from "vehicle collision writing my car off…
Or, "Just when I thought I could stop worrying about COVID, along comes the Bomb". So, as if a global pandemic for the last two years wasn't bad enough, we've now got a war going in Europe that was started by a nuclear-weapon state and permanent veto-weilding member of the UN Security Council invad…
"... the easier it is to stop up the drain." - Chief Engineer Montgomery Scott, USS Enterprise (NCC-1701), Star Trek III: The Search For Spock This is how I'm feeling at the moment with current digital TV technology, in particular the continuing and exasperating problems we're having at Te Whare Ma…
Borrowed from Shay_Feral ... How long in the fandom? I've been in the fandom since around 1995 - back in the days when 14.4kbps dial-up internet was considered blisteringly fast, and a 1Mb dedicated internet link to your house was a fantasy (as opposed to today where it would be considered backward…
Wishing everyone out there a very Merry Christmas, whever you are - I think we all need a decent break and celebration after everything that's happened (and is still happening) this year! It's just me and Mrs Mayfurr (and Anton the Sheltie) here at Te Whare Mayfurr this year, so it's a nice relaxin…
Or: If I didn't have bad luck, I'd have no luck at all. This is going to be a bit of a long ranty journal, so apologies in advance... suffice to say that I've just returned from a holiday that started well but then went pear-shaped / munted / downhill rapidly after an incident that, like a Pan Gala…
(...yeah, that's what she said!) So I got my first COVID vaccination today - the Pfizer one, the same one everyone in Aotearoa is getting - and Mrs Mayfurr got hers at the same time. I was impressed with how quick and efficient the process was, and after getting the jab (which was surprisingly pain…
It's been an interesting month or so here at Te Whare Mayfurr. First off, I completed another solar revolution earlier this month, and am most definitely in the "over half century" club. To make things even better, I'd received some reward vouchers as a management award from work, so we celebrated…
Well, spring has (at least theoretically) arrived here at Te Whare Mayfurr, now over halfway through what has been charitably described across the globe as "a sh*t of a year" where the abnormal becomes the new normal and the old normal feels positively abnormal on the occasions it does come back...…
... or, to borrow a phrase from Sir Edmund Hillary, conquereor of Mt Everest, "We've knocked the bastard off!". At the time of writing, New Zealand now has no active cases of COVID-19, and has not recorded any new cases for seventeen days in a row (and counting). And so from midnight tonight, 8 Jun…
Well, it's official. As of 11:59pm NZDST on Wednesday 25th (1059hrs UTC), Te Whare Mayfurr is on a mandatory four week minimum lockdown due to COVID-19, and a state of emergency is now in place for all of New Zealand for the duration. The good news is that I can continue to work remotely over the i…
... is to learn how to drive a vintage electric tram. Why? Why not - it's something very different to anything else I've done, and I do need to get out more :-) I was visiting the Wellington Tramway Museum in Paekakariki (just down the road from home) a few weeks ago, which runs vintage electric tr…
Yes, it's my birthday today (or tomorrow, depending if you're on the other side of the Date Line :-) ). Definitely over the half-century mark now! Took the day off work to celebrate, so have been chilling out at home relaxing. Not much else to say really. Weird.
So I have determined that the answer to the question "Does a six year old quad-core Dell laptop make a better streaming platform than an 11 year old dual-core store-assembled desktop with a dedicated graphics card?" is "No." Unfortunately. You see, some may be aware that my current desktop "Vixen"…
Well, the poll results are in - and my annual Christmas pin-up picture for 2018 will feature... ...drum roll... SUPER COLLIE! (cue applause and cheering, with Super Collie stepping onto the stage and being showered with party streamers while being presented with a boquet of flowers) Yes, Super Coll…
It's a very sad time here at Te Whare Mayfurr. Yesterday our 11 year old sable Shetland Sheepdog girl Sophie had to be assisted across the Rainbow Bridge due to an agressively-growing cancer in her abdomen. She had been clear of anything like this at her last vet checkup a month ago, but yesterday…
I'm celebrating my 50th birthday today here at Te Whare Mayfurr. Yes, born two years before the Moon landing, and I was at school when the Voyager probes to the outer solar system were launched. Today will be mostly chilling out with family, taking it easy... So only another 50 years to go before I…
Did you ever see the Muppets? Of course. Do you think Miss Piggy's sexy? Miss Piggy? Maybe I've been in furry fandom for too long but every time I see that show, her body drives me crazy. Is it just me? I think in all probability, Miss Piggy is the most desirable anthro female who ever lived. That'…
In a recent Easter pic by rbartrop, the following description line got me thinking: "Lambs and bunnies are both symbols of spring and rebirth, so what better way to celebrate the season[...]" Of course, rbartrop (and a good chunk of Weasyl's membership) reside in the Northern Hemisphere where this…
