Since living in New Zealand for the guts of 7 months I have managed to get a little bit of web development work here and there. Back in Queenstown I did some freelance work for local web development company, Kelpdesign. They took me on for a few weeks and I managed to get a few site’s done for them. Nice bunch of people and I’ll never forget William’s two dogs lounging around the office in front of the gas heater.
The first bit of work was a simple Wordpress website for a local tradesman. They were looking for something quick and it was basically a free theme, some plugins and some content put together.
www.queenstownconcretegrinding.com
The second website on the other hand was a custom design by Kelpdesign and it was for a local construction project management company. I had to convert it to xHTML and CSS and set it up as a Wordpress template. This was the first time I have created a template for Wordpress and it really opened me up to what Wordpress could do. I have created so many templates for Joomla in the past and developing one for another CMS was pretty interesting. This Wordpress template had everything from custom fields and separate layouts that could be assigned to specific pages and categories. As well as clever bits of PHP and nice usage of Wordpress’s API.
Well well… it’s been an awful long time since I have managed to get back to updating my website. I’ve been able to update Twitter easily enough as I can update it from my phone via text. But I just didn’t have the time and net connection to update this blog!
A lot of stuff has happened since my last entry. It’s going to take me many more to fill you in on what I’ve been doing and how awesome our New Zealand road trip has been.
Here’s a quick overview on what we’re been up to:
Went to Milford Sound
Snowboarded at Treble Cone
Left Queenstown and started our road trip
Hiked Franz Joseph Glacier
Kayaked in Abel Tasman National Park
Wine tasted in Cloudy Bay vineyard
Saw a lot of seals chilling by a car park.
Got the Ferry from the South Island to the North.
Met up with my good friend James in Wellington
Went white water rafting
Saw a geyser and smelt some eggy geothermal activity in Rotorua
Went Caving, abseiling, tubing and saw some glow worms.
Ate some sushi
Got to the northern tip of New Zealand at Cape Reigna
Tried sandboarding!
Saw some wild dolphins
Sold the van in Auckland and made a fantastic profit!
At the moment I’m compiling a google map with the route we took, I’m not sure if I’ll be able to share it easily but I will go in more depth at some stage.
Over the past few days my girlfriend Trish and I did some camper conversion work on our Toyota Hiace we bought last month.
We took out the bed that came with it and decided to make a new one down the back, nearer the boot. We also made up a tall storage unit for our stuff and there is also plenty of storage under the bed too!
Today we did some work on the floor; we got a thin piece of MDF, cut it to shape and stuck on some simple lino tiles so it can be cleaned easily! Looks great!
Hopefully we will make a bit of a profit on it when we sell it on and hopefully it will make a great New Zealand road trip vehicle for more backpackers.
We have a few little bits and bobs left to do now but that’s mainly it! Can’t wait to hit the road and explore this amazing country!
Well still no luck getting my boots back from the guys at Small Planet in Queenstown. As I have said in a previous post, I dropped them in as they were a little worse for wear and they said they would bring them to a local boot repair shop somewhere in town. But it turns out that the bloke who works in the repair shop has gone to hospital and since he’s the only guy who works there the whole place has been shut down until further notice. Not good for the relationship between me and snowboarding.
One of my housemates, remembered that there was a pair of boots hanging around somewhere in the house. She fished them out for me and they fit perfectly and they are a really nice pair of Burton boots, all I needed were some new laces. The guys in Small Planet hooked me up with a free pair of laces because I know them almost at a first name basis now as I’ve been in so many times asking about my boots! So at the end of the day, I now have boots and I can head up the mountain again! Plus my ribs are a lot better!
On Saturday I spent most of my day up at Coronet Peak snowboarding. It was a bit cloudy now and again but the snow was great. I also noticed a slight pain early on on the day on my left ribs but I didn’t really do anything about it, I just ignored it and ploughed on! Me and my girlfriend Trish hung around for night ski too, so it was an extra long day! On the last few runs it was very sore to bend down and do up my bindings and by the time I was on the bus back to Queenstown I was in bits! Had to get some bandages from the pharmacy too, which really helped hold them together with a slight bit of pressure! I have been told that there is really nothing you can do except to take it easy when your ribs are sore. So I decided to do a MacGyver on it and take care of them myself and if the pain didn’t go away, then I’d see a doctor!
Now that a few days have past they are much better, still a little bit of pain but no where in comparison to Saturday evening! So I have decided to give it a rest for a good few days and sort out some other stuff!
My snowboarding boots have gotten a little worse for wear so I brought them back to Small Planet (the shop where i bought them in) and they were happy to send them to the repair shop free of charge. Two of the laces are almost broken and another fully broke, I just tied a knot to join it back together last week! Also the velcro strap on one of the snapped! Anyhoo, look forward to getting them back so I can head up to The Remarkables again, my last session up there was last Friday and it was brilliant!
Woohoo! I finally built up the courage to hit a box. They are kinda like rails but with a flat surface so its easier to keep yourself under control! Trish took a little video!
Every year Queenstown officially declares the winter season open with a week or so long festival full of fun events. I decided to get a bit involved with the local festivities. In a flier for Winterfest I noticed that they were looking for volunteers for a drum/percussion workshop. We spent two evenings learning a 5 minute piece in the local primary school’s hall with a NZ drumming group called STRIKE.
We performed the piece straight after the fireworks on the main stage! I’m one of the log drummers in the front Check out the video
Hi and welcome to my website. My name is Dan Stuart and I am a web developer from Dublin, Ireland.
I’m traveling the globe and at the moment I’m in New Zealand.
Feel free to check out my web portfolio to see examples of websites that I have done or even check out my music page and check out some of the music I have been involved in over the years!
Check out the video
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