About half-pie: the word, the site, and me
The term “half-pie” is a piece of New Zealand slang. Here’s the entry from Harry Orsman’s excellent A Dictionary of Modern New Zealand Slang:
half-pie , adjective Possibly from Māori pai ‘good’: compare PIE ON. Half-and-half; neither one thing nor the other; imperfect; incomplete or incompletely realised; unsatisfactory. 1911 e.g. It was a sort of half-pie gate made of iron bed-ends. As an adverb, in some way; partly; half-heartedly. 1949 e.g. Simon was only half-pie simple.
I like this word for several reasons. Firstly, it’s a good New Zealand word that is in use nowhere else. Secondly, it is useful for that kiwi ironic self-deprecation that we seem to be so good at as a nation. And thirdly, it’s partly a borrowing from Māori, so in a way the use of it is a small nod to towards the only unique cultural strand New Zealand has. In fact when you think about it the very word itself describes its own condition, a proud mongrel adjective that we could apply to the whole country.
It is also a good label for my utterly banal and unremarkable efforts in attempting to write a weblog.
About me
I live in a Wellington suburb and am married to the wonderful Rebecca. We have two girls: Bella and Rosa. Here’s a picture of our wee family:
Pity the pic is not quite in focus, and that it’s so out of date that Rosa is not present, but never mind. Must fix it at some point.
About this site
It’s just a blog. And some family photos. Over time, I’ve used a couple different Content Management Systems / Weblog Systems and I’m currently using TextPattern.
Contact me
Use this form to contact me.
List of TextPattern Plugins
The following lists TextPattern plugins that I use in order to present this site. Many thanks to the authors of these fine pieces of code (and not forgetting Dean, the author of TextPattern itself).
| Name | Author | Version | Description |
|---|---|---|---|
| cbs_gravatar | Christophe Beyls | 0.2 | Simple gravatar display |
| dru_random_text | Drew McLellan | 0.1 | Displays text at random (from database or file) |
| asy_stopdude | Sencer Yurdagül | 0.1 | Temporary plugin to stop that first spambot that's going around |
| an7_comments | Iaian7 - John Einselen | 0.5 | Extends the standard comments_invite and comments_count |
| cbs_navigation_menu | Christophe Beyls | 0.4 | Simple customizable sections navigation menu |
| jnm_categories | Juanjo Navarro | 0.1 | Display article's categories, separated by 'separator' |
| rsx_plugins_table | Ramanan Sivaranjan | 1.1 | Display a list of plugins currently installed. |
| glx_gravatar | Patrick Kollitsch | 2009.1 | Implementation of gravatar for Textpattern. |
| smd_short_url | Stef Dawson | 0.21 | Canonical short URLs using article ID |
| ajw_total_comments | Andrew Waer | 0.1.1 | Get total number of comments for site/section/category |
| asy_sitemap | Sencer Yurdaguel | 0.7 | Generates a gz-compressed Google-Sitemap. |
| ajw_top_commenter | Andrew Waer | 0.1.2 | Lists out the most active commenters on a site |
| mdn_count | Mark Norton | 1.4 | Provides a count of the number of live articles by section or category, or both. |
| mrw_spamkeywords_urlcount | Brian Warren | 0.1 | Mr. Warren's attempt to catch some spam. |
| bit_rss | Bit Santos | 0.4.1 | An RSS feed parser that uses SimplePie to parse feeds into TxP articles. |
| zem_contact_lang | TXP Community | 4.0.3.6 | Language plug-in for Zem Contact Reborn |
| zem_contact_reborn | TXP Community | 4.0.3.20 | Form mailer for Textpattern |
| pap_contact_cleaner | tranquillo | 0.1 | Prevent Spam through Zem Contact |
| rah_comment_spam | Jukka Svahn | 0.3 | Anti-spam tools to prevent comment spam |
Boring stats
Articles: 893 (572 in blog, 129 in bambini, 148 in tech, 92 in nature, and 103 in media.)
While total comments: 3197 (2228 in blog, 305 in bambini, 605 in tech, 254 in nature, and 352 in media.)
And the top 35 commenters:
Alan has written 1048 comments
Martha has written 184 comments
Patrick Quinn-Graham has written 132 comments
llew has written 128 comments
Heck has written 123 comments
house_monkey has written 120 comments
Ben has written 105 comments
Mr Reasonable has written 82 comments
stephen has written 76 comments
Sarah has written 71 comments
Jessie has written 60 comments
MiramarMike has written 57 comments
Sam has written 40 comments
Gryfon has written 37 comments
susan has written 33 comments
noizyboy has written 26 comments
Brian has written 25 comments
Reshma has written 24 comments
Heck has written 17 comments
Caro has written 16 comments
Giovanni has written 16 comments
MainlanderMike has written 15 comments
backin15 has written 14 comments
Jasmin has written 14 comments
Brena has written 12 comments
Brian has written 12 comments
Carrie has written 12 comments
sue has written 11 comments
nycgirl has written 11 comments
Rick Brittain has written 10 comments
Joanna has written 10 comments
Karl has written 9 comments
Malach has written 9 comments
Idiot/Savant has written 9 comments
Mary has written 9 comments
And some recent comments:
Alan (the wokman's creed)
Mike Riversdale (the wokman's creed)
Jayne Wilde (bilum bilong beki)
che tibby (some things in life are free)
Ychhh (going post-espresso with Chemex)
colleen (ticketek)
Alan (Meanwhile, back in April...)
Heather (Meanwhile, back in April...)
brian watson (Dry Stone Walls)
Rengo (bilum bilong beki)
John Levita (bilum bilong beki)
David (ask alan: bittorrent)
Ian Sirrell (Dry Stone Walls)
Susan (going post-espresso with Chemex)
Susan (going post-espresso with Chemex)
