Anzac Day

So today in NZ it is a public holiday for Anzac so my friend and I decided to go to the bird sanctuary that is near my house to take some photos since it was a very nice sunny day. Here are some of the photos I took.

 New Zealand Tui

 This bird was probably what we saw the most, Tui's are black songbirds with two white feathers under their chins and they sing most of the day when they aren't eating what ever these tasty tasty red mystery berries are. 

 

  

They also had some native Geckos at the start of the sanctuary, never actually seen one of these in the  wild, however I saw a lot of brown ones in Australia around my Nans place.  

 

The sanctuary was actually converted from the old water reservoir, which works out well because a lot of endangered native Teal ducks stay in there as well.

This was probably the bird I enjoyed seeing the most, a New Zealand Bellbird, they puff themselves up and become almost completely round which is very adorable to see.

  

Lastly, the reserve was also part of the old gold mining area they have kept part of the mines open and you can wander in there with a torch and hardhat to explore in around 25 metres into the hill. However when my friend and I got in there we realized the roof was covered in these Wetas. These ones were about 3-5 centimetres long. I can imagine that this would quickly turn into some nightmare if they stood up in there and became completely covered in these...

Youtube Partnerships for All!

 In a recent blog by YouTube Creator they announced that effective immediately (in selected countries) that partnership status is now granted after you successfully monetize one video. This is an amazing thing for small channels, in the past you needed to have a certain size (around 1k subscriptions) before partnership was offered.

What this means to you:
Basically, lets say you recorded a super hilarious video of your cat doing something like this.

Well now you could immediately create a new Youtube account, monetize the video and link it to your ad-sense. If your video went viral or was popular you would immediately reap the rewards of it.

The Bad News:
Unfortunately, the main perks to being a Youtube Partner were that you could add a banner to your channel, and most importantly select the thumbnail you wanted from your video. The Thumbnail is one of the most immortant parts of a video sadly, people do judge a book by its cover and all the new Youtube partners will be stuck with the old system for now, so the partnership is really like being a Youtube Partner-Lite.

All and all this is an amazing step forward for small time Youtubers, such as myself.

The Waiting Game

Whelp, good news and bad news. The bad news is that I was wait-listed for the JET Programme instead of shortlisted...which means I get to wait till someone else drops out (apparently fairly likely) and get to wait between now and December. Well that's going to be fun since I have been waiting since February already, but I guess such is life. I actually handle bad news quite well, or maybe it hasnt hit me but for the moment I am fine with this and still confident Ill get a spot before August, and in the mean time I get to look forward to stuff I have lined up for the near future.

What does this picture have to do with anything?

Oh the good news? Well I found 15 dollars on the way home, how about that eh? I mean finding 10 or 5 dollars is common, but the combination of the two? First time in my life. Well guess I dont have much to say, if I get that job then Ill have many wonderful stories to tell in the not to distant future, if not then I grow fat playing video games for the rest of the life. Since I don't have much to say here is a picture of a cat.

Happy mid April all!.

Anyone into Squidoo?

 I was just browsing the internet like I normally do and I found out about this website. It actually really caught my eye, its been around for awhile though so I guess I'm fairly slow. As a natural fan of squid related things and colorful drawing it really snagged me instantly.

Basically its like a big blog everyone submits pages to, pages can get likes from the website/facebook etc. Its interface is really simple too which helps. The interesting part of it though is that you can link in amazon products related to what ever you are writing about, and if any sell from your page (called lense) you get a small cut. 

Have a few ideas for some articles I would like to write for it, I tried making one about the Kaka(brown parrots) that live around my house if you recall my old post about them, check out my post for an example of it.

 

My Squidoo Lense about the New Zealand Kaka

 Oh if you guys already use Squidoo, leave a link and Ill check them out later =)