Well yet another shocking display of student drunkenness at the Ferguson bar in Massey’s Albany campus after the Tiki Taane concert (which was awesome, no complaints there) last week.

Now I am not your average student, I am the one that will happily put my hand up to be the designated driver, but of course that comes with the price of having to deal with incoherently drunk students who think they are making sense when all I can really understand of them is “HEEEEEEEEEYYYYYYY I *burp* YOU FR *burp* OMPU CLA…” Yes this actually happened and I did not know the person or understand them, but good on them for trying to make a friend.

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Roller Derby ahe? Brings to mind… what exactly? For some people have no idea… horses on roller skates? Lesbians on wheels? Roller hockey? Well people, let me debunk the myth and explain to you exactly what roller derby is, and how it attracts huge numbers of provocatively dressed ladies, donning alter egos and smashing up other chicks all in the name of sport.

Modern roller derby’s roots are in Austin, Texas, when in 2001 a group of ladies formed the Texas Roller Derby, and began redefining the sport, attracting women who face thrills and spills head on, wear (and need!) mouth guards, kneepads, elbowpads, and for a small amount of time each week take on an alter ego usually quite unlike that of their normal everyday personality.

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The edited version of what happened in the student forum, taken from the Massey news page online:

Vice-Chancellor answers student questions (Kinda. But not really.)

By Tabitha Dewe

Vice-Chancellor Steve Maharey hosted an on-line student forum last week to answer questions that made him look good and weren’t too curly about all aspects of the University, including fees, enrolment policies and the impact of changes to Government funding, but not about how the university is rolling over and taking it like a bitch from a government more concerned with short term financial gain, rather than the future education of our nation.

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The word “Vintage” is most heavily associated these days with clothes and cars. I don’t know anything about cars, but I do know about clothes, so I when I found out that Fliss who I was interviewing for the roller derby article had a wardroom (that’s right a wardroom, not just a wardrobe) full of vintage clothes, I had to learn more.

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Siddharth Magazine is in his last year of an engineering degree in computers and electronics, and loves all things to do with computers, technology, gadgets and the internet. In this column he introduces five of the top new gadgets on the market at the moment.

(1) Solar Charger USB Hub:

Today, it’s important to preserve the environment and power, and the only way to do it is by using power sources that are reusable. The solar charger usb hub looks like a standard usb hub, used for connecting multiple usb devices, but it offers so much more. When the solar charge usb is not in use, it can be used as an emergency power supply, as it has a built-in lithum-ion battery, which can be charged with the AC power supply or solar power. It also comes with ten different adapters that can easily charge all the common devices like Mp3 players, handheld consoles, PDA devices and mobile phones such as Blackberry, Nokia, Motorola, HTC, LG, Samsung and Sony Ericsson. So, overall, this amazing portable device is great for charging many devices on the go.

(2) Doxie Portable Scanner for iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch:

This portable scanner is a unique accessory for iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch, as it scans all sorts of documents on the go, and is then able to send those documents to services like Google Docs and Picasa. It scans in 24-bit color, Grayscale (8-bit) and black and white modes with 600dpi resolution. Scanning and sharing is quite easy to perform with this amazing product by using a single multi-action heart button. It can scan all of the documents in PDF, JPEG and PNG file format.

(3) HyperMac Stand with external battery for your iPad:

Recently the iPad was released in New Zealand. The HyperMac Stand is a stylish stand which allows you to iPad, and interact with it better. The HyperMac Stand has two slots where you can stand the iPad at either 18 or 45 degrees, with or without a case, along with a built-in 40-watt-hour rechargeable lithium-ion battery which extends the battery life of the iPad to 16 hours. This new product definitely has a need in the market when it comes to iPad because of it’s usefulness.

(4) Revolutionary Echo Smartpen:

This is a very cool piece of technology from Livescribe. The product is able to capture everything that its user hears and writes, which can then be transferred to a computer via a usb connection. This smart pen comes in 4 or 8 GB memory, which allows us to record about 400 or 800 hours of recordings. This new product has surely a great scope in the future.

(5) Vibration-Powered Generating Battery:

There are a lot of new gadgets in the market currently which help to preserve the environment, and one of them is this new vibration-powered generating battery. These batteries consist of a single battery and a generator that are connected with a small cord. They will be useful in devises like remotes (Ed’s note: Or vibrators!), as there is no need to replace the batteries, they are recharged through vibrations or shaking. More research is currently underway to make the vibration-powered generating battery more efficient, reducing the time required to recharge the battery.