Author: noizyboy

Intersection of Impending Death

So, the John St/Riddiford St/Adelaide Rd inter­sec­tion has under­gone a bit of a lights phas­ing tweak. It took this par­tic­u­lar Wel­ling­tonista by sur­prise when, last week, I con­fid­ently star­ted to cross John St as the lights turned to red, only to dis­cov­er that instead of my little green man, I was now the tar­get for traffic com­ing down from Adelaide Rd.

There’s been some good that’s come from the change – the most obvi­ous one being that ped­es­tri­ans cross­ing John St (with the green man, that is), are no longer in danger of being skittled by right-turn­ing traffic from Adelaide Rd head­ing up John St (it was a com­mon trick for the first one or two cars in that queue to dive across the inter­sec­tion as soon as the lights turned green).

On the oth­er hand, ped­es­tri­ans cross­ing at the same place now have to con­tend with traffic run the orange (or, even the red!) from Rid­di­ford St and head­ing up John St. Every single morn­ing I’ve had to cross at that point, cars have sailed through the inter­sec­tion a good few seconds after the green man has gone off. It’s par­tic­u­larly bad if you’re cross­ing south-to-north, as the traffic is com­ing from behind you, out of your line of sight. It won’t be long before someone gets knocked over: mark my words!

How’s it work­ing out for you? Drivers – any thoughts?

Free day at Te Papa – today!

Alert read­er Andy writes to inform us that it is free day Te Papa! (Today being Thu 7 March May).

…so if you want to go see the Mon­et exhib­i­tion you can do so without pay­ing $15 entry. Te Papa is open until 9pm tonight.

Be warned though that there will prob­ably be crowds.

Thanks Andy!

Update: As Andy points out in the com­ments, the offer is only val­id for Wel­ling­ton res­id­ents, so bring along some proof that you live loc­ally. Because we all know what hap­pens if you’re not loc­al…

[video:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zOGAAlHzF4o]

A thing at Spacething

There’s an exhib­i­tion open­ing on at New­town’s Spaceth­ing tonight (Thu 7 May), fea­tur­ing new art­work from Helen McVey and Tania Price.

There will also be live music from (the excel­lently named) Pub­lic Toi­let ltd, Chris Palmer and Dan Beban, as well as cas­u­al rock cock­tail poetry by Eli­ot White.

Starts at 6pm. 171 Adelaide Road. 

Demon Woman – Flight Of The Conchords

The ‘nista have been too busy hit­ting the town this week to actu­ally make any posts. We’ll try harder next week. In the mean­time, since it’s Fri­day, here’s some Conchords…

 

[video:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZnU62CUevn4]

Fat Freddy’s Drop

So, Simon Sweet­man’s live review of Fat Freddy’s Drop (he really, really did­n’t like them) seems to have touched a nerve amongst some in the Wel­ling­ton music scene. A few (actu­ally, quite a lot) have come out in sup­port of Sweet­man – says Josef…

the per­fect music for the iPod gen­er­a­tion who would­n’t know good music if it bit them in the ass.

And Hugh…

Thank good­ness someone has seen the ele­phant in the room and had the cour­age to say it like it is. FFD as indi­vidu­als may be tal­en­ted, but the group sound is noise and inut­ter­ably bor­ing. And the inces­sent chirp­ing about how good they are is the ulti­mate sad­ness. Well done Simon

But, like­wise, the FFD sup­port­ers are also out in force. From a guy called guy…

Your douch­ery has no lim­its. FFD are awe­some. Regard­less of what you think. You.. not sur­pris­ingly are not.

And Seb says…

How about real­ising the suc­cess they have had. They must be doing some­thing right for them to do as well as they have. You just have poor taste in music.

So, what do you think? The Drop, hot or not?

[Updated – the poll, which was­n’t work­ing for some users yes­ter­day, should be ok now. Vote away…]

Flight of the Conchords – Sugalumps

Man, we haven’t had any Flight of the Conchords for aaaages.

So, here ya go…

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YtbQaJzZh1k]

Do not mail. Do not call.

Not par­tic­u­larly Wel­ling­ton-cent­ric, but use­ful non­ethe­less. Appar­ently you can get your­self taken off the dir­ect­ing mar­ket­ing data­base.

• NZ Mar­ket­ing Asso­ci­ation Do not Mail Request
• NZ Mar­ket­ing Asso­ci­ation Do Not Call Request

Be inter­est­ing to know if this works. (Who knows? It may just be an under­han­ded ruse to gath­er even more names, num­bers and addresses!)

From Know­IT, via Miramar Mike.

Wellllliiiinnnnggggtttoooonnnnnn!

Trans­la­tion prob­ably not entirely accur­ate.

[video:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dhRRB0WUrds]

[From Spare Room]

Phoenix Foundation: 40 Years

The new Phoenix Found­a­tion video, dir­ec­ted and star­ring Academy Award®-nominated dir­ect­or Taika Wai­titi is a wee gem, fol­low­ing our ener­get­ic prot­ag­on­ist in a one-shot piece of film­ing that takes him around the west­ern coast­line of Lyall Bay.