Author: Robyn

Wellington Pecha Kucha Night #4

Hey, it’s time for anoth­er Pecha Kucha even­ing! Pecha Kucha works like this: 14 speak­ers involved in a cre­at­ive industry each get to present a slideshow of 20 images, for 20 seconds per image. No two speak­ers are the same, and every PK even­ing is inform­at­ive, fun, stim­u­lat­ing, thought-pro­vok­ing and inspir­ing.

The pre­vi­ous two I’ve been to were both sold out, so get there early to ensure you get a tick­et.

Pecha Kucha Wel­ling­ton #4

Tues­day 25 Novem­ber
Para­mount Cinema
Doors open 7.30pm, starts 8.20pm
$9 cash only

After the jump, the fab­ulous line-up of speak­ers includ­ing Roger Walker­’s Irrev­er­ent Inser­tions. 

Greens launch Wellington Transport Plan

The Greens have just launched their new Wel­ling­ton Trans­port Plan, com­plete with Green MP Sue Kedgley as their Wel­ling­ton Trans­port Spokes­per­son.

Wel­ling­ton has a pretty kick-arse pub­lic trans­port sys­tem as it is, with a well used net­work of buses, trol­ley buses, trains and the good ol’ cable car. So what plans do the Greens have for the future?

In short, their plans involve: bet­ter walk­ing, more cyc­ling, cheap­er buses, light rail, expan­ded trains, trol­ley bus love, and use­ful bus stops. And then there are oth­er ideas, like encour­aging people to work from home and shop online, and rethink­ing those mam­moth planned road­works.

Per­son­ally, I’m excited by the idea of turn­ing the Melling train line into light rail that will extend into a loop through Lower Hutt. That’s right, you’ll be able to get the train to Queens­gate without a massive walk. Wow, just like a prop­er grown-up city!

It will be inter­est­ing to see what plans, if any, the oth­er parties have for Wel­ling­ton’s trans­port.

Te Papa’s new Our Space exhibit

Recently opened at Te Papa is the Our Space exhib­it. It cost $6 mil­lion and is appar­ently aimed at the 15- to 25-year-olds – you know, the sort of people who’d rather be tex­ting or updat­ing their Bebo page or say­ing “woteva” than vis­it­ing a museum, etc.

At its most basic, Our Space is a photo album. More spe­cific­ally, it’s an elec­tron­ic data­base of pho­tos and short video clips of New Zea­l­and places and events. It’s a bit like Flickr, but rather than just rely­ing on media sub­mit­ted by the pub­lic, it also taps into Te Papa’s archives and the TVNZ archives.

The exhib­i­tion is made up of three parts: The Map, The Wall and The Rides, and in the interests of prop­er grown-up blog­ging, I made vis­its to Te Papa to do a thor­ough review of Our Space.

Magic wands, surly teens and motion sick­ness after the jump…

Things aren’t THAT bad

So, Wel­ling­ton is cur­rently the recip­i­ent of a whole lot of bad-ass weath­er and you may have received an email with an alarm­ing list of all the dam­age the storm has done, like this:

Pub­lic access to the Basin Reserve has been closed. Approx­im­ately 15 win­dows in the RA Vance Stand have blown out.
Fulton Hogan work­ing on Air­port roof which is lift­ing Coun­cil Parks staff have closed off the walk­ing tracks on Tinakori Hill due to the danger caused by many fall­ing trees. Power poles are in danger of top­pling on the seafront at Lyall Bay.

Slips! Buses and trains closed! Power out­ages! Pretty bad, huh?

Except it’s not. Find out the truth after the jump!

A‑splishin’ and a‑splashin’!

While today’s gale-force winds and rain isn’t much fun, there was much water-related fun last night on Abel Smith Street.

Late last night a water main on The Ter­race burst, send­ing a tor­rent of water gush­ing down Abel Smith.

Rather than snug­gling up under their duvets, loc­al res­id­ents instead leapt out of bed and turned the infra­struc­ture mal­func­tion into an inpromptu waters­lide, using recyc­ling bins, deck­chairs – any­thing they could get their hands on – to slide down the street. Awe­some!

Even bet­ter – a video was made!

Thanks to _june’s Twit­ter Tweets for the report­age.
Video by MrJudkins.

Pecha Kucha Night Wellington #03

The third Wel­ling­ton Pecha Kucha Night is upon us! It’s hap­pen­ing Wed 30 July at the City Gal­lery. Doors open at 7pm, the event starts at 8.20, and it’s $7 admis­sion.

A Pecha Kucha night involves a num­ber of presenters, usu­ally from the design, archi­tec­ture, pho­to­graphy, art and cre­at­ive fields, who present a slideshow of 20 images and speak for 20 seconds per image.

After the jump, check out the stel­lar line-up of people who’ll be speak­ing on the night.

Familiarity in the Cockpit

Last week­end’s Sunday Star Times Sunday magazine had a fun essay by Leah McFall lament­ing how hard it is to meet-cute in Wel­ling­ton – that is, have one of those lovely romantic-com­edy style acci­dent­al meet­ings with the fel­low of your dreams, usu­ally involving some­thing quirky like bagels or poodles. It’s impossible here because, as we all know, in Wel­ling­ton every­one knows every­one.

The essay isn’t online (boo, Sunday magazine!) but I thought it was worth shar­ing this bit, where Leah comes up with a mag­ni­fi­cent meta­phor for Wel­ling­ton’s dat­ing scene:

It’s like when you step onto a 16-seat pro­pel­lor plane. There’s the guy at the top of the steps who rips your tick­et, stows your laptop and passes round the Min­ties. Then he puts down the lol­lies, tugs on an earpiece, strides to the cock­pit and starts the igni­tion. That’s what you’re deal­ing with, in Wel­ling­ton: the man who is every­where. How can you meet-cute with that? You’ve met him before.

Being a recent arrival to these parts, there are still many social dots I’m yet to con­nect, but I’m already find­ing strange con­nec­tions in places I’d least expect it.

But per­haps there’s an advant­age to this small-vil­lage scene? After all, if every­one knows every­one, you’re soon going to hear what your pilot’s crash rate is like.

Real-time Bus Information

I’m a big fan of real-time bus inform­a­tion – elec­tron­ic signs that use GPS tech­no­logy to tell you pre­cisely when the next bus is com­ing, rather than hav­ing to rely on the the­or­et­ic­al arrival time of the prin­ted timetable.

These have been up and run­ning in Auck­land for a few years now, and when I was liv­ing there it made catch­ing a bus just that much easi­er.

For example, I could avoid sardin­ing myself into a packed bus if I knew there was anoth­er one com­ing along soon. And instead of just wait­ing at the bus stop, I’d know if I had enough time to grab a cof­fee or browse in a shop before the bus came, or even walk for a bit to the next stop. And if a bus was run­ning late, I’d know that too.

So it’s excit­ing to see that the Great­er Wel­ling­ton region­al coun­cil are in the pro­cess of plan­ning a real time bus info sys­tem. They have a sur­vey up (run­ning until July 20), want­ing to know what sort of inform­a­tion you’d like, how you’d like it delivered, etc. And there’s also the pos­sib­il­ity to register interest in being part of a focus group.

Take the sur­vey now plz.

Malls, and Lack Thereof

The NZ Her­ald reports that a com­pany named RCG, who are “retail experts” have giv­en rat­ings to the malls of Aotearoa because, “We thought it timely.”

So I thought it was timely to take a look at what they thought of the malls of the great­er Wel­ling­ton area. Do any of them equal Auck­land’s mighty four-star West­field Albany?

The art­icle is skewed towards Auck­land Malls, but it does men­tion poor North City in Pori­rua, which is only worth two stars as it is “strug­gling to achieve good sales”. The art­icle also says that Lower Hut­t’s Queens­gate “made a big state­ment” (What, “I’m a mall in Lower Hutt!!!”?), but does­n’t say what the rat­ing is.

But most inter­est­ingly, the art­icle notes that the research­ers found that “Wel­ling­ton was bereft of malls”, like that’s a bad thing.

Per­haps it’s because Wel­ling­ton’s inner city street shop­ping works so well it has­n’t cre­ated a demand for giant malls lurk­ing out in the sub­urbs.

We have Cuba Mall, and I reck­on that’s worth more stars than any dirty ol’ sub­urb­an mall out there.

Photo cour­tesy of Sol­id State.

Team Puppy Guts fingers their way to the top of 48Hours film comp

Con­grat­u­la­tions to team Puppy Guts who have only just gone and won the grand final of the 2008 48Hours film com­pet­i­tion with their dance short F*DANCE, mak­ing them the first Wel­ling­ton team to do so.

F*DANCE is the tale of a bad-ass fin­ger dan­cer (you know, when you make dance moves with your fin­gers) who loses his mojo and must learn the hard way how to fin­ger his way back to the top.

The film impressed the judges enough to make it to the Wel­ling­ton finals, and was a Peter Jack­son wild­card pick (oo-ooh!) for selec­tion in the nation­al finals.

So what impressed the inter­na­tion­al judges? Was it the humour? The fin­ger dan­cing? The spe­cial effects? Or was it the splen­did mont­age train­ing scene that fea­tured a gruelling fin­ger-run up the Civic Square steps?

Well, whatever it us, team Puppy Guts have done us proud.