It is reas­sur­ing to know that the salon did not die in 18th cen­tury France, gath­er­ing togeth­er in RL to con­verse, spar, eat, con­nect and dis­play our intel­lec­tu­al charms has not gone out of style.  Recently we have had Pecha Kucha, Ignite and more Bar­Camps than you could throw a pack of PostIt notes at.  Today the open source inclined have been play­ing with their toys at Soft­ware Free­dom Day and this week is full of occa­sions to be witty and pretty and geek (slash nerd).

This week brings Nerdnite#2, anoth­er Tues­day night din­ner and Web­stock will be bring us mini-mar­vels and the big unveil of the speak­ers for 2011.

All of these events are non-geek friendly (plenty of room for fraghags), all you need is an eclect­ic men­tal diet and a love of cre­ativ­ity and innov­a­tion, so don’t be shy.  Nerd­nite looks to be tak­ing eclect­ic to a whole new level with geoen­gin­eer­ing, stor­ies, witch­craft, and food on the menu at Bettys Bar this Monday.  It seems the case that people self-identi­fy as geek but get twitchy when ref­ered to as “nerds”, well per­haps this word is going to be reclaimed as well if this Nerd­nite thing catches on.

Besides, geek appears to be con­tested term, this week we have had @BR3NDA toot­ing about priv­ilege and com­puters:

Tonight at the Bur­gundy Room at Bodega you can wit­ness the third live out­ing of a new band fresh from record­ing their demo.  Be there so you can brag to your friends that you were into them before they hit the big time.  Simon Sweet­man does­n’t hate them, so that is some kind of endorse­ment 😉

The Good Words is made up of:

•  Nik Jar­vie-Waldrom – Vocals
• Tak­umi Motokawa – Key­board (com­pos­i­tion prize win­ner)
• Mike Duffy – Bass
• Nick Hens­man – Drums

These guys are all kinds of awe­some, they kick off at 9.00pm with sup­port from Old Time Enemies $10 on the door.  All the dets are on the invite here.

Their bio says it as well as I can:

Take one soul-jazz tem­plate, elong­ate it, daub in bits of funk, traces of pop and the energy of a rock band to cre­ate 21st-cen­tury Diva blues. Proudly Kiwi, defi­antly ori­gin­al and with enough quirk to keep them far from the labels of any par­tic­u­lar ‘scene’, The Good Words live in the moments with­in songs, sidestep­ping the obvi­ous com­par­is­ons by offer­ing just enough spon­taneity in the per­form­ance, enhan­cing the craf­ted tunes. Hook­ing the audi­ence from start to fin­ish.

[Dis­claim­er: The author lives with super tal­en­ted Tak­umi Motokawa but it ain’t just her that thinks they are shit hot, the demo is get­ting plenty of play in the office.)

That’s what the cal­en­dar is telling us. As is the wind howl­ing through the trees, and shortly, a string of cold south-west­erly thun­der­storms and gales. Stay classy, Welly Weath­er God!

Leav­ing that aside, the our etern­al optim­ism finds expres­sion in the cel­eb­ra­tion of grow­ing things that is the Spring Fest­iv­al, to start at the week­end (through to 3 Octo­ber).

The first event is the annu­al Otari-Wilton’s Bush Open Day & Plant Sale, which any aspir­ing sub­urb­an­ite should be advised to attend early if they want to pick up the really good stuff. Early bird catches the hard-to-find horoeka vari­ant and all that. But even if you’re not a garden­er, the ‘Bush is a very nice place for a stroll, espe­cially on Open Days when after­wards you can reward your­self at the saus­age sizzle (and the last couple of years there’s been a cof­fee cart there too).

The reces­sion may be grind­ing on, but it seems there are plenty of hos­pit­al­ity oper­at­ors will­ing to take a bet on a new ven­ture. In recent weeks, we’ve heard of the fol­low­ing (re-)openings and upcom­ing rumours:

• Keen­an’s (formerly New Orleans)
• Was­abi Sushi (formerly Beau­jolais)
• Capri (formerly Koi)
• Vic­tori­an Ale House (formerly Stan­ley Rd)
• Ances­tral (formerly United Video in Cour­tenay Pl)
• Ozeki (brand new, on the corner of Tory St and Fran­cis Pl)

The first three have already opened, with mixed res­ults. Capri has had at least one very good review; Was­abi is part of the respec­ted Kazu empire; and Keen­an’s … not so much. If any of you have exper­i­ences to share about those, or juicy gos­sip to share about the oth­ers, let us know!

So many good things on this week­end. Maybe Wel­ling­ton’s about to put its head up out of the winter slump.…? 

One high­light is art-pop­pers Xiu Xiu who are play­ing SFBH with Sia­mese (Grayson Gilmour) and tal­en­ted duo Glass Vaults. Phew.

And here’s a girl in an apple. Tickets$26

Cre­at­ing con­tent on the inter­webs is all very well, but some­times one has the need to express one­self in IRL.

For­tu­nately the coun­cil have forseen this need and erec­ted giant tri­angles of expres­sion around town. There’s one under the umbrella sculp­ture at James Smiths Corner, and oth­er by the tri­pod sculp­ture down the oth­er end of Cour­tenay.

So what incin­di­ary mes­sages will we see? People stick­ing it to the man and/or lady? Telling the politi­cians where to go?

Or per­haps some­thing charm­ing and delight­ful.

So, the Can­ter­bury earth­quake. Our thoughts are with our friends and whaunau in the area, and we’re so glad that there haven’t been any fatal­it­ies *hugz*

But, of course, liv­ing in the shaky city of Wel­ling­ton, it makes us aware of the import­ance of being pre­pared should such a big one hit our fair city. Remem­ber – parts of the two roads out of the city run along the fault line.

Resources for pre­pared­ness in an earth­quake:

• Wel­ling­ton City Coun­cil’s basic pre­pared­ness guidelines
• The Gov­ern­ment’s Get Ready Get Thru guide
• The Great­er Wel­ling­ton Region­al Coun­cil’s earth­quake inform­a­tion

In the mean­time, let’s count our bless­ings – we have elec­tri­city, tele­com­mu­nic­a­tions, run­ning water, sew­er­age and a roof over our heads.