It is eDay again tomorrow, your opportunity to put your eJunk in your trunk take it to the drop off point to get it taken care of responsibly.  Apparently 95% of materials in a computer can be recycled and reused and putting your electronic waste into landfill just isn’t an option because hazardous materials such as lead, mercury and cadmium can leach into the earth and get into waterways.

Where: Westpack Stadium carpark (map here)

When: Saturday 12 September

Tips for disposing of computer equiptment all year round are on the eDay site here.

We will see you there.

It’s a few minutes to 6pm on a Thursday night, a motley group are making their way along the Terrace to the St Andrew’s Church Hall. Inside, there are already a dozen or so people in casual attire. These are the "Advanced Class" who came at 5pm. Many of them stay on after their class to help and coach the "Beginners" who are arriving for their session with teacher Michael Harris. The beginners don’t come too early, because watching the advanced practise is very discouraging.

This is Thursday night dancing.

Every 8 weeks a new beginners class commences. Last night was the second session of the latest term, and already we’re old hands at the Clap Dance and foxtrot. We’re new hands at Rock ‘n Roll. Next week, God knows what fresh humilations await.

Old hands have expressed delight that this term’s intake is almost equal numbers of men & women. This means the more advanced women don’t have to dance as men so much. Men never have to dance as women.

The class begins with a simple warmup in the form of the "Clap Dance". This is because after every few steps, a lusty clap is required, before tippy-tapping back in towards your partner to bump hips. On the off chance you manage to connect without dislocating your partner’s hips, you get an encouraging comment from Michael. Me? After learning the next stage of the tippy-tapping, which involves a spin and a clap, I found myself about 10 metres away from my partner & having to sprint back in from across the room to attempt my "bump".

090909 UpStage Festival Preview from UpStage on Vimeo.

9 September (tomorrow) at 2pm get thee to a "real life" (RL) access node at the NewDowse (or a computer that doesn’t have all of the bells and whistles blocked) for the 3rd UpStage Festival, 090909.  www.upstage.org.nz will play host to 13 live online performances, ‘cyberformances’ no less, that span 9 time zones.

How does it work?

Well……

UpStage is a web-based platform that enables people anywhere in the world to participate in live online performances, created in real-time by geographically dispersed performers.  Audiences interact through a text chat tool.  The players use images, audio, video and text to creat the performances, operating "avatars" – graphical characters that move and speak aloud.  The performances are accessable to anyone with an internet browser.

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Three members of the Wellingtonista are already gleefully planning our outfits for the opening of the Montana World of WearableArt Awards Show in on the 24th of September at TSB arena.  The huge marketing push has begun with ads popping up near the airport and the details of the WOW wander are being hammered out as I type.  The show is worth around 10 million dollars to the Wellington economy and we will no doubt see creative lunges for our attention on a par with ‘that iceberg‘ and ‘those reapers‘.  Let’s hope they do Wellington proud with more creativity and less branded bumpf. 

Last year the supreme award went to Wellingtonian Nadine Jaggi and this year sees Wellingtonians dominating the field again with 40 out of the 165 garments from locals.  Last year Aunty Helen (or her COMMS people) did a mighty job of writing a speech on the fly but although I am sure the awards will be "World Class"™ I am not sure that we need John on stage with giant paua encrusted key for the occasion this year (but if he wants to give the paua dress another outing….)

What was that sound of crying and wailing all over Wellington yesterday? Why were single ladies pulling their hair and sobbing onto one another’s shoulders? Did it have anything to do with a certain DPF changing his facebook status from "Single" to "In a relationship"?

The Wellingtonista’s Font of all Film Knowledge Dan Slevin has been getting excited about this one.

For the next fortnight the Film Archive is showing a retrospective of the work of Wellington-based independent film making collective Vanguard Films.

Screening at the Archive’s cinema on the corner of Taranaki and Ghuznee Sts, are a range of exceptional documentaries and dramas, with equipment and gear used by the film makers over the years, also on display. There’s even a Bolex camera saved from detection by the French Military at Mururoa Atoll in 1973. Hidden in a barrel of oranges (the film stock in a sack of flour) a decoy camera was confiscated, but one Bolex remained in Vanguard member Alister Barry’s possession which he used to shoot footage of the Mururoa test site.    

Don’t miss Russell Campbell and Alister Barry on Sunday with Chris Laidlaw this weekend at 9:30am (appropriately just after Mediawatch). And come in to the Film Archive to find out more about the collective’s ceaseless political and social activism over the last 30 years. 

Tomorrow sees the start of Wellington’s most favourite book event, the Downtown Community Ministry Bookfair, which is being held at the TSB Arena on Saturday and Sunday.

Thousands of books have been sorted by volunteers for months all ready to make book shopping easier on the weekend.

My hot tips…

• Set a buying budget
• Get there early on Saturday to get the books you really really, REALLY want.
• Pop back on Sunday and take advange of the hourly specials for books, vinyl and magazines you mostly want.
• Don’t haggle at an event like this. All the prices are cheaper than at second hand book stores and every cent go towards helping those most at need in our city.

How good is this event? In the words of one of our favourite Wellington bloggers 

The event itself is so awesome that even if  they told me that they used the money to crush kittens, I’d still attend. Okay, maybe not … but still – it’s fabulous.

And this year’s book fair is all about Twitter. Follow the #dcmbookfair tag for updates over both days of the BookFair. Simply Tweet about your BookFair experience and include #dcmbookfair to let others follow the fun.

DCM Events Coordinator David Cross says…

The BookFair provides an ideal event for people on Twitter and other social networks. I’m excited to see how it all unfolds. Perhaps we’ll get people tweeting about finding the perfect book or that long lost vinyl record, who knows

The BookFair hours are from 9am – 5pm on Saturday 4th and 10am – 4pm Sunday 5th of September. Money raised from the BookFair goes towards Downtown Community Ministry’s work amongst people in need in the city.

At SXSW 2007, the cool new thing that got everyone talking was Twitter, and we know how that ended up. This year’s cool new thing was foursquare, a location sharing social networking app with gaming elements, and many people wondered when it might come to New Zealand.

Well, it’s not here yet. But recently, local dev legend Ben Nolan dropped us a line to let us know about Twitterplaces, an open-source variant on the foursquare theme that he’s been working on.

(When we last mentioned Ben he’d just put together one of the first ever Facebook applications. This was of course many months before we all got collectively tired of being pirates and throwing cows at each other; thankfully, Ben’s application contained neither.)

What to do when one’s parents come to town and want to take you out to dinner? We usually quiz our fellow Wellingtonistæ around the office watercooler: there’s always an opinion or three on a subject like this.

Given we had to cope with a not terribly adventurous (in the culinary sense) older bloke, and two small kids, where could we go that was classy yet satisfy our varying requirements? There were many good suggestions:

• Zibibbo – classy, plus PIZZA for small people;
• Roxy – quiet, tasty;
• Joe’s Garage – newly opened chain restaurant in Tory Street;
• Portofino – another newly opened chain restaurant, in the Meridian building;
• Le Metropolitaine – French, and known for a good steak;
• Osteria del Toro – Mediterranean for everyone;
• Crazy Horse – for a meat frenzy;
• Gusto Bistro – Petone’s finest;
• the Lido – an old standby, great food for the price.