The National Library has joined the Flickr Commons project, whacking up many of their photos on Flickr. At the moment, there’s not much from Wellington, but we’re hoping that will change as more are uploaded.

One particular Wellington delight, however, is a set of photos of a ramshackle house on Cuba Street called the Old Shebang (shebang in this instance means dwelling).

And as well as that, Google are in the process of putting Life magazine’s archive of 10 million photos online. So far, searching for Wellington brings up slim pickings, but it’ll be worth checking back on as the archive grows.

But until then, you can browse Life’s New Zealand photos. Or, um, check out this photo of Madonna looking all cool in 1984.

There’s been a bit of action going on at the old Bucket Fountain, icon of Cuba Street.

First, it mysteriously disappeared:

We initially thought this was a retro ’80s David Copperfield-style magic trick, but it turns out it was just taken down for maintenance.

The fountain returned, with a fresh coat of paint, ready to splash the good folk of Cuba Mall once again.

But then a hand-written sign appeared up the top. It’s not so legible from the street, but zooming in revealed this message:

"Prove your hunter-gatherer skills by finding food in the forest at Te Papa."

Perhaps, with the Current Economic Situation, Te Papa is right to put the emphasis on natural history and away from art.

And if you’d like to escape the misery of modern life, you can now journey back in time to when the Bucket Fountain was first installed in 1969, thanks to the WCC’s The Cuba Street Memories Project.

From this, we learn that the Bucket Fountain was originally nicknamed the Sugar Shovel Fountain and it was painted yellow and black (so 2000s!).

Just quietly between you and me and everyone we know, there’s something tasty for tasting at Cellar-Vate on Molesworth Street this afternoon.

Today is all about holiday drinking! We’ve got some festive bubbles and a refreshing rose. How could you miss the opportunity to sample a quick glass of Champagne on the way home?

See you there 4.30 – 6pm at Cellar-Vate.
 

Two of Wellington’s leaders are backing debate on a user-pays water system to reduce Wellingtonians’ reckless consumption – now more than twice the national average.

Apparently we’re using about 400 litres of water per day, per person.

The bulk of it gets flushed away.

And one answer, to drive the correct behaviour of course, rather than make you behave as "they" want you to, is to install water meters on homes & charge for the usage. Just like Auckland.

Kind of makes that 6 litre per minute shower head that Nanny was going to make us get, attractive.

There are pluses & minuses to this plan & we’d love to hear what you think in the comments

Full story here.

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. 

After every election there are geographical analyses of voting patterns, inevitably followed by suggestions that certain regions should secede and form their own country. Such analyses are often at electorate level, but there’s a lot of fine detail below that, and a cell of socialist insurgents might live just around the corner from an enclave of conservative curmudgeons. So I made the following map of Wellington voting tendencies at a booth-by-booth level.

For analysis, explanations, notes on methodology and a whizzy interactive Google Maps mashup of the whole region, read the full story.