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snapped? (rua)

So we can con­firm that yes, the new Snap­per cards do work pret­ty well in the bus­es (based on the small sam­ple of one attempt ear­li­er today using our tri­al USB snap­per pic­tured). One would expect so, giv­en that the tech­nol­o­gy comes from the giant T‑Money install in Seoul, where their mega-city sized pub­lic trans­port oper­a­tion will have smoothed all the rough-edges out of it long ago.

But WTF is hap­pen­ing with Snap­per?

First, the Dom Post reports that the roll­out, due for Mon­day 14th, has been delayed again (orig­i­nal­ly the roll­out was sup­posed to be in June). Then we find that at least some bus­es are run­ning with live, lit-up and use­able Snap­per read­ers any­way — such was the one we caught this morn­ing. And to con­fuse the mat­ter fur­ther, no retail­ers appear able to sell com­muters the cards until the end of the month… well, those retail­ers that actu­al­ly have agreed to sell the things in the first place, that is.

But… we wants it!

So what might have caused this Clay­ton’s delay? In the absence of any­thing use­ful from Snap­per them­selves we can, of course, indulge in wild spec­u­la­tion (after the jump):

Birds of Wellington

Oh how we love ye.

Well, not nec­es­sar­i­ly all of ye, and maybe not espe­cial­ly these colour­ful lit­tle num­bers as they method­i­cal­ly strip the buds from the flow­er­ing cher­ry tree. You, Rosel­la, made this Welling­ton­ista wish momen­tar­i­ly for the .410 he used to use as a kid. But that would be crim­i­nal­ly irre­spon­si­ble in a built-up area, as well as a seri­ous digres­sion from the sub­ject mat­ter of this post­ing.

Onward.

This week is Land­care Research’s Gar­den Bird Sur­vey:

The basic for­mat of the gar­den bird sur­vey is that peo­ple spend 1 hour dur­ing a spec­i­fied week in win­ter watch­ing birds in their home gar­dens, pub­lic parks, or school grounds, and record­ing the largest num­ber of each species they see at any one time. When repeat­ed over a num­ber of years this will pro­vide valu­able infor­ma­tion on changes in dis­tri­b­u­tion and pop­u­la­tion trends of birds in our urban envi­ron­ment.

This recent fine weath­er pro­vides the per­fect oppor­tu­ni­ty. It’s inevitable that you’ll prob­a­bly not see the occa­sion­al spec­tac­u­lar vis­i­tor in the hour you choose, like that fal­con that was hunt­ing the West­ern Sub­urbs a few years back, but at least you’ll be doing your bit for sci­ence.

And what could be nicer than a qui­et hour out­side count­ing the birds?

Just confirming what we all knew

I’m not usu­al­ly a polit­i­cal fly, but I do like rak­ing muck, so I could­n’t resist post­ing this image from a cam­paign poster. Thanks to the (deeply flawed, of course) Elec­toral Finance Act, now we know who’s real­ly behind the Nation­al Par­ty:

Any sug­ges­tion that they’re financed by C Untts would be vul­gar sock-pup­petry, so I won’t stoop to that. Oh, if you insist.

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.

Mystery? Pah!

Some­times, a bar is too pre­ten­tious even for me. Though by “pre­ten­tious”, I don’t mean what some peo­ple seem to mean by that: expen­sive, styl­ish, ambi­tious or glam­orous. No, it’s bars that make a great show of aspir­ing to all those qual­i­ties, and yet end up being the same-old same-old Courte­nay Place tack, that real­ly set my mandibles on edge.

I Heart Live Music

You know that most gig pro­mot­ers live in Auck­land, eh? And that Auck­lan­ders don’t know we exist, right?

As a response to the Auck­lo­cen­tri­cism (it’s a word, ok) of the tour­ing scene, a bunch of local pro­mot­ers have sprung up, band­ed togeth­er and gen­er­al­ly defied the odds to bring some amaz­ing inter­na­tion­als to inti­mate Welling­ton venues over the last few years. Which means we don’t have to trav­el to see our favourite band, and tak­ing a punt on an unknown quan­ti­ty is a lot eas­i­er and way less expen­sive than trekking up the island. Plus the like­li­hood of hav­ing a qui­et beer next to the main act after a show is ramped up sev­er­al notch­es when it’s at SFBH or Bode­ga.

Which brings me to I Heart Hiroshi­ma. They came over from Aus­tralia in April to sup­port Ratatat in Auck­land, but they could­n’t make it down here. Ratatat, how­ev­er, played to a sold-out crowd at Bode­ga and knocked our socks off. They told IHH about it, and the band begged indie Welling­ton pro­mot­er Palomi­no Agency to bring them down to see us. They’re play­ing at Bode­ga next week — Fri­day 18th — so do us all a favour and go see them! Their songs have been all over tv and radio recent­ly, but if you haven’t heard them, and you liked Ratatat — or you like the fab local sup­ports Thought Crea­ture or Lit­tle Pic­tures — take a punt. Tick­ets are only $20+bf right now from Slow­boat on Cuba St so why would­n’t you?

Strike: banging, crashing and beautiful music

Char­lie Watts was once asked in an inter­view whether he ever tuned his drums. When Char­lie replied in the neg­a­tive the inter­view­er asked him “why not?”

“Because every time I hit ’em, they go out of tune.”

I am mind­ed of this sto­ry every time I hear the Strike guys strik­ing up for they give their gear a fear­ful wal­lop­ing at times (as well as plen­ty of beau­ti­ful, sub­tle and fun moments, too).

“Ele­men­tal”, Strike’s new show is well in to it’s first week and audi­ences of all ages are lov­ing it. Described by Simon Sweet­man in the Domin­ion as “an amaz­ing show” and Aaron Wat­son in the Cap­i­tal Times as “end­less­ly inven­tive” and “not to be missed” this show is a smash hit.

There are sev­en­teen per­cus­sion pieces in the show, includ­ing new­ly-com­mis­sioned com­po­si­tions from Gareth Farr and com­pos­er-in-res­i­dence Taku­mi Motokawa, and the ensem­ble play hydrophones, pyro­phones, dip­pophones, Bed­ford trucks, and even the occa­sion­al per­cus­sion instru­ment, as part of a tremen­dous­ly the­atri­cal con­cert expe­ri­ence.

The sea­son con­tin­ues at Down­stage until 26 July and you can find more infor­ma­tion here.

Full dis­clo­sure: I work for Down­stage and you’ll often find me at the top of the Han­nah Play­house stair­case, wel­com­ing patrons to the venue.

Cinephilia: Opening This Week

The big guns still dom­i­nate pro­ceed­ings at our cin­e­mas (at least until Thurs­day when the lit­tle art-house films all gang up for the Fes­ti­val). Last week was hard­ly worth writ­ing a col­umn about as all the big dis­trib­u­tors sen­si­bly made way for Will Smith’s annu­al 4th of July block­buster, Han­cock (Read­ings, Empire, Regent-on-Man­ners & Embassy).

This week, the ABBA musi­cal (that had a sea­son at the Civic in Auck­land a cou­ple of years ago) Mam­ma Mia! leads the pack. Jus­ti­fi­ably described as a phe­nom­e­non since the stage show launched in Lon­don in 1996, the film fea­tures Meryl Streep, Pierce Bros­nan, Stel­lan SkarsgÃ¥rd and Col­in Firth singing and danc­ing their way through the ABBA back cat­a­logue. It’s been trail­ered for months now, so aware­ness should be pret­ty high and it’s play­ing every­where: Read­ings, Empire, Pent­house, Embassy, Light­house Petone, Regent-on-Man­ners.

[The rest of this week’s new releas­es sum­marised after the jump]

Girls are different from boys — apparently

So tonight was the Sil­i­con Welly mag­a­zine launch par­ty (which we twit­tered about yes­ter­day), and nat­u­ral­ly I was there, rep­re­sent­ing for the Welling­ton­ista. I was inter­est­ed to see that in this IT net­work­ing occa­sion, the ratio of guys to girls was about 7/2, and in talk­ing to the rare woman there, I found that — like me — the major­i­ty of them worked in project man­age­ment, comms or organ­i­sa­tion. As Welling­ton’s offi­cial Queen of the Geeks Bren­da has asked before (sor­ry, I can’t find the link, maybe she’ll com­ment with it) — where are all the female pro­gram­mers at? And if you look at the cov­er of this issue of Start-Up, you’ll see that only ONE of the Sil­i­con Welly hon­orees is female. What’s going on, peo­ple?

I don’t have the answers, so I sup­pose all I can do is pro­mote some gen­der-sep­a­rate events. Pret­ty Pret­ty Pret­ty which is the girlie site I run with Wellling­ton­ista PAG Amy, is hav­ing a big girlie par­ty to cel­e­brate our third (month) anniver­sary, and if you’re a lady, you’re invit­ed. Mean­while, in response, the boys are hold­ing anoth­er Chap’s Night that you might hap­pen to come across. Enjoy!

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.