Joel, a Pākeha man, stands outside the beehive and smiles

Meet Joel MacManus, the journalist that Wellington actually deserves

It’s been a very weird week in Wel­ling­ton where we’re think­ing actu­ally Chris Bish­op has done good for once with the Dis­trict Plan? Very strange pos­i­tion to be in. Obvi­ously, city coun­cilors who want a city for the liv­ing and future have pushed for this for a very long time, but I don’t think it […]

Dan at the head of the FishHead

How time flies! Five years since we hit the launch party, Fish­Head magazine is going from strength to strength, no doubt because they’ve been smart enough to soli­cit a bunch of Wel­ling­tonista con­trib­ut­ors (I wrote in the very first issue, cur­rent ‘istas Tom Beard and Tom Goulter and gone fish­in’ Hadyn Green are all reg­u­lar colum­nists). […]

This fish is still fresh, even after two years

Happy second birth­day to our favour­ite Wel­ling­ton print media, Fish­head! Thanks for the fun reads, the great parties , and for giv­ing our city a magazine and fant­ast­ic quiz host/Jam MC. Their second birth­day issue is out now in shops every­where. Here’s to lots more!  

Who’s the coolest of them all?

So, the news is out – on the front page of the Dom­Post, an advert­ising col­our sup­ple­ment, and ban­ners all along the Golden Mile: Wel­ling­ton is the “coolest little cap­it­al in the world”.

Who’s the coolest of them all?

So, the news is out – on the front page of the Dom­Post, an advert­ising col­our sup­ple­ment, and ban­ners all along the Golden Mile: Wel­ling­ton is the “coolest little cap­it­al in the world”. Yep, that means Wel­ling­ton has beaten out oth­er little cap­it­al cit­ies such as Vat­ic­an City, Dili, Kabul and Apia to be the […]

Wellingtonista Radio Show ep 02

Last week saw the quiet but con­fid­ent debut of the Wel­ling­tonista Radio Show on The VBC. You can listen to an edited ver­sion of the show here Wellingtonista_Show_EP01 (right-click, save as), and hope­fully we’ll get our pod­cast­ing steez togeth­er and start pub­lish­ing the shows as umm.. pod­casts.

I’ll be present­ing the second show, same time: 7pm – 9pm, tonight.

Tech info after the jump…

Wellingtonista Radio Show

Just a wee heads up: I’ll be present­ing the very first Wel­ling­tonista Radio Show on The VBC tonight. The VBC is the stu­dent owned and operated/community LPFM radio sta­tion broad­cast­ing on 88.3FM, based at the Kel­burn Cam­pus of Vic­tor­ia Uni­ver­sity of Wel­ling­ton, in New Zea­l­and.

Ponoko make the Grey Lady

Ponoko in the NYTLoc­al start-up and Friends-of-Wel­ling­tonista Ponoko (among oth­er con­nec­tions to us they’re also part-spon­sor of our awards this year) have their pic­ture at the top of an inter­est­ing art­icle in the tech sec­tion of today’s New York Times. The art­icle talks about the rise of inter­net-aided design and mak­ing and describes Ponoko thus:

Ponoko, a com­pany based in New Zea­l­and, allows cus­tom­ers to upload designs for flat shapes that can then be snapped togeth­er like Ikea fur­niture. Mak­ing a pro­to­type can be as simple as cut­ting shapes out of card­board. Users then cre­ate a digit­al ver­sion and send it to Ponoko, which cuts the pat­tern out in met­al or wood with a laser.

There’s a fair head of glob­al buzz build­ing up around Ponoko, whose poten­tial extends far bey­ond the Times’ fairly neut­ral descrip­tion of what can be achieved with them today.

And as for us: well, we were very excited to note what looks like a pro­to­type of the highly sought after 2nd Annu­al Wel­ling­tonista Award trophy vis­ible on the table between Dave and Derek. So maybe this means we’ve made the Times as well?

P pipes seized from dairies

Any­one else find it amus­ing that every single dairy in Wel­ling­ton today had the Domin­ion Post’s “P pipes seized from dair­ies!” story on proud dis­play out in front of their respect­ive shops.

(And is there a tech­nic­al term for those wire-frame things that hold the big one-page head­line ban­ner for the day?)

Numero Uno? Numero no no!

(Issue two is out now, but I have been slow. All judg­ments below are based on the first issue. I’m not buy­ing anoth­er one to see if it’s improved.)

When I saw the first issue of Uno on the shelves at the super­mar­ket, I was hop­ing it would be the Wel­ling­ton equi­val­ent of Metro – on a good day, not all “Why your kids’ school will give you can­cer and nev­er let them buy a house” Listen­eresque. But it’s not. It’s really, really not. Instead it turns out that Uno is every bit as advert­ising-copy driv­en as the Wel­ling­ton Guide – without the advant­age of at least being Welly exclus­ive. I sup­pose I should have known bet­ter give that Wel­ling­ton’s offi­cial vil­lain of 2006 is on the cov­er. After the jump, more reas­ons not to waste $9.95.