Posts by Compie
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here we go again.
Stuff is running a poll, I hate those bloody polls.
Do you think it is appropriate for spiritual leaders to bless state roading projects?
See storyYes
No
Under the title of "Blessed are roads under the Treaty"
and not surprisingly the poll is running at 80% against the idea.
How does this add to any debate of the treaty and of the place of the indigenous in NZ. But this is trypical of the drivel that we are talking about.
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"Quite apart from this, I wasn't aware that abortion was a crime, let alone an 'Asian crime.'"
Great point, amazing how the media in NZ will pick up on a minority statistic and report on it as if it was a crime. This happens time and time again, and it's really disapointing.
For example when Ngai Tahu fisheries laid off workers it was reported upon with such virtiol that one assumed that Maori business are not allowed to do such things.
too many people in this country are self described journalists, take that bizzare fellow Ian Wishart. Some of the most amazing radio I have ever heard was Brian Edwards just laying into the guy with his homophobic expose on Peter Davis. Edwards (yes we all know his political bias) a guest on the panel was beyond civil to the guy, but in listening to Wishart I can hardly blame him. It was as if we were back in the days of the Homosexual Law Reform.
Another example is Mathew Hooton in the SST (?) claiming that NZ was a quasi facist state or something along those lines. No disrescpect Russell et al here, but his columns are less than what I'd expect in the blogosphere. Often factually incorrect, they are as opinion pieces shoddy and in serious need of an editor.
Did anyone pick up on the comments by Hone Harawera in Canada yesterday. Newstalk ZB did. How astonishing a Maori of some radical background at an Indigenous peoples conference suggesting that full and final back here in NZ might not mean full and final for future generations. My god we could see that coming, but apparently it was shocking news for ZB they ran with it for their main headline, because radical Maori make great talkback starters (for ten, sorry word association football).
Speaking of football, FigJam, now I know many a footballer (the beautiful game) that I could apply that to. Might try and slip it into a sentence at the Otago vs Waitaikere game this afternoon.
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Yikes sorry about the messy spelling, bloody dyslexia.
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What I find really interesting about all of the threads about music is how it changes my itunes.
What I'm surrently listening to is a result of Russell mentioning the Checks, who to my mind are more mod than most things that have come out of Britian over the last decade (excusing the mod father himself sad old Paul Weller).
So new on the playlist and subsequently on the shuffle is my collection of fav mod tunes. But related to this talk of rock survivors and influences, interestingly The Who only get 2 songs on the mod playlist. I know the mod thing was fleeting for them and Roger Daltry had to gel his hair down to look mod, but there is no doubting their influence over the music scene. Saw them at Hollywood Bowl just after John had died, what a show.
Anyway, slipping nicely in there are the Checks.
Mind you what caliber of bands do we have coming from NZ these days. Never mind that they have fleeting dances with major labels and move on, they are moulding and influenceing the music scene here and overseas.
Some of the funniest TV I ever saw was a French Canadian game show. My wife was doing her best to keep up, but for some reason after the music stopped and somewhere in the laughing clothes kept being discarded. No one ever got nude, and nobody seemed to win, to that was there even a point to the show, but it was funny.
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exactly what would be left for the Ministry of Information.
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Tom,
my fascination with data official and unofficial is in how can we make this data available to all, platform independent and context aware. Diving into the realm of Ontologies and how do data sets talk to each other is fascinating stuff being done by some very clever computer science geeks, providing heaps of opportunities of us otherwise enclined to play with.
I'm a designer with a fascination of the wether, and can harldy wait to play with the toys of the future (data sets, ontologies and their interfaces). I could suggest that some of the more classic mash-ups we are seeing today are on the whole just the very starting point of a process in which the ends are still pretty open for defintion. For the computing world (using industrial analogies) we are just starting to come through the steam engine revolution and hitting the internal combustion engine, very early on indeed.
I'm not to sure that those producing the data are in any way better off at presenting it. Some of the more elegant examples of the simpliest mash-ups with google mapping etc have been by people only interested in the interface or results, rather than the data itself. that does not mean there won't be failures, but in getting to where we may be heading to with ontologies and interrelated data sets is going to be fun.
the problem is how to get the seemingly unrelated data, in many different formats (as this should be the challenge instead of looking for conformity of data) talking to each other so that meaning is derived. Stuff around the edge such as privacy, pricing, copyright etc can be worked into this.
As an example, I would be really intersted in an interconnected world of ontologies that enabled a ubiquitious information environment. I'd love my cell phone to anticipate me driving somewhere and getting the latest forecasts to play on the car stereo, to talk to the holiday home to turn the hot water on, or to suggest a number of hotels with the cheapest rooms and which one has views and which one has a touring german ohm pa pa band staying, or to prebook the warrent at the local garage because I have neglected to do so before I left town, compare prices and work out which is the best mechanics not on holiday that weekend. These should not be things that make us lazy, but enable us to do the things we are doing today with better choices. One only needs to remember the fantastic claims of the Mighty Micro to realise that we don't work 3 day weeks and all work from home.
Whops off point a little. Back to data and NZ, why should we rely on the official? Using the weather again, our Dunners weather is out on the Taieri, bloody miles away and about as relavent some times as looking at Auckland forecasts for me living on the Otago Peninsula. So I look to the local weather web cams and amateur weather stations. They are on the whole accurate, and unless I have a lot economically riding on them, they provide very good context for my needs. Sure google maps is still lagging behind in what is available in NZ, but what is to stop us accessing other information or creating it ourselves, instead of waiting for google to catch up with this little blip on the Globe. As I have mentioned with the right systems and ontologial data sets communicating, context and knoweldge can be obtained from seemingly uncompatible sources. Who's to say that someones car taking a temperature every 5kms on the raod between Lumsden and Mossburn relaying that information via a cell phone to a database that can then be accessed by bus operators, with some form or reciprocial renumination taking place (what ever that may be). IS the data any less valid, and if it is we can work in redundancies and error factors to the equation.
Nice thread guys, even if I do go off on a rant. Love the earthquake map, for a boy from Hokitika living in Dunners I do miss earthquakes.
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holly crap, sorry about the rant guys...
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Some of the hype and disinformation surrounding the waterfront stadium project is starting to get up my nose.
For instance we now have to build everything with terrorists in mind, then of course there are tsunami, North Korea's nuclear capability, dog attacks, home invasions (whops sorry they were yesterdays media attention - nice to know we stamped them out with the help of the media).
More recently some in the media have questioned costing, time constarints and engineering feats etc.
Lets remember that whoever builds and designs this thing has a lot at stake. Possibly one of the most visible and scrutinised public works in years, any slip up and TV1 & 3 will have a helicopter hovering above or Tony Field with a hard hat on at the front gates quicker than a rat out of aquaduct (excuse the pun).
Warren and Mahoney and so far Fletchers are very large reputable companies who are not going to have a legacy of a failed stadium hanging around their heads. If we take Warren and Mahoney for instance they have created or fashioned some of New Zealands most iconic architecture that in itself came to mean more than just the bricks and motar. I would tend to think that the next edition of their fine history ends with "failed stadium architects".
Fletchers is also as we know a world class construction company, regarded world wide for their skill and expertise. I have heard hype that it will sink into the sea, or be overcome with water in the face of a tsunami. Well if a tsunami is big enought to inundate the stadium, then that will not be the only building that we need worry about, i'd be running for the top of Mt Eden in that case. As for falling in the water, as mentioned above, Fletchers are not going to let themselves go under or ruin their reputation on such a project.
It is a real shame that we have such low esteme of our architects and engineers in this country. I mean Fletchers built among many of their most prsestigious projects the 1billion dollar Getty Centre in Los Angeles and Burj Al Arab in Dubai. These are not some fly by night cowboys wo are going to fleece the taxpayer and deny mum's poor hip operation as suggested on other blogs.
I guess part of the problem has been the lack of information from the government, but also the histeria that the media has managed to get itself into has hindered good journalism. There has been little or no in dept work into who are these buggers entrusted to design and build this project. The closest we got was John Campbell actually getting one of the partners of Warren and Mahoney in to discuss the project, even then the questions were soft.
Sometimes the media is too wrapped up in its own importance and this has been one of those times. Filming Danny Watson fielding calls from Outraged of Onehunga was apparently more important than looking at what needs to be done to create a world class stadium. Has one journalist actually talked to any consulting engineers, or the clients of Warren and Mahoney and Fletchers to guage the quality of their work. I guess theres no headline in Fletchers constructs Burj Al Arab worlds only 6 star hotel on time and on budget, is there.
When Auckland stops looking past its own nose, and the journalists start doing their job, and the govt starts putting some concrete stuff out there, then we'll get some real debate going.
Meanwhile I'm off to develop and international terrorist tidal wave detector to sell to the stadium, there seems to be some money in it.
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Frank
Good point about the digitalisation of cultural heritage. There is a lot of fluf in this document, but it is at least an acknowledgement of the difficult decisions and planning that is needed.
Russell,
interesting where one get's their collective knowledge these days. My weather sources are all over the place.
Since I'm on campus, my new Irish weather stone has become
http://www.physics.otago.ac.nz/eman/weather_station/current.php
I guess I could put my head out the window...The NZ weather forum
http://www.weatherforum.org.nz/forum/viewforum.php?f=2
is a fine source of technical informal, observational and sometimes downright funny "pissing down here"The weather forum was fascinating durning the big weather events we've had here this year, some people with some cool toys were giving us the latest readings and predictions, while the metservice was chugging along.
My news comes from many sources including these repositories of world newspaper front pages.
http://www.newspaperindex.com/
http://www.newseum.org/todaysfrontpages/Google Earth is an interesting one. Turn it on to get some pretty fascinating imagery, and of course context to where things are happening, just don't rely on the community to get accuracy in their posts. I have seen labels for stadium and airports etc placed many many miles away in the sea, up buildings etc. Accuracy isn't really needed when you are hovering over San Francisco at 40km, but when you are apparently only hundreds of meters up and you have 6 different locations for Victoria's Secret (not that I really needed to know that).
As for the digital plan, kind of related. Did I really hear a spokesperson for TVNZ talking the other day about their upcoming digital channels claim that TVNZ is the world leader in independent jounralism and news innovation? has this person spent all of his/her life on South Georgia Island?
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Hey all,
I am currently in the last few weeks of my Masters thesis in Design looking at weather representation and information design.
One large component of the thesis has been user driven content and in particular folksonomie. I find this stuff fascinating, it would be a goal to develop a truely ubiquitious weather service - but that's another story.
I found the bit in this report about folksonomies and central control interesting. What I found most interesting is how dismissive of this they are. I have no doubt (despite the merits of validity of data) that ontologies and folksonomies, as they are emerging now in the blogosphere etc are the voice of tomorrow.
Just as with the weather, the metservice will continue to provide the official word, but if you are like me, I have dozens of weather cams bookmarked that actually make my NZ weater picture, not the time delayed official picture.
It was like some of the large news stories of the last 2-3 years, officials have been watching TV to get the latest (although not offical or verifiable) information.
The immediacy of the medium (internet, wap etc) allows the official to be blurred, what is official information and is the official necessarily better than informal information.
Take this waterfront debacle, I say it lightly because as far as I see it, the media has done one hell of a job in disinformation (planting stadium Allliance from Germany on the waterfont for a representation), then all morning the talkback is filled with concerned of Riccarton who wonders why they are going to build that ugly thing on the waterfront. The official reaction has lagged behind the populous, I filled out the Auckland City official survey yesterday.
By the very nature of being official, information will mean inherent time lags, and that is fine. But to play such disregard for folksonomies (as disparaging term in itself) is too arrogant of such a report.
Also. of course there needs to be a sense of urgency in getting public content online, and there are some great examples of that out there. But again, they seem to be dismissive of what is actually already available online as in anyway actual real content. Just because it doesn't come from a ministry doesn't make it any less valid.
Public Address & all the other blogs, web cams, amateur weather stations, community sites etc etc etc, are all part of the online landscape that is NZ, and they provide so much for so many that the official will never be a part of.
All very well having the full historical official account of NZ broadcasting history online for example, interesting nice fluffy stuff, but it is the dynamic raw stuff that is being generated everyday that is really interesting. the good old high art & gatekeeping debate.
Nice to see this report, shame it's so dismissive of folksonomies, shame NZ braodband is so expensive and so slow, and shame that govt still sees itself as the director of this, shame it's 5 years late...
Still an interesting read, and something I will be commenting on, cheers.
ZUNE,
I bought a shuffle last year. I opened the box, plugged it in, added music, let it charge and that was it.
I got a great kick out of the disaster they had at endgadget.itunes has never crashed my computer (pretty spectacular if it could under OSX), I never had to give my phone number to anyone... what a joke.
I agree the brown is funky, but the concept and software are tan at best, more a smokers stained off white. But this is why I am a Mac guy and the majority
of concened of Riccarton put up with crap. Walk into Harvey Norman and the Orwellian masses are driven past the macs like a conveyor belt to the PC
section, where mediocrity and frustration lives, why? God only knows?Yikes, bit of a rant
cheers