I’m actually not really referring about the amount of content I put here. Yes, it comes and goes with available time and mood, but nothing is really changing. What I am referring to is a few local sites that seem to have died off, to the detriment of the community.

• Sustainable Wellington Transport had only a few posts in a short burst of activity. Transport happens to be one of my pet interests, so I have been watching for more content for a while. The group of authors includes several city and regional councillors alongside a couple private citizens. I can imagine them being busy, but I’d love to see some activity, even if it’s just media releases that can induce feedback.

• Mount Cook Mobilised is a blog about my suburb. I was raised to care about my environment and I do my best to follow through on that. There seems to be 3 facets to this organisation. The blog refers to a paper newsletter, which I’ve seen a single issue of, and also points to a wiki. The wiki/blog combination can be very powerful, but both seem in relative infancy so far.

• Option 3 was put together during a submission process to discover the best alternative for bringing commuters and travellers into Wellington from the north. Options 1 & 2 were/are large roading project. Option 3 is for sustainable transport. The discussion about Transmission Gully continues, but the Option 3 site seems to have died off.

What do I hope to achieve by talking about this? I’m not sure. I have started to get in touch with the councillor-authors of Sustainable Wellington Transport about adding releases to the blog and I could realistically start editing the wiki myself to encourage development, but I’m not sure that anything is going to kick-start these websites. One can hope, and make noise.

The New Zealand Cartoon Archive played host tonight to a panel discussion of political cartooning in modern New Zealand. It was tied to the current installation of engravings by William Hogarth and attempted to answer the question of whether modern cartoonists carry the same strength and capacity to deliver commentary as Hogarth had several centuries ago.

The three cartoonists each spoke about his work in terms of publication, intention and technical details. Several examples were presented, explaining in a concrete fashion the approaches taken. The audience was presented with a range, from striking single images that cause instant recognition of an idea to intricately detailed works that require analysis, and maybe a history lesson.

It was a fascinating session, binding tightly the realms of politics and entertainment. This is a good thing.

On Thursday of last week, I gave an oral submission on the “Draft Walking Plan”: to a city council sub-committee. I was relatively happy with how it went and it seemed to be well received. After speaking, I was asked 3 questions based on my discussion of inline skating and 1 question on my prior written submission regarding pedestrian signals. Being somewhat prone to reasoned answers, I wanted to expand on 3 of them here.

I don’t remember the order of the questions and I’m in danger of mis-attributing questions to councillors, but I think the question/answer pairs are the most important part.

The city council has considered an approximated distance that translates to 25 minutes’ travel time as a range for active mode transport to the city. How far would that be for inline skates. (Celia Wade-Brown)

In my original answer, I stated that the surrounding hills restrict the access to central city. The area is more limited than a time-based range would allow for. I stand by this answer, but provide a caveat. There are at least two feasible paths that circumvent the hills that can be used as corridors that allow longer trips to be viable.

• Evans Bay/Oriental Bay has a continuous, flat footpath along the waterfront. It is easily handled in low-wind conditions, although there are sections of narrow and/or rough surfaces.

• Riddiford St and Adelaide Rd provide access to Newtown and slightly beyond. Construction is a current limitation, but should be completed shortly.

• For some people, it is possible to pass through the Mt. Victoria tunnel. It is quite steep on the city side and not for everyone.

Can you convince me that it’s safe? (Helene Ritchie)

Well, no. Nothing is inherently safe. This was my original answer, adding a comment about our knees being our bumper. Again, this is still true, but I’d like to be a little more explicit.

Safety is multi-variate. It depends on the driver’s/skater’s ability to anticipate and react to dangerous situations, avoiding if possible or mitigating damages otherwise. Experience and attention are major factors for anticipation and reacting. On the other hand, when evasive action must be taken, environmental factors come into play as well as some features of the vehicle. In the case of inline skates, wet or rough conditions become dangerous very quickly, but stopping is often not necessary, given the ease of side-step manoeuvring. I recommend to students that they stay on the footpath under normal circumstances.

Don’t you think that you’re suggesting over-engineering a solution? (Jo Coughlan)

My complaint was regarding having to push a button to receive a pedestrian signal. At busier intersections, a hold-off period of nearing 30 seconds is required or the signal will become activated during the following light phase. I believe that this is an indication of pedestrians being second-class citizens. I also believe that Cr. Coughlan’s question is intended to keep pedestrians in their place.

From an engineering perspective, treating pedestrians as equal partners in the transport equation is the easiest option. The signal shall allow for pedestrians to cross during every light cycle. If there are no pedestrians crossing, traffic proceeds as normal. Otherwise, people may safely cross with minimal delay. There is no extra engineering required. This is a common situation in Canada.

After my 10 minutes had passed, I watched several other submissions from the gallery. A couple of people submitted on the “Draft Cycling Plan”. Helene Ritchie repeatedly asked a question that was not adequately answered by the submitters. She described a generic accident that happens from time to time where a bus knocks down a cyclist in a very narrow section of road. Cr Ritchie asked what should happen in that situation.

My reply would be surprisingly simple. The bus is not to overtake the cyclist unless it is safe to do so – end of story. If the driver does not see the cyclist, it is less reckless and a bit more negligent. Responsibility is responsibility. The solution to prevent the situation from occuring is driver education. I have been on many buses that have been dangerously close to cyclists and an educational safety program is long overdue.

I found the whole process to be strangely enjoyable. I expect that I will participate again in subsequent submissions. Next time, I’ll try to take better notes.

Are people basically good or basically bad? I am attempting to answer this age-old question with a single sample of whether or not my phone is returned to me. It was accidentally left on a bus after work, as I hurriedly and inattentively alighted.

I’ve contacted the bus company and left a report with lost property. There is also a bar on outbound calls, hopefully to limit the fall-out of someone deciding to run amok on my account. There’s not much else that I can do but wait.

The phone was far from cheap, and I picked it up second hand. Replacing it wouldn’t be very nice to my bank account. On top of that, I’m cringing at a bit of the information that’s on the phone – I’d use my phone to carry my source code home from time to time. I have had to change my email password and my work calendar was synced on there. Very little else should be able to get me into trouble. I hope.

Will I see my phone again or did I just donate it to someone less scrupulous than I?

Normally, for situations where I have no control, I’d sit back and not worry because worrying doesn’t solve the problem. But this time, I’m a bit angry – at myself for not paying attention and at the world because the early indicators show that the phone wasn’t turned in at the end of the driver’s shift last night. This doesn’t bode well for Team Good.

Downtown windows filter the sunrise, returning gold, pure of colour and texture, to the morning. Night becomes day by the washing of windows with light, and the city begins to wake.

First off, don’t make comparisons. Even though the event listing in the Wellingtonian started off with “If you liked…”, don’t go there. It’s not a fair comparison. Take Adagio for what it is. And that is good.

Dance, acrobatics, pole and aerial movements mingle with comedy and music, sketching a loose story. The individual performances were well done and the whole show was well received, although the scenes seemed a touch isolated. Two real, live musicians provided a very nice interactive touch – they did well bringing the piano into the set and working a piece around it.

If Adagio is a starting point, I expect that New Zealand is in for a treat. There is room to grow and develop a stronger show, but I left satisfied with this one.

I was speaking to a friend about being a pack-rat. She’s unpacking and has been finding a few things that have limited sentiment but would induce guilt if sher were to let them go. The conversation continued a while longer and this came up:

I keep old cards…. but I use them again to make gift tags and stuff…. then I get to go through the cards again from time to time….. some of them remain keepers and still haven’t gotten cut up…

It’s upcycling of memories. I like this idea a lot. It’s not possible to keep everything forever, but some things are quite nice – a shame to just toss out. Making something new, maybe better, is a great way to pass it on. Besides, gifts don’t have to be expensive; something creative and personal is much better in my opinion.

As of last week, all of my bills are delivered electronically. Joe Bennett takes aim at MyMeridian for this, but I think it’s great. I’ve had too many bills show up late, or not at all, especially around the edges of moving houses. My email address doesn’t change – the bill will get to me. The bonus is being able to keep records over the course of a year without having a huge pile of papers to sort through. Shared expenses? Easy – bounce the bill along.

Yes, I’m aware that email is not guaranteed and there are ways to snoop, redirect or cause email delivery to fail, but even with those risks, I am happy with the service change. All good.

Immediately after planting a range of herbs out on the balcony, spring burst forth in windy glory. It didn’t matter which corner, there was wind everywhere, going everywhere. The first casualty, sort of, was the mint. The main stem snapped in half before the end of the weekend. Thanks to the magic of the internet, I instantly learnt that mint can grow from cutting. Into the wine glass it went.

Within a week, the first roots started appearing. After the second, it’s ready to plant into real soil. Interestingly, the plant is also significantly taller than at the start. At a guess, the new growth is coming from auto-cannibalisation of the lower leaves, which are well submerged and obviously yellowing.

Naturally, my curiosity got the best of me this past weekend – should I reserve a bit of basil from the bunch we’d bought for soup? Sure. Will it grow? We’ll see.

While flipping through some twitter-provided political news, I saw someone use government as a verb. I couldn’t tell if it was intended – there was a sic attached to it by some editor.

I think that government as a verb should be allowed. It takes the concept of to govern a bit further. It is more about the institution than about the leadership/stewardship. To government is to flex political muscle and knowledge of the system to achieve a result. It will probably be a transitive verb – act on something like a policy or an entity.

To use it in a sentence:

With a deadline fast approaching, the councilors governmented a plan that removed striking from the union’s list of options.

A previous tennant of the apartment that I live in seems to have left a lot of postal references unchanged. I receive a lot of mail for him. On this particular occassion, I wrote ‘No longer at this address’ on the appointment notice and dropped it back into a nearby delivery box. It arrived again two days later. It seems as if I wrote the note on the wrong side of the card and the postal system accepted it a second time – on the same stamp. I wonder if NZ Post realises that they’ve stolen 50 cents from themselves.