I saw this combination in Auckland over the weekend and couldn’t help the result.

As of this morning, there is no bus service provided by Go Wellington. The streets were relatively quiet at 7:20, when I caught my Eastbourne-bound bus to work. I was surprised that we didn’t have a huge number of extra passengers, but with the very nice weather hanging over the capital, some people may have walked the 20-minute journey instead of taking the 10-minute bus ride.

I’m cheering for the drivers on this one. They don’t get the pay or the respect that they deserve for the service they provide. Poneke talks about the money side in terms of dollars, rather than percentages, which paints a very bleak picture. Go Wellington Drivers!

I was taking a look at a medical receipt to make sure it didn’t have overly personal information on it before sending it to recycling. What caught my eye was a mistake in the name of my employer.

Our name is Industrial Research Ltd, not Industrial Recreation Centre, no matter how much I’d like it to be.

I mentioned a few days ago that I had contacted the city council about the photo exhibition on Courtenay Place. Enough information came back to justify an update.

First, Andy Palmer, the curator of the project, sent a letter to the editor to explain the light-boxes.

I admit there’s been little explanation about the work and why it’s there. I suggested that the “curator’s statement” be placed in the park somewhere, but it hasn’t happened. It is on Wellington City Council’s website, however.

With a name on hand, a quick search turned up a blog post that goes much further and gives a nice visual perspective of the new park.

Subsequently, my email prompted two replies from Wellington City Council. The first pointed me to a list of temporary art projects in the city, of which the Light Box Project is just one. The current display, “Flanerie and Figments” is set to finish in October. A second reply came from a city council manager, Martin Rodgers:

Responsibility for mounting future exhibitions has now transferred to the Council’s Public Art Panel which is a group of five external advisors plus Council officers. As Manager of the Council’s City Arts team, I am also Chair of this panel. We have issued invitations to galleries and curators inviting them to propose future curated exhibitions for the boxes. These may be photographic exhibitions or in other genres that fit the format of the boxes.

The Panel has set aside funding for future exhibitions. As you will appreciate, the costs of mounting an exhibition, including artists fees and the output of the works, can add up. At present the Panel has committed to funding two exhibitions a year. Your suggestion to source Creative New Zealand funding so that we can turn over the exhibitions more frequently is a good one which we will explore.

Personally, I can be satisfied with an interesting exhibition which lasts for 6 months. This may mean that more complaint letters are going hit the papers. That’s life. Not everyone will like any given piece. I’d rather have controversial images than boring images.

Aside from that, the other major complaint about Courtenay Place Park is the overwhelming rust-coloured theme that it presents. Yes, true, but the trees are starting to bud now – and the westernmost 6 are already very green. The park is going to look amazing once those trees splash a little life over the rust. It’ll soon be a photo opportunity for anyone willing to capture it.

When I picked up Kit Laughlin’s Stretching & Flexibility after work yesterday, I thought that I should look back at all the things on my wishlist and see how I’m doing. Here’s the summary:

• Subscription to Scientific American Mind. Still open. Shipping costs are increasing at the book shops, making the subscription make a bit more sense.
• Chef’s knife. Check.
• Stretching & Flexibility. Check.
• Book ends. Check.
• Le Petit Prince. In progress.
• Guitar tuner. Check.
• Decomposure – Vertical Lines A. Check.
• Malajube – Le Compte complet. Check.
• Grand Theft Bus – Birth of Confusion / Flies in the No Fly. Neither.
• T Leaf Tea. Lots.
• Sinfest books. Pretty please…

I think we can take an implication from this that I tend to get what I want. Some things have been pushed down the priority list and some things get caught in the spur of the moment and never actually get on the list. All told, I’m not doing too bad.

I wish I could say the same for my list of things to do.

It started with a brief discussion and quickly turned into action. Most things don’t happen that way, but it worked nicely today. My flatmate and I had brunch and went down to Palmers to get some things organised for a small herb garden on the balcony. It’s true that there isn’t a lot of space available in apartments, but we happen to be lucky enough to have a large balcony that catches sun from early morning through mid-afternoon. Conveniently, there’s also a shady side for the things that don’t like a lot of direct light.

We arrived back at the house with a nice array of small items, all edible. Thyme and coriander are in one planter, basil and parsley in another. Mint is in the shade, a cherry tomato plant is shaded from wind but not sun. A tabasco pepper lives alone and a lone strawberry plant should be a god-send in the heat of summer. If we had more space, it would be nice to have rosemary and fresh garlic tips and chives, but we need to keep some room for pulling out the beanbag and reading in the sun.

We’ve been building up a list of complaints, we being a group of people who often catch a bus together to go to work. The bus stop that we get off at is nothing more than a painted line on a road with a sign on a lamp post; we alight into a small park along Parkside Road. Under normal conditions, this isn’t too bad. Morning dew and the occasional bottle stands as the biggest of obstacles. However, with winter being wet, the ground has softened or become mud, and with occasional construction going on, it’s also quite rutted in spots. Now that the election has been called, our little bus stop has also become a poster board for local candidates, in the form of a large, wooden-frame billboard.

This has prompted two emails, one to the offending political party office and one to Hutt City Council. In the first, I’ve asked for the billboard to be shifted an extra meter away from the road to allow for direct pedestrian access to the footpath¹. I received an immediate response to indicate that the issue will be forewarded to the right person. Fingers are crossed. In the second message, I requested that a footpath be added along the edge of the park, at least to the bus stop. Given that no fewer than a dozen people use that stop every morning for work, we deserve some sort of stable footing. I was sent an automated response, but no word on when human eyes might see the message. Ideally, we’d see an actual bus shelter along the route, but construction and maintenance of shelters has been outsourced to an advertising company.

Normally, I’d call that a good day, but it doesn’t stop there. Following the re-construction of the park at Courtenay Place, I have seen a few letters of complaint about it’s bland character and the choice of photographs in the display boxes. After discussing this with a friend on the bus, we decided that the best course of action would be to write to Wellington City Council and ask that a rotation of images be used in place of the pictures that are currently in place. Wellington is very photogenic and there is no shortage of pictures taken locally or by local photographers. As a result, I sent off another government-bound message suggesting that CreativeNZ be used to promote local photography in the displays.

If only one of my messages causes appropriate action, I’ll be happy. For the good of all…

Edit 17/09/2008: The offending billboard has been moved. Such is the power of asking nicely.

¹ This shouldn’t be too much extra work, since someone had knocked over that billboard and two others along the same road last night.

I picked up two sets of tickets for upcoming concerts on my way home last night. Slow Boat has tickets for both The New Pornographers on Oct 16 and for Holy Fuck on Dec 8. Both shows should be incredible and San Francisco Bath House is a pretty sweet venue.

Now if only I could convince Wintersleep to come and play, it would round out the year in amazing form.

I just saw this article in the Financial Times indicating that there is strong international support for Barack Obama as the next US president. That would explain seeing this in a cafe in Wellington:

This is obvious, but I ran into it head first last night. After listening to half an hour of the CBC Radio 3 podcast on an already-low battery, my poor phone beeped once and sat lifelessly in my hand. Luckily, I had already confirmed my plans to meet up with a friend after work, so there was no real danger in not crossing paths and not being able to contact each other. Forethought wins… this time.

Aside from that, there is one other problem that I’ve noticed. I don’t always catch an incoming text message when I’m listening to music. The beep blends in remarkably with electronic music. Calendar alarms are a little more aggressive, resulting the media player pausing for the alarm; I presume that an incoming phone call would do the same.

I don’t know when the problem first started, but for several months, I’ve been unable to resize a video on my home computer. I never really took the time to figure out why until tonight. The culprit is the sis driver for xorg. It was defaulting to the blitter method for Xv, leaving my videos fixed size. The solution was to add this line to xorg.conf:

Option “XvDefaultAdaptor” “Overlay”

And just like that, full screen is actually full screen and not a big black bounding box around a small video.

There are a million things I want to say, but I have to keep this short. I may come back to expand later.

In November 2002, Wellington city opted to use the Single Transferable Vote system for municipal elections. Wellington City Council was obliged to use the system for the 2004 and 2007 elections. Yesterday, I received my ballot for choosing the system for the next election. The mayor, Kerry Prendergast, has always favoured First Past the Post, which was credited for her first Mayoral victory in 2001. Coincidentally, this isn’t the only thing I disagree with her about. The arguments for and against are roughly summarised as STV:representative and FPP:familiar. It’s not in my nature to favour something that is deficient just because it’s popular. My vote for STV was posted this morning.

Several elections seem to be just around the corner. Obviously, the world is watching and waiting for the US to run through the procedures. Meanwhile, New Zealand is meant to have an election this year. The date has yet to be specified, much to the chagrin of the National party leader. I’m happy to wait a while. 3 year terms are not a long time and a couple weeks shouldn’t matter that much. Closer to home, Canada is talking about elections, too. The funny thing is, everyone is talking about change…

Now with all this election action going on, campaign messages are flooding all the news channels. In light of this, I’d like to propose an idea. Politicians are working hard to tell us what we want. They’re shopping for our votes and trying to paint us a glowing picture of their government, should we give it. This has been a very one-sided conversation. They tell us. Instead, how about we come up with our view of what we want our government to look like – what we want accomplished. Instead of talking about which party and which leader, think about policies, actions and outcomes. Write it down and make it permanent. Consider putting your thoughts into blogs and letters. Talk about them with others and get ideas out into the public. Make the election about plans instead of about personalities. And when the time comes, vote in a way that maximises your chances of being happy with the outcome.

I’m one of them. When I see a petrol station price board or see a report of the price of oil, I’m one of the guys cheering for a rally. “Come on, go up… just a little bit. You can do it…” As of today, a barrel is hovering just below $110. It’s about $5 down from the seemingly stable position held through August. As much as I’d rather see the opposite, I’m kinda expecting a slight drop in the local cost of fuels. The newspapers will call victory and some city councilor might just draft a proposal to cancel all buses because we can afford to drive again. I think my politics are starting to show…

All is not lost, though. As seen on The Oil Drum, OPEC is expected to defend $100 oil. As world-wide demand adjusts to high prices, supply would have to follow to keep the price where it is. I’d prefer to see a $120 defense position, but I probably don’t have any influence to speak of. On the other hand, this does offer a bit of psychological headroom for the various regional bodies to tag a cent or two to the pump price to feed into public transport improvements.

Naturally, the counter argument is to question why so many people who don’t use public transport should pay for it. After all, New Zealand is dominantly a user-pay culture. The answer is that it is insulation from the next time this happens. Energy prices are high because demand is high. Western expectations of energy consumption ensure high demand. Last year, budgets were quickly rewritten as petrol prices rose past $2/l; many suburbanites had little or no alternative to driving and suffered for it. Absorbing the costs of effective and efficient transport provides the alternatives and shelters commuters from the inflationary effects of energy costs. Should that shelter be there? I think so, and $2 petrol is the way to push politicians into thinking about the future. I have yet to finish reading the report, but it looks as if the NZTA agrees that residents need some protection from oil prices.

My position is more political than pragmatic. Good things have already been achieved. The world is seeing a decrease in demand and people are thinking more about the choices they have. It’s a very good step, but I think that having prices drop now would just loosen those good habits and people would rev their engines all over again.

I found out about this by accident. I was in the cafe at Te Papa with a friend last month and happened to see everything being set up. We didn’t stay, but my curiosity was piqued.

On the first Thursday of every month, Te Papa hosts Science Express, a series of science seminars on a broad range of subjects, free to the public and podcasted. I’m planning to go along tonight, even though the topic is a little less science and a little more social: Youth Crime – A Hot Election Issue

I was baking on the weekend – a banana cake that I’ve made hundreds of times before, some of which have been at this house. It didn’t bake through in the normal time (at 180C), nor with an extra hour (at 140C, to keep the top from burning). This follows up a baked cheesecake from the weekend before, which took nearly 2 hours to stop jiggling in the middle.

I think it’s time for some temperature verification. Now that the trust has been questioned, a solid relationship needs to be rebuilt. Or the oven needs to be fixed. Either way.

I stopped off at the StarMart at Manners mall yesterday to pick up a new bus pass. Before ringing in the purchase, the attendant asked if I was aware of the price increase. Yes, and I thanked him for asking. Good service doesn’t have to take much effort and should be appreciated.