January 2012
4 posts
“He says Mr Dotcom is not a flight risk, although he has access to helicopters...”
– Read this and try not to laugh. I dare you. From the NBR
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On The Eve of The SOPA Blackout.
On the eve of the US SOPA blackout campaign, maybe it’s worth reflecting on our own situation in NZ with respect to our equivalent legislation.
Most will recall the social media blackout campaign here well over a year ago, which initially caught the attention of politicians, and resulted in the bill being abruptly shelved, pending review. Then, a few months later, out of the blue, it was...
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Crunch Time.
Anyone in Christchurch in their 20s or 30s who’s really concerned for the future of downtown Christchurch, utterly disillusioned with those in control, & wanna try something completely insane to create a city people want to live in. Something concrete and enduring. Email me. I have a crazy idea. layton@polarbearfarm.com
December 2011
2 posts
November 2011
0 posts
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“I could describe a litany of failures that have combined to drain away what is...”
– Turning disaster into opportunity – Hon Lianne Dalziel
This is exactly how it feels to me, and many, many people have it much worse off than myself in this city.
October 2011
3 posts
2 tags
Progress!
Last weekend saw the opening of the fantastic City Mall restart project.
I’m particularly pleased to see this project come to life, because it’s like an exclusively retail version of something I was mulling over back in May, except from a small business perspective. I even registered a domain, and setup a basic website: www.kickstartacity.com But never pursued it. I didn’t...
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A Message To Christchurch City Councillors
As you digest the submissions to the Draft City Plan, please keep one thing in mind:
It’s OK to not compromise.
One of the traps of soliciting widespread feedback from different groups, with different motives, different levels of understanding, is that you try and appease them all, often by compromising others values. It’s the design by committee trap. Try to please everyone, and...
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Steve Jobs on intelligence, experiences,...
September 2011
3 posts
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Some Perspective On Christchurch
I was driving around the CBD Red Zone cordon this morning. It’s a sorry sight. I thought I’d try and put what’s happening here in Christchurch in the context of other countries.
For those in the USA, imagine if the downtown areas of all these cities combined was evacuated and locked down this second, with no warning:
New York
LA
Chicago
Houston
Phoenix
Philadelphia
San...
WatchLeisure Suit - The Face Of Eternal Love
WatchUrbanDaddy Cycling Classic by Red Paper Heart
Urbandaddy asked us to create an installation for the E2NY Music and Arts festival this summer. We proposed a head to head bike race inspired by Goldsprints, but with more of a design focus. We mapped forests, foxbears and orbs to the speed of the bikes, giving the riders a sense of their speed. Riders face off against friends, enemies and strangers...
August 2011
1 post
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Sigh.
Just a fucking embarrassment:
http://www.stuff.co.nz/the-press/news/5418866/Council-breaches-law-withholds-draft-city-plan
It may seem trivial, but if laws are just being ignored for the purpose of “managing information release”, what other laws are being ignored and for what purpose.
Wonder if I can use this logic when I walk the 60 metres inside the CBD red zone cordon without...
July 2011
2 posts
Watchm3video:
Playing in the snow. A wee short film we created this afternoon.
WatchThe making of Leica lenses.
June 2011
2 posts
4 tags
From Natural Disaster to Governance Disaster
Christchurch has a problem much greater than earthquakes right now. The problem is a giant impedance mismatch between the self appointed people in charge of ‘recovery’, and those that live and have made this city what it was. It’s been this way for a while. The earthquakes won’t be the thing which destroy this city, it will be the combined responses of Civil Defence, CERA,...
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WWDC AT&T Prepaid Data
So you want to get data running on your unlocked iPhone while you’re in San Francisco. I’ve got no idea if this works on all iPhones, but it works on off the shelf New Zealand sold iPhones (which are unlocked by default). Here’s how:
Step 1: Don’t tell the AT&T assistant you want a prepaid SIM with data for your iPhone. They will tell you that prepaid data will not...
April 2011
3 posts
3 tags
Planes, Trains, & Automobiles
Cities live or die by their transport systems. The effect a poor transport system has on a large city is clear for all to see in Auckland. Christchurch is a city which I think needs to grow into the millions, without endlessly sprawling. We now have the perfect opportunity, with the scale of destruction here, to plan for that. This is a crisis which can’t be wasted by thinking small.
The...
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WatchJourney Into The Red Zone - filmed from the bus travelling from the old Christchurch Woman’s Hospital site to outside the remains of Edison Hall, Lichfield Street.
Music: James Blake - The Wilhelm Scream
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The Red Zone
Today, six weeks to the day, we got first access into our building since walking out after the quake. We were emailed on Friday to say that we would have access today, but then I got a call yesterday to say that was a mistake, and we wouldn’t have access. Other people in our building got told different things, so we decided to show up today anyway, and get the real story. Lucky we did. I...
March 2011
5 posts
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Why?
The government today announced the Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Authority (CERA) I have five questions. Why?
There are three cores to the rebuild as I see it:
Define a new vision for the city.
Devise an urban plan that supports that new vision.
Acquire the resources (financial and physical) required to execute that plan.
That actually doesn’t require a whole government department to...
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Welcome to the CBD
Imagine you were forced to leave your home and/or business right this second, with no warning.
Imagine you were then prevented from getting anywhere near you home or business.
Imagine four weeks on, you were still prevented from getting anywhere near your home or business.
Imagine the only information you’ve had from those who are blocking your access in that four weeks is
It’s...
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So now what?
This video excerpt from a 1996 Inside New Zealand special on earthquakes has been doing the rounds on Twitter today. While interesting viewing to those who haven’t seen it, I think a couple of things should be kept in mind.
First, I think people should be very careful not to make assumptions and draw conclusions about what happen in the September 4th and subsequent catastrophic February...
February 2011
9 posts
“I never understood how a man could dare
To watch a city shaken to the ground...”
– Anon. Penned after the 1931 Napier-Hastings Earthquake.
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Untitled
Never in my life did I think I’d experience an event as terrifying as the 2010 September 4th 7.1 Christchurch earthquake. Just before 1pm on the 22nd a magnitude 6.3 earthquake struck the outskirts of the city. This quake was far more violent. Far more terrifying.
I was in our office in Poplar St. On the top floor of an old 1920’s era brick building:
The shaking was immediate and...
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Webstock: the greatest conference in the history...
This was my first Webstock. I’d heard great things from people who had attended in previous years, and I had always admired the world class speakers the conference managed to attract. But there’s nothing like experiencing it. It is, without doubt, the greatest conference I’ve ever attended. The speakers, the venue, the attendees, the overwhelming attention to every tiny detail is...
“They don’t sell here, they sell offshore, right? They don’t sponsor...”
– New Zealander of the year Paul Callaghan on why out high-tech companies are so little known in New Zealand.
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The Untold Story of How My Dad Helped Invent the... →
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“Here we have the man who invented the personal computer, then the laptop. He’s...”
– Rupert Murdoch nails the key of Jobs’ ability to remain the innovation leader of an entire industry.
January 2011
1 post
2 tags
December 2010
11 posts
“For Google, nearly all of whose profits depend on advertising revenue, dominance...”
– Kontra (via Daring Fireball)
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A Diamond In The Rough
I thought i’d finally post some before and after photos of the transformation of the (premonitorily named) Epicentre co-work space I started this year, also home to Polar Bear Farm. Currently mother nature seems intent on slowly destroying parts of the building with continuing aftershocks from the magnitude 7.1 earthquake which hit the city on September 4th.
The building is located on the...
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WatchApollo 8’s Live Broadcast having rounded the dark side of the moon, December 24th, 1968.
Merry Christmas to all!
WatchUnbelievable footage of big cats in the wild.
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“No one owns being good. I’m good. I just don’t believe I’ll be rewarded for it...”
– Ricky Gervais on religion.
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NZ Herald for iPad Best User Experience?
So the NZ Herald for iPad app was just nominated as an ONYAs finalist in the “Best User Experience” category. A curious choice indeed. I thought I’d recap my ‘experience’ of the app, as a user:
First Launch: “Fuck where’s the mute button, this is a news app, what’s this movie doing playing?! Home Button. Oh it was an ad, lame, can’t I just...
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Office Hours
Last week at NZiDev, I floated the idea of holding a weekly “Office Hours” where anyone could drop by and ask or get help with virtually anything, from iOS related help, to taking a stab at what the hell Steve Gillmor is on (about) this week.
I’m not entirely sure where the concept of Office Hours started. I may be wrong, but I believe it’s a Y Combinator / Hacker News...
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November 2010
1 post
1 tag
The Anatomy of a typical Facebook Event
Commandeer the nearest lunch room. Throw up a polyester curtain and a cheap projector.
Crap on about the ‘problem space’ ad nauseam.
Share multiple funny ‘serendipitous’ anecdotes about how the product epiphany happened.
Crap on about the social graph.
Crap on about the geeky infrastructure powering the new feature.
Crap on about what it’s not.
Crap on about...
October 2010
3 posts
4 tags
Contractor? Employee? Both? Insanity.
I’m really fired up about this you have no idea. When it was announced that the government was planning to change a very specific component of employment law, the din of reactionaries could be heard far and wide: The big bad corporate was coming to New Zealand to purchase laws so they could enslave an entire industry. How dare they highlight a stupid, ambiguous idiosyncrasy of our employment...
3 tags
The Times They Are a-Changin'
I remember just two and a half years ago visiting Apple on my way back to New Zealand after a whirlwind trip to iPhone Dev Camp in Austin TX and talking with a certain individual about the very first iPhone SDK announced a few days earlier. We talked about the App Store and how huge this thing would be, given our experience with ‘Installer’ in jailbreak, and how awesome it would be if...
