Umamiblog

A couple of my photos on Flickr have been picked up by the online travel guide, Schmap. I feel famous already…

One at the Imperial War Museum in London. And the other of the Beehive here in Wellington.

I guess that makes me a published photographer… right Rowan?

One of things I really love about living in Wellington is the indoor sports centre on the waterfront. Two things are truly great about the sports centre; the building itself is really accessible and the network of organisers, players, referees, etc, is actually quite an organised network of people.

It will be a big loss to city workers if we lose the indoor sports facilities with the general redevelopment and focus on Wellington’s waterfront. If you care about it, you have until 5pm, Friday the 10th of August to let the Council know your views.

Here is my submission below, do feel free to plagiarise from it if you need! WellUrban has a great article on this as well.

There are many reasons that make Wellington a great place to live and work. A lot of the factors that created this environment we enjoy, funnily enough, are not the result of careful planning or human action.

Thanks to our geography we have numerous fault lines and gorgeous scenery, but also narrow corridors of population and a compact city centre. This means we enjoy the best public transport as well as the most walkable and vibrant CBD in New Zealand.

Wellington’s indoor sports centre is really a continuation of this story. Thanks to our densely packed city, we have a centrally located facility the use of which would be the envy of cities the world over. It’s location on the waterfront so close to our CBD means it is accessible to a huge percentage of our CBD workers.

The eco-system that surrounds the sports centre is organised and holds huge intangible benefits to the people who compete there as well as the workplaces and teams they come together from.

This eco-system could be sustained by the use of the ground floor of Site 10 for an indoor sports stadium, an ideal location that would be just as convenient to inner city workers as the current site. The benefits for a society that is steadily becoming fatter, disconnected and less healthy really shouldn’t be understated.

If the sports centre were to go it would be a loss to workers and the sports people of Wellington, but it will also be a loss to our city’s teams and workplaces. Wellington’s indoor sports is a major asset for us and we should work to ensure it survives.

Remember you have until 5pm tomorrow!

From the “Skinny twisted my arm and made me do it” department, here’s a quick plug for Unlimited Potential’s Gadgets, Games, and Geeks event on tonight. It should be great fun and there are a stack of interesting speakers and exhibitionists exhibitors. I’m most looking forward to the Apple stand – especially if they’ve got the new iMac on display.

What: Gadgets, Games, and Geeks
When: 4.30pm today (August 8th)
Where: Renouf Foyer, first floor of the Michael Fowler Centre
How much: FREE
Register here

You have to be fundamentally unhappy with the way things are to leave Microsoft, and yet unrealistic enough to believe the world can change to join a start-up.

- Glenn Kelman proclaiming Start-ups are freak-catchers

A person who drives 10 miles to buy a lottery ticket is 3 times more likely to be killed in a car accident while driving to buy the ticket… than… he is to win the jackpot.

41 Weird Money Facts You’ve Never Heard About

$92,000 per prisoner per year
That title appeared outside most corner stores this morning with the Dom Post running an article on the soaring cost of prisoner upkeep. This shows perfectly, to me, one of the fundamental problems with our justice system and our thinking on justice. We never focus on victims of crime (unless it will sell newspapers), we only focus on the offenders.

How much money do we spend each year on victims of crime? I would love to see some figures… my guess is that it’s less than 1% of that total. If that.

For your reading: Restorative Justice

Maori leaders standing up
At the risk of offending every single New Zealander, I’m extremely heartened to see Maori community leaders stand up and say recent stories of horrific child abuse in Rotorua are a “national scandal”. It is. We have to stop feeling sick when reading stories like that of Lillybing or Nia Glassie and get off our collective proverbial and take responsibility. All we seem to be able to do is debate Section 59…

Our nation’s child abuse record is shocking and is one of many factors that indicate we’re losing our first-world status. What are we going to do about it?

These two stories are probably more closely connected than we think.

- JohnL (born: Rotorua)

How many of you have signed up for Kiwisaver? If yes and you’re willing to divulge, what contribution rate did you opt for and which fund provider did you choose?

If no, why not?

I wish I had this article on blasting the myth of the fold earlier. I think it’ll be useful to anyone working in services and gets that common request from clients to cram all the “important” stuff on the page above the fold.

The next great frontier in web page design has to be bottom of the page. You’ve done your job and the user scrolled all the way to the bottom of the page because they were so engaged with your content. Now what? Is a footer really all we can offer them?
- Milissa Tarquini on Blasting the Myth of the Fold

Now I just need a similar article for why you don’t want a liquid design for your website. (No, its not wasted space, it’s called design.)

Three – nil
Originally uploaded by aitchbee

Went to see the Wellington Phoenix play their first home game at the Stadium yesterday. It was cold but great fun. The quality of the soccer was better than I expected (same can’t be said of the refereeing) and 6000 other punters turned up to watch.

Best part? THREE – NIL! Take that Sydney!

Having a professional soccer team in town with a season that lasts until January? Love it.

Phoenix in “not crap” shock – Wellingtonista
Stuff article

I recently upgraded to Adobe’s CS3 on my Mac and found a problem with my colours changing when saving for the web in Photoshop. Why o why were my colours changing!!

This page here has the solution, I assume everyone will have this same issue once they’ve upgraded…

How on earth could this possibly be useful to be enabled *by default*? I feel hurt Adobe.

I got to play with Ponoko’s frickin’ laser cutter yesterday with dave5. It is unbelievably and insanely cool. Rod is right, dave5 is winning.

Must, play, with it, more… you can still sign up for the beta!

I was in Auckland yesterday for work and bumped into a University friend who I hadn’t seen for ages. As we go to part ways he says “Are you and S on Facebook?”.

What’s more interesting? The fact that he asked or that I said “yep!”.

P.S. Auckland keeps growing on me. The more time I spend up there, the less I dislike it.