Posts by Russell Brown
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Hard News: Angry and thrilled about Arie, in reply to Rich of Observationz,
Library? Archives New Zealand?
They have all those documents. Publishing them online, or detecting demand for them to be published online is a different matter.
I shall now jump on my perennial hobbyhorse about the need for a small, contestable fund for digitising heritage documents on demand. Giddy-up.
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Hard News: Auckland City Nights, in reply to Simon Grigg,
Then, they’ll probably be dragging themselves off the floor after being told how much a beer or restaurant glass of wine is in central Auckland these days and won’t notice.
Advice for visitors: spend the $13 you would have spent on a glass of wine on a marked-down bottle of same wine at Countdown on Quay St. Take it back to your hotel room with delicious takeaways from a food hall.
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Hard News: Auckland City Nights, in reply to BenWilson,
To be fair on the council, it’s not their job to fix up the maps of third party vendors, and it’s not like major roading upgrades are a big secret. Google didn’t have the new alternate motorway by Upper Harbor Highway, when I went there the other day, and insisted I was hurtling through farmland at 100km/h.
The Maps app in iOS -- which uses Google data -- still doesn't show the extension to SH20 that was completed well over a year ago.
But, as you say, this isn't unusual. When my sister and her family arrived at the airport from Australia recently, they decided to ignore my detailed directions to Pt Chev and follow their in-car GPS instead. It took them via Manukau City, SH1 and the Auckland CBD. They professed to enjoy the ride.
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Hard News: Angry and thrilled about Arie, in reply to Richard Christie,
I’ve been doing my bit for Thomas by hosting the Thomas Royal Commission report on the web for years. Until I recently uploaded it to Wikipedia it was the only copy available in cyberspace. What are you doing for Thomas?
Well, I bought a print copy in a second-hand bookshop ...
But you highlight a wider problem. The public sector makes a decent fist of accountability now, and Royal Commission reports get published online.
But older, culturally and historically important documents don't, unless someone cares. The Mazengarb Report was hard to obtain until a student called Jonathan Ah Kit scanned and uploaded it in various places. His copy is now the one used in tertiary courses.
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Cheese on Toast has a good bunch of B Street photographs.
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Hard News: Auckland City Nights, in reply to Christopher Dempsey,
Given the number of submissions to the Waitemata LB draft Plan asking for smokefree public places I would have thought cigarette vendors to be a sunset industry.
It's a terrible thing, I know, but not actually illegal, and you'd think outside tables, at night, would be a permissible setting.
But it's not just ciggies. Where do you buy a newspaper, or a snack for the kids? I honestly think a convenience store would be of service to families, and I'm not that bothered as to what Waterfront Auckland thinks about it.
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Hard News: Auckland City Nights, in reply to Christopher Dempsey,
To be honest, I don’t necessarily want a dairy down there, and I suspect Waterfront Auckland don’t either.
But, it seems, the people who go there do want one. It should be possible to get a cold drink or a packet of crisps without going into a bar. Yeah, I know the food market is open during the day, but it's not quite the same thing. I honestly don't get why a convenience store would be such a terrible thing in a family area.
There are two places to buy an icecream. There is one on North Wharf, and there is a place in the Fish Market building. The crowds may have obscured the North Wharf place – but it is there.
That's the place with a half-hour queue.
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Hard News: Auckland City Nights, in reply to Lucy Stewart,
The location means for six months the proprietors will probably get away with a continuous supply of first time customers, but after that I would hope reality sets in. Didn’t this happen in the Viaduct?
Well, depends. If somewhere gets enough of a reputation as a place to be seen, as opposed to a place to eat good food – or into guidebooks for tourists – I imagine it could sustain that business model for quite some time.
The Viaduct did suffer a high degree of attrition in its first winter, without the America's Cup in town -- and probably deserved to. But it does seem to have settled somewhat now.
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Funniest moment of the night: being hailed by a wide-eyed young man en route from the Rising Sun to Galatos ("Hey! Media7 guy!"), who then explained to his friend that I hosted "a kind of underground TV show". Yeah, that's me: an urban media guerilla.
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Hard News: Auckland City Nights, in reply to Su Yin Khoo,
I was impressed with today’s livable city feature Element Magazine pullout in the Herald, Lots of long-time-coming people-first Auckland plans and such.
And a nice little dig at the unhelpful men from central government too. I must pop down and buy a copy of the paper today.
What Wyndyard Quarter is sorely missing is a skate park for the tweens and teens — and perhaps a non-alcoholic drinkie diner place for them to hang out as well. (The gelato place was closed — did they not stake out Giapo?)
It was quite disheartening to see some good kids being chased away from venue to venue the other night because the council has taken away places for them to hang out and not put in any alternatives.
Quite right. It does seem they'll have a chance to put that right -- the liquor licenses for the bars only run through till March, I'm told, and I suspect some of them won't renew.