List of New Zealand Political parties whose websites have no Science, Research, or Technology policy

• NZ First
• ACT
• Mana
• Maori Party

They're the smaller parties, but even Peter Dunne has a policy for United Future. I'll be looking at the quality of said policy at some point, but at least it's there to measure.

And to be fair to NZ First, they do have a page with "coming soon" on it, and a spokesperson on it.

New Zealand Science Debate

I've been meaning to write up a list of questions to email to the New Zealand political parties. Here's a list I've adapted from the US Science Debate website. I would like some feedback on the choice of questions before I send it out. So far the topics I'm planning to ask about are: Innovation and the Economy Climate Change GE Water Research Biosecurity Education Role of the CRIs, MBIE, and Callaghan Innovation in Science Energy Internet Ocean Health Science and Public Policy Scientific Integrity Environmental Impacts Public Health If anyone has any suggestions about how to phrase some questions around these topics, if I should add some more in or take some out, or pretty much anything leave a comment below.

XKCD

If you're looking at today's XKCD you might find this handy.

Or for the stupidly ambitious: 
1/8 scale (256x256 tiles): http://edc.srvs.us/1110-eighth/

1/4 scale (512x512 tiles): http://edc.srvs.us/1110-quarter/

1/2 scale (1024x1024 tiles): http://edc.srvs.us/1110-half/

full size (2048x2048 tiles): http://edc.srvs.us/1110/

On a proposal for mapping the Hamilton cycle paths

Today, I gave The Hamilton City Council an email. It read:

Hi!

I just noticed GoogleMaps had started beta testing a cycling layer for their map routes. I was wondering if there were any plans for the HCC to help out, similarly to what they've done in Auckland. 

http://wellington.scoop.co.nz/?p=48040

http://caa.org.nz/auckland-transport/google-cycle-maps-are-in-auckland-but-havent-fully-arrived/

Thank you,

- David Jackson

And I got this back slightly about an hour ago.

Good Afternoon David

Thanks for your email regarding Google Maps and cycling paths.  I referred this to our Sustainable Travel Team Leader and she has come back with the following answer in regards to this:

We are keen to see the result programme working, and once the issues have been ironed out, we would like to investigate rolling this out to Hamilton.  At this stage we have no plans to be involved in the trial as we don’t have the resourcing to do it.

If you require any further information in regards to this request please let me know.

Thanks

Michelle Kerbers

Understandable, but really, it doesn't seem like it'd be that hard to. So I just emailed back asking if there was somewhere online where I could find a map of the cycle lanes.

If there's such a thing, I'm thinking of putting the links up on a website, and then directing people to this website here to start filling them in. It wouldn't be hard, and if we had people putting in something like half an hour a week, we'd get it done within a month. And then we could move on and do something else, like fill in all the schools or all the parks.

Because if the council won't do it now, why can't we?

Linkbait

Linkbait.

How Google Builds Its Maps—and What It Means for the Future of Everything

When Capitalists Cared

Raging Bulls: How Wall Street Got Addicted to Light-Speed Trading

How A $440,000 Drug Is Turning Alexion Into Biotech's New Innovation Powerhouse

The Pakeha Veto

Back to Blogger

After yet another rush of blood to the head, I'm going to start blogging here again.

Why Blogger? Well. Tumblr is great for sharing visual stuff like photos, comics, and Glee gifs but when you write a blog post it's very hard for the reader to comment on what you've written.

Wordpress was out because I can't program it, yet.

Blogger wins out because I'm pretty firmly tied into the Google ecosystem. I also want to learn about analytics and adwords, so using their platform makes sense too.

The downside is that Google assumes I want all the photos I post to come up on my phone. I find it really annoying, especially as it seems to think that I want a new folder of photos for each blog post. If I can't find a way around that I'm considering setting up a third Google account and blogging from there.

Anyway, I'm not good with conclusions, so here's my tumblr. It's filled with a bunch of science pictures and very little original content. Hope you enjoy.

Ummmm

Holy Shit.

"People you may know"

You know what Facebook/Twitter/Whatever? I don't need your god awful "People you may know" feature. If I wanted to be friends with these people I would have friended them. The only people that are coming up are a) People I don't want to be friends with (High School people, that annoying dick from my first year physics lab), b) People who you know through facebook postings or RTs from your friends, and who you may get on well with but you don't want to add them pre meeting IRL, and c) Your friend's cute friends who it would be stalkerish to add before you met them unless your friend tells you to.

The Day After

I woke up after a very shaky evening and headed to Burnside high, where they'd set up a Civil Defence post. I spent most of the time keeping people away from an immunocompromised kid who had been moved there after they'd shut down the hospital. I spent the time talking to a guy from the coast guard who'd been working Triage at Latimer Square, who told me what it was like cleaning up around there. Nasty stuff.

The Thursday was the first day out with the SVA. I got talking to another digger on the walk in who had a couple of friends killed, his work had fallen down, his house had fallen down, and hit ex girlfriend was up about 3 people ahead of us walking with the guy she'd left him for.

Aside from that, it was digging, digging, digging. You made friends. You discovered what the different types of silt were like. You learnt how to make a wheely bin into a silt mover, and then you learnt quickly how to tell the difference between a good and a bad wheelbarrow.

Watching the SVA work into a bigger and bigger organisation was interesting as well. What started off as a table in front of the UCSA building to a large tent, full of food and whatever supplies were needed.

The reaction of everyone blew me away. The amount of baking we were given has got me to the point where I'm still a little over it (but driven to distraction to try and find the recipe for a couple of the things made for us). The lunches made by the Otago students, the notes slipped into them from people I'd never heard of. The cards and the emails and other messages which had been sent in and stuck on the walls. The amount of other food donated to us like the chips from bluebird (I still can't eat the sunday roast flavour), the V, the water, the wheelbarrows, the spades.

The look on the people's faces were similarly moving. I can still remember the looks of gratitude on their faces. When working with the street teams helping out with the Civil Defence teams meant getting to meet a lot of people and the outpouring of gratitude from people was amazing. Once they heard you were with the SVA any barrier or scepticism they had was instantly gone.

I got called up to assist at the central police station working their refreshment station. The walk in had me going the full length down Riccarton Road. Just before I got into the four avenues I walked past where a building had collapsed onto a truck. All the notes and flowers left there was the first interaction I'd had with the "actually killed someone" earthquake, and on the walk back home the morning after seeing all the chalkings from his family on the ground was the closest I'd come to crying the whole time.

The police station gave me an insight to what was happening in town. Patrolling around the red zone, finding the looters, and meeting the lovely coffee ladies who I met again when at one of the RWC matches.

22nd Feb.

It started out like any normal Tuesday morning. The cast party for Whorehouse had been the night before, so I slept in, and wagged my math lecture. I didn't have anything till 3 pm for English, so I stayed in bed for most of the morning. I remember the government was releasing its welfare reform policy that day and I was getting a bit wound up about it. There was facebooking the happy birthdays, twitter conversations with a friend in the UK, me discussing meeting up at the Foundry (the student pub) the next day with a friend, and watching Richard III on youtube.

Then the quake hit.

The first few seconds I wasn't that concerned. Just another quake, in the quake kingdom. Then it kept going. And going. I just sat there in my bed, watching things gradually start moving, the stuff falling down and off shelves, and the bookcase coming down. At this point I decided I should go get some cover, so I hid in the wardrobe at the end of the bed.

Once it stopped shaking, I tried the laptop only to find the power had gone. I updated facebook from my phone telling people I was OK, and then texted dad to tell him I was OK. Just as I'd finished my brother called to check on me, where he told me it was a lot bigger than I'd thought.

I got out and checked my flatmates were OK, then headed out to the Ilam fields to see how uni was going. I saw a man speeding back to his place, which was a good move on his part because he beat the traffic.

Ilam field was a chaotic mess of people in small groups, crying and comforting each other. It's where I heard about the building collapses, the cathedral falling, and the buses which went under the falling bricks. I had a friend texting me at that point relaying info from Whakatane, where she had a TV and was home from work. I had to kill my phone at that point because I wanted to save battery.

I headed back home and dug through my stuff till I found the miniature radio that Meridian energy had sent out to Christchurch households at the end of 2010. Over the coming days that radio tuned to National Radio was my main source of information on what was happening.

At that point my flatmates had scooted out, so I decided to head to my friend's place down by the mall. The stroll along Riccarton road was surreal. It was as close to a zombie apocalypse as I'd seen. The carparks were empty and still. Riccarton road swung wildly between hectically busy and calm.

The Narash dairy was open so I headed in there and stocked up on poweraid, V, and packets of chips. I got to Marky's, and we rode out some shocks there, and headed to another friend's place. None of us had smartphones at that point so the only place we were getting news was from the radio.

We went out scouting the neighbourhood around Riccarton Mall. We did a quick loop and headed down Rotherham street, past Borders (where we heard there were bodies, which turned out to be wrong), under the over bridge (which after we saw the the street blocked off a couple of days later was probably a silly idea) where we hit up the only functioning ATM we could find. We drew our limits out because we really didn't know when there was going to be power again.

On the way back to Marky's we saw someone trying to light a fire in one of the deep gutters that are around that area, which led to jokes about the downfall of civilisation and that he was cooking a baby.

I headed back to my place and got home at about 8ish. The street lights had started to come on, which gave me some confidence we'd have power back at my flat. I went past one of the few Chinese places still open, however they'd just run out of cooking gas, which put the kibosh on that idea.

I sat down at the computer and the full extent of what had happened hit me, the checking in of people being OK and telling friends that you were fine. A couple of mugs of tea later, bed, snatched grasps of sleep between aftershocks. The booze and the sleeping pills looking tempting as hell, but you want to make sure you've got all your faculties about you if you need them.

Emotionally it was a frantic day. The initial panic of the quake, followed up by a sense of relief. Then the unease as you hear what happened, about the destruction and deaths. Then there's the panic as you haven't heard from people, the relief as people start checking in, and then as you get home to find power is back on you take a break, because you know that tomorrow is going to throw some challenges at you you never thought you'd face.

Earthquake Reflection Post One

Ugh. I've been putting off this post for a while, but it was always going to be coming out at some point.

For those who have missed the past couple of episodes, last year I was living in a city called Christchurch. Which got done over by a really bad earthquake. It's coming up to a year since, which naturally has got me, the other people involved, and the rest of the country a little reflective.

A warning, this is probably going to be summed up in a bunch of posts which will drive away almost all of you, so I'm going to have to put up a bunch of kitten videos at the end of it.

Authors I have known

Due to the fact my body hates giving up its precious blood and the cricket being on I'm enjoying a quiet Friday night in. And since there isn't that much else I can do while watching the chase I thought I'd type something out.

This post takes its origins from a facebook meme asking you to describe authors who have influenced your life that was going round about a year ago. I thought I'd expand it out and explain some of my reasoning.

So, in no particular order:

Dalton Trumbo
Johnny got his gun. Most of you know it from the video for One, but I'd always seen it on mum and dad's bookshelf when I was younger. I found myself struck by the image on the cover of a man shadowlit on a peace symbol, but never explored beyond that. I can't remember why I picked it up. I knew the premise behind it, but I still felt the shock as he came to term with each setback and almost straight away another one was thrown his way. The imagery in it is incredibly vivid and was the turning point from me doing the teenage boy "blowing up stuff is awesome!" to effectively a pacifist.

Sun Tzu and Machiavelli
Interesting that they're the next ones on the list. To sum it up, both have taught me how I can deal with things life throws at me.

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
I remember reading the children's edition when I was younger and then getting the full books out when I was a bit older. I found the thought process he went through fascinating and I remember putting the book down and trying to work out (with very little success) what had happened, and looking at people and trying to work out things about them.

One quote really stuck with me-
How often have I said to you that when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth?

Ayn Rand
This will be a surprise to most people.

Awful writer. Awful plot, one dimensional characters, preachy.

However, I wasn't in a good place reading it, and Howard Roark reminded me that I had to do what was in my interest, and that was helpful.

"But you see, I have, let's say, sixty years to live. Most of that time will be spent working. I've chosen the work I want to do. If I find no joy in it, then I'm only condemning myself to sixty years of torture. And I can find the joy only if I do my work in the best way possible to me. But the best is a matter of standards--and I set my own standards. I inherit nothing. I stand at the end of no tradition. I may, perhaps, stand at the beginning of one."

J. R. R. Tolkien
Dude, The Hobbit. 8 year old me loved it to bits.

Kurt Vonnegut
Slaughterhouse 5. He took the crazy insanity that I couldn't quite get from my head onto paper, then took it to a whole new level. Liking Kurt is almost a prerequisite to me proposing to a girl.

Bob Dylan and Leonard Cohen
If we'd studied these guys in English instead of all the other poetry they inflicted on us I would have loved it. It's Alright, Ma (I'm Only Bleeding) is a special kind of awesome.

Fyodor Dostoevsky
Existentialism.

Cormac McCarthy
A simplicity in writing and the bleak showing of the human spirit.

You might be able to tell I'm getting tired, so to sum the list up

Douglas Adams
Most of the Sci Fi stuff I'd been exposed to had been overly technical robots and nerds stuff. This, along with Red Dwarf showed me the lighter side of it, like only the British can.

Bleeding

I gave blood today, the experience had left me somewhat light headed and woozy.

Phone Rooting

For those not from New Zealand or Australia, rooting is a euphemism for sex here.

So wanting to get some awesome ICS goodness for my Galaxy S, I went to root the phone, using the instructions a friend emailed me. This is the sort of thing people assume I'm good at, but computers have always been the downfall of my Geek Fu (which is why I've signed up for Code Academy, but more on that in a later post)

So anyway. Followed the instructions to the letter, everything worked... Till I turned on my phone. Some of the annoying bloatware had gone, but then again, so had all my apps, texts, and other such things. Since I'd backed up my photos and know which apps I have and have all my contacts through google it wasn't too much of a biggie, but it's still a bit annoying.

Ah well, worse things happen at sea. I must dash, I've got to get this thing sorted. Plus the dog is jumping on my door trying for attention.

Oh the places I want to go...

Viet Nam, Cambodia, Laos

I've had this trip planned for a while. I'd like to try and spend a month in each overlanding it. I originally wanted to do this myself, but a friend and I had a ill thought out and therefore fun plan to do it on motorbikes and potentially go through Thailand, Malaysia and through to Singapore as well. Time will tell.

Canada
I've got some people there I want to visit.

New England, New York, San Francisco, Joshua Tree, and the Southwest

Overland Europe

Overland Asia to Europe


The beauty of these is that they can be slotted together, like starting from Singapore and going all the way through to London, then hitting the US and Canada on the way back to NZ. Finances really do play a problem with this though.

I'm not a big fan of moving somewhere and working and travelling that way. I don't know why, but the whole idea never appealed. Maybe cause I think I'd get tired of the place. Maybe cause I already did that when moving off to uni? I don't know.

Minimalism

I was sitting down by Turtle lake in the gardens and for some reason I got onto thinking about people doing the 100 things challenge. So I got out my trusty notebook and decided to jot down a list of sorts. I got up to about 50.

Here's the list. I'm putting them in a semi order, with reasoning for some of them. Some of them I'm including together (ie Laptop + Charger) while others won't be. I'm not keeping to any hard and fast rules about it because it's the ideal I'm thinking about here.

Anyway.
1) Phone
In this case, my good ol' Galaxy S. Although a Galaxy Nexus would be pretty schweet. It's first on the list because it's a means of communication, reference, entertainment, book, magazine, music player, camera, wifi hotspot, and about a million things that I'm not remembering. It's the first thing that I make sure I have with me if I'm leaving the house (unless I have a reason not to). Because it does all these things it lets me cut right back on a whole heap of other stuff.

Also included in this list is the charger, the cable that connects it to the laptop, and a pair of headphones.

2) A bag
Because I'm going to have to stuff all this stuff somewhere.

3) Pen and notebook
Because sometimes you need to be an analogue guy in a digital world.

Also because I can rip bits of paper out of it, sketch in it, write in it, all that sort of thing. It's useful and without it I probably wouldn't be writing this all down right now.

4) Sunglasses
My cheapish, mirrored aviators will do. I want to be able to do anything wearing them without worrying too much about breaking them.

5) A laptop
As much as I love my dv6 to bits, It's big, clunky, heavy, and has pretty average battery life. So I'm going with an ultrabook.

The obvious solution here is to go for the Macbook Air. Which would be fine, except for the fact I loathe OS X. (I'll probably put the reasons why in another post, but it doesn't matter for now). So I'd put Windows on it.

Aside from that, Either a Samsung Series 9 or an HP Envy 14 would suit.

Why go for a laptop and not a tablet you ask? Mostly because I want something I can do "media creation" on. It's just easier with the physical keyboard for anything that's longer than a quick email. Plus I can store all of my music, photos, and video on a laptop.

6) A watch
My GShock is pretty good. Rugged, does all the stuff I want.

7) A wallet

All of the above would be stuff I'd have if I was just going out somewhere, where I could get home and change, wash, etc. If I was staying somewhere that wasn't home, or travelling, I'd need to add some more stuff.

8) Toothbrush and toothpaste
9) Shampoo and bodywash
10) Towel
11) Tee Shirt (3x)
12) Pants (2x)
13) Jeans
14) Shoes
15) Socks and underwear (3x)
16) Shirt
17) Icebreaker top
Just clothes. Nothing too interesting.

Beyond that, I'd want:

18) Raincoat
19) Waterbottle
20) Sleeping bag and pillow
Sleeping stuff and keeping warm

21) Bike
22) Helmet
23) Bike lock
Mobility

24) Swiss army knife/multitool
It's like a smartphone but for cutting, bottle opening, tweezering, nail clipping, and tooth picking.

25) Sweatshirt
26) Tee Shirt
27) Jeans
28) Shorts
29) Icebreaker
30) Socks and underwear (2x)
More clothes

31) Togs
Because I want to get some fitness. Running would be my first choice but swimming all you need is togs and a towel.

The list comes out to about 50 things. Without any emergencies and assuming some temperate weather I think I'd be able to survive just using these. Now I think about it it's a good list of stuff to take while off travelling for an extended period of time too.

Hello World

Hi.

I'm trying this blog thing again. It's not going to be about anything in particular, nor is it going to be a regularly scheduled thing. It's going to be a place for brain dumping, or ranting, or practising writing. In fact, it's probably going to infuriate and annoy you if you try to keep up with it, so I don't recommend it that much.

All that aside, welcome!