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At home with the art-hackers | Sep 05, 2008 10:01

Leo and I went out to Purple Spheres this week. It's an event sponsored by Orcon, in which a group of eight art-hacker types spend a week in a house at Huia playing with and creating (as it mostly turned out) user interface hacks.

I'm impressed to discover how home-brewable a lot of this stuff is. The gestural interface they built this week for Google Earth uses an open-source application created in Processing. A couple of LED mini-torches, two ping-pong balls and you're driving Google Earth by waving your hands around. Or, rather, Leo was. I discovered it was much harder than it looked, but he seemed to be able to work it better than any of the grown-ups. Kids, eh. We're going to do that one at home.

Even the multi-touch table they've put together isn't that hard to build. Code for that came from The Natural User Interface Group.

Maya McNichol and Leo bonded. Her bio says "She has a fascination with computers and doesn't really like people much at all.," so that'll be it. He left with a programmable microcontroller and a bunch of LEDs and resistors. Feel free to have a look at the site: they have YouTube clips and this pretty time-wasting sand-trail thingy and they'll be uploading software.

The visit was also a handy way of keeping Leo's mind off the impending release of Spore. Well, not much longer. We've downloaded the game already and it activates at noon today: at which point a boy in Pt Chevalier will be very happy indeed.

Dramfest is back for 09!

But before that there'll be the New Zealand Music Awards, this year stepping up to the Vector Arena (which will be the first time I've been there). I brought Alastair and Jim from Scoop Media (who are up here this week wooing the agencies) along to the announcement of the finalists, and I was quite impressed with the list.

MGMT fans (and what a diverse bunch you seem to be) will doubtless want to check out this rather winning cover of 'Kids' by British band The Kooks.

And oh lordy, I'm going to the Brian Jonestown Massacre tonight. My knowledge of the band doesn't extend far past having seen DiG! , but I'm fully expecting to enjoy myself. I gather they played an "epic" three hours in Dunedin.

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The out-of-control manchild on the council | Sep 04, 2008 11:00

We were having fun with the internet adventures of Aaron Bhatnagar long before he became an Auckland City councillor. And readers will doubtless find droll amusement in Transmogrification, Bhatnagar's thrilling new series of autobiographical blog posts about how he won back the Auckland mayoralty for John Banks. It's like this:

In early 2006, I met with Banks at his large family apartment in Remuera. "I think you can win it back John, I think the time is right to start polling".

Glory!

But there's another story too. Bhatnagar was playing victim a couple of weeks ago, when his one-time political opponent Christine Caughey raised what are, as we shall see, not unreasonable concerns about the inappropriate political use of Wikipedia. He compiles a list of "nations that censor blogs". (Yes, he's comparing himself to the bloggers of Iran, and no he's not being ironic. Bless.)

David Farrar weighed in on his mate's behalf, demanding to know "how did such a person get elected in the first place, and why in God's name has Labour appointed someone who wants to regulate Wikipedia to a powerful transport funding board?"

At issue was Caughey's submission to the Justice and Electoral committee's review of the 2007 local body elections. In which she said:

Advertising by way of blogging, use of Wikipedia or similar, are two examples where abuse may occur. Wikipedia does not appear to have adequate structures in place to monitor and control abuse of the system.

Regulation to control the type of use of the internet for political/campaigning purposes should be put in place and made explicit in candidate information booklets.

You might think that's wrong. You might be right. But read on …

Bhatnagar used his blog to rail against Caughey's submission ("I'm going to demolish these points one by one") but curiously neglected to mention a very important dimension to the story: his own extensive history of inappropriate political editing of Wikipedia: directed at Caughey, her Action Hobson party and former mayor Dick Hubbard.

Indeed, it would appear that Bhatnagar wanted everyone else to forget it. What kind of victorious candidate tries to delete the Wikipedia article for his opponent at 3am in the morning after the results were announced?

Fortunately, Bhatnagar was unsuccessful in deleting the articles and their attendant edit trails. They make for interesting reading. Bhatnagar, as "Barzini", created articles on Caughey and Action Hobson. And when other editors sought to excise the political froth he poured into the articles, he put it all back in. Some of his edits -- including removing a reference to Caughey being named Metro's Aucklander of the Year -- seem sad and petty.

In the case of Action Hobson, Bhatnagar stacks the article with his own spin. He later even brags about its "opponents" -- that is Bhatnagar himself -- "now controlling" the Action Hobson website.

Let's pop on over to where Bhatnagar made his first unflattering edit to Dick Hubbard's page. And then again. And a riotously self-serving effort over the so-called "Queen Street Massacre" of some trees.

See also here, where someone removes an inappropriate rant about Hubbard's mayoralty, and Bhatnagar puts it back.

And of course, no story about perpetual adolescents without a sense of boundary would be complete without a contribution from Whaleoil.

It ought to be a no-brainer that creating Wikipedia articles on your political opponents, and then consistently using those articles to push your own spin about them is, well, not in the spirit of Wikipedia. We can only be grateful that good-faith Wikipedia editors (including the sainted Gadfium) have largely cleaned up the muck.

Bhatnagar and his friends can grouse as much as they want. But when they're done with rolling around the floor whimpering and playing victim, they might want to consider how it looks for a city councillor to behave like an out-of-control man-child and then try and cover it up.

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Also, I really enjoyed making this week's Media7 programme on the state of the gay media. With an all-male panel, it inevitably leaned more towards gay men than lesbians, but our panel -- Jay Bennie, Douglas Jenkin and Johnny Givins -- had lots to say. The show is now up on TVNZ ondemand (there's a backgrounder right at the beginning that explains the state of the play).

See also the Windows Media clips, the podcast and (soon, hopefully) our the YouTube version.

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Go Us | Sep 01, 2008 10:46

When you see a New York Times editorial headed Let's Hear It for New Zealand, you just have to find out what that's about. Has the Times joined the Conchords fan club? No. We're part of an "admirable band" of countries holding the line against American attempts to reopen nuclear technology sales to India, a nuclear weapons state.

Meanwhile, Poneke applauds Flight of the Conchords' decision to quit while they're ahead.

Warm congratulations to Phil Twyford for his good position on the Labour Party list. He's a smart, well-qualified and very capable man.

Even David Farrar has praised the list, which does what the party should have done three years ago: focused more on fresh talent. Although I confess, it would have been better to see sometime PA sportsbloggers Grant Robertson and Hamish McDouall a bit higher up.

Josh Marshall explains one of the more significant problems with John McCain's VP pick, Sarah Palin: her judgement. In the course of her 18 months as Alaska Governor, she appears to have used her position to pursue a family feud, then fired a senior state official who refused to play along. And there's more.

This week's Media7 looks at New Zealand's gay media -- which are in even more turmoil than usual, with Express having dispensed with its editorial staff after the Aids Foundation decided to shift $40,000 in safe-sex advertising online, and no local gay programming on mainstream channels, despite there being NZ On Air funding available.

Our panel is Gaynz.com's Jay Bennie, TV producer Johnny Givins and the venerable Douglas Jenkin, who now works for the Aids Foundation. (Yes, I wanted a woman or two on the panel, but it didn't work out that way.) If you'd like to join us for the recording at The Classic tomorrow evening, hit the reply button and drop me a line asap.

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