Signposts - a blog about Te Ara the Encyclopedia of New Zealand

Rainbow Warrior after the bombing

Bombs scares seem to be a regular inner-city event in Wellington these days. After being caught up in one on 3 March – fortunately, only to the extent that my bus home didn’t arrive because it was marooned further down Lambton Quay with the rest of the fleet – I thought I’d take a quick look at the topic.

There’s been a proliferation of bomb scares in Wellington recently –  on 17 February 2010, 11 December 2009 and 9 December 2009. And it’s not just Wellington central – a beeping package was left at headquarters of the New Zealand Racing Board in nearby Petone in July 2009, while Auckland and Christchurch have their fair share too. The provinces are not immune either – a park in Havelock North, Hawke’s Bay, was shut down on 2 March this year when sticks of ‘explosives’ taped to a board were found there.

None of these were real bombs. Most were premeditated hoaxes. The Havelock North scare was traced to a fancy-dress party held nearby the weekend before. At worst, these incidents temporarily disrupt the normal flow of daily events.

Sometimes the bombs are real though.

The most infamous example in New Zealand’s history is the bombing of the Greenpeace ship Rainbow Warrior, which was sunk by French spies in Auckland Harbour in 1985.

Less well-known and understood is the bombing of the Trades Hall in Wellington in 1984. A suitcase filled with explosives, designed to go off when the suitcase was moved, was left at the building. Unsuspecting caretaker Ernie Abbott picked it up and was killed instantly. Because Trades Hall was a union building it seems likely that the union movement was being targeted, but because police did not solve the case we’ll never know for sure. In the early 2000s police were given new information about the case by members of the public but they did not go anywhere.

Do you know of any other real cases of bombs in New Zealand?

When I first started working at Te Ara my colleagues who sat nearest to me were often bemused by the squeals of delight that erupted from me every now and then. The cause was almost always that I had opened an image to prepare for our Bush theme, and it was cute. Probably it was a baby chick of some kind.

If you search for the word cute on Te Ara you won’t get any results. However, Te Ara is full of cute things.

To view the quiz you need to have the latest version of Adobe Flash Player

Kapa haka group

Over the last couple of months, I have been travelling between Wellington and Pōrangahau to attend kapa haka practices with Tamatea Arikinui. It is one of six kapa haka groups practising for the Kahungunu regionals. The competition will be held on 13 March at Te Aute College and the top two teams will go through to Te Matatini. There are 13 regions, and each are having their own regionals.

The performances consist of seven different types of waiata (songs).

• Waiata-ā-tira - choral singing
• Whakaeke - choreographed entry
• Mōteatea - traditional chants or dirges
• Poi - movement with poi (ball attached to string)
• Waiata-ā-ringa - action song
• Haka - war dance
• Whakawātea - choreographed exit.

The regionals are being held all around the country from now until August. Kahungunu regionals are now only a week away and, with our dress rehearsal over, it’s time for us to rest our voices and bodies to prepare for the big day.

The impact of the 1868 Tsunami on Banks Peninsula

The tsunami alert resulting from the Chilean earthquake of 27 February 2010 is a reminder of the hazard that tsunamis pose to coastal areas around New Zealand.

In the early 21st century we have instant communication around the world. It was very different in August 1868, when one or more large earthquakes close to the Chile–Peru border caused a huge tsunami that spread around the Pacific Ocean. The first anyone in New Zealand knew was when the first wave arrived soon after 3 a.m. on 15 August. Sea-level fluctuations continued for over 12 hours, causing considerable damage, for example around Banks Peninsula.

James Hector, then in charge of the Geological Survey and the Colonial Museum, collected observations from around New Zealand. He wrote three separate reports, as more information came to hand.

On 25 August 1868 Hector was able to produce a graph of sea level changes from New Zealand ports, showing when the first wave arrived and how long the sea level continued to fluctuate. Although the cause of the sea level fluctuation was uncertain, in his first report Hector correctly deduced that it was probably caused by a distant earthquake.

By 1st September 1868 Hector had more information, including reports from the Chatham Islands, where one man was drowned trying to rescue a boat.

In his final report on 1st October 1868 Hector was able to confirm that the tsunami originated from South America, and also had compiled newspaper reports of the tsunami from around New Zealand and Australia.

The 1868 tsunami has considerable historic importance, as it was documented by Ferdinand von Hochstetter, an Austrian scientist who had visited New Zealand in 1859. He charted the progress of the tsunami across the Pacific. It is the first detailed scientific analysis of a major tsunami, but the results are not too different from what is being reported 140 years later.

Were you affected by the tsunami on Sunday?

On Thursday and Friday of last week I attended my second Webstock web conference. Basically it involves someone new bombarding you with ideas and examples and insights every forty minutes. Despite having had a weekend to recover and reflect, I’m still trying to sift though it all. The next step is to figure out how to actually use some of the ideas and inspiration on Te Ara.

It’s obviously impossible to encompass the whole thing in a short blog post, but I’ll share some of my impressions and highlights, and hope you’ll do the same by leaving a comment.

One thing I liked about Webstock 2010 was that several speakers made time for questions. Last time, despite a lot of discussion about the importance of interaction on the web, there was very little interaction with the speakers. I also liked speakers who had something to say (most of them), and didn’t like the ones (fortunately few) who didn’t have anything to say or who didn’t really manage to say it.

The main theme of the second day seemed to be internet startups (new entreprenuerial companies). While I don’t see starting a startup in my future, there were still lessons we could learn from the experiences of the entrepreneurs who have been there, such as Eric Ries, Mike Davidson and Kevin Rose – like the advantages of taking an iterative approach and the importance of looking at how your users use your site. It did seem a pity though that all those speakers (and in fact a vast majority of the speakers overall) were from the US, which surely is a very different environment for startups than here. My co-attendees and I agreed it would have been nice to have had a New Zealand perspective.

My three favourite speakers were on day one, and I’ve realised that there is some commonality about them, even though they all work in different areas: they passionately believe in what they’re doing and they’ve made it personal.

The first was designer Scott Thomas, who kicked off the conference. He talked about being the web designer for Barack Obama’s presidential campaign. He showed how they used design to change the way people perceived this junior senator – so the public could start to imagine him as president. Clearly they were very successful.

I had been lucky enough to see Shelley Bernstein speak last year about her social media work for the Brooklyn Museum. She’s passionate about audience engagement, and had lots of great examples of how the Brooklyn Museum has been using technology to connect with people. After her session I got all excited about the idea of running a Te Ara video competition (based on this one), where our users could contribute short films they’ve made about something somehow relevant. In the sober light of day, I’m still considering the merits of this.

Despite being a poet myself, I have to confess that I was a bit dubious about Rives, the final speaker of day one, who was described as a poet and pop-up-book designer. I needn’t have worried – he was awesome. He did perform some poetry, but mainly showed us digital stuff he’d made – videos, photos and other kinds of multimedia. While Shelley Bernstein made me want to make you make videos, Rives made me want to go out and make more videos of my own – especially ones with poetry.

I can’t remember who said this first, but someone earlier in the day said ‘People love things made with love’, and things made with love were certainly the things that got me excited.