ThoughtSpurs

If there is one thing I hate it is intermittent faults. Like when sometimes your car won't start and the rest of the time it starts and runs just fine. When you take it to the mechanic there's no symptom - nothing to diagnose. When my 10 ferry trip concession card passed through the red laser beam this morning the portable display unit read 9 trips remaining. "9 left" reinforced the man attached to the portable scanner, beaming. "Impossible I said - it should only have three trips left." I said. "Consider it a bonus." He chimed, filled with the beneficence of those who favour others with other people's money.Clearly the matter was above his pay-grade and, in any case, it was the last run on the route for the morning and his mind was on a well earned cup of tea. I'd like to report that I did indeed think of it as windfall but it just troubled me all day. If the digital scanner could get it so wrong, even apparently in my ...

Ushio Shinohara and his wife Noriko are both artists in New York. They love a bohemian life. Shinohara is well know for his work but is not commercially successful. He migrated to the US after finding fame in Japan for his riff on pop art. Noriko arrives in the US, a young art student, meets Shinohara and falls for his manic charms. It's not long before he is sponging off her family allowance to pay rent. Time passes. They marry and have a child. It seems Noriko is destined to become her husband's assistant - he is much older than she is, though neither are young anymore. She harbours her own dream of artistic recognition via her created persona of Cutie. It is a meticulously shot piece, akin to the documentary classic Gray Gardens. Most of the observed narrative is in Japanese but it doesn't matter. We understand. When Noriko steps back from his work to see it in toto he seems to be looking back on his life as he utters 'crap' between words in his native...

I can't say that I like panhandling very much  - but here I go again. The charity fundraiser for Lifewise is fast approaching and my fundraising has been a little slow. That's not to say donations haven't been made - I have a network of generous friends and the ball is definitely rolling. I've made this message to include stacks of cash - because that dilates the pupils of 36.5% of Aucklanders and places them into a more receptive state. Add in a picture of a member of the royal family and if you find yourself on the brink of St Vitus dance and begin to ululate, you'll know why. You are powerless to resist. So, while I have you in this compliant state - follow this link - make a donation to help end homelessness and I promise the next flat white is on me.

If you can help with a donation - click here for my official donation site.

The Big SleepOut is a fundraiser to raise awareness and money to help the LifeWise Trust to help ease homelessness.  The Weather in Auckland has been atrocious. I hope it is milder on June 3, the night that I will be sleeping rough with a number of other Auckland business people and public figures - everyone fundraising from their friends, family and colleagues.  This year the focus is helping homeless youth. In Auckland 50% of all homeless people are aged between 16-24. It is a shocking statistic - those should be the best years of their lives. If you can help - please visit my fundraising page  Donations may qualify for tax deductions. Collection of money is independent and securely managed by GiveALittle - a Telecom Trust project. The LifeWise Trus t

The mayor of Auckland loves the meme 'a more livable city'. I do to - but I think everyone who lives here should be able to enjoy not only the natural beauty and the hum of a modern place - but also somewhere to call home. I'm not saying everyone should have a place on the northern slopes of Herne Bay just because they want one. But I do think everyone who needs and wants shelter at night or a modest place to call their own and feel safe and warm should have access to that. That's what the Lifewise trust do. They find ways of getting the resources available to the people who need them most. That's part of the crazy that is homelessness. Often services are available but the people they are for don't have access. Some don't know how. Others have bias against the agencies that can and do help - like police or CYFs. This year the campaign's focus is youth on the street. They are more vulnerable. very young children are on the street because it somet...

For the last few years I've been helping The LifeWise Trust to raise awareness about the issues surrounding homelessness in Auckland city. Well, not just awareness, money too. We have an amazing city - it is vibrant, diverse, energetic - but every city has its problems too, the things the glossy campaigns gloss over, the people who, for one reason or another fall through the cracks. I choose not to judge them. Every year I have participated in the The Big Sleepout I have learned more and heard more stories that are by turns tragic and uplifting. Every one is different. But in my judgement the work of the LifeWise trust is worth doing and I think we should do whatever we can to assist. You can see their mission and l earn about the work they do on the website . I'm asking for donations from my friends, family, colleagues and the people I know who know that the quality of life is better for everyone when everyone has a better chance. You. This year the focus of our f...

How's this for an idea. A pen that scans the colour you want to match then converts it to a HEX matched ink - or the digital stylus version can be used with a tablet or other touch screen device with a drawing programme. The pen is an accurate color picker pen that picks any color around you and draws in that same color, the Scribble. It is being funded with a Kickstarter campaign which has yet to launch. Who is it for? According to the firm making the device: "… the color blind, kids, interior decorators, homeowners, teachers, artists, photographers, designers and students, the Scribble color pickerpen will make copying an exact color, any  color from any  object, an absolute breeze.”  It is kind of cool, if a little bit pricey at $US150 for the ink version and $80 for the stylus. www.getscribblepen.com

There is a trend in relation to news consumption I've noticed on the internet. and it is driven by Facebook's influence as a curated referral engine. We humans are very visual, there's a thing called the ' pictoral superiority effect ' - attracted to shiny things or warning colours or whatever. It's primal. We also are attracted to attractive, cute or distressing things - kind visual hyperbole - because that how we hunted, fed and chose a mate. Add in the desire to attract clicks to links then you get into the realm of creative storytelling - fiction. The sub-editor - or whoever s driving the web content at the Herald (or Buzzfeed, Huffpost or whatever) has a story that needs an illustration - thats a given - the page would look barren without and an attention grabbing headline. 'Greens want abortion freely available in first 20 weeks of pregnancy' is pretty outré alone. But the picture choice is interesting because it is of someone relative...