Dr Who - the new series

The new Dr Who series starts broadcasting on Prime TV in New Zealand at 7:30pm on Thursday July 7th. I'm lucky enough to have already seen the full series, and I loved it. The Doctor played by Christopher Eccleston is like an exhuberant child. He has shades of Tom Baker, but far better cheekbones and a cool leather coat.

His favourite word is fantastic, which he delivers with a huge grin and a Northern accent. His sidekick Rose Tyler is played by perky ex-pop tart Billy Piper, who is safe to fancy now she's legal and no longer married to Chris Evans. She's not just a dumb blonde, and teaches the last remaining Timelord a little more about humanity. If the Doctor is the brains of the Tardis, Rose is the heart. Both are later joined by the brawns of Captain Jack, a boys own action hero from the 22nd Century.

In the Doctor's world the oldest remaining human in the Universe is a square of skin, and aliens with flatulance build nuclear power stations in central Cardiff. You'll meet zombies, crazed TV network controllers and the pure evil of the Daleks. I loved the future TV episode which brings a whole new level to Big Brother evictions. It would certainly spice things up a bit.

The BBC has an excellent Dr Who website with programme guides, video interviews with the cast and all the extras you expect from the Beeb. They even have a fear forecast for every episode so that you know when to hide behind the sofa.

We have a Dr Who tribute release by Si-Fi on TMet Recordings which is one of my favourite tracks. It's called Davros Returns and you can listen to a free one minute preview.

New Zealand Consumer Powerswitch

Are you paying too much for your electricity? Save hundreds of dollars a year by finding the best electricity plan and provider in New Zealand for your business needs.

New Zealand Credit Card Ratings

Are you paying too much interest in your credit card? Check out Cardwatch for the best rates. It's also worth comparing card fees to get an accurate view on annual costs.

How to Stop Worrying and Start Living by Dale Carnegie

All business owners experience worry especially in the early days. Here is a collection of strategies for coping with worry and fear.

How to deal with VCs

Useful information on how to deal with Venture Capitalists.

Patent absurdity

"If patent law had been applied to novels in the 1880s, great books would not have been written. If the EU applies it to software, every computer user will be restricted" says Richard Stallman

Online Usability 101

Some tips on good online useablity practices.

Lazy, stupid and evil design

Some good tips on what not to do online.

5 years since my Glastonbury Wedding
It’s Glastonbury Festival weekend in the UK, which means it’s been five years since I married Chelfyn. I'm kind of glad to be missing it this year, after seeing the aftermath of the flash flooding. But I'm very proud to say that the two freaks who were hitched on the Pyramid Stage at Glastonbury 2000 are still going strong, and loving living in New Zealand.

It was only 3 months from our first date to getting married on the main stage, but we were gazumped by our friends Liz and Craig. They hooked up around the same time as us, but married a few weeks earlier in top secret. They went to the Bristol registry office one lunchtime, and dragged two people in off the street to witness. None of us knew of the happy event, until they got back from their lunch-break slightly tipsy. 5 years on they are also still married, living in Sydney and about to have their first baby. I am really happy for them and their new bump, but Chelfyn and I will be staying child-free. Some people are just not meant to breed.

I’m just getting into my stride in life, and children complicate things. They are expensive, demanding, and frequently infuriating. I know they can be loveable, generally when they aren’t sticky. Which isn't often. Children also generate copious amounts of snot and other unmentionables, that spot weld to every surface. Then they turn into terrifying teenagers. Being a parent is positively masochistic, two cats are enough for me. The British upper classes had the best way. They got a nanny in at birth and then sent the snot-gobblers off to boarding school as soon as they could walk. Unfortunately this system has bred a succession of spanking mad Tory MPs. The fear of that is enough to put anyone off breeding.

But marriage is lush. I didn't really see the point until hooking up with Chelfyn. Which is slang in an area of London for scoring pot - something he is immensely proud of. I love the fact that New Zealand is one of the first places in the world to allow civil unions, where same sex couples can show their committment publicly. Whatever Pimp Tamaki and the Cult of Density might say, it shows New Zealand is a progressive nation rather than one stuck in the dark ages.

An Interview with Carl Nicholson

Carl Nicholson with Anne Savage

I talked to UK DJ Carl Nicholson on today's TMet Show on Twisted Radio, as he was in Auckland for the night to play at Global Panic. Carl has been on the forefront of the UK Underground Dance Scene since 1994. His recent release on Tidy Trax went straight into the top 10 on the UK's National Dance Chart. He is also about to launch his own label - Global Panic Records, and bring out the 'Carl Nicholson - EP 1'.

One of Tony De Vit's protege's Carl has always stood to the values and advice of this great man, which was to “Always play from the heart and smile and the crowd will love you for it”

Listen to an interview with Carl Nicholson. [3 MB]

Cost of living to rise as fuel price hikes hit

Oil prices have gone up $14 a barrel this month. Central business districts may no longer be economically viable for much longer...

Mohawk Media says hello


Hello from the all new Mohawk Media crew: Chelfyn, MsBehaviour, Mistress Dirtbag & Justin Sane. Check out: www.mohawkmedia.co.nz for more about us, our TV, 3D & Multimedia stuff. And yes we do look like our Southpark characters...

How to Make a Million Dollars, by Marshall Brain

Written for the American market but some good advice for NZ entrepreneurs.

Copyright cops crack down on cooks over cakes

A good article about copyright and IP over at Boing Boing.

Twisted Timeshifting



The BBC does it and now Twisted does it - we have timeshifted all of our Twisted radio shows. You can now listen to archives of every show on Twisted, as a stream or to download. Simply visit the Twisted show schedule page, and click on the name of the show you want to hear. We're keeping a week or so's worth of shows at this stage as 96kbit ogg files, so you'll need at least SOME form of broadband connection, and the appropriate player and codec software installed to listen to them.

You can hear at our TMet Show page, as an OGG stream or to download (136 MB ). Also from last week's show, some of our homegrown Kiwi dance tracks off TMet Recordings, my interview with Terra Nine, a phone in from Mistress Dirtbag and a banging two hour psy set from Chelfyn.

Now it doesn't matter wherever you are in the globe - you can join the Twisted generation, even if you're in another time-zone...

Top 10 Indie Releases - June 2005

1. Various, Green Room 004: Hope
2. Fly My Pretties, Live At Bats
3. TrinityRoots, Home Land & Sea
4. Katchafire, Slow-Burning
5. Shapeshifter, Riddim Wise
6. Katchafire, Revival
7. Baitercell and Schumacher, The Wall Of Bass Technique
8. Savage, Moonshine
9. Kora, EP Volume
10. The Black Seeds,Keep On Pushing

From Indies.co.nz

Terra Nine & Twisted Party People



Listen to an interview with Terra Nine [2.4 MB]

Well Friday turned into a top night, which starting with an unsual incident. As Chelfyn and I were striding along K'Rd on the way to our radio show, a woman came running up to us waving a card. She has a fashion shoot coming up and wants a tall, purple headed loon with a pink mohawk (me) to model. It's a hell of a boost to your ego when you're over 30, to have someone spot you in the street for a modelling gig.

Our radio show was a heap of fun and I interviewed a cool guy called Michael Westcot, AKA Terra Nine. He used to run a successful eco-company in Sydney, but sold up to move to Dunedin three months ago, and work full time on his music. He started Terra Nine in 1997, making and playing live ambient psy-trance with world music influences. His live show incorporates electric violin and viola. Being a fiddler myself (I'm classically trained), I was drooling at the thought of all the cool effects you can add to an electric violin. (Which is currently at the top of my wishlist if anyone from Yamaha is reading this!) You can find out more about Terra Nine and his music at www.assemblage.com.au

The Twisted party was a heap of fun at Bacios. I was door whore for part of the night, and was touched to see all the people who turned up and gave their money to support us. Thank you all! It was a quiet night for Auckland and the flyer crews who were out and about, said the Twisted Party was the busiest place all night. We all had a heap of fun, raised some money to help keep Twisted radio on air and ad free, and I met some fantastic people. Hopefully we'll be having another one soon and get even more of the Twisted Generation partying together. We're also looking for show sponsors so get in touch if you want to be involved in the Twisted Media project.

Other members of the collective are busy with cool projects. Kiwi rock band State of It are about to bring out a single, and Mohawk Media are helping with the video. Our best mate Clayton (Waterboy) is the drummer in the band. He 'beats the snot' out of those drums, has been known to break unbreakable sticks with one bash, and has melted the linkeage on his double kick drum pedal. If you want to see them in action and maybe be in their video, State of It are playing a gig at Papa Jacks in Auckland this Thursday.

Oh what a lovely morning...


A long leisurely lie in with a great book (30,000 Mornings by Hiag Akmakjian), picked at ramdom from the library in a literary lucky dip. Next up is a long, leisurely soak in the bath, before I get ready for our radio show and the Twisted Birthday Party.

I haven't been this excited about a gig in ages, and can't wait to meet more of the Twisties. From what I can tell on line they are a great bunch of people, except for a teenage troll called Meathook Sodomy. He's been banned from all the other NZ dance communities but we tolerate him. Maybe he's not a teenager after all, and will turn out to be a balding 40 year old man. That's the fun of online communities, you can never be sure who will turn up the off-line events.

Anyway it's only $10 on the door, and all proceeds are going to help keep Twisted on the air and advert free. Mistress Dirtbag will be wearing her chains, and I'm dusting off my little black dress. I've got a fresh pink mohawk and I'm feeling in a vampy mood tonight...

Matariki


Today is Matariki, the Maori New Year. It is marked by the appearance of Matariki (also known as the Pleaides) star cluster, that heralds the start of the Aotearoa Pacific New Year. Matariki signals growth. It's a time of change. It's a time to prepare, and a time of action. May this year bring you happiness and prosperity.

Ka Kite.

MsB XX

Fudged up for Friday


We got totally Fudged up this weekend to celebrate the launch of Mohawk Media. Chelfyn’s got a fresh Orange Crush mohawk and I’ve got a Pretty Flamingo fin to go with my Purple Hazed crop. For the past year we’ve been steadily working our way through the new Fudge haircare range and will be posting a full review soon.



Another reason to get Fudged up is for the Twisted 4th Birthday Bash this Friday at Bacios (above Kiss on K’Rd). Twisted.co.nz are celebrating four years online and one year on air with a fundraising birthday bash at Bacios. On the decks are Twisted jocks Karim S, Gargoyle, Chelfyn and special guest DJ Illusion bringing you trance, psytrance, prog, techno and breaks to keep you grooving.

Bring your friends along to meet the other members of the Twisted Generation. It’s only $10 on the door and all proceeds will go towards running Twisted Radio, the only non-commercial full spectrum dance radio station in Auckland and Hamilton.

The future is Indian

by Naomi Hamersley at the NZ Herald. Many NZ companies and indeed our PM are sizing up China as a major source of new business, but another growing giant is India with an expected 51 per cent of the global outsourcing market by 2008.



Kiwi cartoon comedy Bro Town was inked in India and I've been lucky to work with Indian programmers and designers back in the UK.They were a pleasure to work and often put my English to shame!

Weight of debt threatens to crack UK economy

A brilliant article by Stephen King at the Independent on the fallout in the Uk from a recent economic experiment.

Company reputation bigger than brands

By Karen Chan at the NZ Herald: "A company's reputation has more influence on customer loyalty than its brand image, a University of Auckland study of business markets has found."

A Rotorua Roadtrip
My apologies dear readers for not blogging for a while but I’ve been extraordinarily busy. I've started teaching at Natcoll Design College in Auckland on the Graduate Diploma in Digital Media course, plus we’ve built our very own TV studio and have launched a new videographics company called Mohawk Media. With all the creative projects we have in the pipeline I’ll not have much time for typing, but will try and post an update from TMet Towers every Friday before my radio show. Also watch out soon for some Video-Logs or VLogs from me and the TMet Crew.

I’ve also taken some time off to rest my wrist and catch up with an old friend, that Chelfyn and I know from when we lived in the UK. Simon Barber used to invent things for the Hewlett Packard Labs in Bristol. He's now the Chief Scientist in a wireless networking company that he started up four years ago in Silicon Valley. He hangs out with the fabulous geeks and freaks of San Francisco, goes to Burning Man every year and is studying for his pilots license. He was in Australia for a conference for a few days, and stopped off in NZ to catch up with us for the first time in 5 years.

The weather had been balmy for the preview few weeks, but a few days before he was due Land of the Long White Cloud became Land of the Long Wet Downpour. It rained so hard in the Bay of Plenty that they declared a state of emergency with headlines like “My house floated down the street”. To add to the crap weather Chelfyn caught the nasty cold that had been flooring everyone for the past few weeks. Luckily Simon found the Mistress and the girls to nurse us before Chemistry.



So where do you take a friend who is only in New Zealand for a couple of days? When it’s too wet for a roadtrip in a camper to the Bay of Islands or Coromandel. We chose the tourist hotspot of the north island - Rotorua (known locally as Rotovegas).

Rotorua
Rotorua is the geothermal capital of New Zealand. Some people call it tacky, but there is lots to see and do all year round and it reminds me of Iceland. It’s only a 3 hour road-trip from Auckland where you get to drive through some pretty rural areas, and get a sense of how small it really is here. That’s one of the things I love about New Zealand. It’s raw beauty and lack of over-development.

Simon and I set off from Auckland in driving rain leaving a snotty Chelfyn at home nursing a box of hankies. We stopped off for a tasty meal in Hamilton before carrying on to Rotorua, arriving after dark and in driving rain. We made good use of the electronic tourist info point outside the tourist centre and found the stylish Princes Gate Hotel which was originally built in Waihi in 1897, and moved to Rotorua in the 1920s. It’s an unusually old and historical building for New Zealand and had the hottest bathwater I've encountered in ages.

The following day looked promising, with the clouds clearing enough for Simon to book a flight. I never knew there was so much you could learn about clouds, and precipitation. We tucked into a delicious breakfast beforehand at the excellent Grapevine Cafe. The hunks of bread were so big - we had to ask for side plates. I had the French Toast with bananas & crispy bacon on maple soaked doorstops, and the Eggs Benedict was declared tasty and filling with a decent Hollandaise.

Our enquiry about a local flight school at the tourist office turned up Air Discovery at Whakatane airfield, who do lessons for around $200 an hour (with space for two friends). Simon had wanted to take the coast road on the drive down from Auckland, and I don’t think he really believed me that the roads & bridges had washed away. Until we flew over the disaster zone and saw the devastation. Flat mud squares where houses and gardens once stood. My heart went out to the people of Matua and Tauranga some of whom lost everything.








We flew over White Island, New Zealand’s most active volcano. You can see aerial video footage of it here. We could see the crater lake which blew out a few years ago, taking most of the trees with it. It’s incredible to think of the awesome power bubbling under the skin of New Zealand.



We also flew inland towards Mt Edgcumbe, and over some of the crater lakes, before landing at Whakatane and driving back to RotoVegas.








I dropped Simon off at a Maori Hangi for some Kai (food) cooked underground on hot stones at the Mitai Village, before finding a nearby motel and taking a long hot spa bath.



Wai-O-Tapu
In the morning we went to the Wai-O-Tapu thermal area where we saw boiling mud, and the Lady Knox geyser. Though it had been known to local Maori the geyser was discovered in 1901, by some men from the nearby open prison who were using the hot water to wash their clothes in. Some soap powder made its way in to the vent, and a few minutes later their clothes where shot into the air while they ran inthe opposite direction. The Soap Powder in Geyser trick is a technique still used to make the old lady blow her top at 10.15 am every day.





We walked around the amazing geological terraces, with colours like the palette of and underground spraycan artist. As I was musing on whether dumb tourists ever stick their hands in to see how hot the water it, I actually saw someone do this. Then walk away blowing on his hand and looking surprised that the steaming water burned him!



With an onward flight to LA booked that evening and Simon’s record of missing flights, we hit the road back to Auckland soon afterwards. It was a whistle-stop tour of New Zealand but Simon saw Maori warriors, geological quirks and active volcanos, smelled the sulpurous air of Rot & Ruin (as the locals also call it) and ate food cooked in a hole in the ground. Nothing gives you perspective than seeing your new life through the eyes of an old friend. They say a chance is a good as a rest and it was great to have a few days away from the studios. I also got to remember how much I love living in New Zealand.

I tried to explain to Simon how being in this country makes me feel, and why I have no desire to go back to America until they have a major regime change. There is enough in the crazy little country to keep me exploring it for years, and when I went back to the UK in 2003, I was homesick for New Zealand after a few weeks.

I love this land of fire, and ice and lakes, of Futurama cityscapes, Bungy, Zorb and perfect surf, volcanos, fjiords and Middle Earth.I especially love living in Waitekere Eco-City. I love the lush bush backdrops of the Waitakeres and dramatic Weat Coast beaches. All within a stones thrown of a vibrant, dynamic Polynesian city. Add to the fact that the worst winter’s day in Auckland would be considered a good summer's day in the UK, and you can see why I’m happy to a Westie.

Oh and if you want to know where to stay in RotoVegas according to the Maori fullas at Mitai the best places are the Kiwipacker, Green Voyager and the Hot Rocks which apparently usually has the hottest chicks in their hotpools.

I will report back next time I take a roadtrip to Rotorua...

Visit Rotorua online at Rotorua NZ TV.