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Entries for label: wellington

Found 13 entries.

"Turbine" at Downstage

I went to a preview showing of the play "Turbine" last night. And I'll tell you what, it was pretty awesome stuff.

There was only about 30 people in the audience which made it quite intimate. However that didn't detract from the atmosphere but actually made it better.

We were in row two which meant that in a lot of scenes, you really felt like you were within this family's home, especially so because you knew there were only a couple of people sitting behind you instead of the whole auditorium.

As for the play itself, it was pretty imaginative in some of the things it did (I especially liked the 'dancing' scene with two of the main characters). The actors also did some funny things with their scenery and set (no, not like that) but you'll have to go and see it to figure out what I mean.

Over the years in Wellington I've seen a few small productions either at Downstage or Bats and this one is definitely the best I've seen. The actors in this were excellent all round, especially so when a few of them had to change character for a moment or two.

The preview ticket was just $20 though the regular tickets are anything from $20 up to $42. Getting second row seats for $20 now seems like a pretty good bargain.

I'd heartily recommend going to see Turbine. It was a good play, the script was generally good (though the ending could have been a little better) and had some pretty dark humour at times, the local jokes made some patches even funnier but the acting was the winner for me - they really got it in to and it was emotional at times, both happy and sad.

Have fun if you go along.

Labels: theatre, downstage, wellington

Inserted: 2009-02-13 10:17 (3 years ago)

Save Manners Mall

As we all know, kicking pedestrians out of town is just the wrong thing to do. Putting more traffic right in the centre of town is even worse.

Added to the fact that Manners Mall is a rather quaint place (ok, there are some varmints there late at night, but I'd rather be able to walk through it during the day than have to wait for YET ANOTHER traffic light to cross the road).

I hate waiting for traffic, I hate the smell and I hate the fact that this city council only ever does things for motorised vehicles and never pedestrians or cyclists.

So, if you want to stop even more traffic jamming up the centre of Wellington, go and sign the petition (via the council's own website) to Save Manner's Mall.

If you have a blog in Wellington and have some Wellingtonian readers who might also be interested, post this link and let's get the council to rethink.

Labels: manners-mall, walking, wellington, cycling

Inserted: 2009-02-08 21:24 (3 years ago)

What a Week

It's been a bit of a crazy week, lots of things happening and not much time to do much.

Luckily it started off well and ended well but the less said about the middle the better.

Last Sunday I went to the first ever performance of Schola Sinfonica (a member of the Wellington Youth Orchestra group of orchestras) for which my friend Rachel Hyde helped set up and conduct. It was a moving performance especially since it was their first and for which a number of the children were playing either completely new instruments or had only been with them for a few weeks. Overall, their parents must have been very proud and I hope to hear them again soon.

The elder orchestra played afterwards and it seems that Wellington will be blessed with a number of great violinists in the coming years (eight of them performed solos). This was a pretty impressive performance by a good solid set of young people and bodes well for our classical future.

Work this week was pretty mad. There were a few panic buttons pushed and those situations are never that enjoyable but we got through them. I also worked late three evenings so by the time I got home, I didn't want to do much else than eat and go to bed (so my normal life seems to have been put on hold momentarily). However, I felt I was quite productive and so I know we're a good step further along the project line.

The week ended with me going to another classical performance but this time to the NZSO. It was the last subscription concert of the year and a very enjoyable one. I always seem to enjoy about 60% of the music, think that 20% is good but not as exciting as it could be and the remaining 20% is a little weird or not my type. But overall, it's a great experience and I appreciate the fact that I am able to attend these events.

This weekend is already looking decidedly busy. Mountain biking tomorrow, some other bits and pieces and I hope to be able to relax tomorrow night. Sunday I will head to the market, have a small ride, meet up with the Wellington NaNoWriMo contingent at lunch, play indoor soccer in the afternoon and then watch the Phoenix play early evening. Phew! It's gonna be busy. Not sure when I'll get the time to just chill out.

Labels: nzso, mountain-biking, wellington, phoenix

Inserted: 2008-11-21 23:42 (3 years, 2 months ago)

Wellington Rocks

And no, I'm not talking about that heavy metal thing over Easter.

I'm talking everything, all the time.

It's just an amazing place.

Labels: planet-catalyst, wellington, happiness

Inserted: 2008-06-07 10:29 (3 years, 8 months ago)

Working for Catalyst in Wellington

Yesterday I was asked to write a short testimonial describing working for Catalyst and living in Wellington from the point of view of someone coming here from abroad.

A number of \l{Catalyst|http://www.catalyst.net.nz/} employees are off to \l{LCA|http://linux.conf.au/} next week and my testimonial will be placed on the back of a leaflet to be given out to prospective employees during the \l{Open Day|http://linux.conf.au/programme/open-day}.

What I'm putting here is the original version (slightly edited) though I think it will be shortened somewhat due to a lack of space on the leaflet.

- --

Testimonial

Years ago my brother told me that he couldn't see himself living anywhere other than Coventry. Coming from Liverpool and living in Manchester at the time made me wonder how completely crazy my older brother was. Of course, at that time in my life I knew I still had the world to see.

Since then I have lived in London, Frankfurt, Perth and Wellington for varying times between six months and five years. You could say that I have now seen the world. By the way, the five year stint is Wellington and still ongoing (and no, I have no plans to leave - yet). There are many reasons I could use to explain why I'm still here but for the moment I will offer just two. It's quite simple - work and play.

So let's get the mundane one out of the way first - work. Ahah, see I fooled you. Work isn't actually the mundane one of the two (neither of them are) but let's discuss work anyway. It seems that work is apparently something which is a daily grind, another day, another dollar and a myriad of other boring phrases used to describe our nine-to-five work habit. I'd like someone to show me this 'work' they speak of which everyone else seems to consider that nasty time-consumer we force ourselves to do five days out of seven in return for monetary compensation.

My version of 'work' seems to be a lot different than that most other people seem to always moan about. Of course it's a lot of hard work (and I won't be naive enough to tell you otherwise) but there are certain advantages of working for Catalyst. The knowledge and talent of the people inside Catalyst is higher than any of my previous employers and always a great source of new ideas and learning. The open source slant within the company from the outset to the newest employees is self-evident. Talking to and working with people who contribute every day to Perl, Linux, Debian, MythTV, Moodle, Drupal and various other open source projects is a big eye-opener and I feel privileged to work with such bright and open-minded friends.

And that's the other thing you'll get at Catalyst - friends, not just colleagues.

Which leads us on to play. Fridays usually kick the weekend off with drinks and food at work, which always includes homemade bread from the staff disguised as bakers. Wellington being such a vibrant and small city means wherever you go, you're sure to bump into people you know. This gives the place a nice family atmosphere though of course there are also plenty of things to do for younger couples or singletons.

Having lived in a number of cities throughout my life, I have finally settled. It seems that one of my favourite phrases at the moment is "I love Wellington, me" and whilst that's my accent talking, you can see quite clearly what it means.

There's always something around the corner, something new, something different and something challenging, in both work and play. I honestly can't see myself living anywhere else so why not come and see what you're missing out on.

Andrew Chilton - Senior Developer

Andrew has lived in 5 different countries, worked for organisations of under 50 employees and over 13,000 employees, worked in the film industry, the space industry, has an Open Source project he is proud of and has eaten well over 79 bowls of Coco-Pops in the last three years (okay, that last one isn't quite true).

Labels: open-source, planet-geek, planet-catalyst, wellington, oss, catalyst

Inserted: 2008-01-24 22:51 (4 years ago)

Latest Pic I Like

I've added some more pics to my Flickr account.

When I first started this blog, I did a few weeks with a WPoW - "Wellington Picture of the Week", but it turns out I didn't do it for long.

Anyway, with my new camera, I'm uploading bits and pieces and will blog about one or two here. Don't worry, I won't go over the top with photos, just one or two posts a week maybe.

Here's todays, taken in Seatoun:

Hope you like it.

And as with most things I do these days, I'm giving it away free. All my photos on Flickr are licensed under the Creative Commons "Attribution-No Derivatives" license (shame Flickr hasn't updated to v3.0 of the licenses yet).

Go nuts!

Labels: sky, photos, wellington, silhouette, wpow, flickr

Inserted: 2008-01-18 01:04 (4 years, 1 month ago)

Playing with Flickr

After getting my new digital camera today, I've started uploading some pictures to Flickr. It's fun.

Instead of using Flickr as a store for all my photos, I'm just going to upload some of my favourites. Unfortunately, today I couldn't go out and take any nice pictures because of the terrible weather, so I took a few just to play around with the camera.

That's just the small version since I thought the medium version was 400 across and not 500 as it actually is.

Anyway, here is another photo to enjoy:

< <div style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/andychilton/2174255167/" title="20080107_185926 by andychilton, on Flickr"><img src="http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2016/2174255167_9c87feef1e_m.jpg" border="0" width="240" height="180" alt="20080107_185926" /></a>
</div>

And you can see more at andychilton's Flickr page. If you have an account, go add me as a contact.

Labels: photos, wellington, flickr

Inserted: 2008-01-08 00:17 (4 years, 1 month ago)

Trying to be Green

It seems that no matter what you do and how hard you try, you can always be greener.

Sometimes I feel I don't do enough to be green. Mostly I think I'm okay but in reality there are many many more things I can do to help out.

Here is some of the things I do, I've started doing recently or I want to do more of in the future. I'm going to centre on Reduce, Re-use, Recycle and public transport.

Reduce

This is the area I can probably do most in. Not that I'm bad but I feel I can do a lot more mainly by buying less! It's that simple. My main problem is food since I eat out a lot. I really should buy in more and eat at home more (but that's no fun).

Re-Use

Recently I got reusable shopping bags. Erm, can't think of anything else. Oh, I re-use water bottles instead of buying a new one all the time. I really should use my proper bottle.

Recycling

I recycle paper, glass and metals every week (thanks to the council picking them up). I took my old computers to Wellington's eDay recently and I usually give old clothes to various charities for re-use or re-sell.

Transport

I walked to school everyday from the age of 9 to 18. At university I always took public transport. I have always used public transport to work (except on the odd occassion I take the car).

I love trains, have a love-hate relationship with buses and wish Wellington would get proper trams (those silly old trolly-buses don't count).

My car doesn't guzzle gas, I despise the people around town who have 4x4's for no good reason and I really should get peddle cycle.

I will be moving closer to work at some stage in the future, for both the environment and so I get more hours in the day. Then, I'll feel like cooking at home in the evening and I might even be able to go home at lunchtime - which I did do for a while and it certainly means I eat healthier, cheaper and create less waste.

So, that's about it for me. But finally... this article was written because today is Blog Action Day.

Labels: green, wellington, blog-action-day

Inserted: 2007-10-15 22:50 (4 years, 4 months ago)

Long Time...!

Haven't written here for a while, so a quick update from last week.

Things have been good:

• I've started the Gallery plugin for Zaapt, almost done (oh, alright then, 40% done)
• Don is looking at installing and using Zaapt, which will be big news since that'll be the first install I'm not in charge of
• I've been to Rock'n'Roll again with Kerryn, always a good laugh
• spoke to my brother on the phone and gave him instructions to download Firefox, install it, use it and reject the evil ways of Internet Exploder
• caught up with Travis and the others
• started unf*cking the mess in the garage, in some cases 4 years worth of crap - I'm sorting it out and throwing it out

As always, it's been a busy week. Bumped into nem on Sunday and we were just saying how we both like Wellington. It seems to be popular at the moment, with Penny Pants saying similar things, as I have done here and here recently.

The one thing I'm not doing is starting to finish off those things I've promised for The End is Nigh challenge at Kiwi Writers.

Anyways, all in all, a good week but busy.

Labels: zaapt, kiwi-writers, wellington

Inserted: 2007-08-07 00:07 (4 years, 6 months ago)

Some Updates

About Welly and Coding.

I chilled at work drinks on Friday, met a few friends for coffee on Saturday and had a pot luck dinner that evening. Went to see Wellington Phoenix thrash Sydney FC 3-0 on Sunday and enjoyed sitting and watching a film in the evening for the first time in ages.

Also, I'm back into coding (lots) again. I did quite a bit in the last couple of weeks - not on Zaapt but on KiwiWriters - some major things including timezone support, member challenges and fixing up lots of other little things no-one really notices.

With some smaller improvements being done for KiwiWriters I'm also adding a few things to Zaapt now too - in fact, I'm almost at the stage where I am re-factoring a few models and adding some new features rather than adding new models themselves. Maybe I'll reach version v0.1 one day. I still want to get some sort of photo gallery model in there first though. And Martyn has also suggested I put in roles for content-types too.

I should also write more documentation, as always.

Finally, I've also added Phliky to Ohloh too (see Phliky Page on Ohloh). I also received and gave out some Kudos :-)

After this brain dump, I should hit the sack.

Labels: phliky, zaapt, kiwi-writers, wellington

Inserted: 2007-07-24 00:10 (4 years, 7 months ago)

Busy Weekend

The thing about Welly is, it's just so damn good.

On Friday evening, I met up with a friend and headed off to see (hear?) the NZSO. I really liked the Mendelssohn and she really liked the Sibelius, especially the last one (her opinion counts so much more than mine though).

On Saturday I met up with a couple of friends for coffee late afternoon, then with a larger other group for dinner (including Travis, Jason and Michelle). We had lovely food at Strawberry Fare, went to see Carl Barron and went back to Strawberry Fare for desert.

Sunday, a couple of other friends and I did a short version of the Southern Walkway and then we just chilled with coffee in Newtown afterwards.

Then last night, Kerryn and I went to a dancing lesson at Wellington Rock 'n' Roll Revival Club. It was my first ever lesson and yes, it was good fun, in fact, it was excellent. Thanks Kerryn.

Can it get any better than this?

Labels: nzso, walking, wellington

Inserted: 2007-07-17 11:37 (4 years, 7 months ago)

A Good Night Listening to NZ Music

Tonight I went to see an event run specifically for New Zealand Music month.

The Perlorus Trust Wellington Brass Band put on a great display of New Zealand music and one of the best things about it was that many of the actual composers were actually there.

An excerpt from their site (before they take it down):

This concert will feature New Zealand works of music by Ken Young, John Rimmer, Nick van Dijk, Aaron Lloydd, Norman Goffin, John Ritchie, Andrew Weir, Ross Harris and Anthony Ritchie several of whom will conduct their own music.

Soloists will be David Bremner (NZSO principal trombone) and David Chaulk (euphonium).

So, all in all, it was very enjoyable. You should come along the next time they do something. It's a great tradition for Wellington to have and long may it continue.

I've been along twice now and though I wasn't sure if I was a brass band fan before then, I am now! Looking forward to the next one too.

Labels: brass-band, wellington

Inserted: 2007-05-11 22:58 (4 years, 9 months ago)

A Nice Day in Kapiti

Since April, it seems that there has been constant raining - but today is nice.

Which gives me the impetus to head out and finally get started on my wpow. That means Wellington Picture of the Week. Now, I'm not going to post a picture every week, nor will it be of Wellington necessarily (and once it has been happening for a while, no-one will remember what wpow means anyway.

So yeah...laters.

Labels: photo, kapiti, wellington, wpow

Inserted: 2006-08-05 12:24 (5 years, 6 months ago)