When I still worked at Intergen, Trey put me onto Mozy. It’s an insanely-great online backup tool. It works on a PC or a Mac, it works in the background with minimal fuss, keeps the different versions of your files, is very lightweight, and has a very generous free account.

I love it. It has saved my bacon while I’ve been working on Ponoko more than a couple of times.

Today, as a Mozy user, I received their May newsletter (don’t think we’ve seen one at all before…). A big part of my role at Ponoko is email marketing so I pay a lot of attention to what others are doing. Below is the “lead” story in their newsletter:

First thought: WTF was he thinking!? I’m almost speechless beyond that…

It has nothing to do with their product (which is awesome) and manages to insult Americans, Canadians, Quebecois, hockey supporters, and probably his staff as well.

Then again, had he not insulted all those people I could probably guarantee I wouldn’t be blogging about his newsletter or his company or his product.

What do you think? Insanely stupid or insanely smart?

Boy: It’s not my fault!

Girl: I know! It’s not like I actually think you control the weather…

- cnr Dixon and Egmont

The smartest thing a brothel could probably do is campaign against itself.

Yesterday I found out I live in the same suburb as Simple and Loveable ’s Nat. As she reported, Mt Vic residents received a letter from the banana-republic-styled “Mt Victoria Resident’s Association about Brothels in Mt Victoria”. It was a simple petition/submission letter asking you, as a resident, to let the council know you don’t want brothels in our suburb.

I really don’t know if I could care less. Moral panic is boring and generally turns me off. If a brothel respects the regulations those business have to follow… then the law says it’s a completely legal enterprise.

It’s an interesting contrast with Mt Vic’s recreational drug users, from the social dope smokers to the drum’n'bass munters. While some of these are probably next in line for legalisation (once Jim ‘need to protect you from yourself’ Anderton departs) and tolerated like they already are legalised… the law does quite plainly state… they are illegal.

These concerned residents and other moral outrage activists never seem to learn from each other that the very thing they crusade against is what they end up helping the most.

I remember when the “Society for Promotion of Community Standards” protested against Baise-Moi being screened in NZ. Essentially all it did was bring attention and coverage to the film. If they wanted to stop people from watching then they suffered an excellent failure. Their rampant attention grabbing probably increased the film’s patronage in NZ by a factor of 100.

Which makes me think: if I was a brothel, the cheapest most effective way to promote myself would be… to campaign against myself. It would be brilliantly effective at grabbing attention compared to the newspaper ad examples included in the petition, has amazing stickiness, word-of-mouth appeal, efficient (read: cheap).

These guys have just advertised “convenient” brothel services to Mt Vic’s 5000+ residents for the price of a ream of A4 paper. Well done.

It has all the makings of a brilliant guerrilla marketing campaign. Remember, you read it here first.

Day 1: Building hits tram

Day 2: Car hits tram


Day 3: ???

Best comment gets a Ponoko spinning top!

Update: All aboard the failtram

Update #2: UR STILL DOIN IT WRONG (thanks to Bwooce)

Day 3 (or 4): Bus hits tram

I got a chance (like several thousand others) to head to Craft 2.0 last Saturday at the New Dowse. I always enjoy walking around the stalls - the whole event has such a great feel.

First person I bumped into was Sue Quigley, also formerly of Intergen, who was selling her jewelry. “I haven’t got that much left, it has been a good day”. Fantastic.

Moving around I then saw Jeff and got to witness him selling one of his excellent tikis to an eager punter. I think I can now say I’ve witnessed every single phase of Ponoko end-to-end. Brilliant!

Got to say a quick hello to SuperVery Sue who was busy making sure things were running smoothly. Apparently 1000 people had made it through in the first 30 mins alone, at which point the New Dowse people decided to give up counting… Wow.

Grabbed a copy of Hannah and Thomas’ new baby, World Sweet World. The first issue, for autumn, made its debut at Craft 2.0. It looks and feels great, I love the size of the magazine and I really want to try out the beer glass article. I’m quite inspired that they’ve been able to create a magazine in as few as 4 months. Thinking cap is on to work out if/where/how Ponoko could contribute to the next one. Spiffy!

Then on my way out I saw Yana Skala aka Chromatophobic who was also reporting a good day. Can’t wait to see how her Retarded Raven turns out.

Craft 2.0 is simply awesome. If you haven’t been to one yet you really need to make the effort and head out for the next one. It also has sooo much potential - can’t wait to see it grow and develop (when is the online shop coming?).

S and I have been house-sitting for a friend in Hataitai for the month of March. Torture, as you can imagine, having to babysit a view like this (and one very very independent cat) every evening:

This is a timelapse looking over Evans Bay towards Miramar and Wellington Aiport. The lens kept adjusting for the lowering light in bursts which is why the timelapse looks like it’s almost flickering. I was surprised by the amount of activity on the water while playing it back. And if you look really closely you can see the odd plane heading in to land at the airport as well.

Beats staring at the side of another building in town…

Friday, Saturday, and Sunday were spent in the Taranaki sunshine while eating, drinking, and listening to a World of Music, Arts, and Dance or Womad for short (I’d been pronouncing it “WO-mad” but some of the locals liked to call it “the WOM-id”).

It was most excellent and the venue was ideal. They’re putting on a world-class event in New Plymouth, trek up one year to check it out.

Highlights were the food, more food, yet more food. Kora, Phoenix Foundation, Neil Finn, and SJD for the locals. Sharon Jones & the Dap-kings, Clube de Balanco, and Beirut for the foreigners.

Dogfood is tasty. Well, sometimes it is.

The weekend just gone S mentioned she wanted to buy a bookcase for a specific nook in our lounge. After a fruitless search through the interior design shops on Thorndon Quay I remembered this cool web start-up I’ve been working at for the last 7+ months where you can make your own stuff!

It was great fun. Actually it was lots of hard work but sooo much more fun than I thought it would be. It spins me out a little that I made my own bookcase (and it works…).

So the process went something like this:

Measure area and scribble down ideas on paper.

Choose a material to work with and get designing in Illustrator. I ended up going for the Double-sided Whiteboard MDF 9mm

Get it laser cut through Ponoko

Get the pieces and peel protective tape off

Tolerance is never perfect first time and it took ages to get the pieces fitting together. A trusty hammer helped a lot…

Putting the pieces together it starts to look like a “real” bookcase.

Slowly the shelves start to build…

Almost complete… just making sure everything is fitting together snuggly… with no glue or screws either!

Here is the bookcase in the nook I had designed it for. It ended up being a whole lot tighter than I though it would be…

Now here is the completed bookcase, in place, and filled up with stuff.

If you like the look of it you can buy one off me or download the .eps file for free, customise it, and make it yourself.

My head is spinning with more Ponoko ideas now…

Girl: Hey, where is the Southern Cross?

Boy 1: On Abel Smith street

Girl: No…

Boy 1: Oh, maybe Wigan then?

Girl: No, no…

Boy 2: Yes it is! Abel Smith!

Girl: No, the Southern Cross. Y’know… the stars…

Boy 1: Oh, it’s that one up there. *points*

 - New Years Eve, Mt Vic

The TUANZ Business Internet Awards are on tonight and I have the pleasure (?) of seeing two sites I’ve worked on reach finalist stage.

The DoC site is a finalist in the Information Architecture category and Ponoko (with Origin) are finalists in the User Generated Content category.

Poor old Sal (who, funnily enough, also worked on DoC) had an unmovable appointment with our public health care system yesterday. So it was up to Jase and myself to try and convince the 5 judges we are the generalissimos of the user-generated content generation. We’ll know later tonight if we were successful… wish me luck.

Update: We didn’t win our category but we did pick up the Craft Award!

Found at Ajaxload.info.

If you need a spiffy Ajax loader, like this… …then it’s a very handy site.

Neat idea, beautifully shot. Can you spot Air NZ’s koru?