On Web Culture

This one’s for Pete & Megan, home from the UK in 5 weeks!

(above) Hobson Bay, Auckland

UPDATE (03/12/2007): Download the recording of the show.
The playlist is online and if you dig the show, add it to your feeds!
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I’m joining nsu on UPFM’s Beat Dungeon this Sunday for a chillout special.

nsu says “2 hours of ambient, dub and downbeat sounds from the dance music spectrum, and of course don’t forget those NZ grooves too!” To quote Timothy Leary “Turn on, tune in, drop out”.

To listen in I recommend the live stream but if you’re in New Zealand frequencies are 107.5FM Akl, 88.1 Wgtn.

Giveaways and laid back tunes! If you’re listening text in with any questions, I promise I’ll answer them all.

Tune in
Sunday 2nd Dec 4pm NZT, 4am CET, 3am GMT
Saturday 1st Dec 10pm EST, 7pm PST

Video and photos from the South Island Tour are finally online. Includes Stewart Island, Queenstown and the West Coast.

South Island Tour slideshow
Source: YouTube

South Island Tour video
Source: YouTube

It was good to see folk on our trip, Roshan & Lottie in Christchurch - thank you for the awesome dinner. Ivan & Gabi in Queenstown - thank you for hooking us up with skiing gear. Sharon & Steve in the greenstone shop in Hokitika - see you next time in another random New Zealand town! Tip of the hat to Kiwi Campers - I recommend them if you’re looking to rent a campervan in New Zealand.

(above) Above Christchurch on the Port Hills.

Back from the deep south. Smashed my elbow trying to be a pro snowboarder. Hopefully lots of photos and (maybe) video to come. The rest of my September is a busy one. Maybe DB will post his initial thoughts on the trip first.

I’m going off the grid for two weeks. DB and I are going to see some of Aotearoa, which is pretty brave of DB given prior experiences.

Plans include a rendezvous with Mr. nsu and a visit to Stewart Island.

See you in September.

You know how we roll.

More photos from Dave’s birthday [flickr.com]

I found this in the files from last year in November:

Last night was a fusion of Pulp Fiction, Guitar Hero and the throb of recent surgery. I woke up in the middle of the night somehow confused I was going to get shot/killed/die, that I had been wounded and that my wide-open wardrobe was a gate to a dark void.

I must have lain there for about 5 minutes, head spinning, trying to work out why I needed to be playing Guitar Hero, why I was convinced I was going to get shot and why I hurt in so many places…my toe, my shoulder, my back? I didn’t even get operated on my back…why the…?

Unfortunately I can’t recall events of the witching hour with great clarity so the exact reasons for me being convinced I was in serious trouble will remain a mystery. It is interesting though how real pain segues into dreams and is then explained…my toe was throbbing because it had been blown off by John Travolta.

Pretty soon you’ll be an old bastard too

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Source: YouTube

Props to the Stagecoach bus drivers this week. They are both dudes and hardcore. Early this week going home my bus driver got the route wrong which caused Panic! On The Bus! and people getting out of their seats to let the bus driver know we were going the wrong way. He had started to take a different route that still went to Newmarket but which skips out Parnell. He realised straight away but this didn’t stop a couple of people weaving down the aisle while we were moving to queue at the front of the bus to tell him.

It could have ended there once he told us all we would rejoin up with the correct route as soon as possible. But once everyone had sat down one lady, in her early thirties I’d say, stayed standing next to the driver clinging to a pole and staring at the rest of the bus. Initially I thought she was just eager to get off at the first available stop but no. Instead she wound into the bus driver, starting by speaking her mind and getting steadily louder, shriller and more emotional with a strong Russian accent. It seemed that she was upset we had gone the wrong way and what time this was costing her (all of 10 minutes, lady).

But it didn’t stop, I don’t know if she had just had a bad day but she got more and more angry and the bus driver started defending himself, explaining he was doing all he could to get us back to her stop. This just aggravated her more, she started swearing: “You f*****g b***h! You b***h! Do you know how much this is costing me? You should think before you do such things…..you know? Do you know?….f*****g b***h” At this point the rest of the bus were staring at her in silence going Er, what the hell?

She went on, right in the bus driver’s face as he was driving, she yelled at him about cost and I think things along the lines of making him pay her back her back for the money she was going to lose and the bus driver saying the bus drivers union or something would pay her back. Eventually she got at him so much that we stopped in the middle of a backroad so she could get off.

So that bus driver was a dude. Thursday’s bus driver was hardcore though. Months before he got the bus stuck in the narrow streets behind Parnell shops trying a shortcut to get around some fire engines. He’s a pretty gung ho Arab guy and tends to operate his bus a little independently of the rules. On Thursday his bus arrives and we are queuing up to pay to get on board when he gestures to me saying “Get on board, get on board now” so I step up and he pulls the lever to close the doors.

There are still people wanting to get on the bus, the Asian chick behind me puts her foot in front of one of the closing doors while she tries to get money out of wallet. Gung Ho bus driver says to us inside the bus “I am going now, they, they can catch the Link”, the Link being a bus that comes every 15 minutes. Which is not a great plan dude, some of those people may have needed to catch this bus specifically. It is unusual for a bus driver to leave before letting everyone on board when his bus is only half full.

He starts to move the bus slowly forward to the consternation of the Asian chick with her foot in the door. I’m looking at her foot and then back at the bus driver then back at her foot. She takes her foot out just in time and goes ballistic at the bus which is fair enough. Gung Ho bus driver proceeds to let those of us who got on pay for our ride all the while tooting away and absolutely flooring the gas pedal. Hardcore.