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Tag: NZ

#77 June 2025 | Monthly Digital Breadcrumbs

john roedel - whenever i feel helpless - poem
Thank you john roedel.

A bunch of things I’ve found on my digital strolls (which I added to my Tumblr) for your eyes and ears plus brain to spend time on (as no longer on Twitter).

READ

“That’s why I keep documenting corruption and abuse, the erosion of norms, and each step away from democracy. Not because I expect immediate consequences, but because documenting the truth will matter later even if it doesn’t seem to matter now. Because caring isn’t naive. Because documentation isn’t pointless. Because hope isn’t for fools.”
It matters. I care.

“She’s fighting back tears again. Her tone is so sad. Why does she think it’s still so hard? “People only see the decisions you made, not the choices you had. The first part of Covid, people saw all the choices and decisions. And the second half, it just got hard. It got hard. Vaccines bring an extra layer that’s really difficult.” I apologise for taking her back to a dark time. “One of the things that still stands out in my mind – I can’t remember if it was a meme or a genuine cartoon – but it was an image of Winnie-the-Pooh and Christopher Robin,” she says. “It was at the tail end of Covid, and Christopher says, ‘How will we know if we succeeded?’ And Winnie says, ‘Because they’ll say we did too much.’ And it captured this idea that there probably isn’t a sweet spot. Maybe there were only two options in the end. Maybe it was: you’ll be attacked for doing too little or you’ll be attacked for doing too much. And I know what I would choose.””
‘Empathy is a kind of strength’: Jacinda Ardern on kind leadership, public rage and life in Trump’s America | Jacinda Ardern | The Guardian

“The Future Generations Report is designed to support politicians and public body leaders in making life better for people and planet now and in the future. This report is based on extensive evidence, research and analysis and engagement with hundreds of representatives from organisations and communities across Wales. It includes findings and statutory advice to Public Bodies. The Future Generations Commissioner will work with Public Bodies to ensure that the recommendations in the report are implemented.”
Future Generations Report 2025 – Future Generations Wales

WATCH

EXPLORE

Get your retro on and chill out to some tunes / visuals from Poolsuite ☼.

The Star Wars Galaxy detailing all the worlds plus those important trade routes mapped.

Spend some time clicking / tapping / hovering on these forms to make them fidget: Form + Fidget | Noodle.

Little Webby Press is an online tool to convert your (Markdown) manuscript into both an eBook and a Website.

If the Moon Were Only 1 Pixel, a side-scrolling accurate map of our solar system (click the icon in the bottom right hand corner also).

Check out the ‘Complete Collection Of MTV HEADBANGERS BALL’ music videos, a YouTube playlist of 1,533 tracks played on the TV series (which I used to watch as a kid).

All monthly digital breadcrumbs posts.
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Standing Out In The Global Media Industry | Connecting Two Small But Perfectly Formed Nations

nz wales pin small - justadandak.com

UPDATED WITH VIDS: A little side Cymru-Aotearoa / Wales-New Zealand project.

A few months ago in a catch-up with the superb Robin Moore, the topic of collaborating (again) came up, specifically around activating my network in the media industry from my time in New Zealand and if there was anyway to share insights back into the Welsh ecosystem.

What followed is alignment with Media Cymru and the opportunity for me develop the following three unique learning opportunities (click on the images below to go to the event listings to sign up)—CHECK OUT THE VIDEOS BELOW:

I’ll be facilitating said events and doing my best to extract applicable lessons, build some bridges plus allow our guests to shine.

Join us and / or spread the word to others in Wales, please and thank you!

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#45 August & September 2022 | Monthly Digital Breadcrumbs

A bunch of things (which I tweeted) for your eyes and ears plus brain to spend time on.

READ

Even though Facebook tried to brand its way out of its trouble: Meta is being sued for allegedly creating a tool for US hospitals which disclosed private patient information back to Facebook or Meta having to pay walkie-talkie app $174 million for infringing on its patents or Meta facing a new class action lawsuit that accuses it of tracking and collecting the personal data of iPhone users, despite features and policies made by Apple which are meant to stop that same type of tracking.

10 reasons why Brexit has been a pile of wank for the UK.

Why you should be worried about Amazon’s ‘surveillance purchase’ in buying Roomba.

How Tesla is also getting in on the ‘surveillance’ market when you own one of their cars.

Here’s the UN (two years ago) calling NZ’s housing conditions a “human rights crisis” (total agree, it’s a disgrace here and none of the local / national politicians do anything about it).

A tough read from a psychologist in the field who pulls apart their profession and their approaches.

Why a broken heart is the same as clinical pain.

How 100,000gk was removed from the great Pacific Garbage Patch “comparable to the size of Luxembourg or Rhode Island.”

About those doofuses who enabled Bitcoin to have a climate impact greater than gold mining.

WATCH

EXPLORE

This House Does Not Exist, an AI powered website that generates a beautiful new house every time which is not real.

Some rail announcements in Scotland plus some ambient tunes.

52 places you can visit and be part of the solution.

Vector Express to convert your vector files for free.

Palette, a vibrant AI colorizer (free online) app.

Nightdrive, trust me.

Image credit: A Small Fiction.
All monthly digital breadcrumbs posts.
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Kiwi Iconograms | An Idea Needing A Home

A set of icons which ignite kiwi-centric interest and conversation.

A few months ago I came across a set of icons and a wonderful offering to the world:

EXPERIENCE JAPAN PICTOGRAMS were developed with the mission to help as many tourists as possible by providing functionally and aesthetically well-designed pictograms as part of the basic infrastructure for tourism in Japan. For this reason, all the materials are made available for free use, whether that be personal, business, commercial, or non-profit use, so long as the user complies with the Terms of Use. The PICTOGRAMS were designed as minimum tools to convey basic information about Japan, as well as its diverse aspects. Despite the deceivingly simple design, each symbol, for the most part, is provided with a text–a story that gives you a glimpse into the everyday life and history of Japan.

Imagine a similar available set of visual icons which provide pictoral micro-stories of Aotearoa; as the world is still going in and out of varying degrees of lockdown, this ‘graphical tourism’ is a way for these tales to permeate across borders (both digital and real).

Here’s what fell out of my brain regarding what could be included in the set for starters:

  • Places: The Beehive, Hobbiton, Mount Taranaki, Milford Sounds, Huka Falls, Moeraki Boulders, Milford Sound, Rotorua Hot Springs, Franz Josef Glacier, The Remarkables etc
  • People: Gandalph, Golem, Jacinda Ardern, Sir Peter Jackson, Sir Edmund Hillary, Lorde etc
  • Wildlife: Kiwi Bird, Kea, Little Penguin/Korora, Whales, Tuatara, Weta, Fern, Kauri etc
  • Sports: Sailing, Rugby, Skiing, Netball etc.
  • Culture: Marae, Whakairo, Raranga, Kapa Haka, Tā Moko, Poi, Tiki etc

So if you’re a designer or agency who wants to offer the world something distinct, feel free to take this idea, give it a home and action with the agreement that the set of iconograms created will be gifted to the global community for use under Creative Commons 4.0 (CC BY 4.0) license.

Will share on with the many other agencies and organisations I know once making this live. In the meantime, throwing it out to the cyber-world to see if it ignites some creative souls who want to take a crack. Let me know if you do take it on please.

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Creative Welly Episode #2 | More Courageous Conversations

Another two good souls exploring all manner of wonderful topics, ideas, stories, experiences etc.

We curate and collide intrepid talent from the coolest most creative little capital in the world (with a few out-of-city friends as well from time-to-time).

Subscribe and catch the first episode via Creative Welly.

Again, this project is totally self-funded and wouldn’t be possible without these amazing collaborators:

All episodes are shot and edited by the wonderfully talented Jono Tucker, Empire Films. An extremely diligent and personable soul who has added a polish to the resulting video which I never could’ve achieved, thank you Jono.

Hosted at Xequals, a centrally based web development agency who provide us with a kick-ass office which totally gets kitted out for the shoot. Thank you Alex Matthews for being so gracious with your space.

Learn more about the background in this ‘Creative Welly Launched | Learning Out Loud‘ post.

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Creative Welly Launched | Learning Out Loud

A new long-form video podcast for curious and creative humans.

Creative Welly is a new project from an old idea repurposed and reborn during the isolation of lockdown:

We curate and collide intrepid talent from the coolest most creative little capital in the world (with a few out-of-city friends as well from time-to-time).

This project is totally self-funded and wouldn’t be possible without these amazing collaborators:

All episodes are shot and edited by the wonderfully talented Jono Tucker, Empire Films. An extremely diligent and personable soul who has added a polish to the resulting video which I never could’ve achieved, thank you Jono.

Hosted at Xequals, a centrally based web development agency who provide us with a kick-ass office which totally gets kitted out for the shoot. Thank you Alex Matthews for being so gracious with your space.

This first episode represents about four to five day or pre-production experiments with lighting and seating scenarios plus editing options. The result of which is something quite different and unique.

Two further episodes are already ‘in the can’ with another two lined up for this month plus a very long list of possibles from my network here in the capital.

Each episode takes about two hours to set up (one hour to pack down), another two hours to shoot then there’s the editing time of both the video and audio. After that there’s posting the curated bios and relevant content online plus sharing out across channels.

There are also ‘hard’ and recurring costs:

WHATCOSTS (NZD)
Table (round table from thrift store)$55
Chairs (x3, comfortable and supportive)$379
Backdrop photographic paper (for style)$105
Libsyn (audio podcast hosting & distribution)$275pa
Vimeo (video hosting)$130pa
Domain + hosting$25pa
TOTAL$969

I find myself feeling so privileged to be able to start this journey and explore a new format during these challenging global times. It truly serves my purpose of ‘giving people voice’ whilst also my skill base of ‘curating’ as well.

Oh and why not YouTube? Have no intention of monetising the content and don’t like their forced adverts plus the time it takes to figure out the algorithms with the hope they choose my content over others. Vimeo is a wonderful creative community which aligns with the brand values of the intention behind the initiative.

Please let me know what you think and triple please subscribe to receive the bi-monthly episodes via Creative Welly.

Published

#18 June 2020 | Monthly Digital Breadcrumbs

Time to surf the information superhighway for treats and things.

READ

Why an Amazon executive resigned over company’s ‘chickenshit’ firings of employee activists (stop buying from Amazon).

A flood of coronavirus apps are tracking us – now it’s time to keep track of them.

Our lives are now run by ‘Persuasion Engineers‘ – shudder!

How Facebook could use Giphy to collect your data.

Another Apple whistleblower goes public over lack of action – “I am extremely concerned that big tech companies are basically wiretapping entire populations…”

WATCH

EXPLORE

Your illustration dances to the music.

The spoken articles list of Wikipedia.

A curated timeline of COVID pandemic events related to Wellington city here in NZ.

The British Museum has added 1.9 million images free to use for anyone under a Creative Commons 4.0 license.

Free video conferencing background images of empty sets from the BBC Archive.

Play with Mikutap—great for bored kids / kidults alike.

Blush: Create, mix, and customize illustrations made by artists around the world—then use them commercial free.

AutoDraw which converts rough scribbles and doodles into beautiful, symmetrical icons/clipart that you can download for free.

Check out this platform which make acapellas from any song or this one which remove vocals from any song.

thisworddoesnotexist.com creates words which does not exist using AI.

All monthly digital breadcrumbs posts.
Image credit: By en:Charles Burton Barber – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Gelert.jpg, Public Domain, Link.
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COVID19 | Managing Your Personal Privacy Liability

Where does the liability lie when employers stipulate the use of certain platforms / programmes / devices which could become a future privacy issue?

Following up on my ‘Working From Home Privacy Check‘ post last week, I tweeted out the above query as conversations with some of my peers raised the challenge they were facing. It doesn’t take much to come up with some other scenarios where issues could arise:

SCENARIO 1 : An educational organisation is transitioning to virtual classes and is using an online platform to deliver to the students. Teachers are working hard to digitise the content and subsequent workflow for all involved. During some of the online lessons, a couple of students innocently post images of the classes with all the faces plus full names of their fellow students publicly on social media.

SCENARIO 2 : A small company wants to ensure its employees are staying connected and has started using a messaging system which the teams are asked to download on their devices. This creates the opportunity for work discussions along with more personal communications, just like a work environment. The platform they use gets infiltrated with a spambot and it starts sending phishing messages to all the employees personal contacts in their phones contact book.

SCENARIO 3 : A large governmental department is starting to utilise a new video conferencing platform as everyone is working from home. Its operations and the information shared are highly confidential as they deal with issues of national security. Due to a flaw in the video system, some of the discussions are accessible to other parties who use it for nefarious means.

The question about liability bounced around for about a week until I got the following response via this tweet from John Edwards, Privacy Commissioner of New Zealand:

Employees are obliged to follow any reasonable instruction from an employer. If an employee conveyed reservations about using a particular tool and the employer said please proceed, they would likely be obliged to follow that instruction. The employer assumes the risk.

Which was also corroborated by another tweet from 2018 Wellingtonian of the Year and an employment law specialist, Steph Dyhrberg, Partner at Dyhrberg Drayton Employment Law:

Agree. I would put it in writing to have a record of the concerns being raised. Employer should record the direction in writing too.

So if you are working from home and you have concerns regarding your privacy please do detail them via email with your employer. You might want to also ask for some risk assessment and scenario planning from the leadership also.

Stay safe and sane out there, plus wash your hands!

Related posts: COVID19 | Working From Home Privacy Check, COVID19 | A Global Pause, Effective Digital Presentation Skills | Five Quick-Fire Tips.
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COVID19 | A Global Pause

A meandering thought ramble on the current pandemic to redirect my overly-anxious brain.

This week, New Zealand went into lockdown for four weeks after announcing a national emergency plus moving to the highest Level 4 alert. The opposite was sent to all mobile phones in the country to announce the nationwide curfew.

At the time of writing, we have nearly four hundred cases here (no deaths) and taking this approach could ensure the spread is contained.

Nearly all of my paid work has been cancelled although I just got notified I was approved for the COVID-19 Employer Payment for the next three months.

I feel lucky to be where I am.

However, the whole world is sharing this experience and every country is approaching it slightly differently, although many are adopting as isolation strategy.

I’m wondering (out loud) what good can come as we collectively pause together:

SOCIAL

We weren’t ready for this. Some knew:

It’s becoming clear that a mammoth economic recession is coming, along with a radical disruption of societal systems. This is a start not the end, and our overlapping society of nations will have to rethink many of its operating structures.

There’s a collective growing literacy at understanding exponential curves, inter-dependent industries and sectors plus how much small percentage points matter when it relates to economies.

Everything is being revealed as fragile.

Although this does present an opportunity to reflect on what is important. How, after a certain level of comfort and freedom is gained, everything else is a bonus.

We’ll also be critiquing the stale idea of traditional working cultures as swathes of humans turn to digital methods to deliver and continue their workload. However, as the crisis abates, I feel there will be a massive hunger for the physical and in-person again.

There are no special cases when princes, politicians, celebrities are getting it. The real super stars are those illustrating the innate goodness of humans:

ENVIRONMENTAL

The above video shows China’s nitrogen levels falling and then rising slightly again as some of the curfews are lifted.

Wildlife have rediscovered usually polluted areas like the canals in Italian cities:

https://youtu.be/cm7Py-PsXV4

As time goes on, this global pause will provide precious data and critical evidence for scientists to go further in proving the impact we’re having on the world.

CULTURAL

Talking here about the wider understanding that we all share a common space and are part of an operating system which is now in danger of collapsing.

Our streets and towns and cities personify the quiet we need to reflect on what’s crucial. To ask questions which transcend a rigged monetary system, to recognise the importance of community and amplify the need for evolving the politics of our time.

This forced reset is also ironic, separating us all from symbiotic elements of family, friendship, food, nature, place, space etc. which make us, us.

Going forward, the medical (especially front-liners) and educational establishment needs to be elevated, celebrated and remunerated properly (along with others who are now deemed ‘essential’ like rubbish men, supermarket workers, warehouse workers etc.), whilst we dull the idea of celebrity in its importance.

We have such a distinct divide of leadership during these times across nations from silly men who took so long to listen to professionals to other larger and even sillier men who thinks letting people die to save the economy is the way forward (Johnson is what happens when a guy like Trump can speak Latin) to our own PM here in NZ, leading with kindness and compassion (jumping online after putting her baby to bed to take a Q&A for those entering their first night of the impending lockdown):

This crisis simply illustrates how interconnected we all are.

Everything is linked.

All aspects of our well-being are joined to man-made constructs like capitalism as well as natural systems like the wider environment which need to remain healthy.

This is an opportunity to transform.

Become warriors and guardians of wiser and kinder system of living.

This joint deep breath, allows us a chance to redesign our intent as humans in focusing on the right things (rather than continue doing the wrong things righter).

The world has changed so much in three months, imagine if it we were intentional in rebuilding it.

Truly hope wherever you are reading this you’re staying safe and sane.

Your solitude will be a support and a home for you, even in the midst of very unfamiliar circumstances, and from it you will find all your paths.

Rainer Maria Rilke
Image credit.
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