Te Awamutu Online Blog

Videos: Museum and Rodeo

Dave Owen — Sun, 21 Feb 2010 10:54:18 GMT

A couple of new videos at TATV:
The Games People Play - The lastest interactive exhibition at the museum, featuring a variety of historical and modern games.
Waikato Rodeo - 50th anniversary event held at Kihikihi, 20th Feb 2010.

Te Awamutu AFC at TATV

Dave Owen — Fri, 15 Jan 2010 02:02:37 GMT

We'd like to welcome Te Awamutu Association Football Club on board at TATV. Steve, Kim and the team have made an excellent job of their website and videos. Using the TATV service they are able to create and upload videos directly to TATV and also embed the videos in their own website. It's much the same as Youtube but without the 10-minute duration limit.

Well done TA AFC, we look forward to seeing more of your videos in the future.

Christmas Spirit 2009

Dave Owen — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 09:14:30 GMT

In case you missed it in the Courier, here's a PDF file listing this year's Christmas events, Church services and business trading hours: Christmas Spirit 2009 (PDF, 650KB)

Website Update

Dave Owen — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 04:05:04 GMT

We've tweaked the look of our home page a little. In response to popular demand we've restored the "What's On" calendar, and we've added a new page for Hamilton events as well. Hopefully now it will be even easier to see what's happening in and around TA.

The "Random Local Website" link now features three websites at once, but more importantly, you can reload the links and see as many as you like.

The rest of the changes are minor cosmetic adjustments. Please let me know if you see any problems with the new format.

New Video Server for TATV

Dave Owen — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 04:27:30 GMT

We've just finished installing a new streaming video server for TATV. The main advantage of the new server is that you can jump to any part of a video without having to wait for it all to download first. Since we're getting quite a few long videos at TATV (an hour or more), this is a welcome improvement.

For example, today we released three videos from the Te Awamutu College 2009 Senior Prizegiving. If you only want to see one of the awards near the end, you would previously have had to wait for 60 minutes of video to download first. Now you can drag the "scrubber" on the video progress bar and move it right to where you want to watch.

Please let us know if you have any problems with the new system.

2009 Rosetown Scream Festival Preview

Dave Owen — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 11:07:14 GMT

The 2009 festival is underway! At TATV we have a short video featuring festival co-organiser Dean Taylor talking about highlights of the programme.

Satellite View for Virtual Te Awamutu

Dave Owen — Mon, 21 Sep 2009 22:37:23 GMT

At last we have "satellite view" images available at Google Earth and Virtual Te Awamutu. Go to www.teawamutu.co.nz/vta and click the Satellite or Hybrid button on the map.

Herd of Te Awamutu

Dave Owen — Wed, 09 Sep 2009 05:26:23 GMT

The latest suggestion for a new promotional theme in Te Awamutu is bound to get a reaction.

The idea: Encourage local businesses to purchase a life-sized decorative cow and display it for the public (see attached example images). Over time a "herd" of interesting cattle will be developed, providing a talking point and reason to visit TA.

The idea is borrowed from Cow Parade, which is apparently the largest and most successful public art event in the world.

i-Site manager Lynne Fenwick is quick to point out that this isn't about being called a "cow town". Unfortunately, after being labelled that way in the Courier, that's how a number of people I've spoken to see it.

Personally I'm fence-sitting for now, at least until a few questions have been answered. On the whole I have to say I think it has some appeal. As a business owner I'd be tempted to get a cow. However I'm worried about the ongoing cost, given the history of local vandalism. I'm also not convinced that we need to copy the cow theme. Maybe there are other options. For example, who doesn't love the giant lizard at ReptileZ Pets Supplies? Maybe we could develop a theme of sculptures celebrating native wildlife? It would fit with the Maungatautari project well.

Another question is bound to be "Aren't we the rose town?" I won't go into that now except to say I don't think there needs to be a conflict. Whether or not we continue to claim rosetown status is another story altogether.

Anyway, if a few issues can be worked through I do think there's great potential in this. My questions will be:

- Do the cows need to be imported or can they be made locally?
- Are there any environmental issues with manufacture? Indeed, do cows represent a good environmental image anyway?
- What about vandalism? According to the Cow Parade website, the cows do get damaged and require maintenance.
- Are there any legal issues, given that Cow Parade holds certain IP rights over their cow designs?
- Are there any Health & Safety issues? What exactly is the liability situation if someone gets injured falling off my cow?
- Do the residents of Te Awamutu want this?

I'll try to get answers and post them in the comments.

Attached Images

Should Waipa Residents Pee in the Shower?

Dave Owen — Thu, 27 Aug 2009 00:12:53 GMT

I had to chuckle when I heard about councillor George Simmons' unusual suggestion at the last Waipa District Council meeting: "Thousands of litres of treated water would be saved by peeing in the shower".

He's right of course. Whatever you think of the practice, the issue of using drinkable water for flushing toilets is likely to become an issue in the years ahead. The Brazilians are taking the matter quite seriously with an advertising campaign...

Welcome to the New Website

Dave Owen — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 09:52:45 GMT

Welcome to the long-awaited new Te Awamutu Online website. Thanks for your patience! :smile: After all the waiting it was still a last-minute panic but hopefully it's all working okay now.

Here's a quick look at some of the new features:

The Courier website has a whole new look. You can now search the Courier archives for text, or browse by thumbnail images back to 2004.

TATV is now set up like a video sharing site. It's still technically a beta version and we've got a lot of work to do on it yet, but we're excited about the new direction. We hope to start adding regular new videos this year in conjunction with various local organisations. Contact us if you'd like to join the video production team.

The Virtual Town has been completely remade using Google Maps and Google Street View. As you may have seen on Google Earth, the street view images of Te Awamutu aren't exactly flattering and there are some important parts missing. We've added a few panoramas of our own to help fill the gaps. Other features include a directory of locations, Google Earth layers, and the ability to create a link directly to any part of Virtual Te Awamutu (for example, you could create a link for your website showing the location of your business).

There are lots of small additions and tweaks such as Google News for TA, Invited Bloggers and Kid's Space. One of my favourite new sections is the Regent Theatre home page - check out the history pages if you have a spare hour!

One thing we are aware of: You'll need a fairly recent browser and Flash player to use the site properly. For example, Internet Explorer 6 makes a bit of a mess of things - sorry but that's a compromise we felt was justified in order to future-proof the site.

Please let us know if you have any problems or questions about the new site.

Cheers,
Dave Owen

TA Online does Facebook & Twitter

Dave Owen — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 11:03:13 GMT

As we gear up towards the launch of the long-awaited new website, we've started a page for Te Awamutu Online at Facebook. Become a fan and in return for making us feel popular, we'll give you a sneak preview of the new website.

We're also on Twitter. We expect that our tweeting will be somewhat intermittent - most likely we'll tweet when interesting things are happening (e.g. during a festival or other event).

World Rowing Champs 2010 - Waipa Video

Dave Owen — Thu, 14 May 2009 00:38:40 GMT

The World Rowing Champs will be held at Lake Karapiro in September 2010. As part of the build-up and promotion, a "RowBox" has been commissioned to tour international rowing events. The RowBox is an expandable shipping container that includes rowing simulators, video screens and other promotional material.

One of the videos is a 2-minute piece about Waipa. It's a great video with some wonderful shots of our region. You can learn more at www.waiparowing.com.

The official website for the 2010 World Rowing Championships is www.wrch2010.com.

Anzac Videos

Dave Owen — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 01:10:06 GMT

See a few Anzac-related videos at TATV:

Anzac Day Ceremony at Anzac Green
Museum Exhibition "In Memory of the Fallen"
Readings for Anzac (poetry readings)

Faster Broadband for Te Awamutu?

Dave Owen — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 00:46:55 GMT

It's not the first time we've heard such promises but this morning the Dominion Post reported on the Government's plan (PDF) to create an Internet infrastructure capable of speeds up to 100 megabits per second.

In describing the new broadband speeds, Prime Minister John Key said "for most people, speeds which are quantum faster than anything they currently have". Apparently Mr Key doesn't know that "quantum" is defined as "the smallest discrete quantity of some physical property that a system can possess". Let's hope the actual speeds will be somewhat more impressive.

Anyway, the good news for us is that the 25 towns and cities earmarked for the new infrastructure include Te Awamutu. The 25 centres, in order of population, are: Auckland, Christchurch, Wellington, Hamilton, Napier and Hastings, Dunedin, Tauranga, Palmerston North and Fielding, New Plymouth and Hawera, Kapiti and Levin, Nelson, Rotorua, Whangarei, Invercargill, Wanganui, Gisborne, Cambridge and Te Awamutu, Blenheim, Timaru, Taupo, Masterton, Whakatane, Ashburton, Tokoroa, and Oamaru.

Submissions on the proposal close on April 27 2009. We'll wait and watch with interest.

SPLICE Survey

Dave Owen — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 22:37:04 GMT

This week local students from the SPLICE project published a centre spread in the Courier (PDF). These students are researching the ways in which education is changing and how the learning needs of our children can be better served by engaging more with the community.

This is a worthy project and the students have been doing a lot of hard work behind the scenes. I encourage everyone to take a few minutes to respond to their online survey - it's very easy and it will help a lot.

Watch out for results and more material, including a video, next term.