Wheedle’s back, but something’s missing

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No doubt you’ve seen the cheesy ads on prime-time television, with everyone dressed in orange, promoting the free online auction site Wheedle. I wrote about the history and demise of Wheedle’s first version last year, now they’re finally back with version 2.

Version 1 was pulled last October only days after it’s official launch, with multiple security vulnerabilities and technical problems exposed. At the time Wheedle’s Managing Director Carl Rees told the National Business Review (NBR) that he hoped to have the problems ironed out and the site back up by Christmas, or at the worst early in the New Year. Instead it took them six whole months to get Wheedle back online.

With a redesigned interface the site at least looks fresh, and the security problems that dogged it’s initial release appear to have been addressed (although there’s still been a handful of technical problems). They also have a big advertising campaign, free listings until mid-May and weekly smart phone giveaways for users that join and validate their accounts. But for a site that purports to be a Trade Me beater, something’s missing.

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EQCLookup does what EQCTruths and the EQC Couldn’t

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It seems a simple enough task; to give earthquake affected Christchurch residents an update on the status of their EQC claims. It’s a task that EQC themselves hadn’t been able to handle to date. Then when the anonymous blogger EQCTruths thought he’d give it a go instead, it ended in an epic fail with sensitive and confidential information included in the spreadsheet that he helped release.

Firstly Some Background

Following its dissemination, both EQC boss Ian Simpson and Earthquake Recovery Minister Gerry Brownlee have talked to the media around the significance of the information included in the spreadsheet.

For each claim, the spreadsheet contains the street address, the EQC assessor and their estimated repair cost, the appointed contractor and their repair quote, along with several fields for covering the status of the claim.

Simpson talked to Campbell Live on Monday night. In the interview he admitted that EQC hadn’t been good enough at getting information to people and he made a commitment to contact all of his customers over the next three months. Interestingly he suggested that for customers who’ve had their repairs completed, he was happy for them to see what EQC’s repair estimate was for their property.

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The not so Glorious Crusade of #EQCTruths

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The background on EQC Truths

EQCTruths_Anonymous_CrusadeThe EQC Truths blog was set up by an anonymous blogger on November 1 last year. The blog purports to be an exposé of ‘What Really Happens at EQC from an ex-EQC Employee’. Since inception the blogger has posted 80 posts about EQC (roughly a post every other day), averaging over 400 words per post. That’s to say it’s taking up a lot of their time.

The blogger’s username is publiuskiwi, and under that name they’ve also made 64 post comments. Publius is Latin and translates as ‘public’ or ‘for the people’; and in the vein of the ancient Roman Publius Valerius Publicola, the blogger is on a crusade against the establishment.

The EQC Truths blog has come into notoriety in recent weeks, as the blogger received an EQC Excel spreadsheet which had a pivot table containing claim information for 87,000 Christchurch properties (complete with sensitive address details and contractor quoting). Despite EQC obtaining an interim injunction to stop the dissemination of information contained in the spreadsheet, EQC Truths went ahead and posted links to where the information can be downloaded from.

What we do know about EQCTruths

Inside knowledge of EQC (both Wellington and Christchurch offices)

The blogger claims to have worked at the EQC and to have played their ‘small part trying to help the good people of Christchurch recover from the devastating earthquakes’ before leaving shortly after August 27 2012.

It is evident reading through the blog that the blogger has a knowledge, beyond what could realistically be known by an outsider, of both the Wellington and Christchurch EQC offices along with an understanding of some of the EQC’s processes.
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Hagley Oval Deserves Consideration

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After spending last weekend enjoying test match cricket down at Dunedin’s University Oval, I’ve gained a new appreciation for Canterbury Cricket’s plans to redevelop the existing Hagley Oval into a venue suitable for both domestic and international cricket.

Like University Oval, the plans for Hagley Oval are to build a grandstand and a raised grass embankment, with the addition of temporary seating for major events. It’s a formula that’s proved a success not only in Dunedin, but also Wellington and Hamilton.

Hagley_Oval

Canterbury Cricket’s proposed redevelopment of Hagley Oval

Of course there are the detractors, and in particular the “Save Hagley Park” group, who claim they have 3,000 signatures for a petition against the development.Their main beef seems to be around the commercialisation of Hagley park. They want unrestricted public access of the park at all times.

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Timaru Property Sales Heavily Featured

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Property sales have featured heavily in the Timaru Herald this week. On Monday Emma Bailey and Esther Ashby-Coventry informed us that “Timaru property up 4.1pc for year“, this was followed by Matthew Littlewood’s story on Tuesday “Real estate nears 2007 values” and finally Al Williams “Houses selling faster” on Wednesday.

To understand what all the fuss is about, I’ve compiled this chart of the REINZ annual sales statistics for Timaru:

Timaru_Property_Sales_2012

The chart shows that the Timaru property market is getting back on it’s feet after a couple of years of downturn following the massive property boom of the 2000′s.

The other side of a recovering market it that when houses start selling well, agents need to keep bringing new properties onto their books and to do so they’ll naturally try and get as much media time as they can.

And it appears that the Timaru Herald is only too happy to oblige.

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Pass to Pub: The Last Dozen Years

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The Pass to Pub (or Pass2Pub as it is now known) mountain bike race between Burkes Pass and the Albury Tavern is one of New Zealand’s oldest mountain bike races. It was first run in either 1988 or 1989 as the Pub to Pub with two events each year (one in each direction), before the Burkes Pass pub burnt down and event founder Alan Rose decided on the best direction for the race (downhill of course).

Pass2Pub

Ashburton’s Ross Templeton leads a group over an early hill climb in the 2006 Pass to Pub. Photo Credit: Geoff Cloake

The ride attracts hundreds of competitors each year and continues to hold it’s place as one of South Canterbury’s iconic mountain bike races. One of the ingredients to the race’s success is that it appeals to riders of all levels, another is that it’s been a well run and marketed event.

Years Event Organiser
1988 – 1994 Alan Rose
1995 – 1997 Roberts Family
1998 – 2007 Grant Hannan
2007 – Current Chris Thomas

Building up the to 2013 event (that was held on Sunday), I started looking at some of the past results and realised that it might make for some interesting analysis. So I’ve loaded up the last 12 years worth of results to produce the following charts.

Firstly we have the number of riders, fastest time and average time for each year. The mountain biking craze hit it’s peak in the mid 2000′s and this is reflected in the graph, culminating in 884 competitors completing the ride in 2007.

Pass_to_Pub_Finish_Times

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Coke Death – Coroner’s Report Flawed

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Natasha_Harris

The Coroner’s Report on the death of Southland’s Natasha Harris has captured international attention, largely due to the fact that she daily drank excessive amounts of Coca Cola’s Coke. But that’s only part of the story.

The Report details that she ate next to nothing, vomited daily, smoked 30 cigarettes a day, as well as drinking an estimated 8 litres of Coke every day. Natasha Harris led an incredibly unhealthy lifestyle and as a result she had an unhealthy body (although she was of normal weight).

For the six months leading up to her death she complained of having no energy, feeling sick, heavy menstrual bleeding, having a racing heart, and swollen feet. She had a reluctance to seek medical help and blamed her ills on the stress of looking after her eight children.

As detailed in the Report, the autopsy following her death found her to have (among other things) hepatic steatosis (severe fatty degeneration of the liver due to excessive sugar intake), pulmonary congestion and oedema (excessive build-up of fluid in the lungs), status post-tubal ligation (she’d had her tubes tied after giving birth to 8 children), pre-existing scaring of her heart, and no teeth.

But the real purpose of the Coroner’s Report is to establish the factors associated with her death and to make any recommendations as to how similar deaths can be avoided in the future. This is where the Report has gaping flaws.

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SBW vs Botha – Who’s telling the truth?

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Amongst the bravado and egos of both camps, is it possible to nail down some truth around the controversial fight between Sonny Bill Williams and Frans Botha in Brisbane on Friday night?

Sonny_Bill_Frans_Botha

After a bit of investigation, here’s what I’ve come up with.

To Summarise:

  1. The fight was initially scheduled for 10 rounds to be fought on 24 November 2012
  2. Due to Sonny Bill’s rugby injury, the fight was postponed
  3. The fight was rescheduled to 8 February 2013 and promoted as a 12 round WBA International Title bout
  4. Both camps had only trained for a 10 round fight
  5. Both camps knew at the start of the fight that it was only going for 10 rounds
  6. Sonny Bill, although hammered in the final round, won convincingly on points
  7. There was no match-fixing, but the promotion of the fight was a farce
  8. Following an investigation I’d expect the WBA will strip Sonny Bill of his title
  9. A South African rematch would be lucrative but Botha is likely to face drug sanctions

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Nelson’s Solar Saver Farce

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Back in 2011 I wrote an article on the Solar Promise, a joint venture set up by the Nelson City Council, the Nelson Environment Centre, along with SolarCity to promote the uptake of solar energy systems in New Zealand. In the article I outlined three unsubstantiated claims that the Solar Promise web site made around potential savings, two of which grossly overestimated the potential annual household savings of solar hot water systems.

Nelsons_Solar_FarceThe Solar Promise was a spin-off of the Nelson City Council’s Solar Saver Scheme, which was set up to promote and subsidise the installation of solar hot water heating in Nelson. As part of my investigations into the Solar Promise, I also looked into the Solar Saver Scheme and found several concerning elements to the scheme.

The Solar Saver Scheme was quietly discontinued in April of 2012 in favour of a solar photovoltaic (PV) scheme. At the time, the Council’s Community Services Portfolio Holder Councillor Pete Rainey had this to say:

We consider that the Solar Saver scheme has been successful, significantly increasing the number of solar water heating systems being installed in the Nelson area. Unfortunately, installation costs to customers have risen and Council is facing increasing levels of administration and compliance costs associated with the scheme.

The Solar Saver Scheme was initiated by EnergyShift (now SolarCity), where they approached the Nelson City Council “to jointly fund a feasibility study to explore how Nelson could become New Zealand’s first Solar City.” EnergyShift, the Nelson City Council and EECA each contributed $20,000 towards the cost of a feasibility study which was authored by EnergyShift’s Andrew Booth and Simon Stockdale. This is where the issues start:

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So what’s the Sound Shell’s capacity?

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Caroline Bay’s Sound Shell is a fantastic outdoor entertainment venue, but it’s also becoming the source of some fantastical hyperbole. If this nonsense is going to continue then I’ll have to launch my next election campaign down there. Just imagine the hoards I could claim were in attendance. I can even imagine a front page heading in the Timaru Herald: McMillan attracts 10,000 to Caroline Bay.

Seriously though, in my last post I estimated that the seated capacity of the Sound Shell would be around 3,000 where the steps, grass and front area were fully utilised. I’ve since done a bit of research and analysis to get a better picture of the Sound Shell’s capacity.

Sound_Shell_Seats

So lets start with what we know. The steps have allocated seating for 1,812 people, based on 50 cm wide seating. That means that for adults, it’s pretty much shoulder to shoulder, (and in reality people will only sit that close if they are forced to). Measurements from the Timaru District Council’s online GIS show the seated area (including isles) takes up around 1,240 sq. m which gives a crowd density of 1.46 people per sq. m when at capacity. The grass section comprises of 920 sq. m, the path 320 sq. m, and the front section (which includes the temporary seating) comprises 330 sq. m.

Based on research  from Dr. Dirk Oberhagemann, I’m estimating that people on the grass, path, and front sections have a maximum density of 1 person per sq. m seated and 2 people per sq. m standing. I’m also assuming that the concrete steps can have two rows of people per step if standing.

Given the above, I estimate the maximum seated capacity of the Sound Shell as 3,382 and the maximum standing capacity as 6,764.

  Seats Grass Path Front Total
Sitting 1,812 920 320 330 3,382
Standing 3,624 1,840 640 660 6,764

Along with the above information, I’ve compiled a series of photographs from various events held at the Sound Shell, with the published attendance estimate. Using the pictures, I’ve managed to create what I feel are more reasonable estimates of attendance:

Event Herald Estimate My Estimate Full
Bay Carnival 1965 N/A 2,900 86%
Bay Carnival 2010/11 N/A 2,500 74%
Alan Hubbard Memorial 2011 Hundreds 600 18%
Anzac Day 2012 >2,000 1,100 33%
Christmas Carols 2012 5,500-6,000 2,300 68%
Bay Carnival 2012/13 – Annah Mac 4,000 750 22%

And here are the notes for the estimates:

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