Posts for News

Free eMags from libraries

Digital versions of over 600 popular magazines are now available to Auckland Libraries members. The eMagazines are free to download, there’s no waiting and you can keep the items for as long as you like.

USA: Creating a Federal Strategy to Promote the Health of Honey Bees and Other Pollinators

Over the past few decades, there has been a significant loss of pollinators, including honey bees, native bees, birds, bats, and butterflies, from the environment. The problem is serious and requires immediate attention to ensure the sustainability of our food production systems, avoid additional economic…

NPI’s LVL technology

NZ and in particular NPI has to offer more that matchstick buildings. However that requires a big deal of early cross-discipline coordination and communication as well as a digital workflow to optimize systems early.

Matariki – time for renewal

Over the last few days, I learned a bit about Matariki, the Maori New Year. My personal thoughts: Time to think and re-think. Time for adaptation and change. Time to reflect what worked and what did not. I like the concept of Matariki. Have a…

Govt opens Maui’s dolphin area for oil drilling

The Government has opened up more than 3000 square kilometres of a marine mammal sanctuary for oil and gas drilling, home to the critically endangered Maui’s dolphin. It comes less than a week after the International Whaling Commission urged our Government to do more to…

Solar forces a day of reckoning on utilities

The traditional power industry is finally facing a mass defection because of a source once dismissed as a pipe dream.

Old Prius going strong

While it was a bit scary last month when the electric engine all of a sudden stopped working and I just made it home, I guess that is probably something that is not necessarily unexpected for a 13 year old car with more than 250,000…

The challenges of the world wide web

It was just two months ago when I installed some additional security measures on our server to prevent illegal script exploits and login attempts.

Recycling – some personal thoughts

As there are many shades of green, the same applies to recycling. There is downcycling, recycling and upcycling. I think those terms were used by Reiner Pilz first. Most of the time we are doing the lowest level: downcycling, ie your soft drink bottles are…

Moving house

So we have done it, we sold our good passive solar house with some tears in our eyes. Particularly the kids were quite sad. However we look forward to remodeling a 1960 Keith Hay home to a new standard.