Phoenix rising

Welcome to Idealog Weekly, the free email newsletter for New Zealand commercial creatives, entrepreneurs and anyone rich with ideas.

Hello, hello. Mwa, mwa. Today’s Weekly has sauntered into your inbox direct from Fashion Week, and it’s been a long one. Long queues, long waits, long faces. Yep, around about now there are a lot of overdressed people who would really appreciate this.

Phoenix rising

One thing that’s consistently been worth the wait this week is the music. And a lot of it is ours. Yes, in addition to producing tunes to nod, tap and cruise to the beach to, it appears New Zealand also puts out beats for catwalking. Beautiful.

And then there’s the music accompanying the real glamour, the movies. Wellington six-piece The Phoenix Foundation is largely responsible for the Eagle vs Shark soundtrack and, says director Taika Waititi, the band even inspired parts of the screenplay. Perhaps the designers churning out carbon-copy metallic dresses should give a bit of workroom airplay to the Phoenix’s new CD, Happy Ending, out on October 8. If you’re in need of a bit of inspiration for yourself, read their story on our website, then share your effusive affection at our Kiwi Music Wiki.

The secrets of their success

Former Trade Me development manager Rowan Simpson is generously sharing his wealth—don’t get too excited—of knowledge. His Trade Me Manifesto is a must read for any start-up—even if that’s just you getting out of bed. Eventually, it will have ten main points; so far he’s posted the first three. And for another peek into the company closet, take another look at what Simpson had to say in our Silicon Welly story in Idealog #6 (he’s on page five).

Solved in sixty seconds

If New Zealand roads are a puzzle, be thankful you don’t live in Brazil.

Good times

Get some dinner party ambience going with the New Zealand designed Melting Iceberg. Just light the wick, wait for the symbolic block of arctic to start melting, and you’ll be philosophizing like Friedrich Nietzsche in no time.

Be brutal and win some sweet sounds

We want your opinion. We want it so badly that we have some shiny new Apple hi-fi kit to give away to our opinionated readers. Fill out the readers’ survey on our website and you’re in the draw to win an awesome iPod Hi-Fi worth $599 and an AirPort Express to stream music around your home. The survey will take about 10 minutes, is mainly multi-choice and we do pay attention to what people tell us! So get clicking.

 

iPod Hi-Fi

Fill your home with sound, not stereo components. Keep your music collection at your fingertips, not in countless CD cases. Change the way you experience digital music. For $599, iPod Hi-Fi delivers crystal-clear, high-quality sound in a clean, compact design. Hear, hear.

AirPort Express

Enjoy your iTunes music library in virtually any room of your house or several rooms at once. Share a single broadband Internet connection and USB printer without inconvenient and obtrusive cables. Create an instant wireless network on the go. Extend the range of your current wireless network. How many devices do you need to do all this? Just one: the Airport Express. Featuring AirTunes for playing your iTunes music wirelessly on your home stereo or powered speakers, AirPort Express (retail value $169) brings not only the Internet but your music to wherever in your home you like to enjoy them most, whether you use a Mac or PC.

The slow rolling Apple

The Wall Street Journal is also encouraging businesses not to be impatient with their fledgling products. Apparently if you give your door widget or thermal cap time to grow up it might become as big as an Apple. The Evolution of a Blockbuster maps the slow take-off then meteoric rise of a certain fruity company and a certain fruity MP3 player. (Via Core77)

What’s in the water?

If you haven’t had your eight glasses today, drink them before you look at these pictures. The Nikon Big Shots in a Small World competition has captured photos of seemingly giant zooplankton, water scavenger beetle larvae and fresh water leeches—not appetizing, but amazing nonetheless.

Never rains but it pours

If that last piece didn’t spurn H₂O hate, this might. Eric Ngan of Te Papa sent this pic in as a response to councillor Richard Simpson’s Waitemata-to-Manukau canal idea. Germany’s WaterBridge took six years and 500 million euros to complete and the result is … befuddling. And to baffle you further, Ngan helpfully included this “puzzle for your armchair engineers and physicists”: Did the WaterBridge have to be designed to withstand the weight of traffic? Ngan asks. No, he answers … it only has to withstand the weight of the water because a ship always displaces water that weighs the same as the ship, regardless of how heavily a ship may be loaded.

Well. There you go.

Air New Zealand Inspiring New Zealanders presents the inaugural Scholarship in Film with Martin Campbell.

Be mentored by New Zealand born, Hollywood-based filmmaker, Martin Campbell and spend one-on-one time with Martin on his next major feature film.

You’ll also get to attend a short course at UCLA Film School in America and a further complimentary flight on Air New Zealand to anywhere in the international network.

Applications are now open

News from the roof

Dennis Connor may have impressed us all by storming off the Holmes show many a year ago, but it’s his near namesake who’s the really creative one. The nostalgic photographs and sculptures of Dennis O’Connor are on show at Wellington’s City Gallery at the moment in a show called ‘What the Roof Dreamt’. If your dreams need a bit of colour head along.

And for those Aucklanders in need of weekend fix of creativity Fashion Week will stillll beeee onnnn. Fashion 4U is the event’s public offering, so if you haven’t yet experienced the clothes and the queues come along. With a book.

Check out Idealog’s events guide, Agenda, online and in print. Anyone can add an event to Agenda—just fill out the form on our website.

Quote of the week

“In a way they deserve some credit for the screenplay … some of the tracks I was inspired by when I was writing Eagle vs Shark are used in the same places in the movie”

—Director Taika Waititi on The Phoenix Foundation

More at Idealog online

Read more on our website: web exclusives, opinion, Idealog IP, the Idealog blogs and the Idealog podcast. See you at idealog.co.nz.

  Gena Tuffery
  Senior writer

Idealog Weekly is sent to friends, subscribers and registered website users of Idealog magazine.