Category: Reckons

I didn’t do it.

Morgan Avery

Swear to the gods. (And isn’t it about time SkyCity St Lukes cut their losses and changed wall covering to something that isn’t so easy to horribly deface?)

Remu-wera

Morgan Avery

remu-wera

Why not correct the naming of our suburbs, where there are clear examples of more correct spellings? I think Remu-wera means something like ‘tail of the whale’ and is an older name for Mt Hobson.

New Zealand, Supine

Morgan Avery

supine-new-zealand

I can’t help thinking that it would be better for all of New Zealand if this was the ordinary way to display our fine country on national maps.

The horizontal view seems to create less of an ‘us’ and ‘them’ feeling than I get from the ordinary North/South map, this side-by-side orientation evokes something more familial, inspiring a sense of brotherhood and mateship.

Anyway, isn’t it sort of an old-fashioned world-view to always put North at the top? After all, there isn’t really any ‘top’ on a sphere, let’s just do our own thing.

Stroh Violins

Morgan Avery

amplified-violin-variants

These things are incredible. They look like something you’d order from an eccentric luthier, only available from a difficult-to-navigate website, perhaps featuring autoplaying background music that starts suddenly and makes you jump, with barely relevant animated GIFs distributed haphazardly around the page, but they were actually made around the turn of last century.

stroh-violin

They’re modified violins, with attached amplifying horns. Apparently there are even cello-sized instruments available as well, but I didn’t see any on display today.

Absolutely wonderous looking machines – there are videos on the web of people playing various examples, unfortunately the sound is much less special (to my ears, in any case) than the appearance.

Photos taken at an exhibition of the Castle Colllection of antique, rare, and unusual instruments, currently on display at the Auckland War Memorial Museum.