Wainuiomata.com

Wanted

Posted on April 25, 2013 by: Wainuiomata
Filed under: Announcements

HUTT VALLEY AND DISTRICTS JUSTICES’ OF THE PEACE ASSOCIATION (INC)

(Registered Charity No CC25516)
Affiliated to the Royal Federation of NZ Justices’ of the Peace associations Inc

WANTED

Would you like to become a Justice of the Peace for the Wainuiomata Community? If you are interested and would like to know more about the requirements to hold office.

Please contact:

The Registrar
Vickie Ferguson
9761568

Initial forum load done

Posted on April 16, 2013 by: Rob van der Linde
Filed under: Announcements, Developments
Tags: forum, website

We've finally done it!  All the data from the old ynui.co.nz forum has been imported into the new website after weeks of hard work, that is all the threads, topics, comments, profiles, etc.

The new forum software has been uploaded to the wainuiomata.com site, but we will keep the old website running for a while until things have settled down.  The new forum (and the rest of the site) is written in Django, while the old website was written in PHP and was very different in design.

We did manage to keep things as similar as possible to the old forum design, so that the data could be imported without too much rework.

Please note that you can't login just yet, there are still a few things to sort out before we can enable people to login with their old ynui.co.nz accounts (as well as create new accounts) but hopefully this won't be too long.  The main thing is that the new forum is up, which is a huge milestone by itself.

The forum is getting closer

Posted on April 13, 2013 by: Rob van der Linde
Filed under: Announcements, Developments
Tags: forum, website

We are getting closer now to completing the move of the old ynui.co.nz forum and all the existing posts and comments on the forum to the wainuiomata.com website.  There has been a great amount of work put into this project, rewriting the forum as it was on the old website, but in Django rather than PHP, so moving over a completely different system all together and converting the database to the new system.

I have put my best effort in making sure the old data (that is the posts, comments, and user profiles) are preserved when imported into the old system, by converting the data as it is imported and cleaning it where necessary.  This has been a huge undertaking but well worth it, I have run a simulation of the import many times now, and am confident that when the time comes everything should be imported without any issues.

There are only a few issues to resolve now, and I expect the move to be done within 1-2 weeks from now.

Blog update done

Posted on March 4, 2013 by: Rob van der Linde
Filed under: Announcements, Developments

I've finished updating the blog, which changes the URLs of all existing posts making them shorter.  I have updated Disqus with a new URL map and setup redirects in place for the old posts which already had comments posted on Disqus before all the URLs were changed over.

I noticed that Disqus doesn't really update the old links when you look at the "also on wainuiomata online community" section below the comments and it doesn't really update the old post titles either, as I had also changed these earlier, but with the redirects in place everything still works fine including the old links to posts.

New comments added after this point should come up with the proper post titles and new URLs.

Disqus support, but still more to do

Posted on February 27, 2013 by: Rob van der Linde
Filed under: Announcements, Developments

We've added support for Disqus comments for blog posts, bringing back commenting on blog posts.  We had comments on our old ynui.co.nz blog a long time ago, but it became difficult to manage comment spam and we had to disable comments for a while.

I had always intended to bring back support for comments by writing a better spam filter, but it's just so much easier to use Disqus now.  The great thing about Disqus is you can log in using either your Gmail or Facebook account which makes it easy for visitors to comment.

Important:

We are not quite done yet however, and this is a bit of a warning...  I plan to make some changes to the blog which will change the URL of each post, I know this is normally a bad thing to do, especially for search engines, but it's really important and needs to be done in order to develop a new feature.

The way Disqus seems to work, is it links the comments to the URL of a page, so I am afraid that when the URL for each post changes, we will lose the comments from before.  I am not sure how Disqus deals with this, but I have a suspicion we just end up losing the older comments when I change the URL for each post.

Because we have only just enabled Disqus and moved the blog over to wainuiomata.com, it's best to do this sooner than later, when there are almost no comments and the loss is not so bad.  So I plan to get this done this week if possible.

We will keep you informed about any new developments to the site.

First Post on Wainuiomata.com

Posted on June 3, 2011 by: Shane Maru
Filed under: Developments

Thought I would start with the first post to the new site, get something started at least. The idea at this point is to start using the site for personal use? I guess somewhere I can share information, ideas etc with friends, family and whoever around the nui that is interested lol.

First update in ages

Posted on November 10, 2009 by: Shane Maru

Been ages since I left anything on this site, should start using it to get more involved in whats going on around Wainuiomata. Be good to see the website being used. Will try and see if I can resurrect it back to life.

Water coolers

Posted on January 3, 2009 by: Shane Maru
Filed under: Reviews

Did you know something about those public water coolers? that the spout on the water cooler can contain germs? Imagine how many people use them to fill there water bottles? how many water bottles do people put to there lips? then fill there water bottles using a water cooler? what about the spout which the water comes out? maybe touches the water bottles? How many people are you kissing? yucky? you might catch something?

Painting Pictures

Posted on November 10, 2008 by: Shane Maru

I like to think that every person is a fabulous artist, and we paint the most believable pictures around. It seems that in any situation where we do not know all the facts for certain, we tend to 'reckon' or assume we do know what has happened or is happening. For example, a husband is working late a lot, has blonde hairs on his suit (his wife is brunette) and jumps straight in the shower when he gets home. We all 'know',or have painted a picture about what is happening. Most of us would be 100% sure he was being adulterous, but we don't know for certain because we weren't actual witness to anything, it's just that's what it looks like to us based on what facts we do know. If the wife confided in us and asked for an honest opinion, it appears we would be of the persuasion that her husband was guilty of infidelity and inform her so. The overwhelming opinion of her peers would seem to be that her husband was cheating on her. We all have shown her our pictures (ideas) of what's going on, and from that is seems likely she would draw her own conclusions, or paint her final picture, and react accordingly. If this situation were a court case, and the jury found the husband guilty, the presiding Judge would overturn the ruling because it would be based on hearsay, not proof. It doesn't mean he is or isn't guilty, just that we don't have enough facts to convict, only opinions. There could be a whole host of probable pictures to explain the circumstantial evidence, but most are ignored because they don't fit with what we have drawn, with what pictures we have painted ourselves. If we knew all the facts, if we knew everything relevant, we could make an informed conclusion, but if we don't know all pertinent details, what we have is an idea of an idea, that we seem to take as fact. Is having an 'idea of an idea' the same as someone describing a painting you have never seen before, and then deciding we know exactly what that painting looks like? Our opinions seem to be based on what pictures we have painted, and a lot of our pictures seem to based upon a mixture of fact, feeling, and other people's paintings we have interpreted.

Sometimes it seems the husband would be deemed guilty even before a trial. For whatever reason, sometimes it's easy to be convinced of someone's complicity in an event regardless of contradictory evidence presented. Maybe the guilty verdict fits in or supports something we know or have experienced ourselves. Maybe it's personal and we refuse to acknowledge any pieces of the puzzle that don't fit the picture we have painted. Maybe we are taking only what we need to support our idea, and disregarding the rest. Maybe we relate the situation to us and make a judgement accordingly. Maybe we focus too much on the negative and rearrange everything else, so our view is unobstructed and we can keep an eye on it, just in case it is true.

The Wrong Idea

Posted on November 7, 2008 by: Shane Maru

Have you ever been wrong? Have you? Most people will admit to having been wrong at some stage during their lives. They might look back at something they did, then look at the consequences of it, and decide that maybe it wasn't the best course of action after all. They might think back and regret their actions and think "Why did I do that? I wouldn't have done that if I knew then what I know now.". Which, it seems, is exactly it. Maybe we are 'wrong' only in retrospect. Maybe at the time of our actions, at that exact time we do something, we are right. It seems our actions at any one time are based upon what we know - what information we hold at that time. If we could foresee the future and discern an undesired outcome as a result of our intended actions, I doubt we would still go ahead. It seems we just 'Go with what we know'. Are you wrong for basing your ideas and opinions on what you know? Maybe you are wrong from someone else's viewpoint, but aren't you right from your own viewpoint, based upon what information you hold at that time? Maybe later you have an information 'update' and your opinion or viewpoint changes? Ultimately, empirically, or factually we may be incorrect, like a colour-blind person who may see a grey instead of red. The colour-blind person doesn't see a red colour, he sees grey, because that's what his eyes and brain are telling him. For all intents and purposes, and judging by what he knows, from his viewpoint, in his opinion, what he sees is grey. Is he wrong for seeing grey? It looks like grey to him, and from where he stands it IS grey. If you were him, would it be grey to you? What if no-one told you it was red not grey? How would you know? You wouldn't know. If everyone saw colours like you did , or if you saw colours like everyone else does, who would be wrong? No-one. It seems it's just a matter of opinion based on what you know.