This place is very close to work and I’ve been meaning to give it a try for some time. It’s at 15 Swanson St in the Auckland CBD and is tucked in under the Stamford Hotel. It is pretty small with an outer room with the counter and a few seats and a small main room.
The interesting things is the “Gallery” bit. The café is a offshoot of an artists studio so there are several paintings by the artists on the walls (all for sale) and there is a studio out the back of the main room.
Food is standard coffee range with no surcharge for Soy milk and a selection is biscuits , slices and cakes. Pricing is a little cheaper than average (especially with no surcharge) at around $3.50 for a coffee (which is quite big) and $3 for most cakes and slices.
Service was prompt and fast (although it was pretty quiet when I was there) and felt a little more upmarket than usual. My coffee/cake was bought out on a nice hand-held tray to my table with a spork and knife.
I can’t remember the music so it was either non-existent or quiet (either of which is good) but there reading selection was pretty minimal with just half a dozen give-away magazines (like the Red Bulletin).
Apart from the reading selection I was pretty impressed and I’ll probably try it out as my regular for a while.
Update: I’ve just found their website which I missed previous. Has a better map and pictures than I do here as well as menu.
Yes: Full Name of school, Alumni in the news, Promotions for Compus events, Statement of School’s Philosophy,
No: Press releases, Letter from the president, Virtual tour
5/8
Yes: Full Name of School, List of Facility phone number and Emails, Usable campus map, Campus Address, Application forms, Campus police phone number, Dept/Course lists, Parking information
Yes: Alumni in the news, Promotions for Campus events, Press Releases, Statement of School’s Philosophy, Full name of school
No: Campus photo slide-show, Letter from the president, Virtual tour
5/8
Yes: Full name of school, List of Facility phone number and Emails, Campus Address, Application forms, Academic Calendar, Dept/Course lists, Parking information, Usable campus map
Yes: Full name of school, Alumni in the news, Promotions for Campus events, Press Releases, Statement of School’s Philosophy, Letter from the president
No: Campus photo slide-show, Virtual tour
6/8
Yes: Full name of school, Campus Address, Application forms, Academic Calendar, Campus police phone number, Parking information, Usable campus map
Yes: Full name of school, Alumni in the news, Promotions for Campus events, Press Releases, Statement of School’s Philosophy, Letter from the president
No: Campus photo slide-show, Virtual tour
6/8
Yes: Full name of school, Academic Calendar, Campus police phone number, Dept/Course lists, Parking information, usable campus map
No: List of Facility phone number and Emails, Campus Address, Application forms
Yes: Full name of school, Alumni in the news, Promotions for Campus events, Press Releases, Statement of School’s Philosophy
No: Campus photo slide-show, Letter from the president, Virtual tour
5/8
Yes: Full name of school, List of Facility phone number and Emails, Campus Address, Campus police phone number, Parking information, Usable campus map, Dept/Course lists, Academic Calendar
Yes: Full name of school, Alumni in the news, Promotions for Campus events, Press Releases, Letter from the president, Statement of School’s Philosophy
No: Campus photo slide-show. Virtual tour
6/8
Yes: Full name of school, List of Facility phone number and Emails, Campus Address, Application forms, Campus police phone number, Dept/Course lists, Parking information, Usable campus map
Yes: Full name of school, Campus photo slide-show, Promotions for Campus events, Press Releases, Statement of School’s Philosophy, Letter from the president
No: Alumni in the news, Virtual tour
6/8
Yes: Full name of school, List of Facility phone number and Emails, Campus Address, Application forms, Academic Calendar, Academic Calendar,
Campus police phone number, Dept/Course lists, Parking information, Usable campus map
Yes: Full name of school, Campus photo slide-show, Alumni in the news, Press Releases, Promotions for Campus events, Letter from the president, Statement of School’s Philosophy
No: Virtual tour
7/8
Yes: Full name of school, List of Facility phone number and Emails, Campus Address, Application forms, Academic Calendar, Dept/Course lists, Parking information, Usable campus map
No: Campus police phone number
8/9
In all cases I opened up the site and searched around for up to 30 seconds for each item. I used the links off the front page and the search tools on the site. When possible I tended to be fairly generous with awarding points. So if the University calendar was browsable rather than downloadable it was okay or you could enrol online rather but not download the documents you also got the point.
Out of the sites I found Auckland’s the worst in that it was large and confusing (See below) while missing the basics. The other universities were all a lot better to the extent I can’t really pick between them.
Notes:
I found the University of Auckland’s website very hard to actually use. Pretending I wanted to enrol in 1st year Computer Science I found it very hard to find out what courses were offered, which ones I should take and how I should apply. The process seemed to involved jumping back and forth between half a dozen computer different sections of the website. Very bad for a core function of the website.
Many of the sites had separate websites for depts and other organisations within the University. I found that it was often the case where a search for “Maps” or “parking” would sometimes show the the dept’s version of that page rather than the campus-wide one.
I think just about all the sites would benefit from a usability test. Create a list of 10 common things people want to do at the website and pull some people off the street to try and do them. The things in the “What people are looking for” could be a good start.
Search quality seems to vary a lot between the sites. Those using Google search usually are worst. Having the option to highlight certain pages to ensure they appear at the top of search results is a useful feature.
In most cases I could easily find the campus security number by searching for “Security”. Good enough in most case but perhaps some improvement needed since people might be in a panic when dialling the number.
It’s good to see that in most cases the sites were trying to be user-centric. However in many cases the “follow this path to enrol” didn’t interact well with the rest of the sites (eg when it came time to look up course information). Part of this is possibly the high complexity of enrolment and the regulations but the experience could be better.
Best page I came across on my tour was the Otago University Parking Page , with notes like “All phone calls to the Parking desk are recorded”you can tell that is a fun place to work.
However looking though the a New Zealand Herald’s photogallery of a John Key’s recent visit to Washington I noticed that the photos 5 and 6 in this gallery match thesetwo photos on the “National Party” flickr page.
However the photo’s in the Herald are credited to “Tania Garry” who appears ( from a bit of googling) to be a career New Zealand diplomat currently posted to Washington.
So what is happening here? A New Zealand diplomat takes a photograph which is released to some news media (with full rights to publish it commercially I assume) but somehow the National Party is allowed to put it on their website/flickr under their own conditions?
So who owns the copyright for this photo? Who released a copy under what conditions and to who?
From my point of view it appears that a NZ diplomat takes a photo and then it’s made available to “friendly” news media for publication (but not the New Zealand public) before copyright is claimed by the National Party?
Like I said in my previous post, photos and other material like this should not be claimed by Political parties but should be released under a liberal license for use by anyone (which includes commercial use like newspapers).
The current Prime Minister of New Zealand is John Key , he’s a nice (well most people say so) guy who leads the right-of-centre National Party in parliament.
As a 21st century politician he has staff members who look after a twitter feed , he has a video blog on youtube and photos from his activities go on flickr.
The problem is that the copyright of images and videos of John key taken in the course of his official duties don’t appear to belong to the country or even be released into the public domain but are in fact claimed by The National Party.
Presumably this claim comes about because the persons recording the material are politically appointed staffers (although the salary is paid for by the New Zealand taxpayer) and they in turn have given their copyright to the National party (hopefully this is a formal arrangement and not some ah-hoc thing).
The problem is that while some photos and other material are posted to flickr under a restrictive license (which I’ll admit is more than previous PMs appear to have done) ownership and control of the material resides with a political party rather than the public.
What are photos of the Prime Minister performing his official duties, taken by staff members owned by a political party rather than the government (or the people)
Why is used of the photos so harshly restricted?
How does it help promote New Zealand and New Zealand culture when photographs of our politicians can’t be used or reproduced by sites such as wikipedia?
What happens in 50 years when future historians want photographs of our politicians and they don’t exist or the ownership is unclear since they were not correctly transferred to the National party (if it still exists) by the original photographer or got lost at some point?
But really all I’m after is for the photographs to be released under a more liberal license much like the photographs from the Whitehouse. As a New Zealander I really shouldn’t have to wait till a New Zealand politician meets the US president before a free photograph of him is released and our PM’s wikipedia article doesn’t have him wearing a Green Tie.
As a sort of New Year’s resolution I’ve decided to retire a few stories that I sometimes tell people. I suspect I repeat some of these a bit too often (and sometimes to the same person) and they are getting a little stale. Feel free to offer other suggestions.
Kicking down door at work
My day as a court witness
Co-Worker electrocuted and comes back for more
Co-worker at Gang Party
Co-worker mugged on 1st day in Auckland
Colour-blind co-worker and windows
My Uncle meets Bill Gates
Stories about crazy head of the company I used to work for.
The day I meet the guy from the Fraud Squad
The above are all retired until Jan 1st 2015 unless specificly requested.
I’m not sure why I suddenly seem to be publishing a food blog but I have a few tech articles up my sleeve which should get posted in the near future. But for now I have another review of one of my regular food haunts.
The Bluebird is a vegetarian and vegan cafe is locate in the Valley Road shops on Dominion road, across the road from the foodtown supermarket. It is own and run by the New Zealand Sri Chinmoy Centre which is a group/church/whatever of followers of spiritual teacher Sri Chinmoy .
The shop is on two levels, downstairs there is seating for around 20 and a counter at the back where you can order. Upstairs seating is about the same but includes a couple of couches and low tables. Normally you order and pay at the counter and the food is brought out.
The menu (also on the website) is completely vegetarian with about half of items being vegan. The standard item is a bowl which has a base of Baked potato, mashed potato, baked kumara or brown rice with one of about 8 toppings. This comes in 3 sizes ( $9, $12 and $15) and I’ve found that the medium size is more than enough for a main meal.
Medium size, mexican beans on rice with cheese on top. $12
The sample pictured is a medium size ( $12) meal. The base is rice, the topping is Mexican beans with sauce and there is cheese on top. The meal also comes with some bread.
A large meal pretty much fills the bowl to the top.
Drinks include water (free) and various phoenix soft drinks , juices and some smoothies (although I keep forgetting to check if they do Soy smoothies).
Other mains includes a rotating array of salads, hot-pots, Lasagna, pies etc. These may or may not be available each day. Apart from the bowls which are always available you just have to see what is at the counter.
Sweets include the very nice apple crumble (which comes in a bowl) along with a couple of cakes and a small selection of slices at normal cafe prices.
There is the usual range of coffees (50cent Soy-milk surcharge) plus some herbal teas.
Frittata
The general ambiance of the place is very quiet, music is quiet background (although a video on low volume showing Sri Chinmoy performing weight-lifting sometimes plays upstairs). The female staff are usually dressed in Saris and service is usually efficient and polite.
The opening hours are a little mixed. Mon/Tue: 10 am – 8 pm , Wed: 10 am – 3 pm, Thu/Fri: 10 am – 9 pm , Sat: 10 am – 2.30 pm , Sun: Closed. Plus they sometimes close for a week or two while they all go off to do whatever stuff Sri Chinmoy members do.
I’ve been going there for around 6 months and I quite like it (going around weekly these days). It seems to be quite popular (a little crowded on Friday nights at least) but the food is nice and quite good value for money (although it isn’t in the budget category) and I really like a nice quite place where I can just read my book over a meal.
Another person at work had a flyer for this place so I thought I’d try lunch there. The full name is “Sal’s Authentic New York Pizza”. They appear to have only recently opened (ignore the “since 1975” bit).
As you can see from their website they are just a little counter and oven on a central Auckland street. They have a couple of tables out the front on the footpath you can stand at to eat but I just took my food back to the office. When I was there (1pm on a weekday) there was one guy most making the pizza and another guy (from New York, although I didn’t catch if he had previous pizza experience) mostly serving.
I ordered a slice of Cheese Pizza ( $5 ) and 3 Garlic Knots ( $2 for the 3 ) which got put in the oven for a couple of minutes to re-warm them.
Pizza and Garlic Knots from Sal's Pizza
The pizza and knots were a good size and pretty good in general quality. Certainly filled me up for lunch. Service was friendly and fairly fast.
The only bad note was the guy serving didn’t wash his hands between fixing a rubbish bin outside and handling food a minute or two later. That’s the sort of thing that makes some people freak out and he needs to make sure he washes his hands next time.
However I’ll probably visit again, although there are a couple of other good Auckland CBD pizza options.
Update
I receive and email from Nick Turner (Director of Sal’s Pizza) in response to the above post. The email is fairly long so I won’t reproduce it here but he has explained the linage behind the “since 1975” tagline which I am satisfied with and with respect to the less than perfect food handling I saw he says:
Because we are always striving for perfection with our product, service and
cleanliness, obviously we are unhappy about the handling of the rubbish bin
before food. We will continue to ensure this does not happen again, and
continue to maintain our Grade A health certificate.
As I said originally I enjoyed the pizza at Sal’s and intend to go back there.
I thought I’d do a little review of one of the places I go to for weekend brunch occasionally.
Cafe Taska (see website) have 3 branches around the Auckland and while I work close to their Vulcan Lane branch their Dominion Rd place is just a few minutes away for the odd weekend splash-out.
Coming from town the cafe is located a block of so past the supermarket on the left hand side. The interior has lots of wood and is fairly dark although they do have a outdoor area out which I’ve not actually used. The daytime menu is the usual suspects plus a few Spanish influenced dishes.
The dish is especially like is the Piperada which is described as “Basque style eggs scrambled with red pepper and tomato sofrito, served in a terracotta cazuela with crusty bread” :
The whole thing is a very tomato-y mix which I find really delicious and is pretty big for the $15.50 is costs.
I also had a coffee and slice which was about normal although their sweet selection is a little more limited than many other places. They sort of try a few things like Baklava and Turkish Delight to be different. The Linzertorte (hazelnut & raspberry Tart) is interesting but not to my taste.
General atmosphere was good, music with mostly instrumental and in the background (the have live music for dinner), service was okay, reading material was a little limited with just one copy of today’s Herald and a couple of magazines.
The big surprise I have about this place is how empty it is for lunch ( at least out the front). I casually dropped by for dinner a couple of weeks ago and I couldn’t get a table since it was packed so people definitely know about the place but for some reason don’t see it as a daytime destination.
See the previous post for background and first few games.
One thing I noticed about central Wellington is that nowhere at all does a show sell any sort of can or bottle of soft-drink for less than $2.50 , I suspect it’s some sort of cartel of shopkeepers agreeing not to compete on the price. Anyway back to the chess..
Game 5 – White vs Lawrence Farrington ( 1603 ) – French – advance variation
Looking at this later I was probably a bit better off during the game than I thought I was at the time. I got a little tied up on the Queen side and black play c4, Bd7 and threat of Nb3. I spent a bit of time shuffling around pieces to deal with that and in the meantime black attacked on the Kingside. After some swaps of material he tried a king side rook attack but after a moved my king over and we swapped down to a King, Rook and 7 pawns each we agreed on a draw since his king side attack was stuck. However looking at it in the computer it looks like I could have started a Quuenside push which would have been very hard to stop. Still I was happy with the result at the time especially against a stronger player.
Game 6 – White vs Simon Ward ( 1717 ) – Sicilian Alapin with 2 ..d5
This was one of the first times I’ve played this opening in a competitive game and I managed to follow the right moves until a deviated on move eight. I was fairly even after a few swaps ( 2R+B+N+6P each ) but then wasted some time trying a king side attack with a rook along the 5th rank. There was then a bit of heavy manoeuvring in the centre with my opponent getting ahead and me into trouble. before things swung a bit my way and things were probably a draw with scatted pawns and a minor piece each. However I looked at my clock and it had run out ( either I forgot to press it or it hadn’t registered the press) and I had lost. I was pretty disappointed since I almost certainly had a draw against a higher rated opponent.
That night ( Easter Sunday) we went to a little middle-eastern sort of place. Nice enough but a bit short of menu options due to the weekend. We also had a coffee and cake afterwards.
Game 7 was a 1 point bye for me which put me on 3 points ( 2 draws, 1 win , 1 bye and 3 losses )
Game 8 – Black against Bill Forster ( 1953 ) – Petrov 3 Nights
My opponent played a weak move in the opening but I didn’t really take advantage of it and things were fairly even until I got a pawn up around move 13 and then picked up another fending off a queenside attack although I missed a move at the end which would have left me another pawn better. After a few swaps we each had 3 pawns on the king side plus a rook and I had a extra “b” pawn. However I blundered and let my opponent take a couple of my pawns for nothing. I was pretty lost when my opponent totally blundered and gave me a rook for nothing! and then resigned a few moves later.
So overall in my 7 actually games I got 3 points against an average strength of 1788 and played to a rating of 1731 or 457 points above my actual rating. I definitely had a bit of luck in the last game though. My 4 points for the tournament but me in the middle of the field at 14-equal and half a point behind the “C grade” winners.
Overall I was fairly happen with my tournament. I still have lots of room to improve in several aspects of my game but being able to play okay games against 1600-1900 players shows that getting to that sort of rating is not beyond my grasp.
As far as the tournament itself I liked the venue but can’t say I was too impressed with the organisation at times. The full official results still don’t appear to be up but I did a little post to the Auckland Chess Centre website summarising the results of the ACC players.
Over Easter 2009 I went to the North island Chess Championship in Wellington. The event was 8 games over 4 days ( Friday to Monday ) and a single Swiss draw of 31 players. The field was fairly strong with the top 7 players in the field being in the top 20 in New Zealand. I was ranked down the bottom at 28th on a 1274 rating.
I took Thursday off and flew down first thing with my partner. During Thursday we wandered around Wellington ( Checking the buses to the venue ) went to some shops and went to the Terracotta Warriors of Qin which was pretty good. That evening I went to Wellington Thursday Night Curry.
On Friday the games started. Things were a little disorganised ( which the Wellington players joked about ) but we eventually got goine. Games were at 9:30am and 2:30pm each day.
Game 1. Black vs Ross Jackson ( 1972 ) – Exchange Slav
I was fairly equal for most of the game and eventually got an endgame where material was even but I was much better and was winning. However I wasn’t sure how to win so I offered my opponent a draw which he accepted.
Game 2 White vs Nathan Goodhue ( 1897 ) – Double fianchetto opening by Black
The unusual opening by black confused me quite a bit and I was in a bit of trouble. The game was fairly even but after we swapped off most of the pieces I played the endgame badly and ended up losing.
Unfortunately my girlfriend picked up a sour throat / cough in Wellington so was stuck in bed most of the weekend, we went to one of the Malaysian places near Cuba St for dinner though. It was fairly nice.
Game 3 Black vs Han Gao ( 1268 ) –Petrov’s Defence – Cochran’s Gambit
I got into a bit of trouble at the start. Cochran’s Gambit gave my opponent a pretty good attack and since I didn’t defend properly I was even but very low on time. However it turned out my clock was setup wrong ( see organisation problems above ) so I got an extra 15 minutes added to my time. I was able to win an endgame with bishop and 5 pawns vs 8 and 8 pawns.
Game 4 Black vs Quentin Johnson ( 2109 ) – Slav
I made a mistake in the opening which put be on the back foot pretty quickly. I made lots of little mistakes after that and my opponent’s position just got better and better until my position was completely lost and I resigned
That night went out to Indian Malaysian with some friends followed by some tea from and Asian tea place ( which is strangely much less asian than the ones in Wellington). [ to be continued ]
