Kiwiblog

As I blogged in July, I attended a Civil Defence briefing earlier this year on how their Tsunami warning system works, so I figure it is worth reviewing what went well, and not so well.

Timeliness – a big tick for this one. The advisory was released well before the potential tsunami was due to hit NZ.

Media – NZ Herald and Stuff websites carried the info, as did Breakfast TV. Seemed to do well keeping media informed.

Website – Not so good here. The main Civil Defence website did say an advisory had been issued, but nowhere on the site could you actually get the full details of it. The media do not always get things absolutely correct, and people should be able to go to authoritative sources.

Radio – people were told to listen to their radios for any local evacuation instructions. I think at some stage this strategy may have to be revisited. With ipods, more and more people do not have or listen to the radio. To get through to younger people especially, the Internet and text messaging is going to be more relevant.

Twitter – Twitter was great as a way to alert people, and that is where I first heard about it. I suggested to Civil Defence that they should look at having an official Twitter account as it would have been good for people to be able to retweet an official advisory rather than second hand reports.

E-mail – I received the warning threat by e-mail at 8.06 am. That was 90 minutes before the first wave was due, so pretty good. Only complaint is the e-mail address they came from was cdevent@datasquirt.co.nz and that doesn’t look too official. Would be better for it to come from a govt.nz address.

Overall pretty good effort I though, as in by 0945when the first wave might hit, I would have thought most of the country was aware of the advisory.

On Wed 26 August the user GarfieldNZ twittered:

@suebr is STILL a good candidate for NZ’s first political assassination. (watch sue run to the Police because of a death threat, stupid cow)

For those who do not know Twitter, the reference to @suebr means it will get seen by user “suebr” which is Sue Bradford herself.

While I am not sure I would classify the tweet as a literal death threat, even implicit threats of violence should have no part in our discourse.

Dave at Big News names the user as Henk van Helmond, formerly of CYFSWatch, based on some good detective work.

The media door-stopped van Hermond and his response is reported by the Herald:

CYFSwatch is run by Henk van Helmond, who yesterday wrote that though the threats had come from his account “it seems my password was hacked”.

Yeah, Right.

IrishBill at The Standard dives into the gutter as usual and tries to link the actions of van Hermond to the anti-EFA campaign and me personally and sees something sinister in the fact I did not report the original Sunday News story, implying somehow I condone such threat of violence.

As usual he could not be more wrong. I’m not sure if I have revealed this publicly before, but in 2007 there were similar threats made by someone with the CYFSWatch site (and my response is here) – maybe even the same person. Back then, their identities were tightly kept.

Someone from CYFSWatch commented on my site. Due to the threats that had made against Bradford, I passed on their identifying information (IP address) to Sue Bradford’s office and explained the Police could use this to trace them.

Bradford’s office in time passed this into the Police, and they contacted me and I provided the Police with information which allowed them to obtain from the ISP, the identity of the person holding the account which had made the threats.

As I said I don’t think I’ve ever blogged this info before (I think I did mention it once in a comment) but as someone too cowardly to even post under their own name is trying to link me to condoning or encouraging this sort of activity, I need to set the record straight.

UPDATE: Idiot/Savant also jumps into the gutter. Again someone who hides behind anonymity tries to smear someone who does not. You never tend to get these sort of smears from people who blog under their own name. That is because blogging under your own name forces you to think about consequences (well except for Whale!) of what you say on your own reputation.

Was very amused by this story:

The leader of the Conservative Party was forced to apologise this morning after swearing twice during a live radio interview.

In an apparent bid to prove that he was not out of touch, David Cameron appeared on the Christian O’Connell show on Absolute Radio to discuss his life outside Westminster. He turned his satirical fire on the latest internet craze, revealing that he was not on Twitter.

“Politicians do have to think about what they say,” said Mr Cameron.

“The trouble with Twitter, the instantness [sic] of it, is I think that too many twits might make a twat.”

The problem for David is that there are two meanings for the word twat. One is:

1 (British, offensive, slang) A contemptible and stupid person, idiot. Note this can be used affectionately

The other is:

2 (vulgar, slang) A vagina, pussy, vulva, clitoris

He then also on air used a far more minor swear word:

He told thousands of breakfast show listeners: “The public are rightly, I think, pissed off – sorry, I can’t say that in the morning – angry with politicians.”

And the radio host heard Cameron talking to his press secretary afterwards:

“He said (to her): ’That seemed to go OK.’

“She said: ’Yeah, apart from the language.’

“He said: ’Oh, yeah, pissed, sorry about that, I’m really sorry.’

“She said: ’No, it was the twat.’

“He said: ’That’s not a swear word.’

“His press secretary went: ’It is.”’

I would have liked to have seen his face when she explained exactly what the other meaning of the word was!

Last week Tumeke blogged a snapshot of all the twitterings about a a possible tsunami threat to New Zealand.

Now by coincidence I know a little something about tsunami warnings. Not because I am omniscient, but because I attended a briefing for media organisations a couple of months ago by the Ministry of Civil Defence and Emergency Management. And I have been waiting for an opportune moment to share my learnings.

You can read for yourself the handout we got at the briefing.  The key thing for me is this:

Basically you can almost ignore any warnings that comes from the Pacific Tsunami Warning Centre. Generally the warnings they generate are automated. They are not saying there is a tsunami, let alone it may hit NZ. A warning gets generated on fixed criteria, such as an earthquake of a certain maginute within a particular area. The PTWC warnings are not designed for the general public, but for government agencies.

The MCDEM gets notified of any PTWC warning, plus receives its own data from Geonet. They then decide what risk, if any there is to NZ.  Most of the time there is none. They will then issue one of three statements:

1. No tsunami threat to NZ
2. Potential tsunami threat to NZ
3. Tsunami warning – threat to NZ

So unless the warning has come from MCDEM, it is just an automatically generated warning from PTWC. NZ gets around one of these a month, and none have ever eventuated in the last few decades.

However there may be times that a tsunami is generated locally. Or in other words it will hit within 30 to 60 minutes, not hours. If one is generated locally, then it may hit before an official warning is possible. These are the warning signs for people in coastal areas:

1. experience a strong earthquake (it was hard to stand up)
2. experience a weak earthquake lasting a minute or more
3. observe strange sea behaviour, such as the sea level suddenly rising and falling
4. hear the sea making loud and unusual noises or roaring like a jet engine

If you observe this, move inland and to higher ground promptly.

I suggested to MCDEM that they should look at having an official Twitter account. Twitter can pass on an official warning quicker than almost any other medium through retweeting. And I think many would subscribe to such a Twitter account – even if it very rarely will have anything to say. They seemed to think this was a good idea, and I got the impression it may happen at some stage. It may also have the benefit of people not over-reacting to PTWC alerts.

While clearing through my inbox this morning, I found this e-mail:

Hi, David Farrar (dpfdpf).

Karl Rove (KarlRove) is now following your updates on Twitter.

And yes it is that Karl Rove. Incidentally I will over in DC in June. Can’t wait.

Someone on Twitter asked me for a list of all the MPs who are on Twitter, and this story on the PM joining Twitter has reminded me to do so, so I have gone through and compiled it as best as I can. If I have missed any out, let me know in comments. Some of the accounts are parodies, and some look like parodies but actually are real! Most are real.
http://twitter.com/annettekingmp

http://twitter.com/ccosgrovemp

http://twitter.com/CraigFossMP

http://twitter.com/darrenhughesmp

http://twitter.com/DavidBennettMP

http://twitter.com/dcunliffemp

http://twitter.com/grantrobertson1

http://twitter.com/greencatherine – Catherine Delahunty

http://twitter.com/hondavidcarter

http://twitter.com/IainLG – Iain Lees Galloway

http://twitter.com/jacindaardern

http://twitter.com/johnkeypm

http://twitter.com/KeithLocke

http://twitter.com/KennedyGraham

http://twitter.com/KevinHague

http://twitter.com/MaryanStreet

http://twitter.com/metiria – Metiria Turia

http://twitter.com/MoanaMackey

http://twitter.com/nicksmithmp

http://twitter.com/pakaraka – Jeanette Fitzsimons

http://twitter.com/parekurahoromia

http://twitter.com/phil_goff

http://twitter.com/philgoffmp

http://twitter.com/shanejonesmp

http://twitter.com/suebr – Sube Bradford

http://twitter.com/SueKedgleyMP

http://twitter.com/SusieKew – Sue Kedgley

http://twitter.com/trevormallardmp

Also for those who want it, my two Twitter accounts are:

http://twitter.com/dpfdpf – my personal twitters

http://twitter.com/kiwiblogDPF – a feed from Kiwiblog

Can I also recommend Tweetdeck as an excellent way to follow Twitter (much better than via website) and Tweetberry as a great plugin for the Blackberry.

UPDATE: Also have Aaron Gilmore – http://twitter.com/aarongilmore.

Also added Chris Hipkins – http://twitter.com/chrishipkins.

And Clare Curran – http://twitter.com/clarecurranmp

And Keith Locke – http://twitter.com/KeithLockeMP

And Hone Harawira – http://twitter.com/HHarawiraMP

I am getting confused on which Twitter accounts are parodies and which are not. Take two Green MPs.

The Sue Kedgley twitter account is a parody. The comments seem a bit too extreme, even for Sue, such as:

is off to find schools that sell kiddy killing food made by National Party supporting multinational fast food capitalists!

wants to ban anyone selling children unhealthy food. It should be like tobacco and alcohol. Kids don’t know what’s good for them! I do!

shocked that 84% of schools are still selling hot dogs, sausage rolls, hot bites or pies – no wonder kids are become fat, we need action!

is wondering if she could be elected Mayor of a Wellington supercity

Is sad that so many children were abused over Easter by the multinational chocolate capitalists that seduced their parents.

So I am pretty sure this is a parody account. Mind you Sue does go on about easter eggs a lot.

Then I saw Liberty Scott complaining about Catherine Delahunty’s twitterings. And my first reaction was that he has fallen for a very good parody.

But then I went and looked at Catherine’s twitter account, and I am not so sure it is a parody. Examples:

Gorgeous day in Te tairawhiti unless you want to appeal something to enviro court and dont have five hundred bucks just for filing fee

My mate Grant hawke has it right. Maori have been on the advisory commitee since eighteen forty enough already!

Despite the pretty words and new clothes am hoping new puppy at white house will stop killing afghanis and funding Israel wars on Palestine

Awesome Tairawhiti sunshine a good to start our own banks instead of trusting the white boy club

If it wasnt for almonds and dark chocolate I would go crazy here. As for Michael laws gang Bill who needs It?

Those QPEC people defending public and free education are awesome and palmy north was balmy today

I think it might be genuine.

I now have two Twitter accounts.

http://twitter.com/dpfdpf is for my personal tweets, and 140 character observations on politics, life, the universe and everything.

http://twitter.com/kiwiblogDPF is for Kiwiblog tweets and basically will carry headlines and links to blog posts.

I have to say that I have fallen in love with Tweetdeck. It makes tweeting much much easier than doing it through the Twitter website.

A great quote in the Herald story:

This time, Mr Cunliffe stands and gravely intones that not only does he not have an account with Twitter, but “I have never sent a tweet and I have never even, to my knowledge, received a tweet”.

I’m not sure what is funnier. That Labour MPs have parody accounts, or that John Key fell for it and didn’t realise that they were a parody.

Finally signed up for twitter which is a sort of micro-blog – maximum 160 characters – more like the Facebook status updates.

Anyway my latest twitter updates are displayed on the sideroll, and if you are on twitter you can follow me directly.

All these different social networks get difficult it manage, so pleased to have Ping.fm referred to me. One can do updates there which flow into all your different networks. So for example it will update both Twitter and Facebook status updates. Aldo does Flickr, Bebo, various blog platforms.