Two days ago I received an email notifying me that I had been nominated as New Zealand’s Open Source Ambassador in the forthcoming New Zealand Open Source Awards, and that I had been judged a finalist. I was both honoured and humbled by this news and decided to share it with some colleagues.

“Oh, yeah, we knew that”, was the response. It seems that nominations have been a hot topic across the web and while I knew about the awards, I did not take the time to read any of the press releases or postings on various websites. It seems others had and “my” news had been reported in Computerworld on 13th September. You can read the article online here: Computerworld New Zealand

If you find it coincidental that this site was down from 21st September until today, well then perhaps you should consider on what date the local government elections voting papers were sent out!

Yes, folks, lynnepope.net went offline and instead, a vote for Heather Tanguay image was here. Did I do that? NO! I am absolutely disgusted that local government politics has stooped to the level of people attacking and defacing websites in order to promote their preferred Mayor. It should come as no news to you that I am not standing for Mayor of Palmerston North. I am not even standing for re-election to the Palmerston North City Council. I am standing for election to Horizons and if the person(s) responsible for defacing my website are reading this, may I remind you that Horizons is a separate entity and HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH THE CITY COUNCIL ELECTIONS! Kindly play your stupid games elsewhere and leave me out of your dirty politics.

“If you want something done, ask a busy person to do it. The more things you do, the more you can do.”
anon. (Often attributed to comedian Lucille Ball, but known as far back as William Hazlitt (1778-1830)

It seems a lot of people have taken that old saying to heart and the demands on my time have been rather heavy in the past month. Since returning from July’s Local Government Conference in Dunedin (with a good dose of norovirus to recover from) time has just raced away. I’m never much good with enforced rest, which may be why it took me a couple of weeks to recover from norovirus, but as soon as I was back to normal I found my days completely filled. The Standard has been reasonably good lately in reporting back on civic events and on council meetings so I won’t bore you by writing about those.

PNCC Press Release

The City Council’s innovative process to include glass as part of its roading foundations has been recognised nationally.

At the weekend the City Council received a Packaging Council of New Zealand award as the winner in the glass recycling category from the Acting Minister for the Environment, David Parker.

The Council, in conjunction with Higgins Aggregates, has, for the last 12 months, produced a roading foundation material which includes up to five percent of recycled glass.

The glass would otherwise be dumped in a landfill as it has no market value due to the presence of more than one colour and plastic which sticks to the bottles.