2010 October | Kiwi Ingenuity

Archive for October, 2010

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Editor’s note: Probitas is a sustainable farming system, and a new kind of fertiliser, that produces astounding results. Below is the preamble from the Probitas website. PHILOSOPHY Sheep meat, beef, venison and dairy producers, arable farmers and horticulturists carry an extraordinary burden of responsibility in that they are, first and foremost, food producers. The food produced is totally dependent on the soil for all its nutrients. Current analysis of farm performance is based solely on production efficiency. The nutritional quality of the food produced is not assessed. Farmers… Read more

Brian's Amphibious Rescue Vehicle

Check out this video of Brian taking his amphibious vehicle for a spin! Also check out the small image gallery below for closeups of Brian and his amazing machine. Click the images to view in full… Read more

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A device used to radio-track animals will be used on humans for the first time during the 23rd Speight’s Coast to Coast race this weekend, in a world-leading move to map competitors’ locations. The units will be used by New Zealand television production company LeggeWork for a documentary on this year’s inaugural World Team Championship race, tracking the competitors’ routes on the gruelling 243 kilometre event. In what is believed to be a world first for endurance sports telecoverage, the competitors’ routes and times during the one-day event will be displayed on… Read more

Peter Yealands has not only been an aquaculturist, agriculturist and viticulturist, but a pioneer in the three farming sectors, Mark Hotton reports. Entrepreneur Peter Yealands reckons he’s a “run of the mill” tractor driver who gets his best – and loopiest – ideas while driving one of his earthmoving “toys”. Tractor time was valuable thinking time, because it allowed him to clear his mind and focus on other things, he told attendees at the South Island Dairy Event (SIDE), in Invercargill last week. He warned those listening to his presentation not to expect too much. “I’m… Read more

A new locally made building product has been launched to try and reduce the 163,000 tonnes of concrete dumped in New Zealand landfills each year. According to recent Ministry for the Environment statistics building and construction waste makes up 17% of the 3.2 million tonnes of refuse dumped in New Zealand landfills annually. Cemix is an Auckland company, and a tried and trusted brand, which has been manufacturing innovtive construction products in New Zealand for over 25 years. Cemix has developed a new product which will provide an environmentally friendly option for DIY… Read more

Kiwi Ingenuity to the fore – the world’s first cool drawer! That’s a bit of a corny headline I know – but I think given the tone of some of the discussions of late regarding the state of the NZ property market and the NZIER report today on the business and economic sentiment we need a shot in the arm! Great kiwi ingenuity has done it again – the boys and girls at Fisher and Paykel have once again broken the kitchen appliance paradigm and 10 years after launching the world’s first Dishdrawer we now have the world’s first fridge / freezer that can be fitted into a standard… Read more

Us Kiwis are well known for our ingenuity or number 8 wire mentality and after seeing the technology and innovation being showcased during Global Entrepreneurship Week (GEW) I am glad to report that Kiwi ingenuity is on the up and up. At the Wellington to the World (W2W09) technology venture showcase, put on as part of GEW, I was impressed with the offerings launched from Wellington with the intent of going global. Over recent years Wellington has grown a strong reputation as the creative and innovative capital. However, W2W09 showed that Wellington innovation and creativity is… Read more

NEW ZEALAND — A Kiwi company has hooked up with Starbucks to reuse their old coffee sacks for furnishings in their outlets. The Formary will blend New Zealand Laneve wool with fibre from the sacks to create a fabric called WoJo. The fabric — 70 per cent wool and 30 per cent jute fibre — will be used to cover seating in its coffee shops, according to media reports. The fabric will initially be used in British Starbucks and in other markets in Europe, the Middle East and African regions. The Formary co-founder Bernadette Casey said the partnerships showed that “when… Read more

They may be New Zealand’s sporting rivals but England’s cricket team and Japan’s rugby team have turned to Kiwi ingenuity to boost their training – using technology developed by Lower Hutt firm VX Sport. The firm’s GPS units and software can be used to monitor the training and performance of athletes and teams – providing detailed data on heart rate, speed, distance, location and can even measure “body force” such as step rate and hip sway. Chief executive Richard Snow says the firm has spent $2 million developing the product, which is designed to be vastly more… Read more

Scientists and engineers from the University of Canterbury will be part of a team working with American scientists designing NASA’s next generation of space vehicles to replace the familiar space shuttles. The futuristic spacecraft will use scramjet engines and travel at hypersonic speeds of Mach 10 or more (12,250kmh-1). They will be able to fly into space like a plane, eliminating the need for the current rocket-assisted space shuttle launch pads. The exterior of the spacecraft will be made from woven material, a composite of silicon and carbide. The knitted material will be blown… Read more

Australian Bill Franklin, Managing Director of specialist New Zealand ATV company C-DAX, makes no secret of his admiration for kiwi ingenuity. He credits development of the company’s latest piece of technology, recently released on the New Zealand market and being trialed in Australia, to the kiwi streetwise approach to innovation and competition. The C-DAX pasture meter is a rapid pasture measurement system with potential to improve farm production by between 10 and 15 percent, representing around $600 million to $800 million a year to the New Zealand dairy industry. The… Read more

For Ken Marshall, it was because he wanted to give his partner the best birthday present. Warren McNabb needed it to run his vineyard and home office. Liz Udy wanted to become a midwife. And Richard Wilson’s high-tech milking shed wouldn’t work without it. They’re all talking about requiring fast broadband. Yet all these farmers were in places – Hastwell, Mangamaire, the Awatere Valley and Hinds – that made the prospect as remote as their location. Extraordinary, then, that they all now enjoy fibre-optic cable to their doors and unimaginable broadband speeds – 100 megabits per… Read more

One man’s passion for using locally grown food has expanded to the point where he’s offering incentives for the best ideas, reports Sophie Bond. Pete Russell confesses to being not much of a home gardener. But backyard food production is his passion and the entrepreneur has used his skills to form a network for green-thumbed New Zealanders. Mr Russell moved to Waiheke Island from Australia in 2008 and 15 months ago launched Ooooby – an acronym of Out Of Our Own Backyards. Ooooby now has 2200 members, most of them Aucklanders. Mr Russell describes Ooooby as a… Read more

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A Kiwi farmer and part time astronomer is over the moon after it was confirmed he discovered a supernova. The Oxford dairy farmer discovered the exploding star which is a rare event for an amateur astronomer. Stu Parker had been scanning the skies searching for an elusive dying star for a long time. “We searched long and hard, we searched thousands and thousands of galaxies over months and months and years sometimes to find one,” says Parker. And the thousands of hours of staring at the heavens paid off. “Yeah it’s great, it’s marvelous it made a big difference and hopefully… Read more

Banana-Nutrition-Facts

DID YOU KNOW? 1. Peel a banana from the bottom and you won’t have to Pick the little ‘stringy things’ off of it. That’s how the primates do it. 2. Take your bananas apart when you get home from the store. If you leave them connected at the stem, they ripen faster. 3. Store your opened chunks of cheese in aluminium foil. It will stay fresh much longer and not mould! 4. Peppers with 3 bumps on the bottom are sweeter and better for eating. Peppers with 4 bumps on the bottom are firmer and better for cooking. 5. Add a teaspoon of water when frying ground beef. It will help… Read more

http://www.merlib.org http://multimedia.stuff.co.nz/thepress/sonic/ The Press ( 30 January 2008 ) Peter Davey, a 92 year-old saxophone player, uses Resonance to boil water inexpensively. by Yvonne Martin HOT PROSPECT: Peter Davey, a 92-year-old Christchurch inventor and saxophone player, says he has used his love of music to come up with a device that boils water rapidly, in just the amount required. Inventor and saxophone player Peter Davey has come up with a device that he claims boils water in no time. He calls it the “sonic boiler” because he claims it uses the power… Read more

EXTRACT FROM DOUG COPP’S ARTICLE ON THE: ‘TRIANGLE OF LIFE’ My name is Doug Copp. I am the Rescue Chief and Disaster Manager of the American Rescue Team International (ARTI), the world’s most experienced rescue team. The information in this article will save lives in an earthquake. I have crawled inside 875 collapsed buildings, worked with rescue teams from 60 countries, founded rescue teams in several countries, and I am a member of many rescue teams from many countries. I was the United Nations expert in Disaster Mitigation for two years. I have worked at every major disaster in… Read more

This article, while slightly dated, is more relevant now than ever. -Ed The Free Range Child Tralee Pearce, Globe and Mail May 13, 2008 Cleone Grasham’s days of shuttling her three daughters hither and yon to sports, choir and other organized activities are over. The Toronto mother has scaled it back to one gymnastics class for one of her kids – and that’s it. “It was wearing on everybody,” says Ms. Grasham of her family’s once-packed schedule. “Everything was late and dinner was always rushed, and by the end of the day no one seemed to have done as much as they… Read more

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