A Warrior Passes

Posted on 7 July 2013 by SJPONeill

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Last weekend, Kereama Graham Hare Wirangitakina passed away at his home in Waiouru. Known to many as Graham Wi or just Wiina, Graham was a friend, colleague and mentor to many of us. He was laid to rest yesterday.

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One of the many tributes to Wiina, said that this video montage was one of his favourites – as it will be for many who passed through the gates of Dieppe Barracks in the 1980s although it might be entitled The Usual Suspects

I’ve taken the liberty of including some of the tributes to Wiina to illustrate the man and the effect that he had on so many…

Hey brothers. We carried our bro into the Wharenui at the Waiouru Marae and he looked so at peace after his years of silent suffering. For those of yous that haven’t seen him for some time, he progressively got worse over the years. Spoke to his brother and mum, as sad as it is, it was a blessing in disguise and he is now at peace back with his whanau in the sunny far north. He will have a catch-up with his long lost bro Andy Warren in heavenly peace. ONWARDS brothers.

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Kereama Graham Hare Wirangitakina, I have been thinking all week about how you have influenced my life, and finally I know what to say. Long before I became a father, you explained and showed me what fatherhood actually meant. Little did I know at the time, that conversation would shape my understanding of parenting. There were many other snippets of gold in my memories of you Cpl Wi (Cpl at the time), but to me, this was undoubtedly your greatest impact on my life. I will be forever indebted to the interest you took in helping mold who I am today.

I am sorry I cannot be there to say farewell, but I will certainly be charging a very full glass of Rum to you….many times. Take it easy Wi, thanks again and RIP.

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Chur whanau just arrived back from Wi’s tangi and I can report that things went really well. Soldiers, whanau and friends came together…we sang, we laughed, we remembered, we haka’d, we had orders, we had confirmitory orders, we rehearsed, we got cheeky, we got angry, we took a spiritual journey to Te Reinga, we had the meanest weather, and we comforted one another.

Although it was a collective effort lead by capable men and women, a big mihi goes out to the bro Soli! Nei ra te mihi atu ki a koe te kaihautu o te waka nei. The spirit of Ngati Tumatauenga is well and truly alive…mai nga piki me nga heke we will always stand tall in the face of adversity. If I can sum it up in one word “SPEECHLESS”!!

E Winar, okioki i te atawhai o te Atua bro…till we meet again dear friend.

Te taimana whero
Taimana ki runga
Taimana ki raro
Taimana i te kura takahi puni

Whakamua! ONWARD…

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Wiina’s generation shaped the New Zealand Army for the better part of three decades, and through that interface, they were also a formative influence on large parts of New Zealand society at all levels. If one word could sum up this generation it would be ‘standards’ – a closer runner-up for those who know them, might also be ‘mischiefs’…

Many of ‘the usual suspects’…

I don’t remember when I first met Graham Wi, as I knew him, it would have been as a very junior soldier in 2/1 RNZIR in Burnham or 1 RNZIR in Singapore some time in the mid-80s. But my most memorable recollection of him is from 1 RNZIR after it relocated from Singapore to the Manawatu in 1989. I think it was 1993 or ’94, and responsibility for conducting infantry corps training (infantry specialist training after recruit training) had passed to Alpha Company, 1 RNZIR. To regenerate the battalion’s numbers a lot of infantry soldiers had been recruited but the recruit depot in Waiouru was unable to handle the numbers and issued an ultimatum to the effect of ‘…you want them trained, you come and train them…’ As a result, 1 RNZIR sent a platoon commander, platoon sergeant, and some corporals to Waiouru to train a platoon’s worth of infantry recruits. Graham Wi was the that platoon sergeant.

When these young soldiers passed out of their recruit training and arrived in Linton, we were all struck by their professionalism, enthusiasm and standards – read between the lines, and you might gather that not all the products of the recruit depot at this time were as impressive. Then we started to to hear whispers from Waiouru that the 1 RNZIR training team that we had sent there might not have played by the PC rules and perhaps some of the recruits had been mistreated i.e. that their professionalism, enthusiasm and standards might be more due to fear than the infantry ethos and culture.

I asked Graham about it directly. His response was a disdainful glance north (towards Waiouru) “…Nah. All we did was introduce these young men to the concept of standards and the principle that those standards weren’t coming down to meet them…we set the bar and they all came up to it…it IS that simple…” In the months we worked with those young soldiers, that message came through again and again…they were there because they wanted to be there…they sought challenges for the satisfaction of overcoming them…

Kereama Graham Hare Wirangitakina’s generation taught an army to do the job right (regardless of your personal opinion on whether it needed to be be done or not), to be an example to yourself and those around, to fault-check and get the detail right, to push on that little bit further, over just one more false crest…

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Onward, old friend…

Daily Prompt: Singin’ in the Rain | The Daily Post

Posted on 18 June 2013 by SJPONeill

Daily Prompt: Singin’ in the Rain | The Daily Post.

I normally don’t have time for the Daily Prompt but the rain in the last week or so, especially after the super-long and dry summer, has been phenomenal… Raurimu 020

We normally get quite high flow down the driveway which splits as it approaches the house and diverts off down the hill on either side…this morning I had a look out the back of the house when I feed the dogs and noticed that water was starting to flow up to the back of the house. I grabbed the spade and scraped out some encouragement for the water to go elsewhere…

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Tonight, I am rather glad that I did as this would be flowing under the house otherwise – sorry, already got internal running water!

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This is the water flowing the other way away from the house this evening, around the front of the spa and eventually into the pond next door – until *cunning plan* we build our own pond…

Meanwhile, on the mainland…this is the northern approach to Maheno, just south of Oamaru where I was brought up. ‘Normally’ this part of the main road would be some metres above the scraggly little creek that runs under the road…not so scraggly now…
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…the pub is behind the Clark’s Mill sign on the other side of the railway berm, fortunately only the basement is flooded but the beer is still cool…

…and slightly east on the coast, this is the Kakanui Bridge, normally well above the river level…apparently the bridge shakes every time a floating tree hits it…

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And that yellow and blue is what wearing hearing on the roof at the moment…

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Weekly Photo Challenge: Curves | The Daily Post

Posted on 15 June 2013 by SJPONeill

Didn’t have to look too hard to find these curvy pics from our 2005 South Island tour…the Moeraki Boulders are a popular stop about half-way down the east coast of the island…

Even the reflection and seaweed are curvy…

…and some others in a similar vein…

This is in a shop in Manchester Street in Christchurch from the same holiday – all gone now – we thought that something along similar lines might make a nice entrance feature for the front door of the Lodge…

…and totally unrelated to anything Kiwi, except for the one that was wandering around Salisbury at sun-up, some street corner curves as pigeons do pigeon things first thing in the morning…we were in Salisbury for the first ABCA Coalition Lessons Analysis Workshop (CLAW) and most of use tried to get out in the morning for a run and some fresh air…I’m not sure if the blurriness of the image is down to me or the pigeons…

Weekly Photo Challenge: Curves | The Daily Post.

Weekly Photo Challenge: Fleeting | The Daily Post

Posted on 8 June 2013 by SJPONeill

My take on fleeting this week is of moments that you can never get back – they are there, then they are gone…fleeting…this week, just for a change I have used video instead of photos so I hope everyone is cool with this…

As you grow up, you can never quite replicate the thrill of being chased by a big blue ball…

In all fairness to the adults present, this was the chasee’s own idea…

That fleeting moment of victory…

Of course, it didn’t take Kirk the puppy long to grow up (currently weighs in at just over 50kg) whereas Pepe the spaniel stayed around 10kg…we had to sadly rehome Pepe in the end when he kept stealing toys from the big dogs…

And that fleeting moment of rapture when you realise that ISN’T an Airtrainer on approach…

Nothing quite like having a Merlin living nearby…

Weekly Photo Challenge: Fleeting | The Daily Post.

UAVs: hit or miss?

Posted on 4 June 2013 by SJPONeill

out-00061 Terrifying video captures moment German drone missed Afghan plane carrying 100 passengers by just two metre | Mail Online.

Pitiful attempts at contemporary journalism like this get right up my nose! Not only is it poor practice to take an incident that occurred nine years ago and portray it in such a manner that it appears to be a recent occurrence, it is even worse to do it on a topic that a. the ‘journalist’ in question clearly know nothing about; and b. in such a manner that all the ignorati out there that take the internet as gospel will break out their pitchforks and torches.

In all fairness, I may be just a little sensitive with regard to the time issue as I have just completed a university marking marathon in which I have been disappointed at the number of students that think that they can take an incident in one point in time and link it casually to another event some time later.

It’s also a beef I have with Max Boot’s latest book Invisible Armies where he takes a stance that a coercive approach to quelling irregularity, insurgency and other signs of unrest amongst ‘the people’ is counter-productive and ultimately leads to the downfall of the coercing regime. I take issue with this because

a. I think that historically, the coercive approach has actually been more successful than more populist forms of maintaining peace and order;

b. it is a big leap to link the downfall of a regime to the sacking of a city or decimation of a population some centuries (yes, centuries, not decades) before’ and

c. there are just as many indications that ‘peace, love and we’ll-build-you-a-schoolhouse’ approach to pacification is not that successful, regardless of its current contemporary favour.

The constructive advice I give to students in my markers comments is to to construct a timeline of events that MAY be relevant to their argument and then to examine that timeline to see if they can still draw a causal line between an event and the outcome that they wish to link it to e.g. did coalition application of Warden’s Rings theory, specifically to Iraqi leadership, in the 1991 Gulf War air campaign directly lead to the capture of Saddam Hussein in December 2004? It almost sounds plausible until out into the context of time…Ms Becky Evans of the Daily Mail – and Max Boot, if you’re reading this – might wish to take note…

UAS operations are no more or no less safe than manned aircraft operations so long as the EXISTING rules are followed. In the case cited above by the Daily Mail, a combination of procedural air traffic control and air crew issues lead to the situation of the near miss, an actual collision being avoided by the crew of the UAS. The involvement of a UAS in a flight safety event does not automatically mean that the UAS is at fault. In another popular example of the dangers of UAS, where an Air National Guard C-130 struck an RG-7 Shadow in Afghanistan, the C-130 was at fault.

The Daily Mail does nothing but stir up ignorance and conceal the issues that do need to be addressed i.e. those of operators, of manned or unmanned systems, that fail to apply the minimum standards for safe operation of aircraft in a specific airspace environment. UAS are small and often fly close to the ground, making them very difficult to detect with time to take evasive action. As a result, airspace management ‘bureaucracy’ like NOTAMs, SPINs, ATOs, etc becomes so much more important for providing the situational awareness required by the operators of manned aircraft: might is only right until it gets to(o) stoopid…

‘…with great power comes great responsibility…’ and thus the operators of (more powerful, bigger, faster) manned aircraft have the responsibility to ensure that they deconflict with UAS approved to operate in a given area of airspace. There is little to be done about the cowboys on either side of the manned/unmanned fence that do not play by the rules e.g. the jet jocks that think that flying in a combat zone means they can zoom and boom wherever they like, or the private contractor that just flips their undeclared Ebay UAS into the sky because everyone knows that ‘…it’s a big-ass sky…’ apart from breeding those elements out of the aviation culture and fostering a sense of air-mindedness amongst anyone that thinks they need to operate an aircraft (with or without seats).

Here is New Zealand, small UAS fly commercially almost every day with the permission and blessing of the Civil Aviation Authority. They fly in and over urban areas, and in controlled airspace. How do they get away with it? Because the operators reviewed the rules, assessed the risk and offered a mitigation philosophy to the CAA. When, and only when, that mitigation philosophy was accepted, they were in business – literally.

The genie of small UAS proliferation is already out of the bottle, and it is unlikely that it will ever get drawn back in – not when camera-equipped UAS can be purchased from any Toys’r’Us – like so many other genies, small UAS are something that we need to get to grips with and the time for that is now…

Weekly Photo Challenge: In the Background | The Daily Post

Posted on 3 June 2013 by SJPONeill

Weekly Photo Challenge: In the Background | The Daily Post.

I spent a number of hours (yes, really, but more as a part of concurrent activity as I waited for other things to occur e.g. keyboard buffer to clear so I could eke out a few more letters before it clogged up again; waiting for DVD Shrink to process a file so I could upload the next one etc) trawling through Picasa looking so an image that did the background thing for me.

It was a struggle because I don’t seem to have many pix where the background is even that clear let alone, has some potential meaning, message or other attraction. Finally, I managed to go firm on four examples, known from this point on as the ‘also rans’, that can be seen at the bottom of this post.

What happened was this. I export images from Picasa to a holding folder – this also adds a watermark and reduces the longest edge to 600 pixels, and also makes the image a nice web-friendly size – and from here, I drag and drop the images into my WordPress media library. As I opened up the holding folder just now, I was struck by the composition of this image of the Tupperware Terminator (my name for it, not theirs so don’t try ordering a Terminator from Tupperware – who knows what you might get!) where to me the background with our driveway and inferred different pathways left and right at top and bottom, just adds so much more (still working on more what) to the image…so here we go for ‘Background’…

The also rans

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1 RNZIR Thailand to Singapore Bike Ride august or September 1988 – the only thing that I rode, as tour photographer, was inside the van. I only just noticed today, almost a quarter of a century later, that I snapped myself in the foreground of the background of the foreground in this shot of the mighty Hi-Ace fording a flooded road during the monsoon… 1-23-2011_032

Redcastle nestled in the background of St Kevin’s College, Oamaru where I went to school. It’s all changed now from this fairly idyllic shot (mid-90s)…anyway, if you have any problems with me, blame these guys… (just kidding!) DSCF2176

USS New Jersey in the background of this shot taken from the USS Olympia on the other side of the river. My original shot was of the gun in the foreground but after noticing the New Jersey in the background, I recomposed it and shot it again for this specific effect… DSCF5906

Vancouver, around this time last year…the floatplane in the background is the icon of that trip. I arrived late one Saturday, to find that my hotel was overbooked and that they had rebooked me for just that night in another hotel – all the way back by the airport, a 30 min odd drive at midnight – in recompense, they put me in a flasher room with a balcony on the penthouse floor, As it turned out, this was the room original reserved by our hosts for my boss whop they rebooked before he arrived into a standard room a few floors down on the other side of the hotel. When he arrived a couple of days later, I said I’d swap rooms with him but these float-plane used to glide right by his window a dozen or so times a day and he said he much preferred that to yet another view over an urban landscape…top bloke!! So I got to keep my balcony and he got to keep his fly-bys – everyone happy…

Weekly Photo Challenge: Escape (from reality) | The Daily Post

Posted on 2 June 2013 by SJPONeill

1990s parties….

Tank, tank, tank

It was near the end of basic training and all the soldiers were getting ready for the war. A soldier came charging up to his corporal and said ” Corp, Corp, we don’t have enough rifles.,,what am I going to use for the war?”

The corporal grabbed a broom, sawed off the bottom, and handed it to the soldier. “Here, use this instead.” (yes, we all know that this bit is BS because any infantry corporal would already have at least one Handle, Broom, Soldiers, For the Instructing Of immediately to hand)

“How is this going to work?”

“When you see the bad guys coming at you, just point it at them and say ‘Bullets bullets bullets'”.

So the soldier ran out with his new “rifle”. But soon he came running back “Corp, we don’t have enough bayonets!”

The corporal tossed a piece of string at the private. “When you see the bad guys coming, throw this at them and say ‘Stab Stab Stab.‘”

The soldier was all ready for his war. He was sitting in his hole, hating being out there, when he saw an enemy creeping along the top of a nearby hill.

He grabbed his broom, pointed it at the bad guy and said “Bullets bullets bullets” and he fell down dead.

“Wow! this really works” he thought. He started going through the bush when another enemy jumped out so he threw his string at him and said, ‘Stab Stab Stab!‘. The enemy fell down, dead.

Pretty soon, he saw another guy rampaging through the woods. He pointed his broomstick at him and yelled, ‘Bullets bullets bullets!’ Nothing, so he did it again, ‘Bullets bullets bullets!’ The guy was running at him now. He threw the string, Stab Stab Stab!’ The enemy plowed him over, mortally wounding him.

Then he heard the big guy mumbling as he went past him “Tank Tank Tank.”

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The Cabbage Heads

Weekly Photo Challenge: Escape | The Daily Post.

Weekly Photo Challenge: The Sign Says | The Daily Post

Posted on 1 June 2013 by SJPONeill

Random signs from travels…

Cash Convertors is a popular franchise here for trading second-hand goods – this is a clever take on its common nickname – a very cool shop in Palmerston (NOT the one that John Cleese described as the world’s most boring city!) that has (or did last time we drove through that way) an excellent section for pre-loved science-fiction toys and collectibles…

The Bookabach sign for the Chalet – not sure if it actually gets any attention as most traffic cranks down the hill by where the sign is…

Saw this in a mall near El Segundo in LA – I still think it’s quite cool how Americans so openly support their military, regardless of the background politics…

The Big Apple in Waitomo has finally been given a new coat of paint and these young ladies had to check it out before making an credible effort at the ‘Big-Az’ ice creams they sell next door…

A morale-raising site that I thought I’d never see again – best breakfasts in the world at Din’s Diner in Singapore…

I think this was in one of the opportunity shops I visited on my last day in Florida in 2011…

We had dinner here one night when we were in Salisbury in 2005 for the inaugural ABCA Coalition Lessons Analysis Workshop. Some many of the buildings have their date of origin on them…’1750 and we don’t mean the time…!’

Weekly Photo Challenge: The Sign Says | The Daily Post.

Brisk

Posted on 29 May 2013 by SJPONeill

If ‘Brisk’ was a photo challenge theme, my entry would be this morning because brisk begins with brrrrrrr….

We have uber-excellent thermal curtains over all the windows and multiple layers of insulation in all the external surfaces of the Lodge + double glazing on some of the windows (we’re running a rolling replacement programme). The curtains have a secondary effect of blocking out the light which is great for clear full moony nights and daylight saving when the sun comes up at uncivilised times. In winter, however, there is a risk that the lack of light will induce professionally unrewarding sleep-ins so we have a double-glazed skylight in the hallway by the rear bedrooms.

I thought that it seemed a bit dark this morning and here’s why…

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…a good 20cm of snow on the skylight, seen here as it started to thunk off the roof – no one questions this morning about the ‘why’ of a steep pitched roof…

…the earth moves…

Posted on 28 May 2013 by SJPONeill

I’ve been marking uni assignments the last couple of days and at times my head has been spinning but I was quite unprepared for another movement of the earth yesterday afternoon – enough to shake the house for a few seconds and one of the dogs even raised its head for a quick look around before going back to sleep. Pretty hohum, I guess, for Cantabs but it’s been a while since we felt one here…3.3 on the scale and ‘only’ 5 km deep… Quake 27 may 13

The little ‘I shot down a MiG’ star indicates the epicentre of yesterday’s rumble in relation to the Mountain (looking nicely white already), with reporting ‘feelings’ indicated by the baby blue boxes in (from bottom to top) National Park, Raurimu and Owhango…

Checking out the GeoNet site this morning, it looks like Mother Earth is ‘easing springs’ at the moment as there has been a string (at least two dozen) of minor shakes since then in an arc from New Plymouth to White Island…