Hey, you look kinda tired? Doing alright there?

Oh, me? Yeah, I’ve just had my brain overloaded with all the wonderous services provided by Land Information New Zealand

Title card drops from the ceiling

This is a blog post, not a TV show…

Oops, wrong format, haha! So, I heard you’ve started off on this whole Code for Aotearoa business? What’s the deal with that?

So! Before we talk about Code for Aotearoa, let’s learn about Code for All.

Ah, the ol’ bait and switch?

Shush, this is my blog and I’ll write it however I feel like!

ahem

Once upon a time, well, no actually instead of retreading old ground, I’ll just refer you over to the post that Pete wrote last week.

Cheater

Well, it’s more efficient I reckon. So, how about I tell you all about LINZ.

Whoa there pal, we’ve just started! Maybe take it easy and just tell me one cool thing you learned

Hmm, yeah, considering this post is already half a week late, you’re probably right. Weird, it’s like you can almost read my mind.

Anyway, how do you feel about Hydrography?

Hydrowhat?

Hydrography!

The study of water bodies, like lakes, rivers and even the ocean.

It’s such a cool word, huh? Just kinda feels nice to say

What’s cool about water?

The temperature

ba dum tiss

No but they do a lot of interesting stuff. They’re responsible for mapping the sea. Without that information, you’d have people unaware of the depths and shallows which means a lot of beached ships.

They also are in charge of the NAVAREA alerts. Psst, ask me “What are NAVAREA alerts? It looks good when you do the big text”

What are NAVAREA alerts? It looks good when you do the big text

Oh, I put my ending quote mark in the wrong place, oops.

NAVAREAs are basically specific areas that get assigned to a government where it becomes their job to issue warnings for things like weather warnings, loose icebergs and missile launches.

Missile? Excuse me?

Yup, there have been a few cases where foreign countries have conducted missile launches in the oceans administered by LINZ.

Generally they’ll receive an email and if the warning is considered notable then within the short time of 2 hours, the following will happen:

  • The team will generate a small piece of text, intended to be beamed out to mariners
  • That message is sent to Kordia who will also record a voice over to accompany the text
  • Both are beamed up to a satellite where the message is redirected down towards our oceans so that mariners are able to receive the broadcast on their radios and other equipment

Wow, that’s actually really interesting

I told you! Keep in mind though that while there are recreational mariners, it’s the big commercial trawlers and what not who get the most use out of the broadcasts.

Well, that said, there’s actually a lot of things they’re required to carry under law but that’s a different story.

Hopefully you found this all as facinating as I did!

Until next week which, well, actually is just this week so double blog posts since mine was so late, haha.

The first week was all pretty hectic but hopefully we should be able to pick up the slack a bit and get lots of good tweets and that going on!