Blogging the Aloha State and Beyond
For its third year, HawaiiCon is moving further down the Kona coast. Organizers announced this week that the science fiction and fantasy fan convention is moving to the Mauna Lani Bay Hotel for its September 2016 gathering. HawaiiCon was born on Kickstarter, an ambitious dream that nearly 200 backers turned into...
Driving through downtown this week, I was suddenly and briefly transported to Saigon circa 1971. It turns out about a block of Chinatown near Kekaulike Market was a filming location for “Kong: Skull Island,” a big-budget monster movie due out in 2017. It instantly reminded me of the hours I spent...
A new, crowdfunded photo book documenting the “King’s Highway,” an ancient Hawaiian road that once served as the main artery for the island of Maui, has just been released. The book release party for “The Maui Coast: Legacy of the King’s Highway” will be held tomorrow at the Paia gallery of its...
Earlier this year, DevLeague — Hawaii’s largest and longest-running coding bootcamp — introduced DevLeague Prep, an on-ramp to software development for people who had little to no experience with programming. DevLeague promises to turn novice programmers into full-stack developers in a “super intense” 12-week program. But organizers found that many people...
Hawaii Pacific University, the state’s largest private university, has launched a scholarship program aimed at local high school students. Interested seniors need only share and later pitch an idea to improve life in Hawaii to be eligible for up to ten full, four-year scholarships. The #HPUBiz4Good scholarship challenge is now underway,...
When a team of pre-teens won first place in the latest Startup Weekend Honolulu last month, it was a remarkable accomplishment and milestone for the popular entrepreneurial showcase (which was won by a 16-year-old earlier in the year). But in many ways, they were just getting started. Today, Menehune Hat Clips...
This year was an El Niño year, and as expected, the Pacific saw a record number of storms this hurricane season. Miraculously, the season ended at the end of November with Hawaii escaping largely unscathed, but there has been enough wet weather to fuel a different kind of threat: an outbreak...
The Tech Pau Hana series on Hawaii Island is closing out the year with a double header this week, with two presentations exploring different facets of the energy industry. The Pacifichem 2015 conference is already underway in Honolulu, which brings together members of chemistry and chemical groups from the U.S., Canada, Japan,...
Today my youngest son Alex and I were fortunate to have the opportunity to participate in a workshop organized by the Purple Maia Foundation, using LittleBits and Minecraft to teach kids about logic gates — one of the basic building blocks of computer science. The Purple Maiʻa Foundation is dedicated to...
The Hawaii State VEX Robotics championships will be held tomorrow, bringing together 32 high school teams and their creations to face off on a 12-foot by 12-foot battlefield. Having already reached the finals in dozens of regional tournaments, the winners will have the chance to go onto the VEX Worlds Championship...
Santa Claus is beloved around the world, but there are always doubters. And one of the first questions that sometimes creeps into the mind of impressionable young people is this: how can Santa possibly visit billions of homes scattered across the planet in just one night? Wouldn’t toys for every...
Would-be shared bike riders in Honolulu now have a good idea of what their two-wheeled rides will look like. Bikeshare Hawaii today announced that it had selected Canadian company PBSC Urban Solutions as the provider of its core offering: a 1,600-bike, 183-station bike-sharing system expected to launch next summer. Bikeshare Hawaii is backed by...
One of the nation’s leading contemporary science writers will be the featured guest at a book talk hosted by Hawaii Pacific University on Friday. Sam Kean is perhaps best known for his 2010 bestselling novel The Disappearing Spoon, which led readers on an insightful and entertaining tour of the periodic table of the...
A new group for current and would-be startup founders on Hawaii Island has formed, with an inaugural pau hana meetup set for Friday. The Big Island Startups was launched only four days ago, and has already drawn more than 100 members in its first three days. To kick things off, the first Startup...
The need and demand for computer science education continues ttto grow, with more programs reaching students earlier in life, including pre-school and kindergarten kids. One such local program, Computational Thinkers, is now graduating into its own, independent space in Kahala, after running classes at a few local schools since 2013....
The world’s largest computer science education campaign kicks off again this week around the world, with hundreds of Hawaii schools counted among the more than 190,000 locations hosting an “Hour of Code.” The pitch is to provide students an accessible 60-minute introduction to show that anybody can learn the basics of computer programming. Organized in...
KTUH, the college radio station based at the University of Hawaii at Manoa, is shifting frequencies and doubling its signal strength next month. Currently broadcasting at 90.3FM in urban Honolulu and 91.1FM on the North Shore, KTUH will then be heard island-wide at 90.1FM. The student-run radio station first hit the...
Hawaii was the first state to legalize medical marijuana. But unless you were willing and able to grow cannabis on your own, it was a largely useless privilege for more than fifteen years. A practical path to medical marijuana cultivation and distribution only took root in July, with Gov. David...
It was a standing-room crowd last night at the YWCA of ‘Oahu for the “double-threat pitch-off,” a joint event organized by Sultan Ventures and Blue Startups. The former brought the Small Business Administration’s “InnovateHER” competition to Hawaii for the first time, and the latter hosted the regional finals of the international Mobile...
The Hollywood press has proudly declared a “golden age of funny women,” with the mainstream breakout success of female comedians like Amy Schumer prompting think pieces about “the last gasps of mainstream sexism.” But whether it’s a golden age or a “cubic zirconium age,” it’s actually nothing new. Funny women...
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