And then there were none…

 And then there were none…

This past weekend was a highly enjoyable one, largely because of the excellent play at Kapiti College entitled ‘And Then There Were None’. Debbie was the producer of the play, which meant that she did a whole heapin’ bunch of work. I helped out here and there, drawing the t-shirt picture, helping with posters and tickets and such, and going along to one rehearsal and all 4 performances to be a generally helpful lurker. I even did front-of-house for one show so that Debbie could actually watch the show.

The whole experience was incredibly satisfying and quite inspiring. The students did an amazing job in all aspects – front of house, lighting, props, sound, makeup, and of course acting. The play was about 2 hours 10 minutes long, with no singing or dancing breaks, so it was a pretty intense acting job for the cast. They pulled it off with style, being both convincing and impressive.

The first two shows were sold out, with the second two being more than two thirds full. The audiences were all very receptive, though Friday night’s audience was probably the most vocally responsive.

There were a great many excellent things about the experience, just a few of them being:

A great bunch of students. Everyone involved was a thoroughly decent sort of person.

An excellent show – even after seeing it 3 times, I still really enjoyed watching it.

The genki feeling that accompanies any successful production. It’s a nice, inclusive kind of celebration. Even though my involvement was fairly peripheral, I still felt like I could really celebrate with Debbie and the cast and crew.

The awesome music video DVD that Siobhan made. Really striking, and it made me crave the software that created it.

The support from family and friends. About 11 of our family and friends came to see the show, which was very sweet of them.

Seeing some of my students come along to support the Arts. It’s nice that the rivalries between schools need not stop students from enjoying each other’s achievements.

So, the production was great, I got to meet some great students and see them excelling at something they were passionate about, and I got to have some fun along the way. And people said nice things about my t-shirt design, which is always a plus.

My congratulations to all involved, staff and students, and my thanks to everyone who supported the show by coming along to see it!

Good Meeting

 Good Meeting

Yesterday we had a Kapcon meeting, and it was very positive. Things are going well, preparations are well in hand, and it was a lot of fun.

Thanks everyone!

There were a few moments of note:

*The idea of an auction, selling off some of our Kapcon Hunks to raise money. A certain person suggested dressing one of our most popular Kapcon GMs in a dog collar for the auction, which raised more than one eyebrow.

*The idea of a cheese vest, coupled with a wide brimmed hat filled up with crackers. The idea of eating body-warmed cheese off someone (the same someone who made the dog-collar suggestion) caused some consternation.

*The idea of having a wheel of Brie as a prize, possibly for the cheesiest game or character, was also an amusing suggestion (and lead, through a surprisingly short number of twists and turns, to the cheese-vest.

Lots of people are helping, nobody is overwhelmed yet, and things are looking really good for a great Kapcon. I say hooray!

It will kill us, kill us!

 It will kill us, kill us!

The mountain of marking just keeps growing. It makes me a sad panda.

I marked 1 class set of film essays today, so there are just 4 more to go. Plus Y12 film reviews, Y13 short answers from their exams, Y12 short text essays (about 100), Y13 portfolios, and Y9 film assignment bits and pieces.

I will not be despondent. I shall mark like crazy, until all the marking is done*. Then I will celebrate by not marking any work for several hours.

*Not all in one sitting. I expect to be marking like crazy until this time next week, when I head back to Wellington hospital to get my eyelid surgerised.

Kapcon Blog

Kapcon Blog

Don't know if it will prove ultimately useful, but I set up a Kapcon Blog:

http://kapcon.blogspot.com

It has a list of LARP characters on it! 

Pesky DVD Software

 Pesky DVD Software

Harumph. The world of the PC is not being kind to me this week. I have a student video that I want to burn to DVD, and a variety of different problems are throwing themselves in my path. There are 2 computers with working DVD drives that don't have the requisite software, and one computer that should be able to do it for me, but keeps crashing when it tries to convert the files.

Poop.

And there is a fully functioning, ready to go computer taunting me from the very locked library. I shall have to find a solution to this little problem shortly, as the disc has to be in the mail today.

There are also DVD drives that I'd like to buy, but they're out of stock until a mysterious date somewhere in October, so that doesn't help much either.

Ah well, a solution shall no doubt present itself, even if it is just to email the organisers and tell them that we're sending in a VCD, or a DVD on CD or similar.

Back to the problem solving!

Back to work!

 Back to work!

Well, not actual work, but back to marking.

The break was decidedly nice, my nephew is a cute wee fellow, and it's nice to be home. Debbie and I walked around and up the Mount, which was very nice. I saw a sign, which informed me that the Mount (Mauao) is 232 metres high, and the base track is 3.4km long. I greatly enjoyed the walk around, and survived the climb up, so that was good.

It was really nice to see my family, including the new addition, and to have a chance to hang out. I also collected lots of interesting stuff to watch and listen to, which should keep me entertained for many months to come. I am particularly looking forward to sitting down and wathching the new Doctor Who series - well, the recent series with Christopher Eccleston in it. Not exactly new now, but we managed to miss all but 2 episodes on TV.

We bought a new camera before we went away on holiday, which is neat. It's all little and lightweight, and with a 512mb card in it it has plenty o storage space. I may post a photo or two from the holiday if I get around to resizing them...

Ummm, in other news, I have way too much marking to do. Actually, it's not all that much, but it's about 20 hours more than I'd like to have to do during my holidays. Still, it has to be done, and if I can get a few hours done today, that's a few hours I won't have to cram into the Sunday before school starts up again.

I'd best get back into it - I only logged onto the internet to confirm that a student had plagiarised 2 pages of the 5 page report - which they had. Then the lure of not-work got me, and I ended up here...