Content Free Since Term 1!

Being on holiday is not conducive to me blogging. Many exciting things have happened. I will write about 2 of them: Nocturnum Session One I ran the first session of a 19-episode Call of Cthulhu campaign for Debbie, Luke and Sam this week. It was a very Old Skool Cthulhu adventure, complete with shotguns. We spent about 5 hours playing, which is actually a pretty long session for us. Our Thursday games tend to be an action packed 2 and a half hours, so this was a double-hit. The choice of Cthulhu d20 is an interesting one, and one which I am pretty happy with. Fortunately Luke is very familiar with d20, and I've played in enough games to know the basics. It had a couple of distinct advantages over BURPS: - Hit Points. The characters are 4th level, giving them 4d6 hitpoints to start with. This means that they all start around the upper range of what a classic Cthulhu character would have, with attacks doing similar amounts of damage. - Healing. With hospital care the characters regained hit points in a matter of days, when classic Cthulhu would have required months of bedrest. - Leveling Up. At the end of every adventure, the PCs will level up (this is generous - the rulebook recommends every other adventure. However, given that the party is half the size of the usual, twice the advancement seems fair). They will gain improved skills, more HP, feats, stat improvements and such. They'll get tougher as the odds against them get worse. All this means that the characters might actually survive to see the second half of the campaign. This is a great thing, as too many Cthulhu campaigns go from serious to silly as you churn through characters. I had a good time running it, we had a few giggles over one or two 'classic' d20isms (such as briefcases - with traps!), and I'm looking forward to next session. 48 Film Competition I'm super excited about this. We had a meeting yesterday, and it felt good to see that we've learned some stuff from last year. It's also good that there isn't a LARP on the same weekend :) I am on the editing team, and Debbie is going to be the 2nd AD (extra wrangler and general troubleshooter) and hopefully an actor as well (the two should work together fine). We have bagsied a place to sleep at Norman's, just in case the editing of Saturday's footage needs doing overnight. It's a great bunch of people, with some awesome talent to draw on. The challenge is to channel all that fantastic creative energy and good will into something that comes across on screen, on time. I am confident and optimistic and excited. I also feel that we all have the fact that we missed the deadline as one of the tools in our utility-belts: we can all dig deep or push a little harder to get things done because we know we have to. Squee!

Just for Jenni

Cats. They are the most beautiful and elegant creatures in the world. Sometimes I look at my cat and I really understand why the Egyptians worshipped them. In, like, ancient times. I don't think they worship them any more, but they should, because cats are so totally Cockney. Today my cat was walking across the room when it stopped. Then it walked some more. It was so cute! Later it was sleeping, and I was all, "wow, that's so CUTE!". Because my cat is cuter than yours.

Queen of a Kingdom of Biscuits and Sleep

Ah, holidays. A fine, fine time. Debbie and I are greatly enjoying the not-being-at-work. There have been many fun things so far, including:

• A birthday party, complete with medical drama!
• Several films and vids.
• Boardgames and chocolate and visiting family
• Text messages from Italy and England
• Some sleeping in
• A really nice vegetable soup
• Choosing of birthday presents (toys!)

We have also had time to observe the sleeping patterns of our cat, and have noted that as the weather grows colder, the amount of time she spends not-on-the-bed becomes very, very small. We can go out for the whole day, and return to find the cat in exactly the same position. Now, she may have moved as far as her bowl to eat some biscuits, but the amount of cat hair that she sheds on the bed would suggest that that is the limit of her adventuring. She also lurks around in the morning and starts trying to push us out of bed at around 8-9am, so she can steal the warm bits of the bed. She will do charming things like lie across our feet, or walk up and down on the pillows (and our heads), or try to squeeze in between us and purr loudly in our ears. Hmmm, I think this is the most that I have ever blogged about my cat. Yay me!

First reviews in for Game Chef

Yay! Feedback! I have posted my 4 reviews on the game chef forums, and have had 2 reviews of my game posted so far. They are here: http://www.1km1kt.net/forum/ftopic838.html Some positive things in there. If nothing else, one reviewer said of my example of play: "the example of play is friendly (and for once, sounds like an actual example of actual play)" The other said: "The example of play isn’t really that helpful. It is funny to read, but it doesn’t really seem to clarify any of the game concepts. " Hooray for example of play! I think it was Svend's suggestion. Anyways, I feel like once again I have learned a bunch about how games are put together, and have a sense of accomplishment at having finished a project - even a silly 5 page one like 'We Have the Technology'. Now I just need to file away all these gems of wisdom for next year :) Oh, and one of my reviewers is in the games club which Morgue started. Small world! Next project: Kapcon SDC scenario. I shall finish the one I started after K13, then work on a second idea I had a couple of weeks ago.

The Power of Positivity

I've been thinking a lot lately about how important it is to stay positive. It's tiring work being a teacher, and it's possible to get bogged down in all the little stuff, and lose sight of the awesome goodness that is going on around you. Some concrete examples, and thoughts of late: *Being asked to video-tape an event like a school concert can be viewed as extra work, which is seldom a welcome thing (especially at the end of a term). On the other hand, you can look at it as an opportunity to see a bunch of students excelling and enjoying themselves in a different context. Popping in to a rehearsal for 5 minutes today was enough to give me a marked boost of enthusiasm for an upcoming concert, and I am now fully committed to and positive about the filming (compared to my prior ambivalence). *Making positive comments about ideas suggested by students, even when I don't necessarily agree with them, can result in improved rapport with the student in question. Something as simple as saying "that's an interesting take on things," or teasing out more detail with "I like what I'm hearing, take it a step further," acknowledges that the student is trying, and gives them opportunities to keep working and contributing. *Simple positive reinforcement can be surprisingly effective. Asking "who's going to the awesome concert on Friday?" rather than "who's going to the concert on Friday?" can make a difference. Just one word, if used in the right place, or used repeatedly, can reinforce a message. The same is true of the reverse - using negative language can erode the goodwill and enthusiasm of students. It can be a nasty spiral if I'm having trouble with a class - I am not pleased with their efforts, so I have to tell them off, so they feel bad about themselves or not encouraged, so they lower their effort, so I have to tell them off… Fortunately it works well the other way around, with compliments feeding good behaviour feeding compliments. I've been noticing this pattern with Kapcon too. The better Kapcon gets, the higher people's expectations rise. The more people expect, the more GMs and organizers deliver. There have been massive advances at Kapcon over the past 6 - 8 years, due to a lot of hard work and some great positive feedback. Keeping that post-Kapcon buzz going is a challenge, as it naturally dips as people get into the routine of the year. Confusion should be a good boost, as will BOD (which Debbie and I are now planning to fly down for). One of the best things that individuals can do to help promote Kapcon is to tell their friends about it, and to spread the word about all the awesome stuff that goes on at Kapcon. Positive word of mouth is by far the best tool for promoting and building Kapcon. Improvements are being made year-by-year, thanks to the suggestions of attendees and the injection of fresh volunteer blood every couple of years (the current pattern sees front-people running Kapcon twice, then handing it off to someone else. This is a huge commitment from the front-people, and it has clearly paid off in 2 ways - each person has introduced refinements of the systems each year, and there is a growing support group of people who have run highly successful conventions, who help mentor and guide the new blood). It's important to look around sometimes and appreciate how much support and how much positive energy there is around - in a school, a social group or an organisation. I've got a lot to be positive about, and a lot to be thankful for. So I say a heart kia ora to my whanau, my friends and my colleagues, and I send positive vibes in a broad spectrum to you all. Ka pai. Tino pai. [Yes, I think I have now exhausted my knowledge of Te Reo Maori. Except for a few snippits of a mihi, and the awesome phrase "Kei te kanikani ahau", which means "I am dancing".]

Surviving the ultimate week of endurance teaching

 Well despite my fears I have made it to the weekend end of this week more-or-less intact and not too exhausted. This week was the uber-week of the term and I seriously feared that it might beat me within an inch of my sanity/fatigue threshold. Strenuous levels of teaching were required and I think it would not be an exaggeration to say I spent more hours at school (and doing school related activities) than at home this week. Monday had a meeting that went until after my stomach wanted its dinner and it was getting dark outside. A long day but not exactly the stuff of legends I grant you. However, that was just the start of the week. Tuesday was a long teaching day followed by film club writers meeting. This meeting went for 2 hours and my growling stomach's wrath was only slightly abated by fruit bursts and chocolate-coated Girl Guide biscuits*.

Wednesday was my class Noho. This meant that at the end of the school day I went straight to the school marae to spend the next 24 hours with my beloved students. I arrived a little after 4 O'clock to find my Year 9 running around outside the Wharenui with a rugby ball screaming and laughing. I braced myself for the time to come. Last year I had naively encouraged as much running around during the afternoon as possible. I wanted the students to exhaust themselves so that they would fall asleep at a reasonable hour in the evening. I discovered that students take about 22-23 hours to get tired enough to be quiet and fall asleep. Midnight jogs and busy evenings don't stop the talking and giggling until 4 am. They fall asleep on the bus ride home at the end of the camp - not during the night. I realised that the noise and hyper activity was just a taste of what was to come.

The afternoon and evening was pretty full on and I snapped many a photo of their activities. They played trust games and Fruitbowl (kind of like Midnight but in pairs) and then had a talk from the school Kaumatua about tikanga and the history of the school marae. After dinner they went in groups and designed wearable arts clothes out of newspaper and had a fashion parade. As usual, it resulted in several boys wearing skimpy, over-the-top dresses and strutting their stuff. One lad was subjected to a makeover by the girls in his group and had heavy eyeliner, foundation and pink lipstick which he then couldn't get off completely.

They then had a presentation on astronomy and went star gazing on the field led by the school astronomy club. Unfortunately it was a bit cloudy so we couldn't see as much as usual but they still enjoyed it and asked a lot of questions.

They then had to make supper, clean up, set up their beds in the wharenui and make their lunches for the following day. They were in duty groups and the only ones getting off lightly were the breakfast crew who had to get up at 5.30am the following morning. It is always fascinating to watch groups of young teens doing chores. Some have obviously never made their sandwiches for themselves or done vacuuming. They have no clue but then seem to really enjoy it and appear quite chuffed with themselves when they complete something to an acceptable standard. I guess a lot of kids have their parent doing everything for them and it must be quite empowering for them to know they are able to do these things themselves. It reminded me of the Celia Lashley book "He'll be OK" about teen boys and how they need to learn how to take care of themselves as part of growing up. Several of the boys seemed really proud of their sandwiches and that they made their own bed.

After all the chores and supper, they had about 30 minutes of free time before going to bed. What is interesting about a Noho is that it is everyone sleeping in the same place - boys, girls, teacher all on mattresses in the Wharenui. It is different from camp in that it isn't just one group of people in a tent or cabin - if one person snores or a couple of people talk noisily it affects everyone who isn't a heavy sleeper. Many of the kids seemed quite freaked out at the idea of sleeping in the same place as the opposite sex and with their teacher. I find the whole experience interesting having now been to 3 nohos in my life. I'm a light sleeper and often don't sleep well with noises and snoring around but there is something quite nice about a noho. It does create a real sense of being like a family when you all sleep in the same place. I think the students start thinking of you more as a human than a teacher too when they see you in pyjamas and a sleeping bag. I think there are also many protocols that are a real boon from managing kids point of view. Pillow fights are culturally forbidden and they know the wharenui is a place of peace so they aren't allowed run or jump and food/drink is prohibited. They were pretty good at settling and most people got some sleep - except those next to the snorers. I brought earplugs but even so only snatched a few hours sleep before it was 5am and time for me to get up.

Last year I found that getting through all the packing and cleaning up after breakfast was very time consuming and we nearly weren't ready by the time the bus arrived. This year I was far more organised and inflicted military-like precision on all the duty groups. They worked well (except for a couple that who tried to sneak off and avoid helping out - they were made to clean the toilets) and we were packed and ready to go with 30 minutes to spare. I got them posing for photos and then we played some touch rugby until the bus arrived. Then we were off to our activity day. The morning was spent abseiling and rock climbing and was pretty fun. Unfortunately several kids starting getting hungry early and started smuggling food up to places they weren't supposed to. I wouldn't have really objected except that they were littering so I had to tell kids off which wasn't fun. The other thing that wasn't so good was that the place where our school usually goes was a public facility that had changing rooms, toilets, an abseiling wall and amazing bush walks. Last year it was sold to private owners. The rock where they do the rock climbing was still available but nothing else. The kids had to use a port-a-loo and in spite of being told it was only for 'number ones', one boy loudly announced that he "forgot and had taken a big dump" in it. The only students who braved the port-a-loo after that were the ones wanting to see if 'it' was still in there. 'It' was and most of the boys opted for going in the bush and the most girls stopped drinking fluid. After a quick lunch we headed for the river where rafting, swimming and jumping off the big rock into the river took place for a couple of hours. The guys who were running it had a cute dog that swam about with the kids and jumped in the rafts - though it always bailed before they hit the rapids.

It was nice seeing them all have such a good time and I was happy with how well my photos came out. I have several ones of some posy jumps and dives that look very impressive.

As one girl said, "it was the most fun in one day she had ever had." By the time we were in the bus everyone was pretty exhausted and I have some cute photos of the back row on the bus being four boys asleep leaning on each other like dominos.

Unfortunately when I got back to school I couldn't just go home and to bed. I had Parent Teacher interviews starting at 6pm. I had to rush home and have a shower and guzzle a steak sandwich. When I finally did get home I was actually shaking from tiredness or possibly too much caffeine. My hands would stop trembling. It was a nice reunion with Matt though - it felt like we hadn't seen each other for ages.

Morally, my week should have ended there. But there was still Friday to survive. The day itself was OK and most of my classes were enjoyable enough but I found the tiredness was producing clumsiness. I kept forgetting what I was saying mid-sentence and walking into things. However, the end of the day came quickly and my last period was with my form class so I told them that I'd show a data show of all my 200 photos if they worked well for the first 40 minutes. They did in spite of being very tired and watching the photos was really lovely. A nice way to end the day.

I am glad it is now the weekend and that next week is a short week. I would like to finally get around to writing the Part 2 post to the Kapiti Roleplaying Weekend. Maybe after a sleepy my mind won't be so fuzzy.

* Which surprisingly I like less than the regular non-chocolate Girl Guide biscuit. About the only biscuit I can think of that isn't better for having a slap of chocky on the underbelly. Maybe if they made chocolate-coated gingernuts I would feel similarly towards them. Some biscuits suit the plain, honest no fuss exterior. Simple, dunking cookies whose straightforward flavour is best when not competing for attention with the pretension of an additional taste**.

** Wine club has increased my ability to waffle on about the flavours. It's all about adjectives and ideally a personification or two.

Weather, whether... wether?

I have added a new word to my vocabulary. Apparently a wether is a castrated goat. Who knew? Probably a lot of goat farmers and enthusiasts (I didn't want to say goat fanciers, as I have heard terrible stories about Palmerston North...). I am keenly awaiting reviews of my Game Chef game, even though they will be terrible. I saw a game that I thought was really quite good score 17/50! I hope I make it into double figures for at least one review, or at least get a positive comment somewhere. Still, even if it's all accurate and derogatory, I shall not let it get me down. I enjoyed the experience, and it has forced me to read other entries, and in doing so I feel like I've learned a lot about game design. [When your existing knowledge is limited, it's easy to feel like you've learned a lot. It's similar to having a buck in your pocket, and through hard work earning another dollar. You've still only got $2, but you've doubled your wealth!)]

Home Alone

Man, time flies when you're wasting time on the internet. I had plans for tonight, like tidying up and folding laundry and all kinds of chore-doing, but I only got about an hour of useful stuff done. Then I read blogs and NZRaG and looked at geeky toys (like USB enclosures and laptop hard drives to make a portable hard drive) and read more blogs and 1km1kt and such, and now it's late. I think I'd better go do the dishes, tidy up some laundry, and look at going to bed. That's not exactly fun, but it ain't getting any earlier... In fun news, emails about the 48 hour film competition have started bouncing around, and I am all kinds of keen :)

Sensory Overload

This weekend was quite something. There was a nice balance of being at home relaxing, and going out and seeing cool stuff. Friday Lots of Chardonnay. 7 different NZ wines, with blind tasting and analysis (of a very crude kind. Comments like 'it really attacks the gum line' and 'plenty of tang in the sinuses' are not the most refined). Saturday A trip down to Wellington to have lunch, see a brilliant exhibition at the civic gallery, watch V for Vendetta, and then spend a highly pleasant evening at Jenni and Lee's. The exhibition is by an Australian artist called Patricia Piccinini. It's called 'In Another Life', and it's a mix of photographs (with cute/odd creatures photo-shop'd in), sculptures that were both beautiful and cute and creepy, and odd cute technology stuff like li'l baby trucks. I found it to be a fascinating exhibition, as it was masterfully skilleriffic, beautiful, and combined emotions of comfort, familiarity, the alien, and sadness. Quite moving, and incredibly impressive. Me liked it. V for Vendetta has leapt into first place of my favourite comic-book adaptations. It is teh awesome. And the fine company of people who happened to be seeing another film at the same time as us was wonderful, even if some of them did make comments about Jake and Heath using their flatulence for fart-fishing (like dynamite fishing, only you stick your arse in the water). Wedding photos were lovely. Sunday 2 episodes of Miss Marple (at about 1 hour 20 minutes each), plus 4 episodes of Lost (thanks J&L!), with breaks in between for marking (the horror!) and going for a walk. We ate soup, too, which was lovely. Monday Back in the saddle again. Just 9 more teaching days to go, and on one of those I'll be off on a course!

Night time trucks