Incremental Progress

Things are ticking along at the moment. The ball was this weekend, and I went to the start of it to help out with filming stuff. It was really nice to see the arrival of a student who is in recovery for a broken neck making an appearance, accompanied by the Rocky theme music. I assembled one of the most exciting pieces of kitset furniture ever yesterday - a cot which Debbie's mum very generously bought for us this weekend. It only had 5 pieces (2 ends, a base and 2 sides) so it wasn't the most difficult kit-set assemblage ever, but the instructions being sans illustrations meant I had to think about it more than I usually do :) School continues to be school, with all the associated stress and work. 'Nuff said, really. Debbie and I are both doing well - I think, after about 8 weeks, that I might be starting to get over the cold I picked up last term. I heard a student say that their GP had diagnosed them with 'The 100 Day Flu', which made me a little nervous. Of course, more often than not students are unreliable sources of information, but whatever this cold is it is persistent. Time now to go watch the second half of 'Persuasion', and try to warm up under a blankie. And maybe have a hot drink... Ahh! The cat just licked my beard! Crazy cat....

3d Baby Picture, CCAM

We had a bit of a stressful week last week. After our 20 week scan on Monday our midwife called to say there might be something wrong with the baby's heart, or the position of it. We had to wait until Friday (and a 2 hour long ultrasound marathon) to find out that it's not a heart problem, but rather cysts in the right lung.

It will need to be monitored, but at the moment it's likely to be a minor concern only. Bubs may need an operation to remove the tissue at 3-6 months. It can be a lot worse, but based on the 20 week (actually now more like 22 weeks) scan it looks like a mild case.

One side effect of having to go into Wellington Hospital for the follow-up scan was that we got a 3d scan of the baby - it was pretty good, not perfect, but worth posting:

How not to settle a class

Teacher: Right class, we need to get stuck into this quickly because I have to disappear off to Pacific Radiology at twelve. Student: Oh, what have you done mister? Teacher: Impregnated my wife. *About a quarter of the class descends into hysterics, shocked laughter, mumbled comments about "I thought he'd say he twisted his ankle or something" and occasional congratulations and thumbs-up signs* Teacher: As I was saying, we need to get straight to work on this... I knew the effect my carefully chosen words would create, but I just couldn't resist...

Sweet Ride

Last week Debbie and I became the proud new owners of a very nice family car (courtesy of Ma trading up). It's a '98 Renault Scenic, and it's a great family vehicle - plenty of room, liftback, bolt for child seat, and not too bad on fuel economy to boot. It is a sweet ride. Now we just need to get the Honda Civic warranted and registered and list it on Trademe. Anyone interested in a cheap 1990 automatic honda civic?

Terrifying racism

I was thoroughly shocked when a google search for 'porangi maori dictionary' (trying to find the definition of a word in Potiki by Patricia Grace) turned up a tirade of racist abuse on urbandictionary.com. Seriously - definitions of the word Maori contain some horrendous abuse. Of scary note is my suspicion that a kid I taught last year wrote one of the definitions. I am going to try to launch a Sherlock Holmes investigation to see if he did. *shocked*

Luke and Sam are now parents

I just got a call to say that everything went well today, and Luke and Sam's daughter is healthy and beautiful and has a full head of hair, and Sam is recovering well. Yays and congratulations!

More baby photos

These are from round one of the second scan. Apparently junior wouldn't stretch out in the right way to have his spine measured or something, so Debbie has to go back for another scan soon.

I drew some guidle lines on one picture to help people like me who find it hard to make heads or tails of these pictures sometimes. Apparently the light blobs at the front of the eyes (orbits) are the lenses.

Boy baby and writing

Our second scan claims that we are going to have a boy. These things are never infallible, but the sonographer seemed pretty sure. Also, I have finished my kiwinowrimo novel. It came in at 50,777 words. So wasteful, I could totally have left out some adjectives or articles along the way ;)

Scan today

I have reached 48,000 words. Mayhaps I will try to reach 50,000 today? I don't want to exhaust myself though... Also, today be second scan day. Yays! I must miss a meeting after school to go - oh noes! he he. Now I go to prepare Asttle test for period 4. See me go! woosh!!!!!

Novel writing

The kiwinowrimo challenge finishes on Wednesday. The idea was to write a 50,000 word novel in one month (31 days). Two weeks of the challenge were the school holidays, so despite the added pressures of the last week of term 2 being the first week, and the first week and a half of term 3 being the final bit of the challenge, I decided to give it ago anyways.

I am writing a novel about a group of students doing a Shakespeare short film contest. It's pretty squarely aimed at the teen/English department market, and I am on track to be finished by Wednesday, all going well. It's been a really fun challenge, with the camaraderie of a livejournal community to post progress to, and the discipline of a 1,612 words a day target. There were a few days when I didn't get any writing done, a few where I wrote a lot, but mostly I've been tortoising along. I will post an update if and when I do actually finish, which will hopefully be within the next few days!

44,601 / 50,000
(89.2%)

Off to collect glasses

I wonder how much of a difference they'll make? I have slightly blurry vision when reading stuff off the whiteboard from the back of the class, and I find driving in the rain at night stressful, and occasionally subtitles on TVs that are distant are hard to read. Should be good for those sorts of occasions! I also wonder whether the occasional headaches I get (like the bastard headache I had yesterday that tried to make me do no writing) are eye-strain related, and will be lessened by glassesness. Off I go to find out!

Moviefest filming: Phase One Complete

On Saturday Debbie and I headed out and did some filming for our Moviefest entry. We have completed Phase One, and have Phases Two and Three to complete. Phase Two involves each of us doing a short scene, and Phase Three will involve Gino (all going well) tieing everything together as the host.



As you can see, it's a very serious film, that's going to be totally hot.

Writing going well

Have reached the half-way mark for my teen novel that I'm writing for kiwiwrimo. It's developing nicely - I don't think there'll be much needed in the way of editing before it's submittable. In other news, planning for Moviefest is going well. We're hoping to get some shooting done this weekend, in Wellington. It's a piecemeal affair, so there's less pressure to get it all done on one day. I'm thinking I might record the host's parts myself for timing, and then see if someone with slightly better acting chops (and slightly more TV presenter looking) is available to do them properly. Now, I go in to school to carry boxes around, pick up marking (wah!), and maybe print off the first 25,000 words of the novel. I do find rereading easier with a printed out version (and when combined with the second half, I'll probably want to get some feedback, and it's quicker to give someone a printed off copy that they can write on marking style). Right, I'm outta here!

Emoetry

Two works of genius from two of NZ's emerging Emo Poets: eyes_of_winter Blood Haet LOVE. You never understand Hate LOVE Blood when I say what I want Love Hate Blood EMO ------------------------------------------------- jenni_talula Late at night Midnight in the Dark I linger, in the cemetary No one will ever understand me. Midnight. Alone. I weep. I cry. I cry because nobody in the whole world understands me. At Midnight.

Holiday times are good times

Ah, no conference today. No students. No work at all (except the mountain of marking that I'm ignoring). Instead I have written a moviefest script (first draft), pottered away on my kiwinowrimo novel, and done some shopping. Did I mention that holidays are awesome? I've also watched the third episode of Flight of the Conchords, which continues to be very good. More laugh out loud moments in this episode, but the songs didn't come across quite as well. In the recordings of live performance situations the vocals are always loud, and full of personality. The studio recordings seem to be mixed with the vocals significantly quieter, and the performances are less energetic/immediate, which is a shame because the songs are so damn awesome. The TV show is still boss, but when it comes to the songs my preference is for the live stuff. And now, I think I will do a little more writing. The target for kiwinowrimo is to write 50,000 words in one month, about 1,600 words a day. I'm currently a couple thousand words short of where I should be (I've written 13,900, should be reaching 16,130 by the end of today), so if I get a little bit done now, plus another batch after dinner, I should get close to the mark. Sunday was my most productive day to date - something like 4,000 words written. Yesterday was my least productive day - zero words written. I'm enjoying the challenge, and it's great motivation to see how other people are doing. It's all goods, I tells ya. PS: The moviefest script is not a musical. It's a retrospective about the life of a dead princess (killed by monkeys) who raised money for charity through cage fighting, and had a royal stalker. It's in the kicking it around to make it better stage. There are roles for extras, such as papparazi and fans and 'gets punched in the nuts' guy. Yay!

Awesome youtube parody

I am enjoying a very good workshop - I'm just finished the task part a little early and am also enjoying some 'free time'.

Just seeing if this slideshow works

My thrilling presentation for a conference at my school.

The other end of the day

I'm often walking home towards sunset these days, and there have been some stunning sunsets to enjoy. I've been wanting to get down to the beach and photograph one for a while now, and finally managed it today. It's not the most spectacular, but it was very nice:



(you can click for a larger version).

Very pretty. I'm hoping to get down to the beach on many more mornings and evenings, as it's a very nice place to take a walk, as well as a photo.

Flight of the Conchords TV Show roXXors

Having watched 2 episodes of the Flight of the Conchords TV show, I am entirely impressed by it. It is great. I love the Flight of the Conchords TV show. I thought that the first episode was good - maybe not quite as strong as the BBC radio show, but still very good. I love the live recordings of their music, probably moreso than a lot of the more polished studio recordings, and the TV show featured slicker versions of songs (for example, the I'm Not Crying song in the BBC radio show is a live recording, and while less polished is slightly more awesome (to my ear) than the (admittedly also fantastic) version on the TV show). That said, the song at the start of episode 2 of their TV show - Inner City Pressure - is absolute genius. Hilarious, inspired, genius. My hat (and I was wearing one today as it was fairly cold on the walk to school) is off to those very clever chaps. I loved the whole second episode, and I can't wait for next week's show :)

Early Morning Wildlife

I went for a stroll this morning, and took my camera with me. I'm not much of a photographer (though I would love to get a digital SLR camera with a couple of lenses to play with - winning one as a prize somehow is the only way that's likely to happen), but I do like to take snapshots of things from time to time.

I find the beach quite beautiful, especially on a clear day. I took a few fairly random shots, watched sand trails swirling in the wind (that was very cool), and enjoyed the fresh morning air and sunshine. These are my 2 favourite shots:





I'm only about 40 pages from finishing the third book I've read this term. That's not in any way impressive - I used to read a couple of books a week when I was a projectionist, and now I'm down to less than one a month on average. However, with the advent of reading-whilst-walking-to-work, I have managed to read almost three books in one term (five more school days to finish 40 pages, shouldn't be a problem). So, hooray for living within walking distance of my school :)

Phoenix, Holidays, Moviefest

Furniture up for grabs

Surplus to requirements: *One futon sofa bed *One old double bed (slat base plus matress) Will trade for chocolate.

Happy birthday Debbie!

Today is a very important day, being the birthday of young Debzter. So I say HAPPY BIRTHDAY!, and then I go hand in my relief for this afternoon so I can go home and say it in person :)

Baby Photo #1

This is our first baby photo:



As you can see, the baby's still quite small. From the measurement taken of the top of the skull to the bottom (end of the spine) they estimated 14 weeks and 3 days, giving a due date in early December (11th?).

Now, I've never been able to see much in ultrasounds of babies on TV, but when you're actually there, and the foetus starts doing the macarena, it's pretty awesome - and pretty easy to see that it is a tiny little person. Some of the stills from the scan are reasonably clear though - like this one that shows the head, the spine, and one arm:



Anyways, I'm sure we'll take millions of photos of our kid, but there is no question that these are the first ones :)

Happy birthday Debbie!

Today is a very important day, being the birthday of young Debzter. So I say HAPPY BIRTHDAY!, and then I go hand in my relief for this afternoon so I can go home and say it in person :)

Busy, as per usual

Reports. Major Production DVD (editing the matinee, making the DVD). Senior exam marking. I actually almost enjoyed mowing the lawn last weekend. It was certainly satisfying to tame the wild grass. If our lawn were about a third of its current size, but equally flat, I think it would not be an unpleasant chore at all. Well, a fifth of its current size. Roughly. In other thrilling news, I have taken to eating vegemite sandwiches for lunch. This is a change from the peanut butter sandwiches I ate in term 1. Sometimes I have cheese in my sandwiches too, but usually I do not. Mote it be. Lastly, I'm reading some 1990/1991 Kurt Vonnegut - a novel called Hocus Pocus. It's very good - a reflective novel told in first person by a character who is in prison, looking back over his life. The Vietnam War, education, prisons and such are its main subject matter. I'm reading it whilst walking to work, and am about half way through now. I love the feeling I get when it's time to pick a new book to read - so many choices, such a richness of variety. What will be next? It's neat. Peachy keen, even.

Rude words

Sometimes saying lots of rude words is a good way to relieve stress. Not as good as taking a holiday, I'm sure, but as a stop-gap measure, not too bad. It's not a habit I indulge when at work, or often when at home. It seems that trying to get a computer to do something is one of the main triggers for my excessive use of profanity. In other news, I spent way too many hours doing marking yesterday. And I have reports due this week. And more marking. It's all highly tragic, though somewhat ameliorated by the holiday that's coming in 3 weeks. Of course, I have to work on the first 2 days of the holidays, but there are more days after that which I will be enjoying in a big way. Lastly - I've been enjoying reading the forums for the 48 hour film competition. There's always a lot of lively discussion following the 48, and there has been some silly sour-graping this year (there is every year - no surprise when people slog their guts out for a weekend then disagree with the judges' decisions). I was a little rude to one such sour-graper: politely rude, but a lot more sarcastic than I usually am on a forum. It was fun, though not really productive. I tried to write in a helpful manner, with a little bit of a sting in the tail. Anyways, this paragraph is after a pararaph that begins with 'lastly', so it really shouldn't have any content, or even exist at all. I shall simply end with a sad fact from today: I left school so late today that it was too dark to read on my walk home. Although ending on a sad note isn't really my style, so I'll say that the reason I left so late was that I was editing a show using Premier Pro 2. Multicam function is teh awesomes. Seriously - it's a huge leap up from old PP (version 7 - ie pre version 1). It took less than 2 hours to edit together 4 cameras worth of footage of an 80 minute show :)

Well Met

Whew. Sometimes changing what you do at work can be very tiring. Last week I visited another school, and was charged with the responsibility of absorbing information rapidly for about 3 hours. It was intense, and really tiring. I was wiped out by mid-afternoon! Today, I was also out of the classroom for a lot of the day, but this time it was for a 3 hour long meeting to discuss ICT use in the school. 3. Hours. Now, I'm sure there are people who have 3 hour long meetings daily, and for whom they are not a challenge. But I was getting more than a little restless at several points in the meeting - especially when I felt we were making slow progress. Overall the meeting was great and some good stuff came out of it, but I suspect I became a little blunter and more forceful in my contributions as my patience wore down. I made many constructive comments, and am not worried that I was too pushy, but I definitely started to express myself in strong terms towards the end of the meeting. I kinda like putting ideas out in meeting type situations, as I always feel like I can back up what I'm saying, but am not so in love with my ideas that I won't listen to criticism. At least, that's how I see it ;) The end result was not a huge amount of tiredness on my part - not more than I usually have at this point in the week, anyway. But that's quite a bit in and of itself.

Movie Watching

Seen: Pirates of the Carribean 3, and Destination Earth (Jenni's Angels' 48 hour film). One was a tightly put together, funny film with awesome special effects. The other had pirates in it. Actually, they both had awesome special effects - Destination Earth had cool graphic reminiscent (sp?) of Hitchhiker's Guide, whilst Pirates had more than 3 hours of eye-candy. More. Than. Three. Hours. I enjoyed it, but I had a bit of a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach when the climactic sea-battle was about to start, and I glanced down at my watch to see that there was a whole hour left to go. I hope the 'director's' cut is shorter than the theatrical cut :) I will rant about the post-credits bit later...

Weekend Approacheth

I have had an interesting week - a visit to another school on Tuesday, and lots and lots of classes to teach. I am very much looking forward to the weekend. I started up a wiki for my year 12 class this week, and had them adding pages for their research projects. It's been quite interesting - anyone can edit any page, so there were a number of silly comments on the first day, but by the end of the second day the few silly people had pretty much settled down and are using the wiki fairly responsibly. It's kinda neat. I told them that the school would probably have a school-wide system set up before next year (I suspect moodle is going to be that system), and that they were cutting edge. I also asked them to respect the wiki's hauora, and that if they wanted to pwn each other or write comments like 'ur gay' they should do so on Bebo, not the wiki. After stressing that there's no way to retrieve work, and that anything they save over is gone for ever, the few silly kids stopped changing each other's pages. I had to explain it a couple of times, but the move from 'hey, I can anonymously screw people over' to 'hey, stop anonymously screwing people over' was pretty quick (in most cases). It's nice to see teenagers taking responsibility for their actions, or controlling their behaviour on moral grounds rather than out of fear of punishment.

Changing facial topography

I had many, many hours of sleep over the weekend. Many more than I had in the previous weekend (or any weekend since the holidays, I suspect). It was very, very good and it led to an interesting transformation. I was yawning in the supermarket (even catch-up sleep cannot defeat the yawn-inducing power of waiting at the checkout), and I put one hand up to rub my cheek lazily and discovered that my face had subtly changed shape. Gone were the swollen, puffy lower eye-lids that are standard issue for Matt during term time. Gone was the palpable delineation between sleep-deprived eyelid tissue and cheek. I'd somehow de-panda-ised my eyes, through the simple technique of getting some sleep. I am led to wonder what other changes might take place, were I to regularly get enough sleep? Might aches and pains that I have come to regard as chronic symptoms of aging in fact be signs of over-tiredness? Sadly, it's not even 3pm Monday and I can feel that I've already refilled 80% of my tiredness batteries. Le sigh. I will await the long weekend with baited breath, and after that, the holidays! (where Debbie and I are pretty keen to make another 3 Moviefest films. Or more. After all, the entry fee is only $25 and it's soooo much easier than making a 48 film. yes, this will make me tired. but at least it will be the good kind of tired. apparently i have given myself a 'no capital letters' pass for this set of parentheses. i can type in lower case with impunity as i weild my 'get out of punctuation free' card like a monopolist intent on some free parking)

Late Nights, Spending $

Interesting stats from the 48 Hour Film Competition: 490 teams started nationally 77 teams missed the deadline 24 teams MIA (I think this means they registered, but didn't show up on Friday to compete) That's a lot of short films! Our heat is on tonight, so I'll be having a late night. It doesn't start until 9.15pm. I'm looking forward to seeing (hearing) how an audience reacts to the film - Debbie reported back that there was a fair amount of laughter when she showed it at school, so maybe it's not as flat as I feared. I am curious to see how it's received. On the spending $ front, Debbie and I have been talking lately about how it's awesome to save money for future plans, and yet be able to spend $ from time to time on things that make our daily lives more pleasant. There are 2 obvious examples - a heat lamp/extraction fan combo for the bathroom, and a big LCD TV that we've bought this year. It took me a while to get my head around the idea of spending large chunks of cash on nice stuff, rather than deferring spending for some future goal. It's awesome to have made that mental shift though. The stuff we've bought hasn't stopped us from saving, but they are awesome things that we use every day. I like trying to achieve a balance where we're saving regularly, but not missing out on the simple pleasure of a non-steamy house, or a cool big TV to watch shows on (mmm, Heroes is ready to be watched when we get back from the supermarket). Continuing in this trend of sometimes buying nice stuff, I've ordered a new computer. The old beasty we've been using was a low specced machine three and a half years ago when we bought it - it'll be nice to have a mid-range modern PC to use for the next few years. The old machine might make it into a classroom at one of our schools as an editing machine for short films - it's quite capable of handling Moviemaker. I decided to spend the extra $ to get a 500gb hard drive in the new PC - I figure with video projects like the 160gb horror film, and the 150gb school production that I'm working on, 500gb is actually a reasonable size to get. Now, to the supermarket, then back for Heroes. Then, on to Wellington for our heat...

The Post Mortem Post

So - how did we do in our first 48 outing with a Kapiti team? * Ideas - good premise, some good scenes, but split focus between 3 groups (class of students, teacher, guidance counsellor): 7/10 * Humour - some good jokes, especially towards the end, but a slow (joke-lite) start: 5/10 * Technical Stuff - well, you can hear all the lines and see all the peoples. No interesting camera work, OK music, sound fair but not as good as it would have been if our microphone hadn't broken some time between Saturday 7:30 and Saturday 10am: 6/10 * Working to Deadlines - had a rough cut by 11am, a safety cut (perfectly hand-inable) by 3pm, and got the more-or-less finished version (computer crashed when outputting the final final version) handed in 45 minutes early: 10/10 Overall grade for the film itself? Probably 6/10. It gets better as it goes along (the worst 2 scenes are right at the start, and they're not bad - just not particularly interesting/funny), and I quite like the last third or so. Sadly, I think we did a much better job with our practice film than with this one. Of course, the practice film took us 49 hours to put together (without driving to Wellington to hand it in), so in that sense we did much better this time. I am now very keen for Moviefest, as I wants to make more short films :) PS: About 40 - 50% of our takes were unusable (had to call cut early) because of planes overhead. The fine weather sent hundreds of people up for gliding and flying around, and apparently a large number of them decided to circle around and around the school where we were filming!

All done

Another film project complete. Our tape is on its way to Wellington (the driver left about 10 - 15 minutes ago, so even with traffic she should be there a good half hour ahead of the deadline). It's very cool to have finished on time, and be into the relaxing/recovering part of the weekend. My folks happen to be in town, so I shall have to see if I can get hold of them and catch up. I'm really keen to see what other teams have put together - this year's Jenni's Angels film sounds very cool indeed. Unfortunately our heat is a 9:15er, so I shall have a late night in the middle of this week. I keep waiting for a quiet week, and forgetting that down-time exists aplenty - it's called the middle of the holidays. I don't think we'll make it to the 9:15 Jenni's Angels heat (also a weeknight), so we shall have to make cunning arrangements to see their film (or go to the regional finals to see it, or wait for the national finals on C4 ;) ) Lastly, does anyone want 2 tickets to see High School Musical on Tuesday at 7.30pm? We have 2 spare tickets, and could fastpost them to you if you're keen.

48 - Another Update

Well, it's 8:30pm on Saturday night. We've had one or two hitches (microphone that was tested and working at 7:30am not working on set 2 hours later, for no identifiable reason*; computer refusing to boot up at 10am despite having been fine 2 hours earlier**), but things have gone relatively smoothly. We have finished shooting stuff, and have captured most of the footage. I'm now going to attempt to get an assemble edit put together before I get too tired/brain-fried to function: I figure that gives me no more than 3 hours. So far, so good. * We had a backup microphone - sadly not with us, so I had to drive home and get it. ** Computer now working, problem unknown.

48 So Far

Genre: Unnecessary Sequel Character: Gerry Reid, a hypochondriac Line: What do you call that? Prop: A rope Premise: 2 Miss With Love Sydney Poitier, a young female teacher, has just started work at what she believes to be a rough school. However, her father taught at the school a long time ago and completely changed the student body. There are no rough students, no bad behviour any more. Poitier tries to 'change' the students, but finds it disheartening as she is not really making a difference. Eventually the students realise what the problem is, consult the guidance counsellor, and hatch a plan to make their teacher feel better. Bad behaviour ensues, and Poitier finds her purpose in life again. Script = 75% written, and looking quite filmable. Huzzah!

More Quotage

Robert Anton Wilson again: What the alpha males had forgotten was that the science of weaponry had already evolved to the point where even a small minority of angry, rage-filled people could blow the whole planet to hell. Even if they had understood this, it is doubtful that the alpha males would have tried to create a world in which it was impossible for anybody to get that angry. Such a goal would have seemed Utopian to them. They could not guess that it was actually a necessity on any advanced technological planet. Reading en route to work continues to be the knees of a bee. At the current rate, I should be able to finish a couple of books per term just in the time it takes me to walk to school and back. That is awesome (and environmentally friendly!).

Successful Screening

Last night's screening of our wee short film went pretty well. At least, the second screening did. Somehow the disc we had (DVD) had gotten really badly scratched between 8am and 6pm, so at the first screening there was much skipping in the second half of the movie. Luckily we had a back-up disc, so we swapped it out (with a short delay), and the film finished OK. We still don't know how the disc got so badly scratched, given that it was in a cover all day, but at least we had a backup (3 backups actually). The second screening was to about 50-55 people (in the 60 seat cinema I was in - there were also people watching it in the 30 seater), and there was a very positive response. People laughed at (most of) the jokes, and even seemed a little creeped out by a couple of the death scenes. It was a great way to finish a project - with some positive feedback - and I'm very, very glad that I no longer have to work on that film. It ended up being 46 minutes long - we cut it back quite ruthlessly to get it as fast-paced as possible. We even cut out a whole scene at the start, just to get things moving more quickly. Anyways, I am much relieved to have that over and done with. I am looking forward to watching some of the cast and crew interviews that some enthused students recorded last night, and deleting the ridiculous 170gb project off the hard drive. Oh, and I've changed the blog to black, since Mundens wrote about Blackle. Small steps, but positive ones.

It's Monday!

That means 5 days to the weekend! Yes, I have just about recharged my tiredness cache, after only 3 weeks of term. This means that I will be working at maximum tiredness for another 7 weeks. I suspect that the 48 may not help on the tiredness front, but might be a good boost on the creativity side of things. Now I must race to the staff room to drink water - having taught 3 lessons and run a detention already today means I haven't had much time to myself. And I ate a bunch of quite spicy bujah mix. Mmmm, spicy. Whoosh!

Friday's Quote

From my walking-to-school reading, Robert Anton Wilson's 'Universe Next Door' (Schrodinger's Cat): "Right Wingers?" astronomer Bertha Van Nation was trilling. "We've got real Right Wingers out in Orange County. Let me tell you about the Committee to Nuke the Whales..."

Awesome t-shirt

I got a pretty kick-ass present in the post yesterday - a t-shirt from the Christchurch Art Gallery with the image "From Mickey to Tiki tu meke" by artist Dick Frizzell printed on the front. My brother has good taste in t-shirts.



Reminder to self: leave school early enough to get home, collect mother's day present, and get it in the post. Posting the present is essential to it arriving.

Square Eyes

Seen: Spiderman 3 - Loved it. Laughed a lot at badass-emo-spidey. Picadilly Jim - an enjoyable Wodehouse-based film which came out recently on DVD. Some minor modernizations, but wonderfully fun and quite 30's in feel. Thirteen - a rambling tale of 'good girl gone bad'. Wasn't fun to watch, and didn't really open my eyes to much of anything - but I work with teenagers, and they aren't shy about talking about their escapades in class (to other students, but loud enough for the whole world to hear). Not a bad film, and one that I'd been curious about for a while, but not one I'd recommend to anyone either. Wasabi - a surprisingly fun French/Japanese action film starring Jean Reno. I was expecting action and crazy outfits, and the humour was a pleasant bonus. Star Wars 3: Revenge of the Sith? Rise of the Sith? Something of the Sith anyway - there were parts of the film that I had no recollection of, since I saw it late one Friday at the cinema, and may have actually slept through some bits. On the whole, I quite liked it, but it was a weak, weak script in places, and some of the action scenes went on longer than was interesting for me. Still better than Phantom Menace. No parent teacher interviews, evening shows, or other disruptions this week. Just a regular week of school. It's a little surprising how appealing this is - though I guess I was out and about on school business 2 evenings in each of the first 2 weeks, which is quite a time commitment.

One more quote, 2 more classes

"When marriage is outlawed, only outlaws will have in-laws" Wonderfully silly stuff. In other exciting (for me) news, I only have 2 classes between now and the weekend - one in a computer lab, with students beavering away on creative writing and reassessments, and one with my Y12 class looking at Shawshank Redemption. Neither of these should contain unpleasantness, and then it's weekend time for 2 glorious days. I expect to do a modicum of work (editing, gardening, laundry etc.), and a lot of not-doing-work. I suspect a trip to Porirua to see Spiderman 3 is on the cards too (most likely a morning session, as they're less crowded). I walked to school both yesterday and the day before, in spite of forecasts of rain and yukkiness. I carried an umbrella (actually I wore it between my bag and back, sticking out to either side), but was pleased not to need it. I've read close to a hundred pages of the novel I'm reading this week during the walk to school. This is fantastic. Lastly, I'll mention the fact that once people know you can do something, the chances of you being asked to do it increase dramatically. Far too many people at school now know that I'm reasonably good with technology (ie I can plug in a VCR), and I can edit and film stuff. Today some students asked me to edit a video-record of the school ball. This could get burdensome quickly - I think I need to train me a team of students to do the work for me. On the other hand, mulitcam editing in Premiere Pro 2 is apparently quite easy (real-time display of up to 4 cameras, with switching between them done by clicking or keyboard). This will make mixing cameras for live events much easier. Now I go to tidy my office - it's looking a little embarrassingly messy. It's been a hectic couple of weeks, what with major production, Shakespeare festival (which was neat), and parent teacher interviews. But time has come to get tidy, dammit - or to get tidy enough that I don't feel ashamed of my workspace :)

Because it's there

Today I spent 2 or 3 minutes trying to balance my umbrella with its tip in the palm of my hand. Because I happened to have an umbrella, and 2 minutes walking to do. It was a surprisingly pleasant endeavour. Purposeless, slightly challenging (my umbrella-balancing skills leave a lot to be desired), and simple. I wonder whether I ought to do more pointless tasks, as there is a purity to the enjoyment derived from them. I would generalise about boys here, and say that boys love setting themselves silly challenges for the hell of it. I would suggest that there's a charming simplicity to some male minds, and the entertainment that they can generate. But that would be me projecting my simple mind onto others, and reading their behaviour in a way that supports my own view of the world. And it would fail to acknowledge that girls share the same grey-matter as boys, and also participate in challenge-for-challenge-sake activities. I have been reading the Historical Illuminatus trilogy on the way to and from work (one of the joys of walking - it allows an extra 10 to 15 minutes reading time each way). I am up to the wilderness diaries of the main character - fragments of thought from a character who has built a log cabin and taken to meditating and being, in isolation. There is much goodness in this section of the trilogy, and I will quote two small parts here: "I am as unimportant to the ants as a man in China is unimportant to me. More: I can imagine the man in China. I doubt that the ants can imagine me." "Today, suddenly, I encountered a quite large brown-ish bear in the woods. I was careful not to do anything threatening (I had my rifle, but did not want to be forced to shoot so noble a beast). Some ancient instinct told me not to run away. I pretended to ignore the huge animal, as if I had more important affairs on my mind. Then I saw out of the corner of my eye that the bear was doing exactly the same pantomime: he was using identical body signals - the same body "language," I might even say - to signify that I was not of any concern to a bear of his royal stature. We moved off, in opposite directions, all the time signaling that we were too busy to be bothered with lesser creatures. I would call this a case of Mask as body language."

Progress made: a long way still to go

Show number one is about 70% assembled - actually, it's about 50/73rds assembled, whatever that works out to as a percentage. Show number two may possibly go faster, as I should be able to get Adobe Premier Pro 2 installed on my laptop (my school's discs showed up again - now all I need is the serial number (which is neither on the discs nor the case). Short film has been watched again, and notes made. Managed to tidy up the first 20 minutes to near-presentation level yesterday.