Wednesday, May 19, 2004
Yesterday's stuff
This date's from yesterday, when I typed it up, but the home PC crashed as usual, before I could send it.
I dunno about this place! Yesterday, we had a student collapse in the toilets. It was nothing serious as it turned out, but I was somewhat horrified to hear the staff saying things like "We're not allowed to call an ambulance," and "We can never call an ambulance." Anyone having a heart attack around here would be in real trouble! Surely this can't be policy: I think I'd better look into it. While contacting security and first aiders are both sensible, it's imperative to get real medical help as soon as possible with many emergencies.
Actually, I'm pretty sick of "We don't do that, we do this," or "We've always done it this way." Geez, I thought I was in charge :).
Enough whinging.
I sent off my first submission to Oztaku yesterday! It's a five pager that I'm pretty proud of, featuring entirely new characters. I was fairly disappointed with the first issue of Oztaku, as the artwork was generally fairly poor (apart from the always excellent David Kerr), but I expect this to improve, and would like to help out. It is a well-produced, slick-looking anthology, so better content is what it needs. As with, Xuan Xuan I expect the artists will improve in time.
I've picked up quite a few Australian comics lately (thanks to a friend who picked them up at Supernova). A story in Killeroo #2 kind of amazed and unsettled me: it was about Killeroo dealing with the recent fox problem in Tasmania, including a humanised fox. I had thought of doing this exact same story. I checked with Darren and he didn't think I'd mentioned it to him. Maybe I said it on the boards, though it seems it is probably just a case of a good idea whose time had come, occurring in parallel to two people. Very strange!
I managed to reach Michal Dutkiewicz! He returned my call yesterday and is happy to be interviewed for OzComics Magazine.
Heard Duncan Browne's "Country Song" on 3PBS on Monday. Maybe I should listen to them more often.
Tonight I'm going to session run by L.'s teacher. These are always interesting. It is an unusual school, but I like the philosophies behind it.
I dunno about this place! Yesterday, we had a student collapse in the toilets. It was nothing serious as it turned out, but I was somewhat horrified to hear the staff saying things like "We're not allowed to call an ambulance," and "We can never call an ambulance." Anyone having a heart attack around here would be in real trouble! Surely this can't be policy: I think I'd better look into it. While contacting security and first aiders are both sensible, it's imperative to get real medical help as soon as possible with many emergencies.
Actually, I'm pretty sick of "We don't do that, we do this," or "We've always done it this way." Geez, I thought I was in charge :).
Enough whinging.
I sent off my first submission to Oztaku yesterday! It's a five pager that I'm pretty proud of, featuring entirely new characters. I was fairly disappointed with the first issue of Oztaku, as the artwork was generally fairly poor (apart from the always excellent David Kerr), but I expect this to improve, and would like to help out. It is a well-produced, slick-looking anthology, so better content is what it needs. As with, Xuan Xuan I expect the artists will improve in time.
I've picked up quite a few Australian comics lately (thanks to a friend who picked them up at Supernova). A story in Killeroo #2 kind of amazed and unsettled me: it was about Killeroo dealing with the recent fox problem in Tasmania, including a humanised fox. I had thought of doing this exact same story. I checked with Darren and he didn't think I'd mentioned it to him. Maybe I said it on the boards, though it seems it is probably just a case of a good idea whose time had come, occurring in parallel to two people. Very strange!
I managed to reach Michal Dutkiewicz! He returned my call yesterday and is happy to be interviewed for OzComics Magazine.
Heard Duncan Browne's "Country Song" on 3PBS on Monday. Maybe I should listen to them more often.
Tonight I'm going to session run by L.'s teacher. These are always interesting. It is an unusual school, but I like the philosophies behind it.
Sunday, May 09, 2004
Catching up
The new job is keeping me ultra-busy! I don't know yet what I think of being a manager, but it sure is constant - just lots of problems and things that need attention cropping up all the time - and it's therefore difficult to come to grips with the real work that needs doing as well.
Probably the biggest issue for me is the travel, which is a very long drive. The learning curve on this position has been considerable, with a lot of new systems, in addition to paying attention to staffing issues. They have expected me to hit the ground running, which I'm doing my best to do. It does reinforce why I have avoided becoming a manager for this long though :).
J.'s party last weekend went well. I had to give up on the duck game in the end, but it was rainy anyway, so it wouldn't have been a good idea for that reason. One of the new games we devised was a variation on one Jill found in a book. We bought lots of foam shapes of sealife and made some additional ones, then fitted them with paper-clips, wrote scores between 10 and 50 on them, made a fishing-rod with a magnet on the end of the string and put the sea animals in a bucket. Each child got three turns and the winner was the one whose shapes added up to the highest score. The only real problem was them all wanting to lean over to see in the bucket, which made the fishing-rod a bit of a danger! Other than that, we did the usual games and I made balloon animals close to going home time.
On the creative side, my work in OzComics Magazine #3 and #4 has finally come to light, with those issues being published for the Supernova Convention in Sydney. Apparently, they were well received. My contributions include a number of reviews, particularly a three page feature review with Dillon Naylor of Batrisha fame, six reviews and a one page comic, "How to Draw Comics."
The five pager I had been working on is nearly complete, with the Oztaku deadline drawing near. However, there is a beautiful new Manga compilation, Generation that has unexpectedly appeared and I am now having a real dilemma as to which magazine I should contribute it to!
It seems I've made the odd mistake in my reviews. The publisher of TalNon's The Deerflame Legacy is listed as "Native Cat Graphics," which is a result of my overtyping my review of Terinu. Well, TalNon and Peta Hewitt are friends at least :). Worse, I listed the international price of $8.50 for Terinu in my review in Inkspot. I'll try to get a note include correcting this in the next issue.
As I just realized I put "Clayton," instead of "Preston South" as the place of publication for Daniel Reed's excellent The Crumpleton Experiments, so I'd better correct that before it goes to press. No sign of me stopping these small errors just yet. Time to work on my review of Sporadic for Inkspot.
Probably the biggest issue for me is the travel, which is a very long drive. The learning curve on this position has been considerable, with a lot of new systems, in addition to paying attention to staffing issues. They have expected me to hit the ground running, which I'm doing my best to do. It does reinforce why I have avoided becoming a manager for this long though :).
J.'s party last weekend went well. I had to give up on the duck game in the end, but it was rainy anyway, so it wouldn't have been a good idea for that reason. One of the new games we devised was a variation on one Jill found in a book. We bought lots of foam shapes of sealife and made some additional ones, then fitted them with paper-clips, wrote scores between 10 and 50 on them, made a fishing-rod with a magnet on the end of the string and put the sea animals in a bucket. Each child got three turns and the winner was the one whose shapes added up to the highest score. The only real problem was them all wanting to lean over to see in the bucket, which made the fishing-rod a bit of a danger! Other than that, we did the usual games and I made balloon animals close to going home time.
On the creative side, my work in OzComics Magazine #3 and #4 has finally come to light, with those issues being published for the Supernova Convention in Sydney. Apparently, they were well received. My contributions include a number of reviews, particularly a three page feature review with Dillon Naylor of Batrisha fame, six reviews and a one page comic, "How to Draw Comics."
The five pager I had been working on is nearly complete, with the Oztaku deadline drawing near. However, there is a beautiful new Manga compilation, Generation that has unexpectedly appeared and I am now having a real dilemma as to which magazine I should contribute it to!
It seems I've made the odd mistake in my reviews. The publisher of TalNon's The Deerflame Legacy is listed as "Native Cat Graphics," which is a result of my overtyping my review of Terinu. Well, TalNon and Peta Hewitt are friends at least :). Worse, I listed the international price of $8.50 for Terinu in my review in Inkspot. I'll try to get a note include correcting this in the next issue.
As I just realized I put "Clayton," instead of "Preston South" as the place of publication for Daniel Reed's excellent The Crumpleton Experiments, so I'd better correct that before it goes to press. No sign of me stopping these small errors just yet. Time to work on my review of Sporadic for Inkspot.
