Viewing entries tagged with 'New Zealand'
Excellent! Excellent!
Yesterday I won the University of Auckland 2009 General Staff Excellence Award for Excellence in Innovation which is conferred every year to one staff member across the entire University. I highly appreciate that the efforts are recognised. The ceremony was held by the vice-chancellor.
Here's the citation:
"Anatol led the technological implementation, customisation, improvement and maintenance of the online learning management system (LMS) Moodle for the Faculty of Education. He managed the transfer of existing online courses from the legacy system and the creation of new courses in the LMS.
He also provides ongoing support and training for staff and students. He created a student management system that is essential to the implementation of the new e-learning environment and developed a CD-ROM generator for readings CDs.
He engages in ongoing research into technology and media that is innovative and useful for teaching and learning and that helps to keep the University up-to-date and competitive in the tertiary sector."
The award also comes with a nice cash prize that will come in quite handy to get some equipment for my Masters studies for a MA Art & Design at AUT University that will commence next year. What a lot of good news at once!
Incredibly Strange: Movie Marathon 09
It seems I survived the 24 hour Incredibly Strange Movie Marathon over the weekend. Here is the lineup:
The Secret Four/Kansas City Confidential (1952)
(opening sequence)
Zombieland (2009)
Road House (1989)
Forbidden World (1982)
Vice Squad (1982)
Paranormal Activity (2007)
Maidens of Fetish Street (1969) part of The Abnormal Female
(Couldn't find a trailer but here's a photostream on Flickr)
Mill of the Stone Women (1960)
Night Train to Terror (1985)
(Watch the trailer here.)
The Visitor/Stridulum (1979)
The Informant! (2009)
Creature From Black Lake (1976)
(Couldn't find anything on this film.)
Howling II: ... Your Sister Is a Werewolf / Stirba: Werewolf Bitch (1985)
Commando (1985)
That's all folks.
Including some very short breaks it lasted about 25 hours nonstop.
Here are the instructions for this year's movie marathon:
And if you still don't have enough here are some trailers for the Movie Marathon itself. Enjoy!
A million thanks to Ant Simpson and everyone involved for a fantastic weekend!
NZ Moodle Moot 2008
I just came back from an excellent Moodle Moot conference in beautiful Napier. Moodle is a free open source e-learning environment which is widely used and developed by a strong community. I particularly enjoyed that it was a really casual and friendly 3 day event. I am sure I can bring a lot that I learned at the conference back to my job. Getting to know other people involved also is a great motivation to actually contribute to this open source project. I am glad I did not miss out this year.
Welcome to the Gun Show
Some of my animations will be broadcast today on the Welcome to the Gun Show, Saturday 27 September, 3pm NZ time, AltTV (Channel 65, Sky TV). Plus a short live interview about my films.
The Dance on the Vulcano
Once again we moved. Not far just about a kilometer and a half away from our old place. It's sad to leave the house in 11 Lake Rd with the amesome view to the Rangitoto vulcanic island, but the new place is also quite nice: just 2 bedrooms which is enough for us, a conservatory, in a great overall condition, quiet, cats OK, and also quite a bit cheaper than our 3 bedroom house we used to live in before. Everything we need really. And it's right between the Tuff and Onepoto Craters, which may add a little bit of excitement...
Hopefully we will stay here for quite a while. According to my last count we now moved 13 times in the last 6 or so years - which is really not our desired choice; Germany, Austria, Australia, New Zealand South Island, North Island, etc...
So the new address is:
94A Exmouth Road
Northcote
Auckland 0627
New Zealand
Let me know if you are around. There are too many folks back in Germany and Austria who did not come around yet ... Get off your bums, guys!
Shady Art from a Sunny Place
Gosh, if you are having a great time right now but you would rather be slightly depressed then go and see one of the Van Morsel/Wiseguy Productions animations. It's very interesting animated art with amazing dialogue. It sounds like audio recordings inspired by automatic writing and one wonders from what depths of the writer's unconscious it comes from. Interesting, yet deeply disturbing.
I am lucky enough to know the artist – but I won't blow his cover here. Let me just say that he lives in a town called Nelson, the most sunny place in all of New Zealand. His art can probably be best described as the opposite.
As a start I recommend Rook but there are heaps of other yet unpublished animations by Van Morsel which I hope will be available some time on YouTube or elsewhere.
Photo Overdose
Kayaking in the Abel Tasman National Park on the New Zealand South Island, just a one-hour drive from Nelson, my home town in 2006.
Get your photo overdose right here on nugob.org! I love the Silverstripe photo gallery module! I could finally upload a large amount of photos from the last 5 years to the new gallery section on this website in no time: about 500 photos in 19 galleries.
I know this is complete overkill, so below is a small(ish) selection.
Double Shift
About three weeks ago I moved up from Nelson to Auckland for a new job at the University of Auckland. For all those of you who know neither Nelson nor Auckland I should probably mention that I migrated from Germany to New Zealand about one year ago (with some detours over Australia).
Since today my domains nugob.org and prettydarngood.net are also located in New Zealand. It just makes things easier for me.
One thing I realized just before is that there seems to be a problem to comment articles at the moment. I will fix that later.
I hope I will finally find some time soon to upload some pictures from all the places I have visited so far in New Zealand.
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