Okay, back. It’s been a crazy couple of months. Where to begin really? Trimester started, and that’s where it all went south (or is that north here?). I’m teaching, for the second time here at Vic, a large undergraduate course (well over 300 students, which is sizeable for Vic) and I’ve been trying to keep on top of that. I think I’m happy with the way the course has been set up, versus how I did it last year. This is a bit more schematic and based around your run-of-the-mill media studies terminology, rather than things are a bit more abstract.

I’ve decided this year to no longer rely on the “smart” room technology as they pretty much failed me with regularity last year. Now, I do all my lectures on my laptop, which means I’m getting my clips together, audio, etc., all by lonesome. It means a couple extra hours of prep of course, but it makes for a very smooth lecture presentation. I couldn’t do this without ishowu and isquint, which are great little Mac apps that capture and compress very nicely.

I think the students are following and are pretty much on the ball, as you might expect, with terms like ideology, hegemony and subjectivity. We’ll see after the first assignment, natch, but I’m confident.

Doing a course a second time is supposed to be easier, but I’m not entirely convinced, especially since I’ve rebuilt this one from the ground up. I’m sure it will be better than last year and certainly seems to have an obvious narrative structure that links each lecture to the previous one.

During this two month hiatus, I’ve also submitted two articles for consideration. One was that Ping Pong Country piece and the other was for a German journal, called SPIEL, and this one is about play and humour at an electronic music festival, Club Transmediale. Both are about Berlin, really. Fingers crossed that they find a proper home here.

At the same time, I was also helping set up the Berlin Bonanza, which took place over the last two weeks. Great fun with heaps of musical events and artists from Berlin and here. One night was dedicated solely to Krautrock (not by my choice, as it was a Friday and I think the club kids were a little perplexed by it). We set up Ping Pong Country as well, which seemed to go down quite well, once people got over the initial hurdle of trying to imagine what it would look/sound like. Lots of press, with me doing print and radio interviews, which was pretty fabulous fun, too.

I also managed to see an old highschool friend who was passing through Wellington. Not seeing someone for more than twenty years and then catching up on people who’ve long been out of your mind can be quite a trip. It’s been a while since something like that happened.

I should also say that my little amateur photography hobby is paying off as well. As many flickrites no doubt know, there are plenty of businesses and individuals using it to trawl for publicity photos. I’ve had all sorts of requests and I’m usually eager to have my pictures out there. I’ve got photos of mine being used in Sweden, Denmark, Berlin, Montreal and, recently, Carnegie Hall used a photo of mine in their most recent catalogue. No cash for these, but I’m working on it.

It might come through a recent show here that includes two of my photos. The Wellington flickr group just mounted an exhibit of photos at one of the city’s older theatres and it went down well. I haven’t had a minute to actually go down myself, but word on the street is pretty good.

And in other news, I’ve started doing radio again, this time through a new station set up this past month here at Vic. Show name: TV-Disko, you can guess what it sounds like.

Back to the work grind for now, but some new old music for you, in the form of two moog and disco flavoured exotic numbers.

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