Save the Whales

There is a big thing going on atm about the Japanese heading off to catch/kill whales for "scientific study". Greenpeace have mounted a big campaign to try and stop them. Their website is here. And one of the things they are doing is tracking a particular wahale. They have started an on-line name-voting competition for the whale which is here which has lots of sensible names and nice names etc. Except they also included Mister Smarty Pants as one of the options. Of course the internet world has gone with this name and it's ahead by 72% as seen here on their results page :)

You should all go and vote for Mister Smarty Pants... and have a look around their website, it's rather good.

26th November to 2nd December 2008

Karen’s Calendar

Coming up this week:

Monday 26th November

Tuesday 27th November

• America Club: weekly roleplaying club night at Auckland University City Campus. See their club website for more information. www.theamericaclub.net.nz Meetings have moved to Commerce A Building tonight.

• Auckland German Board Games club meeting. Mt Albert Baptist, 732 New North Rd. Regular board games each 2nd, 4th, 5th Tuesday of the month. 7pm to 11pm.

Wednesday 28th November

• America Club: weekly board games club night at Auckland University City Campus. Meeting is in Commerce A Building tonight.

• Auckland University Medieval Guild: weekly club meeting at Auckland University City Campus. All welcome. http://stdionysius.sca.org.nz/
Not sure of the venue, email me for details.

• BloodBowl Federation weekly gaming night. 6pm at Queen's Head Bar & Restaurant, 396 Queen Street, CBD.

Thursday 29th November

• Italian Dance workshops. Check here http://shell.world-net.co.nz/~katherpat/schedule.htm for more information. (note day has moved)

• 29th Nov to 2nd Dec (SCA) St Catherine's Faire camp (Auckland) http://ildhafn.sca.org/stcaths.htm

Friday 30th November

• Venue for the Damned weekly DJ gigs at Oblivion Room. http://www.mukuna.co.nz/auckland/cbd/oblivion.htm

• (SCA) St Catherine's Faire camp (Auckland) http://ildhafn.sca.org/stcaths.htm


Saturday 1st December

• (SCA) St Catherine's Faire camp (Auckland) http://ildhafn.sca.org/stcaths.htm

• Requiem: Larp based in the White Wolf Universe, set in Auckland. Runs 1st Sat of the month. Venue: Auckland University City Campus – Architecture Building Second Floor. For more details contact Lorraine on AKRequiem@gmail.com

• Underpants on the Outside, a comic book/sci-fi swap meet/event. Grey Lynn Library Hall. http://www.myspace.com/underpants_on_the_outside
$5 adult $2 child entry fee. Heaps of stalls, door prizes.

Sunday 2nd December

• Auckland City Guard Gaming Club: weekly Sunday meeting, at Freemans Bay Community Hall. From 1pm to 5pm. A range of wargames and board games being played including Warhammer Fantasy, 40K, Flames of War, Warmachine and Hordes. Cost $3 members/$5 non-members. www.cityguard.co.nz
Christmas CityGuard gaming day. Includes Orkland Cup (Fantasy 2000pt tournament, Apocalypse 40K games, Warmachine/Hordes tournament and more)

• Auckland Wargaming Club: The AWC meets every 1st and 3rd Sunday of each month except the first Sunday in January. Meetings commence at 10am and run until 4pm. Meetings at the Scout Hall at Pollard Park in Balmoral. http://awc.wargaming.info/

• (SCA) St Catherine's Faire camp (Auckland) http://ildhafn.sca.org/stcaths.htm

• Weekly Auckland Farmers Market Plus. From 10am to 4pm.
http://www.aucklandfarmersmarket.co.nz/index.html

Happening All Month - November

• NaNoWriMo http://www.nanowrimo.org/

• Movember – changing the face of men’s health.
http://www.movember.com/nz/home/

Things coming up this month – December

13 Movie Release The Seeker The Dark is Rising (group movie outing)

Things coming up later in the year

January 2008

12/13 GizzyCon (Gisborne)
19/20 Kapcon XVII: Random Encounters. Wellington Roleplaying Convention http://kapcon.rpg.net.nz/kapconXVII/index.html
(includes special Sanctuary Larp http://kapcon.rpg.net.nz/kapconXVII/larp.html )
26/28 Great Lake Medieval Festival (Taupo) Jousting, medieval festival and camp.
http://www.jousting.org.nz/news.html

February 2008
1-6 SCA Canterbury Faire (Christchurch)
1/2/3 Great Lake Tourney, Spa Park, Taupo. www.taupojoust.com
9/10 BattleCry 2008 (mixture of gaming tournaments) (Auckland)
9/10 Valley Con 2008 (Lower Hutt) Hutt Miniatures Wargaming Club
16/17 Over the Top 2008 (Hamiton) Warhammer, 40K and LotR tournaments.

March 2008
7-9 Serenity Larp http://www.diatribe.co.nz/viewforum.php?f=65
15-16 Maelstrom VI (Wellington) 40K event
21 to 26 Conjunction, NZ National Science Fiction and Fantasy Convention
http://conjunction.sf.org.nz/index.php

May 2008
SCA Crown Tournament, Darton. (Wellington)

July 2008
3 to 6 GenCon (Brisbane, Australia) Uber gaming convention http://www.genconoz.com/

Finding another event calendar

Interesting. I just found a website eventfinderfor NZ. Cool. I didn't know it existed. Of course there are no entries for wargaming, roleplaying, board games etc so I'll have to fix that quickly :) and just submitted my first event. There is 1 entry for medieval stuff... which is the Jousting event in Jan, but no SCA stuff. This will also have to be fixed.

I finished my 2.0 web discovery things on Thursday... yay. And when I got to work on Sat my mp3 player was in the internal mail bag... I haven't decided yet whether I'll wrap it up and pop it under our tree for me to reopen at Christmas or not... Not like I'll get time to play with it until then anyway... busy busy.

(NZ Gaming Convention) BattleCry (Auckland) 8/9/10th February 2008

BattleCry
Weekend of the 8th, 9th and 10th February 2008

Freemans Bay Community Hall (same place as last time)
52 Hepburn Road, Freemans Bay, Auckland.

Weekend cost: $30
One Day cost: $20
(included in the Weekend and One Day costs are the Larp and Sat night Board Games)
Friday night Larp only or Sat night Board Games only: $5
If you pre-register and prepay before 28th January for the weekend or one day events, you get a $5 discount*
(*no discount for the Larp or Sat night $5 charge)

Tournaments available: (all 2 day unless indicated)
40K (1850pt)
25mm DBMM Doubles Medieval/Ancients
Victory at Sea
6mm Moderns
Warmachine/Hordes
Babylon 5 “A Call to Arms” miniatures**
Beach Bloodbowl (Sat daytime and evening only)
Magic the Gathering CCG (Sat only)
Vampire the eternal struggle(Jyhad) CCG
Legend of the 5 Rings CCG (Sun only)
Roleplaying (a huge range of games including RPGA sanctioned games, various systems and free-form system-less games)
Board Games evening (Sat night)
Diplomacy (New Zealand Championships) 3 sessions (Sat am, Sat night, Sun am)
Munchkin (Sat night only)

Other events include:
Friday night Larp at Freeman’s Bay Community Hall
Demonstration games throughout the weekend for people to join in and try out. These include Operation WW2 (Operation Overlord), Diplomacy, Babylon 5, Flames of War and numerous board games.
Sunday lunchtime paper sword battle with Alfs Imperial Army
Sunday night Pizza dinner and prize giving
Raffles and spot prizes.
Shop stalls during the weekend

There are heaps of prizes up for grabs. Check out our list of sponsors on our website.

Free door loot bags for everyone who attends with all sorts of goodies inside.
BattleCry Tshirts will be available for $25 each. Tshirt photo’s will be up on the website soon.
Special BattleCry Dice for sale. We have sets of 10xD6 dice for sale at $10 a set, these feature our BattleCry logo on the 1 side.

If you are interested in helping in any way, shape or form, please let me know. We will be needing help setting up, packing down, stuffing loot bags, sourcing goodies, advertising etc. If anyone knows of other clubs, shops, gaming places that might be interested in being involved that haven’t had me talk to them already, please let me know asap. Also if there are any other NZ events who would like to advertise for free through our loot bags, please email me.

Keep an eye on the America website here www.theamerica club.net.nz/battlecry2008 for weekly updated info or email me on info@theamericaclub.net.nz

Regards,
Karen

** The Babylon 5 organisers have spare army sets that can be borrowed for this event if people wish to try out the game. Email me for contact details.

#23 (week 9) reflections

Reflections on how the whole "23 things to learn about 2.0". Hmmm, I think I had a wee advantage in that I use the computer every day to do alot of things on the net, so I wasn't scared of having a go and was in a familiar medium. Some of the activities I could already do, but going through the tutorials was useful as it condensed my knowledge and in a few cases filled in some blanks. Often while using the net you will come across something new and blunder through it and this was a bit more structured.

It has given me another few mediums to reach people in the hobbies I support and promote. I've been able to put my calendar out there for more people to see and that has been interesting. Signing up for more things however has sucked up way more of my time. I now have way too many things to check each day/week which makes for needing lists to remember what needs to be checked. *shrugs*

I can see this being useful for people who don't use computers and the net alot. As it will give people a snippet look at the huge range of things that are out there. And if you have people coming into your site wanting to use these on the computers, and then they get stuck and come asking for help, it will be helpful to know what they are on about.

That's about all I can think of atm.

#22 (Week 9) ebooks

I've created yet another account to something I might remember to use. I watched the "Introduction to NetLibrary, which was eaily explained. I've been going through our list of ebooks and I find the collection of titles rather boring. Nothing really takes my fancy. I can see the use of all the non-fiction, but if I was to use it I'd be wanting popular fiction I can listen to, and I think I saw about 20 plus about another 25 kids books and that was it. The classics fictional material like Shakespeares works with the full e-book and then the Cliff Notes e-book would be useful if you were studying those books. (note to self-remember to show to local high school teacher who brings classes in). And there are a few kids fiction books and biographies about famous people, but how is an e-book of an Anatomy colouring book going to work without the pictures to colour in?

Sadly I'm a visual learner, I like to see what I'm reading. And the whole touching the pages, smelling the pages, handling the book is all part of the experience. But I will be interested to keep an eye on what else gets added. There was 1 (The good, the bad and the undead) which completely doesn't go with any of the other 772 books which is a fantastic novel. If there were others like that I may download them to listen to.

#21 (week 9) Podcasts

Podcasting is an audio version of YouTube. Anyone and anything can be put on the net, about anything... people can rave, argue, discuss, read etc and you listen to the clip rather than watch it. I use podcast.com to look for people's clips to do with all things Whedon. He's the creator of Serenity, Firefly, Buffy and Angel, and I am a huge fan. I also organise the Auckland end of the "Can't Stop the Serenity" world wide fundraising event.

Here is the blog of "Sending a Wave" who put together several podcasts about the event. http://sendingawave.blogspot.com/2007_08_01_archive.html

Here is the rss feed to one of the clips from our last event in June this year.
http://www.futilityradio.com/sawlist.xml (It's in my links down the right hand side) and you would be wanting to listen to episode #19.

I tried having these just as links but for some reason they disappear off the post.