Quite excited about my students this week

Posted On Thursday, August 31, 2006 | 2 comments

They’ve been having their first goes on air in the NZRTS Auckland studio and next week they’ll be doing two hour shows.

Big deal says the average broadcaster! To these kids though, some of which 6 weeks ago had never even set foot in a radio studio, it IS a really big deal.

I’ve been working them pretty hard this week, they’ve been learning how to use the computer system and broadcast desk while at the same time engaging their brain and voice. Not an easy ask! By the end of the semester though, round December, they’ll hopefully - the ones that want to be announcers anyway - have a polished sounding CD to present to future employers.

Now, I only teach studio and announcer skills, but my wife is always amazed that I spend more time talking about what my students did that day at school than what I did on air at night. She’s right, I do! As a tutor, that moment when someone ‘gets it’ is phenomenal. When someone improves on what they did last time, you really do swell with pride.

I’d almost forgotten after 15 years or however long I’ve been doing this radio business how tough it was to break into the industry and learn the skills in the first place, it wasn't easier or harder back then, just different.

As an aside I had a caller tonight asking what album #9 Dream by John Lennon was on. She was genuinely shocked when I started typing “john lennon” discography into Google instead of looking for a non existent CD in the back of the studio!

FYI: There are no CDs anymore – there are CD players but they’re not used very often. There are certainly no records. The music and the ads are ALL on one computer with two screens. To make each song / ad play, we press the F9 key. Yep, all this computer work and I'm still crap at typing.

| | edit post

Finally!

Posted On Saturday, August 19, 2006 | 4 comments

Got a photo of Sophie smiling - it's taken a while! I guess that's one not so good thing about digital cameras - that delay from when you press the button to it actually taking the photo. We've got heaps of her turning away or a moment beyond the smile.

Still, thanks to Andrea for snapping a beauty.

My daughter Sophie and yes I still get excited saying that... Taken at 9 weeks old. (Oh, and half of my lovely wife's face.)

| | edit post

Every other bugger's doing it..

Posted On Sunday, August 13, 2006 | 0 comments

I'm now on MySpace.

Although I'm not sure why. I think it's because I got sick of people asking if I'm on there and having to say no.

When I got on there I found some people I knew so that's neat. I sent them little messages and they'll presumably add themselves to my friend's list as I add myself to theirs. Then, I'll have exactly what I have here with hopefully an ever growing list of friends with dinky little pictures.

Like I said, I'm on My Space and I'm not sure why.

Disappointingly, the first person to contact me wanting to be my 'friend' was a reasonably attractive young woman in her undies with a webcam and if I gave her my credit card details she would show me what was inside her undies.

Accept or Deny?

Deny. And she's lucky I don't know her mum cos I'd tell her what her little minx of a daughter was up to..

Apparently more people go to MySpace now than Google so that's one good reason but I still haven't worked out what it is that people actually do there.

Still, I'm there, until I forget the password anyway. Nothing changes right here though. I quite like this blogspot business and I'm yet to be convinced that I'm not too old for MySpace.

If you're a MySpacer as well, drop by and add to the list of dinky pictures and cute messages and we'll see how we go.

http://myspace.com/davesmarty
| | edit post

The kids are alright, really...

Posted On Monday, August 07, 2006 | 2 comments

Kids are doing the Kapa O Pango throat slitting gesture and people are worried.

Isn't this just the same as when we played 'war' as kids?

Let me remember the rules...

You fashioned anything remotely gun looking out of a stick and proceeded to chase your friends round the house making 'e e e e e e!' machine gun noises while pointing stick at said friends.

When is was decided that you'd been 'shot' you were required to 'die' realistically, which involved biffing yourself in a ragdoll fashion onto the lawn or into a hedge. The child who had been shot was then required to count to 20 before getting up and resuming chase.

Sometimes there were disagreements on whether you had been shot or not and the argument went thus:

"I shot you!"
"No you didn't."
Yes I did, when you came round the corner."
"No, you missed!"

In our game we also had grenades. Grenades could be anything from a crab apple to a pine cone and when hurled within a metre or so of a mate meant you had to count to 50 before getting up. Presumable a grenade did more damage so you counted higher to give the kid who got you more or a chance to get away and hide again.

That's how kids, particularly boys played.

As for the child who used the throat slitting gesture to tell his little brother to back off during a disagreement over DVDs, my wife tells a story of a song she and her friends used to sing to her little brother about him being for sale to make him cry.

He's now a strapping man of 22, around 6" 4' in height with a University education, an excellent career ahead of him, steady girlfriend and making his way in the world pretty well.

Let kids be kids. If you wrap 'em in cotton wool for the entirety of their childood, they'll be bugger all use as adults.
| | edit post

Another dig at journalists..

Posted On Thursday, August 03, 2006 | 1 comments

Auckland Mayor Dick Hubbard took out an an ad in the Herald today which, as a story, made the front page of the same paper.

Here’s the first line of the article..

“Auckland Mayor Dick Hubbard has spent thousands of dollars of his own money to make an impassioned plea in favour of hefty rate rises in the city.”

"Blah blah news story blah..."

Then at the end,

"Mr Hubbard would not say how much he paid for the advertisement, but agreed it was many thousands of dollars.”

So does this mean that this particular New Zealand Herald journalist is too lazy to walk down to his OWN sales department to ask what a full page ad goes for?
| | edit post