Another video from camp - this one a parody of MTV's show made.
Click here for full-size!
Tuesday, September 26, 2006
Monday, September 25, 2006
Uncle Hal!
As of a few days ago, I'm an uncle! My oldest brother's wife, Anya, gave birth to Martha Eve Susan Clive just a few days ago. We went down to London to see her yesterday, and she's absolutely beautiful.
She's incredibly long-fingered and legged, and I was amazed at how aware she seemed after just a few days of life - she seemed to be taking in everything around her.
In other, less exciting news, I've got another Camp Cal video uploaded - a VH1 Behind the Music Parody following the rise and fall of Mr. Mullet and the Perms of Destruction.
Click here for full-size version!
She's incredibly long-fingered and legged, and I was amazed at how aware she seemed after just a few days of life - she seemed to be taking in everything around her.
In other, less exciting news, I've got another Camp Cal video uploaded - a VH1 Behind the Music Parody following the rise and fall of Mr. Mullet and the Perms of Destruction.
Click here for full-size version!
Saturday, September 02, 2006
Camp is over!
At last camp is over and I'm back home in Yorkshire. I'll try to write more about everything that's happened when I have the time to do so, but the main point of this post is to show you a video from Camp this summer that I uploaded the other day.
More will come!
Click here for full-size version!
More will come!
Click here for full-size version!
Sunday, August 06, 2006
The camperless counsellor
It's been a week since my last update, and a week since I've started in my camperless cabin.
I've had a great time, but as I expected, having no campers has led to this being an utterly different experience. In particular, updating the Bunk1 website has been a lot of work and been taking a lot of time - despite the fact that I'm given a free period during the day, I can only do the updates after the evening activities when all the kids have gone to bed. In fact, I'm writing this update while the computer is resizing the images to post on the web.
It's also been wet this week, very wet indeed. The storms here are incredible, with what seem to be solid walls of rain dropping from the sky producing raging torrents across camp. As a result, a load of activities on a load of days have been cancelled with special "rainy day" activities being run in their stead. While I'm glad that this is all happening in this session with relatively few kids making all of this an easier experience for the counsellors to sort out, I feel really sorry for the kids having all their activities disrupted when the weather for the rest of the summer has been so great.
Yesterday I had my day off, which as usual started with a night at a local bar, and continued with a bus at 8:30 in the morning to Pula (yeah, getting up at that time after a heavy night before was painful). We went to a small reserve near Pula called something that sounds similar to "Crematorium" - I think it was actually "Prematorio" or something. Anyhow, it was really beautiful, and we did a bit of cliff-jumping and swimming around there, which was awesome fun.
We came back via Pula and had a quick look around the city. It's an ancient Roman city, and has the largest intact Roman ampitheatre outside of Rome itself in the entire world. The forum and ruins around there were beautiful, and I only wish we had a little more time to do a little more exploring round there and perhaps have a look inside the ampitheatre itself.
Today, we had a special afternoon activity with a superhero theme. As one of the people wandering about both to miscellaneously help and to take photographs, I wasn't obliged to dress up, but how could I resist?! I covered myself with green paint, put on my angry face and became the Incredible Hulk. Everything went really well, much to the credit of the organisers, and we got some great photos too. Perhaps I'll manage to get some of those uploaded here soon too.
Anyhow, I'd better get back to work as it looks like all my pictures have been resized. If you read this Dad, get better soon - I'll Skype home as soon as the necessary computer is working again.
I've had a great time, but as I expected, having no campers has led to this being an utterly different experience. In particular, updating the Bunk1 website has been a lot of work and been taking a lot of time - despite the fact that I'm given a free period during the day, I can only do the updates after the evening activities when all the kids have gone to bed. In fact, I'm writing this update while the computer is resizing the images to post on the web.
It's also been wet this week, very wet indeed. The storms here are incredible, with what seem to be solid walls of rain dropping from the sky producing raging torrents across camp. As a result, a load of activities on a load of days have been cancelled with special "rainy day" activities being run in their stead. While I'm glad that this is all happening in this session with relatively few kids making all of this an easier experience for the counsellors to sort out, I feel really sorry for the kids having all their activities disrupted when the weather for the rest of the summer has been so great.
Yesterday I had my day off, which as usual started with a night at a local bar, and continued with a bus at 8:30 in the morning to Pula (yeah, getting up at that time after a heavy night before was painful). We went to a small reserve near Pula called something that sounds similar to "Crematorium" - I think it was actually "Prematorio" or something. Anyhow, it was really beautiful, and we did a bit of cliff-jumping and swimming around there, which was awesome fun.
We came back via Pula and had a quick look around the city. It's an ancient Roman city, and has the largest intact Roman ampitheatre outside of Rome itself in the entire world. The forum and ruins around there were beautiful, and I only wish we had a little more time to do a little more exploring round there and perhaps have a look inside the ampitheatre itself.
Today, we had a special afternoon activity with a superhero theme. As one of the people wandering about both to miscellaneously help and to take photographs, I wasn't obliged to dress up, but how could I resist?! I covered myself with green paint, put on my angry face and became the Incredible Hulk. Everything went really well, much to the credit of the organisers, and we got some great photos too. Perhaps I'll manage to get some of those uploaded here soon too.
Anyhow, I'd better get back to work as it looks like all my pictures have been resized. If you read this Dad, get better soon - I'll Skype home as soon as the necessary computer is working again.
Monday, July 31, 2006
New photos online
As promised yesterday, I've uploaded a small selection of photos into the gallery section of this site at http://www.halclive.co.uk/gallery. So far all of the pictures I've uploaded are the ones that have me in them (although I'll admit it's a bit like playing "Where's Wally?" in one or two of them), but I might upload a few I took myself too if I can find the time to sort through the tens of thousands of pictures we have on this computer.
As has always been the case, if anyone has any photos that they think I might want to host here, just e-mail them to me and I'll see what I can do. It's also nice to know who's reading this and looking at my pictures, so please leave comments here and in the gallery if you can.
As has always been the case, if anyone has any photos that they think I might want to host here, just e-mail them to me and I'll see what I can do. It's also nice to know who's reading this and looking at my pictures, so please leave comments here and in the gallery if you can.
Sunday, July 30, 2006
Another session done.
It's a little over a month from when I last posted on here, and I thought it was about time to provide an update.
As of yesterday, session three is over. As of today, session four starts.
The past month has been awesome with so many different things going on that I don't know what to write about. There've been so many people who've been really great who I've had to say goodbye to, and that's not so good - there've ben a load of campers I've been really sad to see leave, but counsellors leaving hits hard in a different way. My co-counsellor of last session, Euan from Scotland, left yesterday morning, and over the next week Charan from New Zealand and Kate, the camp nurse from England, will also be returning home.
In fact, because of a guy called Max leaving camp to return to Russia, I'm now effectively in charge of digital photography with all the associated responsibilities. Not only do I need to do all the photo uploads onto Bunk1, the saite where camp hosts all it's pictures, but I also need to build the closing campfire slideshow. Max did such a fantastic job that'll be a really hard act to follow, but as session 4 only has 68 campers, the powers that be have decided to put me in a camperless cabin to ensure that I have time to do what I need to do.
It's the first time I've ever been in a cabin without campers, and the experience is bound to be really quite different, especially with my new jobs. The atmosphere in camp is likely going to be different anyway with so few campers about (normally we have over a hundred, up to around 160), but I'm kind of looking forward to a slightly slower session.
I will try to get some new pictures together to upload to this site at some point, but in the meantime most of you should be able to access the camp's photo page at http://campcalifornia.bunk1.com where you'll get the chance to see my beautiful face if you've been missing it.
I'd better move now.
As of yesterday, session three is over. As of today, session four starts.
The past month has been awesome with so many different things going on that I don't know what to write about. There've been so many people who've been really great who I've had to say goodbye to, and that's not so good - there've ben a load of campers I've been really sad to see leave, but counsellors leaving hits hard in a different way. My co-counsellor of last session, Euan from Scotland, left yesterday morning, and over the next week Charan from New Zealand and Kate, the camp nurse from England, will also be returning home.
In fact, because of a guy called Max leaving camp to return to Russia, I'm now effectively in charge of digital photography with all the associated responsibilities. Not only do I need to do all the photo uploads onto Bunk1, the saite where camp hosts all it's pictures, but I also need to build the closing campfire slideshow. Max did such a fantastic job that'll be a really hard act to follow, but as session 4 only has 68 campers, the powers that be have decided to put me in a camperless cabin to ensure that I have time to do what I need to do.
It's the first time I've ever been in a cabin without campers, and the experience is bound to be really quite different, especially with my new jobs. The atmosphere in camp is likely going to be different anyway with so few campers about (normally we have over a hundred, up to around 160), but I'm kind of looking forward to a slightly slower session.
I will try to get some new pictures together to upload to this site at some point, but in the meantime most of you should be able to access the camp's photo page at http://campcalifornia.bunk1.com where you'll get the chance to see my beautiful face if you've been missing it.
I'd better move now.
Wednesday, June 28, 2006
I've managed to find myself a little more time to add something to this blog.
As I said before, everything's going awesomely in camp, and I thought I'd post a little more about it.
I've currently got a cabin of 9 kids, helped out by two other counsellors - Sam, who's also from the UK, and Zoltan who's a Hungarian. Actally, Sam's having to move out of our cabin today into another one to help out in a cabin where one of the counsellors is having to go for a few days to work out the Teen Adventure program.
We're all going to Teepee Village tonight with a couple of the other boys' cabins, a mock American Indian area a little way out from the rest of camp. All going well, we'll eat, play and sleep out there, all lit by a good old-fashioned camp fire.
That said, last night a load of the girls' cabins went to sleep out there last night but returned when the wind started picking up, making the teepees themselves dangerous for obvious reasons. Other problems with teepee village are the thousands of mosquitoes desperate for an all-they-can-eat buffet and (perhaps surprisingly) the cold.
While daytime temperatures are high and humidity stratospheric, making the conditions extremely sweaty, at night the temperatures can plummet, making sleep under the stars a chilly experience.
The musics playing over the PA system. That means my free period's over, and I have to go.
As I said before, everything's going awesomely in camp, and I thought I'd post a little more about it.
I've currently got a cabin of 9 kids, helped out by two other counsellors - Sam, who's also from the UK, and Zoltan who's a Hungarian. Actally, Sam's having to move out of our cabin today into another one to help out in a cabin where one of the counsellors is having to go for a few days to work out the Teen Adventure program.
We're all going to Teepee Village tonight with a couple of the other boys' cabins, a mock American Indian area a little way out from the rest of camp. All going well, we'll eat, play and sleep out there, all lit by a good old-fashioned camp fire.
That said, last night a load of the girls' cabins went to sleep out there last night but returned when the wind started picking up, making the teepees themselves dangerous for obvious reasons. Other problems with teepee village are the thousands of mosquitoes desperate for an all-they-can-eat buffet and (perhaps surprisingly) the cold.
While daytime temperatures are high and humidity stratospheric, making the conditions extremely sweaty, at night the temperatures can plummet, making sleep under the stars a chilly experience.
The musics playing over the PA system. That means my free period's over, and I have to go.
Tuesday, June 27, 2006
Graduation and Croatia
It's been a while, but at last I'm going to post an update up here.
The last week has been absolutely insane, starting with me as a student in Edinburgh and ending as a graduate in a summer camp in Croatia.
First of all, I'll tell you a little about graduation. Karoliina's parents came, which was pretty cool, and I wore a kilt (Welsh national tartan) to the ceremony. Karoliina graduated the next day, and I had to move all of the stuff that I wasn't taking with me to Croatia to Tom's flat.
After two hours sleep, I started on my journey to camp at 3:30am.
For those who haven't known me for very long, you might not know that I spent my summer two summers ago here in a camp called Camp California in Croatia, right on the North-Western Tip of Istria at Savudrija. Well, I'm doing it all over again, partly because I spent most of last summer wishing that I was actually here, and partly because I want to stall having to get a job in the real world as a graduate.
I'm here, kids are here, and the place is awesome. THings have changed in a few subtle ways since I was last year, like the main stage (called "Hollywood Bowl") has been completely rebuilt.
Oops! Time up.
Better get back to Work!
The last week has been absolutely insane, starting with me as a student in Edinburgh and ending as a graduate in a summer camp in Croatia.
First of all, I'll tell you a little about graduation. Karoliina's parents came, which was pretty cool, and I wore a kilt (Welsh national tartan) to the ceremony. Karoliina graduated the next day, and I had to move all of the stuff that I wasn't taking with me to Croatia to Tom's flat.
After two hours sleep, I started on my journey to camp at 3:30am.
For those who haven't known me for very long, you might not know that I spent my summer two summers ago here in a camp called Camp California in Croatia, right on the North-Western Tip of Istria at Savudrija. Well, I'm doing it all over again, partly because I spent most of last summer wishing that I was actually here, and partly because I want to stall having to get a job in the real world as a graduate.
I'm here, kids are here, and the place is awesome. THings have changed in a few subtle ways since I was last year, like the main stage (called "Hollywood Bowl") has been completely rebuilt.
Oops! Time up.
Better get back to Work!
Friday, March 10, 2006
I'm going to be an uncle!
That's right!
James (my oldest brother) called me last night to tell me that his wife, Anya, is pregnant. I'm so happy for them, and I can't wait to meet my new nephew. I say nephew, because knowing our family, it couldn't really be anything else.
Maybe I'll be eating those words come September...
James (my oldest brother) called me last night to tell me that his wife, Anya, is pregnant. I'm so happy for them, and I can't wait to meet my new nephew. I say nephew, because knowing our family, it couldn't really be anything else.
Maybe I'll be eating those words come September...
Friday, March 03, 2006
Tuesday, February 21, 2006
On the home stretch to a degree...
After an eventful week, I've finally finished my essays and dissertation - the relief is incredible. All that's left of my degree now is the project I'm currently working on (that I mentioned in my previous post) and a four hour synoptic exam that's going to test everything I've learned over the past four years. I'm slightly apprehensive about it, but it's not going to happen for a little while yet.
I've changed a few settings on the site so I can now e-mail in updates, which should make the process of updating when away from my own computer that much quicker, easier and more secure. I should even be able to do it from my phone. Incidentally, this post is a test to see if it's working properly.
Also, the gallery has had its software updated, so check it out.
Wednesday, February 15, 2006
Good news everybody!
I know it's been ages since I've updated anything here, but I thought I'd post on the off chance someone might see this at some point...
I'm going back to Camp Cal this summer!
I really can't wait. The 2004 season was brilliant, and I can't wait to get my degree out of the way so I can just get back out to Croatia. Check out my gallery for photos from my last time out there, and www.campcalifornia.com for the camp's official site.
As for the degree, things are coming along nicely enough. I'm in the essay week of hell at the moment, having handed in essays yesterday and the day before that, with only my dissertation left due the day after tomorrow.
I'm also working on a project at the moment, which I've been working three days a week on since the beginning of term - I start full time work on it from next week. It feels great to actually be doing real research, discovering previously unknown stuff that could ultimately help cure muscular dystrophy. It beats sitting in a lecture theatre, incidentally something I'll never have to do again as of last week...
The real world seems to be approaching ever more rapidly.
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