New Zealand Update

After a very angry phone call to NZ immigration I've resolved part my immigration problem. They're (almost grudgingly it seemed) granting me a temporary work permit till they sort out my proper one.

It's far from over, but this is a big step to surviving.

Now I JUST need to figure out how I'm still going to make it to Canada in August.

I'm really starting to HATE New Zealand!

Well if you've been paying attention I haven't been talking about my current life much on here.

The reason is that a lot of factors have been in limbo, and I didn't have much to report. Sadly not much if anything has changed on that front either...

I'm still waiting for my work permit to clear.

I'm still waiting for my health results to be checked.

I'm still waiting for the ministry to education to properly enter me into their work force.

Now I don't mean to complain, but frankly I'm at my breaking point.

All of these various things were only supposed to take between 1 to 4 weeks depending on which item we're talking. For the work permit in particular I'm in the middle of week FUCKING 8, and the bloody kiwis still haven't moved off their god damn asses!

The kicker being today I was just told by NZ immigration that my permit will be ANOTHER 3-4 weeks of processing. So let's do the math on this. 4 + 8 doesn't = 3-4 weeks... I know I'm a primary teacher (I can even show you the four maths strategies you can use to solve that problem).

This whole time I'm hemorrhaging money. Not only is life costing me, but I can't work legally! I'm going to have to turn down work which is being offered to me. That's kiwi kids going without a teacher for a day mind you. All so that some government pencil pushers can justify their existence. Whilst they do that I'm pretty much broke, and sick of having to go to my parents for help (who can't and won't be keeping it up... but you can't, and I certainly don't blame them!).

The kiwis are constantly saying that their (ass backwards) country needs teachers, and they can't figure out why the hell none of their teacher trainees are not staying here.

Okay class, let's ponder this problem for moment...

Okay I'm hearing some very good answers, and most of you are something like. MAYBE IF YOU FUCKING LET TEACHERS WORK THAN THEY'D DO SO!

If they don't come through for me in another 2-3 weeks I'm going to have to leave the country for good. Let's put this in context. I not only am a trained teacher, but I'm one trained in the New Zealand system! After all this investment their system has put into me, why are they forcing me to take it elsewhere?!?

Anyways I'm done typing about this (for now). I've not only had to try and keep myself calm on this all day, but I just tucked in an indescribably upset lady-type person who is hysteric over this somewhat real threat of my having to leave for good.

So yeah I kinda irked at this country right now, and it might take it a while to get back in my good books. If at all.

It's really up to them.

Wishing I had owned a camera sooner!

Though I'm not a real palaontologist (and sadly never will be) on occasion due through my time at the Tyrrell I've been exposed to stuff that the majority of palaeo people haven't been yet (though hopefully they will be soon).

Recently over at Manabu Sakamoto's blog the Raptor's Nest there's been some discussion about ceratopsians (here and here) that have hit on Pachyrhinosaur growth rates. Now I was unaware of this, but nobody at the Tyrrell has published on the amazing material they've dug up at Pipestone Creek.

Back in 2005 I had the opportunity to see the amazing series of a dozen or so skulls (most being composites of various incomplete bits and pieces, but still pretty good matches) that chronicled most of the age ranges of Pachyrhinos. I was given a personal briefing/lesson on the specimens by either Darren Tanke or Mark Mitchell (I think it was Darren, but I can't remember, and BOTH have been so kind to me over the years with sharing their incredible knowledge). The true crime and tragedy was I didn't own a camera at the time, and didn't manage any pictures. NOOOOOOO!

I did manage a "spare" (not that I bowl, but the term is appropriate) of managing some photo's in 2006 when I finally got a camera. Peter Bond and I managed an impromptu photographing session through the Tyrrell's collections. In our snap shot rampage I got a couple pictures of just some of these Pachyrhino elements. However due to the limited time of our access, and the specimens being put away into storage these were the only images of the series I got.

I'll try to contact Darren Tanke for further info on it.


Here is the best photo I have of various lower jaw elements of the series.

I think at some point they were thinking about putting some of the material on display, and had this excellent sculpt made up. As to whether it was going into the new ceratopsian display or not I have no idea (from my memory the ceratopsian display was only imagined in LATE 2005, after the success of the Dinosaur Park symposium, to accompany the 2007 ceratopsian symposium). Last time I was at the museum in early 2008 this was not in the public gallery (at least to my knowledge. Sadly it was a rather quick visit).

Of course this adult skull (cast on the left, original fossil on the right) isn't unique, but shows the excellent preservation and condition of the Pipestone material.

Since one of the Raptor's Nest posts is on the new Albertoceratops...

Here's the photo I took of it in Jan from the Tyrrell's new ceratopsian display.

Unknown Soundtrack...

I've been getting a lot more involved on flickr (check out my photostream), and a number of benefits have been coming from it. Not only am I "meeting" new cool people, but I'm finding their blogs. I WILL be updating my blog roll soon!

One of my new favourites (especially his pictures) is El Pensieve de Dinorider. However I'm currently in his debut. Not only did his blog alert me to the existence of the Prehistoric Park soundtrack, but it allowed me to get it cheap!

Traumador will probably have some uses for this soon (the DAMN museum quest is finally near its end!!!), and its nice to have some music in my current broke-ness.

So it begins...

After the last couple of months trying my best to get set up to teach in this country, the big day finally arrived!

I got my first call to relieve for a morning today. The skool located just outside of town was one I'd never been to before, and it was very nice. Even better I couldn't have asked for a better group of kids to start things off.

What I'm loving the most about the lifestyle thus far (yeah a whole day later LOL) is the leaving work at work. No planning, marking, or meetings but time teaching. So hopefully I get at least 3 days a week (or 5 half days), this will work out.

That having been said there are some big problems still. Getting paid has become something of an issue. It's a long complicated story not worth going into at moment, but yeah through the "brilliant" set up of the ministry of education I may not be able to collect my earnings for a while. I'm having to fight my Mal instincts at moment.

Close Encounters of this Year

Glendon over at The Flying Trilobite had a cool piece of art with a character who had the Mars face as its own. As I haven't been in a paranormal mode for almost a year, this picture of course helped trigger this years wander down the unreal road.

Now first off I'm not a true believer. Far from it. At best I could accept some paranormal phenomenon as the product and evidence of a multi dimensional reality as outlined by modern string theory. At the same time I emphasis I'm still a skeptic. The closest to a story I find compelling is the Skinwalker Ranch (warning if you click around this website it has annoying noises if you out click from the Skinwalker story pages), but I'll be blogging about this later in the week.

To me the paranormal is more just really good horror fiction "based on" real life. Normal horror doesn't real grab me, but the idea that these things could be real has hooked me right in since the X-files.

This year I had two quick funny stories that emphasis how 99% of "phenomenon" sightings.
_

The UFO

So me and Andy were hanging out in the senior wing stair well, which is an open windowed room. I noticed these two very bright lights hovering in the sky, and they tracked with our field of depth when we moved around looking at them.

Immediately, I noted that an odd thing was we were seeing these lights through another room's window. Technically the lights were behind the corner of the building, but that corner's room's curtain was open allowing us to see through it to the botanic garden. However the lights moved perfectly in the sky as we moved around our limited vantage point, but they appeared to be legitimate objects in the air.

So trying to confirm this we went outside, but due to our now being at ground level there was too many obstacles to see that area of the sky...

It was enticing to think we were seeing flying saucers.

_

That is till we got back to the stair well and moved the couch. Suddenly one of the lights continued to move from the sky onto the curtain of the room!

Further investigation by looking outside I found two tall bright lights on the other side of the building which would be the perfect distance to mimic our field of depth when reflected by that window.

So much for my UFO sighting. It just goes to show that one needs to REALLY think about and investigate these things looking for rational and ordinary explanations. This UFO held up to 15 minutes of rigorous investigation before we figured it out. So it shows that people can see things that they really believe and doesn't become clear right way, but it still wasn't real!

The Monster

So one night during my student teaching I got up to go to the wash room in the middle of the night. Looking up in my sleep haze I was scared awake by this scene you see here (taken about a minute later). Yes it is just a box with my hat on it, but out of the corner of my eye it looked like Freddie Cougar for a moment.

Wheels

Well one more issue settled in my attempts to work in this country.


I've acquired transport, which for substitute teaching is vital. The funny part considering just how much money and paperwork I've thrown into stuff so far (such as VISAs and teacher registration) apart from the cost of the car itself it was comparatively cheap and easy to transfer ownership.

Not liking this new pattern

Well it's slightly old news, but one of my job search leads came to an end the other day. Sadly it is in the vein of the Dinosaur Park outcome. Which is a trend I want to stop pronto in my employment efforts.

The Otago Museum opted to inform me through a letter, that they did not require my services. I suppose it could have been worse. They could have interviewed me and than told me I needed more experience with children... So this could be me climbing away from the DPP thing, and back into the black.

Boneyard #20: Meeting a Prehistoric Creature: The Un-Professional Palaeontologist

Though my life has turned out fairly well (ignoring my current teacher registration and immigration issues) I've always had one regret.

I didn't grow up to be a professional Palaeontologist.

Now there's all sorts of reasons for this. My lack of great marks throughout school, my inability to apply math to the real world, and just frankly it wasn't in the universe's cards that were dealt to me.

It's not too say I didn't manage to grow up to be a palaeontologist of sorts. In fact, considering my education and work experience has been constantly building towards working with kids and teaching, I think I've done a pretty good job leaning my life expereince towards the prehistoric.

Having failed to achieve a formal approach into science at a university level, I wrote off the dream of working with dinosaurs or fossils throughout the first few years of my post high school life.

However when I started to (appear to) out-grow summer camps my mother made a fateful intervention into my work search that reignited the seemingly lost dream. She checked the Royal Tyrrell Museum's website for job openings.

They were looking for educational interpreters. A job that required a whole scattering of skills: dinosaur and science knowledge, public speaking, experience with kids, acting and creative imagination. A list of things I happened to have (and still have!) in some abundance.

Long story short I got the gig, and frankly I think I appreciated my experiences of "meeting prehistoric creatures" all the more than if I'd become a true academic Palaentologist.

My first year at the museum was a steep learning curve on the "practical" side of Palaeontology [note this photo is not from this point of my life, but rather it was taken on my last DAY working at the museum ever... *tear*]. Being a childhood dino geek I knew lots of theoretical stuff that you find in books. However, skills like finding fossils and digging them up were all completely new to me.

I managed well enough. Though I won't claim to be a professional I've got a pretty firm grasp on everything from prospecting, excavating, preparation (though I did damage my first Hadrosaur Phalange), and even casting. At the same time, I was not one of the museum's "pros" I did get paid!

One of the key things I definitely learned that not all professionals know, is how to commincate and relate these cool prehistoric creatures we've met from the deep past to the public.

My main love from this time was dinosaur and palaeontology promotion and education. Sadly as a teacher I don't get to do this anywhere near as much as I like, and only manage it by sneeking my puppet Traumador the Tyrannosaur into some of my lessons as a hook. The kids just can't get enough of him!

So when I wasn't showing off palaeontology concepts in such entertaining ways as mock ceratopsian duelling with my colleague Peter Bond (check out his awesome Boneyard entry by clicking here!), I had the oppurtunity to really engage in some real palaeontology.

The kid in me, who is still sticking around, treasures these experiences like few others, and they show that even if you can't become a "proper" palaeontologist you can come pretty darn close!

Prospecting : At the Burgess Shale... Sorta

At the end of my first year at the museum in 2003 we had an unbelievable oppurtunity to go on an out of season trip to Mount Stephen in Field, British Columbia. Now for those of you who don't know the signfiicance of Mount Stephen it is part of the Burgess Shale. It is however, a less famous site than the Walcott quarry located on the connecting ridge of Mount Field and Mount Wapta directly across the valley from Mount Stephen.

Having just gotten hooked on the bizarre wonders of the Burgess Shale this was the trip of a lifetime.

It was also my first chance to hunt for fossils outside the Badlands. By this point in my 4 year run at the Tyrrell I was pretty good at determining fossil from rock, but it was this trip where I started my progress to the next level of knowledge in trying to identify the fossils I found.

The benefit of Mount Stephen vs. the Walcott quarry is that there is a near infinite number of specimens to be found. This slab full of Trilobites was found on the trail nearly 200 metres below the fossil producing plain.

The drawback of Mount Stephen is that it only produces hardbody specimens of trilobites and a handful of other arthropods. On the other hand, The Walcott quarry contains a massive array of excellently perserved specimens exhibiting the spectacular diversity of the Cambrian. Only there, you have to actively split shale to get to these treasures. On Mount Stephen there were more fossils than I could have ever imagined possible!

The actual fossil plain is atop the Mountain, and requires a very arduous hike. It is worth it though.


As the Burgess Shale was part of a UNESCO heritage site, and thus partially protected, half the hill was off limits to perserve this site for future generations, though erosion in my opinion negates the point of this rule. This meant we could only search part of the slope.

You couldn't help but wonder at the time whether the best fossils would be contained within the no go zone...




With this simple mat of shale in front of you, you could look at the more impressive layered outcrop in the protected area of the plain and wonder wistfully what you could find.

It turns out every 2nd or 3rd piece of shale in THIS photo had at least one trilobite fossil in it!!!

If you don't believe me this photo was taken within 3 minutes of our starting to look!

This trip also was my first experience to engage in real field work. The then curator of invertabrates at the Tyrrell, Dr. Paul Johnson was here to collect samples of rock for his upcoming paper on his theory of the Burgess Shale ecosystem forming around volcanic thermal vent environments.

It was a very enlightening and educational trip for me. Not only did I help collect some of the samples, but I was able to ask him all the questions that my heart desired. Those were the days.


Here are samples of our finds.


Lots of trilobites.

A few species of them too! Olenoides and Naraoia. I am hoping here that memory serves me well, as sadly my palaeontology books are all still stuck in Canada.

Trilobites weren't the only thing to be found though.

Among the most exciting finds of my life was this little beauty... An Anomalocaris claw!!! One of my favourite prehistoric creatures ever...
Though rarer than Trilobites there were few of these to be found.

New Responsibilities... New Oppurtunities

For my 3rd year at the museum in 2006 I returned as a founding member of the brand new Badlands Summer Science Camp. I was a natural to help pilot this program having had 3 years previous summer camp experience, and some palaeontological experience.

Combining the two has been thus far been my most statisfying work related experience.

As the kids were coming out for a whole week of 24/7 palaeontology experience we needed our programs at camp to be a lot more extensive than normal tourist programs. As such I got to do a lot of developement that required far more extensive palaeontology activities than I'd done as an interpreter.

Excavating- Dinosaur Provincal ParkOne of the most hands on experiences was working closely with the Museum's Senior Curator Dr. Donald Brinkman to develop a Micro Fossil sorting program. In addition to the educational presentation, which this photo of Traumador and Dr. Brinkman is from, I also helped collect the fossils. What made this cool for the kids, and cooler for me was that we were helping sort these for actual research!

The best part was the camp team accompanied Dr. Brinkman to do this excavating in Dinosaur Provincal Park which is among the most dinosaur rich sites in the world.

As this trip with Dr. Brinkman included teaching and supervising our work, every single one of us are now pretty competent micro fossil experts.

This was our quarry. Unlike macro fossil digs it wasn't the most elaborate of digs.

At the same time I have to say I enjoyed the "one day and you're done" aspect compared to week long macro digs.

Fossil digging whether micro or macro is great excercise. In the case of micros carrying them and the matrix they're in out of the field is a lot heavier than it looks.

As the micro fossil program was mine to develop I was put in charge of cleaning and screening them for our use.

Which just made working with these fossil all the cooler. I found em, prepped em, and finally..


with the help of the kids sorted them.

Casting- The Corythosaur of Doom!

Another of my development projects was refurbishing an old cast skeleton of Corythosaurus into a program prop usable by children. Sadly I only managed the refurbishing part of that task. The skeleton had been a test bed for a number of experimental casting materials in the 80's and as such a lot of it was made of fairly brittle, or worse, heavy stuff. This made it impossible for me to make it truly kid friendly.

Not that we didn't try it out with the kids. Sadly it was too hard to make it engaging for them as the hands on part had to be strictly supervised, and we adults did the "fun" work of putting the skeleton together. For example, the arms required two of us to attack. One person would hold up the heavy cast and the other would bolt it to the frame.

We retired it from the camp program roster after 2 failed attempts.

That having been said the 2 months I spent repairing the skeleton was a very indepth expereince in cast and mounting techniques. Though I couldn't nessecarily mould a new specimen, beyond wielding the underlying frame, I could put together the mounted cast skeleton now with what I learned in this project.

Much like the whole program's tragic outcome, due to the hectic pace of that pilot camp year I stupidly never had a good photo of me and my creation taken though I believe there is one out there somewhere!

Lost Quarries

In my last year I decided to develop a program around one of my personal favourite research projects at the Tyrrell. For the last decade or so, Darren Tanke has been hunting down the lost dig sites of such legends as the Sternbergs and Barnum Brown throughout Alberta.

I approached him about developing a program in which our kids are given a simulated lost quarry on the camp site, and using Darren's techniques figure out who dug it up, when they carried out the dig, and what dinosaur it was. Darren not only agreed to help me with the program, but he personally got involved!

These photos you're seeing are those taken of me and Darren in the early 20th century costumes that were used in the program.

Considering he's hunting for unrecorded spots all throughout the extensive Badlands of Alberta it seems incredible that Darren has found as many sites as he has so far.

Using nothing more than old expedition photographs, like the ones we simulated in these photos, garbage, old newspapers, and some good old fashioned detective work Darren now routinely pinpoints anywhere between 4 and 7 of these sites each summer. Considering he does this during his off time on current digs he's working on I think that's amazing!

Darren's guidance and assistiance led to this being my most successful program out of the lot. My only regret was a few authentic artifacts (like glass bottles and broken wooden crate) had to be substituted with child safe proxies.

The kids loved it. Being presented with the method of how Darren finds them they really enjoyed finding out the mystery of which dinosaur was found at camp.

This outcome was of course ficticious, but for the record it was the Hypacrosaur George Sternberg "found" in 1914. My Corythosaur cast was to stand in for the Hypacrosaur, but of course that didn't happen.

So I guess I sort of lost my target of meeting a prehistoric creature here at the end. To salvage this premise on this last photo I'll relay the best connection to palaeontology I made with my kids.

Having had a very long day most of the camp staff were incredibly exhausted. They just wanted to get back to the camp site and sleep. I offered for any who wanted to go on the Lost Quarry photo hunt.

You see Darren often finds the unknown dig site locations by matching land marks in the antique photos with the landscape of today. Taking the kids on a hike with this series of photos we followed a trail of landmarks that brought us to this lookout.

In the "modern" day this spot is camp itself, and though simulated the 6 kids who came with me forgot this wasn't real, and ran into camp to excitedly inform everyone that George Sternberg had been digging AT camp!

So, I may not be a professional palaeontologist, but I've had my fair share of run-ins with prehistoric creatures. Perhaps more importantly, I've facilitated and shared these encounters with a whole new generation of potential palaeontologists. Or at least I can try to comfort myself with that thought next time I start to regret my life's outcome.

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Be sure to check out the rest of the Prehistoric Insanity Productions affliate blogs' entries into the Boneyard #20 contest.

Traumador the T-Rex goes on an imaginary Tyrannosaurid date with the girl (dino) of his dreams.

Peter Bond takes us on a tour of Canada's largest fossil collection

Prehistoric Insanity Productions takes you on a behind the scenes of Meeting a 3D CG Prehistoric Creature.

Also be sure to hit Laelaps to check out the other entries, and most important to vote. You simply have to leave a comment to register your vote.

Thanks for stopping by, and hopefully see you again in the future!

The Music of My Childhood at last!

The annoying thing about soundtracks is that their a specialty music niche. At the best of times I'm lucky if I can get my hands on the music of a movie close to after seeing it. With the advent of the internet things are getting much better, and a lot of the big franchises are now pushing their music before the release of the film (this trend being one of the few cool things to come of The Phantom Menace).

Most modern movies typically release their score. Though they can still be frustrating to get, and still sometimes aren't released till WELL after the movie. Transformers being a good example (finally 6 months after the film was the score put out).

In the case of older films, well before the digital expansion of the music industry, getting their music was only a fantasy up until recently...

Two of the big Dinosaur movies of my childhood had music that has been on my wish list since I was 10.

Finally a decade and half later I've gotten my hands on them!
Ringo Stars spoof of Caveman/Dinosaur epics has one of the catchiest and cute themes ever. Helping forever etch this song into my musical psyche was its use in the introduction to my fav video game of all time, Dinosaur Wars on the Amiga. In it a Ringo style caveman walks along the screen to the song until suddenly the music stops the caveman turns to the audience, screams, and is instantly squished by a Tyrannosaur foot and leg from off screen.

This CD was released in 2005, but as it was a specialty label I didn't catch wind of it until a random internet search last year. It wasn't till this week when whining about wanting the album that Rhonwyn suggested I check on Itunes for it. I have the best girl friend ever! She not only suggested the place to get it, but also let me use her account and puter to download it. All for the low cost of $14 NZ! It would have cost me almost double that to ship it down here!

Caveman while making my wish list was more for the cute theme song than the whole album. It also is by a composer that hasn't ever been on my radar.

My other acquisition this week on the other hand has been at the top of my list forever...

Jerry Goldsmith's score to Baby Secret of the Lost Legend, has been a lost legend in and of itself!!!

Sentimental aside. This was the first film I ever saw in a theatre (that I can remember anyway). Though an awesome Dinosaur film for its time, it was also a little brutal for 4 or 5 year old me. The part were the daddy Sauropod gets blown away by the Army was a very traumatic scene, and I can still remember how terrified I was of seeing the Dinosaur pumped full of lead... However once I was older 8-9ish this was a staple film of my childhood rentals.

This film had two major themes that have been in my head since those young me rentals. Their in my top 20 themes of ALL time, and my favourite of Goldsmith's. Which is saying something. I love Goldsmith. He was way more diverse and talented than John Williams, and I have many favs of Jerry's, but the themes from Baby are always in my head.

The foremost being the action suspense theme. Whenever I find myself humming a "made up" soundtrack for something I inevitably base it on this brilliant bit of Goldsmith. Now that I have it my plagiarism finally comes home... Not having it in pure listenable form made it sort of imaginary if that makes sense ;p

Also the theme for the adult Sauropods is the music of finding a Dinosaur for me. The scene where the heroes come across the Sauropod in the swampy clearing for the first time is up there in the greatest Dinosaur scenes ever filmed. Aside not sure why those always have Sauropods in them? Their not even my favourite kind of Dinosaur.

For the last couple of years I'd futilely check every 6 months or so on the Internet for a possible release of this score. Nothing other than a substandard bootleg, and a unbelievably expensive special edition Jerry Goldsmith compilation album that had the adult theme on it, but costing $200!

So like usual in the cycle the other day I plug this into Google to be astonished by real hits!!!

After all this time it had BEEN released... Haza! Than I track down the company that is selling it... It was released exactly a month ago from when I found it. Perfect I think time to get me a copy. Till I see the most dreaded words on these sort of releases. SOLD OUT!!!

There is this unbelievable stupid aspect to soundtracks of collectors wanting them to be collectors items... So the record labels print ridiculously small runs. Like in the case of Baby a mere 3000 copies. Meaning that unless you're on top of it, and buy in the first few days of an albums release you're hooped. I missed Ghostbusters by a day!

Needless to say I was way too late on finding out about this one to buy a copy (for less than $100 bloody dollars!!!).

Thankful salvation came in the form of Alex who helped me secure a copy of the disc (for way less than a $100!!!!). He is the dude!

Now I can listen to music easy having two of my all time most wanted scores of all time. All that remains is Ghostbusters... Stupid limited runs!