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SPAN6202: Spanish in Seville, Spain

Posted by on August 18th, 2010 · Short courses, Uncategorized

SPAN6202: Spanish in Seville, Spain
9 January – 5 February 2011
Seville is the capital of Andalusia and is a great location to spend your summer holidays learning Spanish. Seville is home to 700,000 inhabitants and has a rich and varied history, bringing together a striking blend of Berber, Islamic and traditional Spanish cultures.

The course is run through the Centro de Lenguas e Intercambio Cultural (CLIC) – a leading Spanish language school that offers small group intensive language classes and a comprehensive social and cultural immersion program. The course is open to all UNSW undergraduate students. This is a 6UOC course that can be substituted for a course in a Spanish language major.

Course Fee
The fee is $2,300 per student. This covers: 



  • Four weeks of intensive Spanish language classes
  • ‘Intercambio’ discussions – language conversation swaps with a native Spanish speaker
  • Extra-curricular classes twice per week. Some examples include history, Spanish customs and traditions, phonetics and literature.
  • Housing in a single room at a family homestay, including half board
  • UNSW Travel insurance (covered by UNSW for its students on study tours)

How to Apply
To apply, download and fill in the application form:

http://www.studyabroad.edu.au/downloads/downloads/Seville%202011%20application%20form.pdf.

Applications are due on the 15th October, 2010. Please return the form to the Study Abroad Office, and contact Tom Küffer: t.kuffer@unsw.edu.au for more details or refer to: http://www.studyabroad.edu.au/downloads/pdf/Spanish%20in%20Seville.pdf

SPAN6206: Spanish in Oaxaca, Mexico

Posted by on August 18th, 2010 · Short courses

SPAN6206: Spanish in Oaxaca, Mexico
1 January – 13 February 2011
This intensive four week Spanish language program is run in Oaxaca, Mexico each year. The course is open to all UNSW undergraduate students. This is a 6UOC course that can be substituted for a course in a Spanish language major. 



Oaxaca is a small city of 250-300,000 people and the capital of the State of Oaxaca. It is 440kms to the south-west of Mexico City, is set at 5,000ft above sea level and is one of Mexico’s most beautiful cities. 



The course is run through the Instituto Cultural de Oaxaca – a private language centre that offers intensive Spanish language and culture courses for foreign students. The ICO has organised a diverse cultural program for UNSW students.

Course Fee
The fee is $2,300 per student. This covers:

  • Four weeks of intensive Spanish language classes
  • ‘Intercambio’ discussions – language conversation swaps with Mexican students
  • Activity workshops, such as salsa and merengue dancing, regional cooking, and ceramics
  • Weekly seminars on a variety of cultural themes, such as Pre-hispanic culture, politics in México, Oaxacan artists, traditional costumes and customs
  • Weekend in La Nevería, a small village in the Sierra Norte, to undertake community assistance project
  • Accommodation and food – housing with families, including half board
  • UNSW Travel insurance (covered by UNSW for its students on study tours) 



Students must organise their own airfares, and it is recommended to book these as early as possible. 


How to Apply
To apply, download and fill in the application form found at  http://www.studyabroad.edu.au/downloads/downloads/Oaxaca%202011%20application%20form.pdf.

Applications are due on the 15th October, 2010. Please return the form to the Study Abroad Office, and contact Tom Küffer: t.kuffer@unsw.edu.au for more details.

Further details: http://www.studyabroad.edu.au/downloads/pdf/Spanish%20in%20Oaxaca.pdf

Video of our game so far

Posted by on August 18th, 2010 · Uncategorized

Hi Guys,


This is the video that we have so far..
This video is actually given to welovejam.com.au, that generously offer their help to fill our games with sound effects, but i guess it might be good if we have some feedback..

At the moment, we’re working on the graphics of the game, the background, tiles, etc..

Lab 5

Posted by on August 17th, 2010 · Lab

Your task in this lab is to practise using for loops and prefabs.

We’re going to make a simple game in which the player has to click on a bunch of moving targets to destroy them.

  1. Create a target object of your choice. Give it a script to make it move around randomly.
  2. Create a prefab and drag the object into the prefab.
  3. Use the prefab to create multiple copies of the object.
  4. Use the Inspect to change the properties of the prefab and observe how the instances are affected.
  5. Create an empty “joint” object.
  6. Add a script to the joint to create many instances of the prefab when the game is started. Use a variable to specify the number.

Unity has a built-in facility for detecting when the user clicks on an object. To make it work, your object must have a Collider component attached to it. Most of the built-in primitive objects (boxes, spheres, etc) have colliders by default. If you are using a model you downloaded, you will have to add your own collider.

  1. Make sure your prefab includes a collider. If you don’t have one, add one from the Component menu.

When the user clicks on an object with a collider, a MouseDown event occurs. You can catch this event by adding an OnMouseDown() method to your script.

  1. Add an OnMouseDown() event handler to the script on the target prefab.
  2. Make the object destroy itself when it is clicked.

When all the targets are destroyed, we want to start a new level with twice as many. To keep track of the number of live targets we can add them all as children of the joint object and use Transform.childCount to see how many are left.

  1. Add an Update method to the joint object which checks how many children are left.
  2. If there are no children left, create twice as many as before.

Challenge: Rather than making objects disappear immediately when clicked, make them perform some kind of ‘dying’ behaviour (change colour, spin around, explode or something).

Cloudcamp in Canberra

Posted by on August 16th, 2010 · Uncategorized

It’s happening in Canberra in October – onya Ben and Kristoffer!

and NICTA is already a venue sponsor!

Hopefully round up lots of interesting discussion on Government Cloud this time round…

Assignment 1 – Submission

Posted by on August 15th, 2010 · assignments

Submitting the storyboard: Since the storyboards are going to be checked during lab session at week 4 (week 5 for Monday tut), the final PAPER version of the storyboard has to be handed to the tutor at the start of next lab session.

Submitting the complete Unity project implementing your scene:

1) Script files:

Your assignment will be stored in a number of files. The script files (.js files) can be submitted via two ways: using the “give” web page or using “give” command.

[Read more →]

This week in whiteboard

Posted by on August 13th, 2010 · Uncategorized
DAAO_whiteboard6

MODULE: Ingestion and schema matching

Many of the most illuminating discussions i have with people on any project is over diagrams.  When someone makes that box connect to that circle via an arrow (or better yet, a dotted line), that is usually when the penny drops for me.

Here are a few of the scribbles that facilitated conversation this week.

The diagram above was used for thinking through the critical path for ingestion new data into DAAO and how it impacts on schema design.

This is what this diagram currently means to me. Our designers and I will be working with CIs (you, imagined reader) to find out how an improved database website will best serve your research needs. Your answers input into modifying the schema design and also guide the design of the website through which you experience the database.  Meanwhile,  Olivia and her editorial/indexing team will mine print new source texts for ingestion – indexing to the new schema.  While Olivia (she’s busy!), the designers and I also go through the new databases, (such as art@base) that we are ingesting and interoperating with (Fuam), and matching and modifying when necessary  non-aligned schema. The next iteration of this diagram should have arrows all folding through these boxes in feedback loops – but the green pen died.

DAAO_whiteboard5

relational database twister

Ross and I were using this twister diagram to talk through how various filters might work to capture new imagined relationships across expanded ‘people’ set. – like artist-curator-designer/design organisation. (There is another re-conceptualisation of ‘organisations’ diagram coming)

DAAO_whiteboard4

This diagram emerged after a very interesting discussion with Mr Snow and Zina from the House of Laudanum – where we discussed metadata registry as way of thinking through ‘truth problem’ with interoperating databases – like Video Art Online (VAO) and DAAO.

There are so many things going in this project: ingesting, connecting, interoperating, reducing ambiguity, enhancing search, standardising, redesigning user experience AND then opening up our data into the miasma of the dataverse so it will be safe in numbers but simultaneously pulling it back again as something defined and redefined.

One of the most personally exciting things about this initial business analysis stage is  gaining a really solid sense of the dynamism and complexity of the landscape in which the DAAO needs to live if it is to survive.  There is so much bending and breaking of things to make things fit and yet there is a drift and flow. At once mechanical and organic, the dataverse is a fascinating place at the moment. New vocabularies emerge every other days to describe the growing, living, dead and dying worlds of data.

This week’s word is agile. (Well it been the word for a while) But as i try and work through critical paths of this project, it is clear that feedback across multiple processes makes linear process difficult. The need to be agile runs from product to process and back.

SOA and Cloud Symposium

Posted by on August 13th, 2010 · Uncategorized

will be presenting in the “Real World Cloud Computing Track” on 5th Oct on our recent project experiences in evaluating and using cloud, and sharing with the world some unique challenges and opportunities Australians have with Cloud Computing. Latest agenda at soasymposium.com.

I am really looking forward to connecting with my international colleagues in this experience sharing event.

AIBC NSW Young Professionals’ Mentorship Program

Posted by on August 12th, 2010 · Mentorship, Uncategorized

 Australia-India Business Council – The deadline for applications is 5 p.m. 20 August 2010.

This exciting 16-week program connects aspiring young professionals interested in Australia-India Business relations with the expertise, insights and networks of today’s leaders. Mentees looking for professional guidance and support in the developmental stages of their careers are matched with mentors looking to tap into up-and-coming talent and build their networks.

The AIBC NSW Young Professionals’ Mentorship Program is exclusively available free of charge to all AIBC members.  AIBC has a special membership rate for students of $55.

To register, simply complete the relevant application form (attached) and send it to us at the address stipulated in the form. You may also find answers to frequently asked questions in the attached document. Please note that participation in the mentoring program is not guaranteed as we will only match mentors and mentees where we determine there is a suitable match.

If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact us at ypnsw@aibc.org.au.

For further information:

Lab 4

Posted by on August 11th, 2010 · Uncategorized

Tasks for lab 4:

  1. Check out the Ass1 demo if you haven’t had a chance to yet.
  2. Show your Ass1 storyboards to your tutor for feedback.
  3. Returning to last week’s lab, make the ‘treasure’ objects move around randomly.
  4. Work on your assignment.