There was an earthquake in the UK at about 1AM. I didn’t feel it at all. That’s not bad sleeping to say it was a 5.3 on the richter scale, which Stephen Fry tells me experts no longer use.

The entire college lost connectivity to the Internet a couple of hours ago. Pretty much all of the students left very shortly afterwards. It’s back up now, because I’m posting using it, but it’s a bit late. It made for a very boring afternoon until I decided to start playing Space Invaders in MAME. Trust it to be that exact minute that the network manager popped into the office to ask me if the connection was working yet or not. I think he was secretly impressed and envious. 🙂

I had my observation yesterday while teaching ICT Key Skills to a horsecare class. It went pretty well. The first task I gave to the class was done in exactly the right amount of time. That made me very happy and positive about the next couple.

The second task, however, was completed in about 10 minutes because people worked out what they were doing. The third task went pretty much exactly the same and was over with in another 10 minutes.

I had originally planned that they would continue work on their portfolios once the tasks were completed. Emma suggested to me that they should do some tests that were already on Moodle. I got them to attempt a couple of the tests, and then Barbara had to leave. She gave me her feedback straight away and it was all good. 😀 😀 😀

Barbara did say I project a “no nonsense” demeanor. I see that as a good thing. 🙂 Especially during an observed session.

I’m just glad the first session is out of the way already. Bring on the rest of the course!

I have a piano. I bought it for £20 on Saturday. It’s absolutely massive though, so I’m now going to have to get rid of it already. 🙁 It’s really cool having a piano, and I don’t want to lose it. I can’t think of anywhere else to put it though. I don’t think the shed would be a suitable environment for it.

With any luck I’ll be able to list it in The Chad or something and not lose any money on it.

It took 4 people to get it into the house. Pianos are very _very_ heavy.

Last week Lizz and I went to see a band called Pete and the Pirates because Gordon had a couple of spare tickets. It was a really good gig and we had a good time there.

Last night Lizz and I went to the NME tour because Gordon didn’t realise he’d got some spare tickets for that, too. 😀

We got there in time to watch Does It Offend You, Yeah? They were really good. 🙂 We also saw Jo Lean and the Jing Jang Jong, who were mediocre, but reminded me quite a lot of The Ramones. The headliners were The Cribs who were quite good. They really got the crowd going, anyway. I managed to get 3 people from the front, but couldn’t get any closer for the life of me.

They were both really good nights and I’m looking forward to the next gig in a week or two. 🙂 Jimmy Eat World better be good!

I’m waiting for a staff development session on “Exploring the use of social networking” at the moment. It’s going to be a really boring hour, I can tell already.

At elast with us not being open today I’ve got time to learn how to play the harmonica that Dave brought back for me from Prague. I’m learning the 12-bar blues at the moment. I think I kinda need accompaniment though.

Oh well, off to waste a day I could better spend at home, doing ANYTHING else.

My shift at work today has mostly consisted of playing with electronic components in the office. I hooked up some LEDs to some AA batteries in increasing amounts until I blew one of the LEDs. 🙂 Then I played with a motor from a little model helicopter for a while. I hooked it up to the helicopter again and used the fan in the office to blow the blades around. I measured the output of the motor and found that it was about 1.6v. Not even enough to light an LED. for shame. I’ll have to get a bigger motor and some better blades to make it generate enough power to light an LED.

I had to copy some stats into an Excel spreadsheet for Keith, as I do every month. It’s to show how much the VLE “Moodle”:http://moodle.org/ gets used by different study areas. It suddenly occured to me, after I’d done it, that I could automate the whole thing with the clever use of Excel macros/VBA. After a couple of hours I finished writing and testing my code. It’s excellent. It’ll save me literally 20 minutes a month. :\ I have done it 17 times before, the long way. That’s over 5 hours of my time.

It’s weird coding something in Visual Basic again after about 6 years of not touching it.

30 minutes of work remaining today. 🙂

How come women have such a completely different idea of what is an important purchase in the first month of living somewhere?

I just went to Asda with Lizz and she was showing me some bedsheets for the spare bed. It’s fair enough that we’re getting new ones of those because Jess is coming to stay tomorrow, and I wouldn’t want her to sleep in some random bedding that was here before we moved in… But then Lizz was still talking to me about whether I liked a plain white floral pattern on a plain white sheet or something, so I switched off and just agreed with whatever she decided. That was my first mistake.

On the way out of Asda Lizz mentioned that the sheets she’d just bought for us had cost £17… For us? As well as sheets for the spare room. I already own two sets of bedsheets, and we bought a very nice set between us while we were at Adam’s house. We now have another set. Is it just me or does that not seem like a waste of £17? Is it a woman thing?

It snowed a little bit today. It didn’t really settle because it only lasted for a couple of minutes. It’s the closest thing to proper snow that I’ve seen this winter though.

I’ll be playing football in a few minutes. Then it’s the motherloving weekend!!!

Lizz’s friend Jess is coming up to stay for a while, so she’ll be our first overnight guest. The first to sleep in the spare bedroom, and the first to sleep in the spare bed. Hopefully it’ll all be good.

How come as soon as I start to write a blog entry someone comes along and wants me to do something, after I’ve spent 15 minutes failing to find something that’s still remotely interesting on the Internet?