Why is it that most HR departments seem to be pretty useless at some simple things? I know they do quite a lot of important things very well, but the details seem to let them down.

My line manager just came and told me that HR told her that I have done 0 hours of staff development this academic year. I don’t even know how many times I’ve blogged about the courses I’ve been doing since September, but it’s no small number.

I worked out how many hours of staff development I’ve actually done so far and it’s somewhere in the region of 97. It’ll be something like 107 by the time this course finishes. We’re required to complete 30 hours per academic year. Does this mean I won’t have to do any more for a couple of years? I doubt it. 🙁

I’ve spent a bunch of time today catching up on my coursework. There are no end of little bits and pieces that need to be handed in with each unit. I have no idea where most of it has come from. I barely remember writing it at all. Everything I can remember writing has been written today because I’d put off doing it when I was supposed to. 🙂 With any luck I’ll have two completed assignments in time for my class tomorrow.

For the last few days I’ve been working on plans to build a robot out of a laptop. I was inspired to do so by “a story I read about high school students in America building one”:http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/9103. If they can do it then I bloody well can too!

Now it’s come down to it I’ve realised just how much work there really is to do. It’ll hopefully be a fun little project to work on over the summer, if I keep it up. Ideally I’ll find some other people who are interested in it and can help with some part of it. Otherwise I think this’ll end up being forgotten about in a box in the cupboard under the stairs.

I spent a good couple of hours decorating when I got home form work yesterday. I’ve painted an entire wall behind the bed in the front bedroom. No I’ve just got to paint the other three and it’ll be sorted. I think Lizz is going to make me paint the one I’ve just done again though. In crimson red! Will that make me the “Crimson King”:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crimson_King?

Hehe, Quest arrest. That rhymes. I wrote, “a long time ago”:http://essteeyou.com/?id=170, about how cool Richard Quest is.

Now it turns out he’s “been arrested”:http://www.reuters.com/article/newsOne/idUSN1832900220080419 for having possession of methamphetamine in Central Park at 1am. Tut tut.

Enjoy!

I woke up this morning earlier than I normally do for work. Most unusual. I came downstairs because we should be getting a new washing machine delivered at some point before 12 (so round about 1pm, no doubt). When the post arrived I was absolutely amazed to find that it was the stuff I’d ordered yesterday online. That’s really quick delivery. The last time I ordered form them it took about 3 days to arrive. I am very pleased.

I’ve now got 10 high power infra red LEDs with a viewing angle of 30° and some AA battery holders to play around with. I’m going to remake the infra red glasses, but more stylish. 🙂

Ok, I don’t have a kid, but if I did then he or she would hate “posts about other”:http://education.zdnet.com/?p=1626 “kids who hate Linux”:http://blogs.zdnet.com/open-source/?p=2293.

I don’t care if your kid hates or loves Linux. Almost certainly nobody else does. I like Linux, I use it a lot. Sure it’s come a long way in the desktop world over recent years, but not far enough. 2008 is not the year of Linux breaking into the desktop market in any serious way. 2009 won’t be, nor will 2010. Get over it.

Today I had the pleasure of discovering that “Silvio Berlusconi”:http://www.independent.co.uk/news/europe/berlusconi-returns-to-power-thanks-to-postfascist-ally-808976.html is once again in charge of Italy.

This guy makes me laugh.

I’ve been enjoying electronics for the last few weeks. Since I helped make the robot costume for Lizz to wear I’ve spent a bunch of time tinkering. I’m working on a dimmer switch that turns on an increasing number of LEDs rather than increasing the brightness of each individual LED. It’s probably been done before, somewhere, but I want to do it.

Today I hooked up a “555 timer”:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/555_timer to an LED to make it flash. It wasn’t very difficult, but it was still cool. I had a sense of achievement when I’d finished.

Speaking of a sense of achievement brings me to Gran Turismo 5. JonP and I spent a large portion of the weekend playing on it. There are a couple of challenges where you have to overtake all 15 other cars in one lap. In B-Class alone we must have spent 3 hours trying to do it. We earned enough money from all the 3rd, 6th, 7th, and 11th places to buy ourselves a 450 000cr Ferarri F40. I managed it while JonP was at his house and I was so happy that I dropped my controller, shouted some unintelligible gibberish and jumped over the sofa. 🙂 Good times.

I was off work for my birthday on Tuesday. While I was off I decided I’d try to get my hot air balloon to fly. I lit a piece of fire-lighter to see how long I could expect it to burn for. After a few minutes I got bored and impatient. I held the mouth of the balloon over the flame and it began to inflate. Then I decided to give it a quick push down to get the entire mouth of the balloon around the flaming fire-lighter. I thought I had managed it. The envelope of the balloon began to fill up quite rapidly, but then I noticed the mouth of the envelope was aflame.

By the time I’d put it out I’d managed to ruin any chance of repairing it, so I threw it into the bin.

It was a fun little project while it lasted, but now it’s definitely over and done with. That is, until I get the urge to do it again. 🙂