Stock cars and frozen hands

My new toy :-)

Have sorted out the onward life of the Red Traveller/Red Demon which will have palliative stock-car care and i couldn't think of a better place for it to go.

Meanwhile the yet-to be named 'smurf' van has come into my life and been an interesting experience. The stomach-cramping sickening feeling of having spent quite a lot of money on it and the risk associated (if it goes bang I'm f*&%€d) as it's kind of drained my remaining savings to their lowest ever ebb.

But with the best service history I've ever seen, genuine 49,560 miles on the clock(!!!) and LPG I'm VERY sure it's going to give me years of amazing slow but sure service.

When I bought Vicky, my Type II van i felt the same, the gut-wrencing fear that this could be the worst mistake and most expensive, but she served me well (and cleared my then savings!) and I ave only loving memories, and fear of ever hearing that bang as the oil cooler went...

LPG is an interesting new world, will be intriguing to find out how it goes, MUCH cheaper and good efficiency but weird to put in and a bit risky too - anything that can freeze skin on contact is hectic!

And then there's naming, she's rust free with a tight body and big up top, so name needs to reflect those attributes... It will cum ;7)

Happy dubbing awaits!

Pre-Xmas Job Scramble

been a while since I got round to writing much into this - should be a daily thing but somehow end of the day and I wanna log off not live on line...

Big milestones have been achieved, just the detail to work out on them and the devil truly does lurk in the details. The flyers need a lot of work - they're not bad in print but not that great either, lots of feedback to give and fingers x'd they'll be great once done.

However settling on the VLE has been the biggest milestone. Without doubt biggest professional decision I've had to make ever, and a tough call. Am confident externally hosted moodle to be brought in house in the future is the right way but also have realisation of the political sensitivities and football-like nature this decision could have... After gloscat experience am very keen to stay onside with people and need to watch that i keep control of my attitude towards the clunky interface and ultra-tight back end connection LUVLE has, it IS a good system but it looks and feels old, and is complex to use due to its tight integration with LUSI. The advantages and disadvantages of each solution are double-edged swords cutting both favourably and unfavourably depending on your point of view and concerns, it will be interesting to see how things develop over the next few months and years with these two systems here.

Could this become just more work?

SO it's blogging time agian - and this one could be as dull as Ben's can be...

Today has brought fresh investigations into Moodle and integration with Questionmark perception. A few meetings and more looking at LUVLE and seeing how cluncky it is. Picked up on some of the politics surrounding the status quo and realised how this decision could be political in its ramifications...

Made a great contact though with a professor whose book I'd read for my MSc - Charles Alderson who specialises in language testing - met a few others in that department and left very happy. Haven't had a chance 9as always) to get enough dev done today - was hoping to get a load of stuff up and running but emailing and admin and thinking got in the way.

Sorted out a venue for my party though which is a HUGE step forward so that's all good - designed the flyer last night and will distribute this eve after making final tweaks.

So, all good, liking this Blog not a bad record of the day...

Today I:

• Looked at LUVLE use for Distance Learning in CETAD with Verity Williams
• Organised Website meeting
  
• Followed up and got quotes for Moodle hosting
• Met with Sheryl about that and about other stuff that needs to be done for MRes course for admissions etc
• Updated project plan
• Got very terse with Tiscali as their service and connection are crap
• Sorted Egg stuff out to pay Mary
• Sorted venue for Birthday
• Went to seminar on Qusetonmark Perception
• Met Charles Alderson and a few others in Linguistics working on development plus someone working on PHd about ESOL in public sector who was interested in work at BBC centre in Glos and cynical box-filling exercise it was.
• Created slides for presentation tomorrow on VLE options.
  

First Posts

OK, so I've been reading about and pontificating on Blogs for learning, Blogs in moodle, blogs in VLEs etc, but not actually writing one.

So time to start - things i looked at today:

Moodle Hosting: http://www.pteppic.net/ which could provide the third way to having moodle as a VLE for the IHR, and acronyms for names.

RSS feeds from journals, which has to be the way forward: http://www.library.tufts.edu/ginn/tutorials/webfeeds/#TOC

And Blogs in Moodle which has to be one of the most interesting developments and a long discussion here which prompted me to actually starts a blog. LEt's see what it results in.

No listening at all today which is unlike me - Mastodon, Matafix and ladytron still on the phone, need to change tonight.

Meanwhile I'll probably get home and keep being a techie with broadband - here's fingers x'd.