It’s a small world.

Thanks to Blipfoto user DrTwitcher for the tip to try out the Tiny Planets Photo iPhone app. It has some fun results!

Today I did some work, and yet I am on holiday. Where does this madness come from?

And tonight: dog walking at the beach, and out for ice cream - now that is the holiday spirit!

Sometimes, the desire to be free is restricted by the very enabler of that freedom.

Today I got a new phone. Just a replacement for my last one, which was randomly dropping calls. But useless it was, until I got home and restored it from backup.

Two hours without comms. Awake. How odd.

Finished off some extra work today, in an uncharacteristically sunny Glasgow. Caught up with about three hours of old conference materials on the commute. Doubly productive.

The train home is full of quietly drunk football fans. They don’t appear happy, so I assume they lost. Not sure how that whole football misery thing goes - but I guess they all like it that way…

Anyway. This week has been a bit of a blur (see what I did there?) but now I have two weeks off! Let the intensive slacking begin!

Who believes in Karma?

What an odd week. In many ways, so very positive. The future is bright, the present is cosy, and the past is behind us. A great week of experiencing talent and being inspired.

Then I spend too much time today trying to right the wrongs of a bad driver who “only just sorted [her] last claim out from hitting someone in January!”

I guess swings are accompanied by roundabouts. But I am in the for lucky white heather when I visit Glasgow tomorrow!

So, today was long. It started early. Good company with a colleague. Transversed the country. Met some great people. Spoke to some brilliant kids. Witnessed high quality teaching practice. And then enjoyed a sunny drive (almost) home.

It was all going well. Better than well.

Then dropping off my passenger in his wee Fife village… some $?¥^%?? $++?^*> drove into the side of my car!

I mean… expletive deleted!

So tonight’s dull blip is a very small amount of the damage incurred - tomorrow I will perhaps find out how bad it is underneath, but at least two panels and a door are kaput… :-/

Spent the evening bring entertained by an extraordinary bunch of talented teenagers.

Singers. Pianists. Violinists.

Choirs. Bands. Orchestras.

Extracts from Ravel’s piano duet, Ma mère l’oye, were fantastic. A highlight!

Laptop. Doubled the RAM. Doubled the storage. Success.

And now I must decide how best to throw Windows on it, and which version to use. Oh the decisions.

Feeling less Star Trek today, and more IT Crowd.

But, oddly, that’s still okay! :-)

This evening I have been mostly cloning my hard drive to a double-sized replacement.

Tomorrow I will throw the drive in my trusty laptop, and double the RAM at the same time.

No matter how often I do this stuff, whether it’s back up all my music, photos, and documents to a wee 2.5" disc, blip pictures around the world from my iPhone, VPN into work to grab a forgotten file, draw not so pretty pictures on an iPad, create virtual worlds on PS3, or kill aliens on an XBox 360… I still feel like I am an extra in Star Trek. Gotta love technology!

When you have spent too much of the day dealing with paper, trapped in the endless coffee-work-loo-cycle, nothing beats a good dog walk to clear the head!

I grew up being promised of the impending paperless office. I still await it, relatively patiently.

Apparently called “fingers” by those in the trade, we were visited by this cherub and her parents¹ today.

Don’t let the disguise encourage you to assume this lass is the shy, retiring type. It’s more about control! You can’t lose control of your image, especially in the digital age.

She will hold it against me to say, no doubt, but she’s very huggable - like one of the family!

Well the primary stress is over for another year. Now I can focus on all the secondary stresses.

I would like to clear my inbox by Easter, but I think I need a helping hand. I walked around tonight looking for some inspiration, but there were no signs!

I have only ever had one recurring dream, mostly in my childhood. It resembled tonight’s blip.

Today the stresses and strains of other people’s deadlines are taking their toll, in some peculiar stress by proxy manner. I am hoping a bottle of Chianti finds it’s way into my hands by tomorrow night!

Driven by sunsets and hectic schedules, I fear mundanity in my blips!

Today I am dissatisfied with the camera in my iPhone 4, and wonder at the prospect of completing this year long challenge. Tempted to get the Nikon out instead.

But almost one quarter of the year has passed. Soon the clocks change. So maybe it’s possible. This might just be my dark period!

In recent months I have been heartened and inspired by many people. They are fighting a guerilla war against the establishment of education. They talk in a language that resonates with my own philosophies and they embrace technology rather than simply teach it!

From the lone voice to the collective concert, these are exciting times.

The days are now longer than the nights. The commute to and from work will be in daylight until autumn, and better weather might allow more sunsets to be captured.

I best be careful. I like sunsets. I might get carried away!

I like shadows, reflections, and warped perceptions. It’s good to let the mind wander, and consider worlds yet undiscovered.

Today I caught up with the things I should have done on Friday and Saturday, but was otherwise engaged!

I also failed miserably to capture the moon, despite an evening stroll to suitable vantage points. I need to do done research!

The Howff, Dundee. Something especially peaceful about the last resting place of those long gone.

Missed the Scotland game.

Instead it was my sixth day of “work” this week. But third day in a row in civvies, so it feels less real.

Repeated 80s flashbacks today.

Manic Miner and Elite. Apple II and ZX81.

And the journey home randomly threw up a chain of classic tracks that made me forget the decade I was in.

And today I met some nice people, enthused about technology, committed to good education, grappling with how these things combine.

It’s been a bright, bright sunshiny day!

Should we worry that one of our daughters has a teacher that patently does not know her capabilities, strengths, or weaknesses. He could not tell us how she might improve, just that there was little chance of it happening. Not through lack of application or misbehaviour. Apparently “knowledge” is the problem. Not a lack of it especially, any aspect of it in particular, or a small portion of it - just knowledge! It’s hard. Yup, as a reason for her not being able to improve he actually said that getting a better mark is “hard”.

It frustrates me that teachers do not always want to find the time to know and understand their students. Some do not want to cultivate opportunity or foster talent. How can change be effected in education while some practitioners are only interested in dictating notes and collecting a wage?

Apologies for the rant, fellow blippers. Normal service to be returned tomorrow.

Sometimes order wins over chaos. Certainly it makes life easier at work. But which is better? Only one way to find out…

Photograph!

Another occasional series begins?

And… Eldest convinced family to download Words with Friends. Another social gaming addiction hits our household. Great to know we are gullible.