Wednesday, November 30, 2005
Here in the Bearpit we are getting into the spirit of Advent. We had our annual Advent Carol Service this Sunday in the cathedral and although it was v stressful because we worked with some lantern makers from Sheffield and a local school to make these lanterns:
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which were only finished just before we started, with no time for rehearsals or anything like that, the whole thing was very moving and the music was excellent. Now we are getting ready for the various Christmas carol services and singing carols. Last night our samba band (drama students) played at the Light a Light torchlit procession from our local hospice to the cathedral and I went to see them. There was an amazing long procession of hundreds of people with flaming torches and they lit the Christmas tree outside the cathedral, then gave us all mulled wine. I almost managed to get a great picture on my mobile of all the students using their mobiles to take pictures of the tree and the floodlit cathedral but couldn't find the right zip on my magic Rohan jacket fast enough. But I do now have a great picture of the cathedral as my phone wallpaper! Here is another Advent picture instead of us trying to get the lanterns back in the van:
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I was reading The Guardian the other day- Monday I think - and still thinking about the article I posted about last Thursday and which Dr Joolz discussed much more thoughtfully. It suddenly struck me how one of the great pleasures for me in the paper, especially since its new format, is the range and quality of pictures, nearly all professionally taken, some standing there in their own right and not just as illustrations for articles. Those double page spreads they do are amazing, I think. So it seems very clear that there is a real demand for professionally produced photos and professional photographers in the paper that published the article predicting their demise..
Friday, November 25, 2005
When you get bored with EastEnders dancing, there is some great stuff on FlickrSoup for the Soul right now..
If you want a change from playing patience tonight check out this site. Explore the settings and see - and hear- Peggy Mitchell dancing to house music. Or Dot with the broom dance.
Thursday, November 24, 2005
I stole this heading from today's Guardian Technology supplement which has several interesting stories for us I think. The one with this title is about how professional photographers have been undermined and marginalised by digital photography which means we can all produce pictures for the media. They also now have to edit their own pictures and learn to use technology to do that. It ends by suggesting that so many images are now created that we may be at risk of image pollution.. Personally I love the image saturation I get from reading everyone's blogs and from Flickr. Will we ever get image overload?
Then inside there is a story about Facebook.com which is a social networking site for students but with the added feature that you only get to network with students from the same university, so you might also get to meet them in real life. Apparently it is v big in the States and now growing over here. I thought I would find out about it for the Bearpit to see if we can join. If we do I will blog about it. You can't see much from the website without registering. You can upload pictures too so, hey, more image pollution..
And then on page 3 there is a review of a game that sounds great, Okami. You get to draw in this game and, I quote, 'the concept of the game is to paint and interact with the beauty of nature'. I may have to put a Playstation 2 on my Christmas list so I can play this game.
Oh, and there is a really cool looking DAB radio too with turquoise and flowers. Here is a picture to add even more to this image polluted world.
and all this cost me just 60p and of course for that I also got Doonesbury, Steve Bell and a Sudoku!Monday, November 21, 2005
My dad is 90 on Weds 23rd November. We had a family lunch for him on Saturday which was v hard to organise and which brought 27 members of our immediate family together without bloodshed or anyone leaving early, something of an achievement. Dad enjoyed it a lot, though. My great-niece Ffion ( I have 10 great-nieces and nephews) made Dad a lovely book of memories, kind of this is your life. This is her with Dad:
The only sad bit is that my video camera has a sound problem so I couldn't film the party and I mucked up lots of my still shots- I think I have changed the flash setting by accident so lots of the pics are blurred because of too slow shutter speeds. There were, however, many other cameras present so I hope we are going to be all right overall.Well, although it has taken me a long while to post, I really enjoyed last Wednesday in the end and even the Motorcyclist has been nice about what I said and how I did it, even though for probably the first time in 31 years he had to listen to me for an hour without being able to interrupt or reply. The day itself was great as I had four lots of flowers and some helium balloons arrive from friends, look (these are just some of the flowers):
And loads of my nice research friends either came or sent me lovely cards and messages. Our IT guys are getting v excited about doing the lecture as a media stream (they have robbed their AV budget to buy the needed server) so quite soon I should be able to make a link for you to see if you want. Then you can judge for yourselves if it was any good. I watched a test bit today and it was v strange watching myself teach!
Monday, November 14, 2005
Why did I say I would do this? Right now I am very aware that in 48 hours it will all be over. I have had about 6 weeks to plan what I do but until today all I had done was a) make the poster; b) make a video tape of my goddaughter c) organise the invitations and d) do a scruffy one-page plan which might be distantly related to a mind map but didn't help much today!
All day today I have been trying to sort out what I want to say and I have a very bad and much too long Powerpoint presentation ready which I shall spend tomorrow re-writing. The good bits have been finding this site when I was looking for an on-line version of Pride and Prejudice, finally learning how to draw straight lines in Photoshop and learning about the little clicky button underneath our remote mouse for the lecture theatre. (I have dressed Elizabeth and Darcy at least 6 times today and spent a long time resisting doing some research in my Georgette Heyer collection about what men wore with knee-breeches and what they wore with Hessians. ) The rest of the time has been spent thinking about how to say anything worth listening to and -mainly- wondering if I really know anything about digital literacies at all. in between that I have thought about my knee a bit, which has been hurting since I went to the gym on Friday. (I know. No need to say it.)
Thursday, November 10, 2005
Just before Dr Joolz went to Venice I went here:
It looks very un-English and it is- it is here in Wales. I had never been before and so I took lots of pictures. We also bought the complete DVD set of this and some badges which say we are not numbers.
On the way we tried to stop in Llangollen for lunch but it was full. We saw the river though which was also pretty full:
and this amazing shop, though we did not go and buy anything:
then we went past this lake:
One of the things I liked was that there are lots of natural frames for pictures in Portmeirion like this one where the Motorcyclist is using one of his favourite gadgets, his Lidl binoculars.
and this one looking across the estuary.
Around the village there are woods to walk in and the autumn colour was just irresistible. Or irresistable, I am too tired to tell tonight!
So it was a good break. It feels a very long time ago and work is very full again, particularly since on Wednesday this week I am meant to be doing a quite important lecture which is still just a plan on one side of A4 and a short video clip. I would post the poster but I can't find the file. Tomorrow, maybe..
