Personal Blogs

My second Christmas with the OU.

I can't believe I posted something last year, but you never know: this becomes something of a habit, and for me studying at 5.00am is normal.

This could well be the first year in the last ten when a child hasn't been up by now! (They are 13 and 15). My son, unusually for him, was up at around 12.30am but realised his mistake and went back to sleep. Mrs Santa Claus had paid a visit by then but I don't recall hearing the midnight munching of chocolate money.

There are some wonderful traditions I've read about here.

I particularly like the idea of putting on new pyjamas on Christmas Eve (present no.1) and also having a 'table present' (the last present). As a child's request we're having a roast ham and for the first time in four years my daughter will have some poached fish (cod) having been vegetarian. I don't think she'll stretch to red meat, or even chicken (just yet). We've not asked for an explanation for this change, but delighted to have something else to offer her.

Happy holidays folks, I've got a Residential School from the 11th Jan and TMA2 in early February so I'll be here most mornings

Yes, that is a computer nudging into the frame there.

Prompted to give Google Docs a go I find within a couple of minutes I am Google-smacked!

Overwhelmingly impressive.

e-Life transforming. e-Things will never be the same.

I've only just crept on from Word 2002 in the last few weeks, so to be hit with so much more I feel like someone who has been trying to ski on a dry-slope strapped to planks of wood who has just been let loose on an Olympic Piste in the latest Salamon gear!

My 'MyStuff' days (six months actually) are also numbered. I knew that I had to 'populate' such a resource with material to give myself something to play with, but Google Docs without any doubt, on first impressions takes what MyStuff could have been in the commercial arena and realises it.

Google Docs has translated the desiress, hopes and expectations I had for MyStuff into a user-friendly and intuitive interface.

All I want to do now is share, share, share ... and go and compare.

And write more and read more and never leave my desk again.

In fact, I may re-instigate my exercise-bike as work-station. This is a standard exercisebike with the handle bars removed. Instead I have a lectern of sorts with a keyboard sensibly covered in a plastic skin. In this way I can type and bike!

Yee-ha!

(The second term of the day, did it with heebie-jeebies an hour ago, that I have put through the OED online)

Between them, the OED online and Google Docs leave me feeling like a kid on Christmas Morning with two brilliant but quite unexpected gifts!

Yee-hoo-oo-o!

And then I put a document into Google Docs, my piece on H808 First Impressions (below) and out of curiosity had it translated into French.

OMG

Though I understand French well enough to work in the country and can speak it OK, my written French is attrocious. Has this just given me the facility to communicate at a reasonable level with written French? Its an incredible, by default personalised language learning tool if nothing else.

Perhaps I could head for France in the next couple of months after all?

On verra.

I've regained the will to live.