Nearly over

June 25th, 2010 No Comments »

I’m now entering the final phase of my degree hence the slow procession of updates to my blog. I’m starting on the last assignment for the last course which in theory will all be over by the end of September – although I hope to have completed the project way before then. The first stage involves a project plan which I need to get cracking on really…..

another missed blog post would have been about last week’s Doctor Who episode which did indeed feature the Roman camp photographed earlier in the year, but sadly the image comparison I had planned was scuppered by The Wife who promptly deleted the recording from the FreeSat box. The camp had been enhanced slightly making it several times the size and extending way back towards the hills, and the trees housing Go Ape were easily identifiable at several points throughout including the scene in which we see Rory poking his head through the tent entrance as he volunteers to help The Doctor.


Where have I been? (and Rainbow Cake)

March 21st, 2010 3 Comments »

Well I’ve been busy, okay? My two final Open University courses started at the beginning of Feb as I mentioned before, and I’ve spending most of my spare time completing coursework. I still have a final project to complete for one of the courses which I’ll get out of the way in the next week or so, then that just leaves two more pieces of coursework to be completed in May / June / July… and that’s all.

In other news… Joseph / Joe / Joey / Joey-joe-joe has had his passport photo taken ready for our trip to France later this year. He looks a bit gormless but it is an accurate likeness. The ferry and stopover hotels are all booked and I hope to have Disney all sorted by the end of the week. We have our new Euro GB style number plates ready for the Oli/Tor-bus and I really must remember to order the European travel kit things with the torch, triangle, first aid kit and stuff in…

My copy of ‘All Aliens Like Burgers’ arrived on Friday too but I haven’t had chance to read it yet. I’m saving that for April when there’s a natural gap in coursework… I’m struggling to get chance to read my monthly subscription of PC Pro magazine too so a full book will be more of a challenge.

And finally… I promised Poppy that I’d make her a rainbow cake for her birthday (no, not gay pride), which isn’t until June. But considering I’d not got a plan together on how I was going to make this, I thought it best to perform a test run. Vicky is in the process of decorating the bathroom this weekend so I thought what better way to keep the children occupied than a bit of baking. So here’s how it goes: I made a mega batch of cake mixture… 300g of marg/sugar/flour and 6 eggs. I split the mixture in to six portions and added food colouring as needed to each one.. Purple, Blue, Green, Yellow, Orange and Red (I had to mix some of them myself). Then I spooned each colour in to a cake tin, one colour on top of the other, and did the same for a second cake tin. Bake for 45 minutes and turn them out….

Finally we sandwiched the two together with blue butter icing, then covered it in more butter icing to finish.. Mmmmm count those E numbers. Poppy then decorated the cake with an entire tub of pink sprinkles. I shall learn from my mistakes in making this, firstly I will put the red in first and make the rainbow up from that direction, because it bends the wrong way in my cake. Secondly, I might just make one massive cake instead of two so the rainbow effect is more pronounced. I will also put more effort in to the next one to make it look more like a birthday cake. Will have to get a new icing piper for that methinks seeing as the last one fell apart.

I’ll leave you with these last two photos of the finished product, even if Poppy does look a little unsure what she’s let herself in for.

A productive weekend

February 16th, 2009 No Comments »

I need a rest after this weekend.. I did enough work to last the rest of the year I think. It all started Friday evening when I painted the woodwork in the nursery. First thing Saturday morning I started on the walls, then the ceiling and finally a second coat on the woodwork. While I was splodging away upstairs, Vicky was in the process of cooking (with toddler assistance) a special Valentine’s day meal of Moroccan Chicken & Couscous with Lebanese herby flat breads (all home made I might add), followed by a dessert of chocolate cake and vanilla cream. As nice as the meal was, my highlight was the look on Poppy’s face after she’d shaken her beaker (containing very fizzy traditional lemonade) and taken a sip. Bubbles were pouring out of her mouth and both nostrils. After dinner I replaced the broken frost thermostat on the central heating and reassembled all the nursery furniture (yes, Helena, now you have some space to sleep in the guest room) and hung the curtains. Job done and a customary text to my mom to check in the completion time. Next job was to submit some Open Uni coursework (called a CMA… like a multiple choice quiz submitted online) due end of February and then start on the coursework for another course due in the middle of March. I forgot what the time was on that one and carried on quite late…

Sunday. Up we got (eventually, after a couple of hours of CBeebies) and walked to Margam Park. This took quite a while because Poppy likes to stop every 5 seconds to look at stones so for the main part of the walk we had to stick her in the push chair. But once in the park off she ran talking to all the animals in the pens along the way. She met some donkeys, Shetland ponies, cows, goats and Granny Pig and Grancher Pig. Finally we made it to our intended destination: “Margam Castle”. No, not the actual castle, but a play area named after the building casting a shadow over it. Sadly we forgot the camera, but you can imagine a large adventure play area built out of large logs with slides, high walkways, a rope swing and tunnels and bridges galore. Vicky sat down and dozed while me and Poppy legged it around for a bit. No tears at all until it was home time…. Once home we had leftovers from yesterday for lunch and I carried on with my coursework… and I even finished it. My reward: PlayStation time. I completed Resistance 2 on the PS3 last night. So proud.

Oh no.. I forgot to clean the fish out!

All gone quiet

January 20th, 2009 No Comments »

Sorry.. a case of man-flu caused me to temporarily lose interest in my blog for a few days but I’m mostly back I think. Anyway, over the next few weeks things may go a little quieter on the blog front due to two new Open University courses starting at the beginning of February, and the ongoing Java one still requiring my attention. Still, one of the new ones is titled “Technologies for Digital Media” which I read as “all about mp3, mp4 and jpegs and the like”. It should be very interesting I hope, block 1 starts off discussing the enabling technologies, both hardware devices and about the software innovations in the background (compression etc), then it moves on to IP (Intellectual Property, not Internet Protocol) and finally mobile broadband. I’m hoping it turns out to be a lot more compelling than last year’s “Keeping ahead in ICT” course which started off well with lots of calculations and technology then deteriorated in to essay hell by the final module (note: any amount of essay writing is classed as essay hell in my opinion). Anyway… someone in the OU admin department needs to go on a geography course because although I do live in (South) Wales and am quite happy with the tutorials in Cardiff I have been assigned to, exactly why Wrexham based tutorials are also in my list is amusing. Checking quickly on Google maps to make sure I hadn’t missed something and Wrexham had been moved South without my knowledge, I notice that even my previous tutorial location of Birmingham would be closer. Oh well…

Exams, bleurgh.

October 14th, 2008 No Comments »

I did my first Open University exam on Monday and suddenly I remembered why I didn’t enjoy my A-levels all those years ago. Exams just don’t seem to bear any relevance, in my opinion, to the real world or anything I ever face in it other than possibly the dread of an impending deadline / the clock counting down to the end of the exam. The exam was very similar in content and length to the coursework assignments I had been given, only this time I had no external resources… all knowledge must be remembered, and only three hours in which to complete it. This is all obvious to most people who’ve taken university level exams I guess but I have so far managed to dodge that sort of thing. Previous courses and my HND were completed on coursework alone, and when I’ve taken exams for IT certifications the questions have been multiple choice or simulation based. Being asked to write x words on whether you thnk people in Ghana could benefit from Internet access causes serious hand cramp. Anyway, it’s over now and I’m getting in to the next course on Java programming. This course also has an exam and I’m very intrigued to see what the OU put in a written exam about computer programming, I’m expecting that bit to be quite a challenge as so far the coding aspects are very easy involving frogs and toads jumping, moving and dancing (yes, I’m not sure why either).