Chair of Governors

Just a short post to mark a significant day for me. I’ve been a parent governor at my daughter’s school for about a year. So far it’s been an interesting challenge, albeit fairly demanding in terms of time and commitment. However, it is about to become significantly more demanding… Earlier tonight, I was elected Chair…

I've been podcasted (nearly)

JISC came to see us at lunchtime today. David Flanders (and journalist Basheera Khan) paid a visit in order to present the List8D team with their winning cheque. We had a nice lunch (with pop), a photo op, and two podcasts were recorded: one of me, John Sotillo and Keith Mander, and the other was…

Vista on my laptop

Around two and a half years a go I became the proud owner of a Toshiba Portege laptop running Vista. But I had a few problems – mostly because it didn’t have enough RAM (only 1GB to start with).  Over the years I have tried various ways to speed it up. For a while I…

HTC Touch HD – apps I've installed

I’ve been playing with my phone, installing various apps. I figure that any moment soon I’m probably going to crash it, so here’s a reminder just for me of what went in, in no particular order… Touch InCall Screen Tweak (makes the screen light up during a call if you take it away from vertical…

My new camera has a macro facility

I’m liking my Christmas present. It’s not big but it’s quite clever…  More on my Flickr (via the Slideshow in the main menu). EXIF-aware peeps can figure out what I got from Santa too…

JISC's a bit animated about IPR

Another animation from JISC. Not embeddable I think – probably due to some sort of IPR issue ;-). Anyhow, here’s a screenshot that I’ve not asked permission to show yet… They’re promoting a site called Web 2 Rights which has various toolkits which may be of some  interest. IP toolkit IPR diagnostic tool IPR Flowchart (PDF)

simple pleasures – homemade play dough

Thanks to jennabanana’s comment on this Instructable we made a quick, no cooking required, batch of homemade play dough. Stan requested it first, but they all jumped in for some fun.  Here’s her recipe: 3 cups flour 1/3 cup salt 2tbsp oil (veg) 1 cup water 7 drops food colouring. Mix dry ingredients with oil….

Purple sprouting broccoli, pasta, and a hot mustard anchovy dressing

The recipe I should have cooked tonight: KALE WITH ANCHOVY AND CHILLI DRESSING This pungent, piquant sauce, somewhere between a dip and a dressing, is quite delicious with earthy kale – or broccoli, or almost any other robust green vegetable. If you like, you can turn it into a more substantial supper dish by cutting…

Tea bag splats

As of today, our Library has a nice new web site. Last week our IT Services were re-launched. Thousands of pages have been converted to a new template. New structures have been tested and implemented. New ideas have been included. Lots of consultation and feedback happened. Many stakeholders have pulled together and finally the work…

Time is precious

I suppose I reserve judgement on whether you can proclaim any idea to be the number 1 secret, but it certainly gets attention. A post in Seth’s blog (Time) reveals to us: the #1 most overlooked secret of marketing It turns out to be two things: show up on time (as an individual and in…