This week has been a story of preparation of a course. Friday I had to give a course on NVivo. The thing being that I was getting more and more dischuffed with the course we already had which was anyway for an earlier version of the software. The earlier version I had adopted a document from another university and then written the course around it. This time I was writing the document myself from scratch. I had to decide what went into it. I had to plan the presentation. I scrapped the exercises.
Well I had three days to write it, then one to give it. Actually that is not quite fair. I had the document half written last week, but it had taken me four days to get half way through and I had three days to write the rest. Its manageable but only just. On top of this last Sunday evening I discovered that my lounge heater had given up the ghost. It had done this sometime previously but I had put it down to the plug not being properly in and given it a good thump. This time I decided to investigate and the first thing I discovered was the plug was not properly in because it was a timer device and at a point when the plug was half in that had melted and stuck the plug half in. I could not get the plug in or out. I went to change the plug but the heater did not spring miraculously into life when I did so. Now I am not a hundred percent sure this was due to the heater being faulty. It could be any of the three following. Firstly me not quite establishing contact when rewiring the plug. Secondly a faulty plug got off a hair drier that has not been used for ages. Thirdly a faulty 13 amp fuse as it was got from a 2 plug adapter my grandfather made over twenty years ago. My grandfather made it so the adapter is perfectly safe, please don't worry about that. My grandfather was both very safety concious and a precision engineer. This is more than I can say for the factory that put the plug onto the hair-drier. I am going to buy myself a couple of new plugs and some new 13 amp fuses and try again some day, but in the mean time I ordered a new heater for the lounge. I went to Argos.
Monday I went to writers group, it went well again, with not a lot of corrections, the writing was also going smoothly. Tuesday was another story. My brain decided to throw a migraine about mid day. I presume from running on nerves, I took pain killers and continued on writing as it needed to be finished by that evening as someone else had to format the document. I got it done, went to Herringthorpe for Bible study, its amazing what paracetamol and caffeine can do. I got through feeling okay although more irritable than usual now I look back on it and not as quick at responding to situations. Got home safely although my brain was fantasising nightmares on the way home. I knew it was my brain and just ignored it. I do not mean hallucinations but seriously daft ideas seemed to occur to it, the sort that a tenth of a seconds thought show as being obviously stupid and dangerous.
I awoke the next morning to feeling sick and nauseous. Fortunately it was my day off, unfortunately it was the day the heater was supposed to arrive and I also wanted to get up to date with my diary. Argos turned up with the heater just after 9:00 a.m. and I spent most of the rest of the day in bed and went to bed early, but despite that was still feeling groggy the day after. However it had cleared enough about 12:30 a.m. for me to feel that it was worth getting up. So I got up and made myself the best clearer of migraines I know which is scrambled eggs on toast followed by coffee. The net result was that I was firing on all cylinders despite the fact that I sort of knew the migraine wasn't quite gone.
The course went well on Friday, although some of them found it too intense. They wanted to have their hands held while they did exercises. The problem being that the exercises that they were likely to do would not be particularly illuminating. This course actually worked really well for the two people who had spent some time with NVivo already and bought their own laptops. They were able to make connections between the course material and the things that they wanted to do. This was for them a big break through, because they were getting the how to, for questions they asked. One of the questions both of them had was about rearranging nodes. So I will write that bit to the end of the document.
On the evening I went to see Jean and James Dickson. They are as busy as ever and this week have had a host of early morning meetings with James getting the scaffolding in to change the light bulbs at the church. Also he had been PAT testing the electrical equipment in the church. There is some problem with the sound equipment so Cliff will have to come down and have a look at it. They have lots of holidays planned for this coming year, to such an extent that it was difficult to find dates for me to have supper with them.
Yesterday I was supposed to go to York for a Ship of Fools meet. However, despite having organised it, my migraine returned, and I felt safer in bed in the morning. In the afternoon I got up and did some web design for the website Morag and I are working on. My big problem at the moment is my printer is refusing to scan and the one at work will scan but will not then send it to my email account, or would not when I last tried it. I will try again as it kept saying server down and that just might be the case. The webdesign is very absorbing. I did two three hour sessions on it without realising how the time was passing. It is like a jigsaw puzzle, you get one bit right then you turn to the next bit and see if that is getting right. However I have realised that what I am really doing is designing the look of a content management system. So I am now looking at Joomla to see if I can adapt the website to work with that content management system. If I can it will ease things for both Morag and myself. No real hurry, as I need a photo I can only get in May when I go up.
Sunday, January 31, 2010
Sunday, January 24, 2010
On cold flats and Bread making
Right lets see what is happening this week. Well I went to writers group this week, wrote a poem called Ice Ages, the group felt that the it was worth sending into the Sheffield Telegraph. I sent it, not sure whether it got in, I must try and see if I can get hold of a copy before tomorrow evening. I suspect not or rather I suspect if it had been someone might have told me.
Tuesday I can not remember much from except I know I was busy writing in work and was feeling whacked by the time I got in so did not go to the Bible Study at Herringthorpe but instead tried to write up the notes from the Sunday, without much success, but I at least got something down. I find with note writing that I actually need to leave it at least a short while after I get in otherwise my brain is caught up too much in retaining everything not just the central bits I noticed. This is exceptional for ethnographers who normally want to make notes as soon as possible, but my brain takes a time to make a coherency over the situation.
Wednesday, I took the morning off sick, my initial diagnosis of myself was Appelkoossiekte or Apricot sickness, which is caused by eating too many apricots. There have been suggestions of other causes, but the fact is if you eat rather a large amount of Apricots (in this case it was me counting dried and fresh as separate things and overdoing it on at least one alone) they become a too effective laxative. I have had it at least twice in the past and normally manage to restrict myself. Most people don't eat apricots the way I will do if I am not watching myself. Like most folk illnesses it covered a lot, but in most cases it actually only is a few hours of discomfort and I think diagnosing anything else is a bit much. However I realised later that I was probably partially wrong and that time of the month was partly to blame for the discomfort. However by mid day it had cleared enough so I was in work and getting on with course notes I am writing.
Thursday I saw someone in the morning to help with their research project. If I had known in advance what they were asking I could have just referred them to course notes we have on the web. There really was nothing difficult about it. Her major concern was whether it was valid to do it with seventeen people. Yes you can do it with seventeen people but you will only detect big differences. I also put her largely to doing non-parametric as with the quick look I saw I was ready to bet that quite a bit of her data was log-normal and not straight normal (it was counted data and timed data (which is technically exponentially distributed not even log normal but close enough to have similar characteristics). Had an easy night when I got home.
Friday was my day off, I slept most of the morning as time of the month was making me tired. However I managed to transcribe about fifteen minutes of tape, the first transcription I have done since Christmas and not only that I managed to do another bit on Saturday (all right only five minutes of tape but still some). Then I also caught up with the writing up of my diary, so not too bad a day research wise. On the evening went to a ladies night at Herringthorpe. Allison had organised it, or more accurately had thought of the idea and got what she thought was needed together. It was supposed to be a Christmas Present swap night. Simple idea you bring one or more unwanted christmas present and swap it for something better. Having thought about it, I conclude that the easiest way to do this is to buy raffle tickets. For every item a person puts on the table a raffle ticket is issued, then when they find something they want they hand in the raffle ticket. If people want more they either make a donation for extra raffle tickets. The problem is what about the stuff nobody wants, well the solution here was that went to a local charity shop, in this case YMCA. Donations could go to the shop as well or put to other uses. However Allison had not worked out how to do this, so things got a bit chaotic. I also would suggest that people were limited to the upper amount they can bring (say three items) as we had some bring about a hundred and that made it far more like a bric-a-brac stall.
Saturday again started with a late start, got up and had scrambled eggs on toast. This now seems a reliable way for me to be fairly okay on the afternoon however lousy I was beforehand. I got into town and managed to get changed a pair of thermal undertrousers. I also got myself two new plain top sheets. First time I have bought top sheets, partly as I did not use them for quite a while just a duvet but I find it easier to wash and change a flat sheet than I do a duvet. Partly because I inherited sheets I think from my grandmother. The one on last week was ripping. I do still have some good ones, but mum had sown that one so it became a sort of fitted top sheet and she had got the size right. I had done others but not done it as well, so I wanted to use that as a template for sowing the new sheets. So I had to get them before I chucked it out. I felt as I had worn the previous sheets out that spending money on more expensive new ones was not a waste. The bad news was yesterday I checked my fire in the lounge because it was not working and it was cold. On further investigation I found that the seven day timer plug had actually melted and the plug was firmly stuck half in. I changed the plug on the fire but it did not start working. I don't know whether that was because I had not quite got the wiring in right (the problem is that I am not 100% certain a connection was made in all case or that the fuse was good in the plug I used as both the plug and the fuse were recycled from old equipment.
Today I went to Herringthorpe. I found coffee time less noisy this time, maybe because it was not a parade come party service. Came back, had cheese and fruit for lunch as easy, then went and slept for an hour or so. After that I got up and made bread. Something about making bread seems to fit with Sunday Afternoons. I discovered over new Year I was actually missing it. I don't think I could go back to making my own bread all the time but I have bought those already measured packets and will make it up when I feel like it.
Tuesday I can not remember much from except I know I was busy writing in work and was feeling whacked by the time I got in so did not go to the Bible Study at Herringthorpe but instead tried to write up the notes from the Sunday, without much success, but I at least got something down. I find with note writing that I actually need to leave it at least a short while after I get in otherwise my brain is caught up too much in retaining everything not just the central bits I noticed. This is exceptional for ethnographers who normally want to make notes as soon as possible, but my brain takes a time to make a coherency over the situation.
Wednesday, I took the morning off sick, my initial diagnosis of myself was Appelkoossiekte or Apricot sickness, which is caused by eating too many apricots. There have been suggestions of other causes, but the fact is if you eat rather a large amount of Apricots (in this case it was me counting dried and fresh as separate things and overdoing it on at least one alone) they become a too effective laxative. I have had it at least twice in the past and normally manage to restrict myself. Most people don't eat apricots the way I will do if I am not watching myself. Like most folk illnesses it covered a lot, but in most cases it actually only is a few hours of discomfort and I think diagnosing anything else is a bit much. However I realised later that I was probably partially wrong and that time of the month was partly to blame for the discomfort. However by mid day it had cleared enough so I was in work and getting on with course notes I am writing.
Thursday I saw someone in the morning to help with their research project. If I had known in advance what they were asking I could have just referred them to course notes we have on the web. There really was nothing difficult about it. Her major concern was whether it was valid to do it with seventeen people. Yes you can do it with seventeen people but you will only detect big differences. I also put her largely to doing non-parametric as with the quick look I saw I was ready to bet that quite a bit of her data was log-normal and not straight normal (it was counted data and timed data (which is technically exponentially distributed not even log normal but close enough to have similar characteristics). Had an easy night when I got home.
Friday was my day off, I slept most of the morning as time of the month was making me tired. However I managed to transcribe about fifteen minutes of tape, the first transcription I have done since Christmas and not only that I managed to do another bit on Saturday (all right only five minutes of tape but still some). Then I also caught up with the writing up of my diary, so not too bad a day research wise. On the evening went to a ladies night at Herringthorpe. Allison had organised it, or more accurately had thought of the idea and got what she thought was needed together. It was supposed to be a Christmas Present swap night. Simple idea you bring one or more unwanted christmas present and swap it for something better. Having thought about it, I conclude that the easiest way to do this is to buy raffle tickets. For every item a person puts on the table a raffle ticket is issued, then when they find something they want they hand in the raffle ticket. If people want more they either make a donation for extra raffle tickets. The problem is what about the stuff nobody wants, well the solution here was that went to a local charity shop, in this case YMCA. Donations could go to the shop as well or put to other uses. However Allison had not worked out how to do this, so things got a bit chaotic. I also would suggest that people were limited to the upper amount they can bring (say three items) as we had some bring about a hundred and that made it far more like a bric-a-brac stall.
Saturday again started with a late start, got up and had scrambled eggs on toast. This now seems a reliable way for me to be fairly okay on the afternoon however lousy I was beforehand. I got into town and managed to get changed a pair of thermal undertrousers. I also got myself two new plain top sheets. First time I have bought top sheets, partly as I did not use them for quite a while just a duvet but I find it easier to wash and change a flat sheet than I do a duvet. Partly because I inherited sheets I think from my grandmother. The one on last week was ripping. I do still have some good ones, but mum had sown that one so it became a sort of fitted top sheet and she had got the size right. I had done others but not done it as well, so I wanted to use that as a template for sowing the new sheets. So I had to get them before I chucked it out. I felt as I had worn the previous sheets out that spending money on more expensive new ones was not a waste. The bad news was yesterday I checked my fire in the lounge because it was not working and it was cold. On further investigation I found that the seven day timer plug had actually melted and the plug was firmly stuck half in. I changed the plug on the fire but it did not start working. I don't know whether that was because I had not quite got the wiring in right (the problem is that I am not 100% certain a connection was made in all case or that the fuse was good in the plug I used as both the plug and the fuse were recycled from old equipment.
Today I went to Herringthorpe. I found coffee time less noisy this time, maybe because it was not a parade come party service. Came back, had cheese and fruit for lunch as easy, then went and slept for an hour or so. After that I got up and made bread. Something about making bread seems to fit with Sunday Afternoons. I discovered over new Year I was actually missing it. I don't think I could go back to making my own bread all the time but I have bought those already measured packets and will make it up when I feel like it.
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