Work
Archived posts from this Category
Thursday, 3rd September 2009
Posted by Geoff on 03 Sep 2009 | Tagged as: Miscellaneous activities, Work
Geoff writes: well, today’s weather was, guess what, wet and windy. However, incredibly, it just might be flyable at the weekend. Let’s hope so.
So we worked, both for the JISC conference in November, and the Supporting Deaf People conference in early 2010 (these conferences have a long lead-in).
And, more interestingly, we finally uploaded a few videos from the SIV course we did in April. The classic is Cris’s boat landing. Get the links from the bottom of the Resources page above (used to be called the Articles page, but we changed it to allow for more multi-media content).
Tuesday, 25th August 2009
Posted by Geoff on 26 Aug 2009 | Tagged as: Work
Geoff writes: it’s getting harder to convince ourselves that we have quite interesting lives really, when all we’ve been writing about for the last ten days is working, bad weather and being sick. Yesterday was much the same, with some more LMSC stuff, a fair bit of work for our online conference in November, some podcast editing for Judith (honest, Melise, it will be out soon!). Finished in the evening by Judith going out for a drink with Kai, to hear about the British Championships in France, whilst I watched crappy (really crappy) TV. A couple of people did fly late on, but we couldn’t be bothered avoiding the wet sheep shit on launch.
Just to show that we really do work, and life really isn’t an endless holiday, the November online conference we are preparing for now is on e-learning, and aimed at colleges and universities. We work with a team from an organisation called the JISC, which provides support to further and higher education in the innovative use of new technologies. This is the fourth conference we have done with them. We provide the conference platform, work with the presenters, do most of the background admin, write guidance, provide support during the conference, etc. Last year, the conference, which is entirely online and lasts four days, generated just under 200,000 words from nearly 1700 postings (as well as all the papers and presentations); and had 392 participants from 14 countries. These are big events, which require a lot of preparation – more than just the four days that the conference actually runs.
Writing about work…. the weather must be bad!
Friday, 21st August 2009
Posted by Geoff on 22 Aug 2009 | Tagged as: Boring stuff, Work
Geoff writes: illness is becoming a theme. We were still feeling really shitty. Had a combination of working (for our upcoming online conference) and LMSC stuff. All very tedious and time-consuming – especially the LMSC stuff!
Saturday, 15th August 2009
Posted by Judith on 16 Aug 2009 | Tagged as: Party, party, party..., Work
We’re still catching up with work after spending the week dealing with a lot of the issues resulting from last weekend. Today we worked and saw friends of Hamish who came to collect his car.
In the evening we were invited to the Midland Gliding Club’s 75th anniversary dinner. People first started flying there in 1934 (for those who are too lazy to do the maths). The dinner was nice – they had decked out the hangar with candle-lit tables and parachutes were draped along the walls. Talking to the people was really interesting. It was a huge nostalgia trip for most people with friends seeing each other for the first time in years, swapping stories of daring flights and quick snogs in the hangar.
Wednesday, 12th August 2009
Posted by Geoff on 12 Aug 2009 | Tagged as: Work
Geoff writes: wet and cloudy (though as I write this a hang glider has just launched at the Long Mynd) so it was a working day.
Judith spent most of the day editing the latest podcast with Tom Payne, on his experiences in the X-Alps – the follow up to the podcast we released a while ago about his preparation for the competition. As always, well worth listening to! Go to the podcast page (link at top of this page) to view it.
Monday, 10th August 2009
Posted by Geoff on 10 Aug 2009 | Tagged as: Work
Geoff writes: a wet and windy day, so we spent the day working, both on our own work and club stuff. The forecast for much of the rest of the week is quite good, with tomorrow probably being the Mynd but with a northerly component, a better direction for XC.
A lot of people have been searching for information on the accidents at the weekend. Dennis Wray, who was one of the two people who had the mid-air on Saturday, is in a stable condition, with no internal organs damaged, which is good news. However, he has multiple fractures, not just in his legs, and has a long way to go. He is likely to be hospital for a long time. (This information is from his wife, Carole).
H.H. Tsai (Hamish), who was the person injured on Friday, had back surgery on Sunday. This went well. Again, he is likely to be in hospital for some weeks.
Friday, 17th July 2009
Posted by Judith on 18 Jul 2009 | Tagged as: Work
We had a whole lot of weather today. Lots of rain and lots of wind, in what the BBC weather service had described as a ‘kind of low pressure system normally seen in winter’. Great.
The British Paragliding Cup comp day was cancelled at 9am. I hooked up with Tony Spirling to record a podcast on Paragliding and the Mind, which is a fascinating talk on how your brain works and how you can optimise it to help you when flying.
After that we spent some time on our backs in the garage doing some essential maintenance on Geoff’s hang glider, and entertaining friends for tea and scones. Geoff worked most of the day, doing some programming on the software platform we use for our conferences.
We’re keeping our fingers crossed for better weather for the rest of the weekend. It would be good if the comp could get at least a task in.
We’ll update the live feed on the right with news as it comes in tomorrow.