Technicalities of life

Having got my car back, and then been away to see Mum & Dad last weekend, I spent the past week gradually coming to terms with life and several busy evenings, including uni, comedy, friends visiting, winning a music pub quiz (as part of a team obviously). I also found time to get a new phone as the old one died. I was also out for inner tonight, which was especially nice.

I am thus now part of the iPhone 3G group... first impressions are very good but it did require iTunes, which for some reason my laptop wouldn't install due to a 'corrupted user area. Thus I backed up all my stuff and created anew user area on the laptop, only taking about 5hours. I also tidied my contcat lists, and sorted out my files on the PC whilst all this was happening, so it wasn't wasted.

Having found out how to copy my mail settings across, I can now sync my diary on the pc with the one on my phone...which is kinda cool. I still need to work out how to use teh full functionality of the iPod part of the phone, but that requires an understanding of iTunes.which may have to wait for another day.

This week looks to be another one with several late finishes, with an 'academic meeting. tomorrow, the music quiz on wednesday, an ICU night out on Thursday and then an invitation to Cheesy Pop on Friday night. The quiz doesn't start til about 9, so is a useful post uni, midweek chance to catch up with friends, and demonstrate our lack of knowledge, and eat/drink our winnings from last week.

First Aid

This year in the Edinburgh Fringe, I am assistant technical manager for the Origin show - Exiled; The Gospel according to Hollywood. In this role I felt that I should upgrade my first aid skills, so I am doing a day-release FAW course with St Andrews Ambulance from 30th June - 21st July. Hopefully it should be quite good fun and help set me up well for some of the aspects of pre-hospital and immediate care aspects of A&E medicine for the future, and if not, it will be a useful certificate to have. It does mean spending my holiday on a course with homework and an exam at the end though :)

Here it is - Monday again

Well the past week has been a bit of a blur - back working at Somerfield, Uni examboards, and the tech for out biggest event of the year.

The tech went well after a few teething problems on setup day (Thursday). On Thursday I found out that I was to be operating lights for the 3 performance (Thurs, Fri, Sat). This meant a Friday 10am meeting with the in-house Lighting guy who ran through the desk and took some of our programme notes about the look of the event and how much coverage we needed to light the choir of 400, the band, conductor and soloists - a very full stage! Programming complete, it was then my job to actually run the lighting each night, and between the various demands of a dim choir during soloists versus the need for bright lighting for the cameras, I think I achieved an artistic medium. There were a few mistakes and some missed cues, especially on the conductor, but all in all I think I did ok, and it was nice to be able to hear a gig properly from the middle of the audience.

The event derig lasted til about 1.30am, then I escorted the video kit back to Edinburgh, where I found myself at 2.45 with 2hrs until the first train to Glasgow, PhilT decided he was still up and about, so I grabebd a taxi and went to see him for an hour or so before heading down to the station (and having an interesting economics discussion with my taxi driver) then catching the London -Fort William Sleeper from Edinburgh to Westerton near Milngavie, then the SPT train down into Glasgow, getting home about 6.40am for a nice sleep. The guard on the sleeper even chose not to charge me, so I did Edinburgh-Glasgow for £1.40!

Work is going ok, it is nice to be back but the place is dead....with all the students away and the BBC (our previously largest local employer) having moved to Pacific Quay. Sales were up on Sunday though due to the West End Festival, and the related burgers, ice cream & apple pies for sale outside the store, and the mountain of booze for sale within the store.

Easter ramblings

Tuesday was a bit of an adventure. Glasgow to Alloa via Pollok, Edinburgh, St Andrews and Dunfermline.

The tip to St Andrews was in my role at Asst production thingy for Origin. We have a concert in St Andrews at the end of April, and were up for a reccie of the Church venue, to look at what tech equipment we would need and how we would lay out the stage. The church really is very beautiful, and old-looking. Below are a few nice pictures....Last weekend I had been up to see a friend near Crieff - they live out in the country and have this fantastic view of nice fields and hills out the front door.
They also have a dog who likes posing......
Coming home from Crieff meant a detour as the trains were not running through Stirling due to railway works and the installation of this huge new bridge which will link a new retail park to the town centre.
On Tuesday night I was staying at my sisters new house so I could wait in on Wednesday while she was at work, for the people coming to fit the curtains. Due to her house being on a ridgem, it has great views north to the Ochil hils (which were covered in mist when I was there) and south over the Firth of Forth towards Falkirk. Longannet Power Station can be seen in the foreground.

If it's Tuesday, it must be Edinburgh

Another Tuesday, another trip to Edinburgh - my 3rd in 8 days. This time was to setup a presentation about the work of DIME and the Primary groups. In principle it should be really easy - connect laptop to Data projector and voila it's ready!

Sadly due to people forgetting about an email I sent them, the data projector had been borrowed by someone else, and I couldn't get my laptop S-video port to output in colour, so the presentation was in black & white on a TV - not my finest technical moment.

Fun days out!

Today I went on a fun day out to Leeds.

Why Leeds?
a friend who works for an events company needed a box fo stuff taken to leeds to an event, but no couriers could do it.


How?
I started and ended in Glasgow, which is where my sumer elective is. I got a train to Edinburgh (arrived 1030), met guy from the events company to collect the box, then caught the 1105 Virgin train to Oxford. it was quite quiet so i managed to get some work done and was doing Acid-Base and Metabolic Bone disease as my train crossed the border, went down past home and into deepest darkest yorkshire. I arrived (on time) in Leeds at 1415, and had a quick walk round the corner to the hotel, delivered my box to the concierge and then walked back to M&S, bought lunch and got on a train to Carlisle at 1439. This train took in the Settle & Carlisle line which has some great scenery and a cool viaduct 9not as big as the one in the Harry Potter, but nice views anyway). We crawled into Carlisle at 1728, leaving 8 minutes to go over the bridge and catch the train to Glasgow, which was quite busy with screaming children etc. I made it back to Glasgow Central at 1852. then it was just a small matter of heading home from there. 9hours 22 minutes, and about 500 miles of traveling

Tomorrow I plan to stay less than 3 miles from home!

I like having friends which allows you to do mad things. I have dug up Princes St Gardens in Edinburgh, climbed the inside of a big top, bought 400 Ikea cushions, caused traffic chaos in Edinburgh and other such madness. I like it.

Mystery absences

Ok, I have been MIA for about a week. Well not actually missing, since I knew where I was. I was working on the tech crew for an event in the City halls. Mainly working with the video kit which we were using for IMAG (Image MAGnification) i.e. showing the audience things that they may not be able to see, or which they can see but which we can make bigger using zoom etc. I also ended up involved in stage building and lighting as always happens at such events.The pic above is from the same show in 2006.

All in all a fun way to send 5 days, but tiring as i had work and work-related social events to attend with the usual mob - Stefan the german, dave the hat, the tattooed drinker, Sarah, Little Miss P, Butcher Boy and others.

A mixed up day

Well my week of interspersed good and bad news continued. This is post 100 on my blog (what do you mean you weren't counting?!?!!)

SSM Presentation
Today was the last day of my SSM (I know it's only Tuesday) and today was essay deadline and a presentation to do. In typical me style this year, I started wroiting my essay on the PC about 10pm last night. I had done some of the reading and a fair of thinking about the essay, but hadn't really decided which aspect of "Severe hearing impairment and its management" I was going to address.

SSM Essay
About 2am, it hit me like a flash - kaboom - and I wrote about the communication strategies which are available for deaf children. I won't bore you with all the details suffice to say that it was stuff that was new to me and hence made a hopefully good essay. I finished editing the essay and inserting references about 9am (and had had a 40mins sleep) and then started the presentation, which only took me about 45 minutes to write, since it was fairly basic text and I had most of the essay facts in my head.

SSM Result
We went in at 2pm and did our presentations, and handed the essay in, At the end of the presentations, the consultant had a few questions for us and then told us that we had passed the SSM!!!!!! The actual SSM grade does depend on what he thought of the essay and presentation though. And that was before he had even looked at our essays. He then asked us a few more questions about the best/worst aspects of the SSM, and what we would like more of if he runs it in the future, and then we were free!!!! Third year finished*

* except for the elective and resists

Wednesday's travels
In a very typical move, I forgot to return my Hospital Library books and so, tomorrow before I go to see the Head of Year 3 to discuss my exam performance and see where I went wrong, I hav eto go in the opposite direction to drop the library book off, thus I get no lie in!!! I also need to collect a letter from the Uni to my elective supervisor and then meet Little miss P for Hot Chocolate on her day off (she doesn't do coffee or tea!), then I am through to Edinburgh for the start of a 4 and a bit day extravaganza of techie stuff in Glasgow, interspersed with some work shifts and a party on Friday night.

So my blogging may be a wee bit haphazard until Monday.

But first i am off to celebrate Cott's being open til 1 through the festival by sampling the Addlestones with Butcher boy!

Cushions

The wadge of money I mentioned in Back to Uni needs some explanation I think. At Res 2007 at the weekend, the organisers realised that the concrete floor might be too cold / hard for people to sit on - the event was 2h20 long and not everyone in the standing area might want to stand that long.

However, they would have to pay VAT on each cushion sold, so we invented a plan whereby I would by the cushions and sell them and donate all profit to the organisers to help cover the costs of the free event. I then phoned IKEA in Edinburgh who could only offer us 300 of the IRMA cushions. Since we had some seats, but were expecting another 2-3000 to be standing, we wanted more cushions. We thus phoned IKEA in Braehead, and ordered another 100 cushions from them.
Having spent £300 on my debit card, I was happy when we sold most of the cushions - mainly thanks to my wonderful volunteer sales team (it is amazing what people will do to get a free ticket into a free gig). Thus the pile of money is to go into the bank to cover the initial outlay to buy the cushions. We discovered interesting things, like 300 cushions fills the back of a Renault Megane (ssadly not mine), and Ikea have 525 on each delivery pallet.

I have 64 left if any wants one...or two...or twenty.

Pain..

Ow I woke up this morning with my head tilted to the right. Any attempt to tilt it to straight or to the left results in amazing pain. However, I can rotate it to the left, albeit at a tilt.

I'm not sure if you can spray deep heat onto your neck to relax the muscle.
Edit - I tried and it didn't help a bit..

Either way I hope it goes away before tomorrow as its all systems Go for two days doing tech stuff at Resurrection 07 at Ingliston - no not the Rave, but Scotland's largest Easter Sunday church service.

Last year's event in the Usher Hall was great and let's hope 2007 is as well.