Thinks

The End (well, onto a new chapter anyway)

2006-03-05T12:00:00.000Z

From today my new blog is up and running at: www.mrselsmore.com . RSS feed for new blog available at: http://www.mrselsmore.com/hosted/te/blog.nsf/stories.rss

Thanks to all that have read here - if you enjoy then please follow me over onto the new blog.

T

'Angel Standing By' - by Cindly Lee Jones

2006-03-03T17:53:00.000Z

Was tag searching for angels on flickr. You guys know I have a thing for angels right? ;) And I found an amazingly beautiful picutre: Angel Standing By. (It is copyright to her so the image is not here on the blog, but follow the link and you'll see it.)

I followed a couple of links and ended up on the artist's, Cindy Lee Jones, website. Her work is interesting for its variety both in terms of topic and technique. I recommend you take a look.

She has a section called '33 things': I hope she won't mind if I borrow one that I particularly like for a wee while:

How we greet the day and the people in it is up to us. When we leave this place, others will remember us not by what we did but by how we made them feel when they were with us...

Still here & life is good; really, really good: Socks, new blog, LS memories and more

2006-03-03T15:41:00.000Z

Well being "vowe'd" yesterday made me think I should come out of my little 'nesting' hiddy-hole and say hello to the blogsphere again! Sorry for the quietness, but - I hope understandably- things have been a bit busy since we got back from the 6 week honeymoon that was the 'Elsmore World Tour'. We have been happy at home, just poddeling and doing stuff really. Libby reminded me it is called nesting and reassures me that it is quite natural for newly weds ;)

Anyhoo, after freeing Dobby from his evil Master, I feel I should continue my work and so I offer a green i-pod sock and an orange i-pod sock to any other unhappily-owned House Elves out there I know - all in the spirit of Hermione and S.P.E.W. of course ;) .

In other news:

New Blog:
I am now the proud owner of my own li'l piece of internet real estate: www.mrselsmore.com At the moment that url will redirect to this blog, so don't go trying to find it just yet, but you can update your links to reflect the change. RSS feed: at the button on the right hand sidebar (sorry, not sure of the url for the feed yet - note to self: need husband to come home and help out with a few minor IT bits and bobs ;) - so you'll just have to come to the site when it launches to grab the feed. Now as for the launch: Sunday 5th March 2006 seems as good a date as any; and it means I can call on Warren's expertise tomorrow to put some tweaks in place :) So from Sunday please follow me over onto www.mrelsemore.com - and my thanks to the Blogsphere team for their template.

LS '06 memories:
I know it was over a month ago, and this is darned late to be posting any sort of LS '06 review, but darn it I have been busy so here goes:

Let me start by saying that I HAD A BALL, AN ABSOLUTE BLAST. As soon as we arrived on the Friday night we found kindred spirits and old friends propping up the Dolphin Bar and things just continued from there, non-stop till we left on the following Saturday.

Personal highlights:
(Please take it as read that all caveats are in place about not meaning to forget anyone or anything - there's just so much and so many people I'm almost bound to forget someone or something - my apologies in advance. Oh and the whole 'In no particular order' set of caveats apply too.)

Meeting so many people who I had spent the year reading and wishing to meet: Ben Poole, Captain Oblivious, Damien, Duffbert, Greyhawk, Jess & Matt, and The Lion King. You are all stars and I'm so glad to have been able to spend time with you.
Meeting up with all those who I knew before we got there. Too numerous to list, but here goes: Alan, Bill, Bruce & Gayle, Declan, Devin, Ed, Pants, Paul, Richard, Terri, Turtle, Volker, Wes and Wouter & Coon.
Meeting people I had not had on the radar at all:

My incredibly special and dear friend Libby. Sometimes there are people you just click with. I think it took Libby and I about an hour of booze and Kimonos after the Opening Party and we were set to be life-long friends. You are an incredibly special person hon, and I can't wait to see you in Ireland in the summer.
Kevin - basically you rock and boy were you good on that bungee thing at Sea World!

Getting to indulge my split-personality trait and play at being, in turns: Duffbert, Greyhawk, Terri, Paul, Libby and anyone else I have forgotten. Thank to you all for your, umm, help in my enjoyment off all aspects of LS ;) And getting to the stage when people were questioning why I wasn't in a particular session.
Thanks to Volker for making a specific effort to ensure I had a ticket for the Wednesday night party and to Libby's friend for her help in that too. Thanks also to Pants for preventing me from falling out of the minibus on our arrival at Sea World (due to missing the step I will add for all those sniggerng that I was drunk before we arrived ;))
Hearing Bill welcome 'Warren and Libby - who have just got married and are spending their honeymmon at Lotusphere' to one of his and Paul's Worst Practice session! Good one Bill.
Paul: I'm proud of you - and you know why.
Seeing some of the Inter-Navy swan 'race' and thinking it almost worthwhile opening a book on how long it would take Buchan to capsize ;)
Taking my hadsl dominos and playing them with Libby by the Dolphin's pool.
Listening to one of the funniest comedians I have ever had the pleasure to hear live - my eyes were streaming and my sides aching by the time he finished.
Belting out 'American Pie' - the LONG version with Libby in Kimonos and having all our friends singing along. And generally the whole of Sunday night in Kimonos - kudos to all who sang.

Oh jeez, think I had better stop there - just too much fun. It was madder than the first week of the new year of each of the three of my years are Uni and a hundred times more fun and happier. Thank you all for making it so great and see you next year I hope.

Life is good; really, really good:
Since we have been back in Edinburgh I have been remembering why I love this City so much. My friend Wendy, who is currently staying here, was saying this morning that there was some theroy that for each of us there are 7 places in the world where we feel immediately and completely at home. Edinburgh is definitely the top of my list. I feel such a sense of belonging when I walk down its streets. I feel so at ease and at home in it - it constantly amazes me quite how at home I feel - I feel it everyday and everytime I step out of my door.

I am generally so happy and so content in my life at the moment - really deep-seated and deep-rooted contentment - that I'm likely to be encompassed within it and neglect the blog. I know there are those out there who read and wish I would post more. But to be honest my blog is a pretty accurate reflection of me and as such it is not a rapid-fire commentary on life, that is churning out the latest thoughts (I have this picture in my head of the constantly stuttering printers in the 'news-collation room' in 'Good Morning Vietnam'), but an outlet of the distillation of thoughts which occasionally run round my head (as well as the random and general 'other' stuff that rolls around it too). It's reflective of the fact that fact that I generally consider what I am going to say before I say it; that I don't jump straight into conversations I listen and watch before speaking up.

----
Right onto finishing getting our honeymoon pics up on flickr!

Be 'Monarch of the Glen' (well for a weekend anyway). Oh, and get to help a worthy cause at the same time.

2006-02-13T19:03:00.000Z

Well it has been a while and I have a load to catch up on, not least my Lotusphere roundup, but first and formost, most importantly, I beg your attention for a few minutes.

Scotland is keen to embrace alternative energies. Normally a good thing I grant you, however they are slightly misguided on the specifics of some proposed Wind Turbine Schemes in Perthshire. I will not get into the details of why these are a bad plan, the website does that far more eloquently and comprehensively that I can, please take it that we are not objecting to green engergies in general just the specifics of these schemes.

The Locals have banded together and have won a substantial victory - a Public Enquiry has been called to look into the Planning of these schemes. However, with victory comes a price and in this case it is funding a QC (Queen's Councillor for those across the pond or elsewhere) to work on ASWAG's behalf during the public enquiry. They don't come cheap I'm afraid :( . Hence, a competition to help raise funds.

You and 18 of your friends, get to play Monarch of the Glen for a weekend. The prize is truly amazing and definitely a once in a lifetime opportunity.

You get to stay in a huge hunting lodge Dallick House; go quad biking or clay pigeon shooting; have lunch at Kennacoil House; visit Blair Castle and the House of Bruar; be guests of honour at a ceilidh at Murthly Castle and have a tour of some of the most beautiful scenary in Perthshire with a trained mountain guide.

For all this all you have to do is buy a ticket, £10 each - £10 for all that, just think of the prize value - answer a couple of questions and complete a tie-breaker sentence. All details are available on the ASWAG website along with details of the organisation's work.

I'm sorry to use the blog as a fundraising forum, and I wouldn't except that this a cause close to my heart and I hope you won't mind too much.

Temporary transfer to elsmore.net

2005-12-19T10:28:00.000Z

We lay low for a day in Edinburgh yesterday and are now just finishing off our packing ready to start the 'Elsmore World Tour'. We head down to London Heathrow this afternoon and fly out to Hong Kong this evening.

For the duration we figured it made sense to blog in one place and we are going to do that on Warren's blog. So from now until the beginning of February there will be no posts on here. However, you can keep up with all our travels on www.elsmore.net

Blogging etc may be patchy as we are not sure what access to the web we will have, but what goes up will be on there.

Do come back here to www.thinks.blogspot.com in February when things will hoepfully get back to normal and you can chart my search for a new job and hopefully my new course too.

So this is Thinks signing off from here for the moment. See you in 5 weeks or so!!!!!

I'm Mrs Elsmore! Yay!

2005-12-19T10:24:00.000Z

Well it all went off beautifully and according to plan (except for a few very minor glitches). I'll do a longer 'wedding day' post at some stage, but currently suffice to say that I am happy as a clam or a Pooh Bear who has found his honey stash :D

You know you have done one too many early morning airport drop-offs when...

2005-12-13T08:36:00.000Z

... once you get home you point the car remote at the house and wonder why the door doesn't open!

5 days to go

2005-12-12T22:36:00.000Z

Warren seems to have been covering most things over on him, but I get to beat him to the punch on this one :)

Our 'pre-wedding' photos are now up on Nigel Lumsden's site. So feel free to browse y'all if you feel so inclined. This is where our wedding photos will end up too, but not for a wee while yet!

10 days to go...

2005-12-07T18:23:00.000Z

Well the countdown to the wedding has started in earnest.

The dress is complete.
The placement for dinner is in its infancy (balance between waiting for final replies and people having to change plans at the last minute :) ).
The helium balloons are organised.
The photo we are having for everyone to sign at the wedding is on its way.
The spare bed is covered in piles of stuff to get packed for the honeymoon.
Think we are almost at the stage of 'if it hasn't been done by now, it is not going to get done'.
We are definitely at the stage of starting to over-engineer the wedding ;) .

Probably not many more posts till the honeymoon.

I'm dreaming of an orange christmas

2005-12-07T18:17:00.000Z

Well, just in case we ran out of Jaffa Cakes between now and the wedding I thought I'd stock up... it is a full, five boxes long :)

For Sale | Palm Pilot and DVD writer ;)

2005-11-28T07:20:00.000Z

A friend of mine is selling a Palm Pilot and DVD writer that are both in good condition if anyone is interested.

Palm Pilot £50.

DVD Writer £45.

(With thanks to Lesley).

UPDATED | St Theresa's prayer, Wales & pebbles

2005-11-25T14:06:00.000Z

UPDATE: Have now posted the rest of the Wales photos - really lots of the fabulous sunset we had but one or two others too.

A great friend of mine sent me this prayer from my namesake (well, without the 'h' anyway). I just thought I'd post it up for anyone who is feeling frazzled or uncertain at the moment...

May today there be peace within. May you trust God that you are exactly where you are meant to be. May you not forget the infinite possibilities that are born of faith. May you use those gifts that you have received, and pass on the love that has been given to you....May you be content knowing you are a child of God.... Let this presence settle into yourbones, and allow your soul the freedom to sing, dance, praise and love.

Being in Wales, as Warren posted, allowed us 'to stop the world as we wanted to get off' for a few days. It was fabulous. Just a couple of shots for you of the view from our cottage: Morning and sunset...

I have always had a thing for 'interesting' pebbles - those with striations particularly. I just think they are so beautiful, I am a nature girl at heart really I suppose. Anyhoo, we thought it would be nice to use pebbles as the placecards for the dinner at our wedding reception. So, a happy couple of hours collecting pebbles on the beach later we had a (VERY heavy) rucksack (bet not many Lotusphere 2005 rucksacks have done that!), with about a 100 pebbles which we dragged back to the collage. On the beach and, after much scrubbing, drying out...

[question] Does it spoil the magic to say that Warren spent the evening up to his elbows in the last dops from the pink domestos bottle we found under the wonderful kitchen sink, scrubbing the last vetiges of 'sea' off them? [/question].

Probably ;).

Hen Night

2005-11-25T12:11:00.000Z

Well the photos from this momentous occassion are finally up on flickr. A great night was had by all and it all went swimmingly. My greatest thanks to Cara for organising exactly what I wanted - a nice, long boozy dinner for which no-one had to shop, cook or wash up!

SNOW!

2005-11-25T11:08:00.000Z

Ok, not much of it and it is certainly not the first anywhere this year, but it is the first in Edinburgh. This is the view from our flat this morning

Admittedly it is now more rainy/slushy than snowy, but I am not going to venture outside today if I can help it, it being bitterly cold and all ;)

Congratulations

2005-11-23T15:10:00.000Z

There seem tobe a few of these I have not caught up on so here is a round up:

Lewis Anderson & Sarah Gibson are engaged to be married. Hopefully May 06 for the date.
Heidi & Tony are proud parents for the first time - Jasmine.
Thomas & Kate SF are proud parents for the second time - James Alexander.

Our congratualations and best wishes to you all.

Yoga - Scottish and 'pukka'

2005-11-23T13:18:00.000Z

and

Ahh, what would we do without Tennets Special? ;)

On heavy rotation

2005-11-23T13:16:00.000Z

and

Wedding update

2005-11-15T14:06:00.000Z

SPOILER alert!! Those attending, if you don't want to know all about things happening or what things are going to look like, or what I'll be wearing then DON'T READ THIS POST :)

It is also going to be quite long, so settle in with a good cuppa and a biscuit, maybe a jaffa cake, (of course you can only get real jaffa cakes from jaffacake.com, .net or .org NOT from jaffacake.co.uk, well until they land on 'go to jail' anyhoo ;) ).

As you can imagine with the big day less than 5 weeks away now things are really hotting up. Add to that the general 'running one's life' concept and you get the why I haven't blogged very much lately. SO today your RSS readers should be full on my posts, catching up on the events of several weeks, in no particular order! For once, in recent times, I seem to be in a post-writing mood, so I'm taking advantage of that and so should you, if you're interested in my little life, ;)

Flowers:
I have now had the site visit for the flower ladies. Jeanette and Anita have both been brilliant and have grand ideas on how to make my wishes come true and also for things I hadn't decided on yet. We recently had to change the table layout for dinner, from ovals to long thin trestles, to fit everyone in and so we needed to redesign the table decorations, which was interesting. So we are now having a central 'runner' of flowers down each long (24') table which is also going to have fairy lights running through it. There will also be some very oversize martini glasses with floating candles in them as well as the helium balloons.

The chapel is going to look gorgeous with some pew-ends, and the altar flowers. We are also having a couple of Christmas trees to flank the altar and block the bottom half of the view into the Mortuary end of the chapel. The roof is beautifully decorated and people will still be able to see that, but as no-one will be sitting in that end and we are using it for signing the register we thought it best to create some sort of 'screen' - the trees. We had planned on trees anyway, as those of you will remember from the great bauble buy in the January sales so this was just a different place to put them. We have also sorted the candles to go on the window sills to be surrounded with misletoe wreaths and some pine cones - so pretty. The chapel porch is going to have a couple of large storm lantern with equally large church candles in them and a third christmas tree so both the view of chapel porch as you enter and as you leave will be decorated.

The reception rooms are going to have balls of flowers hanging off each shutter handle as we are pushed for floor space and they will be above everyone's heads when we sit for dinner. And a couple of large, overmantle flower displays above the fireplaces.

Wardrobe:
My bodice is all but finished, we had a fitting a couple of weeks ago. What I am slightly biting my nails over is that the silk for my skirt is still in transit from India. Warren & I have continual nightmares over whether we are exploiting someone in India to bead all the silk or if we are in fact helping their economy, anyhow it is apparently on its way and should be at my Aunt's by the end of this week... fingers crossed please.

Hence my skirt is currently non-existent. Well it would certainly be a wedding to remember if it never arrives ;)

I have just ordered up the velvet for my cloak which should be here next week so that is now all in train ('scuse the unintentional pun - there really isnt much train to my dress at all!).

The guys' waistcoats are in progress and I have just found the purple silk for my brother's one. I'm sure Muma will find it 'too bright, darling', but then she doesn't have to wear it.

Muma has just returned from London and is now in possession of her completed outfit from Aunt Hannah. I'm not sure if her hat is finished yet, but knowing my Mother she will have insisted on bringing it home from this trip.

Photography:
Well, we have had our 'pre-wedding shoot' with Nigel. Been taught how to stand in photos and been through the running order for the day. Our 'engagment' photos should be up on Nigel's site pretty quickly and will let you all know when they go up. I hope to be proved wrong and that I can look OK in photos!

Decorations:
Well, mine and Warren's an*l-ness has finally come fully to the fore. For those, quietly, or loudly shocked by my turn of phrase, I agree with you. I have for years tried to come up with a less blunt description of my obsessiveness with details for events, but I just can't find one that does the job so well.

Anyhoo, our spare bedroom is currently covered in boxes. (Sorry, but we can't put anyone up between now and the wedding!)

Boxes filled with the non-live parts of the flower decorations - oasis, trays, twine etc and the silk flowers, floating candles, storm lanterns etc - we bought last week. (We only await the order for more oasis and the overszie martini glasses to come in and we are complete.)
Boxes filled with the wreaths and garlands (all with integral fairy lights), their attendant cables and hanging accourtrements.
Boxes filled with the lights and baubles for the decoration of the christmas trees and their attendnant cables.

Each box comtains a complete kit for whatever bit of decoration it is and are makred up with sheets stating: contents, plan for putting them up (thanks MS Visio) and plan for where they are to go when they are taken down! Sad I know, but it means we can dish then out to those helping with the setting up and be pretty sure that we won't get too many questions on what needs doing. It is also the BEST way to check we have everything we need and are not running around like blue-arsed flies on the day because we have forgotten some vital component. Believe me in rural Perthshire, in December that could be fatal!

Now aside from the continual job of smoothing feathers which seems the fundamental role of anyone getting married - we'll just gloss over whose wedding it is or I am likely to get red and agitated - we really do seem to be getting there.

Now off to phone the caterer and finalise details with him; talk to Warren's Father about the printing of the Order of Service and then maybe I'll have time to plan the rest of our honeymoon...

UPS drivers who have learnt to read...

2005-11-15T13:02:00.000Z

...and how we helped with that.

(Trying to) take delivery of a box of electical bits and bobs to sort some of our wedding decorations (see later post) was an interested concept last week.

Now, granted we live on the top floor of our block of flats and it is 66 steps from the street to our door, however delivery drivers are paid to deliver, not try to weasel out of delivering.

Day one: I went downstairs towards the end of the afternoon to grab some milk or somesuch from our corner shop across the street, to find a UPS 'we tried to deliver your parcel slip' stuck in the pipework. (That is the stairwell's unofficial place to put things so people see them rather than walking over them if they were left on the floor as we have nothing to put mail on in the stairwell as it is meant to be put through each flat's letter box on their doors). Now since I had been in all day and had not had anyone buzz the doorbell, I thought this was a little weird but left it at that. The slip has a section entitled something like 'we will try to deliver again on ...(day) at ...(time)'. Well, nothing was noted so I patiently waited in the following day...

Day two: I went downstairs, again late afternoon, to go grab the ingredients for a full-on fruit cake, complete with marzipan and royal icing, to make for Warren's birthday, from our fabulous 'Real Foods' just two doors up the street from the flat. On my return to the flat, whilst digging out my keys, I noticed a slip of familiar looking paper on the pavement outside the street door of the flat. I picked it up and sure enough it was another 'we tried to deliver your parcel' slip. Strange as yet again, the time noted on the slip was an hour or so before I had ventured out to the shop and I had been in all day until them and there had been no doorbell buzz. Again the 'we will try to deliver again' section was not completed...

Day three (they 'try to deliver' three times before leaving it at the depot for you to go and collect): We decided to call the depot to make sure it was out for delivery again that day and to let them know that we would be in all day and could the driver please ring the doorbell to let us know he was there. They told us that as the driver was already out on his rounds they couldn't contact him to make sure it was delivered. So we also put up a notice on the street door highlighting which doorbell was ours and that we were in all day, so please go ahead and buzz us.

This time, no note, nothing except that when we checked the tracking number on-line it said it had tried to be delivered three times and that we now needed to go collect it from the depot.

We called UPS and put in an official complaint that the delivery driver had failed to buzz the doorbell on three consecutive days and that we had been in on all those days. The woman said she would take that on, deal with it and get back to us. An hour or so later she rang back: 'We asked the driver if he rang the doorbell. He says he did." "And that is the end of the internal complaints procedure. Sir." Great complaints procedure UPS - he wouldn't have any reason to lie or anything, now would he?

Warren & I reckoned that the box might be heavy so we both went to the depot to collect it. It was so light I picked it up like a feather (despite the desk clerk's note 'Be careful, it is heavy.').

Anyhoo, we had cause to order up some more electrical bits and bobs and waited with interest to see if the doorbell would buzz. Sure enough on day one of the second delivery it buzzed and the guy brought the box up to the flat door. (Now I have no proof that they driver of the first and second deliveries was the same guy, but it is a reasonable assumption.) Maybe just being asked if he had in fact buzzed the doorbell was enough to make sure he did on the second delivery.

Konevets Quartet

2005-11-15T00:25:00.000Z

These guys have performed at several of my Mother's charity events and I love them. They are a Russian quartet who sing, unaccompanied, the most beautiful sacred and secular music. They tend to do renditions of the Russian Orthodox church music in the first half of their concerts, and behove the audience not to clap between pieces as befits the sacred music. It is beautiful, but I personally prefer the second half where they delve into the rich history of Russian secular music - military songs, peasant songs and anything rustic and folk-y. I am sitting here attempting to type up Muma's accounts for the Estate for the last financial year (an annual daughterly duty), and find myself swept up in the stunning renditions the guys produce.

I have always had a leaning towards the more minor keys in music and indeed find that, to me at any rate, the minor keys induce my more long-lasting musical favourties than the upbeat frivolity of the major keys (but that is just MHO). Thus these hauntingly melacholic and atmospheric strains just melt my heart. If you are into beautifully sung, sometimes maudlin music I highly recommend their Russian Folk Songs cd. (It is only available on amazon.com not amazon.co.uk I'm afraid, though the Sacred music cds are available on both).

There are some more lighthearted ones thrown in too, some 'military' and 'we-like-busty-wenches' types which have their own charms and show the humorous side of the guys. In all a wonderful cd which is one of my all time favourites and will be 'on heavy rotation' whilst I am in the house alone and won't disturb Warren's work ethic ;)

The guys have been to stay with us after several of these concerts and they continually put me to shame with their 'apologetic-lack-of-english' which in fact means we can carry on a pretty-good conversation on lost of topics. In fact the last time there were here, a few weeks ago, I had an amazing conversation with Igor on car and house & contents insurance and mortgages! The topic was nothing special as you can see, but we managed to explain the systems in our respective countries to each other with sufficient understanding to be useful and educational.

Now I can't say 'hello, how are you in Russian?', let alone be able to discuss the finer points of mortgages. What always floors me is their frequent apologies for their English not being good. The arrogance of the British that everyone speaks their language so they don't need to learn anyone elses continues to amaze me.

I freely admit that I know only un petit peu of French picked up at school and parum Latin from school and science and fall into the category that hopes that the other side speaks english. I don't assume they should, but I really hope they do.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY WARREN!

2005-11-09T13:44:00.000Z

HAPPY BIRTHDAY to Warren!!! 29 years young today.

Thinks

2005-11-08T10:10:00.000Z

Seems like there is a lot that I have not blogged about so I hope to catch up on some of that today, but there is also so much else to do! It is Warren's birthday tomorrow so I am about to head off and make a big fruit cake for him. I also have to head off this afternoon to ferry a dear friend to M&S for the food shopping for tomorrow night's 'lingerie shower'! Oh and we have the rest of the garlands (for the chapel) to re-wire...

The wellies have arrived!! (oh and so have the umbrellas...)

2005-11-04T13:44:00.000Z

Title says it all really - the wellies have arrived and are everybit as funky and cool and I had hoped they could be - roll on December! Realised I forgot to add the link to where I found these lovelies to hte previous post. This is where you can find them in all their glory and it is worth checking out the rest of their catalogue too.

I also took delivery today of 25 umbrellas won on ebay. Why? I hear you ask. Well I don't want out guests to run the risk of getting wet walking from the car park to the chapel, from the chapel to the reception or from the reception back to their cars. And despite the fact that it is December and it is Scotland you can bet your bottom dollar that the level of rain that day will be inversley proportional to the number of guests who remember their brollies. So brolly provision it is then.

Our regular postman is a sweetheart, but he was overjoyed that I offered to come down the three floors of stairs and carry my parcel up the the flat - 25 golf sized brollies weigh more than you might think! I have yet to tell him that there might be another similar size and weight parcel arriving in a few days if I win the other auction too...

CPU | Words vs pictures

2005-11-04T10:53:00.000Z

Found this article on Creating Passionate Users today (yeah, alright I am a few days behind!). It really struck a chord with me that reminded me of my old job. One of the reasons one of my bosses & I worked so well together especially when producing documentation was that they worked in words and I worked in visuals. They didn't 'get' the flowchart, whilst I found it so much easier to follow the flowchart rather than try to gather the process through the text.

I guess that when it comes down to it, it is linked, at least in part, to the concept of different types of learners from those who are 'active' to those who are 'reflective' or whichever particular set of descriptors you have used / come across. It is also linked to how you think. That may sound painfully obvious, but what I mean is that if you think in 'processes / systems' (which I do) then a flowchart or other visual is going to mean far more to you than a section of prose describing the process. I find I can check a process works by following through the flowchart; I can pick up areas where there are gaps, where there is a loose end that needs tying up, and where all the pieces of the puzzle end up. This was especially useful when creating systems for a trackable, and ultimately auditable, paper-based process such as who had signed off when a report that loads of different people had to see in a specific order etc.

I found it challenging to present that process visually in a clear manner where the lines don't cross, but I found it very difficult to put that process into words, (but I could do it with some effort). I would find myself typing bulleted & indented paragraphs, with numbers and cross references in an effort to make the text more easily navigable. In short I didn't want to leave the text as text (paragraphs and syntax being the only discernible structure), I wanted to mould the text into something I could more easily take away with me in my head as a visual.

Conversely my boss wrote the text, they were good at it. To them it made perfect sense, they could get the process straight from the text, with no visual pointers. BUT they couldn't 'read' the visual - to them it didn't convey the necessary meaning.

If we accept that people learn in different ways, which to me at least is self evident, then we should automatically have whatever we are presenting available in different formats or, at the very least, ensure that the two most prevalent forms (words AND pictures) are both present in our material. We must not make the mistake of thinking that words are more 'adult' and pictures more 'child', but accept them both as equally valid and equally prevalent methods of learning.

At the risk of banging an already beaten drum, I HIGHLY RECOMMEND the CPU site - there is so much you can learn from it, techie-text-book-writer/publisher or no.

Wellies

2005-10-27T09:21:00.000+01:00

I wanted a fun pair of wellies for a particular bit of our wedding day and I have finally found them!

Naturally I am being driven right to the door of the Chapel on my arrival and can therefore wear my very impractical, strappy, high-heeled sandals with no concerns about what I need to walk over.

However when we leave the Chapel it is a few hundred yards walk to the Reception and I can't guarantee that it will be dry underfoot, that there will not be any snow and that it may not be downright miserable weather. I am also placing my bouquet on my Father's grave, which is just outside the Chapel in a grassed graveyard which will inevitably be wet.

Hence the need for wellies (and the need for, thankfully willing, bridesmaids to hold up my skirts and swap my sandals for my wellies in the Chapel porch).

Thought you might like to see them:

Yes, yes they're the ones with the hearts on!