And now, finally...
23 Apr 2009 22:16 Filed in: Personal
It’s time for a short update...
Since the last time I wrote, Nathan has been fine, with no reoccurrence of the symptoms that sent him to hospital and no sign of any after effects. Long may this continue. As usual, he’s been bright as a button, and continues to set the pace of our lives.
He’s had a few special days recently, with the best probably being the Thomas Day out at the Bolton Abbey and Embsay Railway. The steam engines were all dressed up as Thomas, as was Nathan (he had his best Tank Engine outfit on and looked delightfully cute). It was Jill’s birthday, and we spent most of the day in and around the steam trains with a very excited little boy. We had a great time, and I’d recommend the day out, albeit a quite expensive one.
The other really big change is that my mum is finally out of hospital; she came out just after her birthday at the start of April, and looks a lot better for it. It’s really good to see her home, but I suspect that it’s equally hard work for my dad at the moment until mum gets some more mobility back and recovers her stamina. It’ll be a long road, but it’s great to see her out of hospital and back with us after 3 months or so away.
We’ve had to re-gravel the drive after 6 years, partly because one of our neighbours insists in treating the shared section as the starting position for a 0-60 drag race in a very Demon Tweeks fashion. Anyway, after two big bags, it looks pretty good. Nathan was a star and ran and got his buckets and spades the moment that he saw the bags. I do assure you that we didn’t use child labour for this, no matter what the picture may suggest. He was also very taken with the “crane-lorry” that delivered the big bags.
Of course, from a personal position, the picture of the little lad above is the best achievement we can do. Wear him out with a life of fun and games!
I’ve had some fun gaming recently, including a run out of Singularities setting I mentioned some posts ago, for Graham’s Wordplay RPG. This went well, but prompted some questions to do with how one of the mechanics worked. Interestingly, I used my Flip Ultra to try a tutorial to explain the changes we were thinking of and it seemed to work well. I think we’ll be doing some of this kind of stuff once Wordplay is boxed off to go on the website. It has to be said that Tom Zunder played his character absolutely fantastically, double dealing and out for a quick profit in a way that really added to the fun of the game.
Work have given me a Blackberry, which I’ve yet to decide if it is a benefit or a curse. Mad busy otherwise with a major safety report.
I’ve been using InDesign CS4 in anger for the first time this last week as I have been producing some leaflets and posters for the local church. I’m on tenterhooks to know what the final result will look like as the project I’ve produced has been quite ambitious. I’ve been very impressed with the changes from CS2, and the whole workflow was much better. How much that ties to having a faster computer too, I don’t know.
We have followed up the success of the IMechE Annual Dinner in Merseyside and North Wales, held in Chester, with the IMechE Yorkshire Region’s version which Jill was key in organising. It was a more initimate affair (60-70 people rather than 250), but a great kick off for the event. The speech by Colin Brown, the IMechE’s technical director, was very good (by far the best that I’ve seen by someone in the Institution and better than the professional at Chester) and it was superb to actually see our professional body taking some steps to have a view and take a position. I took a lot of pictures, and used the Flip for the speech, and I was happy with the results. Would have been better with more notice, but you can’t win them all!
Since the last time I wrote, Nathan has been fine, with no reoccurrence of the symptoms that sent him to hospital and no sign of any after effects. Long may this continue. As usual, he’s been bright as a button, and continues to set the pace of our lives.
He’s had a few special days recently, with the best probably being the Thomas Day out at the Bolton Abbey and Embsay Railway. The steam engines were all dressed up as Thomas, as was Nathan (he had his best Tank Engine outfit on and looked delightfully cute). It was Jill’s birthday, and we spent most of the day in and around the steam trains with a very excited little boy. We had a great time, and I’d recommend the day out, albeit a quite expensive one.
The other really big change is that my mum is finally out of hospital; she came out just after her birthday at the start of April, and looks a lot better for it. It’s really good to see her home, but I suspect that it’s equally hard work for my dad at the moment until mum gets some more mobility back and recovers her stamina. It’ll be a long road, but it’s great to see her out of hospital and back with us after 3 months or so away.
We’ve had to re-gravel the drive after 6 years, partly because one of our neighbours insists in treating the shared section as the starting position for a 0-60 drag race in a very Demon Tweeks fashion. Anyway, after two big bags, it looks pretty good. Nathan was a star and ran and got his buckets and spades the moment that he saw the bags. I do assure you that we didn’t use child labour for this, no matter what the picture may suggest. He was also very taken with the “crane-lorry” that delivered the big bags.
Of course, from a personal position, the picture of the little lad above is the best achievement we can do. Wear him out with a life of fun and games!
I’ve had some fun gaming recently, including a run out of Singularities setting I mentioned some posts ago, for Graham’s Wordplay RPG. This went well, but prompted some questions to do with how one of the mechanics worked. Interestingly, I used my Flip Ultra to try a tutorial to explain the changes we were thinking of and it seemed to work well. I think we’ll be doing some of this kind of stuff once Wordplay is boxed off to go on the website. It has to be said that Tom Zunder played his character absolutely fantastically, double dealing and out for a quick profit in a way that really added to the fun of the game.
Work have given me a Blackberry, which I’ve yet to decide if it is a benefit or a curse. Mad busy otherwise with a major safety report.
I’ve been using InDesign CS4 in anger for the first time this last week as I have been producing some leaflets and posters for the local church. I’m on tenterhooks to know what the final result will look like as the project I’ve produced has been quite ambitious. I’ve been very impressed with the changes from CS2, and the whole workflow was much better. How much that ties to having a faster computer too, I don’t know.
We have followed up the success of the IMechE Annual Dinner in Merseyside and North Wales, held in Chester, with the IMechE Yorkshire Region’s version which Jill was key in organising. It was a more initimate affair (60-70 people rather than 250), but a great kick off for the event. The speech by Colin Brown, the IMechE’s technical director, was very good (by far the best that I’ve seen by someone in the Institution and better than the professional at Chester) and it was superb to actually see our professional body taking some steps to have a view and take a position. I took a lot of pictures, and used the Flip for the speech, and I was happy with the results. Would have been better with more notice, but you can’t win them all!