Update #2 8:00pm Sunday

A looong day, but here we are at Eaglehawk Holiday Park, which is actually in NSW, on the far north-eastern edge of the greater Canberra area. The kids were amused that we actually drove into the ACT on the Barton Hwy, then turned onto the Federal Hwy to go back into NSW. A downpour greeted us, but all kids are now organized in their rooms, and fed (lasagna & chips) and watered. Miss Carroll and Mrs Brennan are distributing the children's special camp shirts now, in readiness for tomorrow, when we visit Parliament House.

Everyone enjoyed Western Plains Zoo. I believe the siamangs, giraffes and spider monkeys were the most popular exhibits.

Another video on the bus, and we arrived at the Parkes Radio Telescope in time to see it swing around 180 degrees. Lunch, and then a fairly quiet trip through to Canberra.

Some random highlights of the day:

• Alec Schmidt: Dubbo Zoo
  
• Adam Nearhos: sleeping on the bus
  
• Hamish McGovern: the Dish
  

Photos to come soon.

An entry directly from Word

Another experiment. This time, the blog post is being written using Word's "New blogpost" option.

Experiment with MI

Today I am uploading two photos and some text using my Telstra Moibile internet connection. There are a couple of reasons why I am doing this.

First, I wanted to check the Picasa editing/resizing tools. The two photos appearing here have been resized from about 900k and 780k to both under 100k. I am curious as to what size on the page they will appear. If I’m not happy, I will look at using one of the other editing programs to do this.

Second, I am of course interested in how long it takes to upload text and photos using the IM service. Time is of the essence!

The process I have used is this: photos loaded from camera to PC. In this case, I have used photos I took a couple of weeks ago during the “Great Dust Storm of ‘09”. Photos were resized, and placed in a new folder. The text has been written and edited in Word, and will be uploaded to Blogger once I am online. I need to check out the blogging by email functionality of Blogger. I Have already noted to differences to WordPress. 1. Only one page in your blog and 2. Some of the gadgets don’t want to work properly.

From my Eudora email account.

This post is an experiment using the upload by email option in Blogger.
This facility could be of great use while travelling, as the connect
time can be considerably less than when writing directly into
Blogger, or even when writing in Word and importing to Blogger.
I'm looking forward with some excitement to using these facilities
over the next couple of weeks.

Back in the real world

Three days away at a conference - interesting, challenging and all the rest of it. Then home and Father's Day yesterday, and a really enjoyable day. I was sitting in Mass yesterday morning thinking how renewed and re-invigorated I felt. Out walking this morning and running ideas through my mind for this afternoon's staff meeting - jumping right in, no cooling off period.

Then the realities this morning, as people start ringing in sick, and providing excuses and making other people's lives more difficult - not mine here I might add, but I know of at least two other people who are not going to be happy campers when they hear what's going on.

The greatest impediment to innovation and clear thinking is dealing with the detritus of other people's issues.

Leading a Digital School Conference

Lucky me - on the Gold Coast for 3 and a half days attending a conference on Leading a Digital School.

Sessions so far have included Marc Presnky, Chris Betcher, Tom March and John Pearce - plenty more still to go.

Ideas to take back to OLSCC include a College blog attached to the website, significant staff PD about embracing change (not advancing backwards). Lots more in my notes.

Even get to use an iPod touch while I'm here - slowly getting used to it, as I am getting used to Twitter. Have set up an account, tweeted, and even have a couple of followers. The first couple were 'interesting', but I decided it may be judicious to block them. You never know, perhaps they were genuine and I was about to get lucky.

What I forgot to do, though was bring a camera with me, so the memory of what I have seen better be good. I am taking lots of notes, and downloading heaps.

My Fair Lady

For the first time in perhaps 30 years I watched 'My Fair Lady' right through today, and let me say, "I enjoyed it!"

It was a father/daughter day because the rest of the family is away for a day or two, and it was effectively the last day of holidays for me. So we went out to breakfast, wandered through a craft market, and went shopping, which was where we bough the MFL dvd, because we had been joking about Groundsman Willie singing "Wouldn't it be adequate" on the Simpsons this week.

I had sort of forgotten the whole class class struggle aspect to the story, and the lack of respect shown by the upper class for the working class;  the difference in morality between the middle class and the 'undeserving poor' as explained by Alf Doolittle; the incredible piss-taking of the upper class at Royal Ascot. I also noted (after reading on the Internet Movie Database ) that the 'educated' men speak their lines in pitch rather than sing - thus showing intellectualism and a lack of emotion, so my daughter and I had great fun listening carefully to Rex Harrison, and his performance, especially of 'I've grown accustomed to her face', noting how he changed between speaking and singing lines in the song. A fascinating insight!

A most enjoyable day.