A Friday Medley
Nov. 12th, 2018 12:26 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
danieldwilliamSome sort of Friday Five / Monday Medley effort
1) Bluebird was in town for the weekend. She is busy working away on her dissertation on the effect of media coveration on the dehumanisation of Muslims. I am subject number 2. She is also busy applying for jobs. I think she is finding not knowing what she is doing in August next year a little stressful. I hope she finds one too. I have have already spent her allowance on something else.
2) I had Friday off work and Away From Keyboard - hence the FFMM. I did some work on set building on Friday morning and then joined MLW and BB to pick up the Captain from school. There had been a cake bake, judged by Tom Kitchen of Tom Kitchen fame. We (I) ended up hosting a playdate for two of the Captain's friends which basically became a 3 on 1 Nerf gun battle with me in the role of John Mclean and them in the role of Hans Gruber and his cronies. It involved perhaps the best ambush in my history as a father as I persuaded my son that I had swapped the speakers around on the Sonos system and the one marked "Den" was now in my bedroom. Imagine his chagrin as he then plays a non-stop soundtrack of fart sound effects in to his own bedroom. it's the little things that bring you joy. We then agreed to have one of the friends for a sleep over. Unfortunately he came down with some sort of stomach bug and had a disrupted night's sleep and then went home early. Shame, nice kid.
3) Later on Saturday to Murrayfield to watch Scotland play Fiji at rugby. The first half was a bit tense. Due to unforeseen circumstances our usual ploy of parking in Ballgreen didn't work too well and we ended up further away and later than planned. The first half was a little nerve racking as the Fijians found and basically ran through our defensive frailties. We were lucky to be winning 21-17 at half time. The second half was better. Scotland scored 5 unanswered tries to win the game 54-17. Next weekend we have Grandma coming to the rugby to watch South Africa. That will be an experience.
4) Sunday was built around rugby training. MLW did some singing in the morning. We had a grandparental visit. Mostly I was focused on P4 coaching. The Assistant Development Officer and one of his U-18 coachees came down to run our session. Lots of good input for the kids but also lots and lots of good input for the P4 coaching team. Lots of focus on the contact area and tackling but also on how to avoid being tackled. Things for me to practice is asking questions. I think most of the benefit of interacting with the kids comes from getting them to reflect on their actions. To which end any reasonable question or any generic question will do - no need to try to think of the right question - just ask the kid a question. (It shares something with improv there - any competent move forward in improv looks like magic from the outside, so long as you then follow up with another competent move forward and then another). Also, don't be afraid about getting them to do difficult technical stuff at the age of 8-9 - they don't know it's difficult.
5) I am done with Remembrance Sunday - more in a separate post - but I'm not wearing a sodding poppy ever again.
6) I enjoyed Doctor Who. I thought it was emotional. It touched on some classic time travel science fiction tropes - don't meddle yoourself out of history. The paritian of India is not something I know a lot about, so as a route to deliver education wrapped in entertainment (how Reithian) it did a decent job. It did remind me that one of grandads had been in India in the army during the partitian. It took a very different appoach to issues of remembrance than e.g. the crypto-fascisism of Strictly. I found it deeper and richer than previous episodes.
(Am also reminded of a pal of mine at primary school in Australia who was given detention for spending a double period in which we had been asked to do some art on the theme of remembrance drawing chickens. Turned out his grandfather had been a prisoner of war of the Japanese and had come literally a hairsbreadth from being executed by them for stealing a chicken in August 1945.)
I'm still not loving Whitaker's performance or her intepretation. I can live with it.
The episode provoked lots of questions from the Captain. Again, good.
I enjoyed the idea of Sheffield as exotic - which I suppose it is in a way.
7) I am worried about my brother.
8) I am thinking of taking up wearing braces. I seem to be incapable of buying a belt that actually fits me at the moment. The problems are many and varied and mostly located between desk and chair. The braces have reminded me of a USian girl I dated very briefly whilst at uni.
9) I have lots and lots of holiday to take before January, so I am planning a series of long-weekends including London and Aberdeen and probably the Borders.
10) Targeting a new personal best at weight-lifting this week. I've been stuck working at about 120 kgs for a while with a PB of 145 kgs. On Friday I lifted 130 kgs, pretty easily, so it looks like the slowness building back up after the summer break has passed.
11) I need to buy a new phone as my current one appears to have developed a defect. Attempting to communicate by WhatsApp on Friday night almost ended in a rage induced phone death. This morning, WhatsApp was fine, couldn't post on LJ from the phone. I think it is basically borked.
Enter your cut contents here.
1) Bluebird was in town for the weekend. She is busy working away on her dissertation on the effect of media coveration on the dehumanisation of Muslims. I am subject number 2. She is also busy applying for jobs. I think she is finding not knowing what she is doing in August next year a little stressful. I hope she finds one too. I have have already spent her allowance on something else.
2) I had Friday off work and Away From Keyboard - hence the FFMM. I did some work on set building on Friday morning and then joined MLW and BB to pick up the Captain from school. There had been a cake bake, judged by Tom Kitchen of Tom Kitchen fame. We (I) ended up hosting a playdate for two of the Captain's friends which basically became a 3 on 1 Nerf gun battle with me in the role of John Mclean and them in the role of Hans Gruber and his cronies. It involved perhaps the best ambush in my history as a father as I persuaded my son that I had swapped the speakers around on the Sonos system and the one marked "Den" was now in my bedroom. Imagine his chagrin as he then plays a non-stop soundtrack of fart sound effects in to his own bedroom. it's the little things that bring you joy. We then agreed to have one of the friends for a sleep over. Unfortunately he came down with some sort of stomach bug and had a disrupted night's sleep and then went home early. Shame, nice kid.
3) Later on Saturday to Murrayfield to watch Scotland play Fiji at rugby. The first half was a bit tense. Due to unforeseen circumstances our usual ploy of parking in Ballgreen didn't work too well and we ended up further away and later than planned. The first half was a little nerve racking as the Fijians found and basically ran through our defensive frailties. We were lucky to be winning 21-17 at half time. The second half was better. Scotland scored 5 unanswered tries to win the game 54-17. Next weekend we have Grandma coming to the rugby to watch South Africa. That will be an experience.
4) Sunday was built around rugby training. MLW did some singing in the morning. We had a grandparental visit. Mostly I was focused on P4 coaching. The Assistant Development Officer and one of his U-18 coachees came down to run our session. Lots of good input for the kids but also lots and lots of good input for the P4 coaching team. Lots of focus on the contact area and tackling but also on how to avoid being tackled. Things for me to practice is asking questions. I think most of the benefit of interacting with the kids comes from getting them to reflect on their actions. To which end any reasonable question or any generic question will do - no need to try to think of the right question - just ask the kid a question. (It shares something with improv there - any competent move forward in improv looks like magic from the outside, so long as you then follow up with another competent move forward and then another). Also, don't be afraid about getting them to do difficult technical stuff at the age of 8-9 - they don't know it's difficult.
5) I am done with Remembrance Sunday - more in a separate post - but I'm not wearing a sodding poppy ever again.
6) I enjoyed Doctor Who. I thought it was emotional. It touched on some classic time travel science fiction tropes - don't meddle yoourself out of history. The paritian of India is not something I know a lot about, so as a route to deliver education wrapped in entertainment (how Reithian) it did a decent job. It did remind me that one of grandads had been in India in the army during the partitian. It took a very different appoach to issues of remembrance than e.g. the crypto-fascisism of Strictly. I found it deeper and richer than previous episodes.
(Am also reminded of a pal of mine at primary school in Australia who was given detention for spending a double period in which we had been asked to do some art on the theme of remembrance drawing chickens. Turned out his grandfather had been a prisoner of war of the Japanese and had come literally a hairsbreadth from being executed by them for stealing a chicken in August 1945.)
I'm still not loving Whitaker's performance or her intepretation. I can live with it.
The episode provoked lots of questions from the Captain. Again, good.
I enjoyed the idea of Sheffield as exotic - which I suppose it is in a way.
7) I am worried about my brother.
8) I am thinking of taking up wearing braces. I seem to be incapable of buying a belt that actually fits me at the moment. The problems are many and varied and mostly located between desk and chair. The braces have reminded me of a USian girl I dated very briefly whilst at uni.
9) I have lots and lots of holiday to take before January, so I am planning a series of long-weekends including London and Aberdeen and probably the Borders.
10) Targeting a new personal best at weight-lifting this week. I've been stuck working at about 120 kgs for a while with a PB of 145 kgs. On Friday I lifted 130 kgs, pretty easily, so it looks like the slowness building back up after the summer break has passed.
11) I need to buy a new phone as my current one appears to have developed a defect. Attempting to communicate by WhatsApp on Friday night almost ended in a rage induced phone death. This morning, WhatsApp was fine, couldn't post on LJ from the phone. I think it is basically borked.
Enter your cut contents here.
no subject
Date: 2018-11-18 10:34 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-11-19 10:54 am (UTC)I think she'll have finished the data gathering by the time she see you. She's about 3 months ahead of schedule. Which is good, gives her plenty of time to revise the paper and still plenty of time to revise for her exams.