Wow, what a busy few weeks it has been for me.  Trips around the country, presentations galore, twitter/Facebook upsets, birthdays, holidays; It's been non-stop for me.  As usual the first thing that I forget to do when I'm busy is to update my blog.

So my idea today is to cram as much as I can into this post and hope that I don't forget anything on the way.  I may expand on some of these in the future, but I wouldn't stake your life on it.

Lets get started then.

Presentation for award

Part of my job involves working with outside agencies on regional initiatives.  Well for the last  year I've been working with a number of colleges, charities and other companies to create Making IT Personal: Joining the Dots.  This activity (well as small part of it) is a bit of a region-wide site available to members of the public to get together online to raise their IT skills.  Its a really interesting project and I've been part of a team leading the creation of the website.

Well we had to go down to London in September to present our project to a board of judges with the aim of winning a prestigious national award.  How did it go I hear you ask?  Well it could have gone better, but then again it could have gone much worse; we'll find out in November if we have won.

City Break with the Wife

Sarah and I love London and try and get there as often as we can afford, usually around my birthday.  Well this year as you know we were both quite busy getting married so didn't get time for our city break.  The Wife's birthday is at the end of September so we used this as a good excuse to go down south for a few days.  Plus Sarah wanted a Radley bag from Covent Garden.

Sarah had been away at the weekend so I met her down in London at the hotel and then the first thing we had to do was go to get her birthday present.  So she got her new bag (the one in the photo) and I got to go to the new Apple Store afterwards.  That thing is huge, massive...

I was even well behaved - I didn't buy anything that time.  So we got back to the hotel after walking up the middle of Regent Street which had been closed off for the day.  It was a really weird experience.

When we got to our room it was decided that the bag needed to be waterproofed with some spray we got.  Now bear in mind that the room has a window which opens just enough to let air in but as we found out, not wide enough to let clouds of gas out.  We were nearly dying with the smell of the spray, but Sarah had her new bag and was happy so that's all that I cared about.

The rest of the city break was great, we walked all around the West End and Hyde Park one day, and the second day had a leisurely walk along the South Bank to the Tate Modern.  I realised I don't have a single atom of culture in my body after walking around there for an hour.

Wednesday came around far too quick and it was time for us to go home.  We got home mid afternoon and I slept for pretty much the rest of the day.  Perfect end to a nice time with my Wife.

Meals, Drinks, and more meals

So as I mentioned, that week was Sarah's birthday so that involved meals and drinks.  Here is a brief timeline

• Thursday Lunch: Taybarns with Sarah's family.  A good time, nice food and a cake afterwards
• Friday Evening: Drinking from 5pm until almost 1am.  Didn't manage to get drunk
• Saturday Afternoon: Franky and Bennys with my family.  Good food, good company and the chance to see my brother who has been away for a long time.

As I said my brother had been away for 2 months as he was at basic training camp to become a soldier.  I was really proud of him and it was a real setback for AJ that he had to be discharged because he became ill.  But it is good to have him back, so there is a silver lining to it.

More Presenting

Another part of my job is that in May this year I was asked to take over on a temporary basis the college VLE and do something with it to make it user friendly and attractive.  So i've been working with @lewiscarr for the last few months to see what we could do with it.  Well it is turning out very well and I got to launch it at the regional Moodle User Group last week. 

I was very nervous to be doing this here.  Would people think that I had just copied Leeds' moodle, would they be impressed with it?  I had no idea.

I shouldn't have worried, I had great feedback and some of features I had implemented into it went down a storm.  This has been the best thing I've worked on in my job for years, so I'm now just hoping that a full time job comes along that I can apply for.

Well that was a long post... well for me anyway.  I think I've covered most of the important stuff that I've been upto.  I guess the moral of all this is that I should post more often.