Ben

 Ben dying was most traumatic. In hindsight we should have called the vet but I was home alone and wasn't sure how these things are done. The result was a 3 day epic. Ben was a lovely dog but a pain in the arse. Having friends to dinner was a nightmare and going for walks was a drag. Not a boring type of drag, more of a dragged through a bush type. He was a bit posh, we always felt we were beneath him. 

 

Blog reboot

 Wow, I haven't blogged on this one for almost 10 years. Thought I would re invent it rather than starting a new one. I have so much to say I don't know where to start. A lot has happened in 10 years. I tried to summarise with a few words but failed. Over the coming weeks I plan to fill in some of the details.

This blog was the start of my writing career. I never used to write anything, never kept a diary. Actually that's not true, I did keep a climbing diary for several years. Not particularly interesting to read, mainly descriptions of moves and mild bragging. Writing a diary that no one reads seems a bit pointless but at least you can imagine some one is reading a blog. I wasn't good at writing at school, my spelling and grammar were atrocious, they still are. At school you get penalised for this but this is my blog I will write it how I please.

Pearson were looking for someone to write a physics text book. One of their publishers found my name on a list of workshop leaders, Googled this blog and thought it might be interesting to combine my slightly wacky writing style with my knowledge of physics. Luckily they also employ editors.

The meeting stalker

Haven't updated this for almost a year. Probably because I spend so much time updating my website and physics blog that I don't have much inspiration left for this one, occasionally something happens that isn't really relevant to the physics blog but that I want to record. Such an event took place on Wednesday, actually it is referred to in the other blog but here's the full story.
After class I tend to sneak off home but on Wednesdays I am doing a course to help with preparing resources and conducting lessons for students known as ESL (English as a second language), well that's all my students apart from Hero (and maybe some first years but I don't know who they are yet) so pretty relevant. Maybe more about the course in another blog but the point is I had to wait around for an hour between the end of class and the course. Fancied a coffee so headed off to the staff room. The coffee maker there is really small so has to be filled up many times a day. No one can be bothered to wait for it to fill up so teachers have devised ways to get the coffee before the filter is empty. This time it didn't require such ingenuity.
Standing alone in the corridor with a cup of coffee is rather sad so I joined the group sitting in the staff room. They were talking about the TOK essay titles and whether they should advise students on which one to choose. Interested to see the titles sat down and had a look at the paper and started to go through the ones that were particularly relevant to physics. We had a lively discussion for a good 10 minutes which filled the time to drink my coffee nicely.
10 minutes of TOK discussion is about enough for me so I started to steer the conversation in another direction but Edmund kept bringing it back to TOK. After a while I started to think about the group and realised they were all teachers of TOK. I had sat down in a TOK meeting. Oops.
Realising that my interest might be misinterpreted as an indication that I wanted to teach the subject I made a hasty retreat.

Simon Rogers

Went to the dance performance yesterday, very enjoyable. It's getting more and more difficult to be impressed by dance, there's so much of it on the TV that you get used to seeing people spinning on their head and stuff. There was a warning before the show that people with epilspsy should contact the organisers so that something could be arranged. It was because of the flashing lights, what were they going to do, supply a blindfold? There was a boy at junior school called Simon Rogers, he had epilepsy and had to wear a helmet everyday. I wonder if he still wears it, I guess its OK if he turned out to be a biker or something but what if he's a bus driver. People would think it really strange if the driver was wearing a helmet. Wouldn't inspire confidence.
It was quite a cool helmet, blue and silver if I remember correctly.

Top tips

Quite a busy time since I last blogged on. Berlin at the weekend to run a workshop, back to Flekke then straight off to Stadt for a bit of surfing then The Beach for climbing. Yeah it's climbing / surfing PBL again. This must be about the 5th PBL of this type with the usual student group with the Nordic profile. Whilst instructing climbers I realised there are a couple of basic principles of climbing.
1. Stand don't flop on your feet.
2. If you can't see a hold then there probably isn't one.
3. If you don't move your feet then you can't climb higher than 2m.
And my 3 hints to improve the likelihood of catching a wave whilst surfing are:
1. paddle harder
2. paddle harder
3. paddle harder

After many years I know that my brain has been seriously damaged by too much physics teaching however this week I saw the effects of too much orienteering. People who partake in too much orienteering lose the ability to go from A - B by the most obvious route. When orienteerers climb they simply wander all over the cliff trying to avoid any suggestion of a line. I can imagine what it would be like if they entered a track race, half way round they might decided to take a diversion across the centre of the track.

Bananas Saved my Blogged up Brain

I have a confession to make.
The reason I stopped blogging was because my brain got blogged up.
If you look back through the posts you'll see I was in Seville running a workshop for IB Physics teachers. I wrote a couple of entries about some shoes and strange fruit that was very sweet. The problem was that I couldn't switch off the blog brain resulting in 3 days without sleep. Some one told me that I should eat bananas to help me sleep, it didn't work but I liked the title.
I'm a bit scared of starting again in case I get the blog brain again. When you have blog brain you just can't stop thinking of blog entries, you start seeing everything from different angles which is fun until you can't switch it off.

Yearly update

It is again ages since I wrote the last entry. Same excuse as before, that is that i spend enough time sat infront of my computer as it is without blogging. The shift button on my keyboard is sticky by the way which is why i am i and not I. Been a good year with regards climbing, managed another 8a+ which was a harder variation of one I (oh shift button works again) did ages ago but anyway. Got a mention in another blog Drammens granitt.
Its a whole new world here in Flekke without Jose Row and Floss who are now spread around a bit. Row hasn't spread very far as he's in Bergen but Floss is in Panama doing an exchange year. She has blown me away (blogging wise) with her blog, having said that she hasn't made an entry for a while.
So lets see how long I go before the next entry.
One thing this worthy of comment are these step counters that everyone is walking around with. the idea is that you count steps so that you walk around the world in 80 days or something like that. The walking is ok but i'm getting really sick of having to enter my steps onto the website. the idea that this is going to continue for 80 days just makes me feel sick. if I wanted to walk round the world then i'd do it. I think some contestants have already walked round the world and are heading for the sun, it'll end in tears.