Friday, February 23

 

 

I got up at 7:30 and sneaked out without breakfast because Irma plans to work from home today. She can get up at 8:30 and still start work at 9:00. I realised I might have timed things so that I can catch the earlier bus and I did. I got the 97 and find that by the time it arrived at Itäkeskus it only had three passengers. Does everyone work at home on Fridays? I wondered.

I spent the morning reading. My diary said that I should prepare the teaching materials for Structuring Information today and Monday, and I decided that I should begin by reading, or at least skimming, the books I downloaded from O’Reilly yesterday. One of them will enable me to avoid teaching anything about servers, because it will answer all the questions students usually have about hosting and DNS records and so on. I will make that a a pre-course assignment so that we can start the course with a discussion.

I read several other books about html and css and about styling conventions and html frameworks. These will also prove useful.

I had noticed earlier in the week that lunch today consisted of mashed potato and uunimakara, and so I had decided to pig out, which I did in the company of Kauko and Leila. The child in me loves this every now and then. Naa loves it too, and has once travelled all the way to Arcada just to join in the piggery.

In the afternoon I began making examples in html: blocks of code that I can use with the students as exercises. I have a final exercise already prepared and so this afternoon I made some of the examples that will lead up to it.

Luke appeared on Skype and I talked with him for thirty minutes. He decided to come to watch me in Manchester, when he heard that sparks might fly, as I resurrected a thirty year old argument that I thought everyone had forgotten.

At 16:45 I left for Kuusi Palaa where I will attend my first open planning meeting. I get off the metro at Hakaniemi where more of the community art decorates the platforms. I find this strip cartoon (in several senses) and stand looking at it. I wander up and down the platform looking at other images but none holds my attention quite like this one.

I will get there and feel time shift under my feet. I will feel myself standing in a community art project thirty years ago. I will have a cup of tea and join in with the small gange of people doing the place up. I will baulk at laying the stair treads with Bostik, in a tin actually labelled Bostik – something I haven’t seen for thirty years and didn’t know still existed. I will have a Horlicks moment.

I will help paint a small table and then sit with Aga folding leaflets and stuffing them into envelopes as though email had not yet happened. I will think that if this doesn’t prepare me for Manchester then nothing will.