Tuesday, March 20

 

 

I woke up at 4:00 and hardly got back to sleep, unless I did and dreamed that I had stayed awake. I got up at 7:30 and saw the thick snow falling.

I got to the bus stop in time to get the (slightly late) 641 this morning, which meant I got to Arcada just after 8:30. This counted as good news because the Structured Information course begins at 9:15 today, and I had some final preparations to put together: things that I had thought of while I lay awake or dreamed that I lay awake. I got everything done, got the computer in A303 sorted out to my liking and sat waiting when the second student walked in. The first student, Amanda, had beaten me to class.

The class went smoothly. I had no idea how much they knew or remembered so we proceeded experimentally and I felt relieved that they neither knew too little nor too much. I explained the purpose of the course and showed a roadmap. Then we started by looking at the units of measurement that html offers and their different consequences.

I showed them my preferred strategy of rems for text and percentages for nlock elements, with pixels used only to establish a foundational measurement (a variation on the old 62.5% tactic) and to establish absolute maximum widths (as in: this website will never display at more than 1024 pixels wide).

We spent the second half of the session looking at ways to centre text and blocks, which proved more fun than it sounds.

When the class ended I prepared some scripts for filming on Friday.

At 14:15 I leave Arcada and head for Itäkeskus. At 14:50 I stand outside the entrance to Stoa looking at the ground: an unusual mixture os snow, ice, puddles of water, and dry ground. We have had the coldest March since records began, if I overheard a conversation correctly. I photograph some evidence of its oddness.

At 15:00 we will start a meeting for the micro-work project. Natalie and Laura will make a presentation and Irma and Sami will respond. I will take notes and make occasional interjections.

They will agree a name for the project. “Have we agreed that then?” I will interject.

Later Irma and I will go to Prisma for candles and in the evening I will relax by doing a load of ironing slowly.