Wednesday, March 26

Today, to make up for yesterday’s missing session, I held an all-day XML Foundations workshop, in which we learned everything we need to know about epub2. This was as difficult to manage as always. The subject is not hard, and it is not intellectually complex, but there are a lot of bits and pieces and it is easy to get lost. Several students played their parts tothe hilt, and dutifully got lost as often as they good.

The began at 9:15 and had been intended to finish at 17:00 but by 15:00 everyone had learned everything they were going to, and my brain was boiling over. We concluded with forty minutes of individal help for those who needed it, and an assignment, which involved doing what we had just done on your own and producing an ebook of three of four Shakespeare sonnets.

During the session my laptop had restarted itself on two separate occasions. On the first occasion I assumed that I had missed the four-minute update warning while I was dealing with someone, and on the second occasion I was puzzled. I was also irritated because it caused chaos with Truecrypt and Notepad++ and some other portable applications.

I raced back to my desk and began compiling the results of a survey I gave the Social Media class last week, so that I could produce some charts for tomorrow’s class. As I began Chrome crashed. I restarted it and the clock plugin didn’t start. I started it again and the clock sat happily on the toolbar. I began compiling results furiously. I looked up and one point and the clock said 16:10. I thought I was making rapid progress and decided to stop at 16:30 to get home on time.

I looked up later and the clock said 16:10. I opned my phone and it was 17:35. No wonder I had made such good progress!

Now I am outide the house, having apparently lost ninety minutes of my life. The light is interestingly odd, which is also how I am feeling.

Naa will be revising for an English test when I finally arrive home, and Irma will not be happy. She will take Naa shopping while I clean up some mess. When they return I will get suitcases from the shed for tomorrow’s journey.

Later we will have showers.