Chaplog tries hard In which an ageing climber comes to terms with life closer to the ground.

13/9/2008

Slaidburn Forest of Bowland

Filed under: General,Information Technology,Out and About,Pain,Work — Mike Chapman @ 7:38 pm

There are not many places in England especially close to Manchester where it is quiet on a sunny day at the weekend. The Forest of Bowland used to be one of those places. When I was cycling the summer before last I stayed at Slaidburn Youth Hostel and thought at the time it would be nice to go back there when the weather was nice.

lythe Fell Road – North of Slaidburn

I cycled up the this road with a man of a similar age who was getting a 50 mile ride in before lunch and before his grandchildren arrived for the afternoon. Makes you think….

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31/8/2008

The Phil and Friends Challenge Ride

Filed under: General,Information Technology,Me,Out and About,Pain,Work — Mike Chapman @ 8:19 pm

The advert for next year, the 2008 version covered the same course
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11/8/2008

Morlaix

Filed under: General,Information Technology,Pain,Work — Mike Chapman @ 7:19 pm


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9/8/2008

Last ride in the Alpes and on to Brittany

Filed under: General,Information Technology,Out and About,Pain,Work — Mike Chapman @ 7:59 pm

La Roche aux Fees

For my last ride before going to meet Lynne I wanted something pretty, long but not too hard. From a colouring in point of view, yellow highlighter on map. The Alpe du Grd –Serre combined with the Col d’Ornon which I have done previously looked the best option.
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14/7/2008

A week in the Peak at Ilam Hall

Filed under: Work — Mike Chapman @ 9:08 pm

I had a wet week with 200 students and 40 staff. It rained everyday but we all enjoyed ourselves. The first day was water sports at Rudyard Lake. A pretty place where it did not matter that it rained for a part of the day. The students were reluctant to get wet at the start of the day but by the end of the day they were doing their best to get the full experience.



The photographs are here

4/6/2008

Manche Normandy

Filed under: Family matters,Work — Mike Chapman @ 7:31 pm

We stayed at Anne’s house close to here. Floodplains that have not been built on and flood on a regular basis

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22/5/2008

A visit to Waddington

Filed under: Family matters,Work — Tags: — Mike Chapman @ 8:25 pm

Thyme Leaved Speedwell

We made a visit to Lincoln and spent time looking at flowers.

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29/7/2003

Large globules of time

Filed under: Information Technology,Work — Mike Chapman @ 8:23 pm
I have spent a lot of time thinking about weblogs in the last month. Why? I spent a week with 13-14 old students creating weblogs. I had to plan for the week. I then had a minor operation that gave me four or five days away from work and with strict instructions not to exercise. This gave me some time, a lot of it was spent installing and configuring a Movable Type system.

The week with students was more successful than I had expected even though we had a technical crisis three times in five days caused, in the main, by my lack of forward planning, nothing to do with the software. The test of success should be do the students want to continue with the activity? I am told that they do, many have signed up for the activity next year.

Once I understood the installation process and the power of the system the next step is the killer one. To communicate effectively, more than produce text posts with hyperlinks, I need to understand HTML, XHTML 1.0 Transitional, cascading style sheets and the rest. There is not a way around this if I want to produce posts with the style of word processed document.

I think it is worth the time! Will I still think so by the end of the summer holiday?

25/7/2003

One Blog or two?

Filed under: Information Technology,Work — Mike Chapman @ 4:43 pm

I went for free hosting Netfirms before committing myself to the cost of purchasing some web space. I was not sure whether I would be capable of installing and configuring Movable Type. I succeeded, but unlike some of the other Weblog writers, I do not feel capable of writing a mini guide on how to do an installation. It has taken awhile!

I was not a lot quicker on my second attempt but more confident I would succeed. The tricky bit for me was working out; no some of it was trial and error, the paths to various files. The problem being I can work out a path as long as I know where I am starting from and finishing. That is the problem; it is hard to write a guide to installing and configuring software in a variety of environments. You probably need to be working in these environments to do this easily. Yet so many people could use the software but not cope with the
installation.

I hope I do not have to do it again soon. How hard are the up-grades? The reason for doing it is to get the chance to use a very sophisticated piece of software that can be adapted in so many ways. One blog or two? Shall I have a photograph album? Should I use one for each course that I teach?

18/7/2003

End of the year

Filed under: Work — Mike Chapman @ 8:17 am

I have mixed feelings at the end of the school year, pleasure in the thought that I am going to get a break and remorse that I did not finish a lot of the things that I had expected to. There are always a few jobs that spill into the holidays.
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