the last couple of days it has been freezing cold. today it was still -1.5 degrees at 11:30am and it got to -0.5 at 1:00pm this afternoon. the car was covered in ice as you can see it was still there when we wound down the window.
I went to Hyde park and Buckingham palace. At Hyde park I checked out Princess Dianna's memorial. I also took a few photos of Henrietta. We are going out to dinner with the people that we are going to stay in France with. Tomorrow we will be packing for France.
the picture of the river is lake Serpentine in the middle of Hyde park. The carollers are really rugged up and singing in Victoria station.

news from Copenhagen

Had a great weekend in Copenhagen. we arrived fairly late Friday night after an uneventful 1.5 hour flight from Heathrow. Temperature is quite cold. we caught a train from Luftven airport to Noreport in the middle of Copenhagen. we arrived around 10:00pm and were getting rather hungry but most places were closed. The only place open was the MacDonalds. so MacDonalds it was. Meals are not exactly the same as Qld. I had a Texas burger which is about the same size as the cheese burger and around the same taste. fries are the same. As a healthy alternative you could get carrot sticks instead of fries. different! I wonder how popular they would be in Australia. We then caught a taxi to our apartment which ended up being near the industrial estate of Copenhagen but the apartments are very nice. They have heated tiles in the bathroom which are really handy in the middle of the night. We went to bed and woke up around 9:00 am the next morning. We headed into the middle of Copenhagen for a brunch which is the in thing for Danes on the weekend. We eat not far from the canal that you can see in the picture, Then we checked out some of the Christmas markets. It was very cold but sunny. If you were in the shade at all it was freezing. Temperature was around 2 degrees in the middle of the day.

Henrietta has a very warm suit so she is right. The photo is of my sister Kellie, Nigel and Henrietta in her sling. At the market we tried some Glog, a very traditional danish drink of wine, apple juice, almonds and cranberries, Too many and you feel very warm and very tipsy. I saw someone doing some Ice carving, too cold for me to try. After a canal ride in a heated boat we went to the mermaid on the rock. (Very famous) and then we visited Princess Mary's castle, pity we didn't see Mary as we would have said hello.

We saw Hans Christian Anderson's statue and walked down the many shopping malls. In the town square they have an ice-skating rink. On Sunday morning it snowed for a short while, very cold indeed but fun. I was beginning to think that I would not feel my nose and face as they were freezing as we walked around. The shops are quite warm so you are forever talking off your coat, hat, gloves, scarf etc and then putting them all on again when you went outside.

Danish pastries are beautiful as well as the Danish coffee, another popular food is crepes. These are sold in small street vans and you can have chocolate and almonds or honey or sugar and lemon. the crepe is folded into quarters and put in a triangle wrap, a bit like a kebab. They are very nice. It was too cold to try the danish ice-cream we just took their word for it.

We flew home to London Sunday evening and eventually got back to cold grey London around 6:30. The underground train takes around an hour to get from Heathrow to Caledonian Road where we get off. The last walk to our house is freezing. After a while we thawed out and had a quick bite to eat and then off to bed.

Will chat soon, bye for now

A few more pictures

I do have some pictures of Henrietta so I will show you.

I have just dressed her ready to go out. Because of the cold she has several layers. The actual dress is the green item. then underneath is tights, jumper, body suit and underneath that is a another all in one suit, lightweight.

The other photos are of Highgate Hill park where we were walking Oscar and getting Henrietta to sleep as she sleeps very well in the pram when you are walking. I caught a glimpse of a squirrel before Oscar chased it up the tree. The woods are full of squirrels but they are hard to get a photo as Oscar chases them very quickly.

try agin with pictures

I think I have worked out how to get the pictures
just not how to label them.

The first one is the house at Freegrove Road where we are staying. It is the house on the end, on the right
Second picture is Australia house in Fleet street. I used to work there many moons ago, I had a part time job for a while while I was working as a clown for another employer.
The third picture is Downing street not far from no 10, we were not allowed any futher up the street to see if the Prime minister was in. The last picture is the latest in police surveillance. this little car has a camera that goes up and down and takes pictures of the traffic and any crime that might be going on. Pretty nifty and because of the size of the car it can get in and out of the traffic quickly. A must when you see how much traffic there is in London.

London at last

well finally arrived in London after a long flight. I managed to work my way through customs and then along numerous tunnels and passageways to the Underground station. I needed the Picadilly line which is in fact the only line that goes from Heathrow. I managed to pay for my ticket and then get on the train. I left Heathrow at around 6:15am and arrived at Caledonian Road station at 7.00am in the morning. It was dark and drizzling. I navigated my way to my sister's house and knocked on the door. The dog Oscar started barking and Nigel opened the door, he looked at me and said Oh my gosh, Kell you better come quick. Kell (my sister) came to the door and said a similar thing and then I said 'any chance of a bed for a few weeks? Kell was beside herself not to mention Oscar, I finally got myself and suitcase in the door and Kell was so glad to see me. It was a great surprise for them all. Needless to say we managed to wake up Henrietta but Kell didn't mind. It was a good excuse for me to cuddle my new little niece and yes she is gorgeous.

I didn't get a photo of Kell at the door because it was too dark and with Oscar going crazy and it is such a small door.
Once I work out how to get my pictures onto this computer I will add some photos,

For the last couple of days we have been doing a bit of sightseeing around London and a bit of shopping for Christmas.
We have also been walking the dog at Highgate Park. Henrietta is not a great sleeper and has a great set of lungs so I have been walking the floor a few times to try and get her to sleep. Most times I have succeeded. I am a little rusty at dressing a 4 week old baby, should have had some practice before I left. I didn't realise how floppy they are and they definitely don't help when you are trying to dress them. Getting better at changing nappies. I must admit I had to get some instruction as I had never used disposables on my kids. but they are certainly easier than worrying about pins etc.
The weather is very cold so you have to rug up everytime you step outside. The temperature today got to a real high of 3 degrees. The sun doesn't get up till around 9:00am and then it is dark by 4:00pm in the afternoon. The frost on the ground is very thick so you really have to watch your step so you don't slip on the ice.

We are going to Copenhagen on the weekend to see hopefully snow and all the beautiful Christmas decorations. Apparently it is just gorgeous and the place to be at Christmas. we will be back by Sunday evening as Nigel has to go to work on Monday.

We are going to France for Christmas. Kellie had already arranged to stay at a villa in the south of France where the weather is marginally warmer, top temps are around 6 - 7 degrees. We will be staying there till after the New year. Plenty of room for me although it will be a cozy trip in the car with the baby and the dog but we can do it. I will pack very lightly.

Well hopefully I will work out the photos soon so that I can upload some photos soon. I am just not that familiar with Mac computers. Bye for now

Singapore

Just about to leave singapore,
heaps of shops and people in the transit lounge. Flight was ok
now for the long haul to London.
This flight looks like it is full of noisy japanese high school students
Could be fun, I am hoping for some sleep this leg.

Bye for now

One more sleep

Getting really excited now as I only have one more sleep before I get on the plane and head for London. I thought I would check out my blog to make sure that others can read it and keep up-to-date with my travels and adventures. So this is just a quick post and will post again from London. Bye for now

I am checking out to see if uploading photos is really easy as this is where I might upload pics

so long as I click in the accept policy then it will upload. Only does one at a time. Might need to check out xanga to see if you can load a few at a time

Just starting a training session on the LRM program resource bank Access and search for resources
We are one of the first groups after the pilot
If you have any suggestions re the Resourcebank can be emailed to be possibly introduced in futher updates
review on Resource bank overview
digital resource repository, quite a few uploaded resources already that we can use. We can design and creat content, share educational material, manage intellectual property.
using the navigation and desktop
access the help and support tailoring your search options
perform basic and advanced searches
conditions associated with using a resource copyright metadat & licence agreements using a resource, paper-based or electronic

my.tafe overview
create online courses, users and study groups , courses and communication tools, message centre, desktop and reporting
deliver online, manage student partidicpation, communication and collaboration. Interact with reourcebank to search and discover teaching and learning resources.
benefits, uniform guidelins for quality learning resources, development tools and customisation activities, copyright management
the self-paced books that have been handed out are supposed to be capable of using to log in etc. We are the first so there may be errors etc
We are currently only using a training session on Janison
If you are in the training and you submit a resource then you won't have access to that resource you will have to transfer it to the real site that doesn't have a big red colour block
In the edit details you can set up the number of notifications so beware you may get more emails than you can handle.
There is a help but still in development so may not be working all the time
wow it is so cold at the moment and very confusing as we seem to be jumping around a lot and this is not in the manual for this class. the first manual is extremly difficult to follow.
I seem to at last make some head and tail of the handouts. It was because we were jumping around all over the place. If I was to go back and read through both the resources I will find more details. I didn't realise that the books were for the first session, hopefully we will get more resources as we go. Why did I nominate myself as a trainer. god only knows.
three more books to read, topic 2A Resource bank learning resource - design principles & intellectual property. 2b Resourcebank contributing a TAFE Queensland Owned Resource & 2c Resourcebank Contributing external resources
This is really going over some old things especially copyright etc and the learning design principles. not enough actual doing anything with the resource resourcebank. etc

Moral rights remain with teh atuhor/creator of the work, even if copyright is owned by another party. You are entitled to attribution, not to be falsely attributed and right of integrity (distortion, mutilation or derogatory action)

The state of queensland (
copyright protexts this material, Reproduction by any means (photcopyin,electornic, mechanical, recordin or otherwise), making available onlin, electronic transmission or other publication of this material is prohibited without the prior written permission of the Department of eduction, traing and the arts reproduction, communication, modificaion and adatpation of htis material by TAFE qld institutes and the Bremer institute of TAFE corporationfor their educational purposes is permitted.

I have just uploaded a number of office equipment pictures, a fax, folding machine, franking machine, photocopier, scanner and printer. It is now ready for moderation
We also covered what is required for licence agreements etc.

If I get to attend the next session on authoring then I could use the Captivate tabs lesson and then add the questions as part of the tool. Maybe think about some questions that I might ask and also adding extra files

Right now I am procrastinating because I don't really want to start writing the newsletter, but if I don't then I am not going to get it finished in time. I was in the middle of reading my emails and downloading some event files to format when I noticed that I hadn't updated my blog. hence I am blogging instead of writing a newsletter.

Some tasks that I need to do are

Artist trading cards
Newsletter
getting packs together for Retreat
reading through the videostreaming slides that I have to present on Thursday.
I need to pack ready for my 2 weeks house sitting and running out of time.

So I better go.

Trials and tribulations on scrapbooking

My name is Jay and I live in Walloon in Queensland. It is west of Ipswich. I teach at the Bremer Institute of TAFE in the Business Administration team. I teach most of the computer software, customer service, OHS, filing and handling mail.

I am always designing interactive content for all my distance students and really into videoconferencing and videostreaming.

I am mad about orienteering, mountainbike orienteering, line dancing, card making and scrapbooking.

I have two children Sandy my DS is 23 and my DD is 22 her name is Kristen. My DH is Alex. He is just about married to scouts so I hardly ever see him. He works at the Toowoomba hospital so he travels 80+ km each way everyday. Another reason I hardly see him.

We live on 40 acres of land with only 2 steers, (due to drought) 1 dog and 1 bird. We only have tank water so we are praying for rain. Haven't had much lately.

Alex and I originally moved up from Victoria in 1980 but all our families are still down south.