Number Bond Tester

Another numeracy related post. I have been fiddling around with some javascript and made a number bonds to 100 tester. Let me know what you think. (I know it doesn't work in Firefox but there's only so much one can do in an evening!)

SingStar

This evening we had some good friends over for a games party. We provided pizza and they provided the games and 200% more children. Before tea we chatted and the children played stuff somewhere (not sure what but as they were quiet we left well alone.) After tea we played SingStar. One of the visitors' children has recently been given a PS2 console and SingStar as a present and it was lovely and shiny and new and pink and came in the most fabulous pink zippy case. It was great fun. My wife's sister, her husband and daughter came over too and we played SingStar. Hopefully they had a good time as a bit of an antidote to the tragedy of yesterday. It was supposed to be a family games evening but the children gradually drifted away and it was just the adults battling it out.

ANBBVOTD

Happy and Sad

Today was a good day for my wife - it was a celebration for her birthday. She went to a pantomime with her sister's mother-in-law, my eldest, sister, niece and mother - a girls day out and then we went to a local estaurant for a meal out with the lads as well. Afterwards we went back to her sisters for coffee and games but it was there that the sad thing happened - their cat was found dead at their front door. The cause of death is uncertain, but it is likely to have been a car hit victim. This was a sad end end to the evening.

More Maths

Whilst thinking about how to help my eldest with her maths I was dissapointed with the stuff on the internet for helping with it.

So... I have made my own page:

A Normal Bloke's Numeracy Page

The New New Maths

I have been trying to help my eldest with maths, but predictably, I don't do it the right way. We spent a good while discussing the way she has been told to do it at school, but as she doesn't fully understand it and I can't work out what on earth she is doing it ended in frustration all around.

After much searching on the internet (you think that how schools are teaching subtraction would be a feature of at least one government website and that this would be easy to find - but no) I think I have kind of figured out what she has been taught to do.

It goes a bit like this...

Say you want to subtract 129 from 241:

241 - 129 = ?

What she does is round the 29 up to the nearest 10:

241 - 130 = 111

And then add on the one that we used to round up to 30.

241 - 129 = 111 + 1 = 112

This seems really weird to me and a possible cause of confusion. I suppose it makes sense as a strategy for mental arithmetic but as a formal method for substraction it's odd. I suppose that the idea is to give the student confidence in substraction and explain how things work later.

I suppose all parents are cursed with the inability to do maths the way they do it at school due to changing fads in educational practice. Does it have to be this way?

Snow Day! (well nearly)

Well it did snow - but was there enough to keep me from work? Was there enough to go sledging down the hill?

No

Was there enough to make a snowman?

No

Was there enough to make a snowball from the snow on my car?

Barely.

But the town did look a bit nicer.

Investors In People

Our company is planning on "going for investors in people certification". I kind of think that they have fallen at the first hurdle with that kind of statement. Either you want to invest in your employees or you don't. Participation in the investors in people certification program will undoubtedly help but its the attitude of the company that is important. Perhaps a statement more along the lines of: "We value our staff and want to make sure we are doing all we can to make then feel valued, and to that end we are participating in the investors in people certification program."

Hopefully the first part of the program will cover this necessary paradigm shift.

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Happy birthday to my beautiful wife

It is my wife's birthday today and I just want to take this opportunity to thank her for being so wonderful, and wish her all the best for the next year!

Happy Birthday Tune


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Monday AGAIN!!!

You'd think that I would have got the hang of this work thing by now - and some weeks I think that I have. I feel that I am doing the right thing and persevering and doing my best and making a valuble contribution to the world, my job, my life and my family. But then a Monday will come around and all the mundane, boring tasks that are the part of every job kind of get me down. Not to mention the one hour drive to and then from work.
When I started the job the drive was quite nice - it gave me time to think, to plan and look forward. But now it just seems a waste of time - time away from my family, time away from being able to do things (I suppose this is because I am a do-ey sort of person. I am hopeless at doing nothing I always have to be fiddling with something). I think it would be nice to work closer to home. But then the real trick would to be content in this situation - to enjoy it - and on good days I am very happy with my situation.

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Prayer needed

I'm not sure if you believe in prayer but there are some things that happen that the only response I can think of is to pray. One such thing has happened today. A friend that we khew from a previous church's husband has tried to kill hinself. We are not sre what the outcome will be - we only know he has tried and has gone to hospital in an ambulance. This is not the first time that something like this has happened to this family, but last time with much prayer and support the person in question seemed to be getting much better. So it is with great sadness and surprise that we hear this news.
If you can please pray for this family - that this attempt to take his own life will fail and he will revover to full mental and physical health - both for his sake and his families.

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Busy Day

Today was a busy day - it started when I woke to find myself on the floor of my youngest's bedroom. He had had a nightmare in the night and to settle him with the least amount of fuss I lay down on the floor next to his cot. We then had to plan and lead the group time for a children's Saturday morning club - it would have been better to plan it earlier in the week but the decorating and necklace party got in the way. We had one game that required donuts - but could we find donuts in any of the shops near where we run the club? No. There seemed to be a village wide shortage of things. Luckily we always plan more stuff than we need and so all was well. The club is in three parts - a group bit (which my wife and I lead) and then two sessions from the children can choose from three zones - Chill out, sport or craft. This week I helped in the sports zone. We played unihoc and only had 2 minor injuries (one my wife's toe) - it's surprising how competitive adults get when playing sports - even against children!

My wife and I then went shopping at a large shopping centre in a town about 45mins drive away but left the children behind in the care of my mother-in-law. Shopping is so much more fun when you are sans enfant. We hardly ever argue when shopping on our own but with our children we normally argue about something. After shopping we then went for a meal at colleagues of mine who live in the place we were shopping. They had invited us for the evening and we thought we could combine the babysitting for this with babysitting for the shopping trip.

The meal was wonderful - Lasagne, with a lovely starter and Tiramasu for desert. I am still full now! It was nice to get to know people who I spend time at work with every day a bit better.

Trapped in the bedroom

Me and my eldest are trapped in the bedroom. My wife has got lots of ladies around for a Virgin Vie party. This seems to consist of a very polite fight to the death for the best bits of jewelery in the sale, as well a helping each other by saying how nice each other looked in various bits of jewelery. My eldest and I are watching Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban on our bed before sending her off to sleep. Though currently is is taking my eldest ages to unwind and fall asleep. She comes downstairs regularly saying that she can't get to sleep - often quite upset about the fact. We are not sure how to help her - she has a fairly good evening routine - we just think that it takes her a long time to unwind. I enjoy reading to her and talking to her at bed time but only up to a certain time and then we expect the children to go to sleep. When they don't fall asleep they can stay quietly in their bed. Is this mean?

Here is a picture of the necklace buying frenzy:

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Miracle in B&Q

I had a near miraculous experience in B&Q whilst doing the floor in my front room. Two things made it stand apart. As I have previously mentioned I managed to buy the moulding for the edge of the room for half the price. This meant that I managed to leave the store having spent less than £30. Now we all know this is a miraculous event as there is an unwritten rule that if you enter B&Q and buy something, no matter how small, the bill will always come to more that £30. A bag of screws - £30, some glue and a shelving panel - £30.
The second miracle was that the item that I wanted was not barcoded - and there was not even a barcode on the shelf. This meant that I had to ask a member of staff how much the mouldings were. I was not hopeful. After wandering around the store for a while looking in vain for an information point or a spare member of staff I decided to ask one of the people on the till. Not only was there no queue! the member of staff left her till and went to the shelf and made valiant efforts to find the correct price. Even returning to the shelf a second time when the barcode she had copied down failed to work (and that is saying something as this particular B&Q is massive. It takes a good five minutes to walk from the garden centre to the timber cutting area.) This meant that I was able to pay the correct price for the item I wanted with the minimum of fuss. This is also a miracle as the staff in your average DIY store seem to resent serving you, in fact I have a sneaking feeling they spend their days working out what thing you want to buy, getting to the shelf just before you, and then removing all traces of the specific item you want. Every other size and colour of item of the type of thing you are looking for will be there but the specific thing you want will be missing. Or, if you are lucky, there will be one shoved down the back of the shelf that has only been stamped on a few times, but missing it's barcode.
So to recap -a miraculous B&Q visit.

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It is finished

I have finished the floor! It only took two days and an evening.

It started on Friday night with moving all the furniture out of the front room into other rooms in the house. There was stuff everywhere - it was like one of those puzzles where you have to move squares around to reveal a picture but there is only one empty space for the squares to move into. Once the floor was clear (and the computer was moved - no internet!!!!!) I was ready for day one.

On Saturday I got up bright and early -actually later that normal as my Wife and children were staying at her mother's flat as the relocation of furniture had rendered our house uninhabitable and the heady mix of children, diy and saw dust did not seem a good idea. This meant it was the first time I had woken in daylight this year. I put down the fibre board underlay, which is very itchy stuff and proceeded to lay the floor. The first 3 rows are the critical ones - I attempted to get them a straight as possible and then continued accross the room. In order to get the best finish I started at the longest wall as I decided that it would be easier to get the boards to stick together if it pass pushing against a flat surface; but this meant that I had to walk over the fixed boards to get to the door, something that you are not supposed to do as it moves the boards when they are sticking. I tried to mitigate against this by laying the spare boards across the floor to spread my weight. Hopefully this has worked!
Here is a picture of the half finished floor:

On Saturday afternoon I remembered that I still needed to buy edging strips to cover the gap aroung the room so I went off to B&Q. I knew that you could get the proper ones for about £4 for a 2m length from homebase but I was certain that there would be some sort of alternative available for less. I found just the thing in the upvc window section - some sort of plastic moulding that was only £2 for 2.5m - what a bargain!. After B&Q I put some more boards down but found that they were slightly wonky and so a gap was appearing between some of the boards and so I stopped for the night to think about a solution.
Sunday morning I woke ready for the challenge and I hunted in my shed for a plane that I have had for ages. It is very old but after a bit of sharpening and adjusting I was able to adjust the floor to be straight again. I finished laying the floor by lunch time. But then there was the edging. But this wasn't as bad as I had feared and I was ready to join my family for a lovely evening Sunday meal at my Wife's mother's.

The finished floor:

DIY Weekend

Today the weekend began. A weekend of DIY that is... I am stripping the window sill in preparation for re-glossing as this is the weekend that I do the front room floor (and regloss the woodwork). So our house is redolent of the fragrance of paint stripper. I hate stripping paint - mainly because I never seem to get all the paint off. Hopefully, in this case at least, any paint left will be minimal and also hibben under the new gloss. The main reason for the stripping is that the existing gloss is not sticking to the window sill and hopefully removing it and starting again will remedy this.

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Trip to London

I went to London today to train a customer in one of the products sold by the company I work for. It was nice as I didn't have to start until 10:00 and so I could walk down to school with my family to drop our eldest off. Unfortunately First Capital Connect cancelled the next two trains scheduled to leave after I had arrived at the station. This meant I was late for the training. Fortunateley the customers had just had a false fire alarm when I had arrived and so they wouldn't have been able to be trained had I arrived on time anyway. The joy of compatible mess ups (two wrongs do sometimes make a right). (And what do two Wright's make?).

Work again

Another week at work. It never seems to stop. Thinking about it I suppose that is a good thing. 2 1/2 years ago I was made redundant from a job and it was nice for a while to be at home - especially as my youngest was being born at the same time. But after 6 months it was a relief to get back to work. Though this was mainly a relief because we were running out of money. It's times like that that makes me think -the timing of my redundancy was perfect in many ways - it gave me and my family a break at an opportune time and a job came up at the end of that time at what seemed the right moment. But its really only looking back that you can see it in this way. At the time six months without a job seemed like a disaster. I wonder in what ways this time of my life will seem like perfect timing when I look back at it. If you believe God has a hand in your life - and I do - and you believe that "in all things God works for the good of those who love him" - and I do - then everything that is happening now is for the good of myself and others. In some ways I can't wait to be in the future to look back and in another I way I am content to be in this situation as it is the place I should be.

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Getting there

Today's website is one I use a lot to find the times of trains and to calculate the lengths of journeys. It is called Transport Direct. Here is an example of a journey from Land's End to John O'Groats, though the website seems a bit stumped by the public transport side of this request (perhaps because it would take several days!). One of the good things of the website is to take in account the delays caused by traffic at different times of the day. I have tried it around the M25 and environs and it seems quite accurate.

Back to Church

It's the first Sunday of the month today and so it's back to church. It's nice to be back and see all our friends. Also the children love the groups they go to. Though its always seems to be a struggle to get there on time. In an ideal world we'd get up have a leisurly coffee and breakfast in bed - whilst the children had theirs and tidied up downstairs. We'd then all get dressed and walk to church discussing the state of the world in an intelligent manner. Unfortunately in the real world the kid's breakfast get forgotten, they want to watch telly or play on the computer or fight with each other. We all take ages to get dressed and then fall out or have to tell the children off or both. It's then so late we have to drive to church. Fortunately we are aiming to get to church half an hour before it starts and so we still get a seat. All this means that we are normally in a frazzled state of mind when we get there. But usually this soon wears off and we enjoy it and are able to relax and worship God.
Today's service was really good - it was a service for epiphany - with a story read for the children about the fourth wise man (but I enjoyed it as well).

No Background

I have decided against the background - it made the text too hard to read when it was behind it. (For those who missed it here is a bit of the circuly background:

I might try and get it just down the sides of the page but haven't worked out how to do that yet...

UPDATE... I've done it - a background on just the edges - do you like it?

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Backgrounds

Not content with leaving well alone I have been fiddling with the template for my blog and have given it a circuly background - what do you think?

The new lamp.

New Floor

Today we are shopping for a new floor for the dining room. It is 10% off day at homebase and the real wood flooring is about a third off. We did our hall in it but we think it would be nice to do the front room as well. We have had the floorboards stripped fora long time but think that a new floor would look much nicer. I enjoy the flooring but it is the edging that I think will take ages... (and probably cost more that the flooring if our experience in the hall is anything to go by.
Following that my wife wants to go to Laura Ashley and buy a nice lamp - I hope they are in the sale!

ANBBVOTD

First Friday

First Friday of the year and last day of work for this week! I'm glad it's only been three days. I've had a kind of inertia - probably related to the shock of getting up and out each day when for the last week I have been able to get up in a more relaxed manner and also probably in part related to the fact that I have been waken in the night by my children over the last few nights.
On the subject of children it seems that my youngest is getting the hang of talking and has started making simple sentences. It is apparent from the things he says that he has quite a good grasp of what is going on in his world - I go to work in the car, he knows where people live and where the play park is. This is going to take things to the next level as a recent walk around the block demonstrated. I had in my mind a quick walk around the block and through the trees at the back of the park so that he could splash in the puddles and get some fresh air. But he had other ideas. He was happy enough if we were walking in the direction of a children's play park but at every turning I took which led away from said children's attraction he complained bitterly and pointed with great defiance at the direction he thought we should be going in. So it was with much sadness and in a very cross frame of mind that my youngest arrived back home without a trip to the swings.

Today's fun website is retrievr - which allows you to search flickr's pictures by using a sketch. You just draw a sketch in the box provided and pictures that are similar to your sketch appear. Try it it's great!

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Back to work

I'm now back at work. It's not too bad - but after a holiday I always feel that there are lots of things that I should be doing/haven't done, usually with good reason. It always takes me a few days to get back in the swing of things. Highlights of work this month will be training a customer, upgrading another and a trip to France to train some french colleagues. Dinner time has come round nice and quickly but this is mainly becasue I took an early lunch as I am covering the phones for our help desk co-ordinator's lunch break today. This afternoon looks to be being a long one...

Todays link is a site I use to back up and synchronise my outlook calendar and contacts for free. It has proved invaluable - especially as you can also look up your contacts online when on holiday as well. The site is called Plaxo.

Happy new year!

A happy new year to you all. My family and I spent the weekend at my parents in Dorset. We had a lovely time - although the house was rather full as two of my brothers were there with their wife, child and girlfriend. We saw the new year in at my parents house but before that we had a fun filled few hours at "The Con Club" a members club in the town.
Here is one of my brothers, my father's nose and a surprise appearance of the tardis (a raffle prize).

Here is a rare picture of my wife and I dancing - though, at the time, we were the only people on the dance floor it soon filled up (what trend setters).

To set the scene here are some of our fellow revellers at the next table:

Back at my parents house we celebrated with party poppers and sparkling wine

To finish off the celebration photos here is one of my wife and I to wish you all the best for 2007.