August 22nd, 2007
Last week I drove back all the way from the South Ouest of France where my wife’s parents live. I went back to work the next day. Waking up was almost impossible. Then I couldn’t find my keys. Then I couldn’t find my wallet. Then when I finally managed to get up I rushed to the train station. I was right on time. I jumped into the train.. except that as I sat down I saw another train leaving, the train I had intended to take. 
August 18th, 2007
I’ve just spent 2 days sick in bed at Hossegor in the south west of France, after having spent 5 days at Paray le Monial in the Bourgogne (Burgundy) region, teaching a dance to a group of about 40 teens (3 hours a day), and getting the whole session - well 2000 people or so of the 3000 that were there - to move to the beat (15 minutes a day).
Surprisingly enough, the 15 minute session was almost more tiring than the 2 hour session, for several reasons:
1. I was using my own music, not music that others had made. Even for “Shine Jesus Shine” I did my own arrangement, although I must confess I used a MIDI file I found on that Interweb thingy!
2. I was improvising as I went, both in terms of choosing the music and in terms of the gestures put on them, except for the first one (Shine Jesus Shine), which I had had 2 weeks to arrange - and of course I’ve known the gestures to that one for something like half my life.
3. There were 200 people in front of me, not just 40, and I was alone doing my thing, whereas Melissa and Corinne (two great girls, incidentally) were helping me out with the teens.
4. For some reason, having people cheering at you is more tiring than having people just listen to you. Something to do with noise levels probably 
Anyway, that, and the 8 hour drive to Hosssegor kinda finished me off, so as usual I finished off the session in bed…
August 7th, 2007
This post was written using the InScribe text entry method. So far so good! The question now becomes long this can be kept up before becoming stale. I’m still hesitating between that and the handwriting recognition system, which seems to me to have moved on since the last time I tried one (only about 10 years ago if I’m not mistaken!)
June 12th, 2007
Looks like the cat is out of the bag again City Life 2 or what ever it is going to be called is looking good
May 15th, 2007
My daughter Sarah was born on the 31st of October last year, which kind of explains the long silence… I’ll get a few photos up in due time. It also means nights have been short and interrupted often.
September 29th, 2006
A number of colleagues have told me that they have found my page on MySpace via this blog.. Kinda makes you wonder how they came across this page.. Were they googling me up, I wonder?
On another note, I got my driver’s license yesterday, having managed to avoid needing one for the first thirty years of my life - when you live in Paris, it takes longer to find a parking space than it does to do the whole trip by public transport! I was sure I had messed up - the car bumped into the pavement at one point, I had trouble parking, and so on - but apparently the guy doing the examination thought I looked like I was in control and self assured… go figure
September 14th, 2006
I’ve just started a new job within my current company. It’s going to be blog-oriented and crowd wisdom-driven and so on, so I’m gonna be insisting more on my presence here on this blog… It’s also going to have me traipsing back and forth between Paris and Kyiv (a.k.a. Kiev).
June 6th, 2006
Now that I’ve managed to get image embedding to work, here are some photos from my brother Paul’s wedding. To go though them, press ‘N’ to get to the next photo, or click on the top right or top left corners of the photos to move back and forwards. By the way, for those of you who are interested, this uses the Lightbox plugin for Wordpress.
For those of you getting one photo only, without any fancy transitions or anything, reload the page (press F5) and try again.
June 6th, 2006
I’m just testing how YouTube videos can be embedded in WordPress pages. Here’s a video test:
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dMH0bHeiRNg]
Well, for the moment it looks like the image is working but the video is not. Expect to see the themes change as I test around
June 5th, 2006
I’m in the middle of redecorating the downstairs room, and getting to grips with having a garden - grass that needs mowing, flower beds that need weeding, plants that need watering - I never thought this could actually be fun! It’s all part of expecting another baby too, I guess.
