Day 4

My last day at work was Friday. I kind of miss it.

Testing my new blogging app.

Anyway as you know I write when I have the need not when I have anything to say. So here goes.

Today is Maria’s last day at School. Henceforth she will be teaching singing by video link. That should be hilarious, can’t wait to be a fly on the wall. I am now an old lag having done a several video sessions. The pattern is as follows – several minutes of mouthing and gesticulating across mute screens, a bunch of software restarts and reconnects, exit to find a microphone, camera, cable, have a wee etc, an abandonment for an alternative platform and a couple of pop up visits from somebody’s cat, dog, mum to liven the proceedings. Actually I think one to one sessions will work pretty well, one to group broadcasts are arguably no better than recordings, small group sessions will work only at the whim of available bandwidth and large group sessions will never ever work and never ever have. Those of you that remember Rick Wakeman and his multiple synths and keyboards can picture the scene. I have 6 screens in my studio, ok so three are for the phone box, that leaves three plus, iPhone and iPad. At any one time there will be a group chat on Slack, Emails from Outlook, discussions on the university VLE (virtual learning environment) conferencing on google hangout, SMS texts, and message from WhatsApp – all coming up on different screens. In addition we have 4 camera feeds watching over Nonna. Frankly it’s like leaving some old slightly drugged up geezer (me) remotely piloting the moon landing – every now and then my brain jams and I feel so confused I really do start to wonder if you can get instant Alzheimer’s a bit like a hiccup. On minute nothing, next hurb….ck

back to work I feel better now.

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