More cowbell

Lordy - things have been busy.

I've now been at Remarc for over a month - the time has certainly flown by. So far I've run three courses (currently running a 2073 Microsoft SQL 2000 Programming course) and all have gone well. The place is good and I've settled in, even though I'm still fighting to remember all of the names and nicknames.

Getting the train is ok. Sure, when I'm going to Manchester it is insanely crowded (message to Northern Trains: Put more carriages on the Liverpool Lime Street to Manchester Oxford Road trains at peak times! We cannot breathe!) but going to Leeds is fine - nice and quiet until Huddersfield and then chaos for those last twenty minutes, and going home is the same but in reverse.

What have I been doing? Apart from running courses I've been picking up SQL 2005 (some cool stuff, some kind of "hmmm" stuff, and some really weird stuff in there), looking at SharePoint 2003 (very weird) and also Visual Basic .Net. Keeping myself very busy then, which is a good thing, and it is always good to stretch myself like this.

Something I have been doing a lot of though is reading! My book backlog is now dwindling as I'm reading like a demon these days. In the last week I've read about three books and worryingly I'm not buying any new ones on my regular forays to Waterstones and Borders. Looks like I'm going to run out... Also my MP3 player is seemingly permanently on charge as I'm listening to it on my travels each day. Current favourite listens are the new ones by Sigur Ros, Elbow, The Cardigans (producers of my favourite album of all time), Arcade Fire (favourite album of the year so far) and Depeche Mode - their track "John the Revelator" is a fantastic thing and I can't wait to hear it at the MEN Arena in March.

Oh yes, and something happened one day last week... I sat in the classroom at lunchtime, took a pen and some paper, and I started writing something "proper" (i.e. not a "Mushroom Factory" or something daft) for the first time in about two and a half years. Title so far: "Within." Will it ever see the light of day? I don't know. Time will tell.

Hello also to my mate Mike Easton, and my new pal SuperFunkyOrganGrinderSexy over in California, who laughed at my name in the Prince forums, emailed me, and we started chatting. Nice to have readers :-)