Spanner in the works!

So 25th October I was all for punching the computer after my 3 hour stint of re-doing the Gantt charts for myself and the group, after the initial one became corrupt, these latest versions again became corrupt!

We cannot identify the reason and it has flummoxed two IT gurus.  Needless to say, I was frustrated, nay furious.

The following morning I was at the midwife's for my check up and blood pressure had shot up, not surprising after how annoyed I was the previous night.

I had to return to keep and eye on things and again on the Friday, blood pressure was high, but all in all I was feeling better than I had done in weeks.  Fast forward through a 2 hour Tesco shop and a 2 hour Ikea trip to buy wardrobes, I spent the night rubbing my aching bum and back whilst devouring a 12 inch Pizza.... all of it.  With hindsight I should have seen what was coming.

Unknowingly in labour! Horizontal in the car to accommodate the wardrobes!

I'll spare you the gory details, by the following lunchtime our baby boy had made his debut, Ayrton James Bernard Peter 'The Bear'.

Following 16 days in special care, our boy came home with us and we are still adjusting.

I'm sure Becky will fill you in on her exciting fly in the ointment, in short she has had investigative surgery on her ankle and was also rendered out of service.

Becky and I returned to uni in the New Year to find that the rest of the tutorial group have been granted an extension.  Obviously we also require additional time to complete this assignment, Allison is applying to Leeds for an exemption, hopefully for an Easter submission date.

This week we had a production meeting and agreed that we should streamline our project as we are also starting a new assignment next week, it will be near impossible to complete everything we had originally planned to do.

We went through my production log and marked off what was complete, what we needed to do in the immediate future and what tasks we would shelve.  It is hard to set dates at the moment as we have not had confirmation from Leeds of our final deadline date so the dates we chose may need to change.

This week's main tasks are to collate all the resources that we need to build the working presentation, jpegs and sound files. 

Working Presentation - writing the script

So yes I have been rocking out to the piano of Chiquitia still on the ABBA blast following the name being chosen.

I have been productive as well though.  I have started my Production Diary, at least I think I have.  Having looked at other people's Gantt Charts I feel I may have put far too much detail into it.

To produce the Gantt charts for Becky and I, I noted the activities and dates of all the items that we have published on the blog, as well as in the minutes.  I listed them all in a spreadsheet to populate the Gantt chart when we got back to uni (not having a version of Microsoft Project that is Mac compatible, nor access to a PC).

The blog itself has been my Production Diary, along with many a 'to do' list but I am not certain whether this will suffice for the presentation on the 8th November.  I emailed our tutor Iain to ask what format he needs it.

For the time being I'll continue to update the spreadsheet that I used for compiling the Gantt chart.  I have found it a useful tool for logging jobs that need to be done, as well as viewing my progress.  I'll also check on Tuesday (next tutorial) if we can really strip the Gantt charts out and make them much simpler?

Other areas I have been working on today have been the introduction to the working presentation script.  This includes much of the information from the pitch document.  I'm not posting any of it on here just yet, not being cloak and dagger but it is very much work in progress.

I have also done a bit of housekeeping, updating tags on the posts so the blog is easy to navigate around and items can be grouped.  I have also tidied up some of the files in my assignment folder on my Mac.

Finally I have done the minutes from last week and complied a 'to do' list/ schedule for next week.  Beck called earlier but we keep missing each other.  I like this blog as we can use it as a way to exchange ideas and where we are up to around the clock.  If we miss each other on the phone, we can catch up over the blog at what would be considered an anti social hour!

Image c/o simplyeighties.com