Pig Sty Avenue

It's like re-encountering a former lover, and then remembering why you used to enjoy their company so much: the nice clunky shutter, the feel in your hand, the pure functionality, the oh-so wrongness of its beautiful lines which you know are stolen... The fact you could get it onto the kitchen table and take the bugger apart , without a qualm. What that link doesn't say is, how to deal with a faulty flash connexion. That's what this has. But I'll give it a go with tripod, ambient light and slow exposures until I get to grips with Soviet soldering.

The Shirelles - Baby It's You Please Please Me has become the album of September 2009. I was Molly's age when it came out, and my infancy was saturated by The Beatles, through my Mam's three teenaged sisters, dancing around their bedroom in Hebburn, with the ever present odour of hair lacquer. Baby It's You is one of The Beatles best covers. The original is great too.

I've gotten involved on Flickr in something called Old Film Project . The story so far is that a nice man from Seattle had a load of old film, and offered to send eight rolls of it to various photographers around the globe, and I'm one of them, (whether on the strength of my photo stream or a first-come-first-served basis, I didn't like to ask). It got my interest because one of the types of film was EFKE 100 asa. The only downside was that the film is 35mm, which I'd sworn off in favour of medium format. But never say never again. Whilst in Durham, I went to an art shop and bought a wee bottle of black fabric paint. Back home now, I've got the FED2 in this picture out of the press, and painted its leaky curtain. I'm going to put a roll of cheap colour film through it and have that developed at a shop, just to see if the light leak's mended. And then I'll get down to it with the EFKE. Which, I should point out, was manufactured in Zagreb in...

I could almost feel sorry for that twat Keane . Almost. Not quite. But not for Polanski . He's been a walking affirmation of every paedophile's sustaining belief that having sex with children isn't really wrong. He lured this 13 year old would-be model with talk of a photo shoot, gave her alcohol and Quaalude, and then penetrated her in several ways. He was 44 at the time. It's really difficult to think of anyway on earth to mitigate that one very much. In the UK, that would be, what? Seven years?

And a bloody funny one . I was thinking of maybe giving it all up and getting an M9 myself, coincidentally.

http://www.last.fm/ When I've the time.

Today is the day when I get to grips with this beast. A few weeks ago, the dissertation was launched, and sat in the river like a big empty ship; now, with the entrails of the beast, I'm building the engines. It's on schedule to sail out of the river in four weeks' time.

"...we will take every step to ensure our staff are fully aware of current legislation and protocols" , originally uploaded by monaxle . Taking photos? Doesn't he know there's a war on?

Street photography video . For when I've got time.

One of The Old Man's favourite sayings, referring to the only recourse open to someone who's suffered a setback. "All you can do, is shake your head and box on". It's what you do when boxing if you've taken a good punch. It's a phrase much on my mind as I search for paid employment.

When going through (Chinese, post graduate) students' essays with them in tutorials, I will point to a sentence which is so garbled as to be meaningless. I ask the student what it means and they explain it to me very well. They use a different structure and lexis in the explanation. "Write it like that, then", I tell them. This happens with the majority of my students. None of them can explain why there written sentence differs so much from the spoken one. What's all that about, then?

There are some basic numbers here , but to get the meat I need to check out the library. Monday, that'll be. Weekend off.

This is another MA Dissertation note to self. If anyone's still reading, sorry about the navel gazing, but that's just the way it is: for the next month, I will be my MA. Then I will be free. However, just now, HESA are the people to consult regarding statistics for International Students. I need these numbers: 1: Overall Studying UK by PG and UG 2: Information regarding course, conditionality of offers. 3: Numbers who returned in less than 16 weeks, (and therefore [probably?] did not meet course requirements).

I've read about this in Weigle 1999 . I need to get hold of FACETS. Rater severity (or leniency) and what we do about it is an interesting area. There's no time for this now.

Things have come to a pretty pass when I start thinking wistfully of my own dissertation as I plough through fourteen of my students' 3000 worders. At least, as I tweeted , it's raining: splendid weather for those chained to a pile of scripts. Anyway, here's a note to self, as I've been contemplating the dissertation and not had the space to do anything with it for a few days. I'll be back onto it tomorrow. There are three things I need to do: begin to process the data that I've got; read up and review the literature on "norming"; read up and review the literature on the CEFR. And next week I've got to get to grips with the data available to me. I couldn't really chase up the teachers whose students are providing it this week (we've all had a big marking burden), but I can do that next week. I'll be following the fortunes of six students and two teachers through the assessment process. I need also to get consent forms printed an...