Friday 2 April 2010

Lessons from a Careless Learner

It happened today. My hubby has been issuing me with dire warnings for quite some time. "I don't know why you use xxx email to save your stuff. You'll lose it all one day!" And so I did. I lost absolutely everything. It was all kept under my "Drafts" section in my email account. My links to give to Primary school teachers I will be teaching in exactly 2 weeks time. Lots of cool sites I have earmarked over the past months to condense into one "Really Useful List" to give as a handout. Well, now I am in a "slight bit of trouble" as there aren't many days left to rebuild what I have lost. Understatement is pricelessly and uniquely British, and here is a lovely link to Vicky Hollet's "British Understatement" post on her "Learning to Speak 'merican" blog.

Gone With The WindHow did I cope with my spot of bother? I tweeted about it to get it off my chest. This is what I wrote:
  1. Just accidentally deleted ALL my bookmarks for favourite sites/links kept on my email.very silly! Out of disaster, have now set up a wiki
2. Ignored dire warnings of hubby saying "you shouldn't keep things there!"so now have
hours of xtra work trying to remember all the cool links
.


An immediate response came from @JoHart who helpfully offered some sympathy and practical advice. I will have to look into delic.io.us as she so kindly suggested. Luckily, I do have some bookmarks saved under "Bookmarks" and also in diigo, but they are in different places, as opposed to all in one convenient bunch. You may ask, but surely Janet had a back-up system in place? Surely she has saved a copy elsewhere? The answer is NO, I had meant to copy them all into Word, but somehow I had never got round to doing it. The proverb "A stitch in time saves nine" has never rung truer than now. Anyway, it's no use crying over spilt milk and so what is done is done. I have to live and learn!

The second thing I did to cool down and ponder on my "technical mishap" was to attack the grass cuttings with renewed vigour. Aided and abetted by chickens, cats and dogs, I was able to continue building a huge compost heap. I intend to sit right on top of it, like I did last year. This might make me feel better. There's nothing to beat sitting on "top of the world", so to speak.

The third thing which made me take my mind off the delicate state of technical affairs was to accept the offer of writing another book review for packtpub. I enjoy writing book reviews and feel pleased that I have been invited to do more.

The fourth thing I did was to sign up for wikispaces. I had been meaning to transfer all my lists into one place where I could add stuff as I came across them. So that is done now and I guess this is a very positive step for me. I have not really had much to do with wikis since my excellent wikis course with The Consultants-e and it's about time I really looked into them and started using them.

The fifth thing I did was to make a nice pot of tea and sit on my elephant bench and just look at the beautiful view in front of me. Like Scarlett O'Hara said in Gone with the Wind, "Tomorrow is another day."

K busy cutting the grass earlier today

Chickens gleefully jumping into my carefully laid out mounds of grass cuttings and wreaking havoc! You can catch a glimpse of the jungle in the background.

7 comments:

Marisa Constantinides said...

Janet!

How awful! You are welcome to my del.icio.us here http://delicious.com/CELT_Athens

Do check out my network - collectively we have lots of useful links, all tagged nicely!

Hope this helps!

Marisa

popps said...

Hot bath, Gin and tonic, candles.

Janet Bianchini said...

Hi Mike

Thank you very much for your support. Greatly appreciated! The cup of tea did do me the world of good.

Hi Marisa

Thank you so much for your very kind offer of letting me look at your delicious bookmarks. I am sure they will be wonderful and they will save the day!

Hi Chris

Thanks for the lovely suggestions. A glass or two of red wine has certainly done the trick. Off to bed now and I hope tomorrow will be a better day. I am sure Scarlett did utter those immortal words.

Nick Jaworski said...

Ouch, that's a rough one. It's happened to all of us at one point or another. I like all the idioms used. Maybe I'll bring it into a lesson :) and I'll add one more "live and learn"

Anne Hodgson said...

Dear Janet,
Very glad the red wine helped. I've lost collections of information before myself and think this sharing of bookmarks is excellent. (Mine is not as nicely archived as Marisa's, but perhaps you'll find something you like or need if you browse: http://delicious.com/ahodgson)
If you remember something you're forgetting (if you get my meaning), do post on Twitter!
And now: Happy Easter!

Janet Bianchini said...

Hi Nick

Would love to read about your future "live and learn" post- should make me feel better to know that I'm not the only one!! :)

Let me know when you publish.

Janet Bianchini said...

Hi Anne

Many thanks for your very kind offer. I will definitely look into your delicious links when I start to re-compile a list of some sort. I also need to consider whether delicious is a better place to keep future bookmarks in than diigo.

I hope you have had a lovely Easter.