November is coming...

Man, you know! I just blinked and August was gone. In fact, most of September is also gone. Yikes!

It's been busy and wet around here, as the entrance of my house one early school morning testifies...

But there have been unexpected moments of peace and sunshine...

And as usual, a liberal sprinkling of blessings...

So I can't complain on the whole! But it's definitely time for something seriously constructive...

NANOWRIMO!

Yes, I know that's only in November, but I have been mulling over my plans for a while now. Needless to say I am definitely attempting the challenge again and super keen for it. More details soon, but I am trying to choose between writing a golden age detective novel, or a zombie apocalypse...

Join me?

Yours productively,

jjr

Pictures from a Sleepy Week

...someone still thinks he's enough of a baby to sleep in dad's marking box..

(it's a bit more crowded than he remembers!)

...Valentine's Day, and a somewhat revamped kitchen...

(plus our special weekend otees!)

...magic on Rondebosch Common...

(remember last time I posted about the Common? quite a contrast!)

2013? Really?

Hello everyone!

So apparently it's 2013 already - and the internet is full of focus words, resolutions and general planning goodness. Far be it from me to buck the trend.

(Some of you may have noticed that I've killed Out of Perspective - splitting my attention was a silly idea in the first place. But I did import all the posts, so nothing lost!)

So, on to some of what 2013 holds for me:

teaching english

Yes, this year I am teaching THREE English classes (grade 8, 9 and 10) and only TWO Maths classes (grade 9 and 10). While this is a good thing (I've been wanting to wriggle into English teaching, and yay! no grade 12s), it is also a VERY VERY stressful thing. I've been teaching Maths for almost three years. How much experience do I have teaching English?? Zip, zilch, nada...

Prep time!

teaching maths

So I'm still teaching a fair bit of Maths though, and will continue to lead the grade 9 Maths team at my school, which means a lot of resource creation and general admin. I'm pleased with the plans we've set in place to tweak the ordering of the syllabus, and this year I will be teaching a top-set grade 9 class - yay! Last year I had all mixed groups in terms of Mathematical ability - pretty demoralising when at least half my kids failed every exam. So although I enjoy teaching kids who struggle with Maths, it will make a nice change. 

As good as a holiday? We'll see. This past holiday will be pretty hard to beat.

family

...which doesn't only consist of my cats, believe it or not!

My younger sister is getting married in April (yikes), and then moving to England with her beloved! Very exciting times, but also a bit sad and definitely stressful. So this year will be full of family things, at least for the first part, and I want to try and prioritise them as much as I can...

"Family" also covers my mini family (husband + two cats) and home, and trying to leave work earlier as often as possible (5pm, please? maybe??) so that I can spend time at home and hopefully not leave such chaos behind me when I go to bed at night.

creativity

Last year I participated in NaNoWriMo for the first time, and absolutely LOVED it. So come November 2013, all else being equal, I will NaNoWriMo again! Yay!

But I also want to get into the routine of getting creative work going regularly throughout the year, starting with the editing of Mending Hedges (my NaNo novel from 2012). I've also got some other interesting plots and plans up my sleeve but we shall see... dum, dum, dum...

ALSO, I want to get back to a more regular blogging schedule. To that end, I want to stop putting pressure on myself to create one type of post or another at any particular time - just to write and create whatever springs to mind based on current events. Realistically, I will be trying one general post and/or one writing post per week (depending on work situations). Mainly posting on Saturdays, as far as I can make out my schedule, but obviously trying to gather material throughout the week and mainly construct the posts over the weekend.

Anyhow, I'll give it a decent effort for the first little while, and hope to hold up my end when the school work gets tougher.

sjoe!

I think that's quite enough resolution-type things for me for one day...nap time?

Statistics (with a pitstop by the Oxford English Dictionary)

So there's this nifty spot where you can go look at the stats of your blog. And it's very interesting. One of the most interesting things about it is this: when I post something new, my readership skyrockets in South Africa (i.e. here). When I don't post anything new, most of my readers come from the US (though I had a brief spate of popularity in India after I posted a mini-series involving Indian mathematicians).

Is this just because more people use the internet on a regular basis in the US? 'Cos I have a nasty feeling it's mostly incidental/search-engine/accidental traffic.

What is driving this particular pattern??? Any suggestions?

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Pitstop!!

What is the difference in meaning between incidental and accidental in this context?

The pocket OED that I have in my classroom (call me old fashioned but I still haven't gotten used to online dictionaries) says that incidental means "having a minor role in relation to more important thing or event".

Accidental (helpfully) means "happening or done by accident". Well thanks OED. Accident is defined as "event that is unexpected or without apparent cause".

My analysis - incidental relates to the importance while accidental relates to the intentionality of the event in question (i.e. visiting Daydreaming in Maths).

Do you agree??

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