I had a not so good morning yesterday, probably in part due to my own overindulgence in some extremely yummy cookies. My refrigerator and freezer are full of delicious soups and stews that friends have contributed. I eat soup for breakfast — something I’ve done for a long time to keep my blood-sugar level below that of a diabetic — so this is a great relief from the store-bought soups I’ve been eating for breakfast. I don’t have diabetes, but my cells don’t deal with insulin as well as they should, so I take supplements, lost 20 pounds when I discovered this condition 10 years ago, and exercise by walking for an hour a day.

Today, I woke up feeling much better. I still have the beginnings of the radiation effect symptoms I described yesterday, but I realize that it can and probably will get worse, so I’m dealing with the unpleasantness when I have to, and then I let it pass. That’s the up side of “all these things just go away.”

I’m celebrating a major victory. I have no way of knowing whether my students appreciate it, but I’ve been working since the beginning of the summer on learning myself how to use tools like RSS, persistent search, Postrank, and Yahoo Pipes to build information dashboards, radars, and filters. I managed to finish two screencasts, but I crashed the third and final episode so badly that I couldn’t open the file. I was using Camtasia for Mac. I got in touch with Techsmith support. They were baffled for a while, but I put on a little (always polite!) pressure and worked patiently (the patience was on both sides) for weeks. Finally, yesterday, they delivered a workable version of the file and I was able to finish the screencast. Yes, I know that without threat of a quiz, most of my students would skip the videos I’ve put hours and hours into making - but hey, that’s why they are the students and I’m the teacher. But I consider it a victory that I will be able to present my Infotention series to my students next Tuesday, as planned.

I have a presentation scheduled for early March. My sponsor, Betsy Aoki, of Microsoft, has been superbly supportive. She flew from Seattle to work with me for a couple of hours. Now, with the help of my godson, who knows more about Final Cut Express than I will ever know, I’m working on making a special video presentation in lieu of a personal presence. Betsy is the best, and I am so grateful for her support. I’m hoping that the debilitating effects of my treatments will hold off long enough for me to complete this assignment. I am determined to repay Betsy’s faith in me by producing a unique and valuable presentation. After that, I can relax for a while in regard to my assignments — my sole focus will be on my students.

For those who are interested, the Infotention series:

http://blip.tv/file/2792135 Part one

http://blip.tv/file/2799206 Part two

http://blip.tv/file/3177852 Part three