So this is technically day four of my youngest having a weird tummy bug which is where he has no temperature but yet has diarrhoea so runny it sounds like Niagara Falls when he goes to the loo. I felt so bad on Saturday because I thought it was due to my cooking. I had cooked a curry dish that I hadn’t done for a while and my hand had slipped with the cumin seasoning. I knew my little one was averse to it so when his had a runny tummy on Saturday I had pretty much nailed it onto this.

By Sunday he seemed better and I didn’t take him to nursery on Monday to cover the 24hr without incident rule, that most nurseries have now in order to contain the spread of nasty stomach bugs.

By Tuesday off we went back to work and nursery and on the face of it, all seemed well.

This morning, I was running a bit behind getting to work and as per usual, just as I was about to rush out of the door I had to go myself. I rush off my shoes and shot upstairs in order to get this visit to the ‘throne’ over and done with so that I could then rush to work.

I returned downstairs, threw on little man’s coat just as I heard the dreaded “Poo Poo” whine as I put the key into the front door.

“Are you sure, son?” I asked in desperation as I see the time quickly fading that would enable me to arrive in work on time.

“Poo Poo mummy!” came the urgent reply.

We then went through the routine of taking off the outdoor coats, gloves, hat, scarf (he wanted snow on this warm Spring morning), ski boots, he ran upstairs and sat comfortably on the throne, ready for action.

As I heard the noises that came from the other end of my son, I knew that I was not going into work that day and my heart sank (which was especially surprising from me given how much I enjoy being at home with the kids). The hassle comes from being a teacher. My profession is the only one where you do more when you or your kids are ill in terms of setting cover work than you actually do by being in. So when you do have to stay away from work through illness, your heart sinks. It’s a rush job then to find some work to suitably engage your classes while you are off.

I had to quickly make all the necessary phone calls to notify school that I couldn’t be in, set the work, send the work by email – all this while my poor little cherub was on the loo. I had been fooled into a false sense of pity however because as I clicked the send button on the email, I noticed that the bathroom was too quiet.

I cautiously called upstairs to see whether my little man was ok, and I heard a very innocent “Yes”. That was when I knew I had to rush upstairs.

So when a child has a tummy bug, they like to do things like this with a full roll of loo paper:

In response to being met with this when I reached the bathroom, my 3 year old said in a very triumphant voice, “Look mummy, I’ve wiped my bum all by myself!”

At this moment words failed me but he still managed to melt my heart by his little happy smile in spite of not feeling too great.

Still in keeping with my last blog entry, I had to log a very bizarre event from a couple of days ago.

As you can see from my profile, I am quite an animal lover and in particular, my three cats. It struck me that after this year all three cats will be older than me in cats years. The one who has my heart is of course the mama cat. This old girl will be a whopping 55 years of age after her birthday later this year.

She is the smallest of all 3 cats and had a litter of 3 kittens when she herself was still quite young. I had her neutered after that as she has always been an outdoor cat. But she is quite a little hunter and I always took it for granted that her gentleness with me extended to everyone else with four legs.

I know that she has my heart but I never really appreciated just how much she loves me until the other day. On one of the rare occasions in the UK we were experiencing a lovely sunny Spring day last week. I was out in the garden tidying up some winter shrubs and true to form, my old mama cat was right next to me, keeping me company. At the bottom of my garden I suddenly hear a great commotion of male cats preparing to fight. I get worried for one of my other cats (the one in my profile photo) because he tends to be a bit of a wet lettuce and always gets beaten up. So I slowly wander down the garden to where the fight was about to take place. When I was nearly upon the male cats I see the other cowardly kitty shoot past me, away from the fight and over the fence. He didn’t even look back to see if I was going to be ok.

But then, similar to the dragon “Toothless” in the ‘How to train a dragon’ cartoon, I suddenly see something shoot at top speed right past me and straight into the fight! It was my mama cat and boy, was she angry. Her build was somewhat smaller than the other two tom-cats but the ferocity with which she saw them out of the garden was frightening!!! In less than 5 seconds both male cats shot out of the garden and away from my tiny little cat’s psycho-kitty rage fest.

When they had gone, her fur returned to normal and only when she was certain that they were not going to return, did she turn and walked back to me meowing so cutely, like nothing had happened. I was humbled to see how much she defended and protected me.

So today, while my other little human offspring was upstairs feeling poorly, I have dedicated this blog entry to Coco, my velociraptor cat.

I so love this advert series being a cat lover myself. A quick drive by post dedicated to this ad

Well, folks I have reached that stage in my life where I get the dreaded ‘Perimenopausal Migraines’. I am two days into recovery which has meant that I have had to be off those things which exacerbates the symptoms and – you’ve guessed it – being in front of a computer screen does not help things at all.

This article highlights the fact that for some women in their late 40’s, experiencing migraines is the added inconvenience of entering menopause. Triggers such as hormonal changes in the month, a lack of sleep, stress, coffee/other substances with high caffeine, plus certain foods can bring on the migraines.

So of course, during this Half Term break from my day job and in celebration of not being in the classroom, I decided earlier this week to go on my drink coca cola/coffee/stay up late watching DVDs binge. Oh silly, silly child……by Tuesday I was begging my kids to not shout/argue/scream/yell while I wallowed in self pity with the mother of all headaches as my very close buddy.

End result – two days left of Half Term and only one entry on this blog.

So what have I learnt from all this?

To make sure I cram all my blog entries earlier in the week and BEFORE I go crazy with the coffee..

Something tells me this may not work….

Things haven’t been too brilliant in terms of my little one. He’s been such a tough guy recovering from an operation which didn’t go as well but praise God he is much much better and back to his wrecking things routine again.

I’ve had to take a week off work due to a bereavement taking mum overseas but in a way things have worked out well.

While my little precious was asleep a couple of days ago, I was able to check out some of the Blender tutorials on You Tube. One is by a channel called Tutor4U. It is an easy to follow set of tutorials and as a result I was able to produce a quick intro for anything that I get the chance to showcase on here and on my You tube Channel.

The music for the intro was courtesy of “Music by Longzijun” who has made some of his compositions available for people to use on their YouTube channels. I’m hoping to acknowledge his website and You Tube channel when I get to upload some videos.

So the video was made using Blender 2.71. Originally I had created the full “Showshannahs Little Space” text to dissolve on screen but it resulted in my CPU overheating and the laptop crashing whenever I rendered the footage. Soooo, plan B was to use an acronym of my channel name – S.L.S. In order to edit the movie I had to download VLC Media Player which has the facility to convert OGG files into an MP4 format. This in turn allowed me to import the said animation into any video editing software. I used Magic Movie Edit Pro 15 to put the animation together

I finally reversed the footage and placed it back to back with a copied file and voila! We have my intro. Look out for my intro when I upload videos to my YouTube Channel!

So my six weeks are now over and I am glad that I was able to do more this year than in previous years. I was able to get some very much needed DIY done, as well as increase my twitter following significantly. Plus I was able to update this blog – I reckon I’ve broken a world record by having at least more than one entry for just one month! 🙂

The biggest highlight this month was discovering just how talented our young people are especially in the more modern methods of marketing such as Social Media.

I cannot put into words just how impressed I am with the following video made by a fellow You Tuber, whose channel is known as Bumblebee Broadcasts. This channel is made by a talented young person who makes use of video special effects in her videos as well as sharing what it’s like to be a young person in the UK, sharing things such as professional beauty tips days out etc.

The purpose of my post however is a video that was made by this channel, where she simultaneously makes use of splitting her screen so that it looks as though her alter-ego is fighting and then dancing with herself.

I have seen this done in Blender but to actually witness it in such an artistic way was impressive.

So a big thumbsup from this humble little Computing Mum for a well made video

So to coin a phrase from a well known supermarket, I woke up this morning to this phrase.

After a little quiet time with my Heavenly Father I went through the usual routine of reading my daily devotional. For this year I’m following Joyce Meyers’ Promises for Your Everyday Life – A Daily Devotional. It’s a year long devotional and I must say is really spot on for those things to meditate and think on during one’s hectic day.

To be truthful after the way I felt yesterday morning I was beating myself up at my lack of action concerning how others are suffering in the world. But I still did my little bit not really appreciating that by doing something I have actually done something.

This was what bascially the above devotional reading was about this morning.

I don’t think we have been placed on this planet to carry on and not consider others at some point. Even if it’s a small thing that we do for that person on the bus or something bigger, we are making a difference in another person’s life…. in our own little way.

It has been troubling me that I am witnessing the slaughter of people in one part of the world while we in the West are sitting comfortably day to day. Now some people – thanks to our media – would automatically think of what’s going on in Gaza which is very sad indeed.

But no.

The slaughter currently taking place is in Syria and Iraq and concerns indigenous Christians (can I say that?) who have existed in the region since Christianity pretty much began.

Since being on Summer holiday I’ve been able to follow this slaughter and to be truthful, I was expecting my UK media to be as appalled as I was that in the last week of July a piece of history was destroyed. That Mosul was now devoid of Christians for the first time in history went by our media without even a mention on national TV news.

It takes a group of people being trapped on a mountainside before the US send airstrikes onto ISIS and ONLY yesterday, did my government decide to send aid. The resultant tirade of ISIS social media propaganda threatening our troops has stirred a feeling not felt since our dear soldier Lee Rigby lost his life our a UK street.

So, it has not left me feeling that brill tbh.

I was reminded of the following poem written by a German called Martin Niemoller as I got up this morning which kicked me up the backside to try to do just one small thing:

So, I’ve taken to signing a petition found here calling for our government to take further action, but I still feel like I’m sitting on my hands. I had a chat with a very dear friend of mine who suggested that I pray and right now that is what I’m doing. That is the only thing I can do, aside from raising awareness of what’s going on to my friends and family online.

However, it still hurts to witness this.

I DO NOT want any of our troops to be in harms way but at the same time I want this group wiped off the face of the planet (if I am truthful).

I can only pray that things will begin to change…. 😦

In the meantime perhaps I can again be focused on working on some animation before I return to work in 3 weeks.

My heart thoughts and prayers goes out to my brothers and sisters in Christ who are being killed in the Middle East. 😦

One of my biggest ‘fears’ evolves around the minefield which is Copyright and You Tube videos. It is my desire to really get moving with posting more videos online but of course the difficulty stems when I haven’t got the orchestra or band sitting in my back yard ready to record an exclusive sample to use on my videos. I have gone down the route of downloading LMMS in the hope that I would casually have a couple of hours to create my own musical arrangement. But that went out the window when little man began to walk, talk and destroy.

So like most You tubers I have to rely on acknowledging other artists’ work when I upload a video together with a link to iTunes etc so that the listener can download the artists’ song and it is clear that I do not own the song at all. I have always been under the understanding that one cannot obtain revenue from advertising on your uploaded video if whatever you upload is not completely your own.

Interestingly, I do occasionally view videos on You tube where some users do link (quite rightly) to a third party’s song but…. they have generated an income from placing ads on their video (even though some of the content is not their own).

Well it would seem that this bubble has burst with the following lawsuit:

Michelle Phan – a fantastic young entrepreneur and fellow You Tuber has been sued by Ultra records under what the record company have described as alleged copyright infringements in her videos. I’ve linked to the news article here.

I really do hope that an agreement can be reached as this case would have implications to ordinary folk who want to showcase their talents but who do not have the revenue to hire/pay for copyrighted material to add a musical emphasis on their videos.

I will be watching this closely to see what the outcome is….