Wilson Waffling

Can anyone tell me how the world works? Why do I need to know this? Well, as you might be aware I have two blogs, this my professional one and I have a second one which is my ‘personal/gaming’ blog. I blog every Saturday to my personal blog (I love the name I came up with – Back of Beyond!) and yesterday I published a post which was part of the continuing saga of my weird life. Currently, and I’ve just checked, it has a total of forty one views – one of my highest recorded views of any of my blog posts and two comments! Returning to my original question, why does that happen when I write a blog about being weird? Answers, as always, in the comments below . This week’s waffle is something slightly different – I read an article this morning while eating my usual two slices of toast and really thought – could this actual be true? Well, what follows are my thoughts… The complete transcript and links can be found by following the link to my Wilson Waffling blog below. Remember keep up to date with my waffles by

Ok, so you have suffered what I don’t look cool in, the continuing saga of my radio journey and some interesting posts about games and voice servers. After suffering all of those, I thought it was time for you to have a treat – a well done reward for enduring those aspects of my life. What is the reward? Well the next amazing installment of my weird life series! No, please don’t applaud, no whistling please, just keep reading – it is all part of my giving nature. What is this next installment covering, well it sounds a bit strange, but it is all about germs, routines and touching. No connection between those? well… just you wait and see.

Summer holidays are either here or quickly approaching for higher education and although many students are looking forward to sleeping in and chilling, I’m hitting the mammoth marking period of the year when deadlines for SAPs and hand-backs abound. During this time it is important to prioritise and keep tasks and actions clearly defined and assigned to appropriate time slots. But even when we are all away from work, it is also important to maintain a focused approach to things in order to ensure that we reach targets and, using that well rehearsed phrase, ‘get things done!’. I’m a bit of a task manager freak and probably, and I can say this, a workaholic – although the actual definition of that word is probably a whole waffle in itself. I like reaching targets and achieving things and in this week’s waffle, I wanted to share with you some of the tactics or strategies I use to achieve this. The complete transcript and links can be found by following the link to my Wilson Waffling blog below. Remember keep u

I’m trying to rotate the content of the blog posts are on this page. Recently we have had some related to gaming and some personal ones so I thought it was probably time to write about the continuing adventure into Radio Land. This also coincides with the webpage for Wilson Waffling Radio coming into existence so it somehow seemed appropriate. So headphones on, finger on that mic button counting down to the end of the song…3….2….1…..

If you have been keeping up to date with my weird life series on my personal blog, you will be aware that my brain is quite unique – I was going to say at times, but I think that should probably read all the time! This morning my brain is being rebellious! It has just written the script for my live show on Monday (20:00 on Youtube – plug plug) and it has decided to go into distraction mode! I’m trying to tame it with some caffeine but I would just like to establish a disclaimer now so, if this is your first waffle of mine you have read, please be reassured that the content is usually better…no comment please from you regulars! Anyway – I wanted to waffle about science this week and what my views are about the curriculum and how it should be taught. The complete transcript and links can be found by following the link to my Wilson Waffling blog below. Remember keep up to date with my waffles by subscribing to; Twitter- http://goo.gl/FcZaz Blog - http://goo.gl/IRne5D Youtube - http://goo.gl/ssxQNw Facebook

The weather has been good the last few days here in the north of England and people are slowly starting to remove their winter woollies and don sunglasses, vest tops and shorts. As you will be aware, I'm not a great fan of the summer (reasons given here) and although people are in favour of the warmer weather, I'm still looking forward to October when the darker nights and windy wet weather returns. As I walk home from work every night, I switch to what I call the summer route. This is a route, mainly consisting of different sides of the roads, which provides me with the maximum amount of shade in a vain attempt to keep cool. It is while I was walking home that I started to realise that there were certain things that I am not able to look cool doing and will never be able to do so. Image from Pixabay.com

Here’s a question for you…which song has the lyrics – “I’m on a ride and I want to get off”? Do you know? If you do then add the answer in the comments below. Don’t worry this isn’t turning into a Youtube Daily vlog – I just think it represents how I am feeling at the moment. Last Monday was lovely and although many of you probably worked, it was just nice to work on some different things and not the usual jobs that we need to do. I have many projects on the go at the moment, and something which I like to keep in mind is whether there are providing satisfaction for all the people who engage with them, whether this is my blogs, my gaming stream or even my Youtube videos. At the same time, it is coming to the end of the teaching year at university and students are being askrf to complete programme evaluations and the National Student Survey – but do these actually provide an accurate measure of student satisfaction? Well that it is what I wanted to waffle about …

Last week I had a look at how subscribing might or might not work for my Twitch and Youtube channels. This week, I appear to still be in a gaming/streaming mood, since I wanted to share with you my experiences of the two new ‘Teamspeak’ replacements, Discord and Curse. I need to make it very clear right at the beginning of this blog that I am not partnered with either and I would very much doubt whether I would ever be invited to be, so this is a purely personal view of things from a small streamer’s perspective.

Yesterday I wrote a blog post on my personal blog about the subscription system on many of gaming sites such as Twitch and why people would actually engage with these, especially relating to my own content. This got me thinking about my own ‘levels’ and ‘badges’ which I have on this website. It is always very important to reflect on your own practice and how this website runs I consider as part of my practice and so, with my soothsayer’s hat on to try and predict possible reasons, I thought I would attempt to decide why there are currently no Waffling Legends! The complete transcript and links can be found by following the link to my Wilson Waffling blog below. Remember keep up to date with my waffles by subscribing to; Twitter- http://goo.gl/FcZaz Blog - http://goo.gl/IRne5D Youtube - http://goo.gl/ssxQNw Facebook - http://goo.gl/lDp6B Podcasts - http://goo.gl/NeEWjF Have fun and catch you later!

If you didn’t enjoy doing something, I guess you wouldn’t do it – apart from things that you have to do for a variety of reasons. Although I spend a lot of time writing blog posts and preparing for streaming and radio shows, I do enjoy doing it. However, one thing which is always nice to have, as well as the satisfaction of streaming, running a radio station and blog, is that feeling that you have given something to someone else. This usual comes in the form of viewers, listeners and general ratings. However, within Twitch there is a partnered programme which allows people to actually pay for the pleasure of being part of the community which the streamer creates. But I can’t seem to get my head round this idea of paying for what I do…why? Well that is the topic of this week’s blog post.

When I introduce myself to the students in my first session with them, I always tell them about my taste in coffee, colours and my favourite animal. Before long it becomes apparent that I am somewhat of an Apply Fan Boy! (Well probably Apply Fan Aged Man – is more accurate.) We all have preferences and these tend to build up over a period of time and we can easily become an ambassador for the application. One of the applications which I always recommend and use is Google Drive. Why? well that is what this waffle is all about. The complete transcript and links can be found by following the link to my Wilson Waffling blog below. Remember keep up to date with my waffles by subscribing to; Twitter- http://goo.gl/FcZaz Blog - http://goo.gl/IRne5D Youtube - http://goo.gl/ssxQNw Facebook - http://goo.gl/lDp6B Podcasts - http://goo.gl/NeEWjF Have fun and catch you later!

I often feel that I was born like thirty years too early! When I look at the technology available now and the possible opportunities I often do wonder what I would be doing if I was thirty years younger! People will always say that it is never too late to do anything in life and I try to live to this aspiration, engaging in what I would like to do rather than, at my age, what I feel society feels I should be doing. I don't know whether it is something about being a teacher/tutor, but I do like to present and it was always a dream of mine to have a successful radio station. Well, I didn't have the time or the money, so what did I do - you guessed it - started my own radio station...and this is the story so far...

It always takes a while for my body to get into gear when the students come back full time. Although I have never stopped work over the Easter break, the speed and intensiveness of the work is less and I think, due to having more breaks, I do eat more! Everything is back to almost full speed now and I’m back to my usual cucumber thin throughout the day – if I remember. As I eat it, I often spend my five minutes lunchtime, checking my Feedly and tweeting out articles or collecting stories ready for my live show. It was while looking through my RSS feeds that I came across an article saying how group work actually helps us learn. But how does technology support group work? Well that is the topic of this waffle… The complete transcript and links can be found by following the link to my Wilson Waffling blog below. Remember keep up to date with my waffles by subscribing to; Twitter- http://goo.gl/FcZaz Blog - http://goo.gl/IRne5D Youtube - http://goo.gl/ssxQNw Facebook - http://goo.gl/lDp6B Podcasts - http:

With the students returning back to university tomorrow, things will be getting back to normal. Many have been working over the Easter break or been on placement, but it is only when the students actually return that the university seems ‘alive’ again. Tomorrow I will start teaching again, mainly mathematics, and I spent some time last week prepping the sessions and putting the resources on the VLE. One resource which is uploaded is the student version of the presentation for the session in the form of PowerPoint slides. I recently read an article about presenting without the use of PowerPoint and I thought I would waffle this week why I think it is important to have something like Powerpoint at our disposal as practitioners… The complete transcript and links can be found by following the link to my Wilson Waffling blog below. Remember keep up to date with my waffles by subscribing to; Twitter- http://goo.gl/FcZaz Blog - http://goo.gl/IRne5D Youtube - http://goo.gl/ssxQNw Facebook - http://goo.gl/lDp6B

Too much weirdness is not good for anyone to suffer, so I have been giving this series a bit of a break for the past few weeks, however, it is back! You might remember that I started this series of blog posts to let you have a sneaky insight to the my weird life in an attempt to allow you to see that even though you thought you were 'different' after reading about me, you suddenly feel a lot more normal. This week I'm going to let you into the weirdness which is related to my drinking habits...

University is still on holiday at the moment and although many of the students are working hard, I thought I would take a couple of weeks away from the usual routine in order to bring other things up to date. A few weeks ago, well maybe months ago now, I shared a survey to see what people's views and comments on the Wilson Waffling Live show were. I got a good response and I thought it would be worth just detailing the comments and feedback in a waffle. It true waffling style, I'll also be saying what I will be doing to address the comments. I know it sounds a bit dull, but I will try and spice it up a bit...(reaches for the paprika!) The complete transcript and links can be found by following the link to my Wilson Waffling blog below. Remember keep up to date with my waffles by subscribing to; Twitter- http://goo.gl/FcZaz Blog - http://goo.gl/IRne5D Youtube - http://goo.gl/ssxQNw Facebook - http://goo.gl/lDp6B Podcasts - http://goo.gl/NeEWjF Have fun and catch you later!

Let’s have a break from the ‘My weird life’ series and have a quick blog about something which I have been thinking about for a while. I know that age is just a number and that you are as young as your feel, but I sometimes do feel that I was born in the wrong era! Why? well many of the things to do with technology I wish had been available when I was a lot younger and, if this had been the case, maybe what I would be doing in life would be slightly different now. I wrote a blog post on my ‘professional site‘ some time ago titled, I have a confession! It was a popular ‘waffle’ mainly because of the title I think, rather than the content. One part of the content of the post was my confession about being a streamer and I wanted to share with you all the positives and negatives of streaming…at my age!

Let’s get something straight right from the start of the this blog post. I’m not a religious person and anything that I talk about today is not referring to the religious aspects of the holiday celebrations. Now that that is established (always seems strange when you actually use the same word twice next to each other) I wanted to talk about Easter. Currently we are enjoying the four day break which is the Easter weekend. Today, although it is Saturday, many of us have been confused into thinking that it is already Sunday due to having Friday off work. However, when you look and compare the Easter holidays and the Christmas holidays they have many things in common and yet, they are completely different. Is Easter slowly disappearing as a holiday celebration? Well that is what this waffle is about…

Apologies first! I was really poorly last week so I wasn’t actually able to write a waffle, hence why there was only a reference to my personal blog post which was suitably titled, Being Ill as a Singleton! Term has come to an end at university although our second and third years are still hard at it on placement so although I would normally hang up my waffling for the holidays, I thought I would continue for a while to give everyone something to read. As you might realise I am a bit of a budding YouTuber and it was while I was browsing through the videos that I can across a famous Youtuber blogging about education. Of course I had to listen and this is my response. The complete transcript and links can be found by following the link to my Wilson Waffling blog below. Remember keep up to date with my waffles by subscribing to; Twitter- http://goo.gl/FcZaz Blog - http://goo.gl/IRne5D Youtube - http://goo.gl/ssxQNw Facebook - http://goo.gl/lDp6B Podcasts - http://goo.gl/NeEWjF Have fun and catch you late

Isn’t it amazing how fast time flies. Next week it is Easter and it feels as if I have just finished Christmas and the New Year celebrations! Next weekend marks the downward spiral to the period of the year which, when blogging about sometime ago, I identified as being my least favourite time of the year. I am, however, going to stay positive and thought it would be a good time to start the series of blogs post which I was meant to embark on last week, but was really too poorly. The series is going to focus on the weirdness which is me. It’s ok, I know I am weird and I thought it would be beneficial to share with you the strange routines and activities which I have to endure in my every day life…