My First Socialist Party Conference

I’ve just got back from town, having attended my first conference with the Socialist Party. The regional level conference ran over the weekend, and involved representatives from all of the branch’s within the region, including but not limited to; Halifax, Leeds, Rotherham, Wakefield and York. The first day of the event focussed more on political discussions after a lead-in from a guest speaker, today had more of a focus on practical matters.

Both sessions where educational, interesting and I’m very glad I was able to attend. I don’t know if it was planned or simply a coincidence but I believe next week is the National Conference for the Youth Fight for Jobs & Education “campaign” and soon after that the Socialist Party will be holding their national conference, so it’s a really good thing I got a taste for things over this weekend, to dispel any nervousness I met have felt about attending the larger events. I didn’t speak in front of the session as a whole on either day, but did contribute to discussions, especially concerning the branch websites and social media which was discussed at some length today. Hopefully I will now feel more able to address the room or a larger audience at future events after my experience this weekend.

I’ve had a few days of focussing on this site and other things now, so I’ll now need to re-double my efforts on the Wakefield Branch website. Most of the structure is in place, at least for a first interaction of the site, it’s mostly lacking content, and as our branch is smaller than some, it may mean that I have to step up regarding writing and producing content as well as doing the more administrative side of the website.

Computer Revives from Heat Stroke

A few days ago my computer suddenly stopped working. In hindsight the symptoms pointed glaringly obviously towards the true cause of the problem, but as I just replaced my DVD-RW drive in a rather too tired state, I temporarily lost all reason and became paranoid that in some way, I’d done something that resulted in a sudden failure of the display to appear, and soon after for the computer to even remain in a powered on state at all.

Thankfully, I returned to my senses yesterday and investigated other possibilities. It seems that my computer suffered a heat stroke. Don’t get me wrong, computers and heat problems sadly go hand in hand, there is nothing surprising about a computer suffering from a beat of electronic heat exhaustion, but when you have a good quality case and six or seven fans circulating the already freezing air in my home around the components, you do tend to take your machines ability to keep cool for granted. Unfortunately as great as my computer’s case fans are, they don’t clean themselves, and my graphics cards especially suffered from a worrying build up of dust around the fans. A good clean of the fans, and the memory chips was enough to revive my computer, saving me the expensive of replacement components.

The lesson I have to accept here is that I can’t continue to keep putting off cleaning the internals of my computer, something I tend to do, as my computer is usually in constant use, it doesn’t have much down time for cleaning. I now aim to clean the external surfaces and the front case fans much more regularly, perhaps as often as once a week, and will back that up with a thorough deep cleaning of the internals of the case unit perhaps every three months.

Blog Update, Poor Title

I pondered the title of this post for a good 5 minutes… okay so that’s not that long, but still. Given that this site will be made up of a collection of different topics, with probably varying degrees of focus, and the fact I’ll repeatedly want to chat about whatever takes my fancy, I really need to develop a system of naming the posts I categorise as “casual chat”, both for aesthetic and SEO reasons… I’ll give it some thought.

Earlier in the week, as I mentioned I had an appointment to picked up some contacts to follow-up regarding some courses I need to take. I ended up being distracted by other things Friday, so I’ll be following up those leads on Monday. Another in road into improving my career prospects is to get my CV up on here, which is now listed under my new page, Hire Erika! The new page will only feature on the menu when I’m seeking work, so I’ll probably link to my downloadable CV via my about page too. In fact I’ll get that done after I publish this post. The new page is very short at the moment, effectively just acting as a place holder for my CV. I was planning to publish my CV on the page itself as well as making it available for download, but at the time I was too tired to lay it out nicely so I’ve left that for the time being. If I do publish it up, I think it makes sense to expand it and elaborate on my experiences, as the version I host here doesn’t have to be limited to the standard two or three page limit, that you’d aim for if you were mailing it to a prospective employer. There are probably some sophisticated techniques for displaying online CV’s in an interesting and creative manner, which I will have to investigate. Even if they don’t work on my current WordPress.com hosted domain, becoming familiar with the methods will help me should I move to another host.

Always trying to improve the site, and in doing so learn new, and refresh old techniques for working with websites and WordPress in particular I’ve made a few small changes to the sites navigation. I’ve created a new drop down menu entry for the site’s blog categories, and also removed the category widget which was displayed at the top of the sidebar. I did investigate placing other widgets up on the side bar, having created a little more room, but the ones I’m interested in are not suitable for my hosted domain.

Yesterday was a really good day, I did a proper good shop at the supermarket. Having ran low on so many things over the past few weeks it was really good to stock up again. I could still do to pick up more groceries, as a 1/3 of my shopping seemed to be taken up by toiletries and household items. Before hitting the supermarket I visited a local farm shop and picked up a bag full of vegetables and free range eggs. I hope to make use of much of the veg by making some vegetable pies, something I’ve only done a couple of times before, the first time making a bulk supply. There always a great thing to have in your freezer, easy to cook, surprisingly filling and packet full of veg I’d imagine fairly healthy despite the pastry, especially as I only use pastry on the top of mine.

WordPress support got back to me today regarding a problem I’ve had on the Socialist Party’s branch website I’ve been developing, so I hope to complete a couple of pages on their a bit later on. So far this morning, I’ve already finished the hoovering, had breakfast, done the dishes, emptied the washer and topped up my internet dongle, so its set to be a productive day.

Ecover Fabric Softener

I went ages without using fabric softener, never spent much time down the laundry isle at the supermarket and still don’t, as I get my laundry powder in bulk, but I’m happy my impulse to buy lead me to adding a bottle of Ecover’s fabric conditioner to my shopping basket over at Able & Cole. You’ll also find it at Big Green Smile and descent ethical stores in town.

In my opinion the best use of fabric conditioner is to ensure towels don’t over dry and crisp up when you hang them on the line, and in this regard Ecover’s line performs flawlessly and does so with a wonderfully refreshing sent. As with their washing up liquid, its available in bulk, comes in a variety of “flavours” and the packaging is made from their green plastic which is 100% renewable, reusable and recyclable.

Please check out more of my content featuring Ecover.

Ecover Washing Up Liquid

I’m really happy to have come across Ecover. I probably first found them via Able & Cole whom I order organic groceries from now and then. They offer an extensive range of environmentally friendly alternatives to household cleaners, laundry products, etc. My first purchase from their line was their washing up liquid, which is a available in a range of “flavours” shown in the pic bellow.

Its been awhile since I placed my order, so I can’t recall where I purchased it from, but it would have been Able & Cole or Big Green Smile. Thankfully a growing selection of Ecover products are now available in the supermarkets, and local ethical stores. The official Ecover website has a section showing you where you can purcahse their products from.

So, what do I think of it you ask… well essentially its awesome! I know this reads like a blatant add, hint hint Ecover lol, but its actually a really good product, way better than I expected actually. The flavour I’m using at the moment is grapefruit and green tea, it has a pleasing aroma which isn’t too strong, and in my opion much nicer then some products which have an over strong lemony scent to them. Contrary to expectations it bubbles up at least as good as the populour high street brands I have used before, but where it really shines is in its “softness”. Despite advertising their hand-friendliness washing up liquid is actually rather harsh on your skin, not so with Ecover’s natural versions, which truly is nice to use, with or without gloves.

Another great benefit of the brand is that both their washing up liquid and their fabric softener which I also recommend (and presumbly more products) are available in bulk quantities, so you can order a bottle for your sink top, and when its ran out order a 5 litre bottle to re-fill it, which will save you money, and produces less waste. Speaking of waste the packing is manufactured from Plant-astic a green plastic that’s 100% renewable, reusable and recyclable – and made from sugarcane!

Please check out more of my content featuring Ecover.

Motivation Through Organisation

I can now finally see my days becoming less and less focussed on a singular endeavour like they were towards the end of last year. Being solely focussed on one thing can have its positives such as a potential for increasing efficiency, but there are negatives too. Not giving yourself a break, or a change from the same routine or focus can lead to burn out, something I’ve experienced before during my time as an online poker player, and is a state of mind I don’t wish to return to.

So I’ll be widening my focus, participating in some new hobbies, dramatically increasing my efforts in career and personal development, getting back to practising Italian, plus a whole host of other activities and responsibilities. Some of these demands for my time I am excited about and can’t wait to crack on with, some of them I’m committed to yet always end up putting off for the next day… and the next day, others are too easily forgotten or ignored entirely. With that I’m always keen to try out new organisational techniques to help structure my day, keen to realise benefits in time management as well as derive a boost in my motivation towards the things that can be easily be put off and then forgot.

I’ve tried numerous organisation techniques in the past with varying success. Time tables are the obvious technique that everyone’s used at some point, I’ve used them, or ignored them through my school years, and all the way up to University. I’ve even created my own time tables at home. Whilst working as an online poker pro, my life got so hectic, especially when I offered to coach students all over the globe and fit myself around time slots that where convenient for them that at my request one of my students who had gone through similar experiences helped me set up a schedule for my coaching, and added dramatic amounts of structure to my previous routine which was totally devoid of any structure at all. By far the biggest problem I’ve had with the timetables I have created myself is that I have a tendency to overpopulate them, or set them up in a manner which is too rigid, which usually ends up in me having a very nice looking timetable up on my wipe board, only for it to get ignored. Even if it wasn’t ignored entirely fill in activities like checking e-mails or catch up on Facebook would take infinitely more time and I’d allocated and would totally skew the rest of the day.

Another technique, that I’ve used a lot, but haven’t done to any significant extent recently is to create a list of what I am committed to get done the next day, the evening before. This creates a “tick off list”, which I personally find really motivating, even if its partially populated with jobs you hate, your motivated to get them done, because then you can clear that list! A cautionary note with this technique is that I believe its important that you only write down, at least initially, what you are seriously committed to get done, even if that means focussing on the bigger things you need to get done. You don’t want to create an all-encompassing tick of list, which is going to stretch your time or motivation too much, doing so, as you inevitably skip certain items, you’ll be reinforcing a negative habit and you’ll find in my experience, that you will increasingly skip or re-prioritise more and more, until the technique because mostly ineffective.

The only other technique I’ve used that I can recall at the moment, is to randomly… or I guess more accurately based on how I’m feeling the night before, commit to doing one key thing, or one group of related things on a set day. I’ll usually big it up and either visualise getting it done if its something rather crappy like doing chores that I’ve neglected, or will be enthused about it so much that its self motivating, those cases are usually work outs that I’ve put off for too long and all of a sudden feel really in the mood for.

Given that outside of “formal education” I’ve mostly been employed part time, self employed or unemployed and have had either a large amount of free time or a very large amount of freedom in my typical day, I rely on such techniques to ensure that weeks and weeks don’t fly by without me doing something productive or meaningful. My next step, as I’m writing this offline without access to the internet tonight, will be to do some further research on organisation and motivational techniques tomorrow and until I find something more beneficial I’ll get back to my old routine of listing my key tasks for the following day, as I’m winding down and preparing to go to bed. To give you an example, I’ll include a few key tasks I’m going to commit to doing tomorrow bellow.

Key tasks for tomorrow will include:
1. Posting this post on my website, and doing some further research when I get online.
2. Contact some training providers about enrolling on a course.
3. Complete either a body weight home workout I have previously created from the Women’s Health Big Book of Exercises or complete a routine from a yoga or pilates video.
4. Wash the dishes I’ve left on the side and mop my kitchen and bathroom floors.

Looking ahead, after having a (very) short meeting with a Next Step advisor today, I was advised to get enrolled onto a confidence building course and a business administration course. Both of these courses will help me immensely in career progression and personal development, and having been given a reasonably lengthy list of providers, I will be contacting some of them within day’s and hope to be on either course as soon as possible.

Website for Wakefield Socialist Party

I had a rather busy night last night, well more accurately a very busy morning as it was probably around midnight by the time I got started, and it wasn’t until around 6am when I felt too tired to do any more, although I kept trying. The mission I tasked myself with was to set up a website for my branch of the Socialist Party, which I joined whilst with Occupy Leeds, as outlined on my About page. Being camped in Leeds for a number of weeks with Occupy Leeds, I was a little more aware of the Leeds branch, they also seemed to be more active on the web front, with a website already up and running as well as Twitter and Facebook pages. Seeing an example of what seemed to be missing from my own branch empowered me with realising I could give something to support the Wakefield Socialist Party, so after a few e-mails to ensure I wasn’t stepping on anyone’s toes, I got to work, and the new website was born.

I’ll outline for you what got achieved during that period, and what the next step will be, including what I hope to tackle today. The website was setup on the WordPress.com platform, I chose this for two key reasons, the first being it was free, and the second is that I am most familiar with WordPress based websites, so I knew I could get something setup a functioning without too much hassle. The immediate step was to go through the settings and perform a few tweaks, set up a static home page, and after deciding on a theme, creating a new custom menu. The current theme supports two menus, the primary menu is set up for site navigation and currently features the Home page, About page a Join / Contact page and a News page. The secondary menu will probably be used for displaying some key categories prominently at the top of the page, I have left this menu empty for the time being until the categories are established and sufficiently populated with entries.

The next phase would have me traversing backwards and forwards between the website, Facebook, Twitter and Gmail as I created new accounts to be used in conjunction with the website, allowing the branch’s Twitter feeds to be displayed in the side panel, and a like box for Facebook to be set up. Having done that, I spent some time on both the Facebook page and the Twitter profiles, adding the Socialist Party logo and filling in some basic information. Thankfully the basic information was already present on a Facebook group, which made it a simple copy and paste. In addition I sought out some appropriate people to follow on Twitter and then uploaded a map and a photo showing the usual location of our branch meetings to the Facebook page.

Having already used the contact form on the national Socialist Party website to request help on the direction I would like to move towards regarding branch websites, the only thing left to do was add some link categories, and modify the default Hello World! post to something a little more appropriate.

Looking ahead, today I would like to focus on the Join / Contact page, I will probably do a similar design to that used on the national Socialist Party website and use a “page within page” structure, utilising contact forms for requesting user information. Longer term I would like to mirror more of the appearance and functionality of the national website, and do so on a private domain. Ideally I see this being developed to a degree that it can be used as a template for other branch’s who don’t yet have their own website, or who would like to follow suit, becoming more consistent with the theme of the national site.

About Emotivated Erika!

My About Page has undergone a rather massive transformation today, which was a rather satisfying task to get done. Within the updated page you’ll find a more detailed description of this site, what I plan to write about and show support for, as well as a section on myself, outlining a bit of history, listing a few hobbies and interests that I expect to write about. Tooked in down at the bottom is a link to my new Press Page, which currently holds a few quotes of mine regarding Occupy Leeds from regional media.

I’ve probably spent too much time on website and blog related work today actually, as I’ve still got a mountain of household chores that need completing, but it has been enjoyable and hopefully rewarding. Even more importantly I have got more work to do on career planning. Yesterday I did some research on various job profiles that I had short listed from the Next Step website, and later on I’ll continue with that, perhaps reducing my short list of careers I am interested in pursuing a little further. My main objective for tonight however is to get started on some star stories. Star stories are short “stories” you create to highlight or document your skills and experiences. There a useful aid memoir for filling out job application forms, updating your CV and can assist with preparing for an interview.

Before I get busy on tonight’s agenda, I’ll be rustling up something quick and simple to eat. I expect I’ll go with some stir fried vegetables, as I still have plenty of spinach, mushrooms and courgettes in the fridge. To ensure I’m not back in the kitchen looking for something else to eat within thirty minutes, I’ll prepare a jacket potato to go with the stir-fry.

Looking ahead to next week, there is a mountaineering club meet and Socialist Party branch meeting in the pipeline.

As predicted tonight’s evening meal / supper was a jacket potato with some fried vegetables.

Occupy Leeds, CBA!

I was beginning to think relations with myself “a former occupier” and the current Occupy Leeds “administration” were improving but it appears I was once again being naive, because really when it comes down to it, anything which isn’t GA signed and approved conversation isn’t worth your time, because Occupy Leeds, simply CBA… that’s can’t be arsed!

I’ve encountered this response more than one, usually via the Occupy Leeds Facebook Page, and have brushed it aside, we have our history and I’m prepared to let that be and continue to work, at least to an extent those who know “run the show”, but when I’m doing nothing but providing feedback which I believe is not only in the best interests of everyone interested in Occupy Leeds, but also going some ways towards safe guarding the values of “open and inclusive”, which the current “administration” would have you believe they share with their fellow occupiers around the globe… well that’s rather out of line imo, and I’m sick of the attitude of Occupy Leeds, specifically the attitude of the admin, whom I believe posted the bellow comment.

Bellow you will find a thumbnail of what I had written, just before the page refreshed to show the comment above representing Occupy Leeds”, I’m showing this in addition to the image bellow so that you can see the full messages that I had taken the time to write. incidentally I have been forced to take copies of what I write to Occupy Leeds, especially via Facebook, has my comments have been deleted or misquoted so many times in the past, and I do it to safeguard myself.

Points to OL regarding online forums and locations of GA's

The final thumbnail (click to enlarge) shows the reply, from an official voice representing Occupy Leeds. Are they appreciative of what I had to write, or did they not even care… I guess I’ve already given the game away with the title of this post… but jeesh, who the fuck are you able to represent if you can’t even hold a conversation, or share an idea without it being face to face, and in a minuted once a week meeting… which as was evidenced on Facebook can also be cancelled with close to zero notice.

Occupy Leeds, CBA

Being Productive

Its been a long time coming, but finally after too many days out of the house and too many “comfort days” I have finally gotten in a productive day at home, and it an’t even finished yet! Sure things started off slow, waking up about 11am… and my guess is probably on the generous side I turned the heating on, made it just in time to catch my courier before she had to consider what to do with my mail and then went back to bed, and besides the odd dash to my desk to check Facebook or change the video I was playing, mostly for background comfort, there I remained… until a time, which would be unfashionable to disclose.

Well, eventually I dragged myself off my bed and turned off whatever video I was half ignoring, having seen it too many times, and from there I kicked my day up a notch, well several notches. The first order of business was to sort out the laundry that was drying on the clothes airers over night. The usual drill of neatly folding (read as dumping on temporarily on the sofa) anything that was dry, and replacing it with the surplus washed items awaiting its turn on the airers from my basket. Another load of washing in the machine, and the laundry component of my day was done, at least until the final load got finished in the machine.

The dishes were next. There are always more than they should be, I blame late night snacking, and the bad habit of being too hungry to sleep, but too sleepy to bother washing up before morning. Sharing my house for a few day’s and then spending an equal number of days crazily busy away from home, didn’t help matters, but eventually my worktop was visible once more. Think I took a quick dash to the local shop about this time, the lady, I suspect to be the owner, commented about me being in the paper, I failed to resist buying a pack of biscuits and soon after I was sat once more at my desk, munching biscuits and sipping tea.

The biscuits, as nice as they were didn’t hold my hunger back for long, so the next job was to get to work on lunch. Today’s menu, called for a bastardised version of Jamie Oliver’s vegetable lasagna, taken from his 30 minute meals series. .. I’ll skip the finer points, but dinner was ate and more chores got done

By now, my mom had returned so I could make the short trip to borrow her stock pot. Having defrosted three chicken carcasses the night before, a key task for today was to get to work on creating a new batch of chicken stock. Just in time too, as I used the last of my stock pile in the lasagna. A bunch of hours and a little boredom later and I’ve now got the first batch strained and in the fridge. It needs to cool enough so that I can drain off the surface fat, and whilst I’m waiting for that, the second batch is on the heat and will be ready in approximately 1.5 hours time… judging by the “quality” of the stock, I believe I can get another 2 loads out of it before it goes “too weak”, which I’m guessing will be a total of about 12 litres.

Wrapping up today’s productivity, I finally got around to narrowing my stupidly long short list of job profiles, I took from the Next Step careers website. I must have had at least 20, maybe even up to 30 job profiles, covering a reasonably wide range of industry’s, as my first step was to simply create a list of any jobs that appealed to me, mostly on title alone. After some advise yesterday, I am now tasked with reducing this “short list” to a much more manageable 3 or 4. My plan is to approach this task in stages, and tonight’s portion of that effort, which I started on just before I began writing this post, is to read the entire profile for each job profile and then categorise it into one of 4 categories. The categories I have chosen to use are; Available to me now, requires some training / experience, requires extensive training / experience and requires a degree. inevitably whilst categorizing each job profile I’ll realise I’m unlikely to pursue some of them, or after reading further decide they are not for me, so those will be left out. After an hour or so I hope to have reduce my current list down to perhaps half and be in a much better position to explore my next steps.

Only other news that I can think of is that I plan to commit more to this site, apparently posting regularly is key, so I’ll endeavour to try to have at least one post published every weekend. I may skip if I published something on the Friday and nothing worthwhile took my interest since, but generally I will try to get a new post up either on the Saturday or Sunday of each week, in addition to whatever ad-hoc posts get published also.