Had another wonderful long early walk with Pip the dog. We had some excitement though, usually we don’t meet anyone, but this morning, someone and his very young 6 month old spaniel also had the same idea as us. Damn, it’s catching on, that’s not what I was hoping for. Pip is not always great with other dogs, we rescued her 5 years ago, she is now 10 years old.

The rescue place told us she was fine with other dogs, however whenever she came close to other dogs, she would be quite feisty and she even delved her teeth into a dog’s ear once. She didn’t draw blood, it was okay, she just managed to get hold of it’s hair, which was lucky as she definitely would have been in trouble. Ever since then she’s always on the lead and I just do not allow her to socialise with other dogs. A real shame I know!

Well, this other dog we met on OUR field, was not on the lead and made a bee-line for us. I had to pick Pip up and hold her in the air. Normally Pip will grow and bark, like she wants to eat them up, but this time after a few minutes, she started squeaking, she so desperately wanted to play with this other dog, but I just didn’t want to risk it. This 6-month old spaniel looked beautiful and I would hate for him to be damaged in any way. Eventually the owner managed this puppy to listen to him and we could go down our own paths. I really hope he’s not there tomorrow!

Right then apart from some emails, reading, listening to the news updates, I spent another good amount of time helping James with virtual Taiko drumming experiments. Today we had Kate, who is an awesome drummer, based in her home, helping us test out the technology her side.

The bottom line, it doesn't really work. There will be too many variables across all the students and as such it will be too big a task for very little return. So back to the drawing board and we will have to think of a totally different approach, which may be still having the Zoom call, for a chat and a social, then showing everyone the song to practice by James playing it to everyone, we know he can be heard with his iPad and then everyone using air drumming to rehearse the song.

After that James will have pre-recorded the song on his camera, which everyone can then watch back in their own time and practice over the coming weeks. All of this testing is taking a huge amount of time to sort out actually, but I believe we’re getting closer to finalising an idea.

Apart from all this, I also took the time to apply to STEAMhouse. They are a European Funded business support organisation. I was with them from August 2018, but to be honest they didn’t do much for me. They have new funding, I guess not European and therefore I am trying again to get some support for my Augmented Reality ideas. They now are setting up a specific lab that deals with AR, VR etc. This is what I ideally needed last time around, but never got. So fingers crossed I will get the support this time around.

In the evening I am getting into the habit of watching Adam Dacey of Mindspace doing his evening 1/2 hour meditations at 7.30pm GMT, soon to be BST. It really is very useful and enjoyable. Please do check him out. I am including a playlist below:

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL1DrvSW1_WqgD3LtGP1u1at3vXcNA62GG

Be safe and stay at home most of the time!

Michael de Groot