I’m writing this offline using Notepad because it’s been a MOST frustrating day. Since midmorning today, my ISP (Tiscali) has been repeatedly timing out, dropping my internet connection, suddenly dying but apparently not being disconnected, and returning ‘Remote server did not respond’ messages. I confess I muttered more thana few mild imprecations at the distant server (images of Dastardly and Muttley float into my mind here … ) The thought of these problems continuing through the weekend was not a pleasant prospect. I even resorted to my reserve 56k dialup connection to visit Tiscali’s homepage (oh, it’s so painfully slow after broadband … 
) and check on server status. This morning it admitted rather grudgingly to only 80% efficiency on its internet connection but by this evening it was claiming 100% …. yeah, right!
So, with only 72 hours until the T189 ECA deadline, I decided I had no choice but to get my skates on. Cue a frantic afternoon juggling images in slideshows, editing and polishing the written answers, converting my Works word processor document into the requisite .doc format which can be read by the Assessors, spellchecking and proofreading, formatting and zipping ……. finally, at exactly 21.23 this evening, I managed to submit the T189 End of Course Assessment. It took me two reboots and many attempts to connect but eventually Tiscali obliged by squeezing out ten minutes online for me … before dying again I printed out a hardcopy of the written part of the ECA then also backed the whole lot up to a CD AND Goliath, our external hard disk, just because I’m paranoid.
One unfortunate student reported on the T189 conferences this week that her laptop had been stolen and she hadn’t backed up for three weeks So she’d lost the bulk of the work she’d done on her ECA together with all those irreplaceable images taken over these three important weeks of the course. It is a painful but salutory lesson – not only to suffer the indignity and trauma of someone breaking into your house but also the loss of property that holds data far more valuable than the thieves could have imagined. Fortunately it looks like she will get an extension for submitting her ECA due to exceptional circumstances. She’s also had her laptop replaced and is now gearing up to tackle the final stretch.
Now I can’t get a squeak out of Tiscali so I’m giving up until later…..
Just one final quick footnote: I’ve just registered the domain name www.t189digitalphotography.co.uk and I was thinking of creating a simple ‘portal’ website where information, links, useful resources, websites, blogs etc can be collected together for the purpose of helping future T189 students. I also thought a message board might be a good idea so T189 -07E students can keep in touch and give help and advice to folks thinking of taking the course. What do you think? Any ideas … suggestions … brickbats …. I need some feedback here 
