The tallest of the two is now a respectable 119cm tall (from soil level to flower).

I’ve been meaning to post about learning British sign language (BSL) for months now. I wanted to post it in BSL as a video blog (vlog) but, having borrowed my friend Ben’s webcam months ago, I’ve still not got round to even seeing if I can get it working, let alone actually sign coherent content in front of it. Another friend, Gareth, has started blogging about his experiences of learning BSL and prompted me to just pull my finger out and write a post. Maybe at some point I’ll record a translation in BSL. Maybe…

So, I started learning BSL in September 2006 when IBM put on courses for employees at Hursley. We had two hours of teaching every Wednesday morning for 30 weeks, which culminated in being CACDP BSL Level 1 certified.

Jeff, our tutor, is Deaf and taught us using a combination of signing, speech, writing on whiteboards, slides, and humour. Different tutors using different communication methods – for instance, BSL tutors don’t have to be deaf themselves, and some use speech and some don’t. Jeff doesn’t really lip-read so we got lots of practice at signing when talking to him during tea-breaks.

During the course, Jeff taught us a bit about Deaf culture as well as the language. This built on the deaf awareness workshop that we had attended early on in the course. In the workshop, another man (also deaf but deafened later in life; he speaks, uses a hearing aid, and lip-reads) taught us about what it’s like to be deaf, how (as hearing people) to communicate with deaf people, what the Deaf (signing) culture is, and attitudes of deaf people to their deafness.

I really enjoyed the course. It was difficult at first to deal with learning something without being able to write it down (BSL notation is a skill all to itself!). So learning to rely less on written notes was useful too. Learning BSL has been really useful, in particular in talking to my friend Ben at work who is profoundly deaf (without speech) and whose first language is BSL. It’s also handy in meetings or in the noisy canteen to be able to sign to colleagues.

I think it’s really cool that we could learn BSL at work. Aside from the actual language, learning about the Deaf culture and deafness in general has given me a different perspective on things and broadened my understanding of other people. In terms of my day-job, I have a better understanding of the issues around Accessibility.

For instance, here’s one of them….

Did you know that if BSL is your first language (and, therefore, English your second), written transcripts are not necessarily sufficient for a Deaf person to understand an audio recording***? The concepts and grammar of BSL are so different from English that moving between the two can be very difficult. That’s why you get BSL interpreters signing on TV (eg BBC News 24) instead of just providing subtitles.

A lot (a *lot*) of people don’t know that.

Update (16th July 2008):

***This is not to say that written transcripts are a waste of time, nor that Deaf people can’t generally understand written English! Also, if you can provide written transcripts, they provide a means for other people to translate those transcripts to other languages. So projects like this one are really cool: https://launchpad.net/~transcribers. For a start, a written transcription might one day be able to be converted automatically into BSL…(My SiSi blog post)…

Last year, I attempted to grow sunflowers for the first time. Blue Peter always encouraged me to grow them as a child but I never did. So, last Spring, I bought some seeds and planted them in little pots. They all germinated nicely so, just before we went on holiday in May/June, I planted them out in the garden. Unfortunately, in under three days, the slugs had eaten them all. I was devasted for about a day then started plotting how to beat the slugs next year.

So, this Spring, I’ve started collecting toilet roll tubes (also in the spirit of Blue Peter) so that I can stick them in the ground around my small sunflower seedlings when I first plant them out. Hopefully, that’ll fool those pesky slugs.

In the meantime, I’ve bought a couple of packets of seeds (hoping that if one is so tasty that the toilet roll tubes fail to foil the crafty slugs, I can try again). I’ve planted the first packet into small pots on the windowsill and the first few seeds have germinated nicely:

That’s despite me mixing in too much of the water-saving crystals with the compost so that every time I water them, the soil expands so much that it starts to climb out of the pots!

I’m hoping these ones work because I want to see what they come out like. They’re not your usual yellow sunflowers. They’re a species called ‘Moulin Rouge’ and the heads are a dark red instead of yellow. If they work, I’ll post a photo here.

I picked up my final piece of pottery course work tonight. Formally known as ‘Unit 03 final piece’, here are the best of my mugs:

Unfortunately, I have ended up with fewer working mugs than people who have hinted they’d like one. And I definitely owe my parents some pottery to clutter up their house after I kept the sunflower planter (a.k.a. ‘Unit 02′).

So my apologies in public (that way you have to smile and say you don’t mind):

“Sorry to everyone who I’d like to have presented with a mug. If I do the course again next year, you will, of course, be foremost in my mind.”

And with that, my pottery course 2007-2008 is over. I’ve decided not to carry on next term because I’ve signed up to learn pole-dancing again. More on that later….

Tonight I finally brought home my completed sunflower planter from my pottery class.

In case my examiner is reading this: the sunflower design was inspired by Gaudi’s tiles on a house I saw in Northern Spain once; the triple planter idea was my own; the idea to do a slab pot planter was inspired by another student’s single slab pot planter last term. Also, dear examiner, I did a couple of sketched designs, made some changes to the design along the way, and did lots of test tiles to investigate the best way to glaze the pots, and, finally but mostly importantly, I recorded all my investigations, findings, and decisions in my notebook like a good little potter.

And here’s the end result:

At this point I must make a confession of sorts…

I had promised the finished article to my parents as part of their Christmas present….

Having worked on it weekly for the last 4 months, however, I’ve become rather attached to it… :-/