Norman Ralph

Who would have thought it? It is now three weeks to Rationalist Week 2009!

Thi year we will be running the biggest, most jam packed week ever. We are open for business 24/7 for the first time ever, starting Sunday 19th and finishing Saturday 25th April outside Leeds University Union.

There will be plenty of news and posts to come over the next few weeks as we finalise the arrangements and then there will be posts live from the evnts themselves.

For all the up-to-date news and announcements, keep checking the Leeds A-Soc website!

Regular readers will have noticed a common theme running through my posts recently, namely that of the AHS. Posts on the press launch and the general publicity surrounding the build up have dominated my blog. This is for the veyr good reason that it has been pretty much all I have been thinking about. Sure, I have been involved in a lot of A-Soc stuff like Galileo Day and starting up Perspective but most of my work has been focussed on the AHS.

I have no doubt that the time spent was worth it, you only have to read the coverage the launch got to see how successful everything is proving to be. Check out a few of the pieces here, here and here. The upcoming xchallenge is to ensure that my work with the AHS doesn’t detract too much from my current commitments. I mean I am currently a student, hold down a (not so) part-time job, am president of Leeds Atheist Society and president of the AHS. All of these commitments could and maybe should be full time commitments, but I am sharing my time between them. Thankfully, I have the support of friends and family (big thanks to Liz et al) and a wonderful team working with me both at A-Soc and the AHS.

In other news, it is now only 7 weeks until Rationalist Week 2009!

There is a saying that goes “another day, another dollar” and it seems only fitting that I begin my review of 2008 with a quote regarding time and money. 2008 has been a mixed bag of a year, like most years it cam with its ups and downs. The news stories of the year reflect this, with Team GB performing heroics in Beijing and then the economic issues of the last quarter. I hope the rest of this post reflects this theme.

January
Exams were the order of the day at the opening of 2008. never a good start. Although this particular bunch of exams went pretty well and helped set up a relatively successful second semester on my new course. A-Soc kicked off its second full year with its first event of 2008, the low turnout not indicating the successes to follow. January aslo saw Chris finally lose his virginity at Wendy House.

February
Darwin Day 2008 was supposed to be the highlight of February, but it got somewhat overshadowed by Sarann’s secret affair! The planning of Rationalist Week seems to get earlier and earlier and we officially kicked off the organisation of A-Soc’s flagship event on the 13th February. Somehow, I also managed to fit in a well deserved few days away with Liz in the lake District – you cannot beat walking, relaxing and real ale by the fire to wash away exam and coursework stress! The Union’s political machinations also culminated with me being dubbed “Norman the No! Man” due to my inability to sit back and watch debates go undebated, regardless of my actual view points.

March
One of the coups of 2008 came when Si finally succumbed to peer pressure and started blogging! In another blow for democracy, my decision to stand for Faith and Culture rep for the Union was rebuked as I was effectively blocked from standing (or voting). My main memory of March, however, was the setting up of Secular Portal, which would ultimately turn into my current project, the AHS.

April
Rationalist Week 2008. Need I say much more about how awesome April was? Except for everything that went wrong it was a great success! The icing on the cake was being elected president of A-Soc at the AGM. We managed to recruit a decent sized committee and really was the icing on the cake as far as the success of A-Soc in the first half of 2008.

May
it seems I didn’t blog about very much in May. Probably down to the exams etc that I was taking, along with recovering from April!

June
I started work with O2 at the beginning of June and spent most of the month training for my new role. I did manage to squeeze in a few social activities too, brewing my own ale for the SoC graduation reception was a particular highlight. I also went to see Avril Lavigne perform in Manchester, which was also pretty awesome. I also moved out of the house I had lived in for three of my four years at university.

July
Work and parties seemed to be the order of the day this month in 2008.

I’m going to stop splitting up the months for the second half of 2008 as I didn’t actually spend much time bloggine. Really, I worked near enough all summer – managing a day off for V Festival – either at O2 or putting together Intro Week for A-Soc.

Part of me thinks I should write here what happened in the couple of months I wasn’t blogging, but I feel that it wouldn’t do it justice. It wasn’t until December that I began blogging again, inspired by the relaunch of the site and our end of year festivities.

Hopefully, I will continue this new found blogging activity into 2009.

My marks out of ten for 2008 as a year, a good 7.

The summer time blues, of Eddie Cochrane fame, have been something that many people I know have experienced and is a phenomenen that I am personally familiar with. I have always found it bizarre that so many people, especially in Britain, suffer from this highly oxymoronic state of mind. Most British people spend all year waiting for the sun to come out and as soon as it does they all get depressed! How silly is that?

On a totally different note I am currently experiencing a massive increase in workload. Planning for the upcoming Atheist Society events in fresher’s week is now in full swing. Membership cards and committee hoodies are in the pipeline, events are being nailed down, room bookings being made and equipment sourced. It is quite scary that we are only six weeks away! Then there is paid work, O2 is going swimmingly. I have just completing my second week in ‘grad bay’ so should be fully live soon enough. I am hoping that I impress enough over the next few months to get up the ladder a bit. The biggest news is the fact that I have just been given my first freelance software development contract! Designing and implementing a user interface for a university research department. More on that as I get into it.

I am quite enjoying this new found level of activity. I have been busy before, of course, but it was usually the hectic kind of busy where you don’t get chance to breathe or sleep or eat. This is the kind of busy that keeps you occupied ten hours of the day solidly, but that doesn’t feel that much like hard work. Whether I am still saying this when A-Soc gets into full swing and Rationalist Week is upon us again I don’t know. In the meantime though, I am going to enjoy it and hopefully see my bank balance rise into the positive numbers for the first time in several years too!

This post could be a long one if I included everything that happened at Atheist Society’s Rationalist Week 2008. A pretty good run down of everything that went wrong for us can be found here so I won’t include them in this account. I want to focus on the positive sides and more of the human interest aspects of the week.

Chris, the retiring president, wrote this account of the week, well worth checking out. My version of the week follows here.

The week got off to a bad start, the tent was late and the generator needed fetching, and we were late starting. There were hiccups during the rest of the week, not least of them me being ill, but in general the week got better. A lot better.

We signed up a lot of people, didn’t lose too much money and our events ran smoothly for an A-Soc event but the ultimate success came from within the society. We finally got people involved, found leaders from within our ranks, something we have been sorely lacking the past two years.

We reached a lot of people during the week, I would estimate that we probably developed our brand to over a thousand staff, students and members of the public during the week and that we physically spoke to well over a hundred (excluding all night debate) and signed up a quarter of those that came into the tent. The membership numbers now rival our competitors and should hopefully mean we can start playing with the big boys in terms of politics and campaigning as well as securing some decent funding for the year!

The highlights for me included the CU debate, where again we out argued the opposition and should have come away with the victory had the crowd not been partisan, and the internal debate on the Flying Spaghetti Monster where the key flaws in religious argument were highlighted and exposed. In fact, most of the events went well – especially the evening ones. Once again Mike Lake was excellent and converted some fence sitters.

My personal highlight however, was the friends and friendships that I forged and strengthened during the week. The improved ties we developed with the CU and other societies. The fact that I think our message got across. Atheist Society is not about religion bashing or telling people they are wrong, but to offer an alternative that wasn’t available.

It was a success that didn’t kill us financially.

We finally pulled off an event that was worthy of the work that went into it.

Well done all!

Well. It’s over. It worked and we haven’t gone too bankrupt…

A full post will follow just as soon as I have shaken off this horrendous bout of tonsillitis!

The title says it all really, there are seven days of the Easter break left and the start of the final term of this year. This means three things.

1) Rationalist Week is fast approaching. If we pull this off then it would definitely count as one of the greatest achievements of the 21st century following an unprecedented level of set backs and foul ups. I won’t go into the details here as I feel it would lead to incredibly strong language and graphic violence and, after all, this is a family blog!

2) Exams. Enough said.

3) Summer! I really enjoy summer in Leeds. In fact it is one of the few places that I actually enjoy sunshine. This may sound bizarre but the reasons are twofold; first I burn, baby, burn – even in winter, and secondly I hate being hot. I enjoy the barbeques, the bikinis and the laid back atmosphere everyone seems to adopt. I really hope that the council doesn’t enforce its no drinking policy on Hyde Park as having a beer and a BBQ whilst watching the world go past is one of the few pure pleasures of city living.

Well, to be honest, I think the title says it all….

It has been an incredibly frustrating week this week, all I seem to have done is chased my tail round and around. Rationalist Week is two weeks away and I am still fighting with our sponsor to get everything sorted out in time. Not to mention the fact that I am really starting to lose sleep and hair over the budget for the event too!

Liz and I are starting to fight more because I am so wound up, which is leading to even greater frustration and heartache. It seems I am constantly on edge and fighting the frustration. I think I need to take a break from a few things but I just don’t have the time at the moment.

ARRRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!

Yes, it’s that time of year again – A-Soc started planning this year’s Rationalist Week in Earnest yesterday, getting a provisional timetable together and starting to look at the budget. The event is likely to cost in the region of £1500, of which the Union’s grant will cover maybe £200-300, which means we will have to raise the rest ourselves. Yesterday’s cake sale was a good start but we need a lot more money.

A-Soc is looking into running a Rocky Horror Picture Show Night and a couple of club nights to break the back of the fundraising. We are also looking for sponsors, both private and corporate who might be interested in getting involved. So if anybody has any ideas or would like to contribute let me know!

It is a great event, check out the posts about it from last April.

The Christmas festivities are over, the New Year hangovers have subsided and 2008 is nearly a week old. This seems like the perfect opportunity to take a look back at 2007 and the people, events and ideas that made it.

Christmas and New Year are always a time for reflection and nostalgia and this year was no different. My family was all together for the first time in a while, including some of the new additions. I had an enjoyable time with several highlights – firstly, I caught up with some old friends and relived some of those moments from my youth that I miss. I also had a good time Christmas Day as I actually felt part of the family for the first time in many years. The end of December was also a good time for me, I spent it with Liz and her family and really felt accepted.

Anyway, back to my review of the year.

January
January was an interesting month, fisrt it saw the blossoming of a new friendship, one that would lead to something quite special – although i didn’t know that at the time of course. This month saw the final plans for the new academic year’s housing plans and all the arguments that surrounded that decision. This is probably the time that I cemented my friendship with a number of people whom I now consider my closest allies.

January’s exam period was hard for me, not just for the obvious reasons, but because it saw the dawning in my mind that I had lost my passion in Materials Engineering, that the course was no longer the inspiration I required. I began to toy with the idea of leaving university, or at least changing course.

February
I don’t remember much of February apart from starting at McDonald’s and buying a new car. I also went to Langdale in the Lake District with my mum.

March
March was an interesting month, I saw Barenaked Ladies in concert in Leeds which was amazing, visited Sarann in the Lakes and most importantly I started this blog.

April
Now here is the definition of a rollercoaster ride. I reached some of the lowest points of my life but also touched some of the highest highs. I ran Rationalist Week, spent a week in a self-destructive spiral of drinking, partying and depression, I met a girl and fell in love.

May
May was a busy month. Liz and my relationship went from strength to strength, went to see Soweto Kinch and The Who live in concert and Blackpool won in the League One play-offs and got themselves promoted to the Championship.

June
Festivals were the order of the day/month for June. I went to Sunrise and Farmyard Party to work in a chip van with Sarann. I had a great time but it meant not seeing Liz for a lot of the month – the first real test for our relationship. I think we ended up stronger than ever! Chris ended up in hospital with a serious bout of appendicitis and I spent a lot of time helping Matt sort out his car.

July
July was quite boring compared to the surrounding months.I went to Workhouse in Wales, had minor computing issues and moved in with my new housemates – Sarann, Michelle, B and Chris.

August
Always a quiet month, with uni still a month away and the excitement of breaking up long since faded away. I spent most of the month taking stock and seeing what was what in my life. I did go to Solfest, however, which was definitely a personal highlight of the year!

September
I made only seven blog posts in September, which gives a good indication of how little I did. I did start a new course at university though and turned twenty-three – which also explains the lack of blogging! The combination of Fresher’s week and birthday celebrations will do that to a man.

October
A difficult month for me. A lot of things happened in my private life that left me somewhat adrift. I did get a new computer though, which is always nice!

November
November saw things pick up a bit with the A-Soc London trip, Atheist Week and the discovery of the Lancashire Hotpots! London was worth all the effort that I put into it, it turned out better than anyone had predicted and nothing really bad happened. Liz and I went from strength to strength and I even managed to find time to do some uni work!

December
A month of WoW and family. Not a lot to report on really, except what is already included at the top of this post. It was a good festive period all in all. I think it set me up for 2008 quite nicely.