Zzz.

So zapped from this week, I feel like my feet haven't touched the ground. Even when I've not actually been doing anything I've really stuck at keeping myself occupied. Today was a terrible day and I'm pretty sure I spent about a quarter of it in traffic jams, sure I wasn't driving but I had places to be.

Take-three of this week's house hunt in Newbury today and we were incredibly unsuccessful yet again. The first was incredibly overpriced and not that great anyway and the second had a great downstairs but awkward upstairs, not to mention a weird garden (although at least it had one) and was right next to a main road and so noisy inside. We're looking at a couple more on Monday, but Moon will be starting his job and it makes things very up in the air as to when we can view, especially seeing as his job will mainly involve driving so commuting to and from Dorking adds to this and I can't really afford to take the train down there to view houses all the time, especially three times a week.

The job hunt isn't looking much better either, I had a promising email letting me know I was the right candidate for the role but that I lived a bit far away, despite applying for it because it was closer to Newbury. It actually was about halfway between here and there but I never got a response when I explained that travelling wasn't an issue, and I've tried ringing but the contact never seems to be there. I haven't had a lot of time to look for jobs this week but I've been trying, having received two rejection letters by post and one rejection email this week, there's only so much bad luck I think I can continue to get... but onwards and upwards, something's bound to come up soon, etc.

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In slightly more positive news, the lovely NUJDM posse have used a couple of my photos in a report about the Leveson investigations. You can take a look at the articles here, and my photos were used here and here. It's quite hard to believe that NUJDM was nearly a year ago.

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At least the weather has been fun this week, I've nearly finished my chest, and I'm pretty proud of it really, I just hope it doesn't suddenly rain. Here's a photo of Moon looking like a babestation.

This outfit is from Monday, which I know is basically forever ago, but I had to share this dress with you, I'm so pleased with it. I don't know why I ever stopped rummaging in charity shops and online, I blame Portsmouth's shoddy charity offerings. These were taken on a quick walk by the canal whilst we were down in Newbury. We were actually looking at a flat that was practically on the canal, but sadly it was pokey, expensive, and generally not what we're looking for. Location-wise you couldn't fault it though, I'm definitely looking forward to being down there and taking Sunday strolls and feeding swans.


Dress: Charleen's Closet, Etsy
Necklaces: Primark, H&M
Belt: eBay
Tights: Primark
Socks: Primark
Boots: River Island




These guys were failing epically, but what a good effort

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It's time for me to catch up with more of The Tube and have another cup of tea.

Thanks for listening, hopefully I'll stop moaning soon. Have a good weekend.

651: All I got was a bit of knowledge and some free pens.

Yesterday, I attended an NUJ training workshop at NUJ headquarters. It was pretty swell, I got to see a lot of the faces from the NUJ Delegate Meeting and we spent the day learning about how to go about establishing chapels within universities and the workplace, something that may come in useful on this upcoming placement.

I really need to sort out renewing my membership, I will do this as soon as my (probably) last instalment on JSA comes in - wow this post is just full of acronyms.
I found the whole day really useful, I'm now considering further workshops that the NUJ offer, particularly relating to CVs and interviews but we'll see how my life is going once this internship starts. I am hoping that I can forward on all this information to my past tutor in order to establish a chapel within Portsmouth university, I would really like her to take me up on the offer, and I can give her so many free pens.





The press card is just one of the many benefits of being a member of the National Union of Journalists, you also get to go to things like this and meet lots of really nice people. As well as sharing knowledge and making friends, you sometimes get lucky and get free USBs and a drink at the end of the day.

NUJ Delegate Meeting roundup.

So, I've had a little bit of time to reflect and catch up on the extreme lack of sleep I had to deal with over the weekend and I have realised what a brilliant weekend NUJDM was.
I've met some great people and if I gain nothing else from working with the NUJ Student Team, I've got that great experience. I don't know what I was so nervous about but now I know I could do it again and for some reason my confidence actually feels as though it's through the roof.
A link to all the work I did has been set up on a profile on the NUJDM 2011 website.

Eventually I'm going to get round to uploading my personal images from the weekend, but I think between editing my profile and looking at other people's articles that that is quite enough for today.

Now it's back to reality and concentrating on starting my project report for my final unit as well as finishing off my RDB, not as exciting as tweeting and photographing all day. I've got some fun things planned for the Easter break but I really do hope that I can muster up the enthusiasm to get this work out of the way, just because, apart from Viva, that's it.
I hope the weather stays nice for me, just because I've basically been underground for 5 days and it would be nice to catch some rays.

Here is a photo of me taken by fellow student delegate photographer, Dougal Wallace, it looks much better than I thought it would when he took it. The girl who thinks that she isn't in the photo is Angie, she was my roommate for the weekend, I definitely want to keep in touch with her.

National Union of Journalists Delegate Meeting.

This post is going to be structured weirdly compared to my usual style. As I am technically at the NUJ Delegate Meeting for work experience and more importantly as a Photographer, I'm going to do rolling updates, so everything will just appear as one big post.
As things go, apart from the terrible internet, everything has been quite exciting, and I've thoroughly enjoyed my first official day at the conference.

I'm currently using Lightroom to work through the conference as it auto-watermarks my image, which isn't one of my favourite things but I'm uploading straight to Flickr so (when the internet works) it makes everything a lot quicker. I think under a professional circumstances where I do have to work quickly it's great to use, but having made the huge move over to Aperture less than a year ago, I'm not sure when I'll have the time to do something that huge again, saying that I may move by the Easter holidays.

07/04/2011




I've never been to a conference before so it's exciting to see so many people so passionate about issues within their fields.

08/04/2011




09/04/2011

The NUJ's oldest delegate attending the conference, Roy Jones aged 81.

The youngest delegate attending this weekend, Josh Taylor, aged 19

10/04/2011

Visit from Mama.

My mum came down to visit me with my sister yesterday, it was nice to see her and spend some time in the sun. I'm a bit annoyed that they didn't arrive sooner as we didn't actually have that much time to do anything other than get a nice lunch. I took her to The Tenth Hole, so that was good. I only took a couple of photos of what I ate.
I'm marking yesterday as the day I stop being so lazy, I was lacking that get up and go, but seeing my mum has refreshed me and the promise of a holiday to Hong Kong in the summer is also helping with motivation.

© Ruth Johnston 2011.

I've written my to-do list for the week and not only is it do-able but, it's not overwhelming.
The fact that it's only 3 weeks left until the Easter holidays is bringing on a stress ulcer as it means (not including Easter) there are only 5 weeks left of this project. However, the NUJ Delegate Meeting is creeping up too, which is something I'm really looking forward to.