Teaching... training... lectures... you name it. It's going to be busy for a bit. Don't expect much!

Shattered now.

Our International Fayre day with a Library stall promoting our services and facilities to hordes of students from all over the world.

Most sensible colleagues volunteer to do 90 minutes or so, but I've somehow become the Library contact and end up helping out throughout. Exhausting, but great fun meeting folk from all over and getting the chance - as ever - to practice the odd phrase, word or even national anthem in the relevant language.

Interestingly a new colleague for whom this was a first was observing at one point and told me afterwards that she would again and again see tired, shell-shocked, confused looking students (they'd just arrived in the country the day before) trawling around the stalls and arrive in front of our Library table. I'd accost them, she said and try out a greeting, and their eyes would light up at just a fragment of home.

I'd not actually seen that, but she could see it was well worthwhile. I was just relieved they weren't irritated at the feebleness of my pronounciation or knowledge or something.

Loving the ebook reader already. Finished _Around the World in 80 Days_ (Jules Verne) last night. Though that was cheating a bit as I'd read 3/4 of it on my daughter's Nintendo DS as an experiment to compare the experience. (Nintendo wasn't bad actually although pages a *little* small).

Survey for the ebook reader gave me the chance to suggest a fair few things I might improve, so it's by no means perfect. But a lot better than I was expecting and very comfortable on the eyes not being another 'screen'.

Went mad and bought an ebook reader today.

Been looking at it for a week or two after seeing a colleague demonstrate with hers that it could cope with Word docs and PDFs. I'd never seen one in real life before and had also got some vague idea it would only handle DRM ebooks which I wasn't interested in. I have enough that I've already got to read without wanting to limit myself to just what gets sold as an ebook.

So, now I can read:
- ebooks I've bought from Fictionwise (www.fictionwise.com) for my Palm
- ebooks Fictionwise have given away for free
- role playing game material I've bought as PDFs
- journal articles etc I have to read for work (usually either PDF or Word docs)
- free ebooks found on the web - Cory Doctorow for example or 'The Tower and the Cloud'
- loads of classics that came with the reader or yet more from Gutenberg and the like

OK, so that's me occupied for the next decade....

Deadline for submitting my paper to the 'international journal' today. Never quite feels real when it's only online. But beggars can't be choosers.

Got the thing formatted and checked and so on and sent in. Nothing more I can do now.

OK, didn't go so badly as I perhaps feared. Still some angst over the fact that I do the least teaching amongst my colleagues (and even less than I did myself last year). Not for wanting of touting myself about the bazaars but there's only so much you can do. Not sure I had any new strategies for getting more this year, but I'll keep at it.

Book group second anniversary party this evening. That's something to look forward to.

Appraisal time again.

Hope I'm not as 'thin' as last year. Can't say I'm looking forward to it - they never bothered me before.

Tour of the new cosmology building with the academic I liaise with over there.

Very nice. Although half the height of the six storey building they've vacated which seems to me to take them further from their subject matter...

Particularly nice were the offices on one side of the three storey building with a balcony. Probably big enough to park a small telescope on although I didn't see any in evidence.

I was amused by at least two whiteboards in a row that looked like something straight out of Big Bang Theory. Which would make sense of course because the BBT guys are mocking the types who live up there.

Two frustrations of the new build: security access involving having to swipe through just to go to the john; a long 'ramp' (with rails) right through the middle of a not overly large staff room to allow disabled access to the balcony. (Apparently they forgot to put the provision in originally and were made to do it subsequently.)

Today is our great office tidy. Colleague and I endeavour to clear out the detritus that's accumulated over the year (or more). We did it last year and it went quite well. It's only a start though as it usually doesn't get as far as files and filing cabinets or even drawers.

Spent most of the day preparing to deliver a three hour session on Web 2.0 not just to staff as usual, but to IT staff who'd specially asked for it. Fortunately there's lots of hands on (and my patent paper based blogging exercise) so it's not just me talking for 180 minutes.

But it's pretty daunting doing something IT related to IT staff. You kind of think they know it all. As it happens I'm assured that they sit in their bunkers doing their narrow jobs and actually don't necessarily have any wider knowledge than your typical member of staff. We'll see.

The little team I've been given to help with our fun library blog met again today. But our brief has been expanded really to cover Facebook and Twitter as well, so we're a nascent Web 2.0 team which everyone seems happy with.

I'm now detailed off to write some reports which could be interesting.

(Somewhat amusingly I thought we were about done 90 minutes in, although we'd booked the room for a couple of hours. I was told in no uncertain terms by the two issue desk staff that we should find something else to talk about for half an hour as otherwise they'd have to go back to 'work'. As it happens there's always plenty to discuss so we obliged.)