I have to admit to be astonishingly nervous about the whole Private View thing. I mean it's a tiny display cabinet and barely worth crossing the road for really.

But:
The VC is apparently coming.
S is coming from 20 miles away.
I feel somewhat vulnerable having 'poetry' on display like that.
I've no idea who will turn up or how much drink to buy.
I've no idea if it will all fall flat on its face.

Yesterday, the art librarian H, bemoaned the empty display cabinet she has and was wondering if my offer to put something in it still stood.

Of course!

Why not display some haiku I've written and some of the books and magazines I've collected over the last few years.

So last night I extracted all the books I could from my shelves and then was a bit sleepless thinking about how it might work.

Today I've been arranging the material in the cabinet. Thanks to S, my former colleague for her help and advice and even a title.

Then H pointed out that such 'exhibitions' often start with a private view. Easy enough to arrange and invite Library staff and a few assorted others. But to get permission to have wine required contacting the President of the University. Who said he'd only agree if he got an invite and we supplied orange juice. I can't help feeling this is all getting out of hand. But Monday lunchtime it is for a 'Private View'.

Back with the pre-entry project people today.

This time they want to link to reading lists which isn't a bad idea.

Except...

how many students before they even arrive are going to want multiple page reading lists?! Perhaps a few items of indicative reading - which the academics have already put into the pre-entry project. But not full blown reading lists when the academic has gone overboard anyway!

and then there's which reading list?
the Library collects them and puts them onto a library system
a local bookshop does the same
(fortunately we collaborate and share what we get)

Sad though it is to say, the bookshop lists look much nicer than the library computer system equivalents. Perhaps unsurprisingly so. But of course the bookshop ones prioritize buying a copy of the book and don't link through to electronic full text when we have it (though they do manage to have a small link that's you'd barely guess its purpose that links to the library catalogue entry for an item).

It just all seems a bit unjoined up as yet. Ironically the reading lists wouldn't even go in the Library part of the pre-entry project!

Hmmm, I'm not sure but I'm beginning to hear rumors that would suggest I may have upset one of my crossword colleagues. I can't think why but I can't bear rumors and tales and gossip so I'll give it a day or three and then find out what's up (or what's not up and been completely overblown).

I've been informed that a section of books up the 2nd floor - planning and garden design of all things - are my responsibility. And desperately in need of weeding (hah!).

So I'm back amongst the shelves getting my hands (and clothes) dirty once again. But clearing the shelves of a lot of dead wood.

And up on the second floor I even seem to be able to get help! Why my team is so poor at that I don't know. (My boss recommended kicking them.)

Book group meeting last night.

Our glorious leader was unfortunately unable to make it (Mum getting a new knee which is a fair enough excuse). Just a shame that it was her book choice. _Cold Mountain_ by Charles Frazier.

Now the back of the book and other places have raved about it. R, who suggested it, has loved it.

But unfortunately none of the rest of us did. It's very 'fine' writing in a literary sense but rather a bleak story all told. I'd made up my mind about 2/3 of the way through to love the scenery and the obscure words and the descriptions - and was getting on with that. But then I got to the end. And watched the film as well for added impact.

Somehow I need more cheeriness and escapism in life! Still, I mentioned it to one friend and former colleague who I had a sneaking suspicion might like it. Turned out she'd read it and I was quite right.

Back with the pre-entry project woman today explaining all the revisions we've made after their request to expand it somewhat. I learned today that that request had come because the initial launch had been so successful and our library had garnered such interest.

That's gratifying. Of course it means more work...

Marvellous day today of getting my desk/drawer/shelf cleared up. Not quite done and have unearthed some jobs to do, but did clear a fair bit of detritus and at least now I can see the extent of the problems!

I've had it agreed that tomorrow I can stay home and do as much as I can of the pile of reading I need to get through. That will make a change and probably be more productive for not being worn out with commuting for a change! I could do with a break like that. But only a couple of weeks till the vacation.

Second graduation today - the other half of my faculty.

Slightly different in that as it was the afternoon it was much warmer in the hall! Also, one of the departments is all research so they had no graduates. Just an hour instead of 90 minutes.

Sitting there does get you questioning just how much you contribute to their success. Not a lot is the answer most likely.

The sadness of today's event was one of the Heads of school making an utter mess of many of the foreign names. It seemed a shame for the students whose names were sometimes unrecognizable.

Perhaps I'm just biased having had the privilege of living in Nigeria for a year and then in Asia for a couple of years but Yoruba or Chinese names just don't hold the same mystery as they evidently did for this poor lady. Why can't they just get someone to do it who can get it right?

Much as I expected really - the ceremony - all done and dusted in 90 minutes which wasn't bad. But then there weren't any honorary degrees and so no formal speeches. Our new chancellor - the actress - did make a few remarks at the end: haven't you all done well, aren't you all beautiful, go out into the world. But that was it.

Still, it felt very grand processing in robes, sitting on the stage (I had a prime at the side, to the front, right by the table where the doctors signed a book). Great fun.

But the other lot tomorrow (cosmology, math and computing) so I hope it won't be tedious doing two in quick succession. Perhaps I can take some Swedish words to learn.

Just back from the gowning rooms where I've picked up a gown, hood and mortar board.

It's graduation this week and next and the engineers turn this morning.

I'm a bit more excited about this than I expected to be. Mainly because it's actually the first time I've done this. I've attended a couple of friend's graduations before, in the audience. This time, however, I'll be on the stage and wearing a gown with my proper colours and so on.

I've never done this before because my graduation ceremony wasn't held until November by which time I was on the other side of the world. It always irked me that they couldn't have been in July as these are as I would love to have attended.

Another 'management briefing' training day today (only did one a couple of weeks ago). It was good though - same woman as did a 'cultural awareness' day in the Library which went well. (And from whom I shameless stole an ice-breaker for the last sermon I preached because it was so appropriate.)

This one was on 'maximising team performance' and as is often the case I feel I come away with more doubts about my ability to lead a wet paper bag than I do renewed vision to maximise my team's peformance. But there were some useful tools to take away and think about. And once again I got to 'sell' De Bono's 6 thinking hats and our use of them at TheOldPlace. Can I get a commission?

Lots of weeding the last few days. It's that time of year.

This year I've picked on the civil engineering and building/architecture type stuff which looks like it's been long overlooked. (We did no weeding last year thanks to moving almost all of the stock).

It's different - having to involve the academics - but once I get into it I quite enjoy the process and it certainly improves the looks of the shelves somewhat making the stock look more attractive (and hopefully useful) to students.

It just seems a shame that books have to come to the end of their natural life. But when it's not been borrowed in ten years or more (my record was 1985 for a last stamped date), it's probably not going to be greatly missed.

It will be interesting to see what, if anything, the academics decide can't be thrown away.

Three of us have been 'volunteered' to work on the details for Freshers' Fayre this year. In place of the rather excellent organization I've observed from A in previous years. But she's busy this time round.

I can't help feeling that with the three of us in charge - none of whom are best in this kind of role - it could yet be a disaster. We'll see.

I had been looking forward to the Library summer barbeque this evening but it's cancelled thanks to the lousy weather we're having. Perhaps another evening. But I'm not holding my breath. And to think I didn't go to the *university* party last Friday because two Fridays in a row was a bit much!

Completely unrelated to work, but congratulations to my sister who gave birth today. As an older first time Mom there were some worries over it all and Elijah is currently in a neo-natal unit as his blood sugar level is low. But he weighs a little under 6lbs and I shall look forward to seeing him as soon as maybe.

Over the summer the Library tries to organize a visit or two to other libraries if possible.

Today we went to a small college about an hour away that specialises in horticulture, aquaculture, agriculture, animal husbandry and lots more. Lovely little library with around 30000 volumes and lots of natural light. Nice folk to show us around and they put on a great lunch.

The only snag was that by it's very nature a lot of the day was outdoors and the weather forecasters' predictions for the day were proved right: rain, rain and more rain. Just when you thought it was beginning to brighten it suddenly got heavier.

Still, seeing the archer fish spitting at their food and a pair of the most delightful red pandas you've ever seen (at close range) were two real highlights of the day that made it all worthwhile.

Started doing some weeding today.

I can't look at all the books over the summer, but am concentrating this time round on civil engineering which looks like it's not been done for a while. Going to start by visiting every book that's not been borrowed in ten years.

Of course, at TheOldPlace it was entirely my decision. Here I have to get the academics involved and allow them a veto which complicates the process and makes more work. It will be interesting to see if that's a positive experience and useful or just an aggravation!

Makes a change to get away from the PC though and get my hands dirty on some real live books (and their dust).

I may have mentioned on a previous occasion that we (faculty librarians, plus our boss and our assistants) get together with our opposite numbers over in the academic skills unit sometimes. Just an opportunity to liaise, swap notes, share projects and problems, make sure we're coordinating any similar things we might be working on.

Another such morning today and once again I was struck by the way that if we didn't do this, there'd be a lot of reinvention of the wheel going on. Today we were joined by an online course developer from one of the faculties and she was impressed by how much we were - jointly -already doing and how much she (and presumably her equivalents in other departments) could benefit from swapping notes.

I could see this growing...

I've visited a nearby Catholic church four times this week. They hold a mass at 12.15 every day for half an hour. This is not my normal church or even my normal denomination but I'm glad I got over any trepidation I might have felt.

I've not joined in the Eucharist. I've been forward with everyone else but keeping my arms crossed in front of me to indicate you just want a blessing rather than the bread - sorry, wafer. But in fact I spoke to one of the staff there and he took the pragmatic view that I would have done, which was that it would be fine to join in if I take it in my own church. My boss is actually the chair of their pastoral committee and she said the same thing. But I wasn't sure I wasn't doing it for the wrong reasons, so I refrained. Perhaps another time.

But it was a marvellous space for quiet and contemplation. Even though the liturgy was sometimes identical to what I'm familiar with and sometimes just a little different, it was easy to pray and listen to God (and find that he spoke there as well!). You could genuinely sense the devotion. Right in the heart of the city, in the middle of a busy day, in a week in which I really needed such a space.

Thank you to the friend who guided me through my first visit and most certainly stretched my comfort zones.

Chance today to visit the new Second Life presence of TheOldPlace.

I have to say I'm really really impressed. Very imaginative and appealing. It draws you in and gets you exploring and wanting to find more. With a 'bubble transport' system that I've not seen before, a proto-library presence, catwalks for the fashion students, nightclubs, a swan pond, helter-skelters and all sorts, it's really lovely.

And apparently more to come from the library in the shape of an underwater maze and seahorses!

My thanks to S and Z who showed me round (or should that be their avatars, E and Z?)

Spent the day in a training course on 'communication' which was very good. Possibly a bit too interactive for my liking. Indeed at one point it all got a bit intense when in trios we were taking turns at observing, mentoring and being mentored. All was fine until I was taking on the latter role and picked a management issue that I was evidently too emotionally engaged with! The other two were fine with it (and I think secretly quite pleased that they may have been able to help with the problem), but I found it quite draining.

I thought the subject overall was quite amusing given that I spent the in between bits of the day trying to resend an important email that kept bouncing back.

Farewell at lunchtime today to a friend I've not known for very long at all.
Farewell this evening to one of the chaplains who I've known for somewhat longer.

Doesn't get any easier. Indeed parting seems to become ever more of an exquisite pain as I get older. Joy at the memories, sadness at the separation. But surely life's been enriched by knowing both of these people. I can only hope they feel the same way in return rather than 'phew - glad to move on'.

Safe travelling and take care.

A few of us (including our boss) met to swap notes on the various faculty conferences or bits of conference we'd attended last week. It was pleasing to see that firstly it was indeed acceptable to spend time getting to more than just my own faculty - there were interesting points from all of them.
And secondly it was good to come up with a flipchart full of action points from the various sessions we'd really enjoyed (or not) as the case might be.

I think I'm now down to do something on the Deep Web after Wednesday's disappointment! Just remember it's supposed to be some 500 x bigger than the web (which I knew) rather than 10 x (which is what my tongue said).

First proper day in the office all week which meant there was a lot of catching up to do. Difficult to get into it though knowing it's Friday already.

Still, no team meetings of any sort today so at least there were no distractions like that.

And it was also our book group meeting tonight. Been going almost a year and tonight was the discussion on the title I selected way back when. Chinua Achebe's _Things Fall Apart_. Unfortunately, no one had enjoyed it. Even me. It was just too depressing. And it's the first book that *someone* at least hasn't liked.

Still, they were very gracious about it. I think buying the round of drinks probably helped.

So, today was the turn of the Technology Faculty Learning and Teaching day.

Good time keeping in the morning but a bit lax in the afternoon and a later finish meant the day seemed to drag on. Isn't it typical that the most boring speaker (in everyone's opinion not just mine) is the one that over runs?!

Great talk on using humor in math teaching that may cross over to the kinds of things I do.

But highlight for me was a foreign national turning up who I've met a couple of times before and being asked to translate Acronyms and any difficult words. Made the day much more interesting (and kept me on my toes). Although I nearly caused trouble when as a joke I spelled out DVD and nearly caused a suffocation as laughter was stifled.

This week each of our faculties has a Learning & Teaching conference. I've attended the Technology one before but I don't recall hitting any of the other ones. Not that they're not intersting, it's just fitting them in.

Well I've missed the last couple of days thanks to leave, but today was the Science Faculty's turn and particularly because I'd been asked to present something, I thought I'd attend the whole thing.

It was very good. Aside from the usual complaint of having to choose between two sessions you wanted to see both of. Twice. Full marks to the organizers for keeping the day nice and tight. (Starting at 10.30 finishing at 3 and always on time.) Nice slot in the afternoon about the similarities between stand-up comedians and lecturing - and what lecturers can learn from the former. Good slot in the morning on using more interaction with students even in big classes. You can improve retention of the material from something dire like 20% to around 50%.

My slot in the middle of the day seemed to go well given that the three of us hadn't really rehearsed beyond a quick sketch of what we thought we might do. People seemed interested and I even managed to tout the article that S from TheOldPlace and I wrote about alternative libraries. Good to be an interloper with the Science Faculty and be able to point to some research and peer-reviewed material in support of the 'fun' stuff.

Gravid sister's farewell (for the moment) do now so I must run...

Off several days next week and conferences when I'm technically "in"... so don't expect many posts.

Destination: information
Our library staff development day today. Training on Information Literacy without mentioning those two words. Set up by our inhouse training lady we had 5 teams of 6 each given a holiday to plan. (From two center trips to Russia to hen night shopping sprees in New York to slightly more local ecoholidays).

In the morning each team collected the info they needed (and had a briefing from the map librarian on his resources including printing vast posters) and in the afternoon they had to create a poster of whatever size they wanted and then do a presentation.

The presentation wasn't so much on their holiday as in their process of finding out what they needed.

Meanwhile some of us weren't allowed to 'play' because we'd be detailed off to be various experts (I was an "IT consultant") which meant roaming around the different teams and helping, offering advice, and resisting the urge to tell them I'd put them on a 3 day waiting list for assistance.

Then our boss wrapped it up with some theory, learning points and discussion.

It was interesting watching library staff from all grades reverting to student stereotype and almost exclusively relying on Google - despite all sorts of other material that was available. But everyone had a great day and some terrific posters were produced.

Two days of working with my email have reduced my inbox to just 5! It's difficult to describe the weight that feels as though it's been lifted. It'll start piling up again but just for the moment it feels good.

No meetings today! Even though it's Friday!

been great to catch up on all those emails that have been lurking at the back of my consciousness for a while. Not easy to answer, not really ones I could just ignore...

Also expected to come up with a better workshop title than 'Good Googling' to see if we can't drum up more student attendance next year. 'Great Googling' didn't seem like much of a change. 'Googling with gusto' didn't really appeal. Something along the lines of a "long title" like 'All you ever wanted to know about Google but were afraid to ask' was ruled out for advertising reasons (this workshop is one of a series and none of the others were labelled like that).

I'm still of the opinion that we could use classic films and their posters to attract attention (assuming it's ok under copyright as parody or fair-use or something). Perhaps I could do 'The Google, the Bad and the Ugly' as I spend some time on Google's censorship deals with China or utlization of things like the fascist press for (part of) its news gathering.

Any suggestions more than welcome...

Why oh why oh why do I find it so hard to organize even a wet paper bag?

How hard can it be?

Few weeks ago one of our database providers phoned offering to do some training for us. I could manage to arrange myself and my assistant so it was worth the trainer coming. Even managed to email another library colleague over in another building in case she was interested. But what with conferences and other busyness didn't get round to emailing the Faculty rep or the rest of my colleagues in the Library till this morning. Not surprising the academics didn't come. But just to gratify me, 6 other colleagues from the Library came and made the 90 minutes really worthwhile. Including the woman I'd not thought could come because she was on leave - she came in 'specially.

Phew. But really, next time...

Attended a day conference today on creativity.

Not like the last one I went to 18 months back which was very 'serious'.

This one started with a woman in a bag 'dancing' on the floor very slowly. Quite compelling. And then had poetry and even a song or two all as a 15 minute welcome to the conference.

Great keynote speech from one of four acting brothers.

Good opportunities to network and discuss how and if creativity can be measured (the practical upshot was 'not easily' but there were things that could contribute to a kind of measuring process).

Once again I felt very much the 'outsider' as a librarian amongst all these creative types (the rest of the delegates were either artists of some sort or members of the creative technology faculty here at the university). But that paid off as they were pleased to attract what they saw as the creatively challenged! (I didn't tell them about my extra-curricular activities that would count as performance or art or both). But did get a chance to talk about 'guerilla creativity' which one delegate was very taken with and make sure they knew that the Library wasn't completely uncreative.

Great day, well organized and more useful than my boss thought it might be!

Mini conference cum workshop today on Second Life held here on campus. To my shame (muddling it up with something else) I thought I'd mentioned its existence to former colleagues at TheOldPlace. My apologies to them for missing passing on the news; and my apologies to those here running the thing for not spreading the word more diligently.

It was interesting - scripting workshop very useful. Lunch was good. :-)

But the highlight of the day was the visitor from TheOldPlace (who'd heard about it from elsewhere!) who showed off the as yet not public space that TheOldPlace is building in Second Life. It looks absolutely fabulous and I'm very envious. It makes the speed at which we're doing anything look positively glacial. But then apparently they've farmed out the actual work to a foreign whizz which would explain a lot. But the design is great and it will be fascinating to see how it works in practice - 'specially the Library bit. Best of luck to them with it though. Even if we caught up I fear our vision might not look as attractive!

To a lunchtime presentation today based on this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ljbI-363A2Q

(only without the music which rather lessened it's emotional impact)

Or available as PowerPoint from:
http://entrepreneur.iiee.org/new/about.php
(under 'Shift Happens' towards the bottom right).

While I'd seen it before a couple of times on YouTube, it was good to be reminded of it and the discussion it provoked afterwards about how it affects us in University teaching was interesting. But no real 'answers'.

Nothing to write about today except for the delights of a long lunch celebrating someone's birthday.

The only downer being the number of non-work related friends and relations invited as well which meant polite conversation with people I'm unlikely to see again (well, till next year or something) and feeling a bit cut off due to table arrangements from people it would have been great to be able to chat to.

Who thought it would be a good idea to have a meeting at 4pm on a Friday afternoon? Especially one on how the loans team deal with boards of examiners and students who may or may not have left and/or be in default over borrowed items.

It's not often I find such things a yawn. But permission to do so once?

After a holiday yesterday, great to come to work with both nothing in my diary and knowing I've got two more days off this week (theater trips and late nights involved) before the end of my two day week on Friday. Might even get something done.

Bitty sort of day with a training session on a digital mapping service, a lecture on security, a talk on planning for personal development, a meeting with my boss on progress and developments and another meeting on the perils of Facebook.

Sadly, the only meeting of the day I'd been particularly looking forward - the book group after work - has been cancelled/postponed because so many haven't finished the book (it's 1000 pages) or didn't like the book so didn't bother with it. [1] Irritating as it's the first book of the group that I've actually enjoyed. (Suzanna Clarke's oddly intriguing _Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell_).

[1] So much for my dutiful plowing through 7 previous books which I didn't much care for just so I could be part of the discussion and feel I'd committed to the group.

Funny sort of day.

We occasionally do late nights here. Usually a Friday every term or so. But recently a colleague has some changes of circumstance at home so for a few months we're filling in and doing an even more 'odd' late night. Means I'm here till 8.45pm which isn't great. But as I had the morning off instead it's not been too bad.

Still, after nearly 4 hours on the enquiry desk I'm about ready to head homewards. Shame the buses have long since stopped for the evening...

Trip out today to the local branch meeting of our professional group.

80 minutes away by rail and 5 of us going. You'd have thought it might quite social. But no, between us we set off for 3 different trains! My boss apparently likes leaving things till the last moment with no margin for error. One of our number was on the committee and was going a little earlier. The other two chose the most sensible train timewise. I plumped for going a bit earlier to keep A company. With laptop in tow I can work anywhere - 'specially if there's mains power to hand. But fate had the last laugh. We got to the station to find our train was cancelled - half an hour's wait reading the article my boss has had published (bit unthrilling to be honest, but worthy) and then the other two caught up with us...

The branch meeting was holding an AGM (about as thrilling as such things can be - but only 15 minutes so not too painful), but also a briefing from a recruitment company on "getting that promotion". Not that I'm looking to do anything of the sort - or expecting much along those lines - but it had some useful pointers.

Best bit of the day was randomly meeting someone I knew at the end of the day who could give me a lift home instead of hanging around for a bus for the best part of an hour.

Had to show off the pre-entry site to a Library team this morning as the lady who did the actual work isn't here today. Good response as people were very positive about it. A few revisions to send in but nothing major. Couple of typos which may have slipped through from us in the first place.

But it suddenly occurred to me as I thought about what it looked like now (transformed from the PowerPoint mock up) that what's really been created is the visual version of the alternative library from TheOldPlace that S and I built and wrote up in a professional journal some years back. Sigh. Am I going round in circles or is this development?

I wonder if we could put a donut machine in a picture somewhere? :-)

Smidgeon of excitement today when I visited a building across the park to see the work that's been done on the Library bit of the pre-entry project I may have mentioned.

This is a project to create a suite of web pages for students about to join the University in the summer before the start. Give them info about the uni, their course - and of course the Library.

Inspired by a Dr from down the coast who'd invented some fun games to engage the students at her university (I think I mentioned her session as being a highlight of the learning and teaching conference I attended here last December), we really didn't want out bit to be boring and tedious.

So after brainstorming with a small group here in the Library, I was left with trying to create a mockup of what we wanted in PowerPoint that would look pictorial/graphicy and encourage 'exploration'.

Some techie web people have turned our 'vision' such as it was into something that looks great and is easily the best bit of the web suite - in our not so humble opinions! Well, it's fun at any rate and not just more text!

Day off without touching the computer (partly enforced) - but probably very good for me.



Spent some of today looking through the PowerPoint slides brought back by a senior colleague who went to a day of presentations by ebook publishers and the like. He was contributing his own presentation on our perspective as academic institution users.

Although it's hard to judge the tone from just the slides you can't help feeling that even now as the publishers boast about how they're getting in touch with users that they're only just beginning to get anywhere near thinking about what users actually want. Our usage is (apparently) pretty impressive compared to other universities - but I still think we've yet to see how ebooks could be used once all the technology/rights issues stop getting in the way.

Full day today including showing round some design students interested in the design aspects of the building (and getting the University Librarian to take them through the process from his point of view) , a somewhat surreal friday meeting (aren't they all?), and highlight of the day going to a lunchtime thing with a metaverse researcher who was excellent - and even thought I might be able to contribute something to research on motion sickness in Second Life!

I also saw for the first time, one of those "$100" (aren't they $200 now?) laptops that are supposed to be great for developing/third world countries. It looked great (if odd) and although limited in memory was very usable and the screen was better than I'd expected. Be interesting to see what comes of them.

No blog on Monday. Day off.

Well. The workshop went about as well as might be expected.

The quiz *was* too hard but I suggested doing it in pairs which helped. We ran through it as a memory test and then turned on the computers to try tackling it with the pages in front of everyone (even then there were difficulties).

Still, it seems to have improved people's awareness of certain features of our web site and it certainly generated discussion on design, layout, expectations and so forth. Which I guess was the point.

I don't *think* too many people were utterly demoralized...

Trying to prepare for a little workshop I'm leading tomorrow on 'How well do you know your web page'.

I started by trying to create a massively complicated (and far too small to read on the handout) graphical representation of our library web pages.

Gave that up as a bad job and created a quiz instead.

But I've just tested it on the University Librarian and am now worried it's much too difficult to be any fun for anyone. Oh dear.

The swamp, otherwise known as my desk (and virtual email desk) is back again.

Astonishing how quickly it builds up.
Astonishing how much of my day it consumes if I let it (and if I don't I'm back to the building up again).

Ah well. The sun is out, surely summer is on its way and things should quiet down a bit.

At work late tonight getting caught up which is great.

Sounds of a student carnival going on the park next door which makes me feel as though I'm missing out on a party. I might have to wander over later to hear the Brazilian batala band.

But still lots to do. Sad that it is being here on a Friday night...

Great staff training session this morning from H on databases for the visual arts. Not only was it well thought out and clearly explained, but her slides were really attractively designed as well. I mean I know she looks after the art and design area, but I wish I had a tenth the design ability!

Visit today from a couple of our 'colloborative partners' at a college a couple of hours drive away. H and I gave them a tour and showed them the electronic side of things which they can access (and show their students how to access).

Very sociable.

Followed immediately by a birthday lunch for a couple of colleagues and fortunately just enough alcohol to get me through some humiliation in the afternoon.

I managed to not only answer a student enquiry completely incorrectly, but was then told by R - one of our loans team - the correct answer. That would have been fine only I didn't know about a peculiar 'quirk' of the database involved and told R what I thought was the 'correct' answer.

Fortunately, I didn't actually give up at that point, discovered my mistake and was graciously received when I went to grovel in apology. But maybe we could just switch jobs and I could be spared being stressed about all the email that's piling up while I show people round, take 90 minute lunches and also fit in another visitor who'd dropped in for something else entirely but by chance I could introduce to our map librarian who shares a common interest.

At least today I had nothing happening in the evening so I could stay late and work in the relative peace of just the rain tapping on the window and dripping in the newly acquired bucket.

Yes, I'm now the proud owner of one of the leaks that the old part of the building is renowned for. I don't know why it's suddenly manifesting itself now, but I shall make sure the University Librarian gets some of the water damaged paperwork just to make the point.

With rather a lot of annual leave to use up before the end of August I took yesterday off. Although I'm stressed by the work that's piling up, I was glad of a day off doing very little after a weekend with in-laws.

On the upside French rellies were visiting which made it fun and I managed to beat father-in-law at chess which is a once in 20 or 30 game occurrence. Or less. Very unusual.

The new campus cards have arrived. We had photos done a while back. Now they're here.

I must admit mine is much improved. I guess I was in shock when the first one was taken - it was my first few hours in a new job. Now I'm not so embarrassed to wear the thing. Though I can't say I like the vivid lime green of the card in place of the more subdued green of the old one. I'm sure I won't notice soon though.

I may have mentioned way way back that that's one difference between the library here and TheOldPlace. Here staff are much more inclined to keep campus cards on them at all times round their neck on chain or cord. It's been a while now (nearly two years!) but I don't recall many doing that at TheOldPlace. Maybe no one.

They haven't yet implemented the proximity detection that's supposed to be on its way - so these new ones are still swipe access. But mine seems to be letting me in, still, to the huge range of places I'm 'cleared' for. Some, apparently, have had the wrong numbers printed on them preventing borrowing from the Library. Great!

Great coffee morning this morning as a colleague who's just returned from leave presented pictures (and thoughts) from his travels in India. If only my staff development offerings were as well attended - we had to switch venue when numbers got up around the 30 mark.

One moving section of his talk was the images of kids from an orphanage dealing with those who've lost parents working with salt. More information here:
http://www.akaashganga.org/

My lunchtime workshop on Google today. Using it well (or not using it all or with caution). It's quite a fun session and it's run 'hands on' so attendees can follow along - or do their own thing.

Not sure attendance has been great at this series this year and mine was no exception - just 5 today. First time we've added to our advertising by using our Facebook page and blog, but I don't think that helped any. It's early days.

However, those who came seemed to appreciate it and engaged with the discussions and puzzles and so on. If nothing else they get a nice lot of color handouts!

Posting today from some training on Toolbook. I think my boss volunteered me for these two days when I wasn't at a meeting or something...

It's software http://www.plattecanyon.com/instructor.aspx which allows you to develop computer based training which can either run on the web 'as is' or be put into our Virtual Learning Environment. The Library's interest comes from wanting to build some information literacy nuggets and wondering if this would be a good tool to use.

I'm wondering if a hour's demo to a wider library audience wouldn't be more efficient than two days of me getting to grips with the software and then trying to report back on whether it would be useful or not.

Still, I'm here with 5 or 6 others (some of the more 'important' people come and go) and at least R, a colleague from the computing department, and I can sit at the back end of the room and check our email when things get slow. I've been told off by the (external) instructor a couple of times for doing my own thing when we were specifically told we could try our own examples and then what I have on my laptop screen doesn't match what he's trying to show us. Sigh.

All that wouldn't be so bad except for some of the brilliantly unintuitive bits of the software interface. I appreciate it's powerful and can do some clever things, but all the same...

I wonder how much Microsoft is to blame by getting us to expect software to behave in certain ways. Whatever you might feel about the company, they've certainly standardized a lot of our way of working with software and even if Microsoft products themselves can have unintuitive bits for complete newbies, for those that have been around for a while it's a least familiar.

OK, back to thinking up some multiple choice questions to get the software to grade and comment on.

Senior team meeting cancelled this morning! Time to catch up... yay!

Until of course all the enquiries hit me...

... ah well.

Coffee morning this morning on 21 moons of the solar system which was really interesting (I scored well on the quiz!) and delivered of course by my office colleague who is into such things.

Then onto a workshop for three hours about designing good student handouts from one of my favorite internal presenters. Excellent. Learned lots, was inspired, and was able to contribute in a tiny way.

But with all this and lots of student 'interruptions', I'm really not getting a lot done!

Hardly a moment in the office today what with enquiry desk work, tutor center time, tours, and a committee meeting in the afternoon. So of course work is still piling up round me as I don't get on with it...

To the 'installation' of our new chancellor today. A lovely actress (and writer and director). Very weird and not something I've done before. A 50 minute thing in a nearby theater followed by reception/party afterwards.

The formal part was about as close to a secular church service as you could get. Opening 'worship' from an excellent choral group, a 'reading' (i.e. 5 minute talk by the President) reminding us of past events, and a 'sermon' by the new chancellor. Not much liturgy I suppose excepting everyone on stage signing a formal warrant or something.

Amongst the 'welcomes' were half a dozen international students representing their cultures and faiths. One of whom I happened to know as I've spent some time with him on several occasions. So very gratifying when he mentioned the library as being a great help.

The reception afterwards was very jolly with live jazz band (and excellent drummer) though not quite the 'lunch' I thought we'd been invited to. Just an endless succession of canapes and drinks.

Funny kind of thing to go to and arguably a waste of three hours in some colleagues' view, but for me it was a great opportunity to see the university with it's formal (and not so formal) hat on, to see us as part of a larger community and to be encouraged that what we do is appreciated by students and worthwhile.

Back froma a week's vacation. Only about 400 emails to deal with. Fortunately 200 of them could be deleted as spam - I must have words with the IT guys.

Wish I feel I'd made a dent in them by the end of the day...

... ah well.

I appear to have survived being a Roman.

But I fear it was only by the skin of my teeth.

A fun quiz evening I think, but once again we were doing well all evening (2nd) only to be pipped into 3rd place at the end. By the other Library team (again). And once again, they took first place for costume and we took second. (We suspect it wasn't so much the excellence of their outfits - which were ok, but the popularity of their French resistance tv comedy).

But we definitely had the better food!

Speaking of which, this might clear up some misconceptions:
http://www.straightdope.com/columns/021101.html

I'm away all next week - so come back in 10 days time or so.

Uni quiz night again tonight. For whatever reason I was volunteered to play the part of Frankie Howard "a distinctive English comedian and comic actor whose career spanned six decades." says:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frankie_Howard
as we all dress up as Romans.

It's a bit worrying really. It started as something of a joke but given a choice of two other guys in the Library it was decided I was 'campest'. Now admittedly I could be terribly butch and still come out as 'most camp' if the other two are even more so... but I don't think that's what they meant!

Then it degenerated and they (by this I mean staff room tittletattlers) decided there was no male in the Library more camp.

Oh dear. It's an achievement of sorts I suppose. And I can hardly complain given that I'm a librarian in the first place. Librarianship isn't noted for it's high ratio of male to female staff. But it would have been nice for my legacy to have been *something* else...

OK, off to don my toga.

I've set up monthly meeting with my assistant to make me look at the budget situation. Hopefully this will force me to grapple with the numbers - and more importantly what to do with them.

But somehow - although I'm reasonably numerate - as soon as you stick a currency symbol in front of any kind of figure I begin to feel I'm translating out of some very alien language.

TheOldPlace had a simpler system in many ways. If, by the end of the financial year, you hadn't spent the money you lost it. We all got through our book budgets for certain! Better yet we were sometimes given extra money from parts of the Uni which hadn't spent their allocation. The only way of getting through it in the time available was to hit a really huge bookstore a couple of hours away and literally pluck titles from the shelves. Great fun.

But we don't do that here. :-( We can carry money over which causes lots of problems down the line. But with a bit of hard labour for three hours or so, I've spent over $10,000 on books today.

Spent today in a workshop on cultural awareness.

Having had the privilege of travelling fairly widely I was curious to see what I could learn that might have helped. Not that I get to travel so much these days. I was somewhat surprised to find that I was still the most travelled and the most language articulate. [1]

But it wasn't so much about other cultures as getting us to look at our national "culture" for want of a better word. Especially its idiosyncracies.

And getting us to look at ourselves as alien, will hopefully make us better able to help international students struggling to be strangers in a strange land.

Useful.

[1] Not that I claim fluency in anything (including English on a bad day) but I scored well for smatterings of all sorts. Hausa, Finnish, bits of written Chinese. The more esoteric the better in my book.

Any levity in my being this week is probably entirely down to the fact that I've reduced my email inbox to one screen (just 12 emails in fact!) - first time in months. The weight that feels lifted is astonishing. Partly down to hard work, partly down to a quiet Easter and partly down to my office colleague being off on leave for a bit! (So many fewer interruptions and no blow-by-blow recounting of last night's tv, her latest genealogical research, or how she's been partying with the stars!)

Now if only I could do the same with my drawer in the physical world. And my shelf.

And then all my 'reading'.

Out at lunchtime today doing more metaverse evangelism. The same academics from the computing department as last time round. (The third is in China lucky thing!) Once again I took a projector with me so as well as the main screen we had a side screen showing my viewpoint of the mini-tour. Worked well - though I wish I could get my laptop to display both on its screen and the projector screen simultaneously - there must be something I need to tweak.

Anyway this time it was to the IT crowd. Bit scary. Aren't they supposed to 'know' about these things? I was expecting to be somewhat out of my depth with technical questions and the like but it turns out I wasn't. In fact, somewhat surprisingly/depressingly/pleasingly I was able to contribute and respond and sound as if I knew what I was talking about. Indeed the scariness didn't come from the difficulty of the questions, it came more from the left field nature of the questions. Aren't these people supposed to be responsible for our IT systems and have a bit of computing knowledge if not actual geekiness? One of the questions, for example, was why students might want to use SL instead of Facebook. Then again I managed to get words like 'asynchronous' into the answer which is always going to sound good.

Gary
Metaverse Evangelist

http://www.criticsrant.com/bb/reading_level.aspx
Reveals that this blog has a Junior High School reading level.

I'm not sure if that's a good thing. I'd hate to be difficult to read, but does it mean that I'm dumbing down or not utilizing the English language in an interesting way?

Meeting this morning with a new(ish) member of staff who has been employed specifically to look at the statistics we can get from, for example, database providers. Hopefully this will give us a much better idea of usage (or more worryingly lack of usage) to inform buying and promotional decisions. Be interesting to see what comes of it.

And with that rather dull and worthy post, this blog is shutting down for four days for the Easter break. Have a good one and see you next Tuesday.

Definitely a winding down for Easter sort of feeling around the Library at the moment. Some disappearing on leave already, those of us left actually able to get on with some work for a change. Still, I don't appear to have made much of a dent on the in tray or email. Just debating whether to take some of the reading I need to do away with me as we travel to visit parents-in-law for a couple of days. Nah, maybe not.

Getting a handful of enquiries about the Library via our Facebook page these days. Not so many from the blog...

Off to see the University Librarian today in fall out from my faculties library committee meeting last week. All the things I told them he reinforced and I was right in my surmise that they're operating at the wrong level.

Still, it sounds as if he's up for coming to respond to them in person next time so maybe for a change it won't be me getting it in the neck!

Day off in lieu of being at the conference last weekend. So not posting today.

Oh wait, I just did. Bother.

I was supposed to be doing a coffee morning on mind mapping this morning, but my boss asked me if I could, instead, do a report on the conference in Second Life which I attended last weekend.

Without a lot of time to prepare I managed to cobble something together which seemed to go down ok. Very glad now I took lots of snapshots which helped. Majored on how it was to attend such a virtual conference and also on the session presented by former colleagues from TheOldPlace. (Well done S and Z).

Unfortunately I didn't time myself very carefully and had too much to fit into the time alloted (well, actually I was allotted an hour but out of habit everyone turned up at the usual time which only left me 40 minutes), so I didn't manage to leave time for questions or discussion which was a shame. But although I feel somewhat ambivalent about Second Life still, apparently I came across as something of an enthusiast. Not sure where that came from.

Great lunchtime presentation from someone I saw at the Creativity conference I attended a couple of years back.

He's an academic who decided he needed a change and branched out into stand up comedy.

Now he speaks about the connections between standup and seminars and how similar they are and how academics can/need to change. Particularly as students pay fees and become ever more demanding about what they get.

Funny - but also very thought provoking.

Got into a minor fracas at the ferry yesterday. I dared to stand up to some bullying and obnoxious behaviour. But a cop arrived and gave me my first ever Miranda warning. Bit daunting that.

Needless to say I'm now cross and upset with myself, fearing it might go to court (but it will be 6 months before I know for sure it's not), and not sleeping/concentrating well. Stupid, stupid, stupid. 'nuff said.

Over the weekend I attended a virtual conference in Second Life. Which was fine. Only cost work $30 for the attendance fee.
http://www.alliancelibraries.info/virtualworlds/

Fascinating time although sometimes as surreal as ever. Not sure what I learned but here are some memorable moments:

- discovered I was in a tiny minority not using voice and thus some sessions I was effectively 'deaf' as I couldn't tell what was happening unless someone bothered to type what was said. Kudos to those presenters who bothered to arrange for voice and text.

- went to a session on how stuff to do with Abraham Lincoln was being simulated. At the end of the talk Lincoln himself arrived.

- sound sculpture in the exhibition area was curiously fun

- picked up just as much 'stuff' at the exhibition as I might have done in real life. And it's about as organized

- missed both the keynote presentations thanks to technical issues :-(

Another disappointment today as I sat through a presentation on Web 2.0 by an external speaker. Given that I have to do my own training on this, I thought I might pick up some useful pointers. Unfortunately, it was more about a particular implementation of a virtual learning environment at another university - so not that helpful. Though I quite enjoyed Googling the presenter's powerpoint slides as she spoke and nicking an idea regarding the ipod scroll wheel as an image.

Thursday morning training session this morning. Supposed to be on science databases as we start a series on each subject area to get a bet idea of what's available. (I struggle to keep up with just the Tech ones, never mind the other 300 odd).

Disappointly the session spent more time covering what databases are in general than it did the three examples it provided at the end. I'd hoped for more of an overview of what science databases there were, how they related to each other and what might be used when. Ah well.

It will be my turn in a few weeks and I doubt I'll do better.

Hmmm, finance are struggling with paying for my attendance at the virtual conference on Saturday. Perhaps I shouldn't be surprised. Though I feigned it well. Surely this is their problem not mine - I'm not short of things to do.

In any case I can't see an invoice getting sent from the organizers and then processed and sent back in time for the weekend, so I guess I'd better explore alternative options for paying. Maybe the computing academic leading the Second Life project I'm connected with has some spare Linden Dollars kicking around. It's only 8000 of things.

(That's $30 for those who don't know the Linden is about as valuable as a B-ark leaf. Don't ask.)

Well, that's a bit scary. Serves me right for finally updating this blog. And for writing it at work.

One of my present rather than former colleagues, R, wandered into the office while I was putting the finishing touches to yesterday's entry and spotted the name of it before I removed it from the screen. (Drat this fishbowl of an office!)

It probably wouldn't have mattered except she knew I wrote a blog that wasn't public and had apparently spent some time a while back looking for it. Armed with the title it wasn't such a hard job to find it apparently.

So welcome (sort of) to a new reader. I can't help but feel you'll be very disappointed.

Everyone else: please let me know if you think I'm now self-censoring, or changing how I write...

The chaplaincy run an occasional event on Mondays which featured myself and two of the computing academics today. A demonstration and tour of Second Life which was fun. It was fairly general although we did have a particular section where we looked at some of the religious possibilities. From the chaplaincy's own SL area to mosques, temples and churches.

One of the academics was projecting her view onto the wall, I had another projector putting my view onto the wall (slightly smaller) beside her, and the third member of the gang travelled around with us from his laptop.

Scarily the University Librarian decided to attend (so I wonder if I really should have told my story about my brief visit to a pole dancing club??!) but with a range of knowledge on the subject in the audience it seemed to go down well and provoked lots of questions and interest. And I realized I was back being a metaverse evangelist once again. Perhaps I should get a card printed up.

Usual fortnightly Friday afternoon meeting today. A bit more irksome than usual however as I was off on a course Friday night/Saturday and could have used stepping out of work rather more promptly. At 4.05 I thought we were set for another hour of meeting, but in fact it did manage to wrap itself up in fifteen minutes and I just managed to leave by 4.30. (Which *just* gave me time to swim at the lovely hotel pool when I arrived.)

Unfortunately, however, I managed to break my toe turning round awkwardly. Great. What a pain, what a hassle, what a clumsy oaf. I shouldn't be allowed out.

Another Thursday morning training session - this time on our map library which moved over to this building when our last 'outpost' finally shut down last summer. It was a session that was evidently in huge demand and all of the ground floor wanted to go - including all the folk who'd normally be on the enquiry desk at that time.

I decided it probably would be more helpful for those who spend a lot more time on the enquiry desk than I do, to know how to answer queries so I (sort of) offered to sit on the desk and allow them all to go. I guess as 'team leader' for these two years that kind of falls to me. But anyone who knows my personality type will understand how much I felt I was "missing out".

On the up side though, I did manage to answer all five of the questions I got and the first one I couldn't manage came just as everyone emerged from the briefing and I could pass over the query to those who knew better.

I should have had some (80+) masters students to see today.

Fortunately on Monday the academic involved phoned to ask if I was "all set for tomorrow?" (i.e. Tuesday).

"Tuesday?" I said, recognizing his voice. "I've got you down as a two hour slot on Wednesday. In pen. For some time now."

Well, whoever fouled up and although I wouldn't put it past me I'm normally inordinately careful over such arrangements and always verbally or via email echo back the booking to be doubly sure, at least his phone call enabled the error to be spotted in time. Or I'd have spent a puzzled half hour wondering where they all were this afternoon and they'd have been waiting for me yesterday. Close one.

Quite a busy and 'stretching' day.

Someone at another University had read my article on our new extension and asked if a small group of their staff could come and visit as they're about to "renew and refresh" their library.

It fell to me to arrange it which I reckon is on the limits of my organizational ability. Still, I suggested a timetable, persuaded the Uni Librarian to give a talk on the process of the requirements planning, the architecture competition and the build; persuaded a couple of other colleagues to do a presentation on the revision of the website; and (only at the last minute) inveigled several colleagues to come and consume a "free lunch" with us so it wasn't me talking all of the rest of the time. I'd thought scheduling 90 minutes for a tour was possibly too much. It turned out to be far too little and I felt as though I spent the entire day chivvying them around.

But they seemed to enjoy it and claimed that they found it helpful. As ever it was interesting seeing our place through fresh eyes. Only a shame that we can't be a fly on the wall as they debrief.

First day in my diary for ages without a formal engagement. And what a relief that is. At last a chance to catch up with the seriously overloaded desk and email intray that I'm accumulating. Our IT lot are enforcing the mailbox quotas they've been warning us about but they're quite tight and those of us who, rather than printing stuff out, keep a fair bit of email and/or subscribe to high-volume mailing lists don't have any easy task of getting down to the quota limit. How much is a hard-drive? Could I buy them one for me?!

(Apparently not, after an earlier whinge the University Librarian did actually ask this at some higher meeting where the IT folk were present. And was told "it's more complicated than that". I'm sure it is; but I still think the tail is wagging the dog!)

Had to present the beginnings of the work I've done on a project for pre-entry students today. What little I'd knocked together of a pretend suite of web pages in PowerPoint seemed to go down well. If only there was really time to work on it properly.

But away with the family for the weekend, I knocked off at lunchtime (seemed a fair trade for Wednesday when I was here till 7.15pm).

Some of our once a week morning training sessions aren't so much training but social. This morning's talk was from a loans team member who has recently visited Thailand. Great stories, great pictures and interesting insight into an alien culture. My few days there a couple of decades ago didn't do it justice (which I knew at the time), but it was fun to revisit virtually.

The academic who arranged the mindmapping lecture also persuaded me to offer a workshop this afternoon demonstrating the software we have available (two different packages - not to mention the examples I've produced using PowerPoint) and providing an opportunity to have 'hands on' with PC/software or to explore the colored pencil option...

But while you can lead a horse to water, you can't make it drink and though I waited a good while, not a singe student showed up!

Training session today from our biggest (by far) ebook providers. 37,000 titles.

Discovered we're his example university as he trails round the country selling the product. Apparently we're the biggest user bar one (a uni with a lot of campuses abroad, with presumably limited library facilities). Not only that but rather than the average usage of such collections running to about 50% of the titles getting at least a view, apparently we're up at 70% which is good.

Hopefully with the new data mining post we've just employed we'll start getting some really useful/interesting statistics out of what's on offer from this and many other databases.

I'm still not convinced ebooks have really 'arrived' though when they must be read on a PC connected to the internet (though that's frequently becoming easier to manage!).

Bit neurotic about a lecture I had to give this morning. It was on mindmapping. I'm familiar with the topic and have taught on it before at TheOldPlace, but it's been a while. And this was to 80+ students. And I'd spent the weekend trying and failing to hunt down a folder full of lovely examples of mind maps I'd collected over the years (I suspect I threw them out in some attempt at a clear out - maybe between jobs).

Always difficult to judge how it's gone - especially when someone sitting in the middle of the second row of one of our largest lecture theatres has quite evidently gone to sleep. (I debated waking him up and then decided to leave him as it would only have been jealousy. If I'd stopped talking for more than two minutes, *I'd* have probably been asleep.)

After a couple more hours of lectures to Masters students over lunch and the early afternoon, the rest of the day turned into a horrible example of good news/bad news.

The bad news was this I discovered I'd lost the key to the drawer where I put my laptop and digital recorder.
The good news was the latter bits of expensive kit were both very safe!

The bad news was it took the best part of an hour trawling everywhere I've been today (various bits of the library, a nearby bookshop, a lunchtime eatery to celebrate someone's birthday, the lecture theatre from this morning). I'd left the lecture theatre till the very last place as it was furthest away. Of course, I arrived half way through a lecture and sat down to wait till the end of the hour.

The good news is that with time to kill I went through *all* my pockets again and actually found a pocket in my suit I didn't even know existed - and there was my (small) key.

The bad news is I'm utterly exhausted after three hours of really big lectures (not to mention the additional hike round the city and campus that I could have lived without!)

The good news is that if weren't for the latter I wouldn't have bumped into a student from the mass this morning who stopped me as I scoured the sidewalks to say thank you for the lecture this morning! It almost made it worthwhile.

(Oh and thank you to S from TheOldPlace who helped dig out some of the old material we'd prepared back when we did mind mapping as a shared session).

A PowerPoint session this morning from my favorite guru over in the academic skills unit. I have a lot of admiration for the style and content of Z and his ability to communicate in clear and interesting ways.

Actually, it wasn't so much a PowerPoint training session as an 'anti' PowerPoint session. It wasn't hands on, more a led discussion around the research that's been done that shows that PowerPoint doesn't actually help students learn and in fact in some cases hinders. Very interesting and although it's the second time through the material for me (it was hearing it elsewhere that got me to have him invited to do the same thing again in the Library), it's such a change of attitude from what we've all been led to believe and trained to do that it will probably take me at least a couple of hearings to let it sink in. If anyone wants pointers to the research, comment and I'll post URLs.

The Marketing Department came to talk to us this morning. Three ladies telling us about different aspects of their work - interacting with schools and colleges, 'forming relationships' with students and so on. Two had PowerPoint to talk to and the third who was apparently lurked to do the talk at the last moment, didn't. At least twice she apologised for "not having a presentation". By which, she must have meant 'PowerPoint' as quite clearly she did have a presentation and gave it very ably.

The afternoon was spent trying to get collective ideas from and promises of help from a small group who'd I struggled to get volunteers for as *their* managers were unhappy releasing them. I just about got the hour we spent (garnering good thoughts it must be admitted) but they can't commit to doing any actual work because of the other pressures of their departments. So I guess it's still down to me despite this being one of the 'solutions' my boss gave me! Joy.

Last night I trawled up to TheOldPlace who were hosting a 'computing' lecture. I went with a couple of computing academics and it turned out the speaker was actually one of our old students. Now working for IBM. As a 'metaverse evangelist'.

It was on the subject of Second Life (and how businesses use it although that didn't seem to be the main focus). He did a great presentation which was interesting, informative and insightful. I could have listened to him for longer even though it was late, I was very tired and facing a long trip home. One highlight was this machinima which he showed us:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LxVDVggLqsA
but there was lots of other good stuff and I believe we're now hoping to get him to come and talk down in our neck of the woods.

Went to see the boss yesterday feeling a bit stressed over another new project I've been given to do (and quite a tight timetable on it). She was very supportive and offered various bits of advice and ways I could get help.

But I'm not sure the real import of what I was saying (I thought very clearly and explicitly) went in.

This morning I got a request from her to drop in on a meeting she was chairing and offer my Belbin 'plant' thinking - sparking ideas and so on. Which I was happy to do. And it seemed to go well.

I was less impressed when at the end I was given one of the group's projects to take on. Even when I pointedly asked whether that was appropriate given I wasn't a part of the group and had only been invited to come and provide ideas.

I shall cite this post at my nervous breakdown recrimination.

I know, I know it's been an age since I posted. I daren't even look.

I could blame the pressure of work, stresses at home, depression caused by that and more. But now, of course, it's just become a 'where do I start up again?'.

I won't endeavour to catch up, but if I get a 'blank' day might revisit something in the diary from the gap. But in the meantime, I'll just attempt to get going again...

Terrific Superbowl!

They can be a bit one-sided but this was nailbiting right down to the wire.

At least returning to work today wasn't quite as painful on the email front.

Mother-in-law has had wireless installed which was a birthday gift [1] last year from her three sons-in-law but only got working recently by my technically skilled brother-in-law. With laptop in hand I could now check email regularly enough to keep the junk under control, but better yet spend Christmas not *just* with relations, but via Facebook with Scrabble playing friends as well! Who said being 'plugged in' was anti-social?


[1] You'll see this was a purely altruistic thought on all three of our parts!