...arrive safely in San Francisco after a very long day and many, many security checks (I got nabbed 3 times in Heathrow and had to not only unpack all my handluggage, but also turn on and then remove the battery from every piece of tech I had on me...).
after getting to hotel, I showered and changed, and headed out. First to Bluebottle Cafe courtesy of Ms Persky, where I met a couple of cool people - one cute and the other with a consultant friend in Chicago! I then had dinner down in SOMA and wandered back.
I'm pretty much ready to crash right now as I think that I've now been up for over 22 hours and my body has decided that enough is enough.
tomorrow I've got the day to myself and then going to a baseball game in the evening as part of the wedding celebrations.
more updates when I have a brain.
Friday, 26 June 2009
Tuesday, 9 June 2009
a scientific experiment to prove the existence of L-Space
... well, quasi-scientific, anyway!
my landlord announced yesterday that he was in London and that he'd be coming the flat on Wednesday. Queue panic and lots of 'oh my god, I have to sort out the spare room and make the place look like it's tidy, but not just tidied - as in , I live like this all the time'. I've had the door to the spare room closed for about two months and in my head it was six foot high with crap... I went in last night and found that it wasn't actually that bad, and after an hour or two, it was pretty much done.
next on the list of things to do was to fix the fact that there were 11 boxes of books taking up most of the hallway (the ones from my Grandma - all very exciting). I'd had a plan to go through each box, catalogue them, and then rearrange my entire collection. This obviously wasn't going to be finished by first thing tomorrow so I decided on a quick fix. I rearranged the bookshelves in the library to get maximum bookage (the one big shelf that doesn't have a back is now positioned to be able to put books on both sides!) and then started just putting books on shelves wherever they would fit.
then something strange happened. All my books fit. There is even SPARE space. This shouldn't happen. As Nanila pointed out to me a while ago, there is a natural law which states that there are always more books than shelf space. I then figured out what had happened.
when my books aren't organised, they take up less space than when sorted by category, alphabetically. Over the next couple of weeks I shall now prove this by sorting out my books properly. When they don't fit on the shelves, I will have proven for the first time, that L-Space is blocked by organisation!
must go now - need to call Swiral back and find out about halloween costumes for pets...
my landlord announced yesterday that he was in London and that he'd be coming the flat on Wednesday. Queue panic and lots of 'oh my god, I have to sort out the spare room and make the place look like it's tidy, but not just tidied - as in , I live like this all the time'. I've had the door to the spare room closed for about two months and in my head it was six foot high with crap... I went in last night and found that it wasn't actually that bad, and after an hour or two, it was pretty much done.
next on the list of things to do was to fix the fact that there were 11 boxes of books taking up most of the hallway (the ones from my Grandma - all very exciting). I'd had a plan to go through each box, catalogue them, and then rearrange my entire collection. This obviously wasn't going to be finished by first thing tomorrow so I decided on a quick fix. I rearranged the bookshelves in the library to get maximum bookage (the one big shelf that doesn't have a back is now positioned to be able to put books on both sides!) and then started just putting books on shelves wherever they would fit.
then something strange happened. All my books fit. There is even SPARE space. This shouldn't happen. As Nanila pointed out to me a while ago, there is a natural law which states that there are always more books than shelf space. I then figured out what had happened.
when my books aren't organised, they take up less space than when sorted by category, alphabetically. Over the next couple of weeks I shall now prove this by sorting out my books properly. When they don't fit on the shelves, I will have proven for the first time, that L-Space is blocked by organisation!
must go now - need to call Swiral back and find out about halloween costumes for pets...
Friday, 10 April 2009
the day started off so well...
...had a lovely lie-in this morning and got up at about 9.30. Did various bits of tidying in the flat and some work - all was good. Then the inevitable happened (well, it's been inevitable for the past 2 months or so) I started looking at my books and realising how many of them aren't in my spreadsheet. I'm now about half way through putting all the missing ones into the spreadsheet. This is the First Stage of sorting books... the madness has begun.
I also realise that I don't own enough bookshelves...
I also realise that I don't own enough bookshelves...
Thursday, 2 April 2009
something had to give...
...I've officially made the decision to pull out of the second-year course I was enrolled in through OU. It's a shame, as it was really interesting, but I had a deadline for my course coincide with a deadline for work, and work won. I may still continue with the first-year course (although it's incredibly dull), will need to decide in the next couple of weeks.
I'm not beating myself up about it though - but if I try and study whilst working again, I'll have to recognise that I go through periods of having to do 14-hour days semi-regularly, and so I'll try to do more work at the start of the course than necessary to give myself some flexibility.
In other (old) news, this is such a great April Fool's from a couple of years ago. Love it!
I'm not beating myself up about it though - but if I try and study whilst working again, I'll have to recognise that I go through periods of having to do 14-hour days semi-regularly, and so I'll try to do more work at the start of the course than necessary to give myself some flexibility.
In other (old) news, this is such a great April Fool's from a couple of years ago. Love it!
Monday, 30 March 2009
the benefits of an iced mocha...
... it can hold as many shots of espresso as you need. My one this evening had four shots and has done the job of keeping me awake through the work I've had to do quite well! Reckon I have about another half hour of work left tonight and then home. Will have to do about the same tomorrow and then report will pretty much be done (which is good, as the deadline is close of play Wed, so just enough time to do lots of proofing!).
had a lovely weekend away for Jane's 30th - an amazing house on an island in Essex which you can only get to at low tide. I'd definitely recommend and am thinking of excuses to get a group of people together to go there for a weekend in June. The house sleeps 10 so if anyone fancies, let me know!
anyway - back to work now and then home to bed. Think I may try and do a cycle or swim in the morning to counter the long-day-sitting-at-desk thing.
had a lovely weekend away for Jane's 30th - an amazing house on an island in Essex which you can only get to at low tide. I'd definitely recommend and am thinking of excuses to get a group of people together to go there for a weekend in June. The house sleeps 10 so if anyone fancies, let me know!
anyway - back to work now and then home to bed. Think I may try and do a cycle or swim in the morning to counter the long-day-sitting-at-desk thing.
Thursday, 26 March 2009
on giving women more information about their choices
a review of advertising codes by the Committee of Advertising Practice (CAP) and the Broadcast Committee on Advertising Practice (BCAP) is now going to a public consultation. There are a number of recommendations in the report, the most interesting of which is a change to the rules on advertising family planning services (more from the beeb here).
what bothers me about the recommendation is that the lines that are being drawn are between pro-life and pro-choice organisations - both of which will be allowed to advertise. For me, the distinction is not between pro-life and pro-choice, it's between organisations that will give a women information about all of available options and ones that will seek to promote a particular world view.
I have a bit of experience in this area (having had a termination). When I went to the initial organisation they talked to me about all of my options (including abortion and adoption) but didn't pass judgement on the route I chose. I see this as a completely different thing to going to an organisation who would seek to persuade me to make a choice that fitted in with their views, or worse, attempt to coerce me into making a decision that would not be in my best interests (and effectively take away my right to choose what is best for me). I'm not singling out the pro-lifers here - pro-choice is about choice - to have that, you need to know what you're choosing between.
I think that this report is a great step forward in informing women of their choices. I just hope that the public consultation is not completely sensationalised by the press - there are some issues here that need to be addressed.
what bothers me about the recommendation is that the lines that are being drawn are between pro-life and pro-choice organisations - both of which will be allowed to advertise. For me, the distinction is not between pro-life and pro-choice, it's between organisations that will give a women information about all of available options and ones that will seek to promote a particular world view.
I have a bit of experience in this area (having had a termination). When I went to the initial organisation they talked to me about all of my options (including abortion and adoption) but didn't pass judgement on the route I chose. I see this as a completely different thing to going to an organisation who would seek to persuade me to make a choice that fitted in with their views, or worse, attempt to coerce me into making a decision that would not be in my best interests (and effectively take away my right to choose what is best for me). I'm not singling out the pro-lifers here - pro-choice is about choice - to have that, you need to know what you're choosing between.
I think that this report is a great step forward in informing women of their choices. I just hope that the public consultation is not completely sensationalised by the press - there are some issues here that need to be addressed.
one of the many reasons I love Neil Gaiman...
When we hold each other, in the darkness, it doesn't make the darkness go away. The bad things are still out there. the nightmares still walking. When we hold each other we feel not safe, but better. "It's all right" we whisper, "I'm here, I love you." And we lie: "I'll never leave you." For just a moment or two the darkness doesn't seem so bad.I hadn't heard it before, but it's from Hellblazer #27, "Hold Me." and collected in the DC Comics' Neil Gaiman's Midnight Days collection that I'm going to have to get myself.
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