I’m sure this has been done before, but it was a welcome break from marking. (for the record, I’m aghast at SixApart’s ruling both with respect to images of breatfeeding and to depictions of nudity in works of art, and hope that they come to their senses sooner rather than later)
This morning, it was Isobel’s turn to wake up shouting at the radio. UCU have agreed to put UCEA’s offer of 13.1% to their membership (and not, as the BBC put it, agreed to the increase – learn how a democratic union operates!), so the industrial action will be suspended for the duration of the balloting procedure. I can’t say that I’m happy with this offer, and will probably vote against accepting it. can now look slightly smug for having been able to prepare for her marking. My role in assessment this year has been mainly limited to third year… Read More »That academic pay dispute
There is no excerpt because this is a protected post.
While buying a round of tea in the Students’ Union this lunchtime, I noticed that the chap standing next to me was wearing a t-shirt which read: Students Against Lecture Strike Action – salsa.susu.org This makes no sense on a number of counts: There is no “Lecture Strike Action”, because teaching is proceeding as usual. If they’re referring to people with teaching duties, they should be aware that these are called “lecturers”. As an aside, if the students can’t distinguish between “lecturers” and “lectures”, we’re doing something seriously wrong. This industrial action is not limited to lecturers, but to all… Read More »Down with that sort of thing
With some chagrin, I’ve just realised that I’ll be in Edinburgh at the time of plokta.con π. Chiz. On a related note, I’ll be in Edinburgh for WWW2006 from the evening of the 20th May until the 29th May. Any residents of Auld Reekie care to meet up for a drink or two during that period? ? ? ? ? Bueller? Anyone? Anyone?
As reported by the BBC: A cloud of pollen has coated cars and homes across a huge stretch of the east of England in a film of yellow dust. (inspired by )
Those of you who read ‘s journal will have probably already read our announcement. For those of you who don’t, I’ll repeat it here: Ladies & gentlemen, May I introduce to you, on the third attempt: Garklet no.1 Garklet no.1 is currently 12w3d. Arrival is expected on 21 November 2006 but given the timekeeping of its parents, I wouldn’t hold your breath. The web page is rather bald at the moment (Nick did it!) and unfortunately the picture we got this scan was not the greatest but it is the only picture we have. The previous scan at 10w3d was… Read More »An introduction
You can now access the BBC’s programme catalogue online. It doesn’t contain listings for all of their radio and television programmes, but it’s as comprehensive as you’re likely to get, and goes back at least as far as the early 1950s. All I need to do now is think of something interesting to do with the data. I’ve also seen the following web toy (I hesitate before saying “mashup”, because that might provoke a desire to kill in some of you) which combines Google Maps and a NASA land elevation dataset to give a graphical display of what we’re likely… Read More »Why I love the BBC / Web toys
This isn’t exactly news, but it may interest some of you. First, a bit of computer history. In 1968, Doug Englebart gave a ninety-minute demonstration of NLS at the Fall Joint Computer Conference in San Francisco. NLS, the oNLine System, had been under development by the Augmentation Research Center at Stanford since 1962, and had a number of features which we now consider commonplace: the mouse, outline lists, hypertext links, and so on. The demo was filmed at the time, and there have been copies and fragments of varying quality floating around ever since. Some enterprising soul has now uploaded… Read More »The mother of all demos