Nick Gibbins

Flocking together

got to this before I did – the first public beta of the Flock browser has now been released. It’s a Firefox variant that integrates del.icio.us social bookmarks and blogging more tightly into the browser, but I can’t help but feel a little underwhelmed by it. It is slick, even for a beta, but much of the functionality has already been present in the form of Firefox extensions: The Shelf is equivalent to the Scrapbook extension There are at least two extensions which integrate del.icio.us into Firefox’s bookmarks There are already blogging extensions, albeit not one which is properly cross-service… Read More »Flocking together

GARKNET is go!

We have ADSL in Gark Villa. Also, my back is starting to feel quite a bit better. These are both Very Good Things.

Farewell to all of that

Well, that’s it. Gark Towers (or as the University of Bath insists on calling it, Cotswold House) is no more. We’ve spent our last night under its flat roof, and the vast majority of our belongings are now gone. I say vast, because the amount of stuff that we’ll need to move out over the next week is still quite substantial. We need to get better at this hoarding malarkey. I’ll probably write something longer on Monday, but for now suffice it to say that I’ll miss this place. It’s a great house, even if it does have its pecularities,… Read More »Farewell to all of that

To Glasgow…and beyond!

Off to Glasgow for the Worldcon this afternoon, so I’ve made sure that the iPod has a full charge for the train. I’m in the Hilton for the duration, and my telephone number is in my friend-locked contact details.

“Wizard freaks invade Reading University” part 2

I was wondering who were the authors of the two papers named in the Grauniad hatchet job. Beings and the Beast: Free Will, Destiny, Contagion for Animagi and Werewolves was by a Canadian medievalist, while The Rule of Law or the Crumpled Horned Snorkack? (or to give it its correct title, Which beast is more fantastic: the rule of law or the crumpled horned snorkack?) was by . I can’t speak for the former, but I’ve read a fair bit of what AJ Hall has written, and I don’t think that I’d dare refer to her as “pseudo-intellectual”. I’d comment… Read More »“Wizard freaks invade Reading University” part 2

“Wizard freaks invade Reading University”

While this wasn’t actually the title of the article on Accio (UK Harry Potter academic conference) in today’s Grauniad, it might have well have been. The last time I saw this bad a hatchet job by a lazy journo, it was Channel 4’s infamous coverage of the 1995 Glasgow Worldcon with Craig Charles. Even now, the words “sci-fi” spoken in a Liverpudlian accent make me grind my teeth. The Grauniad article has quite a superior, sneering attitude; when it isn’t decrying papers as “pseudo-intellectual”, it’s describing the attendees as obsessive compulsives with unhealthy sexual fantasies. If anything, it’s the former… Read More »“Wizard freaks invade Reading University”

Hangman

Well, I won ‘s round, so here’s mine: SINEAD O’CONNOR / NOTHING COMPARES 2 U (artist / song title) guessed the song (so much for my sneaky picking a song with numerals in the title), so it’s his turn now.

Some mothers do ‘ave ’em

Yesterday was a bit of an odd day. Decided to get a later train from Bath and rolled into work after eleven, which partly makes up for the extra time I’ve put in over the last few weeks. Ran a viva for one of my mentor’s PhD students (we viva our PhD students three times, as a check on progress at nine months, for the transfer from MPhil to PhD at eighteen months, and the final thesis defence) which went well. Needed another teaching observation for the lecturer training course, so got my mentor to assess me assessing his student.… Read More »Some mothers do ‘ave ’em