Nick Gibbins

Last year, I got a paper published in a new Elsevier (ack! spit!) journal. Late this year, I became one of the editors-in-chief for the journal. Last week, I finally received a copy of the first volume of the journal, which contained my article. Today, I received a big box containing another dozen copies. Either this is a justification for Elsevier’s (ack! spit!) ludicrous subscription costs, or they’ve overprinted. (on the plus side, this means that I’ve managed to fill another 10″ of shelf space in my spartan but overshelved office)

Interesting research from a postgrad here at Southampton, with an attached survey. Satisfy your ticky-box fetishes here!

Today is another UCAS day, so in order to give myself a treat before that starts, I’m looking at postgraduate applications. I’m currently assessing an application from a Chinese student who has provided a full transcript of his degrees. This transcript includes such wonderfully named courses as: Dialectics of Nature Theory and Practice of Scientific Socialism Review of Chinese Traditional Culture Military Theory

My exam questions came back from the internal panel this morning, and go off to the external examiner at the end of the day. Today I learned that the internal assessment process for exam papers doesn’t actually work that well. The panel had picked me up on a minor ambiguity in a question. Ironically, this was a question that I had largely lifted from a previous paper and then changed extensively. The text they didn’t like was about the only bit that I hadn’t rewritten. However, they missed the fact that the example program fragment in the same question was… Read More »Caution: put brain in gear before engaging pen

One of my colleagues recently mentioned that his other half had tracked down a copy of the ultra-rare Spanish short film La Cabina on eBay for his birthday last month. It was last shown in the UK on Channel 4 in 1985 or thereabouts. He passed on a copy of the DVD to me this morning. I’m not entirely sure if I ever saw this film, or if my dad saw it and my memories are an embellishment of him telling me about it over the breakfast table chez Gibbins in the mid-80s. They’re certainly very vivid. I have UCAS… Read More »Must. Not. Watch. DVD.

Very busy week this week. Today, I gave a presentation on ontologies for medical informatics to an interdisciplinary university group on stroke management, including giving someone else’s slides because he had to dash off back to the university (this was at a hotel in town) to give a lecture. Tomorrow, I have my first lectures for a course that I’m directly responsible for (as opposed to lectures I’m covering for colleagues) from 1000 until 1130. From 1250 until 1330, I’m giving a seminar to the Learning Technologies Group, then I’m jumping in a car and going to Swindon where I’m… Read More »Nose to the grindstone

I’ve joined the club. I now own a PS2 (one of the new little ones) and a copy of GTA: San Andreas…