Nick Gibbins

Right. I’m applying for a lectureship at my own University, having failed so far to get one anywhere else. I’ve been told by my head of school that I won’t get this job, but that I should apply anyway because it may give them the incentive to move me onto a teaching fellowship which they’ll then use as a two-year probationary period before trying to find a junior lectureship for me (if I perform well enough that is, and I’ll still have to go through the probationary period for new lecturers). I know this sounds like jam tomorrow (or rather,… Read More »No way to run a university

Just been out with my long-suffering officemate Steve (WINOLJ) and the 1m pinhole camera that we bodged together out of one of the many cardboard boxes that clutter up our office, but to no avail. Although we could get a fairly crisp image of the sun about 6mm across, it wasn’t crisp enough for us to be able to make out the disc of Venus. I did manage to see the transit through a pair of eclipse glasses that the deputy head of school had brought in, and I can see why the resolving power of our camera wasn’t sufficient.

…BECAUSE THE WALL NEXT TO ME IS VIBRATING. They’re reflooring the labs on the level below me (level 2), which is involving much drilling. Conversation is out of the question, and I’m kicking myself for not having brought my shiny new Bose noise-cancelling headphones with me from Bath yesterday. The message informing us of this work from the deputy head of school read: This work is known to generate high noise levels and this may propagate through the building structure causing noise nuisance on Levels 2 and 1 in particular and just possibly on Level 3. “Just possibly”, my arse.… Read More »I HAVE TO SHOUT…

and I will be at the Tun this evening – but where is the Tun? I assume that it’s still at the Flo, since I’ve seen nothing to the contrary..

Taken from here – try www.bugmenot.com if you can’t be bothered to register.

Very, very lazy weekend, much of which was spent playing with the shiny new iPod. Well, fixing up the ID3 metadata tags in my mp3 collection so that the iPod would display them in a reasonable manner. Well, that and playing GTA3, now that I’ve completed GTA:Vice City and am waiting for GTA:San Andreas to be released.

I am posting this from the living room sofa, where I am currently watching Big Brother with about a quarter of my brain. This may seem like a small deal to those of you who are L33T D00D2 and are just waiting for your Gibsonian cranial jacks, but this is the first wireless network I’ve set up. Probably breaks all sorts of regulations in our ISPs AUP, but I’ve locked it down as much as I think I can. The last few weeks have been extremely busy. The week before last was the Web conference in New York, which was… Read More »Big Apple Redux

and I are having our summer party, which will be at Chez Gark at the University of Bath, on Saturday 31st July from lunchtime onwards. There will almost certainly be some sort of barbecue, and crash space will be available for those that want it. More information will appear at http://gark.net/ when I get around to writing the webpages.