The beaver is a proud and noble animal
Notes from a bemused canuck
I'm going to be adding a few more frequent flyer miles to my body. I'm going to 3 conferences this year:
– “HABATOS” consortium meeting in Lodz, Poland (June 25th). BTW, HABATOS means “Healthy Ageing by Adaptation to Oxidative Stress”. They want me to give a talk on PRIDE and how it can be used to store their data.
– PSI meeting in Washington DC (September 25-27)
– HUPO meeting in Long Beach, CA (October 28-November 1)
Going to be a busy little beaver for a while.
See this shiny new website:
http://www.hinxtonvillage.co.uk/
The couple that runs the dead-tree-format newsletter wanted to go high-tech and make a website for the village but didn't really know how to go about doing it. I've been in touch with them because I wanted to set up a board game night at our local pub and, well, basically. I offered my services and they jumped at the offer. I looked into content management systems for them. That way, they just need to write content and happily ignore having to mess with any HTML. They're thrilled. The whole thing took maybe 30 minutes to install, an hour to get my head wrapped around their configuration logic and a whole of 5 minutes to hack together the graphics. And you know what? It kicks ass, especially compared to other village websites out there :P
Feeling meh at the moment. Don't really know why. I think I need sleep. I've not been sleeping well these past few days: weird dreams† and I'm waking up at like 5am. Not cool. I blame the change in the weather I've also been having annoying low-grade headaches, which I've come to associate with sudden changes in air pressure. I used to laugh about the whole concept until it started happening to me. Gotta love Karma…
We were supposed to spend a quiet weekend this weekend, but those plans, in our usual idiom, went flying out the window when we decided to invite Katy's parents over at the last minute. Katy was in a redecorating mood. In the last two days, the living room has been touched up, all the woodwork and trim done, and that bloody alcove painted (which meant that I had to unplug and replug everything electrical – again. blergh). I wasn't in the mood at all to do it, but it's done and I have to say that it looks nice and also means that I don't have to bother with it for the next little while.
We spent way too much money at B&Q to get the stuff we needed for this weekend. A large chunk of that went into a lawnmower, which is not a frivolous expense and we need to start tackling the wild kingdom in our backyard. We spent just as much though for supplies to re-grout our bathroom and get a shower curtain and rod. Again, looks nice, but I think it could have waited until we were a bit more flush.
Still in the spending-money category, I bought a new phone. Not because I wanted to, but because my motorola V3 RAZR, the one I bought just a little more than a year ago, died. After I renewed my contract and passed up the phone upgrade. After the warranty expired. Orange were totally useless about it and I spent waaay too much time on the phone with peons until I asked to speak to a supervisor that answered my question in 5 minutes. There's a lesson in there somewhere. Anyway, I could either spend £90 in “insurance” (which is a more polite way to mean “protection racket”) and get a replacement handset or spend £60 and get a new pay-as-you-go phone, ditch the SIM card and voila, instant handset.
All in all, it hasn't been the bestest weekend ever. On the plus side though, I did make a really nice stuffed chicken yesterday and there has been booze and chocolate.
Still, I think I'd have preferred to visit the Fitzwilliam and just chill with a book…