All 39 entries tagged Personal

Hot air balloon flight

I wasn’t at work on Monday as I was travelling through the Cotswolds from Chipping Sodbury to Oxford for a hot air balloon flight at 6pm. It was a birthday present for Nick and I from last year, and this was our second booking after the weather cancelled plans for a flight over Bath on our wedding anniversary. Never mind: I got 2 weekends away out of it!
I definitely recommend the hot air balloon flight, even for those a bit scared of heights, because it is so gentle when you take off that you hardly notice how high you’re going. It actually gets more scarey again as you travel low to the ground, but then you get to see things better, like the hares darting around the field in fear of this enourmous round, red predator!
We didn’t have time to call in at the model village at Bourton on the Water, but Oxford from the air was a pretty good substitute. :-)

Some pretty pictures are available in the gallery on the left of this blog.

Jenny Delasalle : 01 Aug 2007 14:21 |  Tags: Personal |  Comments (1) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Back after the break

I’ve just returned from a skiing holiday in Chamonix – fortunately nothing is broken! Had a lovely Christmas and a great time with friends in France surrounded by beautiful snow capped mountains.

My main focus at the moment is updating the RIU web pages, organising the scanning event we have planned for 20th March and preparing our return to the CLA for 15th Jan.

Jenny Delasalle : 11 Jan 2007 10:15 |  Tags: Personal |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

The final 7

So we come to the last 7 days here at Warwick for me. You'd think by now that I'd be relaxing. Hah, no chance. I'm busier than I've been since finishing the reading list audit report.

At the moment I'm going through the medical school focus groups from last week attempting to make sense of the data. Overall the groups were really rich in information and ideas from the students, and I have high hopes that quite a few of the areas touched upon are resolvable in the short to medium term.

It certainly was very enjoyable getting out and talking to the students, something I've not really had as much opportunity to do in this job as I'd hoped – they're a really fab bunch here at Warwick.

Once that's done I've got the librarian's work audit to analyse and write up and then that's the lot. I've got pretty much scheduled all my time from now till I leave without any real room for slack – which as a bonus means I can at least really concentrate on what I'm up to.

Speaking of which, I'd better get on with it…

: 16 Feb 2006 11:55 |  Tags: Personal Project Results |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Great Cthulhu – in Lego?

He's clearly got more Lego bricks than me…

: 07 Feb 2006 08:18 |  Tags: Personal Wider-World |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Gadget desire

Writing about web page http://products.sel.sony.com/pa/PRS/reader_features.html

Oh dear, a techy chum of mine just sent me this link. I've suddenly felt an overwhelming desire to buy one – though not quite sure how I'll justify the personal expense. Can't quite see me managing to persuade work to buy one right now…

Wonder if the screen is not as hard on the eyes as other e-book reader-type things? One's I've used in the past have always tended to be a bit hard to read for very long.

: 26 Jan 2006 15:24 |  Tags: Personal |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Audio tour

Had a go at the Library audio tour this morning (if you've not tried it – I'd have a go, it's rather good). Realised that despite being here a year I still don't have a particularly good idea of where things actually are in the building. Much clearer now.

Took me around 30 minutes, and now I do know:
-how many items we had when we first opened and now
-all about study carrels
-which service is where
-all about the richness of the collection

: 25 Jan 2006 10:12 |  Tags: Audio Tour Personal |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

The beginining of the end

With today Jen has started her secondment to Careers, easing herself in at 1 day a week before ramping up to more or less full time over the next month or so.

And with my departure in a little over a month as well, it looks like we've come to the parting of the ways for the RIU as it stands. What will come after I think is very much open to discussion…

In part to help ease this change we’ve set up a general riu@warwick.ac.uk email alias that will send messages to (currently) either one of us, and as new people are brought in to backfill our posts then on to them.

However, if around early March there is a slight slowing in the speed of response, well our apologies but at that point it won’t really be up to us to sort out…

: 23 Jan 2006 09:40 |  Tags: Personal RIU |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

One way around the problems

Follow-up to Death to Demarco! (or fileserver problems day 4) from Innovating Research!

Well one way around the network glitches (which turn out to be not just down to Demarco – though she's a prime culprit for some of them still) is to work from home – which is what I'm doing today. So at least I know I won't suddenly have a network outtage when I'm trying to make a crucial calculation or edit the reading list report. It's down to the its final days now and I really don't want to spend any more time on it after next Friday if it can really be avoided…

: 13 Jan 2006 09:44 |  Tags: Computing Problems Network Personal |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Death to Demarco! (or fileserver problems day 4)

And so for the fourth day in a row we have file-server problems here. Today was a personal best for the system – 2 minutes after logging in (just after 8am) and we get fileserver down. Darn, by always coming in early I can usually be guaranteed an hour of pain-free computing and get some work done. But not today.

Seems to have stabilised for now, though for how long I just don't know. Beginning to lose count of how much effective work time's been lost this week, but it's easily over half a day. If it keeps up at this rate this will end up being effectively a 4 day week (at least for anything much achieved).

Normally when the net goes down, there's some paper work to do. Sadly with all this down time, I'm so up to date with the paper work that I'll be reduced to dusting the desk next (in between gnashing of teeth and questioning the legitimacy of the fileserver's parentage).

sigh Ah well, at least the sun's shining…

: 12 Jan 2006 09:33 |  Tags: Computing Problems Network Personal |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

The wee haags alright

Writing about web page http://www.scifi.com/scifiwire/index.php?category=0&id=34071

Best news I've heard in ages – Sam Raimi directing Terry Pratchett's Wee Free Men! My only question is – who'll be up for Granny Weatherwax's cameo?

I'd have said Dame Maggie if she wasn't linked with Potter, wonder if Judi Dench would give it a go?

: 10 Jan 2006 08:54 |  Tags: Personal Pratchett |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem