Yesterday was St Andrew’s Day: 30 November. St Andrew is the patron saint of Scotland (and many other places too), though there’s no major official celebration of it as such. After the helicopter accident in Glasgow, celebrations in the main square there, George Square were cancelled. But we’re 35 miles away, and we had been asked to play a session of (mainly) Scottish music in a local bar, the Dunblane Hotel. Now, there’s a wee crowd of us who play every Tuesday night, fiddlers, whistles, guitars and a singer or two, and myself accompanying (mostly) on my electric piano – and there’s some of the pub’s clientele who seem to enjoy it. And we’d been asked to play on the Saturday, for St Andrew’s Night. So we did, and a good night was had by all. Lots of Burns songs, lots of fiddle tunes, plus the occasional more modern song and tune as well. Good crack, and even some (excellent!) singing by a gentleman visiting from Kingston, London.
Perhaps I drank a little more than I’m used to (by the feel of my head this morning, I’m sure I did), but I really was celebrating. Not only had my University finally put the awful and bloated research excellence framework (REF) to bed, but I also officially stood down as Head of Computing Science and Mathematics at Stirling University. Not that I’m retiring yet, but now I’m just plain Professor. I’ve moved to a smaller office (and thrown out more than 100 Kilos of paper and many books), and I think I feel lighter overall. As my earlier blog post says, I need to think what I want to do now. And in the process of moving, I found several sets of paperwork for projects started, but never completed – perhaps one paper had been written on the area, but then the work dropped due to pressure of the management task, or a proposal started but never submitted. So I’m a bit spoilt for choice about where to start. Decisions, decisions…but for today I’ll keep equivocating about what to really work on first in my nice new office…
And today? I think tea (lots of it) is about right, sand an eschewing of alcohol. My wife wondered if St Andrew’s Day might be a public holiday in an independent Scotland: I’d say yes, but I’d make the holiday last from sunset to sunset, starting on the 30th, to permit sore heads to be nursed at home!
Lestheprof's Blog 
My problem with blogs
January 17, 2010I started this blog thinking it would be a bit like a diary. Not that I’ve ever successfully kept a diary for more than about a week, but I thought that the technology might encourage me. But the difference is that I can ensure that only the people I want to read a diary – or even that no-one else at all reads it. But a blog? A blog is a public document. Worse, it’s a copiable public document that takes on a life of its own: it’s indelible. Even if I delete the blog – even in WordPress closes permanently, there will still be a record of whatever I write, readable by those who want to. So I can’t write anything I don’t want to make public. And that’s a problem, because all the interesting things that I might want to write are things that I don’t want all and sundry to be able to read. Yes, I know that my name and identity are not directly visible, but I’m quite sure that anyone who really wanted to know who I was would have few problems in tracing me. And there are a few people who already know who I am.
I’m told that on facebook, security can be set on a friend by friend, post by post basis (as is the case on some other portal-based repositories that I work on). And, of course, on facebook, most users hide more or less everything from the casual non-friend visitor. So perhaps I should give up the blog and go on to facebook. But then I’d have to manage my friends, and manage my posts: and that’s even more work.
So? I’ll settle for making bland entries, and attempting a little humour (see: English spelling, implies UK educated).
It was a dark, dark night, and three men were sitting on a log. One of the turned to one of the others, and began:
It was a dark, dark night, and three men were sitting on a log. One of the turned to one of the others, and began:
It was a dark, dark night, and three men were sitting on a log. One of the turned to one of the others, and began:
It was a dark, dark night, and three men were sitting on a log. One of the turned to one of the others, and began:
and so on. Surely I can do better than this?
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