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September 30, 2005
sorrygottago
This will save you some time. (Wish they did a version for people who are there in person ;-)
B-)
Posted by Billy at 6:33 PM | Comments (1)
September 28, 2005
room bookings
Went to teach this morning and found another class in our room. After checking that it was indeed our room, we decided to allow the other class to use it this once seeing as they had a PowerPoint set up and a visiting speaker and stuff. After scrabbling around, the timetabling person managed to get permission for us to use the executive boardroom (provided we were ‘very quiet’). The students really enjoyed getting past the combination-locked door next to the Vice-Chancellor’s office and checking out the portraits of honorary graduands (including at least one graduate from our programme) on the way to the room. Quite odd, though, to have a seminar in the kind of room you expect to see high-powered executives making their presentations in and stuff.
B-)
Posted by Billy at 12:20 PM | Comments (0)
September 27, 2005
tu and vous
Enjoyed this from the Language Log. Must use that closing in a letter soon (if I ever write a letter again, of course)
B-)
Posted by Billy at 3:52 PM | Comments (0)
missing the boos
Just read a short interview with DA Pennebaker about No Direction Home. He says he didn’t really notice the negativity of audiences. This is what he said when asked whether he really didn’t hear the booing:
I hadn’t noticed it. It’s hard to tell booing from cheering in a way and I’m up there on stage so there’s a lot of noise - I’m in the middle of The Band. Maybe I heard it and hadn’t thought about it. It just didn’t seem reasonable to me in view of how marvellous that music was.
B-)
Posted by Billy at 12:54 PM | Comments (0)
cold and far from home
Managed to catch a cold in time for the first day of teaching yesterday. Did a fair bit of dripping, thought I was going to faint a couple of times, and I was definitely a bit fuzzier than usual, but the students were bright and interested.
Meanwhile, I’m thoroughly excited by No Direction Home, Martin Scorcese’s documentary about Bob Dylan (part 1 last night, part 2 tonight). I showed the students Jed’s apostropheless poster yesterday and had to stop myself going on about Dylan too long. I assured them that I’m not a Dylan nerd, but I should have admitted that I am working on it. I enjoyed the opening bit where he spoke about being on an odyssey taking things in on his way home. I’ve added this snippet to tomorrow’s ‘Meaning and Understanding’ handout:
I was born VERY far from where I’m supposed to be and so I’m on my way home
B-)
Posted by Billy at 12:47 PM | Comments (1)
careless illustrators
Just enjoyed receiving this from a university staff email list:
Illustration have lost their skeleton! If you know where it is please phone me
B-)
Posted by Billy at 12:37 PM | Comments (0)
September 26, 2005
fighting back
Looks like we’re not happy that [name of rival university ommitted] is outdoing us on the confusion front. So far, everyone seems to be fairly good-humoured in the middle of it all, though. I’m off now to project the module outline which got lost somewhere between here and the print room.
B-)
Posted by Billy at 10:21 AM | Comments (0)
September 24, 2005
confusion
The start of the academic year is more chaotic than ever this year. It’s a bit like the Fall of Saigon except there are lots of modules at lots of times rather than one last helicopter. It could be worse, though. I apologised to one student for all the confusion and she raised her hand and said ‘It’s nothing compared to [name of rival university ommitted]!’
B-)
Posted by Billy at 12:51 PM | Comments (2)
September 23, 2005
The Glasgow School
With all the chaos of a new academic year, added to by the effects of having changed campuses, there’s no time for blogging at the moment. Even so, I’m enjoying The Glasgow School so much I’ve got to tell whoever I’m communicating with by typing this. This review has things in it I don’t agree with, but I do think it communicates the excitement of a band who always sound like you’ve just dropped the radio and it’s falling apart as it bounces down the stairs. Hadn’t thought about the lyrical connection with Morrissey but it’s really obvious now.
I have two main memories of Orange Juice. One is crowding round a phone at an appointed time in a record shop in Aberdeen (‘The Other Record Shop’, for those who might remember) because those nice people at Postcard had agreed that they would play us an unobtainable Orange Juice track at that time. The other is seeing them play the day after some nasty incident (was it a mugging?) so that Edwyn was wearing a big eye-patch. Am I remembering right that they had borrowed a guitar for the evening? (‘The bitter comes out better…’)
B-)
Posted by Billy at 7:56 PM | Comments (1)
September 13, 2005
jeds (sic) apostrophe
Back in December 2002, I posted this note from Jed about Dont Look Back:
I just read your blog on apostrophes and wondered if you are interested in my apostrophe story: A million years ago when I was making TV Commercials with D.A.Pennebaker (he of ‘Primary’ and ‘Woodstock’ then and ‘Startup.com’ now) I also helped Penne in the closing post production on his film of Bob Dylans English tour. I designed the poster (now a collector’s item - and No, I don’t have a copy) and took his title ‘Don’t Look Back’ and did an all caps title that became ‘DONT LOOK BACK’. We had a lot of talk about it ( and I have some current emails from Penne discussing it again) and when it came out Safire of The New York Times went ballistic - never mind the movie, he wrote a whole column blasting the movie just for that missing apostrophe. I was quoted by Penne as saying something like ‘Well, we wanted to be controversial’ (which I’m sure I never said!). But today, all over the world that movie and my poster are still working together quite well without the aid of that apostrophe
Last night I went to see the movie at the NFT and I found that the programme notes mentioned that ‘Jed Falby. the advertising executive who copperplated the poster with Pennebaker’ was the one who suggested dropping the apostrophe.
Looks like one of Jed’s stories was true!
B-)
PS Enjoyed the film, which had a decent and enthusiastic audience (they applauded at the end!). In fact, I sometimes found it hard to distinguish the reverential audiences in the movie from the audience in the cinema.
PPS One key scene is the one where Dylan is annoyed because somebody threw a glass. I looked up the movie on imdb (where there’s a note saying ‘orthographically correct title’ for the Lynne Trusses of the world) and was amused to find that it had been Joan Baez who threw the glass cos she was fed up with Dylan.
Posted by Billy at 11:54 AM | Comments (0)
September 10, 2005
'I'm NOT... TIRED!'
Kiloh doesn’t cope well with being tired, and it seems they really pushed the kids on their trip to Wales. Kiloh’s class had one day at school last Friday (8 days ago), which they spent doing first aid and circuit training, before heading off on Monday for a week at Haringey’s outdoor centre in Wales. When I got home from the thunderstorm at work yesterday, I found an exhausted Kiloh and an au pair who was seriously delighted to see me. Our mission this weekend is to let Kiloh recharge her system so she can focus on being a more positive person next week.
B-)
Posted by Billy at 5:12 PM | Comments (0)
September 9, 2005
moving in
Remembered to time myself cycling to the new campus this morning. 45 minutes from when I started cycling at home to arriving at the bike rack here.
I’ve now got everything into our office (but not at all organised) apart from five crates of books. Sylvia has 6 more crates. We have no more room, though. An interesting little puzzle. I’ve got no idea what will happen when students come to discuss things (something I spend a lot of time doing).
No individual post trays yet so I went to the mail room, gathered all of our mail into a big sack and carried it fatherchristmaslike to the building where I sorted and distributed it. Several colleagues asked me whether I was being ‘redeployed’
B-)
Posted by Billy at 12:31 PM | Comments (0)
September 8, 2005
'run by alcoholics for alcoholics'
Something about this story makes me feel really good, at the same time as being deeply horrified.
B-)
Posted by Billy at 7:28 PM | Comments (0)
September 7, 2005
meeting of minds
EducationGuardian.co.uk | Higher | Meeting of minds
This is an article I read on the tube yesterday about making the student-supervisor relationship work. Naturally, I showed it to Mai
I think the main good thing about is that it encourages you to step back and think about how things are going rather than just going along with them, which I guess is something that applies to every aspect of life. It might even be one of the functions of a blog? (Although I agree with the expert on shoptalk yesterday who suggested that it’s often a kind of ‘personal PR’)
B-)
Posted by Billy at 1:12 PM | Comments (0)
major cricket excitement
Oh Lord, if I must die today,/Please make it after close of play,/For this I know, if nothing more,/I will not go, without the score.
According to the Guardian, these lines were written by John Major, according to the Times. Not bad, I’d say.
B-)
Posted by Billy at 10:16 AM | Comments (0)
September 6, 2005
meetings with remarkable trees
Well, I’m fully back to Trent Park now and struggling to combine catching up with doing new things and unpacking. We have a desperate need of shelving which is currently being thwarted by the system.
It’s nice to be here, though, and getting used to a new (and longer) cycle route. Really nice to cycle through the foggy woods yesterday morning, including a tumble when the bike jammed in the mud. Left my knee slightly iffy so today was a public transport day. Always an adventure.
I’m not sure how much I’m going to enjoy the extra time involved in cycling home every evening. This was added to yesterday by having to visit the police station on the way home to report Apoa’s passport having been lost on the music trip to Paris at the weekend. A bit of a surreal experience as they constantly impress on you the importance of reporting it quickly and then make it very hard. I particularly enjoyed the policeman’s first response at the station which was that Apoa would have to come in herself to prove that I wasn’t ‘making her up’. Luckily, he decided it would be OK seeing as she’s only 12.
B-)
Posted by Billy at 4:44 PM | Comments (0)
modern marketing
Just listening to James talking about blogging on shoptalk radio 4. Should be listenagainable soon.
B-)
Posted by Billy at 4:23 PM | Comments (0)
September 2, 2005
kiloh
While I’m here, I’ve heard from another person with the first name Kiloh (the maiden name of a great-grandma in Aberdeen) who passed on a bit of etymological info:
Yes, Killoh (with two l’s) is derived from the same “Kellog” as mine. Even going further back it’s from Cel (Celtic?) which refers to the bog around which the family was established. So the name actually translates as “from the swamp” yippee!
This explains why the name is sometimes written with two l’s.
B-)
Posted by Billy at 10:27 AM | Comments (0)
starting up again
I’ve had a few real 3-D people comment on the lack of posts now so I guess it’s time to get going again. I expect I’ll post more after Monday when I’ll be spending more time sitting among the unpacked crates in my new office.
Meanwhile, I’m at a conference trying to understand the apparent lack of recursion in Piraha syntax despite its obvious presence in the semantics of their utterances and thoughts, and keeping up with family life by email. Here’s part of an update from Ohna on Apoa’s first day back at school:
First day of school this morning was very typical. I asked her to make sure she had all her things packed last night, but of course as she was about to leave, she realised she didn’t have her travel pass sorted, or her mobile phone or any money & I forgot to make her a packed lunch!!
B-)
Posted by Billy at 10:04 AM | Comments (0)