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at least i'm up to date on laundry

1 September 2025 18:05
wychwood: Teyla wonders if you meant to do that (SGA - Teyla mean that)
[personal profile] wychwood
Back to work was a slog today! That was my last day off until Christmas, and September is looking like being pretty intense as a month. The "be on campus for a week to act as a reserve for visa checks" has morphed into "three and a half days of being a reserve plus two full days of actual checking" (yes, this does add up to more days than exist in the work week; I have refrained from accepting the relevant calendar invites until someone can clarify quite how they expect me to staff two desks at the same time). I've also been voluntold to attend a full-day meeting on campus the previous week, which is not only on a work from home day but also a day with choir in the evening (not to mention choir the office day before it and choir the work from home day after it). I am trying very hard not to think about the number of things which I really ought to be getting completed before the start of term, because my odds are looking extremely poor.

On the other hand, I did get through the 300 system emails, 84 personal emails, and 31 Teams notifications which were waiting this morning, and only have a dozen or so new actions to pick up from them. And I did the first round of monthly reports, including desperately scraping my brain to extract suggestions as to what I did during August (not very much, apparently!!). I left the intimidating email from Legal for tomorrow morning, and then have ambitious plans to make a proper list of what I want to get done this month and try and make some progress on... well, anything. Something. A Task of some kind. Perhaps if I can manage that I will feel less like the human incarnation of the scream emoji.

july booklog

31 August 2025 12:32
wychwood: Sinclair in the light (B5 - Sinclair light)
[personal profile] wychwood
63. Our Precious Lulu - Anne Fine ) This isn't what I would normally call id fic, but there's something of that visceral satisfaction in it; "person with rubbish family wins in the end".


64. The Gabriel Hounds - Mary Stewart ) Not perhaps one of the top Stewarts, but even middling Stewart is pretty good.


65. Enchanted Glass - Diana Wynne Jones ) Even a whole bunch of really annoying elements can't take the pleasure out of this book, but it's not one of her top hits.


66. The Return of the King - JRR Tolkien ) The triumphant conclusion, followed by lots of realisations about what happens after the triumph and how much harder it gets, and then a whole bunch of appendices, which I enjoyed more than I expected! This is a cracking book, though, even as I develop more complicated feelings about it over time.


67. Stone and Sky - Ben Aaronovitch ) Another fun volume; I'm interested in seeing where Aaronovitch is going to take things from here.


68. The Islands of Chaldea - Diana Wynne Jones and Ursula Jones ) DWJ is basically never less than entertaining, but this doesn't manage much more than that.


69. The Adventure of the Demonic Ox - Lois McMaster Bujold ) I feel like I'm saying this a lot this time, but: this is fine! I enjoyed it! Wasn't much more than that!


70. Kid Wolf and Kraken Boy - Sam J Miller ) Fine but I'm not sure I'd read Miller again.


71. Behind Frenemy Lines - Zen Cho ) Deeply delightful; I do prefer SFF to romance, but Cho's romances are so fun I don't mind!

Random Doctor Who Picture

30 August 2025 08:37
purplecat: The Second Doctor holding his diary (Who:Books)
[personal profile] purplecat

Cover for the Doctor Who Past Doctor Adventure Palace of the Red Sun by Christopher Bulis.  Picture of a domed palace with four pointy turrets.  The silhouettes of two figures, one in a long dress and one in a shorter one walk down an avenue of upright trees to the palace.  Everything is in oranges and yellows.

Another blank in my memory. The back makes it sound like there is an underlying quest style narrative which, as I recall, is common in Bulis' works.
purplecat: An open book with a quill pen and a lamp. (General:Academia)
[personal profile] purplecat
The award winning paper I mentioned next week, actually had a sequel. In The human factor: Addressing computing risks for critical national infrastructure towards 2040 we performed a similar exercise of asking a number of experts about risks to Critical National Infrastructure arising from computing developments and synthesising the results.

I am honestly, happier with this paper, I thought we had a better range of genuine expertise in the people we talked to, and a more focused area of consideration. We had a little trouble with the third referee, who thought our experts were wrong about Quantum Computing and that we should rewrite the paper so they gave the answer the referee thought was correct. Our experts did not think Quantum Computing was among the biggest risks to be considered in the next 15 years - but instead thought there were a number of issues relating to human factors (sophisticated phishing, difficulty tracing the cause of problems and poor incident response in complex situations).