Tag Archives: Work

Vote for me!

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Or rather, vote for my team, who have been nominated in the 2012 Digital Humanities Awards http://DHawards.org/DHawards2012/voting.  We’ve been nominated in the “Best DH project for public audiences” category, for our CEISMIC digital archive.

Actually, I don’t think I’ve ever mentioned CEISMIC on here, have I?  That’s where I’ve been working for the last couple of years, helping build a massive archive of material related to the Christchurch earthquakes – we’re trying to collect everything from people’s stories to government soil reports to news footage to historic images of demolished buildings to the tweets people sent.  It’s a fantastic job, building something that will be of immense value to future researchers, and really fascinating work, although sometimes it’s a bit depressing when I have to spend my days immersed in images of destruction – a bit hard to move on from memories of the earthquakes when you’re surrounded by them all day!  Anyway, check out http://www.ceismic.org.nz and https://quakestudies.canterbury.ac.nz to see what we’ve been up to (QuakeStudies is the research arm of CEISMIC, and the area I spend most of my time working on).

Cats and birds

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I am very very very tired.  Some of that is because I went to my boss’s place for a Christmas party last night (which was really nice – it was a beautiful evening so we sat out in his garden and talked and ate and drank until the sun went down – very relaxing), and didn’t get home until nearly 11.  Some of it is because it’s stinking hot today, and the builders were being particularly noisy so we could either have the windows open and be slightly cool but not be able to hear ourselves think over the drilling and crashing, or we could have the windows closed and have peace but no air.  But mostly it’s thanks to the cats, who have discovered the wonderful world of birds.

They’ve been catching flies and insects for ages, but so far nothing bigger (well, apart from a thrush Pushkin dragged in a couple of months ago, but I suspect that she’d found it already dead, probably from flying into a window or something – it didn’t look particularly cat-mauled).  But when I got home last night MrPloppy said he’d found a few feathers on the floor in the study, plus enough things knocked off the desks to show they’d been chasing something around.  There was no sign of a bird though, so we assumed it must have either flown back out a window or they’d eaten it.

Fast forward to about 3 am, when we were woken up by a crashing from the bookcase beside the bed – Pushkin was trying to push her way behind the books (it’s an old baker’s stand turned into a bookshelf, so there’s lots of gaps between the bars) and had knocked a pile of them onto the floor.  Next there was scratching and scrabbling as Parsnips tried to burrow under the bottom shelf.  But an exploratory mood isn’t particularly unusual for either of them, so we just assumed they’d suddenly discovered the bookcase’s potential as a climbing frame and tried to ignore them and go back to sleep.  But after Pushkin tried to clamber her way up to the top shelf, we decided it was time to herd them out of the bedroom and shut the door.

I was just drifting back to sleep when MrPloppy said “I can still hear something scratching – I wonder if that bird is in here?”  We turned on the light and I moved some books, and sure enough, there was a blackbird perched on one of the bars at the back of the shelf.  She looked a bit the worse for wear, but was definitely still alive and able to fly (as she demonstrated when I tried to pick her up).  So then we had the fun task of trying to herd her towards the open window without panicking her any more than necessary – not easy!  We finally got her out though, and finally all was quiet enough to get back to sleep… for a couple of hours until the alarm went off, anyway.

So it’s official, the cats now know how to catch birds, even if they’re not entirely sure what to do with them once they’ve caught them.  I predict a summer filled with feathers…

Moving on

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December is suddenly upon us, and the round of Christmas/end of year functions has started – I’ve already been to three, and it’s only the 9th.  One was combined with a farewell – Jan, a very-like-minded colleague from another department, is leaving to set up a tea shop in a gap-filler space in the CBD.  Sounds like an exciting new direction for her, but I’ll miss our ranting phone calls whenever one or the other of us had to deal with one of our irritations-in-common and needed a sympathetic ear to share the frustrations with.

And that’s just the beginning of the farewells, too – two other good friends (I won’t mention names as I’m not sure how official their departures are yet) are heading off for pastures new soon, one to Lincoln and the other to Brisbane.  Work just won’t be the same without spontaneous yum cha.  Still, I’m pleased for all of them that they’ve found such great opportunities.  And opportunity is quietly peeking over the horizon for me too – I don’t want to say much in case I jinx it, but there’s a distinct possibility of new and exciting things.

Anyway, Christmas is approaching fast, so we put up the Christmas tree yesterday (and are taking bets on how long it lasts before the kittens destroy it…):

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Only two new ornaments this year, both from the Newbridge silverware factory, which we visited during the Dublin Convention.

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Sorry about the glare – shiny stainless steel is very hard to photograph!

Back Home

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(except I’ve updated here so irregularly lately that you probably didn’t even know I was away…)

Anyway, I spent last week down in Central Otago at a conference (which was really interesting – lots of heated debates going on in the tea breaks, which is always a sign of a successful conference), with the bonus that I was able to stay with Mum instead of the conference hotel, so I got to see lots of my family in between racing up and down to Cromwell.  And I got to introduce the kids to Minecraft, which was lots of fun (and when I mentioned we’ve got it set up for multiplayer over our network, the boys invited themselves up to visit us in the holidays ;-) )

Another highlight of the trip was a guided tour of Bendigo (note for Australians, yes, we have one too, but ours is a bit more ghost-towny than yours).  Dad came along for the walk, so I got to spend some time with him as well.

So generally a very nice way to spend a week when I was technically working!

Pretty pictures from Bendigo:

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Not much about nothing in particular

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I really have nothing to say, but I just stumbled across this amazing site while searching for something completely different, and had to quickly post something just to have the excuse to use one of her gorgeous drop-caps.  So I suppose I should think of something to fill up a paragraph or two to make it worth posting.  Um… life has been busy, but only with the usual work and study (I got my first essay finished and handed in, yay!  Now I’ve just got to work on my project and presentation…) which seems to fill every waking moment.  It’s a good thing I’m still enjoying both so much :-)   If only the funding would come through to make my temporary job change permanent, it would be perfect.

In exciting news, I almost have a new computer.  MrPloppy ordered the last of the parts yesterday, and hopefully should be able to start building it at the weekend.  It’s going to be shiny and fast and (most importantly) have pretty lights inside.   Not that there’s going to be much point in having an excitingly fast computer seeing as I have no time for gaming at the moment anyway, but at least I’ll have the pretty lights to look at while I type up my project :-)   And it’s only three months until the end of semester when I’ll have finished all my study for the year… and it’ll be summer so I won’t want to spend all my time sitting inside at a computer…

It’s been a while since I posted a list of recent catches (in fact, a very long while – I just checked my catch email folder, and it goes back to March!), so here’s a round-up:

A lot from the Ireland trip, of course (and yes, I know I still haven’t posted my travel journal – I promise I will eventually):

And a few others:

Right, that’s filled up enough of the page to make the drop-cap look good, so I’d better get back to work.

Randomness

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Yesterday was not the best birthday ever.  For a start, deadlines and panics meant I had to go to work, and it was a frustrating day with all sorts of technical problems putting us even further behind (though on the plus side, one of the analysts did go out and get pastries for afternoon tea as a birthday treat for me, which was sweet of him).  And I wasn’t feeling all that birthday-ish anyway – what with post-nuclear family meltdowns, and a spot of rockiness on the home front this week, there’s been a definite deep dark pit of despair vibe in the air recently.

Oh, and to totally top off the day, there was an earthquake yesterday – just a 4.0, which to us toughened Cantabrians hardly rates a mention these days, except that I was sitting on the toilet at the time!  And there really is nothing more disconcerting than feeling that rumble and wondering whether this will be a big one, and if so, are you going to be able to get your pants up in time?

But MrPloppy did his best to get me in a happy birthday sort of mood, with some really thoughtful and fantastic presents (highlight is the 150th anniversary edition of Darwin’s On the Origin of Species, which is a gorgeous book, combining the original text with contemporary and modern illustrations of various species he mentions, and sidebars with biographical details and extracts from his other writing – weighs a tonne though, so I don’t think I’ll be reading it in bed…), and an attempt at a birthday cake (except the never-fail recipe he used somehow failed, and it didn’t rise properly – but I did appreciate the thought, if not so much the cake).  So it wasn’t all bad, really.

Otherwise, life has just been full of work and study. I did force myself to take a break last weekend and do something fun instead of hitting the books yet again, and spent a few hours pleasantly ensconced in my long-neglected embroidery project:

Until of course I ended up with a kitten on my lap and had to stop and hide the dangling thread temptations.

Talking of kittens, I should probably post some pictures (more difficult than it sounds with Parsnips, who is such a bundle of energy and craziness that most of the photos I’ve attempted just show a blur).

They alternate their time between destroying the house and decimating Christchurch’s weta population (seriously – I think they bring in at least one a day at the moment, and chase it round the house until the poor thing has lost all its legs, at which point they get bored and leave it for us to find… I’m just glad we only get the little ones down here, not the giants!)

Snow Day(s)

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It’s way too early in the winter for this!

I keep telling people it hardly ever snows in Christchurch, but I may have to revise that.  It seems like the last few years we’ve had several big (for NZ) falls each year, instead of one small one every two or three years.

This latest one started in the early hours yesterday morning, and we woke up to a reasonable dusting.  I went into work anyway, because the forecast was for it to ease off pretty quickly, but by mid-morning it was obvious that wasn’t happening, and they’d started taking the buses off the road, so I told my boss (by email – he lives up in the hills, so hadn’t come in at all) I was heading home while I still could.  I was just in time, too, because the bus driver told me he’d been told to finish the route then to go back to the depot, so if I’d left it any longer I would have had a very cold and wet walk home.   And they closed the campus about an hour after I got home anyway.

The snow kept falling until early evening, when it started to freeze over, so this morning we’ve got a beautiful icy scene outside (not that I’m planning on going out to admire it!), and completely treacherous roads (because snow is such a rare thing in Christchurch (supposedly), the council doesn’t own useful things like ploughs and grit-spreaders).  We’ve been listening to cars attempting to negotiate our intersection this morning, with various degrees of success.  No actual crashes yet, because thankfully everyone’s going very slowly and carefully, but it’s just a matter of time.

The university’s closed until at least lunchtime while they try and clear broken tree branches and shovel some safe walking routes, but the buses still aren’t running anyway, so I’d be working from home no matter what (I’m not walking in on this ice – I tried that after last year’s big snow fall, and it wasn’t a fun experience).

Oh well, a good chance to catch up with some reading for my linguistics paper.

(And needless to say, we totally missed out on seeing the transit of Venus yesterday :-( )

Feeling lucky

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We’re finally getting round to having the 1950s wiring in our house replaced (I’m so looking forward to having more than one power outlet per room – finally an end to the maze of extension cables and multiboards we live our life off!), so had the electrician round on Saturday to do a walkthrough of what we want.

While he was checking the connection where the powerlines come into the house, he pointed out that the lines were stretched taut between the house and the nearest powerpole, which was on a slight lean (thanks to earthquakes, no doubt).  He reckoned we were probably just a couple of centimetres away from having the lines pulled out completely – and given the latest swarm of aftershocks (a 5.2 on Friday, amongst a scattering of 3s and 4s), it’s amazing it hasn’t happened yet.

So we’re feeling very lucky he noticed it before it went, and the best bit is it’s not our problem – the power company will have to fix it (he said he’ll try and convince them the best solution would be to replace the lines with underground ones, which would make our view a lot nicer!)

In other news… um, there isn’t any, really.  Still up to my ears in study and work, but still enjoying both enough not to mind that I don’t have any other life at the moment.

Busy busy busy

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I really will get round to posting the rest of my travel journal entries, but life is kind of busy at the moment.  Work is hotting up as we get closer to our big launch, and study takes up most of my free time.  And this week I seem to suddenly have a social life – as well as last night’s meetup, I’ve been invited to Jenny’s book launch tonight and another colleague’s birthday party tomorrow night.  Add to that ESOL tutoring on Monday night, and working late on Tuesday, and it’s amazing MrPloppy even remembers who I am, he sees so little of me!

Anyway, a good meetup last night, with a full table – I think almost all the regulars were there.  I released a few books (The Kitchen Boy by Robert Alexander, The Sealed Letter by Emma Donoghue, and Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer), registered a few more (because one of the non-bookcrossing partners who often joins us had brought them along unregistered, so as I happened to have some pre-nums on me labelled them up for her), and despite my best efforts ended up taking a pile home – only for release, though, not to add to Mt TBR (which is still totteringly high after Dublin), because they were left on the table at the end of the meetup, and there were too many to just leave in the restaurant.

Currently reading:

  • Real book: Percy Jackson and the Titan’s Curse by Rick Riordan
  • E-book: Orange as Marmalade by Fran Stewart
  • Audiobook: Pygmy by Chuck Palahniuk
  • Study: Bickel, B., & Nichols, J. (2009). Case Marking and Alignment. In A. Malchukov & A. Spencer (Eds.), The Oxford handbook of case (pp. 304-321). Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Kitten poo and mad people

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As usual when life gets busy, I get worse at journalling.  The main thing that’s been taking up my time (apart from work), is studying.  I knew the Honours year is a hard one, but I didn’t know it would be HARD.  We’re only three weeks into term, and I’m already finding it a struggle to keep up with all the reading that’s needed… not to mention the thinking.  It’s great fun though, and I’m absolutely loving the challenge.  Just don’t expect me to have a life outside of study for the next four years….

Work is another challenge, but thankfully another enjoyable one.  I’ve had a kind of promotion (it’s complicated), the end result of which is I’m involved in a really exciting long-term project, which (if all goes well) could give me even bigger and better opportunities further down the track.  It means I’m a lot busier than I was, though, and I’ve got a lot more responsibilities to juggle.

Oh well, at least I never get bored :-)

In kitten news, they’re just as cute and just as infuriating as always. Just when we thought we had them litter-box trained, Parsnips has decided the carpet beside the front door is a much better place to poo. So we spend a lot of time cleaning the carpet and trying to find some sort of smell that will discourage her – so far lemons and the fancy spray from the pet shop have failed. Any suggestions gratefully accepted!

Anyway, pictures of the cute:

And in embroidery news, I’ve made a little bit of progress:

Can you tell what it is yet? :-)

All of a sudden it’s just a few weeks until our big Ireland trip. This time three weeks from now I’ll be somewhere over Europe, descending towards Heathrow (having already been travelling for nearly 40 hours, and still with another 6 hour bus trip ahead of me to get to the Outlaws’ place – whose stupid idea was it to do the whole thing non-stop???)

I’m almost completely organised – my to-do list still has a few wee jobs on it (like find my NZ/UK converter plug so I can charge my phone), and I don’t actually have a flight home from Brisbane yet (the airline cut the flight I was originally booked on, and the alternative goes via Auckland, so I’m considering staying the night in Brisbane so I can get the direct flight to Christchurch in the morning), but otherwise it’s all coming together nicely.

Actually, speaking of Australia, I should put something on BCAUS to at least organise a meetup in Sydney on my way over.  Organising a Brisbane meetup will have to wait until I know how long I’m there.

In totally weird news, a certain local Bookcrosser has been masquerading as a new member and posting anonymous comments on an old LJ entry.  It was pretty obvious who it was from the start, but I played along to see where she’d take it.  Not very far, as it turned out – she lasted three comments before she started insulting us.  That was amusing enough, but then she followed up by sending me a friends request!  As the Tui ads would say, Yeah, right.  No idea what planet she’s on…