Retracing Steps in Glasgow

For my job at Oxford University Museums and Gardens, now part of GLAM, I attended the Axiell User Group Conference 2018 in Glasgow; we have two museums (MHS and MNH) that use the EMu collections management system,

I took the opportunity to spend a few extra days revisiting the city where I had been a postgrad between 1990 and 1992.



I arrived back in Glasgow on Sunday evening. At Glasgow Central station I bought a weekly Zonecard before proceeding on my way, anticipating quite a lot of travel around the city, reasoning that it should be more convenient than repeatedly buying tickets and I might save some money. Then I towed my luggage along St Vincent Street and Arygll Street to reach the Sandyford Hotel in Sauchiehall Street, where I had booked 5 nights’ accommodation.

A few minutes later under greyish skies, but dry at least, I headed for the waterfront, which was easy to reach from the hotel, using the SECC tunnel walkway



There were many passersby wearing conference lanyards with a great diversity of ethnicity, so I stopped one of them to ask. He explained that they were attending a congress of the World Federation of H[a]emophilia. It seemed a very laudable gathering, but seeing the multitude I soon guessed that was probably why accommodation prices seemed elevated. Soon I emerged by the river and proceeded to cross towards the Prince’s Dock, where once mighty ships would berth, supported by an array of cranes, warehouses and railway yards.



Now this has faded away, with much of the waterway reclaimed (the BBC Scotland occupies some of this area). The area has been redeveloped, but some vestiges of the old practices remain, including the Clyde Puffer.



The next day, fuelled by a substantial cooked breakfast, I set out to explore at length, starting with Kelvingrove Park and then up to Gilmorehill, the location of the imposing Gilbert Scott Buildings, which form the central areas of the University of Glasgow.



A lady doing the polishing at the entrance to the Hunterian Museum explained that it was now quiet as the exams were over and the graduation ceremonies were yet to begin.





Around the corner, in Professors’ Square, was a distinctive sculpture in the form of an urn made of slate. It was produced by Andy Goldsworthy, a donation from a former Principal and his wife, Sir Graeme and Lady Davis:



I then headed downhill to Church Street, but whereas the view used to be of the Western Infirmary, now I saw this:



(sunyata!)

It’s a huge development site for the University (similar to the Radcliffe Observatory Quarter redevelopment in Oxford). Some ragged remnants still remain adjacent to the street:



I returned to the main campus via Byers Road and then continued down University Avenue to University Gardens, where I used to receive instruction at the Maths Department at no. 8 and study at no. 11. Now it looked like this:



(sunyata!!)

At least they hadn’t knocked down the villa, a listed building from the 1880s, where I used to share a sparsely furnished office with other Maths postgrads at George Service House (number 11).

Next door, no. 13, was Hetherington House, home of the Hetherington Research Club, the scene of a student protest in 2011 “against cuts to higher education within Glasgow University and nationwide” (the Hetherington Research Club was closed in 2010). It got widely reported, including BBC coverage and a Wikipedia article.

Seeing that the Maths Department building, a block constructed in the late ‘60s in the Brutalist style, had been demolished I quizzed a security person (I assume) who was standing nearby. He said it was knocked down at the beginning of the year and the completion of the new construction was planned for completiion in 2 years’ time. I expect few would mourn the loss of the old structure.

The flat I shared in Church Street was appropriately described by my flatmate as "a hovel”; cheap, but not so cheerful. So after a few months I moved again and finally found a generally comfortable and affordable place to live, still close to the Maths Department, in Hillhead Street. So on my return I carried on, using a shortcut that I still remembered by Queen Margaret’s Union, to get onto Hillhead Street. And memories started to return…

Miss Macaulay, the landlady, was retired. She had previously run a rest home there, which was apparently particularly popular with Americans. As part of my induction she pointed to the Macaulay clan’s crest with its motto, ‘Dulce periculum est’, which she obligingly translated — “Danger is sweet!”. However, whilst she was proud of her heritage, her tone was not menacing and I was offered two rooms at a generous rate.

I don’t recall having taken any photos, but it’s not so hard to find glimpses of the interior. A few months after I had moved a production company came to do some filming for The Bogieman, a BBC Scotland Comedy Drama from 1992 starring Robbie Coltraine, Midge Ure et al. Here we see the detective approaching the home



Most of the flat was need for the filming, i.e., the entrance hallway, the two front rooms and the kitchen at the back (where they kept all the turkeys). Apparently when it came to finding the right location they reviewed 8 properties and this one won hands down; I don’t think they needed to use so many props for beyond the red door at the entrance was a plentiful supply of tartan, chandeliers, stags heads and especially brass, frequently augmented at weekends by new acquisitions from The Barras.

The BBC wrote to us individually advising what was going to happen. They very kindly allowed me to come and go as I pleased during the filming and I could stay there overnight as my rooms were not used (this also helped them in that I could watch over their equipment). On one occasion as I was making my way through the hallway I bumped into Robbie Coltraine coming out of the front room. Seeing me he immediately remarked in an affected voice, “Don’t go into show business!” and then carried on his way.

Now revisiting, I could barely recognise the flat — gone were the tartan curtains, the front door had been repainted; there was little sign of the distinctive colour from the past. I tried to strike a conversation with a resident outside, but she didn’t want to know (and looked at me with suspicion). So it was soon time to move on, down the hill, past The Mackintosh House



As it was Monday, I knew it would be closed, so next stop was the Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum,



It’s a fabulous museum, with a rich mixture of displays, some quite unexpected, particularly the multimedia object cinema, which I found quite immersive. However, I spent most of my time at ‘Mackintosh and the Glasgow Style Gallery’, a permanent display of work by members of the Glasgow School, particularly the Group of Four. Actually, there is also a special exhibition to celebrate 150 years of the birth of the leading light: Charles Rennie Mackintosh: Making the Glasgow Style. My only disappointment was not being able to see Dali’s Christ of St John on the Cross, which is currently on loan.

After coffee in the Centre Hall, I wandered along Argyll Street, past Kelvin Hall, where I remember watching international athletics. Its redevelopment is bringing together disparate Hunterian collections of the University. Its website includes a beta service with integrated online access to search the collections.

I had planned to explore Pollok Country Park on the south side, so it was on to the Underground, where the turnstile rejected my ticket first time I tried it and then again and again. The staff in the ticket office was watching on and gestured to hand over my card. He studied it and with furrowed brow concluded it was meant for buses. Not to worry as he could fix the problem if I waited 10 minutes. So I did and I continued on my way and emerged safely at St Enoch’s. But when I came to the platform where I was to catch the train for Barrhead, the turnstiles there rejected it also. “It’s the magnet”, explained the rail staff cheerily as he let me through. “Och well…”

Disembarking at Pollokshaws station, I headed for Pollok Country Park, passing by Pollokshaws Railway Viaduct, which spans White Cart Water. Built in 1847 and subject to a lot of rail traffic, it must need quite a lot of maintenance.



This scene somehow felt like a metaphor for working in an IT team.

A few yards along Pollok Avenue one finds Shawmuir Lodge, built in 1891, as the stone relief indicates (I guess):



The grounds are part of an estate that belonged for many centuries to the Maxwell family until it was handed over to the Glasgow Corporation with the condition that it remained a public park. The stately home is Pollok House, maintained by the National Trust of Scotland. It’s currently featuring a photography exhibition, Harry Benson: from Glasgow to America, which I found really impressive — he vividly captures many aspects of life with a perfect sense of timing. And lunch was very good too.

The park was delightful with many blooms and I felt no need to investigate the Burrell Collection, though it’s actually ‘temporarily closed’ for refurbishment (estimated until 2020).





I returned to the hotel greatly contented with what I had seen.


The following day I explored towards the east, aiming for St Mungo’s, Glasgow’s cathedral. I took a slight detour to see what was happening with the refurbishment of the Glasgow School of Art following the fire of 2014.



According to the information boards it will reopen in 2019 "as a base for all first year students from across all disciplines: architecture, design, fine art, innovation, simulation and visualisation". Using my map from 1990, I carried on, but lost my way when I hit Buchanan Galleries, a large shopping mall, but eventually I reached my destination and quickly made my way to the shrine of St Mungo. Similar to what happened in Oxford, the shrine gained special attention during the medieval period (in Oxford in the 12th Century, the relics of the patron saint, St Frideswide, were transferred to a special new shrine, and a miracle collection was authored by Prior Philip, detailing miraculous healings, on which I wrote an essay. This was formerly the Roman Catholic mother church of the Archdiocese of Glasgow, but following the Scottish reformation it has been under the Church of Scotland.

I gazed at leisure from the cafe in the nearby Mungo Museum of Religious Art and Life.



I found the museum itself unassuming and quite a lot larger than expected; it seems to unfold, floor by floor. As it doesn’t overwhelm, it lends itself to measured absorption; one can linger on the displays. Its exhibitions are planned in interesting ways, particularly the one space where world religions were introduced in the centre and around it were the stages in life (and death), bringing together different perspectives from the various faiths. There are good education facilities for youngsters and It feels like there’s been good involvement from local communities. And they didn’t shy away from difficult topics such as mission and conversion - it included material on Billy Graham, including a photo of him preaching at Celtic Park in 1991. I went along to listen; he was certainly dedicated to his fath and charismatic, but I didn’t feel a calling to go to the front.

As I left the museum I took a closer look at the Zen garden, which was designed by Yasutaro Tanaka and entitled “Where We Are”. I don’t claim any background, but as I observed the grass growing around the edges, it struck me that it needed maintenance. The few gardens I have seen have all been very precisely arranged with not a stone out of place. Perhaps it needs some specialist maintenance?

Emerging, I continued towards the Necropolis, a bold statement of a Victorian cemetery, as though “from the other side”, about the city’s great and famous in the form of memorial stones. Looking back there were impressive views of the cathedral next to the Royal Infirmary:



Commanding a central position in the Necropolis and visible from afar is a tall column, a monument to John Knox, who was a leader of the country's Reformation.







Having meandered and tiptoed along, I descended and started my return, came across unexpectedly a touching work of street art: a Glasgow High Street mural, by Sam Bates, aka Smug. It seems very fitting and is said to relate to St Mungo.



I could have ridden on a bus with the Zonecard, but I felt roaming on foot was generally much more pleasant and kept going through Merchant City and onwards until I was back at the hotel. There was much to observe and entertain, but I felt a sense of loneliness, perhaps an echo of similar feelings I had experienced whilst living here.

The next two days were dedicated to the conference, which was packed with many informative sessions and conversations; I took hardly any photos.

Then I resumed my explorations on foot after the conference had closed, mainly along the River Clyde, taking snaps quite frequently.

The giant Finnieston Crane:



And an unexpected horizon that reflects the evolving nature of belief (religious and secular):



Then across the Clyde Arc:





past some rather dilapidated piers



The weather having improved since the beginning of the week offered nice views.



A lot of blocks sprung up in the centre:



And greater traffic loads to support.



It was a very pleasant strolling along at leisure. A nice way to end the tour of the city.


One place I didn’t get round to revisiting was Hillhead Underground station. This was where I bade farewell to my research supervisor, Prof. Robert (“Bob”) Odoni. Alas he passed away about 10 years later; he was highly regarded by colleagues. (I remember colleagues sharing their mathematical problems with him and a few days later he might go up to them and suggest: “Have you tried this …?”)

Since then Glasgow has undergone far-reaching development; although this dynamism had already started when it was European Cultural Capital in 1990, it feels more international now. However, as with many other cities, I heard about some aspects of modernisation, particularly student apartment blocks, which are changing the nature of some districts and, I suspect, the expectations of its inhabitants.

WCBS Paper on Sustainable Social Networking

In addition to the invited plenary speeches, the 3rd World Conference on Buddhism and Science scheduled three tracks on the second afternoon (2 December), one for each theme (Buddhism + Natural Science / Cognitive Science / Social Science) with 4 presentations in each. The conference organisers very kindly gave me the opportunity to present a paper in the section on Buddhism and Social Science; it's only through the generous support they gave that I decided to make the journey to Thailand just a year after my last visit.

I was listed as the first speaker after lunch, something of a mixed blessing with feelings of gastronomic contentment and the body's tendency to want a siesta! Sectional presentations were given up on the 4th Floor in the College of Religious Studies, a building nicely designed around a quad, and for my talk I think there were 40-50 people who wandered in, including a substantial number of bhikkhus, sitting towards the front. Mahidol University has many members of the Sangha as students on its courses, a feature that makes me imagine scenes from Oxford's early days when it's academic spaces was full of monastics also.

The title of my paper was Supporting Kalyāṇamittatā Online: New Architectures for Sustainable Social Networking, a theme that I've had in mind for several years. In my blog post On 'Friends' and other associations, I had already proposed as core to new designs the implementation of multiple relationship types for making a connection - at present, the norm is just the one, 'friend', which places colleagues and closest family members in the same basket. The key inspiration is the Buddha's teachings in the Sigalovāda Sutta, guidance to the householder Sigala, on how to cultivate true friendship. How one behaves should depend on the kind of relationship that one has and the Buddha divides these into 6 separate categories, one category for each cardinal point (N,E,S and W) plus above and below. There's an excellent diagrammatic representation of this in Phrabhavanaviriyakhun's book, Man's Personal Transformation, enough to get my onto my feet to explain it!

[photo credit: Mananya Pattamasoontorn]

I tried to emphasize the contrast these 6 directions with the single direction operative in most social networking sites today. That's a rather parlous state of social affairs, is it not? (In fact I even received assistance from Matthew Kosuta, the chair of the session, who provided a further illustration of the blackboard.)

Furthermore, the Buddha gives advice on how to cultivate each type of relationship, which suggests in application that the services available for each relationship type should vary accordingly.

A copy of my slides below:

Supporting Kalyanamittata Online: New Architectures for Sustainable Social Networking

View more presentations from Paul Trafford.

In the Q&A and subsequent feedback, one question raised the underlying issue of control over online activities - there were several representatives of grassroots organisations who were concerned about being restricted in communications. My response was to suggest that it may depend upon how social networking sites are implemented - whether a single site [run by just one organisation] or distributed [in the manner of Diaspora]. Another key issue is the level of guidance - whilst most people that some is needed, there would be great resistance to any heavy-handedness whereby people are told what to do online, particularly in a way that takes away their freedom to choose.

I'm keen for the ideas to be shared, so I'm pleased that the paper itself is also available for download from the conference papers section (or a pre-formatted copy from my site). Please let me know if you have problems with access.

Interacting Processes at the 3rd World Conference on Buddhism and Science

The deep yearning for knowledge, particularly solutions to the problem of suffering, are stimulating many kinds of dialogue, particularly between and among Buddhism and Science. Thus the 3rd World Conference on Buddhism and Science that took place 1-2 December 2010 at the College of Religious Studies at Mahidol University (Salaya), provided a good opportunity to facilitate such activity. A prime mover behind this kind of meeting space is Dr. Alan Wallace, who is actively promoting the scientific analysis of meditation and its benefits.

I was able to join this conference series for the first time and find out about some of the recent developments in this field and present ideas of my own. The 2 day event was compact, with about 20 speakers in all, allowing for closer discussions. In fact, quite a few of them can be seen on the following brightly-decorated open air shuttle bus (or 'rail car' as it's known locally)!

That was taken shortly before 7am on the first day.

The conference was formerly opened by HRH Princess Maha Chakri Sirindhorn of Thailand, who arrived right on schedule at 9am to give a supportive speech, highlighting the qualities of compassion and the importance of ethics for human well-being, an underlying goal for this conference. Her Royal Highness subsequently stayed on to listen to 4 keynote speakers (and meet them afterwards), taking notes at a desk placed close to the speakers. One of my cousins informed me that at the end of the year the Princess compiles a book from the notes taken, indicating considerable conscientiousness.

The presentations were very diverse, covering various aspects across the three themes of Buddhism and Natural Science, Buddhism and Cognitive Science, and Buddhism and Social Science. I'll only touch on a few here, but very conveniently a complete set of papers is available for download. Despite the diversity, there appeared to be some common patterns in much of the research articulated. The scene was very well set by a fluent presentation from Professor Denis Noble who gave a few notes, as it were, from his book, the Music of Life. I attempt to paraphrase what he said (I have studied very little biology!) As a systems biologist he emphasized interaction of processes as the characteristics of life, rather than any genetic code or other building blocks. For him, the human being needs to be treated as a whole, with no control centre; changes are effected in multiple directions, so you can't predict human behaviour by unravelling the human genome - such DNA provides only templates for proteins. This has led to reflections on the Buddhist concept of anatta, though I think it can only be properly understood through meditation at an advanced level.

Process-oriented views were repeatedly echoed by speakers in neurological reports, particularly neuroplasticity arising from meditation practice. Although it was observed that many presentations about science came from a particular Western epistemological perspective, at least the encounters with Buddhist teachings were generally encouraging more 'plasticity' in the research approaches. It is only early days. One speaker applauded the fact that in Thailand the integration of scientific methods with traditional Thai medicine is formally recognised at the national level, contrasting it with the rather constricted approaches in Britain and the United States - often treating symptoms, not causes. Some of what was presented I had heard before, particularly the work by Prof. Ian Stevenson at Virginia's Division of Perceptual Studies, relating to recollections by children of previous lives. Whilst the evidence continues to accumulate and I've long been persuaded myself, I wonder how much traction they are getting in general amongst the skeptical elements in the scientific community?

I don't have much formal training in the sciences (apart from computer science), but I have been practising meditation for quite a while and keen to see it adopted universally. So I was very keen to hear Rasmus Hougaard of the Potential Project, which provides mind training (meditation) for corporations. This looks like a recipe for success that has the right ingrediences: a programme that draws multiple meditation traditions (including the Thai Forest Tradition of Ven. Ajahn Chah), teachers experienced in meditation and the corporate world, training that applies throughout the day in whatever activities are engaged, a language that business people can relate to and the development of local facilitators to ensure continuity of practice. One limitation still to be addressed, and an important one in view of increasing movements between jobs, is that of supporting someone when they leave the company. At present it seems they're on their own...

It was fitting then that we could join in two meditation sessions - both courtesy of the jovial Malcolm Huxter, who had previously been a bhikkhu. Coupled with monks chanting the metta sutta (and excellent food), the conference had a very pleasant feel, though some of the organisation was a bit 'just in time', which is not unusual for Thailand!

There was another personally significant aspect. In 1993, Fuengsin Trafford, my mother, had helped organise a joint conference on 'Death and Dying' between Mahidol University and Selly Oak Colleges, Birmingham. With her language skills (Thai and English), she was responsible for many of the communications; she also presented on Thai death rituals. So I was very pleased to be able to visit the College of Religious Studies at Mahidol, particularly to meet Dr. Pinit Ratanakul, who had been a member of the group visiting the UK.

For a cosmologist's perspective, you can read the thoughts of keynote speaker, Adam Frank, who writes on Buddhism And Science: Promise And Perils.

All aboard? Reflections on the 7th Sakai conference, Amsterdam

Note: This article was originally posted in the Connect section on the Educause Web site, at:
http://connect.educause.edu/blog/pault/allaboardreflectionsonthe/44626. 
However, this address has since become inaccessible, so the post has been reproduced here as an archive with the same date and approximately the same time.

Oxford made a decision in Autumn 2006 to migrate to the Sakai VLE with the announcement of the Tetra collaboration. Since the completion of the academic year, we've been able to focus more on the task in hand. For myself, I decided the best way to quickly gain a feel for Sakai was to attend a Sakai gathering and conveniently the 7th Sakai Conference was recently held in Amsterdam, the first time the conference had been held outside the United States. I was primarily interested in sessions that addressed system migration, deployment and support, but also keen to hear about pedagogy and usability, leaving it to my colleagues to cover the more technical development aspects. I wanted to know what approaches were adopted to move to Sakai: organisation, resources, timescales, etc.

So was it a case of all aboard...?



Above is the luxury cruise liner, Silver Shadow, which was waiting for passengers to board. It was right next to the Moevenpick Hotel, the conference venue. In fact, it's designed to accommodate a little under 400 guests, about the number of participants at the conference, which rather suggests a dream future venue ... :-)

It's taken two or three weeks for my impressions to settle - I found the three days of the conference quite intense and took copious notes. I can say straightaway, however, that I felt there was generally a good sense of community, with a very constructive outlook across the various constituent communities, ranging from development through to pedagogy and research. Sessions were usually informative and presented well; there was a real sense of purpose and commitment It was consistent with what I've observed on the Tetra developers mailing list: although I'm not been involved in any Java coding myself, I have been seen how the Sakai developers have provided very helpful responses to the various queries raised by Bodington developers seeking to incorporate key functionality in Sakai. Furthermore, when some of these ideas were presented by my colleagues, Adam and Matthew, in their presentation on importing Bodington tool, they were greeted very positively - there is a willingness to learn. So I broadly concur with the encouraging sentiments expressed by Michael Feldsteain in his 'State of the Union' blog post.

There remain many questionmarks as expressed Ian Reid, whose responses were not so rosy: in wrapping it up, he perceived a number of weaknesses and for him fundamental questions remained unanswered. I can at least answer his first point about the product: there are certainly large scale deployments - e.g. at Indiana and Michigan. Further, many of the other points, such as the technical bias, are well known and as far as I can tell they are being actively addressed.

I have quite a number of concerns myself and among my colleagues may be the one who is most reluctant to migrate from our present WebLearn, based on Bodington, perhaps largely because I have spent so much time with it and naturally can get attached. My first query is what kind of system is Sakai? Is it largely an open source replacement for Blackboard or WebCT? At the culmination of the procurement process at Oxford in 2001/2002, we were left with a head-to-head between Blackboard and Bodington. There was a free vote and Bodington won very easily, largely because Bodington offered flexibility: in the use of terminology, in how it allowed areas to be set up, in who could do what in these areas, and in how users could navigate freely around the system. One could use it to augment existing teaching or research arrangements with little effort. WebLearn has subsequently grown organically - from the handful of resources in December 2002 to its present state of about 60,000 resources manually created and managed by thousands of users (staff and students) in the various colleges and departments. At the same time, Bodington also has many weaknesses - it's rather long in the tooth and has often been described as "clunky" - many of the tools are looking very dated and making changes can be very laborious.

Sakai was felt to be the most promising way forward, but as it stands there are serious limitations in its design. The name of Michigan's deployment itself hints at one of these 'CTools,' rather indicating a technical focus: indeed much of the talk at the conference was 'tools' oriented, but during the past year or two, in WebLearn, we've deliberately tried to move away from 'how does tool X work' to 'how to carry out activity Y [using the tools available]' with a recent project looking at activity-based use cases for WebLearn. Also, the course subscription model in Sakai will not be not sufficient (in theory, Oxford's undergraduates are at liberty to attend any lecture at the University); the role-based access control is more coarse-grained (in fact, Bodington doesn't have any fixed roles - they can be defined via group memberships), and the overall organisation of materials lacks hierachy. There are many other smaller issues - e.g. what about those horrible Sakai URLs?

There are many concerns, but there is reassuringly intense activity to address them and this is leading to mutual enrichment. So, a lot of discussion has flowed on the topic of groups; a new hierarchy service for Sakai might have a name component that will enable nice URLs etc. I also saw some good examples of how requirements are driving the development; how development goes through a proper processes of evaluation and many other encouraging signs, such as the use of the term of Collaborative Learning Environment (CLE), getting away from the systems-oriented language.

So, largely reassured, at this stage my biggest concern is more in terms of timescales and resources regarding a full deployment of Sakai: it's a question of when than if. Looking around, it seems fitting then to note Stanford's announcement on 21 June:

After a year-long pilot, Sakai went into full production at Stanford today, fully replacing our legacy home-grown system. We've taken a long, careful path toward deployment to assure a seamless transition to the new system. It is localized, integrated and well tested, and today we flipped the switch. This is a big achievement for us, fulfilling the commitment we made to ourselves, and to our collaborators at Indiana, Michigan and MIT three years ago when we started this project.

So it can be done, but a long road lies ahead and if we are to achieve this at Oxford for everyone's benefit, we really shall need all aboard!

Post conference: brief reflection

Note: This article was originally posted in the Connect section on the Educause Web site, at:
http://www.educause.edu/node/166320. 
However, this address has since become inaccessible, so the post has been reproduced here as an archive with the same date and approximately the same time.

The dust is now settling after Educause 2006 came to Dallas, Texas. It was the first time I had attended and I enjoyed very much those few days of heightened activity - the Dallas Convention Center was an excellent venue, the presentations were varied and informative, some quite entertaining; the chats were friendly and stimulating, the hotel was comfortable, even my cell phone arrangements worked out fine.

It's tempting to think that when a conference closes with its final keynote, that you can slowly wend your way home and have the luxury of gently pondering all that's gone on. I was back in Oxford on Friday, so at least I had the weekend, but I used up a fair amount catching up on sleep and I spent the greater part of Sunday just tidying up the copious notes I had jotted. I knew that once I returned to the office I wouldn't have much opportunity to tidy them up much further, especially as the conference took place during Week 1 of Michaelmas, our Autumn term, not an ideal week to be away!

So it's back to user support queries, teaching preparation (rather more than expected), ideas for e-learning projects and funding applications, and more queries generated by the important Tetra announcement and so on. At least I managed to share my notes with colleagues and do a debrief, with the lava pen provided by Best Buy being a big 'wow' - now everyone wants one! Well, this one is going to Kate, our resident floaty pen collector :-)