Quick update

So busy at the moment, only time for a quick update before returning to work:

In terms of my course, I still don’t really feel like I fit in properly, which is annoying. I gave my core seminar presentation yesterday, but I don’t think I’ll have got a very good mark, even though I felt that it went reasonably well and I managed to answer the barrage of questions that followed it (although the programme director jumped in before I could on several of the answers). I’m on the way to sorting out my dissertation topic though, which is something of a relief.

I’m also helping out at the UKUUG Spring 2007 Conference in a couple of weeks time, at which I’ll hopefully get to speak to some interesting people within the industry (it’s being sponsored by Transitive, Google, Sun, O’Reilly and Novell, and I suspect they’ll all send at least one representative). There’s a four course dinner on the Tuesday evening as well, which I’m going to. Finally, I’ve been asked to do a short write up on the conference, which will be published in the newsletter along with the book review that I’m already working on (the more places my name is mentioned, the better).

I don’t think I’ll be able to do the MEnt programme next year though, because the money grabbing institution that is the University of Manchester has decreed that as the course crosses two departments (you are attached to a department where your project comes from and MSEC provides the business-related modules) you should be charged double fees (or, more precisely, £3415 plus the normal tuition fees for whatever department you are attached to, which more or less doubles the cost). I’ve emailed the ‘marketing assistant’ who is apparently the right person to ask about this, but unless she comes back with some funding opportunities I think I’ll have to put that idea aside for the time being.

Finally, I’m going indoor rock climbing on Wednesday evening with some people from Friends of the Earth, which should be fun. I’ve only done it once before, way back when I went on one of those adventure weekends in primary school, but I think I should manage quite well because I’m not really hauling up that much weight with each move.

For the moment though I need to get my nose back to the grindstone and try to get through this huge pile of work currently residing on my desk…