On the work side we’re getting ready for the battle of lecture recording systems. Interestingly they are all very different. We tested out a Windows Media / Silverlight solution for the LLAS e-learning conference last friday (videos are here) and are also looking at a H.264 / Flash solutions too.

At the moment it is the Graduation ceremonies at the university. I’m streaming them with Cam3Media and it means I have to start work at normal and work through to 6.

At the moment I’m trying to start the ceremony at 4:45 and then try and catch 20 minutes between 5 and 5:30. Better than nothing I suppose.

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The major change is that I’m back at Avenue campus with the Humanities staff.

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Today I was called away for something critical… updating a web page. This thing isn’t remotely my job and having the permission to be able to do it was just a technicality. However all 3 web editors spanning two separate Humanities departments were all on holiday.

So I, not even having the software to do the job, had to go to a different building to sit in someone else’s seat to do half an hour of work that I shouldn’t have done. This is on a day that I went to the Humanities campus early because I had far more work than time in the day to do.

At least everyone seems happy to see me back, even if I don’t know what I’m doing once I am back.

Another ISS person is down at Avenue, I’m going up to the main campus and hopefully everyone will miss me

It’s hard to work out which place is the best to be. They both have a lot of good points.

Avenue is quiet, air conditioned, independent (as managers are at highfield) and there is a very personal touch with everything with most people knowing me by name (and vice versa).

Highfield however has lots of things in it (Gym, shops, bars). Advice is closer and I’d meet more people within the team. Hopefully it would also be the first stage of better career progression.

But we’ll see how it goes. Nice drink tomorrow with some of the Avenue people, looking forward to it.

Colleagues may have noticed yesterday’s publication by the Guardian of league tables for particular disciplines.

Particular congratulations go to Film Studies, who figure at the top of the table for Media, Communications and Librarianship. Southampton appears as third in Modern Languages, behind Oxford and Cambridge. Archaeology (10) and Music (14) also appear in the top twenty for their subject area.

Congratulations to all concerned.

Best

Mike

—————————————
Professor Michael Kelly
Head of School

My dentist appointment is tomorrow, I have arranged for 2 days off work with some programming to do while I’m bored. I look forward to eating soup and dribbling out of the side of my mouth.

My entertainment this week has been from Grand Theft Auto 4. There’s only one thing better than playing this game and that’s reading about how much other people hate it. Apparently mothers against drunk drivers were the latest people to complain (an argument that is flawed mainly by the fact that drunk driving either a) gets you killed because you can’t drive straight or b) makes you take a taxi because you learnt quickly from option a)).

Also of interest was that someone got robbed queuing for the game (the person didn’t get the game and neither had played it, it wasn’t even out) and that children might get hold of the game. I don’t see them banning alcohol and cinema, so that argument is mute as far as I’m concerned.

My biggest scientific observation is that psychopaths are likely to buy the game, not that people who buy the game will become psychopaths.

The last thing that has bothered me recently is a blog by Amy’s Friend James.

http://preview.tinyurl.com/6epe8d and http://preview.tinyurl.com/6jj2u4

They are very good people and have strong religious views. Now I’m sure that they can write far better blog posts than I can on the subject of abortion, but lets just say that my opinion is the exact opposite of whatever they write.

I blog to you on behalf of Fr. Frank Pavone and Priests for Life. Fr. Pavone recently posted two videos on You Tube in which he describes and demonstrates the two most common abortion techniques, using the actual instruments of abortion and the words found in medical textbooks and court testimony.

I had the quite unfortunate pleasure of watching an abortian the other day. It was on a Channel 4 documentary that work recorded. It had strong warnings on the program but my job was to cut out all the adverts and put the video on the streaming server. I wasn’t expecting what I saw and I had strong words about warning people.

On the subject, however, I think that what I saw were cells. I also don’t like watching videos of liposuction, appendix removal, heart surgery, etc. All those are where a surgeon cuts away living cells from a human that has consented and has decided, correctly or incorrectly, that this was the road they wanted to go down. Nothing should remove a woman’s right to choose. Nothing.

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