Monday 11th January 2021, 9.20am (day 3,427)
Less than an hour into the working week and I’m already reaching for these, which is not a good sign. A side effect of screen imprisonment — I doubt I’m not the only one suffering.
Essential supplies
Being 42
Life, one day at a time
Tag Archives: Apple Mac
Self-portrait as Zoombie
Thursday 17th December 2020, 1.00pm (day 3,402)
Another day with little to record except my further Zoombification, along with much of the rest of the planet. It’s nearly Christmas, which of course will lead to radical change in the current shape of life. But at least I won’t have any Zoom meetings for two weeks.
Tools of Monday
Monday 7th December 2020, 10.35am (day 3,392)
The allocation of Mondays as designated stay-at-home days seems to have become a set pattern. Tools of my particular trade: the Mac, the backup disk, and we are at the time of year where the 2021 diary needs to come to the fore. It ain’t high adventure I know, but at the moment it’s what there is.
Very limited horizons
Thursday 3rd September 2020, 11.55am (day 3,297)
This really was about as much of the world as I saw today. But, you know, not in black and white.
What happened between 28/4 and 1/5/2016 incidentally? Answer: that year’s Hebden Bridge Burlesque Festival. Should you be wondering.
Awayday (not away)
Friday 26th June 2020, 9.55am (day 3,228)
Staff ‘awayday’ for us today — which in geographical terms, of course, meant little more than a different Zoom URL and, for me, the latest in a series of shots taken in Clare’s treatment room. It was a big day for me in a way as copies of my new book arrived, but all played out on the same stage. And not even with a very clean screen on the Mac.
Live in Indonesia
Thursday 18th June 2020, 9.55am (day 3,220)
My last picture taken outside England was captured on February 2nd, 137 days ago in Bucharest. That span of time isn’t all that long, I know, but it is nevertheless now the longest period I have spent only in England since I started doing this blog: and I guess it is due to go on for a little while yet.
The nice people who put me up in Indonesia in November (UKSW in Salatiga) did want to hear from me again however, hence the webinar I did this morning — to an audience of 500+, according to the counter of ‘Participants’ at the bottom of the Zoom screen. I, on the other hand, just talked to a computer screen, as I have been doing for the last three months. Like the Premier League footballers who restarted their well-paid activities last night, I made do with a bunch of artificial ‘fans in the stand’, namely Clare’s Russian doll collection.
137 more days from now takes us until the end of October; will sanity have returned to the world by then? I’m not taking bets on it.
The last class of the year
Friday 1st May 2020, 9.25am (day 3,172)
It was my last scheduled teaching of the semester today. Normally we would have concluded this significant moment in the academic year by some kind of group photo, as on 4th May 2018, and said our goodbyes, at least amongst those I will not be supervising over the summer. There can be none of that this year. I sit in a room and talk to a laptop for an hour and twenty minutes and take questions here and there and that’s it. I do plenty of distance teaching anyway, so it’s not that I’m pissed off about this as such — but I miss people, and if you claim not to, then I worry for your sanity.
Online meeting
Friday 8th November 2019, 12.45pm (day 2,997)
I was supposed to be in Manchester today but with the outflow of yesterday’s floods still wandering past, I gave the travelling a miss. But how great is videoconferencing? Photographically I hope it is also interesting to depict the random pile of crap that has accumulated at one side of the dining table… then again, I am surely reaching.
Totems
Thursday 31st October 2019, 9.40am (day 2,989)
Back home — at least for a day. It’s Halloween but I don’t really go for The Festival of Cheap Plastic Tat. I did have a couple of online classes to run however, so I let my totem make an appearance. Perhaps the Mac is also a totem — or a familiar? It’s certainly hard to weave any magic without it, these days.
Working at home
Thursday 3rd January 2019, 3.25pm (day 2,688)
According to my phone pedometer: number of steps done yesterday = 38,855. Number done today = 839. This is an accurate reflection of things.
Being 42 