Generic Life Update

[major_clanger]

Aargh. My brain's full. At least, that's my explanation for why I haven't got very much (i.e. anything) useful done this evening. Perhaps it's because I know I've taken tomorrow as leave so that I can (a) Get Some Stuff Done, and (b) get up to London early enough to do a bit of shopping and then go to the BSFA monthly meeting.


'Stuff' will be a bit of sorting out of my room (such as filing my accumulated pile of paperwork) and quite a lot of OU. I did a big chunk of OU on the flight out to Florida next week and have had a few days slack since then (I would have done more on the way back but to my surprise managed to sleep instead). To an extent the stuff we're doing at the moment is material I know about such as civil court procedure (been there, done that...) but I ought to knuckle down and cover the other topics such as judicial review. Next week is a brief introduction to Scottish Law, which should be quite interesting, and that completes the first course manual. First of four for this course, that is, and that's the first of four courses that should - with credit transfer from my existing qualifications - give me an LLB at, oh, the start of 2008.

On that front, I've made my first bit of measurable progress, with my first TMA having been marked. 85%! Yay me! That's a distinction... and in weighted terms, goes 5% of the way towards passing this course. Six more TMAs and an exam to go, and that's just for this course. But it's a start, and (if I say so myself) quite an encouraging one.



Florida was very nice, once it stopped raining, and once some administrative trivia was sorted out we had a very productive meeting. Thursday we had free and the plan was to go to Kennedy Space Center before heading back to Orlando for the flight home. We had hoped to do the 'Historic Cape Canaveral' tour but unfortunately this was not running owing to the presence of a fuelled Delta II rocket on one of the pads. I knew the rocket was there - if I hadn't had to come back for the SFF AGM, I'd have tried to hang around for the launch on Saturday! We ended up doing the standard tour instead, which I've been on before but is still very good.



Saturday was the joint BSFA/SFF event - talks, panels and our respective AGMs. It went very well - thanks go to everyone involved, including brisingamen (Happy Birthday!) for a very interesting panel on Children's Fantasy. Also very good were Al Reynolds, Paul McAuley and Liz Williams - I really must read some of Liz's stuff soon. I didn't make too bad a mess of running the AGM and we had a pleasant few drinks at the pub afterwards before bugshaw and I headed back to Cambridge for groliffe's party. Sunday was a fair bit quieter, but did feature some DIY work involving mounting some display cabinets on a plasterboard cavity wall. My approach involved multiple spreader bolts holding a batten to the wall, then screwing the case to the batten - well, it hasn't fallen off yet...


See some of you at the White Hart tomorrow,

MC

Comments

[alexmc.livejournal.com]

I totally failed to remember the BSFA meeting - I worked last weekend instead.

Thanks go to bugshaw who cheered me up after whinging on LJ.

I am surprisingly bouncy after my last three posts (2 disasters and 1 cool thing all in the same day!)

Now, why did this appear the first time I posted it?

[purpletigron.livejournal.com]

I did a big chunk of OU on the flight out to Florida next week

No wonder your brain can't cope :-)

I'm not sure if purplecthulhu has remembered about tonight ... or maybe, it just clashes with two astro talks this afternoon (which means, drinkies this evening)?

Re: Now, why did this appear the first time I posted it?

[major-clanger.livejournal.com]

These time zones are just getting worse, you know :-)

[timill]

My approach involved multiple spreader bolts holding a batten to the wall, then screwing the case to the batten

You can improve this by using two battens. Each has one edge cut at 45 degrees. The first fixes to the wall with the cut face uppermost and the high side out (so you form a recess). The other goes on the cabinet, cut face down, high side out, to match the batten on the wall. The cabinet can now be hung on the wall, is supported along its length, and can be removed easily.

Moreover, you don't have to hold the cabinet to the wall while fixing it.

This trick courtesy of Norm Abram, who uses it for worksop cabinets &c.

[bugshaw.livejournal.com]

What a smashing idea! Luckily, we have another cabinet to try this with :-)