Goodnight and goodluck, sweetheart

We spent last weekend exhausting ourselves on the dance floor at Goodnight Sweetheart in Hertfordshire. It was a fun weekend for us because we hadn't had much dancing in a long while. The weekend included workshops from Steven & Virginie and Peter & Giselle, among others. I think my favourite thing for the whole weekend was the classes from Peter & Giselle. Really great. The huge, gigantic, spectacular World Championship Battle of the DJs turned out to be rather disappointing. Sound systems that didn't work, a strange setup, stressed organisers, and guess how many songs we played? 3! Even the final two only got to play a total of 6 songs. The winner in a very good field was Alf from Norway who did an excellent job in these difficult circumstances, I must say. He gets to buy himself a ticket to Canada (if he can afford it) as a prize. Hmmm. Still, it was great to get away for a while, and even more terrific to make some new friends and catch up with our great mate Dozka. She did us proud by making it through to the semi finals of the DJ Battle too. That's better than I did, that's for sure.

An awful lot is still going on here as we settle in. The big news for us is that Lotte's found an ad for a job that really sounds like her, so she's putting some time into preparing to apply. Keep your electronic fingers crossed, folks. She won't know for a few weeks yet how she does, though. Work here for me is going well. I've had time to get to look at some things that I know will help me in the next year, including updating my knowledge on tools for qualitative research. In the running are Nvivo 7, Atlas.ti, and a Mac-only thing called TAMS Analyzer. I'm going to try the last of these over the next short while becuase I can run it on my machine and it has a limited feature set (an advantage for my needs, perhaps).

Today jeff pointed out this demo of Multitouch (14Mb, Quicktime), a gestural interface project that looks absolutely amazing. Also see this article and this page about the project. That's exactly the sort of thing I heard Alan Kay talking about in 1994. It definitely takes a long time for these ideas to come to fruition.

Steven Hawking and Sir Humphrey

Namedropping has got to be one of the most common pastimes at Cambridge, if my first week of work here is anything to go by. On Sunday we were walking between the city centre and Granchester Meadow and I looked up to see Steven Hawking directly in front of us on the path. I only realised it was actually him right as we were walking past him, but it was incredibly cool to see him just tooling around campus. Then today we went down to the Judge Business School for my first look at an actual Cambridge class in progress. It was a role-play simulation about the privatisation of British electricity in the 1980s. But this was a role-play with a difference. They'd invited a couple of VIPs to take part, including Lord Wilson of Dinton, who played the role of Permanent Secretary to the Department of Environment. If you're a fan of Yes Minister, Permanent Secretary was the role that Sir Humphrey played in that series. The thing is, Lord Wilson was the real one. It added a certain sense of realism to the whole thing, I have to say.

The walk to work

Hello Cambridge

And here's the new flat in Cambridge. We were really impressed with how big it feels, and it still feels brand new. We're only the second tenants since it was built in 2004. Lotte's demonstrating how to make a chicken stir fry with our new stirfry pan from Tesco, which we ate on our new plates from Tesco. In fact just about everything we've bought so far (including our groceries) has been from Tesco. It's not our first choice to support a giant megastore chain, but well, we've got a limited choice at the moment and it really does have everything. We've made what seems like dozens of trips there already, stuffing our little back packs full every time.

The place was fully furnished, so the fridge, book case, couch, kitchen setting and desk were all waiting for us. The best thing about the place is the floor, which is some kind of faux wood and will probably come in pretty handy when we want to practice dancing.

Probably the most surprising thing was the bedroom seems an awful lot bigger than at our place in Melbourne. It could be because the bed is only a double, but it really does feel pretty big. Both rooms have windows onto a courtyard, which has a bike shed on one side that is always crammed to the gills with bikes. Lotte was pretty happy about that.

Today's major Tesco purchase was a micro stereo system, bought mostly based on being the cheapest one we could find that had audio input, so that we can use AirTunes. Wouldn't be without it. It's all plugged in and pumping out the tunes now.

Byebye Melbourne

Apologies for the slight break in transmission. We've been pretty busy moving out of our place in Melbourne and, then into our new place in Cambridge. We took just a couple of snaps before we left to remind us of the old place. This one was taken at our farewell party on the Monday night before we left. A word of warning: if you're ever moving overseas and you have your farewell party 48 hours before departure you're going to have a lot of cleaning up to do, and you might consider moving most of your furniture beforehand. We got out of it without too much trouble by giving away just about everything we possibly could to our friends as they left the party. People left with all sorts of items, including chocolates, kitchen utensils, cricket bats and ancient technological clutter.

One last look at our little house. It looks so sunny looking back on it. We'll be back soon, little house! Honest.

Best Laid Plans: Part 2

What was I saying about life not going as planned? Last night my brother was rushed into surgery to have his gall bladder (along with a 1.5 cm stone) removed. Well, "rushed" is a strictly figurative term in this case because he was actually kept waiting in pre-op for about 4 hours because of an emergency case. But they had only diagnosed the gallstone the day before and had him into theatre last night at about 8pm. I was there when he was wheeled back up to his ward to see him give his victory point of the finger and smile as best he could through an oxygen mask. I know what it feels like when you're waking up from being under -- those drugs are actually pretty good and you feel very relieved that it's all over. Despite being pretty groggy he was joking around so much we had to struggle not to wake up the other patients.

We've decided that with news of Oma's stready progress we can stick to our initial plan of leaving on January 11. We'll probably just change our side-trip plans to get to Amsterdam earlier and stay a little longer. This will mean we can proably just get everything organised before our departure, although I have to say it's getting pretty tight.

Best Laid Plans

Life doesn't always go as planned. Just when we thought we were getting on top of our plans to leave, we learnt that Lotte's Grandma (Oma) has taken ill after a fall. It's now quite serious -- she was admitted to hospital yesterday and had another fall today. Of course Lotte needs to be there for her Oma and really all we can do at the moment is think about how it would be possible for her to do that. We're now contemplating leaving just after Christmas, and Lotte may even have to go sooner if worst comes to worst. We just hope we get some better news soon.

BSG on iTMS

So my wish has come true. Battlestar Galactica is now available for download on the iTunes Music Store. Now if they only made video content available to countries other than the US, they would have something just as revolutionary as Bittorrent, but completely legitimate. And a whole new way of making money through online distribution without the huge cost. I hope the studios figure that out quickly.

BPPV

Yesterday was I took one of the last steps in my quest for some answers about my dizziness. At least one of the last steps I will take before I leave for the UK. I went and saw a Neurologist. He was very thorough, and gave me a bunch of different tests as well as some I had already done. I gave him my whole history and he spent quite a while going through some other questions. He's diagnosed me with something called BPPV -- Benign Paroxysmal Positional Vertigo. He's pretty definite about it. The way he described it was that one of my ears has got some little crystals in it, almost certainly because of the vestibular neuritis / viral labyrinthitis. I found a more detailed explanation on this page.

The ear that works tends to "push" me towards the ear that doesn't work, resulting in spinning or movement. Anyway he reckons I need to try some home treatment exercises, which are also described on the page above. He also reckons that it works for almost all people within like a week, and that it probably won't come back! I hope he's right.

No Conference For You

I never got a reply to my request to attend ASCILITE this year, so I guess that meant no. The paper that I didn't present went down well, though, I hear! It was presented by the first author. It's sad though -- the first time I haven't been given support to attend this conference. I know it sounds like sour grapes, but it really does make me feel like my decision to find another job was worthwhile. Clearly they don't see professional development as a big priority where I am now, and particularly the academic kind.

Dining Al Fresco

Last night I was feeling like crap, so Lotte decided to cook up a really nice summer meal while I slept, and when I awoke she'd set up a table outside for us to enjoy our meal in the fading sunshine.
Our poor little courtyard is looking a little worse for wear at the moment, but it was very pleasant just to eat in the open air. The house was way too hot. After we'd stared at the overgrown weeds taking over the carefully planted herbs and natives, Lotte decided we really needed to attack them right then and there. We've probably got a good day's work to get the rest done but we did make a start.

Halogen globes are dangerous

Okay, this is beyond a joke. For the THIRD time one of our halogen globes has just burst for no reason, and this time it really hurt. I had just entered the smallest room in the house and about 10 seconds into a leak heard a loud *pop* and felt a sharp pain in the back of my neck. A split second later a shower of hot glass hit the ground all around me. One of the pieces had lodged itself into my neck and I could smell my hair burning. Not happy. I'm going to figure out who makes these globes and write them a letter. Something ain't right.

Flurry of plans

Tonight Lotte and I registered for Goodnight Sweetheart in February and the London Lindy Exchange in March. Places tend to sell out of these things in the UK we've been told, so it was time to commit. Also I found out I've been picked to represent Australia in the 3rd annual World DJ Championships at GNSH, which is going to be huge fun. And just yesterday I got a casual invitation up to the International Centre for Research on Learning at the University of Dundee in Scotland. I might take them up on that offer to do a presentation of some sort. We've also planned our first side-trip to Holland, only 6 days after our arrival in the UK! The air fares are amazing -- for 100 GBP we get there and back, and that's including insurance. Handy.

We got the flat

We found out today that we got the flat we applied for, which is on the ground floor in the newly built West Cambridge university residencies, close to the Cavendish Laboratory. If the university map is to scale, it seems to be around a mile west of the city centre. The floor plan makes it look pretty small, but we actually measured up our current living room/kitchen and it's almost exactly the same size, which put our minds at ease a bit. The big difference will be that we'll have hardly any room for storage, and no spare room for visitors. Still, there are a couple of desk areas and we won't have to store years of stuff with us. It should be pretty good.

Beaming Up

Since getting over the initial shock of our impending trans-hemispheric move, we've started to notice our perspective shift. Before we were here in Melbourne and thinking about what it would be like to be overseas, and all the implications for family, friends, and work. Now, even though we're here in Melbourne in a physical sense, our minds are already on the way to England.

Not only are we dealing with the issues of setting up bank accounts, arranging visas, accommodation, and travel -- we're also slowly beginning to consider all the human connections that are important, both with people in Europe and people here. We're conscious of spending time with family and friends while we're still here. And we're in daily contact with friends and family in England and Holland respectively, talking about everything from airport pick-ups to who has some tea-towels and crockery we can "borrow".

All of this gives us this strange sensation of seeing our lives here as though we've suddenly jumped outside the goldfish bowl. We keep noting how cheap groceries are here (like it didn't occur to us before) and spending time in the sunshine like it's our last chance. Stupid, really, but we just can't escape the feeling that our cognitive epicentre has already started teleporting to the other side of the planet.

The Whole Story

Back in June & July when we visited Europe, Lotte and I started talking seriously about the idea of spending an extended stay there. We'd actually been talking about it since our previous trip when we visited Zurich and thought how fantastic it would be to live there. But this time we were talking about the practicalities rather than the dreams -- if we wanted to make this happen, how would we do it exactly?

We figured out pretty quickly that the biggest hurdle would be for me to get a visa and a job. Lotte has excellent English and holds an EU passport, which makes everything pretty simple for her in many countries in Europe. It turns out that Switzerland is one of the most difficult places to move to in the world, and not even EU people can live and work there easily.

It didn't take long for us to start thinking about the UK. It's close to France, Holland and Sweden, and it has the distinct advantage of being a good place for an Australian to find work. It also happens to have a lot of universities.

When we got home, Lotte just asked me one day about where exactly I would like to live and work if I had my choice. The answer was obvious but I hadn't really given it much thought until then. Cambridge. It's about a year ago now that my supervisor was over in the UK and visited the Centre for Applied Research in Educational Technologies (CARET) at Cambridge. He came back with a lot of good things to say about it. The interesting thing is that they were clearly interested in what we are doing at Melbourne as well, because in some ways our work is complementary as well as overlapping. The background of CARET is as a research unit, whereas CDS (where I work now) is made up mostly of people involved in the production of multimedia.

More recently, apparently, CARET has started to turn its attention more to projects involving the development and delivery of materials for courses -- the sort of thing we do here all the time. At the same time we are attempting to bring more of an applied research model to what we are doing here.

In one of those really fortuitous turns of events I just decided to do a search of jobs in the higher education and see what turned up. The second job ad I looked at was actually from CARET and the Faculty of Education at Cambridge. It was quite bizarre -- these jobs don't come up very often. The job description was a very close match to my background.

I applied in late August, and didn't hear anything for about a month. I actually only found out that I was shortlisted last Monday, and the interview was on Wednesday night. Despite some technical problems (the videoconference didn't go according to plan) I thought it went pretty well. I answered all the questions and seemed to get along well with the interviewers.

After the interview I had a strange deflated feeling -- perhaps because I had hardly slept the night before with nervousness, but also because there was really nothing I could do after that point. I mentally prepared myself for the possibility that I might get the job, but I had also didn't expect too much because I knew the other candidates would be strong.

On Friday night we got home late and got the news by email. It said that they had given the job I applied for to another candidate. Again I had that sinking feeling in my stomach, along with the sort of immediate acceptance that I had tried my best. But then I kept reading.

The next sentence said that they had been impressed with my interview and my background, and wanted to offer me a different, even better, position. I was absolutely stunned. Not only was I going to Cambridge, they were offering me a new position that they were creating just for me, and it would be 100% within CARET, which is exactly where I wanted to work. I had got even more than I'd asked for!

Lotte and I have been so excited since getting the news we have hardly had time to think about anything else. The position is for 12 months in the first instance. We'll move to Cambridge in January. So if anyone knows of some good accommodation in or around Cambridge, let me know!

Cambridge!!

Well, this one is a biggie. We found out late last night that I've been offered a position at CARET at the University of Cambridge, starting in January. I don't have time to tell the whole story right now but needless to say we are both incredibly excited and will be rushing to get everything in order before we leave. Wow!

Poor neglected blog

Okay, okay, so I haven't been updating much lately. Well, at all. It's just that I don't have a lot to talk about. Well, there's news, but for various reasons I'm not able to talk about it here yet. Maybe more soon.

I can say that I've been very busy lately. At the start of October I took over the coordinator role for my group and it's meant quite a bit of extra work behind the scenes, on top of my normal project load. Some of it is boring, but some of it is quite interesting as well.

It's hard to believe that we're almost in November already and that MLX is only just around the corner. It's a strange feeling not to have to worry about how the registrations are going, or to attend volunteer meetings at every spare moment.

The labyrinthitis continues, unfortunately, and on Monday I went in for an MRI, which was actually a much more greuling experience than I had imagined. Nothing at all like a CT Scan, which was pretty easy. The main difference is that the whole machine shudders and makes a huge racket, which makes you feel like you have your head inside a jet engine while it's starting up. It's very offputting.

I also wasn't prepared for the strange feeling of the magnet sort of scanning around... it's a very odd sensation and sort of made me think of weird science fiction brain probing experiments. The stragest feeling was my eyeballs sort of jiggling around as though they were being buffeted by an invisible force (which they probably were). I thought magnets only had an effect on metal! Perhaps it was just the vibrations of the machinery as it clunks around.

Whatever it was, I finished up with a king sized headache and my eyes were watering from movement. The funniest thing was they ask you to bring along a CD of your favourite music, which I did, but you can't hear a bloody thing. First they shove huge earplugs in your ears, and then they turn up the volume so you can just hear it. But as soon as the scanning starts, you can't hear anything else at all. I got up to find the medicos talking about what great dance music I'd chosen and smiling broadly, so at least someone was happy.

Horoscope time

At a meeting at work today one person was talking about horoscopes, and as a result mine was read aloud.

Libra
The prevailing influence brings a strong masculine energy into the day and may increase your sexual appetite. Now that's not a bad thing, so plan a bit of fun tonight. But through the day you shouldn't flirt or that may be taken the wrong way! Keep your energy firmly focussed on achieving your goals.

Now, when they got to the part in bold of course everyone was in hysterics. I started to turn a nice shade of bright pink and everyone wanted to know what starsign Lotte was. Naturally the next thing that was read out was hers:

Virgo
Happy Birthday Virgo: This should be the perfect day to attain a goal, make a dream come true or fulfil an ambition. All things can be realised when you take a stand, be courageous and work for your own benefit. This is not a hostile thing; you just want to know you've done it alone! Plan a hot and sultry romantic night if that's possible!

Of course they had to add that last line just to embarass me in front of my colleages, didn't they?

New MLX Chapter

Well, I haven't been able to post about it until now but it's finally public. We're not going to be coordinating MLX this year. It was a tough decision to make, but we're both relieved too. I think it's going to be really different for both of us to be there as attendees and just enjoy the vibe, and the new team is going to be great. I'm not quite sure if they know what they've gotten themselves into, but that's probably a good thing. Here's our announcement, made yesterday night.