Fog, frost and technical snags

Sent a large part of yesterday on the M6, travelling to and from and meeting with colleagues in the North.  Managed to skip most of the fog and car mishaps, and the visit was well worth while - for me anyway.

I met some healthcare colleagues I'd last seen at the Endocrine Nurse Update event in September.  They were kind enough to show me around their PCOS clinic and let me sit in a for a while.  We also had some early stage discussions about possible applied research collaboration.

Writing an outline draft of a paper today and responding to various emails about the Disaster Management research.  We have had a few technical problems and have had to resort to delivering data in person.  I hope everyone is wrapped up well...

Clunky link but: The weekend saw progress with both the leaf clearing and my new home made coat.  Had to stop at the pockets as I was having a bit of a mental block interpreting the instructions. But I've worked it out now and might get it finished next weekend.

Can it really be Friday already?

Where does the time go???

Packaged up some data from my PCOS research and sent it off for independent analysis by my two colleagues Lynne and Rachael.  Will be really interesting to get together and compare our analyses.  Having others look at data you've collected is great as they always spot things you haven't.

Ran through the online coding test I've designed for interns on the disaster management project.  It seems to be working ok so I should be able to post the link to individuals once they've gotten through the literature searching task on SCOPUS.

Prepared a presentation for Monday to talk through with NHS colleagues I am meeting in the North of England.  Looking forward to seeing them again, and sitting in on their clinics.

And for the weekend: if the wind and rain stops I shall mostly be sucking up leaves from the garden.  If it doesn't, I hope to make a Butterick Pattern B5297. It says "FAST AND EASY" - that remains to be seen...

Deep in the data: And poor old Emperor

Today I have been deeply immersed in some data - one of the luxuries that comes from being on sabbatical. Had to emerge periodically to send out information about our motivational interviewing courses, and will be making an uncharacteristic visit to campus tomorrow to prepare course materials.

Have noticed a couple of rather sad animal stories on the web today:
1. Paul the psychic octopus has died - seemingly from natural causes.
2. Someone with nothing better to do has shot the UK's biggest red deer stag, preventing it taking part in the imminent rut.

The BBC news article on this is an odd mixture of advertorial for stalker/shooting businesses, and melancholy reflection on human pointlessness....

(pic above isn't him)

Being helped - and feeling guilty?

"As a new user to the service..."Oh no I'm not!!!!!

You know how I'd almost finished my presentation for the Endocrine Nurse Update... 

Just needed to do the reference list.  About to do it this morning when disaster* struck. 

I've got in excess of 20,000 references in my RefWorks database - going back to student days in mid 1990's.  When I used EndNote, I always had a back up copy of the database, but now the University has ceased to support EndNote and switched to RefWorks, I don't have that facility.  On logging in this morning I was greeted as a new user (with no references) and invited to CREATE my database.  Horror...

I have been assured that RefWorks know about the problem, which appears to be affecting all Coventry University users.  I just hope they get it sorted out soon.

On a less frustrating note: did a telephone interview with a journalist today, about the work Glenn Furnell and I presented about the experience of Midlanders whose homes were flash flooded.  Have also seen three very interesting papers that have been published in the interim:

Carroll et al 2009 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18996730

Carroll et al 2010 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20618385

Mason et al 2010 http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/content~content=a918846798~db=all~jumptype=rss


*I realise of course that the meaning of this word is somewhat context-specific ;-)