Dr Laura James's writings

Some more pics of progress with house now up here . As of today, we even have revitalised heating!

There is a petition on the Downing Street website, supporting protected status for the term Engineer, preserving it for professional engineers only. Despite the flakiness of the site, it's doing well with over 4000 signatories.

No, not today's Today interview. Last night, Radio 4 aired a 15 minute piece by Adam Long, co-founder of the amazing Reduced Shakespeare Company . For some reason, it wasn't an RSC production, but it retained much of their style. Still on Listen Again, the Condensed History of Tony Blair is definitely worth a listen. The RSC also have a weekly podcast now.

A gap in blogging whilst I moved house and waited for the ADSL to recover. Michael and I are now fairly settled into our new home . You may notice that we have already made our mark by replacing the old number with a geekier version.

and now we are returning to it - or at least, something resembling it, with textual interfaces, according to Don Norman . Good to note that at alertme.com we are doing something similar!

Last term I attended a wine appreciation class, in an attempt to increase my knowledge to the point where I could pick a wine based on more than the prettiness of the label, or the menu's description. I now know more than I did, including how easy (or otherwise) it is to describe the taste or nose of a wine in comparison to other things. I'm not the only one to struggle with this on occasion; Colin Bower in the New English Review discusses this problem.