Dr Laura James's writings

I nearly crashed my bike into a bollard when I spotted this light show. I assume it's because of " the 800 ", as it's called in the University. I'm looking forward to more fun and unexpected events to celebrate, although I am also a little sad that I (thus far) have not received a lovely 800 fleece, unlike my colleagues in the Communications Office. But what does it all mean?

The University of Cambridge is 800 years old this year. There are many things happening to commemorate the occasion. For example, today I have been upgraded to a brand new shiny phone! This replaces the old ways of doing things in Cambridge (paper). Although I suspect that in reality there is still a great deal of paper in my future. Luckily my desk has space for both. The famous University messengers are also being upgraded, from their old royal blue bicycles, to - err - new ones. Good to have the right blue on them at last, I guess.

This morning I heard about a terrifying incident in Lincolnshire, on the Today programme (just before a piece about ghosts - really!). Apparently a large wind turbine has been severely damaged (one blade removed, one severely bent) by some sort of large object. Glowing lights were seen in the area, and also glowing tentacles. I think there can be no doubt that this was perpetrated by a giant space octopus. For some time now, pictures of a tiny piglet squid (deemed particularly cute for his smiley face) have been all over the internet . We can only assume that these are a small relation of the giant space octopus, which has arrived to defend the squid from the embarrassment of having naked pictures broadcast to all and sundry. The octopus has begun the destruction of our electricity generation system, without which the internet cannot operate. We must defend our lands against this glowing tentacular menace.

It's been quiet here of late, but I've been keeping busy otherwhere. CARET has a splendid new website , and if you are reading this within a fortnight of me posting it, we are currently hiring . SeriousChange also has a revised website , and I'm looking forward to working on a much richer and more informative version in the coming weeks. I still pine on occasion for electronics, and setting up our Nabaztag at home (along with some RFID bits and bobs, including a Mir:ror and adorable Nano:ztags ) was fun. I'm looking forward to controlling our home energy consumption more in 2009, although I still have doubts as to whether purchasing gadgetry is a helpful solution to this for most people. Our reliable and simple central heating and hot water timer, for which we had been gradually calibrating the timings to give adequate heat without excessive boiler operation, at some point in the autumn suffered a power cut. We didn't realise this for a while, until we realised t