Dr Laura James's writings

Marriage may end your career in scientific research, vice versa, or not. There's an interesting article discussing the issues in AAAS Science . The spookiest part is when one apparently successful marriage is described: the couple sitting together in bed, both doing work on laptops, and instant messaging each other. Ouch! Whatever happened to voice?

I don't believe in just recycling links, but if Cambridge-based people haven't seen MySociety's latest offering it's worth a look. Fascinating to see where you should live if you work at Microsoft Reearch.... now, with some data on real bus arrival times and delays, and some more destinations (city centre, science park), this could get very useful very quickly.

It's been good weather in Cambridge, mostly, this week. I've even quite enjoyed the rainy phases! Still, I haven't really appreciated it all, as I've been resting up after being ill last week. It's amazing how much I can sleep per day without feeling I'm overdoing my time in bed or napping. I'm hoping that I'll be properly recovered soon, and able to be awake for more than, say, 4 or 5 hours at a stretch without really wanting not to be. And perhaps I'll have woken up in time for the next beer festival, given that I totally missed this one. Today's link is to tips for making sure your startup is bulletproof . Doesn't mention making sure you are awake...

Inspired by the iDucks from BugBash, we're getting an Nabaztag for our office - we're going to see how long we last before it drives us mad . At least we won't feel guilty when we dismember it, unlike if we forget to water the office plants we don't have.

Not only am I Dr Laura now, I am also a Chartered Engineer, at last...

Just back from a lovely week in the Dordogne, staying at Maumont near Hautefort. (Many thanks to Rosie's Mum!) Also, I'm now officially Dr James, as shown in these pics. Both sets of photos are somewhat out of order for a variety of complex technical reasons :-D

... designing gadgets on a new page from Scenta .

Watch a Smart outpace a Ferrari F430 over 400m. (The Smart has a bike engine, not a Smart engine, but it's still cool.) Cambridge UK restaurant menus now listed online (Thanks, Samuel, very useful!)

ARM-based and open source firmware. I can't wait to get my hands on this :)

died this week. She was a computing pioneer during WWII, and described herself as one of the computers which ENIAC made redundant. There only seems to be one, rather sparse, obituary online sadly. I met Kay at GHC in 2004, and she was a witty and insightful woman, with many tales of the early days of computer development which still reflect today's computing realities.

Rendezvous - up to 140mph through Paris in 1978 (on google video) . It's as old as me, but still looks like a lot of fun. Makes a change from WEEE which I've been looking into today for work, and which promises to provide me with my very own personal skip of electronics waste some time in the future. What more could I want?

Today we went to Sutton Hoo and Aldeburgh. Mahon got his photos up already, quicker than us, which is probably for the best as they are likely to be better than mine anyway!

Beer-based cocktails in the NYT - not my thing, I suspect, but knowing people who like both beer and cocktails, perhaps there is a market for them.

List of online note-taking apps. There are so many nifty sites online now that it is lucky there's a large number of people with nothing better to do than try them all out. Those of us with other work are still left trying to work out which are actually useful without an inordinate effort to configure them in the first place, which are still going to be operational in a few months, and which are secure enough to be useable for work...

CITB-Construction Skills (a strange organisational name, but a good bunch of people) have a great new TV ad to entice people to consider careers in their industry. You can view it by clicking "How will you make your mark?" at BConstructive (also works with the e, for spelling geeks). One day, all engineering fields will have professional skills bodies like this...

Multiprotocol IM via Meebo for those away from their machines with IM clients or behind firewalls. Still, no Skype, so it's not the all in one solution I'm ultimately looking for. 

Just as I was about to seriously start using iCal (which conveniently integrates with my new project management tool, Merlin , which is super btw), Google finally launches their calendar offering. Very nice too, although the SMS alerts seem to be US only at the moment.

The first ducklings I've seen this year, at Sheene Mill . They made it up the stairs, amazingly.

Paul and Ivor next door have been building Ivor's new garage the last 2 weekends. Today they put the roof on.

Not that I am planning on driving over my MacBook Pro, but this is reassuring...