Between Spring Breaks. Or, Wasting Time with the Wife

BLOT: (20 Mar 2011 - 06:20:28 PM)

Between Spring Breaks. Or, Wasting Time with the Wife

I do not get Spring Break this year. Spring Break for grad students is always a bit flaky. Some of us have jobs. Some of us have active lives. Some of us have mountains of homework that we have treated as molehills until now, and therefore must accelerate our activity towards. In this year, though, a particularly ghastly joke has been played. Last week was UA's Spring Break, so I had no class but I did have work. This coming week is UAH's Spring Break, so I have no work but I have class. Two part-time weeks does not a full-time week off make, but I'll take what I can. Besides, as you likely know, if I have too much time off, I enter into a weird sort of do-nothing funk and will have a week of listening to podcasts and half-goofing with Minecraft as my only endeavors.

Over the next couple of days, I have to catch up, somewhat, with my LS566 [metadata] class blog. I post a different sort of thing over there, but some of it might be of interest. I also have to organize my resource booklet for LS510 [resources for the humanities] and finish a utilizing resources assignment that basically means describing how to answers eleven questions typical to the research desk environment. Since these last two bits are the kind of thing I do naturally at work, they hopefully will not take too long. Soon, my LS566 class will have both a big project coming up, and I will have to give a screencast/talk on ID3-tags as metadata (to which I am looking forward). I am thinking about getting an upgraded version of Jing for this purpose, though I might try and find some other [Opensource?] solution for the screencast. For the project's sake, I have been doing some research into alternative ways to display digital archives. Any suggestions for a fun one?

Enough about class. What else have I been up to? Well, I have finished Big Finish's Eighth Doctor Adventures. Amazing finale, but also very depressing. I will not go into many details, here [review for the last two eps, soon], but it was one of the more powerful moments in Doctor Who history, and it both demonstrates not only that Paul McGann would have been a lovely Doctor had his series been picked up, but that Big Finish is able to take a couple of risks that the TV-series might not be able to take (I say that knowing that the 6th season of New-Who is supposed to be pretty dark). I am hoping that one day BF gets the go-ahead to actually do some Last Great Time War tie-ins.

I have also finished the Trial of a Time Lord story-arc. Which was better than I expected, kind of, but that era of Who was all about pearls being found laying here or there in rough-hewn rock. This is the first story I have ever watched with Mel as companion, and she is better than I thought she would be based on clips I have seen. Too bad her and the Sixth Doctor only got two official stories together (and the second, "The Ultimate Foe", was mostly about them apart.

Beyond that, Sarah and I have been playing Agricola. We both like the game. It takes at least one play through to really understand, but it's not as bad as some rumors make it. At its core, it is simply "follow the instructions on the board" plus "follow the harvest rules". Once you factor in a number of Improvements (Minor and Major) and a number of Occupations and such, it gets a bit more complicated, but still, after a play through I am sure that most anybody would either like it and get it or get it enough to know they won't like getting it more. I have the "Gamer's Deck" expansion, that we might get a chance to play tonight, and I have ordered the "Goodies Box" that has several minor expansions and bonus for-funsies style bits. If anyone wants to learn, just let me know and I'll set up a game.

And, that's about it. Sarah is going out of town and I'll be here minding the fort. Which is about one part catching up on homework, one part catching up on shows like Justified I am behind, one part watching horror movies, and one part taking a semi-sabbatical from the human race. My brain needs such alone time every once in a while. It won't be a true one, because I have classes and such, but it should help.

I'll bring it to an end, here, and go and get some supper cooking.

LABEL(s): Me in 2011

OTHER BLOTS THIS MONTH: March 2011