Tuesday, February 5

I spent the morning making XML Schema with the XML Foundations group, and decided that we are making progress at an acceptable rate of knots. In fact we are moving faster than I thought we would, which will seem like good news until we get to the last couple of weeks when I have run out of material and have to work for a living.

At 13:00, when they finished, I went to see Göran Pulkiss give his retirement lecture; after which we all went upstairs for songs, speeches, a glass of sparkling wine, and some cake.

Now I am looking out of one of the slit-like windows on the side of the building. It was snowing when we got up and it has been snowing all day. It is beginning to make new piles.

Back at my desk, I will book air tickets to Dublin using Arcada’s official travel agency. Their website is a nightmare, or at least the way one finds flights at reasonable times and prices is far from intuitive. The site will begin by offering me a 17 hour flight to Dublin, leaving at 6:30, with an 18 hour return journey that leaves at 18:00 on Saturday and arrives in Helsinki just after midday on Sunday. I will check ebookers and when I am just about to book there using my personal credit card when I will have one last go at the official site. Eventually it will transpire that you can set advanced search criteria that, if done in the right order, and with granular accuracy, reveal the same flights as ebookers at the same prices.

I will end up with two 5-hour flights with my arrival in Helsinki timed for 22:50 on Saturday night.

After that I will begin an exercise with two overlapping aims. I will start adding content to the Projects section of this site while, at the same time, intending some or all of this as reference material for my thesis. I have to get my archives in order to ensure I haven’t missed any valuable evidence in the form of interviews and papers, and doing it this way means that I will get two outcomes for the price of one input.

Finally I will leave for home through a thick snow shower.