Wednesday, October 29

This morning is much warmer when Naa and I leave at 7:00. When I get off the tram I see an old Vespa in mint condition parked at the kerb.

Yesterday I learned that one of my examiners has flounced off in a temper and refuses to read my thesis. Last night I thought of Rob Fisher as a more than able substitute, and the person that I should, in fact, have asked in the first place. I will begin my morning by messaging him to ask if he would consider being an external examiner for my doctoral thesis. Rob will say yes, send me a CV which I will pass onto Juha, and the next round of the game will begin. I am so glad that Rob agreed: I should have asked him in the first place.

Now I have stepped outside to clear my head beofre the teaching marathon begins. The Vespa is still there so I walk over and photograph it. You can never tell when a photograph of an antique scooter will come in handy.

I will spend almost all day in A303 with the Advanced Web Apps group who are finalising their projects. Towards the end of the day I will realise that their projects are all uniformly over-ambitious, but they are learning rapidly and in danger of finishing their first real work. I will agree to add another block to the course to allow those people who do not manage everything to get one last round of supervision. However I will make a condition for attending this block: you must email me first with a to-do list of clearly explained issues that I can work on beofre trhe class begins.

Nobody will be allowed to walk in asking what we are supposed to be doing, and I will not answer the question “why doesn’t mine work?”.

At 17:00 I will prepare for a Skype conference with Erik and at 17:25 I will abandon it and go home, since he has not appeared.