Writing about web page http://www.hlx.com/en/

Just thought I’d share the love. Ryanair annoys me so much that any alternative is a good alternative.

HLX are now flying from Coventry airport to Cologne/Bonn (Köln/Bonn), with tickets around £16 including all taxes. Pretty useful for western Germany, and also Belgium and Holland. The flights are at sensible times of the day, and you don’t have to get down to Stansted.

Bring it on.

Writing about web page http://www.phdcomics.com/comics/archive.php?comicid=515

Long-distance-relationships are hard.

My girlfriend is German, we met while she was studying at Warwick, but only got together once she was back in Germany, been together about a year now. Basically, things are going well.

But occasionally things happen that are much harder in this kind of relationship. Tonight, she fell and cut her head open, so I got a call from her friend letting me know that she was in hospital.

I think she’s ok – being kept in overnight for observation, but haven’t been able to talk to her yet.

These things are much harder when you’re in a different country.

Writing about web page http://www.votergasm.org/

I like this particular “get out the vote” idea :-)

To quote the BBC:

Citizen, patriot or hero?
Voters who visit the Votergasm website can choose from three different levels of commitment:

• “Votergasm citizens” must pledge to withhold sex from non-voters for a week after election night
• “Patriot-level commitment” requires a voter to have sex with another voter on election night as well as withholding sex from non-voters for a week
• Those who take the most extreme pledge, called “American hero”, commit themselves to having sex with another 2004 voter as well as turning down all non-voters until the 2008 vote.

Writing about Best blog competition from E-learning Advisor Team

I think there should be some alternative categories in the “Best Blog” competition:

Insomniac

The person with the latest (earliest) average time of posts

Skiver

The member of staff with the most posts/comments during the working day

Neanderthal

Person with the shortest average comment length

Egocentric

The person who has commented the most on their own blog (average comments per entry? :) )

Firestarter

Person with the highest number of comments per blog entry

Any more? :-)

Writing about an entry you don’t have permission to view

I should start out by saying that I’ve got nothing personal against Ian (whose blog entry I’m writing about), but his entry does pretty much sum up the way that people here tend to socialise.
I didn’t used to find it unusual that the way that people at universities in this country “socialise” is by drinking until they collapse, but over the last few years I’ve realised that it doesn’t have to be that way.
I got to know some international students. I spent some time abroad. I became a postgrad. I got more confident in myself, and realised that the fact that I didn’t want to go out to the union every night didn’t make me boring – it just meant that I enjoyed different things to what most of my mates were into, and certainly different to most of the things on in the union.
Sure, an occasional visit to one of the indifferent events is a good laugh, but I really wouldn’t call it socialising. Socialising means to me talking to people, in an environment where one can actually hear what they’re saying to you. So I like sitting in a pub, or in a café. Somewhere I can sit and chat over a cup of hot chocolate or a pint, rather than in a bad club like the union.
So I’ve joined the Café Society . We’ll have to see if the rather unnatural environment of a society social translates well to coffee culture.

Writing about web page http://www.maxhammondphotos.org.uk/

I’ve never really considered myself to be a particularly “arty” type, really. I’ve always appreciated art, but only at a “oooh nice painting” level, not “the symbolism of the main figure’s closed right eye is a clear reference to the role of the church” or whatever. I just know what I like.

Over the last couple of years I’ve become really interested in photography. I’ve learned the skills that I need to be able to make images that I like. It’s a secondary thing, but I’m pleased that some other people also tell me that they like them too.

I sometimes amuse myself in noticing how prissy I can be about my images, taking the time to set up the shot just right, and then spending a long time in photoshop making relatively trivial adjustments, until it’s just how I want it to be. I can’t always articulate why it is that I make the changes that I do, I just know that I like what I’ve done.

But the thing that never ceases to interest me is how different people see different things in my images, and how different people prefer different images. I’ve got my own preferences as to which of my photos I like the most, but they never match with anyone else.

So if anyone’s reading, which of the images on my gallery site do you like the most? And can you say why?

Writing about web page http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/3536956.stm

So, I’m sitting at home at the moment, feeling genuinely awful, and no, I wasn’t at the fresher’s ball. My approach is typically that if I’m not going to be productive at work, I might as well by unproductive at home instead.
I remember in the news a little while ago was a lot of stuff about the amount of sick days that people were taking, and about companies who had prizes for people who didn’t take any sick days.
Well what a good idea! Motivate people to come into work when they really shouldn’t, and in so doing, infect all their colleagues. That’s really good for productivity, I’m sure.
Perhaps what we need is a good dose of Spanish Flu. It looks like it’s going to happen and perhaps fairly soon – they’re cooking up some nice avian flu in SE Asia right now. I can’t help thinking that it’s about time that we were reminded how dangerous influenza really is. And isolation is the best way to control the spread.