Misc social

[liv]

1. Coming bank holiday weekend. I'm planning to be in Cambridge and specifically at the last day of the Beer Festival on Saturday. Who else is going to be there? I may be free Sunday evening or Monday, if anyone wants to get together?
   
   
2. 14^th-16^th June: I'm returning from travels with jack late on Thursday evening 13^th. Would anyone like to see us either in London or Cambridge on the Friday or, more likely, during the weekend? If people can offer crash space in London Thursday night and hang out on Friday that would be perfect, but most likely we'll end up heading back to Cambridge to recover from travelling.
   
   
3. The first crop of doctorlings whom I've personally taught are graduating in July. This is slightly terrifying, knowing that kids I remember as callow second years are going to be actual doctors in just a few weeks! Anyway, the Medical School have very kindly invited me to represent the school in the formal academic procession. This is the first opportunity I've had to wear my PhD gown in a professional capacity (first academic dress occasion since my own graduation).
   
   Although they've changed this now, when I graduated Scottish universities mostly didn't have caps, so I have to process bare-headed. pseudomonas came up with the brilliant suggestion that I could make up for this by getting hair-falls. Dundee colours are black and something called "Stewart blue" which is basically as near to royal / liturgical blue as they could get away with without actually being royalty or the Virgin Mary. I am really struggling to translate the official British Colour Council code (BCC149) into a modern digital code, but it's something close to #002266. And a secondary colour of eggshell blue which is approx #0088ff. Does anyone who knows heraldry or any relevant aspect of formal colour stuff know how to get a more precise identification? And does anyone have any recs for where I might order hair-falls in my academic colours?
   
   
4. jack got a new shiny phone, so I have remembered that I used to play Draw Something a lot. If anyone wants to play, please add me (username ewerb).
   
   My own contract isn't up for a couple of months yet, but I am starting to think of what I want to do. Most probably buy a phone outright and then get a cheap, SIM-only contract rather than spreading the cost of the phone over the monthly payments. I really like my HTC Desire Z with the slide-out QWERTY keyboard and full-sized screen, but it's getting old and tired and nobody makes phones like that any more. So what do people recommend? I think I probably don't want to spend much over £200 on a phone. I want a decent amount of screen real-estate, and am leaning towards continuing with Android OS even though evil Google is evil argh. I want a phone that is a powerful handheld computer, mainly for internet, but don't much care if it's also a music player and camera.
   
   Cursory glance at what's available: the high-end Samsung phones are really nice but probably out of my price-range. I can get an HTC Desire X for £200 and it looks pretty solid if not ultra-fancy, or the Google Nexus 4 for more like £240; currently I lean towards the HTC, but I could be convinced. I wandered into a phone shop today to handle a few of the phones I'd been looking at on the internet and the salesman reckoned the best thing at my price-point was the Sony Xperia T. That's the "James Bond phone", which is kind of an anti-rec for me, but in terms of bang for buck it seems to compare reasonably well to the other two models I was considering. Having handled it I like the physical phone better than the Nexus, but the display is less shiny.
   
   
5. And talking of shiny tech, I've managed to score one of the £29 fire-sale Nooks. I still prefer the older generation Sony ereaders, but the recent ones are all touch-screen and nothing made in 2009 is really still usable today. If I have to have a touch-screen e-reader, I'd rather have the cheap Nook than something with a similar feature set at twice the price.

Comments

[liv]

OK, have fun visiting her, then!