Monday, April 07, 2008

Corridors and Fingernails

I have spent a decent bit of time wandering the corridors of Heriot Watt buildings trying to find cafeterias, bathrooms, exits, and the like. Why do they design their buildings like mazes? They make Sloan Annex and even Dartington House seem easy to navigate. (Yes, the last two buildings in which I have offices are both rat mazes. That says something about my lot in life, doesn't it?)

Also, I am the early leader in our brand-new Study Group injury pool. I managed to savage one of my fingernails trying to lift an empty lunch tray (in fact, two empty lunch trays). Ouch!

This conference also has its version of Housequotes, which are apparently supposed to be collected for a final presentation on Friday. These objects are described in this article. I already uttered a comment about the well-known "vegetable kingdom" that may or may not have any staying power.

Oh, and I found out a paper on which I played an ancillary role as a grad student apparently just got published in a collection---only 6 years after I ceased to have any involvement in it. I always just thought it was going to just remain a preprint, but I think the book ended up being partly a conference proceedings for a conference from back then where one of my coauthors presented the paper. I got an e-mail about it today, and this was a paper that had been out of my radar for so long and to such an extent that I hadn't even included it in my CV since before my first postdoc.

4 comments:

wren said...

I suggest avoiding the James Clerk Maxwell "building" at the University of Edinburgh. It warps space and possibly time.

Mason said...

I probably won't make it to that university (the study group is at Heriot Watt), though it does look like I might make it into the city tonight (thankfully).

wren said...

I didn't realize you were still there! Well, the next time you're up there, there's a pickup Ultimate game on the Meadows. Friendly game.

Mason said...

I leave on Friday afternoon. The pickup ultimate game definitely sounds very cool.

I had a chance to make it into the city tonight and take some pictures. Obviously, I need to go back and explore a lot more when I next visit the city.