kaberett | Entries tagged with icl

Lo these many years ago -- I think I was in sixth form, so 2006-2008ish -- I picked up a copy of mauve from a charity shop (probably the Oxfam bookshop on Sidney Street?).

Today, lo these many years later, I finally! caught up to the present day! of A Slob Comes Clean! which means that I can now stop dedicating most of my reading cope to that particular completionist digression, and can redirect to this year's planned Reading Project, namely "work my way through the stack of hard-copy books that probably don't actually meet my threshold for Want To Keep (In Hard Copy) at least to the extent of establishing that I no longer care about them and should Just return them to a charity shop*, and so I have once again picked up mauve, having got a whole five pages into it in late February.

Today I also made a desultory attempt to find out of there's anyone other than Ede & Ravenscroft who sell Imperial gowns* and in the process discovered that the reason they are quite such an egregious shade of that particular purple is -- and you can of course see exactly where this is going -- a specific commemoration of Perkin's mauve.

I am mildly peeved that (1) we apparently really don't actually wear hats for graduation, and (2) the purple velvet Tudor bonnet with white cord and tassel is, contra wikipedia, something only recipients of Higher Doctorates are entitled to. Upon my own head it shalln't, alas, be.

But: I really am charmed by this unexpected confluence, and it is delightful leavening for the ... something ... of bureaucracy. I think this metaphor has got away from me? I think perhaps it might be Time For Bed.

* They provide hire garments for the actual graduation ceremony, and deduct the cost of hire -- £58 -- from the purchase price, provided you make the purchase within 28 days following your actual graduation ceremony! They are also out of stock of the relevant items, and do not expect their stock to be replenished until the end of the summer, oh and also you can't place pre- or back-orders. They have confirmed, after I asked in very small words, that they really do mean that because they do not have stock I will not only have to pay £58 to hire the necessary accoutrements for the graduation ceremony, I will also have to pay full price with no discount if I make a purchase. I have not actually cancelled my attendance at the graduation ceremony in a fit of pique -- yet -- but I am going to be making a phone call on Monday in order to Ask Some Questions.

Today I cleared out my desk at Imperial, which among other things involved pulling my graduation presents (from last graduation, from my Director of Studies) out of the bottom drawer, where they'd been for pretty much bang-on seven academic years.

( An academic tangent... )

And then we went to the zoo. Because we enjoyed Shepreth Wildlife Park a lot, the week of the viva, and Regent's Park (and thus London Zoo) is actually right on the driving route between "home" and "work" for me, and: AMINALS. We got incredibly lucky with the weather -- it was pouring on the drive down (to the extent that A discovered that the windscreen wipers will automatically put themselves up to "high" given sufficient provocation, rather than needing to be manually wrangled into that setting), and it started raining a bit again shortly after we got in the car, but the entire time we were wandering around the zoo it... was dry! Sunny, in patches!

... we absolutely did not manage to see everything we wanted to and will therefore be going back, probably via converting today's ticket price into part of an annual membership, which we can do at any point for the next two weeks.

( Plague logistics. )

Highlights: African Hunting Dogs, which were excellently spotted and long of leg and elegant of trot; the pile of warthogs that were mostly asleep but occasionally snuffled their noses around in their pile of straw; the stripes on the okapi and also on the zebra, which I got to admire much more close-up than I recall having ever managed before; the PYGMY HIPPOS (not that we managed more than a glimpse, because they were very much Wallowing in their Warm Indoor Pool); red-footed tortoises; the bokiboky, a Madagascan mongoose that looks much more like a pointy squirrel than I'd realised mongeese did; the two! toed! sloth!; in the Nightlife section, the elephant shrew and a warren of naked mole rats in a variety of sizes and competencies (so small); the red river hogs with their RIDICULOUS ear tufts; colobus monkeys, with pampas-grass-tuft tails and SMOL BABS that get CARRIED AROUND; the scarlet ibis and also the northern bald ibis (there were also sacred ibis and flamingoes but I have my priorities, and they are the ones that are COLOURS); pretty much everything in the Tiny Giants exhibit, which we sped through at the end and definitely want to spend more time in; the various BRIGHT BLUE things; and the RARE TADPOLES in the SEX TANK with the VARIABLE EXTENTS OF FEET.

... as you can tell from the length of this shortlist of highlights, I had a great time. And then! Then we headed back home, via Ruby Violet (Tuffnell Park), where I tried new-to-me Malted Milk and had an actual serving of old-familiar-friends strawberry sorbet and hazelnut & hazelnut brittle ice cream, and when we made it home we flomped on the sofa and listened to the bats (though did not actually manage to see them) and admired the very dramatic and very beautiful crescent moon.

It has been lovely.

Alright, so, Zoom. Zoom for Linux.

Today I attended a departmental workshop on Understanding racism (a really good workshop! I was surprised by how good! my department's previous gestures at acknowledging and discussing racism have included e.g. a "listening exercise" facilitated by... a middle-aged wealthy white woman! this facilitator was Lesley Aitcheson, who on two hours' acquaintance I would cheerfully recommend enthusiastically) via Zoom, and experienced Technical Difficulties.

The specific technical difficulty was: every time I got switched from a breakout room back to the main meeting, Zoom lost all incoming audio. Incoming video was fine; laptop audio was fine; people's microphones were on and they were audible to others; but I didn't get incoming audio back until I dropped out and rejoined the meeting. (This also happened on one occasion when I was moved from the main meeting into a breakout room, but only once.)

I'm running version 5.1.412382.0614 under debian testing (current codename bullseye). I have more (related) workshops upcoming & would like to Solve This Problem, though obviously I'm not going to manage it by... 9am tomorrow, which is when the next one is. A quick shake of the internet doesn't reveal any obvious bug reports. Suggestions extremely welcome...

Like: guidelines on when it's appropriate to touch a chair; guidelines on asking if help's wanted; guidelines on talking to someone using a chair (and therefore not at standing height) -- with the understanding that people vary. (Largely because I have come up with a rule-of-thumb about touching chairs that I am failing to phrase as a standalone post, so.)

Interested? Got things you'd like addressed?

who the hell am I supposed to contact given:

smokers are (illegally!) rendering my building so toxic that I can't actually enter/exit it without rendering myself unable to breathe
an initial e-mail 4 months ago to disability services & building manager has resulted in no useful follow-up, and nor have the two most recent chasing e-mails

... because this isn't actually sustainable. I can't do my job without entering the building; I can't enter the building without getting poisoned, and if I were actually on a contract I'd be seriously thinking about constructive dismissal, but that's not how PhD stipends work.

(No, really, at least two hundred metres of corridor and the entire central stairwell are currently not actually usable by me without causing damage. The only mostly-safe route to my areas of work has no working lifts. I literally cannot get to my desk +wheelchair without exposure, or to my lab at all unless I time breathing very carefully. As for getting to my desk without chair, it's about six flights of stairs, which isn't sustainable given my joints. It is shit.)

1. A tiny quilt arrived from

jelazakazone! It is gorgeous! It is lava! I squeaked and flapped with delight in the lift and have been showing it to anyone who'll stay still long enough!

2. ... also in my work post! A book from my largest smallcousin! I have been sending her care packages, frequently including books and occasionally painkillers, so she got the collected works of Arthur C Clarke delivered to me because she is apparently appalled that I've read barely any of his stuff.

3. Yesterday in e-mail! My poster abstract for a conference this autumn has been accepted, with the slightly baffling additional bit of

At the moment, your contribution is high on the reserve list of oral presentations, but is not yet scheduled for a talk and currently we are only able to offer you a poster contribution. We anticipate that there may well be some contributors who withdraw, in which case a slot may open up. We will let you know as soon as an opportunity occurs to move you into the talk schedule.

... opinion among those I've polled is divided on whether this is a bizarre courtesy measure or something they actually mean.

4. Interactions with housemate continue just routinely absolutely fab. <3

5. Have heard from a friend in a way that suggests that (1) he doesn't hate me and (2) the reason he dropped off the face of the earth around March is not another major depressive episode but instead that he has been arranging to move in with his girlfriend.

6. ... I just became the trans rep for Imperial's staff LGBT network. Accidentally. This is probably good, in that I will be able to be useful, but also a bit facepalmy.

7. I voted on some action to be taken by my institutional branch of my union, for the first time, which feels like being a very particular kind of grown-up.

8. It was spitting this morning - raining gently enough that it was quite pleasant to be out in in t-shirt, but hard enough that the normal congregatory points for smokers on my way into work were mercifully mostly clear. And the rain'll be good for the garden - the hebe was starting to look a bit sad but I hadn't quite got my act together to water it.

9. There's another really enthusiastically happy hebe on my way into work - currently lots of big purple floral spikes, and behind it a tree with graduated pink-to-white floral spikes that I don't understand at all but suspect is another NZ species given how that one's planted up more generally; I should take photos and get my mother to identify it, I suspect...

10. Yesterday was extremely wobbly, but I was sensible and took care of myself and today I am managing to leave not only my room but also the house again, HURRAH.

... having asked me how long I'd been on the machine for. (Answer: since Saturday afternoon.) I told him I was going to spend Wednesday asleep. He grinned and told me this was the correct decision -- but I wasn't to fall asleep right then. (I mentioned in passing to my supervisor that I was contemplating sleeping here tonight. "... you have the code to [the head of group]'s office, right?" she asked -- because the PIs got so sick of PhD students refusing to go home during machine time that they shelled out for a sofa specifically for us to sleep on that lives in HoG's room.)

On Saturday morning my body decided I hadn't noticed sufficiently that I'm quite stressed at the moment, and concluded that a good way to get my attention was FACIAL HERPES. Meanwhile I've been walking too much: I can tell because the knee with the old cartilage injury has started screaming every time I walk down stairs. I am fairly certain that the last time I washed was Friday. I think I am still wearing yesterday's clothes; I can't remember if I changed them this morning or not.

But this sprint on the machine is nearly over - I have til midnight tomorrow - and I am getting data (and still eating regular meals!). And I am spending Wednesday alternating between sleep and cooking all the things, and in the two hours I spent home yesterday evening while the machine was running without me I cooked dinner and did the washing up and put away laundry and sorted out my pills for the next week and hoovered.

As mentioned, I chatted to my supervisor briefly this afternoon and asked her - she's been poking the very expensive vacuum leak when she gets in at 7am; I'm tending to stay til chucking-out at midnight - whether I'd got it tuned up okay. (There are eleven electromagnets, two quads, and three axes of torch position to adjust every single time you start a run; in addition to the sweep gas flow rate that is currently needing tweaking every hour or so, which is suboptimal, and the nebuliser pressure, and and and. This is why the first day on the machine is, for me, tuning up. Always.) She grinned and told me it was perfect - that she'd gone through two iterations of attempting to improve the tuning right down to the fine-grained settings, and hadn't changed a thing.

And you know what? That was pretty nice.

(Last night I got locked into the building through misjudging how fine I could cut it when leaving for the second time. I had to phone security - "ImpSec" in my phone, obviously - to be let out; thankfully I got someone nice. And then I got a night bus, because at 00:15 on a Monday morning in London there are still buses, which took me halfway home; and I walked the other half reading Octavia Butler and hugging the gingko trees along the A4, a little giddy on sleep deprivation. On Sunday morning I got to bed at 3am, via the Oxford Tube to Notting Hill Gate and hoping like hell there'd be a suitable night bus - and, again, at 2.15am, I only had to wait 5 minutes for one, after I'd got myself turned around twice trying to drowsily follow a map having slept on the Tube. My body is quite right to be kind of unimpressed with me, to be honest, but I haven't yet slammed into the wall. There is no way I can keep pushing myself this hard, but at the moment -- oh, right now, just right now, it's kind of glorious.)

(1) TEST DRIVE OUR NEW COLLEGE WEBSITE FOR ACCESSIBILITY :D?
(2) from the Head of Department to the entire department, approximately "please don't use electronic devices during talks/seminars, because we've had some complaints about it from speakers; make notes by hand instead, please, but also get back to me if you've any feedback and we'll discuss it in the staff meeting on [date]."

To which I have replied:

(1) sure, but be aware that I have a very tiny amount of specialisation in this area so will probably rip if to shreds; and
(2) ... you do realise this is actually an accessibility issue, right?

Oh, goodness. Mostly, so far, that absolutely everything is dependent on lab and group and supervisor, because: every single interaction I've had with my supervisor, from the very first, has been absolutely stunning, including the best accessibility statement I've ever met. I'm supported, we tell jokes, I'm taught effectively and promptly, I'm told what I need to improve in clear and immediate terms, and things I'm doing correctly are flagged up specifically as reinforcement. My head of group gives us cheerfully drunken speeches about how, as a group, we're not like Wall Street, and this is a good thing; is prone to spending half an hour over dinner lecturing me on a general theme of Nazis Are Bad; and has informed me that if I bring cake to group meetings I'll get given money for ingredients for same in advance, out of the kitty, no need to faff about with expenses claims.

In group meetings we negotiate about who's going to be using what when, we collapse in helpless giggles over the state of the lab and the instruments, we talk about how our work's going and who should be doing what when. It's supportive and charming and friendly and kind, and it's great.

BUT OH DEAR GODS ABOVE THE BUREAUCRACY.

The irrelevant, self-contradictory, obligatory plagiarism course. The incompetent Disability Advisory Service. The LGBT soc organised as a social rather than welfare entity (with no trans rep). The endless paperwork relating to Existing While Disabled. The getting-outed-as-trans-on-my-first-day. The Grad School and obligatory Personal Effectiveness courses and all the bullshit that entails. The glacial rate at which getting me 24-hour access to my building is progressing. The Nice White Ladies getting their racism everywhere.

In short: I cannot even begin to imagine how I'd cope if it weren't for the fact that both supervisor and group are amazing.

One of my supervisors from first year undergrad saw the announcement I made on facebook about having received an offer from Imperial, and he politely but firmly requested that he get a chance to talk to me on the phone. He proceeded to spend an entire lunchbreak talking to me about systemic problems at Imperial and the sexism his then-partner was mired in; and he relaxed the moment I told him my supervisor was female. (And my group is, at all levels, a pretty representative breakdown, genderwise.)

So it boils down more or less to this: I'm having a fantastic time when I'm allowed to Just Get On With Science; I love my lab; I'm really enjoying teaching, for all that I facepalm repeatedly about how what I've done so far could be handled much, much better; and it only starts to drag at me when I start interacting with people significantly outside my fairly insular research group and I have to deal with paperwork, which appears to have been uniformly designed to be as obstructionist as possible, never mind misc other -isms.

And them's me thoughts, etc etc etc!

As has been hard to avoid noticing, I've been having a bit of a misery with my new institution plus my name. I finally got around to logging back into the library system today, to find that my name has actually been updated (i.e. the system has presumably been updated as a whole to pull from the preferred name field). I sent an apology for having been radio-silence to the bloke who's been handling the issue, plus v heartfelt thanks, and have just rec'd in response:

No problem - figured you would holler if not sorted. Learnt something about data sharing and College records along the way so all good.

... I kind of want to ask him if I can buy him a drink.

I get a ridiculous grin every time I think about my lovely freshers.

Other things that result in ridiculous grinning: this weekend, as a whole, which involved (1) going to the Globe to see the Lightning Child with a subset of the polymer; I got given flowers by someone other than my mother for I think the first time in my life (the cast threw roses into the audience, as it was the last night; the audience threw them back; in the second round of same, That One Lady caught one and handed it to me; and then of course I had to catch one and give it back...) and it recovered very nicely upon being placed in water when I eventually got home on Sunday evening; and I have possibly Acquired another Person in at least some capacity, which - smiles everywhere.

Korra! Elementary! This particular episode of Elementary, my goodness, I can't even begin to tell you how delighted I am with the... references to current affairs. In other fannish news, I am anticipatory and a little scared about having signed up to Yuletide for the first time ever.

And tomorrow is my first day in the lab... which I will spend mostly washing beakers.

... but yesterday was on the whole entirely bearable and today is so far shaping up pretty well, give or take having nothing to do apart from sort of aimlessly read (which is a thing I HATE).

-- ah, no, wait, I can actually legit get started on reading for a lit review. Good. This is good.

So, yes: lift was broken, but via a slightly entertaining sequence of events I have ended up with access to both Bioengineering and the Business School, and thus can get up to my desk even when the main lift is down. Further, my desk has been moved from the third floor to the second, so that if the tiny-lift-for-four-steps breaks I don't have to deal with getting my chair up and down them by hand because I am NO LONGER ON THAT FLOOR (with the added benefit that I am now on the same floor as my supervisors and a KITCHEN and my MUGS and TEA I CAN DRINK).

Yesterday I had a moment of Abject Horror at the Imperial Library - they apparently completely disregard the preferred name field in the student e-service so were displaying my first name. However, I've just received an e-mail promising me this has been fixed.

And furthermore: Yesterday I managed not only grad social but subsequently eating in public at the hostel, in re which I am proud of myself; and this evening I will be going to From Sindbad to Sci-Fi: Reimagining Arab Science Fiction, which is a free event at which Amal el-Mohtar will be speaking (SO MANY EXCITE). So.

Furthermore I continue making progress with Python: to my astonishment and delight, I'm running into things I can't do straight off and instead of bursting into tears and becoming convinced I am not good at anything and will never be able to any of the things, I go away and do something else for a bit and let it percolate, and then I write an outline of what wants to happen, and then I... write code. And then, mostly, it works. I am seriously, SERIOUSLY proud of myself for this - and simultaneously mildly horrified that some of the PIs in my group consider me advanced and intimidating because I am learning to code sort-of for fun...

This afternoon I have a session with my counsellor, which I am really looking forward to: I think I've done a lot of Stuff about feelings and procesing and displaying emotions and how I interact with people, and I think we will have lots of good stuff to talk about (and probably also some processing about Monday, which was kind of traumatic but which I think I have - to my astonishment - mostly bounced back from.)

And finally, this week I am hosting at

poetree, so if you want to see me rambling about How Poems Work and sharing some of my favourites, that is a good place to find me (though I appear to be incredibly talkative here at the moment, too, so I doubt you will go short either way ;).

And, seriously, thank you all again so much for the solidarity and validation and the looking out for me: I remain incredibly grateful.

TODAY THE LIFT IS BROKEN.

PS MY OFFICE IS ON THE THIRD FLOOR.

Cissexism, ableism, outright fucking lying to my fucking face.

( Read more... )

This is what it is like, or what it is like in words.

I have registered! This means that, soon, hopefully, I will have journal access again. I believe it also means I am officially a member of aforementioned new institution. As such, I am trying to follow instructions to do... something... relating to an information systems account -- the instructions are really not terribly clear. SO FIRST: upon clicking the link to take you to the new place (which has to be a left click; no opening-in-new-tabs-via-any-other-mouse-buttons permitted around here) you get a pop-up prompt for your log-in details.

And then.

You get.

A second one.

And then the full horror is revealed unto you.

( Read more... )

IN SUM: dear Imperial, IE stopped having a controlling market share in browsers used on desktop machines in 2010 what are you even doing AND WILL YOU PAY ME CONSULTING RATES TO DO IT BETTER.

(I am caught up with the introductions post so far; if you'd like to meet people I know, please feel encouraged to go browse comments & leave one of your own, if you haven't already. Absolutely no obligation to subscribe or grant access.)

Today I was supposed to: post a lot of things, have lunch, and go to a pain clinic education session.

I managed to: eat a fig and some berries for breakfast, get a bus at approximately a sensible time, post the things, have lunch with my mother, and... get on a bus. And ride it to the end of the line. Because there were roadworks, so it was rerouted away from the hospital, and I was in too much pain to realise that the sensible thing to do was get off the bus and get a taxi. So I missed my pain clinic appointment. Which is somewhat awkward and deeply embarrassing, but whereas at the time I was convinced it was because I Am Shit I have with the benefit of a little more hindsight and a lot more opiates recognised that no, in fact, it is merely that I am ill and was having a bad day. So that's going to be an interesting phone call to make tomorrow. (On the plus side, I have had near-constant stress-induced facial herpes outbreak for the past month, BUT I haven't had any Staggering Crazy this menstrual cycle, which is good.)

But then I got home and collapsed into bed and some hours later, when everyone was home, finally managed to ask people to get top-up painkillers + water + me all in the same place, following which I perked up rather, astonishingly enough. And I read some more of the current book (Labyrinths, Borges, in translation; it's Harry's copy, and it was rather unsettling to be sat in the sunshine in Fulbourn, where he spent a lot of time in the local mental hospital as an in-patient, reading a book with a hand-written dedication to him, and some wry pencilled comments in exactly the style I would make them), & I showered, & I played a game of Scrabble, & I wrote two e-mails about the Housing Situation, & I transferred all of WtNV to the mp3 player.

On balance successful, I think, primarily because I actually managed to realise (unprompted!) that missing my appointment wasn't a case of me being the worst person in the world, utterly incapable, &c. Well done me.

I've had extremely intermittent internet access for much of the past week (home internet was, er, internot). The connection's been up and stable-ish for several hours at this point, so I'm tentatively hopeful, but given that it's a Virgin account administered by college affecting a relatively small number of users (no, we're not on the university network) I... yeah. Not promising I'm back just yet, but I am starting to work through the e-mail backlog, so if you're expecting to hear from me and haven't by the end of the week please feel free to kick me.
fannishness! This would be much easier if my computer would reliably play DVDs, grump, but nonetheless I have done a fair bit of writing and I am looking forward to getting the current piece of fic polished & Made Public And No Longer My Problem (A:tLA, ~1000 words on the political aftermath of the first three-quarters of the show finale)
had another PhD funding interview on Tuesday; I don't think I did especially well (off-day), but I was the only applicant (of four) for that project that they shortlisted for interview, and they were interviewing 29 candidates for ~15 studentships & some of those will be going off to other places, so. I think I managed to address their major concerns, and I will hear by Friday at the earliest and the end of three weeks at the latest. Fret fret fret. Supervisor bought me another hot chocolate, whinged gently (& justifiably!) about some recon experiments misbehaving a little, and took me to the fortnightly group lab meeting which I really enjoyed. Ugh. I really want this, and I need to not be thrown utterly off-kilter if I don't get it.
I took on London buses and won. (Last time I tried London buses was during the Olympics and I ended up sprinting [unnecessarily, as it turns out] for a train; the time before that I misinterpreted the front of the bus and ended up at the wrong terminus having travelled in the wrong direction, at which point I gave up and got the tube instead and wasn't actually late for my appointment at the US embassy, but. Nonetheless London buses are a slightly hyperventilatory experience for me.)
also also on Tuesday, I met up with a good friend I hadn't seen in over six months and they don't hate me and I had been half-convinced they did, and several other times that day I managed to apply logic to my kneejerk "I DID IT WRONG EVERYONE HATES ME" reaction. Go counselling & go applied techniques.
other making-stuff-wise, I have ~40 rows of ~300 stitches each left on the current project, and then I get to block it and I will have FINISHED MY FIRST SHAWL and then I just have to hope the recipient likes it. (They've said they like the principle; I then just Got On With Making It and didn't exactly, er, double-check with them. But if they don't like it I'm sure I'll find someone else to take it, and in any case BABY'S FIRST SHAWL and BABY'S FIRST SERIOUS BLOCKING.)

( Cut because it's a bit disgusting, really. )

M	T	W	T	F	S	S
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28	29	30

who only by moving can balance

only by balancing move

today's moment of serendipity

[academia, plague diaries] A Day, feat. Several Things

[plague-related tech support] ugh, Zoom

I am thinking of writing an introduction to interacting with wheelchair users

In all seriousness

Excellent things

"You," said my head of group critically this afternoon, "look like crap."

In my inbox this morning:

Impressions of being a posgraduate at Imperial College London

bits & bobs

Fairer weather (well, actually, it's raining)

..........

Today has been actually vile.

ongoing adventures with my new institution

symptoms log//I'll keep taking the pills if you keep giving them to me

Bits and pieces

Academic squee of the day

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April 2025

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