Consumer Culture Vulture

This weekend I spent 2 full days installing a new kitchen sink. In between cursing to myself, and my poor partner sheltering resigned in the garden, I got to thinking how similar DIY is to journal article writing. Both take far longer than you expect to complete. Both will need several touch ups later on. The more preparation time you put in the first place the better they both come out. And both will be subject to critical evaluation afterwards. So wrench or pen; you're lumbered either way I'm afraid. The only upside is when you become sick of one, you can give the other a go. And then when your thumb can take no more awry hammer strokes, or Endnote has sent your eyes fuzzier than a peach, go back to the other and it seems a positive relief.

Just an update to yesterday's post. The European Commission website is an excellent resource for finding out about the latest funding opportunities across the continent. Would highly recommend. Plus they have a nice map I wanted to share.

I have been discovering, through incidental conversations with colleagues, a number of useful websites. I thought I would pass them on, a downside of lecturer's independence being that we often don't realise what/how/where/when resources are available. Hence... The UK research council : can register with these for alerts on UK funding opportunities etc. Researchgate is a sort of facebook for academics (which sounds a bit like facebook with all of the fun sucked out of it, but my colleague swears by its networking charms). The European Commission , who I follow on facebook facebook, are regularly updated with interesting research findings and funding opportunities. Plus they have good graphics to be inspired by. Those are the ones I have so far. Hope they are of use. I will keep my ear out for more...

I've just been googling myself (personal and academic vanity aside, I was legitimately looking up my past papers so I could reference them alright) and have discovered that I have been cited three times by people who aren't me! Oh my gosh this is very exciting. It means somebody other than my mum and dad (and I suspect from the 'that's nice dear' summary they gave me that their review may have been less than thorough) has read my papers. Well they must have at least read the abstract. Probably. So that works out at around 76 hours writing per reader thusfar. Hmmm.

I'm not sure it counts as research and enterprise activity (I should be so lucky to get it into ref 2020) but I was last week doing a tiny part to promote tourism in the Isle of Man. Us academics are supposed to be involved in spreading the word. On Sunday, at the annual Festivale InterCeltique , I helped carry a flag and hand out sweets, supporting the Isle of Man dance group Ny Fennee , as they represented the island in the Grand Parade of Celtic nations (my sister was dancing hence how I got in - and she's not even a fancy PhD like myself). Give me a bit of flag waving over article editing any day. The crowds are much nicer. And their feedback far more positive than my first round reviewers ever are. Why can't my submissions ever just be clapped and cheered? One day, one day... One devious idea might be to tag some sweets into my appendices. The crowds went mad for them after all...

We might have defeated them at Agincourt, Waterloo, and bailed them out in WW2 (lets just gloss over 1066, Jean d'Arc, and all that), but in the battle for tourists, the French clearly have us licked.  I have just come back from my first ever paid holiday (the guilt of it was washed away pretty quickly with local beer, don't worry folks). Ten days in France. And when I wasn't congratulating myself on my good fortune to land a rare job that still gives generous vacations, or realising that for the first time ever I could afford to buy real Orangina, not Top Budget Orangey Lite, I was observing how deeply developed tourism across the Channel is. I appreciate this every year, but even more so this time. Perhaps after four years of budget cuts in the UK becoming increasingly apparent in our ever more unkempt town centres, shabby civic spaces, and frequently pruned back tourist initiatives, the difference is all the more stark. The modern, clean, accessible facilities fou...