This and that

1. My current new toy is a graphics tablet. It's good for my RSI, and the handwriting recognition is impressive; it can cope with my terrible cursive scrawl, and seems to recognise names used elsewhere. I'm not the neatest writer, unless I'm really trying. It occurred to me that this could be a solution to the problem of the handwriting of students who type all their work, possibly including their lecture notes, but still have to write exams long-hand. If they used a graphics tablet instead of typing then when they got into the exam room they would at least have had plenty of practice at writing to a certain standard.

2. I was fed up with Calvin Harris but he made quite a good video for that sofa advert song.

3. The photocopier in my faculty can now e-mail things to you as pdfs instead of spewing them out on paper. This is a fantastic thing. I tried it out with a lovely letter I had just got from the Politest Man in the World, and now I don't have to worry about losing it. I have visions of spending all my weekends there for the next year or so, copying the articles which take up 67 inches on my shelves, not including a couple of years of unfiled stuff.

4. I would advise you not to read Ken Follett's Pillars of the World. It made me very nostalgic at first because, when I was a daunted twelve-year-old at my grandparents' house surrounded by loud extrovert relatives I would rifle the shelves and end up reading exactly this sort of well-constructed, engaging trash. I read it to the end to find out what happened, but it made me feel a bit car-sick. Also, it has that rather dirty sexuality which is big in those sorts of books -- lots of rapes. All in all, it's on a par with Jeffrey Archer, and should be avoided.