So, ermm, Twitter then.

Kitchen is still a little bit too chaotic for me to be presenting it to the world. Maybe next week, I say to myself. Again.

Just back from a lovely, fairly relaxing, weekend in a tent (2 different tents actually) with some of my best friends in the whole wide world. I probably drank too much, but if I did anything embarrassing, none of you have been willing to tell me about it. I climbed two fairly insignificant hills which took an altogether disproportionate amount of effort, no doubt due to the desk-bound life I have been reluctantly living of late (and not helped by the drinking too much). I played boule/petanque and got eaten alive by the midges. A weekend well spent.

This week - a Newbie's take on Twitter.

I have succumbed. I don't know if it's a good idea at all, but I have done it. I am on Twitter. I've gone for a boring real name handle, @Kirsten_G_F, through nothing more than a lack of imagination. Rowan Tree Tents will likely hit Twitter too, be warned. L's Aunt thinks it's a good idea, and she strikes me as someone whose advice I should take, so here we are.

I still like Radio 4's Tweet of the Day better.

I'll admit I'm not really sure how to make it work, both in a "how in heck do you work this thing" way and also in a "how can I make it work for me" way. So I'll start out somewhat tentatively, on account of how I'd rather not embarrass myself. I'm imaging it's all too easy to put something stupid out there. And if there is a stupid things that can be found and done, I'm the one to do it.

I have been on Twitter for 1 day now. That's not much, but I have noticed some things that I can share with you all.

My observations on the medium. 

• 99% of my feed is Stephen Fry, and I'm very ok with that.

• Twitter posts aren't much to look at, so I'm going to intersperse this list with pictures of my weekend. Because it's my blog so neh.

• 140 characters is enough. You either keep it simple or you find a clever way to work within the restraints. It narrows the brief and that seems to make people thing more carefully about the words they string together. 

• How the hell does Twitter know to show me a bunch of people I already know in real life? My Facebook account runs out of a different email address.

Not actually on fire. 

• Twitter bios are hilarious. They lay bare your priorities about what you want people to picture when they think of you. We all want to be witty. 

• Christian Twitter bios are all the same "Following Jesus. Engaged to @husband. All opinions are his." "God is my Superhero. Slightly cooler than you. Husband of @silentwife001". 

• It's all so damn public. My employers are on here. My Minister is on here (but he's only posted twice since 2011). My parents could well be on here for all I know. I'm gonna have to be nice. You are live on air. Please do not swear. 

• Following people is not the same as befriending them on Facebook. It's more one-directional. Short of blocking someone, there's not "acceptance" of a follower. It feels a little like creeping up on people, but it's the way the whole medium works, so it must be right. 

• It might take me while to get used to using the word "follow" in a capacity that doesn't mean "Jesus" or "Court order".  

• It's fast. The more people you follow, the smaller snapshot of time you're gonna see in any one visit. If you don't post when someone is there to see it, they're never going to see it. Unless you get the app, in which case I think I'd end up ignoring it a lot. 

• Recommendations go a long way, and that feel a bit more "real world" than Fb. I can really see how I'd wind up following a huge number of people/groups just for interest value.

• It's not just procrastination any more. This is the real world, in a bizarre microcosm. The FutureLearn course I'm still trying to keep up with, Nutrition and Health, seems to be making a lot of the fact it is engaging with social media. Heck, even L's office has an account. @UoAEpi, should you care to find out. They mostly just post pictures of cake. 

• And that's ok. Everyone likes cake, right?

Happy Tuesday! 

Coming up this week. L goes away on a work thing, I don't, H moves in, I have to take a tent to Ellon. But it's all going to be ok because I just made enough lasagne to eat it for every meal till the weekend. :)

Welcome to Aberdeen University

A post aimed entirely at people who I don't yet know and will probably never read it. 

Campus is pretty quiet right now. I can buy my lunch without queueing and I can usually find a space on a bench to sit outside and eat it. Apart from today when it's pissing it down so I'm hiding inside and only shivering a little bit. I'm getting rather used to having campus to myself. It won't last much longer...

It's been 8 - EIGHT! - years since I came to Aberdeen. I've undoubtedly spend more hours here on this campus than anywhere else in the city. In a few short weeks a brand new fresh crop of Newbies will land. This is going to be my guide to studying at Aberdeen University. It's got numbers, 8 of them to conveniently go with the 8 whole years I've been calling this place home. Here we go.

1. Don't pinch my spot. 

I have a perfect spot I often take off to on nice days. The oldest part of the campus here is King' College, and there's a part where we have quite a small quadrangle surrounded on 4 sides buy nice tall, pretty buildings. One side is the chapel itself. The space is small enough and the walls high enough that the seagulls which Aberdeen is particularly afflicted with don't seem to be able to manage the angle very easily, so they seem to leave it alone-ish. It's sheltered, and there's one side which gets lovely warm direct sunlight at about lunchtime. The best bit - in the summer when there's precious few students around, it's often fairly uninhabited. Quiet, sheltered, warm-ish and safe-ish from seagulls. I have my spot. It's a good little place to go think in. Please don't be in it when I want to be, ok?

2. Never Ever Ever Feed the Seagulls. 

One lunchtime this week my perfect spot (see above) was occupied by some other people, people who had the sheer audacity to be having a conversation. I know, shocking. Anyway, I was in a stinking bad mood and wanted to be alone. So I moved along a bit, over on to the other side of the chapel. Again, it's a pretty spot, to look at, but it has a mahoosive seagull problem. They're unafraid and they're aggressive and they're fucking massive. If you have food, they will take it. Thy are the ultimate bully. Basically no-one can eat here. If I sat here every lunchtime, I can guarantee you that every day I'd see someone loose food to a seagull.

But for some daft reason they're quite heavily protected so no, we can't just shoot them.

Because there are idiots keep feeding them. Either you're just a bit dim and you've been hiding under a rock and you've missed the memo - Aberdeen Seagulls will take your food - or you're an inconsiderate pain in the arse and you think it's funny to feed them. Everywhere else these are wild animals who are scared, or at least wary, of people. Here they see us as prey. They're wild animals, I can't blame them. They've figured out the best way to get food. Survival of the biggest and meanest. They've learned now that people=food. Please, please, can we retrain the buggers out of that. Sometimes I wish I had a pet Eagle, or even one of those big remote control drone things. Alas, I don't. So in the meantime, will you idiots stop encouraging these horrible animals to ruin the nicest spot we've got on this campus.

3. This is Ki:lau. We like Ki:lau.

Best coffee on campus. Quite expensive coffee but I'd rather have one of their coffees than 3 from Starbucks. They're independent and local and they make incredible brownies. Just leave one for me.

4. Sort out your own registration. 

You can do all of the necessary things before you even set foot in the city. Please do them. Please do them on your own, and don't ask me any questions about it. You're coming here to do a degree, you can figure it out. And please, please, I implore you - leave your parents at home. Campus is crowed enough at the start of term as it is. You're big boys and girls now.

5. Scottish Country Dancing. 

Wednesday nights are dancing nights. No signing up for anything else on Wednesdays.

6. Go camping while you can. 

Scotland has the best camping in the world, and Rowan Tree Tents does a generous student discount. ;)
September is totally still camping season if you own a big woolly hat and some decent thermals. Then you can start again in April if you're feeling brave.

We had snow on this trip and it was still ace.

7. Hillhead is cold. 

You see that loan money that you were planning to spend on alcohol and food? If you are going to find yourself living up at Hillhead, go out right now and spend it on one of these.

Buy the biggest, longest, puffiest one you can find and afford. 

Packing essential here. Go rake through your Dad's wardrobe. Yes, your Dad's. Or your Grandad's, or your Uncle's. Keep bothering family members until you find it.

Find what, kiddo? The jumper of wonders.

Preferably big enough to cover your butt if you're in the sea and not wearing much else. 

This will be your Please-Don't-Ask-Me-Any-Difficult-Questions jumper. This will make life happier.

8. Go Watch the Dolphins. 

If you ever want a decent excuse to get away from your randomly-allocated flatmates and sit around outside for a while, get yourself up to Torry Battery and go dolphin-spotting. I am probably a very inaccurate sample, but I've seen them every time I've been round there. You might need that jumper and that coat, mind you.

This weekend I'm actually going camping myself! I will have fun regardless of the weather. Till next week.

What do you do with a BSc in Geography?

How not to introduce yourself.

We've been sociable little bunnies this week, what with all the running around the country giving people tents (which we have done rather a lot of - just back this evening from collecting one).

We've done a lot of introducing ourselves and catching up with people we haven't seen in a while. I think there have been 3 or 4 conversions this week where I've been trying to explain what it is that I do for a living. On multiple occasions I've found myself trying to explain why a geography degree is a reasonable precursor to a job where I'm on a university IT project.

The honest truth is that geography seemed like a good way to get to go on a few nice fieldwork jollies and get a degree along the way. No career planning in sight. Which makes me a royally crap role model for an ambitious teenager.

The question, "So what do you do with a BSc in Geography?" is not a million miles away from this very question:

For the uninitiated this is one of the less-well known ear-worms for a musical called Avenue Q. Go see it, it's hilarious. Just don't take your kids. Or your parents.

How on earth do you go about describing your job to people like your Fiancée's family, or people who are are desperately hoping to get to do more business with? There's that killer question, "So what do you do?" Arg. Makes me want to run and hide. In that moment a whole range of totally unusable answers run through my head.

What I actually do is sit in front of a computer screen doing repetitive, fiddly, confusing, monotonous things that cold be done much better by a reasonably well-written algorithm. Occasionally interspersed with trying to convincingly answer the odd question I'm not really sure of the answer to. That's not interesting, not even a little bit.

I could try and be accurate, and tell people what we're trying to do, which is give our students a shiny new bit of software which should make choosing courses better for them. But that would take me all flippin' day. I reckon answers to the "what do you do question" can not be longer than about 4 or five words, beyond which people just start to glaze over.

Sometimes I just say "I'm in IT". It's only technically true, but there's never ever in the entire history of people introducing themselves been a follow up question to that particular answer so I get away with it. But then no-one talks to me for the rest of the evening and I go home sad.

There are times when I'm tempted to flat-out lie. I could go with something noble and worthwhile. Yes, actually, I am working on a cure for cancer right now. Think I've just about cracked it. What I wouldn't give for a one-word job title in those moments. Some snappy and recognisable. I'm a Teacher, a Doctor, a Writer, an Engineer. Alas no, I am forced to converse for a sentence or two.

So what value do those 4 years of Higher Education lend me now that they're over. They filled a gap, I suppose. They got me away of my childhood home and out in to the big bad world on my own, without me needing to figure out how to earn a living at the same time. Education was something I understood, it was the logical thing to do. That degree then, what's it good for? Not much, you might say. Right now, for me, it counts as a qualification at a certain level. It probably wouldn't make much difference at all had it been in any other subject, but it tells the world that I have a degree, any degree. It says that I (only just) had it in me to hack 4 years of education that the state didn't actually make me do. It should say that I'm capable of writing an essay, or at least a report of some sort, and have the end product make a degree of sense to the reader. It qualified me for a gradate trainee-ship, so it worked out ok. At least that's what I tell my Mother.

Alternatively I may have just been in it for the silly hat. 

Working in a university, I often find myself questioning what the point of some of our degrees are. In my more forgiving moments I suppose that if there's an interest, it's worthwhile running, but we do offer some odd degrees. When I'm feeling less charitable I think we should run no more than 10 different degrees, and no-one should get to choose anything complicated.

Free online courses are becoming a thing. Even Aberdeen is beginning to offer them. I really rather enjoy the idea of free online education. I just hope it's done well. I'd love it to be possible to do enough Futurelearn courses to qualify for some credits which could actually start adding up to a qualification. Of course that's not in any university's financial plan, but I still wish it was possible.

So I am going to find out if they're any good or not. I've gone and signed myself up for a course called Nutrition and Wellbeing, which the University of Aberdeen are running through Futurelearn. If I learn anything interesting I shall report back. It starts next week!

Not Chicken Pox

A lesson in Scottish camping.

Sometimes it's nice to sit with a laptop on your knee and sink a bit of potentially useful time in to the productivity sinkhole that is the internet. I will read or watch any old crap.

I am (now not so) secretly awaiting the return of the Great British Bake Off to BBC iPlayer. As ever, I'll probably wind up watching about 20 minutes a week, and finish the series a number of months after everyone else. It's a way of setting my little brain to "standby mode" for a few minutes.

In a moment of classic internet time-sinking, I found myself reading an article (this might have been Sunday, I'm not so sure of time these days) recently about "X things successful people do", or some such clickbait-y nonsense. It was absolute garbage and I'm not even going to find it and link to it because I'm slightly ashamed of reading right to the end of it. One of things on one of those lists has sort of lodged itself in my thoughts. It was about how setting small targets was a habit worth getting in to. Most of the time I just set myself the target of "get to bedtime without pissing anyone off too much", but it's a thought. I keep a to-do list because I have a brain like a sieve, and whilst it gets added to and ticked off, it still lingers at a critical mass of outstanding stuff. 

I wonder what it would take to get it down to zero? Is that even possible? I don't actually think it is. Nope it's not possible, now I come to think about it. Maybe I can just strive for having a slightly shorter list?

Less of the rambling, This week there are some scenic pictures, and an explanation of why both me and L currently look like we have chicken pox. 

We went to Arran this weekend. Turns out it's rather a lovely place. At least the small fraction of it that we made it to was. 

We had a plan. It went a bit like this. 

Drive. 
Sleep. 
Drive.
Ferry. 
Pitch.
Arran.
Camp.
Ferry.
Hot Chocolate.
Drive.
Sleep.

What did you do with your weekend?

Many successes were had. I succeeded in driving my little car on to a ferry and not, like, missing it and driving in to the sea or anything. 

The job in hand was to pitch a bell tent for someone else, and get it all pretty and ready for them to move in to. We succeeded in finding the right camp site (at least we hope so) and pitching the tent. 

At this point it's about 10 am, I've been up since 5, and still haven't had any breakfast. That counts as a smile.

We found the important bolder that marks the height at which the camp site occasionally floods to, and we think we're pitched higher up than that.

Some last minute tent repairs were thrown in to the mix, but I'm happy now that the thing will be that bot more watertight and midge-tight. 

We even did our best to give our tent guests a scenic view up the glen.

At least as much of the glen as is actually visible. The mist rolls in pretty quick. 

In the process I dropped my little phone on a nice (no doubt geologically interesting) big rock. The rock is fine, thank you to those who asked. My phone is kaput. Quite enjoying the radio silence until it gets replaced.

There were castles.

There were tame red deer.

And we found an all-but-perfect spot for the night, in our 2 man tent that marks the other end of the spectrum from the fancy one above.

We got the map out and found us a lovely spot to camp the night. Clear, uninhabited, pretty flat.

We covered ourselves in pre-emptive skin-so-soft, but did not reckon on the ways of the Scottish midge.

In short, we spent the night in a gorgeous scenic corner of nature, tightly zipped inside a claustrophobic, 20-year old tent, that was most definitely not midge-proof. It sounded like it was raining, but it wasn't. In the middle of the night, when nature called, I unzipped the flysheet and felt my whole face sting as about 20 of the buggers bit me at once.

We have taken out shares in aloe vera, anthisan and germolene. And we have learned an important lesson about only camping in places where there will be a stiff breeze and you can have a camp-fire, just in case.

Today I counted 32 little midgey nibbles on one hand alone, and L has come off worse than me.

This marks the point her leggings came to. Eek!

And next weekend - we're back for more of the same!