Yes, it’s time once again for Thanksgiving celebrations Oxford-style.

I have about 16 people coming around this year, and am hoping to get all of us at one table!

If you can’t make the festivities, you are more than welcome to watch the webcam (either on the right hand side of this page orthe larger version), which will be live most of Saturday (and part of Friday too!).

With life moving quickly these days, I thought I would pause for a bit to reflect on things once more. "To not be happy is still to be" is a bit more philosophical than some of my other Journal entries, but I hope you still find it interesting.  All comments welcome!

I have waited a long time to post this one. After Amy-Ruth's wedding, another Ole, Kristie, and I decided that our time with Amy-Ruth was not as long as we wanted it to be.  We also discovered - after swapping photos in the early hours of the morning after the reception - that what was a wedding on March 31st had just become a wedding night on April Fool's Day.  This was an event that we could not pass up.

At first, we heard a rumour that the newly minted couple were actually staying in the same hotel, but after a long time of searching for their car in the parking lot, we talked the receptionist into telling us that they had actually checked out that day (good thinking!).  

Then I remembered that Amy-Ruth and Jason had kindly provided all of the guests with their new address on the back of the wedding programmes, and that their house happened to be a mere 10 minute drive away.  Vacating the hotel premises (an event spurred on at least a little by the arrival of a security guard, no doubt do to our giggles and suspicious walk through the parking lot looking at every license plate), we found said house, and though not certain it was indeed the happy couple's, we nevertheless set to work.  The windows steamed as we chuckled to ourselves composing a letter and trying to avoid looks from the passing police cars.

And now, a little background is in order.  Amy-Ruth, Kristie, and I all lived in Mellby Hall at St. Olaf one year.  In an unfortunate event, Amy-Ruth went to collect her laundry one day, and the whole lot seemed to have gone missing.  This load, moreover, contained all of her bras.  In a petition to the hearts and minds of all students, Amy-Ruth wrote a very long, loving, but insistent note and posted it all over the Hall.  The gist of the note was that, if the person who took the bras really desperately needed them and couldn't afford their own, then she was happy to give them away; otherwise, they had better return them ASAP because there was one very unhappy camper on the second floor.  They never returned.

This story provided all the fodder we needed to drum up just what exactly had happened to those bras.  And in a humour that I suspect only those who are Oles will truly appreciate, the result was our Nefarious Letter.  Click the image above to (re)live the moment. 

The birds are out, the weather is unpredictable, the days are long, and everyone's dying to get outside.  I've put up a selection of the Term's events, from May Morning and a Cambridge conference to dinners for the graduates of the business school and New College.  There are picnics, punts, and plays - plenty pictures for perusing.

The picture I won't show is of my supervisor standing at the door to my office threatening to chain me down to my desk until I produce some writing.  It's true, though.  I think he's serious too… 

I have finally had a chance to sit down and congeal some thoughts I've had lately, this time about 'time'.  Care to join them?

I have also upgraded my Manifestations section of my website to the new version of Gallery.  I'm still tweaking it a bit.  Now that my digital camera is back in working order, I suspect some pictures will once more be taken.  For now, though, enjoy the ones from Kristie of Amy-Ruth's wedding !

With all my work for Sir Crispin Tickell, who was writing about climate change long before it became the topic it is today, and seeing as my supervisor is a lead author on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), I thought it was nifty that my webhost decided recently to go carbon neutral by buying carbon credits from Green-e. 

While emissions trading may not be the best way to reduce ones emissions (they don't really reduce emissions at all, just help companies that produce renewable energy do so more cheaply), its a step towards less reliance on fossil fuels.  

I listen to a lot of music, of a lot of different types.  When I want to discover new stuff like the music I already have, I head over to Pandora.com.  Insert an artist or the name of a track and it will create a station that has music like that.  It's really amazing and so far I've been surprised by how much I've liked what I've heard.  I've put up a new section on the right hand side of my homepage where you can see what stations I have newly created.  There's also a link there to take you to my pandora homepage.  Enjoy!

Yes, after 5 years with my old host, phpwebhosting, I have decided to pack up my bits and move my home on the web to a new server, dreamhost.  The old guys were decent hosts, and their support was pretty good, so the choice to move wasn't an easy one.  But I found a host that provides a more user-friendly back-end to my site, and is also cheaper than the current guys, and should provide more graduated levels of security that I need. 

There will most likely be some moving pains in the next few weeks as I sort everything out on the new server.  Think of it like moving house.  The front-end of the site (what you are looking at now) shouldn't change that much, if at all.  It's kind of like furniture.  The back-end is like the house, and it takes a while to fit 5 years of stuff into a new arrangement!  One change that may affect you, however, is that email announce lists will be reconfigured because dreamhost has some strict anti-spam requirements.  You may have to resubscribe to the lists, but if that's the case, I'll send you an email.

 I've been looking forward to this move for a long time, and it's all thanks to a Christmas present from my sister Emily!  She's just bought the site for two years, so you'll see her advertising around.  Like here! This website provided by the generous endowment of Emily.  Thanks Ems! 

If you notice parts of my site that have gone down, please let me know so I can fix them as quickly as possible.

[Update: I've moved!  let me know (by commeting on this post) if there's a broken link.  I'm surprised how easy it was!]

Between Christmas and New Year's, I decided to take a few days off of my research and visit a friend in Cornwall.

Cornwall, located in the 'foot' of England, is a place of many castles and much coastline.  I wish that I could have spent a week or more here, just walking the coastline and seeing lots of ruins.  I did enjoy the time I had though.  I got to see the main town, Truro, and had a day trip to Tintagel, the legendary (though totally unsubstantiated) home of King Arthur, and Boscastle, which is famous for the flash floods of 2004 that poured mud throughout the whole town but killed no one.

Enjoy the pictures!  Now it's time to get back to work… 

For Christmas this year, as for many years now, My present to my Aunt Sally and Uncle Brian is my Year in Review.  This year, I decided to write it in the form of a dinner party.  Care to stop by for dinner?