Archive for the 'linux' Category

TOILing

I have a day off today - Time Off In Lieu, TOIL (I love ironic acronyms).

I haven’t got anything planned but so far I have been:

  • Playing with Ubuntu. Found out yesterday that a number of the doctoral students I support use open source tools like LaTex and Inkscape and KBibtext (they don’t use EndNote! ¡Ay, caramba!) I don’t have to learn how to use LaTex, for example, but I hate not knowing anything about it. And this gives me an impetus to play around with Linux a bit. Thanks for M for installing it on my PC (we’re using virtual machine software so I can keep running things like iTunes on Windows).
  • Watching the birds outside my study window. I’ve been leaving seed out for them for a few weeks now. Initially they didn’t touch the food, but after almost a fortnight I guess they realised there was no longer a cat around to make things hazardous, and they’ve been enjoying it.
  • Cleaning my fountain pens. I’m sure this isn’t particularly interesting, even to fountain pen users, so that’s all I’ll say about this ;)

Plus the usual reading, pondering and general pottering around the house. It’s so nice to have a day off!