Send Me a Postcard, Drop Me a Line

The (very generous) maternity leave laws in the UK stipulate that you can have ten "keeping in touch" days with your work whilst on leave (which then get tacked on as extra holiday to your period of leave... and the holiday you accrue whilst on leave... did I mention the word generous?) Anyway, I've now got to make a note of what I did in my ten "keeping in touch" days for my back to work meeting with my boss next week.

So I thought I'd point you to some of the things of interest:

1. I chased the book, Digital Images for the Information Professional, through from submission (just before I went off on leave) to publication. Heck, I even designed the cover myself. And no, its not fun to go over the proofs with a fine tooth comb in less than a week when you have an 8 week old baby to look after full time, in case anyone would think it was a good idea.
2. I edited, alongside Greg Crane of the Perseus Project, a fantastic special issue of Digital Humanities Quarterly called "Changing the Center of Gravity: Transforming Classical Studies Through Cyberinfrastructure" in memory of Ross Scaife. I should have mentioned it before here: a really provocative and strong collection of essays about where digital classicists are going, and what classics will be like in ten years time.
   
3. I saw a paper, written with Paul Gooding, through revisions and through to publication: "'Grand Theft Archive': a quantitative analysis of the current state of computer game preservation" in The International Journal of Digital Curation.
   
4. I took part in the Day in the Life of Digital Humanities blogging experiment.
5. I got the ball rolling, with Brent Nelson, for a couple of volumes on Digitizing Medieval and Early Modern Material Culture. Hopefully, the contributors should be sending in essays soon - and we are looking for a quick turnaround (ie publication within the next year).
6. I went to Digital Resources in the Humanities and Arts Conference, for the afternoon, to see a paper about the VERA project.
7. I answered a tonne of email. As usual.
   

There were other things not really of relevance outwith my immediate community - Digital Humanities Town Meeting, Computing Science Away Day, visit to the eSAD project at Oxford. Involved in a few grant applications. Wrote a book chapter. Got a couple of papers accepted for conferences. You know, the usual.

The eagle eyed amongst you will probably spot that this probably took up more than ten days of my time. Well, I didnt mind. For a start, it kept my mind ticking over (and I was completely housebound for over 4 months, you have to do something lest you go crazy). And I'm not at all phased about being back at work... my mind has never really been away...