Last day in London was lovely; the weather was great, autumn temperature, but nice sunshine; going for breakfast/brunch at the St Pancras station - and realising for the first time the great new layout, the light and condition of the whole thing; going for me-time treatments and shopping (minor and always items that I would be able to carry on the pockets of my luggage), finding a shorter route from Regent Street to Shaftesbury Avenue (it does take me 8 years to find out those things); watching Away We Go and loving it; meeting for drinks in Marylebone High Street (after an “episode”); saying goodbyes and crying at Baker Street; coming back home and drinking champagne to celebrate flatmate’s birthday. Switching off the recurrent alarm in my mobile since there was no need any more to wake me up to go to “normal” work.
The next day, waking at 3.50 to be at the airport at 6; taxi 10 minutes ahead of time, quick goodbyes with flatmates who were brave and sweet enough to wake up at that time, a slightly crazy drive to the airport and a very helpful driver watching my things while getting a trolley; 70 pounds fee for excess weight (ouch!), but nice fast queues at security and at EAT - a double espresso looking like a basic human right at that time of the day; everything else going smoothly till landing; parents being there 20 minutes before landing and then being hurt when saying that I am torn between two cities; and then I started noticing signs of aging everywhere, to the two people next to me and to everything around me. Finding a can of instant coffee in the fridge that had an expiry date of January 2008 and watching the greek version of X Factor in the evening were the least worrying things of the day. (I also found out that there is a Greek version of America’s Next Top Model launching this year - apparently they are only keeping the last three words of the title, phew! it could have been so much worse!)
The weather was summer-y rather than autumn-y and I spent the day sorting out my stuff in the office/shed which apparently is so humid that it needs a new coat of plastering and painting every couple of years. Checked two of the boxes I sent and found an orange juicer and a jug that broke - that’s not something major, is it? The next couple of months will be interesting.
I really want to see how that will turn out. At first it seemed just like one more “fashionable” thing to suggest in desparation; now it seems to be gathering steam. It will be interesting to see how traditional publishers react to it.
“In this first step, the initiative asked for textbooks in Math and Science and nine suppliers submitted 16 titles. The publishers were both individual educators and publishers and Pearson was the only ‘traditional’ publisher that chose to submit content. Embarrassingly, Pearson scored one of the lowest scores against the ‘content standards met’ criteria. (Why they were there at all is perhaps a more interesting discussion point.) “
Whenever there is talk on electronic content, you hear so often about how easy it is to update it and make any corrections. Is that important or necessary in a textbook or is it something to avoid:
“As this program develops, it will be interesting to see how the concept of a textbook begins to change. One of the criteria listed in the ‘parameters’ for review of the digital content is that the material must be ‘stable for two years’: Changes to the content are not allowed. For some subjects this parameter should be no problem but, as the state evaluates social science and some other (dynamic) subjects, this parameter will begin to look quaint and limiting in what advantages digital content - free or paid - is able to deliver over print formats. In turn, as the parameters change so will the process of vetting and approving titles for use in high schools.”
Dealing with image rights for electronic textbooks is tricky as it is, especially for new editions where price agreements sometimes mention discounts based on how much of the original edition the new edition includes. Discussing about using material within a continuously updated material, oh, that will be a priceless experience, probably sucking the life out of me.
It’s too late to write about an average day but there are still three days to right all today’s wrongs. The good things first: summer is still not giving up alltogether; the basil I planted in May is still going strong (although the wind keeps throwing the pots off the window sill); I am moving up ranks in The book oven proofreading snippets; everyone will soon start talking about the how and what of Frankfurt; and I started reading Orhan Pamuk’s “Distant Relations” in this week’s New Yorker (http://www.newyorker.com/fiction/features/2009/09/07/090907fi_fiction_pamuk) and I really enjoy the pace and the narration. The bad ones: Xmarks was a huge dissappointment today making me spend hours trying to sort it out and failing completely - I had to uninstall it; discovered some thousands bookmarks on Firefox under “unsorted bookmarks”, some of them in multiple copies, probably legacy of read-it-later and XMarks upgrades - it took me over 3 hours to delete them all (such a waste of time); haven’t cooked for a while and getting very bored with having to choose from the same sandwiches every day - need to make something tomorrow; the to-do list still looks strong and that it will not give up without a fight - I will need to use magic to tackle it.
Checking out the replies and thinking “OMG how are they going to make sense of all these replies?” How can you organise all those things? Will some poor intern have to ramage through it all and put them together in themes on a spreadsheet?How long will that take? Would there be an easier way to sort out this kind of material?
