Monday 30 April 2018

Month in Review: April 2018

I'm going to have to admit defeat on producing a none Month-in-Review post this month: life and work have been too busy for blogging! Of course, paradoxically, that gives me a lot to talk about, but such is life.

Of course, this month has seen the Easter holidays, so I've had Bank Holidays, and a substantial chunk of annual leave taken up looking after children (including a trip to Manchester to visit the Robots exhibition at the Museum of Science and Industry, and a family holiday), which means that I've only actually been working for half the month.

Still, it's been an exciting half month, particularly on the SUITCEYES front. We've been interviewing for User Needs Research Fellows, and I've also had a trip to visit Astrid Kappers' lab in Amsterdam to test out the first prototypes with Nils-Krister Persson and Adriana Stöhr from Borås. And Astrid. It was a fascinating, and very informative time. Lots to report on - in due course!

There was also a trip to Dundee with Stuart Murray to meet with Graham Pullin (the author of the excellent Design Meets Disability, and leader of the also-excellent Hands of X project) to talk Hands, which was also great. On top of that, we are at the end of teaching, have had a very productve workshop on Immersive Technologies (today!), and we've just managed to get revisions on one of our grip modelling papers in.

Lots of exciting stuff to report - but no time in which to report them, sadly! Such is the way!

I will be doing the Pint of Science festival in May on the subject of Talking Through Touch, so hopefully I'll get a chance to put up a post on my talk before I give it... here's hoping!

Sunday 1 April 2018

Month in Review: March 2018

Ooops. I managed to miss my "two posts a month" target in March, albeit only by a day. Anyway, it's been a busy month with not a huge amount of specifics to report. As noted in my last post, I was down to Westminster for the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Assistive Technology: other than that there's been the usual end of term rush, planning for the Summer Showcase, advertising for Research Fellows, sorting out employment paperwork, and one PhD student (Awais Hafeez) has passed his transfer viva, while another has passed his final viva (Haikal Sitepu) - congratulations to both! The main thing that has kept me busy though is implementing the controller for SUITCEYES, which I'm pleased to say is coming along nicely and will be tested in Amsterdam next month. Sorry, *this* month, since it's now April. Of course, half of this month is School holidays, so I've a fair bit of annual leave, plus the two days in Amsterdam, plus a day's round-trip to Dundee. I'll keep you posted!