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Number 8 in a series of N… Chambery airport isn’t really in Chambery. If you’re going there, you should probably realise you’re looking at a 20euro taxi ride from the train station. Or if you have a bit of time, you can take a local bus (number 6) to the end of the line (Voglans Eglise), ask for directions, and then take a 15 minute stroll downhill, arriving at the airport on foot. And on your way, you’ll pass a dog training centre called Hot Dog Education.

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I’ve been playing with a javascript zoom thing, which is available free from this site, as a means of displaying panoramas better. I think it works quite well. Here are a few examples – Grenoble after sunset, the Chartreuse mountains and a very snowy Grenoble from the memorial to the troops of the mountain. I think the last one came out best.

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Number 1 in a series of N… The wines of the morning! Discounted wine between 8am and 2pm! Marvellous. Must remember to pop in on my way to the lab.

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I mentioned a while back (in this post) that I’d applied for a paid blogger job with VITAE, the organisation that supports UK researchers, but didn’t get it because I couldn’t make an induction session in London. To my delight I was contacted a few days ago and asked if I was still interested. So I’m now on the official team until it’s reviewed at the end of March. The theme of the blog is staff development and career support for researchers, but people seem to be interpreting that quite broadly. My first post as one of the core bloggers has just gone up hereRead More →

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Number 7 in a series of N… Actually, I think that if I were to suffer a massive career change and open a native American gift shop in France, I might well call it Sioux Venir. I’m really rather taken with the name. I’ve never been in, of course – I don’t have much call for bows, arrows or dream catchers. But I do like the name. Comedian Dave Gorman, upon my recommendation, has entered this shop into his Pun Street. So thanks to this shop, I’ve been mentioned by twitter ID on Absolute Radio. Fame at last!

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Campus looked a bit like Narnia, but with cooler street names. Being in the Alps, they know how to handle snow. Public transport runs fine. People change the tyres on their cars, then just get on with it. I’ve not cycled since it came down as I’m a bit nervous of ice, but the trams are going perfectly, so that’s not a problem Later in the day, once the University Snowplough had passed, it got a bit more slushy, but not much. It’s done a lot of melting today and has just refrozen, turning the pavements into a real ice rink just in time forRead More →

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I finally got to catch a Grenoble Foot 38 match just before xmas, and you know what? They didn’t lose!!! The final score was 1-1 against Nice, which for GF38 is really very good. In my not so expert footballing opinion, they were robbed, too, and it should have been a win. But what do I know. The Stade des Alpes is a magnificent building. It opened less than 2 years ago, and according to Wikipedia its solar panels generate 70,000kWh a year. I have no idea what they use those kilowatts for though, it’s certainly not heating. We had to scrape the ice offRead More →

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A few weeks back I went to the Grenoble Swing Dance Festival (GSDF). This involved all sorts of fun, like 6 hours of classes and 45 minutes volunteering to work on the bar. Strangely, the bar only sold soft drinks. Yes, only soft drinks. And pancakes. Believe me, you didn’t want to get the first crepe I made, it was more like a baguette. Fortunately, I sold it to an American guy, who probably didn’t know any better. The Flocon classes (this was translated as “snowflake”, but I think also means “flake”, ha ha) were the absolute beginner level and were taught by a coupleRead More →

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I’ve been using Citeulike to manage my references for a few months now and there are some things about it that are great. I love the browser button (available from here) and the way that it means I don’t have to type in article details any more. However, there are a few glitches. Sometimes, upon import, a conference paper is incorrectly entered as being a journal paper or a full conference proceedings. I’ve not worked out which sites this happens with yet, but I’ve definitely seen it with Springer LNCS imports and maybe some others. To correct this, you need to edit the article details.Read More →