Remember my letters to Sainsbury’s, re the whole them-calling-Ms-Gillian McKeith-“Dr”- Gillian-McKeith thing? And the fact that they realised “how irritating this must be for me” and were going to change it?

Well, I was in at the weekend, and they havent changed it. To be fair, its only a couple of weeks later. But in two weeks time, if its still not rectified, do you dare me to contact the lovely Natalie Sweeney, Customer Manager at Sainsbury’s, and take up the crusade again?

I’m sure she would be delighted to hear from me. Us? (I’ll pass on any comments you make, dear reader….)

I’ve put up a set of pictures – highlights – on flickr – of my stint on the plinth. I took a lot of pictures of people just watching me – and this is my favourite. He Is Not Amused By My Plinth Antics.

I promise to shut up about it for a while, and return to the wonderful world of digital humanities! Although, as UCL tweeted me when I was on the plinth, it kindof was work…

Thats me up on the plinth in trafalgar square, that is.

Its going to take me some time to process it all! You can see it again here – I had a great time tweeting and talking and interacting with tweeters from the uk, the states, canada, ireland, australia… quite an experience.

Giving a coherent lecture whilst standing on a narrow bit of rock 8 metres in the air, in the rain and the wind, was more challenging that I thought – I hadnt factured in vertigo to the experience! But I had a fab time. Thanks to all who watched, tweeted, commented, and joined in!

I’ve taken a couple of hundred photos of people watching me on the plinth. I’ll go through them tonight and edit them and post the “best of” soon.

And now… back to normality. (since “reality has jumped the shark”, which is something I said that has been endlessly retweeted….)

The 4th Plinth, Trafalgar Square, London
Originally uploaded by daveograve@

Randomness upon randomness, next Wednesday (2nd September, 1pm- 2pm) I’ve been selected to take part in the Anthony Gormley Sculpture “one and other“, in Trafalgar Square, London. I get an hour to be up on the “fourth plinth” and, well, do what I like. It will be streamed to the Internet, and maybe appear on Sky Arts as well. Being into all this new media, etc etc… am thinking of giving some thoughts about the nature of streaming media and arts. Whilst taking some photos. And will see if I can stream my *own* content from the plinth. That’ll show em!

This is a photo of someone else up there, doing their stuff. I’ll let you know how it goes, no doubt. (and in case the caption doesnt load, the image is by DaveoGrave, used under a creative commons license).

*its the first line from my favourite short poem, from “A Child’s Garden of Verses” by Robert Louis Stevenson. The full version goes like this:
“The world is so full of a number of things,
I’m sure we should all be as happy as kings”.

About 6 months ago, BBC Weather changed its interface for local weather forecasts. I dont like the new version – too hard to read, and its very pessimistic (ie if a drop of rain is forecast all day, the symbol for the day is “downpour”).

And more to the point – its often very very wrong.

So hats off to my Uncle Jim, who pointed me in the direction of yr.no – the Norwegian equivalent of the Met office. Easy to use, you can see what their decision is based on, and we get pretty graphs. Nice.

Consider this a public information service, loyal reader. Although I’m not sure that its altogether more accurate…

Do you remember my rant about people who buy correspondence PhDs from non-accredited colleges, and parade them as if they are bona fide qualifications? And my letter to Sainsbury’s?
Well, I win. They are changing their database accordingly.

Although they quite clearly think I’m a nutter.

I dont think I’ll ever be bored by the fact that there is free Internet on long distant trains in the UK now. Although I do always wonder why Google thinks National Express Trains are in Sweden.

My recent shed exploits on BBC 6 have made it onto the UCL news pages.