So very much has been happening, and I guess I’ve just not been bothered with the blog. Christmas was fun, with only one minor mishap - we did a Secret Santa thing, mum got my name, thought she’d gotten dad, and forgot to get a present 
There was brief upset, but these things happen. I took copious notes, but decided in the end not to bother blogging.
Some of the things I’ve been up to include:
Finding bugs: I was using Ubuntu in Athlone over the hols, and oooooh, it’s pretty. Want. But I seem to have developed my own personal LFE! The bugs I could reliably reproduce were filed in Launchpad, and while I was at it, I did a few bits and pieces of translation - Rosetta is really pretty sweet for that kind of thing!
Meeting people: Old friends and new, New Year’s was a particularly good time
Learning & Teaching: This should probably be a post of its own, as I suppose it’s probably the biggest one College has been busy as ever, but there’s a lot more to it than that. I learnt (a very small!) bit of hip-hop dancing on the 29th - thanks Naomi! I had a huge amount of fun with it, although I’m definitely not a natural! I’ve had to do several presentations for college - all of which went really well.
I talked about embryonic screening, and thalassemia in Cyprus for my German oral (under the title of “Ethics & Genetics”), and was told it was the first time that particular topic had come up, which was a huge win for me. After a big panic, I gave a presentation about my FYP plans that was described as “impressively, and positively so, polished and witty” (I’m not entirely clear on how it could be impressively polished & witty in a negative way, but hey!) - so I was delighted with that… I gave my testimony at the CU Carol Service - which was an altogether lovely affair (even if it did clash with the Google sysops Christmas dinner - bah!) - and I think it was a really positive experience for more than just me Talking to Jeremy afterwards, who had known me at school during the time I was talking about, it was amazing to look at the different perspectives we can have about people and so on! Finally, although no less significant for it, I’ve now stood up and spoken out in front of a crowd of people in church twice.
Add all that to the experiences of teaching (in my admittedly tiny AI class) earlier in the term, and I’m actually getting comfortable with the idea of teaching, presenting, speaking in public. It’s kind of fun, actually!
On a tangentially related note - I’m flying off to Atlanta, Georgia for a weekend at the end of the month for the ApacheCon planning meeting. I’m really looking forward to the meeting, although the travel fills me with a certain amount of dread! Happily however, the dates we chose for the meeting are the weekend before my birthday (my birthday weekend was the other option) - so I might even get to do something birthdayish. I’ll probably either forget or be too lazy though - so don’t mark your diaries just yet!
On more learning, I’ve started writing python - and it’s oh-so-very-much for-the-win… I love it. It’s so clean, and neat, and simple. The syntax takes a bit of getting used to, but it’s just a joy to write. Now if only I could unfsck my brain after all the Prolog, and remember what a for loop is for 
I think that might really be all I have to say for now - hurrah!
*resumes radio silence*