First welcome

Yesterday we received a “First welcome” email from Gerry, with info on how to reach Reading, when the term starts, how to look for accomodation, insurance and healthcare matters. He sent the email to all of us, sharing our names and email addresses, so it looks like we all rushed to find out who the other MATD 08/09 students where. I eventually managed to make contact with Gro, Jon, Marian and Anette. I already knew Eben from Typophile, so that brings the count of people I “know” (for some values of know) to 5 out of 13. I started a Facebook (eek!) group for all of us, but many haven’t yet checked in and I’m not sure about its usefulness. I guess we’ll see.

I also got an email from Gerry about accomodation. I opted to stay in one of his flats, the Foxhill one, as I didn’t fancy going around Reading chasing dodgy rooms full of undergrads living the high life. I also heard good things about Foxhill and I kind of like the idea of having people doing what I’m doing around me: that means they (hopefully) won’t throw parties while I’ve got an essay deadline to meet, at least.

I’m still hating Blogger. I’ve been thinking to other alternatives I can install on my server like ExpressionEngine, but being PHP I’m kind of wary of using it. I could whip up something quick in Django/Python, but then I’d have to move it away from this server to run Django trunk comfortably. I’ll see what I can do.