I know… 2 personal blog posts in a row. I shall try not to make it a habit…

The month as a whole:

It was odd – but in a (very) good way. I spent most of 2013 dealing with illness and recovering, and January was the first month I felt back to something like myself. I went to lots of social events, continued working part time and did some additional freelance work looking at open data policies in/around academia, and took a few trips down to London. I’ve even started to look around for new freelance work and jobs. (My current job has a hard deadline in a few months, and my boss knows I’m looking for something else before then). It may be a cliché, but I certainly feel that January has set me off on the right track for the year.

Things I did:

As well as the stuff above, there has been lots of cooking, getting back into running/walking (all of which have helped me lose some weight), and meditating. There have also been a few events – such as helping to run/attend London Open Drinks, and dropping into others including the ICT4DLondon MeetUp.

There are a couple of research projects on the go at present around open access and universities and learned societies. I hope to release some data around these soon – but they’ve been quite a time drain.

Things I didn’t do

• I wanted to do much more on an Arduino project I have in mind. I’m trying to build a mini weather station from scratch – but I ordered the wrong bits which I didn’t realize until they arrived (taking forever).
• Jazz dancing – I was going to start jazz dancing, but couldn’t find a good class. I tried a few different places, but they were all not quite right. If you have any suggestions please let me know!

Things I watched

• I saw the Rocky Horror Picture Show for the first time. And wow – that’s quite the experience. I am disappointed it took me so long to get around to watching it!
• Roman Holiday. What a perfect lazy, wet, weekend film. I’ve been on something of an old film kick over the winter so may be biased – but it had me giggling much of the way through it. If only more films realized that a fairytale happy ending isn’t necessary…
• I tried to watch The Fifth Estate – but I got about 20 minutes in and decided I couldn’t take anymore and had far better uses of my time.

Things I read

• Hackers, Hoaxers, Whistleblower, Spy – by Gabriella Coleman. It’s an excellent and easy to read exploration of Anonymous that’s certainly worth a few hours of anyones time – even if you are less interested in Anonymous itself and more interested in digital activism; and I hope to write a book review up properly at some stage. Perhaps at times her sympathies are slightly too aligned with the group she’s writing about, but I much prefer that than an author who pretends to be totally detached.
• The Last Continent – Terry Prattchett. I felt ill, I needed a warm and comfortable book to slip in to… and one which I knew very well.
• There are a couple of others on the go at present but as I’ve not finished them, I’ll omit them for now…

I’ve been thinking about:

• Citizen science – I’ve had a blog post in the back of my mind for a long time about how citizen science has potential to be much greater than academics using citizens to measure/record data – and how open hardware and citizen labs opens up some really interesting ideas. I really need to get these thoughts down somewhere, rather than just talk at friends.
• Data privacy and ownership in citizen science/crowd-sourced projects – This is as issue I rarely see come up – and something that I think needs to be discussed more. This well-meaning and potentially valuable project from the Guardian started this line of thinking
• Citizens engaging politicians – I’d like to see a lot more of it – rather than people just complaining that their MP doesn’t listen to them. With an election coming up there are some great opportunities for this…
• That we need much more PR/media/politician friendly comms work on tech and Internet issues. A lot more.
• The Green Party – How will the Party change and evolve as its membership grows and expands beyond an ideological core? They’ve had such a recent expansion.. and it will be fascinating to see what happens next.
• Digital democracy – whatever that means
• Academic publishing, institutional repositories and the politics that lie within universities…

And Februrary?

I need and want to do more writing. I always say that, but this month I shall succeed. There is also a science/tech hustings to organize in Cambridge, and already a few trips around the country on the to do list, as well as some stuff I can’t yet talk about.

My main aim for February is to be completely confident by the end of the month that I’ve recovered – which is totally doable I think.

So onward to February….!