Christmas in the office

It's a strange experience being in the office just a few days before Christmas, as we use the same workflow but have only a skeleton staff. That means everyone has to wear more than one hat, as the metaphor goes.

For example: a writer writes a story for our website, then sends it to me for subbing. I sub the story in one program, then send it to... myself, for classification in another program. I classify the story, then send it to... myself, for final approval before it goes live. And then, should it need pulling or updating, that's done by... me.

With no content editor, no web editor and no digital assistant (great job title, huh?) to contend with, everything runs that much more smoothly – but then, I have fewer people to share the blame with when it all (inevitably) goes wrong. Still, after today I'm not back in until New Year's Eve.

Project Gutenberg really takes the cake

I wrote a while back about some of the great project names we have at work, including Project Platypus and Project Prometheus.

One that I neglected to mention was (the sadly non-alliterative) Project Gutenberg, which is currently providing editorial teams with "a clutch of exciting new tools and resources".

You may know that there exists a better-known Project Gutenberg, according to Wikipedia "a volunteer effort to digitize, archive and distribute cultural works". And that, presumably, takes its name from Johannes Gutenberg, the inventor of the mechanical printing press.

So I have high expectations for my company's own Project Gutenberg. Not so some of my colleagues, who have taken to referring to it as Project Battenberg...

Webcams in the workplace

Slightly off-topic, perhaps, but here goes:

Today I discovered that the company Apus and I work for has set up two webcams in our building: one in the staff restaurant, and one in the coffee shop franchise on the ground floor.

The feed can be viewed live via the company intranet, although is only by chance that I came across the link to do this: it hasn't been advertised at all. And it is intranet only, I'm afraid, so I can't give you the link.

But in effect this means I can sit at my desk, subbing copy, and spy on my workmates as they buy a latte or eat a sandwich. The truth of this has already been brought home to me: as I returned to my desk this lunchtime after buying a cup of soup in the staff restaurant, a colleague whom I had earlier told about the webcams remarked that I had been a "bit heavy on the croutons".

Trivial stuff, but slightly disturbing nonetheless. If nothing else, it lets my line manager see whether I really am 'just popping downstairs to get some more milk'. Again.

And being mature, sensible journalists, we already have a bet going to see who will be first to moon at one of the webcams...