I made an appaerance on Greek national TV!

Hi guys!

Remember I told you about the TV crew that came to take a couple of shots of us here on Ikaria? Well, the video is now available online and definitely worth watching! The documentary covers many aspects of Ikaria, but the bit about Rhanti forest and the work of Archipelagos should start at around minute 12. Tip: Flick through a Greek for beginners book before you watch this - may be useful :P

http://www.skai.gr/player/tv/?mmid=100820

Otherwise I'm doing just fine here. In terms of work though, I've been completely immobilised with any of the actual work I should be doing because of a computer system virus epidemic going around. Since our computer infrastructure has been donated to us, it's not difficult to see what we're dealing with is a pile of absolute rubbish, both in terms of hardware and software. And although we have people from all fields here ranging from marine biologists and tree huggers to media students and staff for public (manipu-)relations, the board of directors seems to have completely forgotton about how useful it can be to have someone who keeps the computer infrastructure up to date.


Me, Katie and Abi on Mesachti Beach last weekend

The result is that there's no internal network, meaning we transfer files with USB sticks and external hard drives and the virusses just love it. On top of that, my desktop computer, what we named 'the GIS control station' because of the nature of the work we use it for, had a little problem with the version of the freeware virus protection and hasn't seen a virus definition update for the last two years. I can only imagine those computer bugs drooling thinking of the kinda doors such policy opens for them...

Well anyway, I'm going to get this sorted right now because the whole things is just doing my head in! Luckily, the levels of frustration that have raged within me for the last 10 days have also awoken some sort of innovativeness in me and I have decided to develop a product that will revolutionise computer virus protection: the USB Condom (patents pending). I'm sure our little data storage friends will prefer it the skin-to-skin way but if there's one thing I've learnt recently, it's that prevention is ALWAYS better than curing. And with these wise words, I'm going to leave you for now and wish you a great weekend!


Our outfits for the Eurovision party: I dressed up as pint of Guinness complete with shamrocks flying over the top. In this image my pint glass is being harassed by a Frenchman (left) and what's supposed to be a stereotypical Belgian but turned out to be a impression of me instead (right) :D