Daily Bulletin

Tuesday, July 9, 1996

Deadlines for research grants

Says the memo:

The Research Grants Area of the Office of Research has undergone some reorganization due to the retirement of Joan Hadley. . . . Pauline O'Neill, formerly the International Programs Officer, is now the Director, Research Grants and International Programs. These two areas are now combined into one. Pauline can be reached at ext. 2288. . . .

Starting with this issue our bulletin will be designed for the World Wide Web and can be accessed at http://www.adm.uwaterloo.ca/infoor/newsletters/newsletters.html.

Walking the Web at Waterloo (9)

On the page you then see, your only choice is "Alta Vista", and making that choice gets you started searching UWinfo with the help of the immense Alta Vista web indexer in California. (Should you want to search the whole web, or some part of it outside Waterloo, you'd do better to go via the UWinfo "search tools" page and end up at Alta Vista's main searcher, http://www.altavista.digital.com.)

A search for "skeleton" will produce a listing of about 50 pages, and it's something of an art to guess from the list which pages are worth examining closely. The offerings include a page from the biology and earth sciences museum that provides a picture of a parasaurolophus skeleton, one from the chemistry department that shows the "skeleton molecule" of polychlorinated biphenyls, and lots and lots of pages that use "skeleton" as a metaphor for something in computer architecture -- not to mention a page that seems to be called "Story Time with Sexbat" and offers a fairy tale with "black armoured skeleton knights". They also include a fair number of pages that don't seem to exist any more, which is a continual hazard with Web indexes: they're never quite up to date.

But a skeleton of a creature that's real and not extinct? A human, say? On that, Alta Vista comes up empty. It would take a fair amount of serendipity to find the one pictured at right, mainly because the creator has dubbed it a "robot" rather than a "skeleton". It appears in a gallery of images generated in the computer graphics lab, which can be reached through the CGL home page. That, in turn, you can find in the "Alphabetical list of departments and groups" -- more old-fashioned than a Web indexer, but sometimes a lot more productive in the end.

Those pay increases will come

The original announcement, Scott notes, indicated that the new money ought to be showing up in pay slips at the end of August. "It looks as if that will be possible," she says, "provided everyone gets their performance appraisals in and we can run the program.

"However, the retroactive part of the increase will not be done until September's pay. Retroactivity is one of the most difficult things to ask of any payroll system, and since ours is over 20 years old, there are naturally some challenges attached to increases like this. Thanks to everyone for their patience."

The talk of the campus

Most of the graphic services copy centres will be opening late tomorrow morning, at 9:30, as staff will be attending a training session. The late opening applies to copy centres in the Davis Centre, Math and Computer, Engineering, Environmental Studies, Porter Library and Humanities, but not to Graphics Express. . . .

"Continuous phase" job placement continues for co-op students who are seeking fall term work. A couple of job-search and job-networking workshops are being held this afternoon in Needles Hall. . . .

Bill Pearson, retired professor of chemistry and physics (and dean of science 1969-1977), has been appointed a Member of the Order of Canada.

CAR

Editor of the Daily Bulletin: Chris Redmond -- credmond@watserv1.uwaterloo.ca Information and Public Affairs, University of Waterloo (519) 888-4567 ext. 3004 Comments to the editor | About the Bulletin Yesterday's Bulletin