Fresher's Weekend

Well, another Fresher's Weekend is over, and our new students have arrived. The rain held off for most of the time - Sheffield looks so much better in the sun - and the usual festivities happened at our two Student Villages, including free ice cream from Our Cow Molly.  I recommend Cora's Chaos - very good! As usual we had teams of people in - in both Student Villages helping students get connected, and working across campus fixing network points, installing AV equipment for the start of term, and printing several thousand Ucards to be dished out starting tomorrow. This year we've developed new systems to enable most information to be loaded by students before they arrive, unfortunately not delivered through our new portal as we'd hoped, but a huge improvement on last year, and some very nice looking screens.

Virtually every student arrived with a laptop, and many more than last year with wireless only devices - mainly iPads and Macbook Airs, so we need to crack on with getting wireless in the student bedrooms as well as the wired network which is in there now.  This year students have access to student.com which gives them free TV, free phone calls, back up, and various other services provided by Cablecom.

So, now we move into Intro Week, and hope that registration is a success, after the one or two problems we encountered last year. Lots of hard work has been done by many people, and hopefully it will be a much improved experience. I leave you with a picture of a penguin, drinking a cup of tea, because it amused me.