A couple of days ago I got the timetable for the inaugural conference at the C.E.C.H. (formerly D.U.C.E.A.C.H. when it was in the planning stages; I'm told University Executive Committee thought the word 'archæology' threatened to tie the Centre too closely to the Archæology Dept.). It seems there won't actually be that many philosophers (or at any rate, people who identify themselves academically as philosophers) speaking: James Young as a keynote speaker, Emeritus Professor Cooper on the preservation of ruins, Janna Thompson as part of a panel discussion on human remains, and Proctor and myself from the Durham postgrad. cadre, meaning that unless some philosophers just aren't marked as such in their institutional details, we're 3/5 homegrown; though at any rate Cooper always lends an air of distinction, and Young and Thompson are both people whose work I make use of, so I'm not grumbling. [Update: as it turned out, once philosophers not explicitly listed as such were taken into account it was more like 3/8.] Archæology seems to be the most numerous discipline (Lord Renfrew is giving a guest lecture, which I gather is something of a coup for the Centre), followed by law, and then we have various people from other backgrounds, such as curatorship and environmental sciences. In interdisciplinary terms it should be a decent mix.
Right now I'm working on my paper (not much that hasn't previously appeared here in note form; I'm largely returning to my social epistemology topic). I've just about recovered from my first experiences of marking exam scripts, and marvelling at how few people have legible handwriting. The oddest script I got ended with a drawing of a cat's face and the word 'end' in Japanese, French and English on the final leaf, with a huge arrow on the opposite to make sure I didn't miss it; that was also the script that sought to explain Aristotle's conception of perfect friendship in terms of Xena and Gabrielle. Meanwhile, I hear this year's Durham-Bergen Conference will be even more cash-strapped than last; I'm frankly glad I'm not involved in organising this one.
With impeccable timing, the C.E.C.H. conference opens not only soon after the Acropolis Museum, but even sooner after news that the Heritage Protection Bill has dropped off the parliamentary schedule again...
...I regrettably have to report that there are no signs of lost regions, although a comparison of TIMs between versions shows that RB-3 was originally called what I think is 最終兵器—'ultimate weapon', or at any rate that's how it was translated for Saikano. The reason the demo's REGION.OUT file is larger is that although it's missing a few textures present in the final version, it does include several graphics that aren't actually used in either version but seem to have been intended for Baccarat.
Using Atrius's TLA editor reveals a couple of strings in English that refer to a debug menu; I don't know whether they mean the rooms or a menu that has yet to be found.
