I was away 8-12 May at a UK Grad school as part of my PhD. I went away not expecting very much from it at all, and I was so shocked. It was a really useful week away, I met lots of interesting people and learnt a lot about myself. I think it has really helped to get me in the right frame of mind to get my PhD finished and find a great job out in California! It has taken me this long to even touch my blog as I have been so busy at work setting my schedule, agreeing it with my supervisors.
I also found the time to sign up for the researchers in residence scheme and attended the briefing day at Sheffield Hallam University (the other one down the road 
). We did lots of really useful stuff at the Grad school such as interview skills (great for me as I am job hunting right now), marketing, negotiation, constructive feedback (the level of honesty was very refreshing) and lots more besides. We also squeezed a lot of socialising in during the few hours they gave us to ourselves!
I now have an agreed schedule for writing up my thesis and papers. I still have a little lab time I can squeeze in and fingers crossed it should be submitted by the end of September fully complete. I will of course be using my favourite open source tools to write up with and was considering writing an article on open source tools and their use in a scientific PhD. Could be a good one to write while I am waiting for my viva…