Beyond Selidor

When I do teaching sessions, if it's a group of students, I teach using Zoom and arrange the settings so that their cameras and microphones are switched off by default. (It's too distracting otherwise.) When I have Teams meetings with colleagues we tend to keep our cameras switched on, apart from one person who has an ideological/data protection-related opposition to having photos or video of himself appearing online, in any context, ever. It's nice to see their faces, plus occasional cameos by their kids/spouses/housemates/pets, but if they didn't want to be on camera I would understand.

When it comes to conferences, virtual book launch events and similar, it's nice to be able to keep my own camera off, though. I've attended at least two conferences in my pyjamas that way!

I hope you get/got the rain you need. Listening to rain on the roof when you're curled up indoors is a glorious way to spend the time.