Ina's Blog

New York Travel Blog

2010-11-05T03:01:00.002Z

Ok, ok, I can't stay away from blogging forever. I now have a travel blog about my time in New York (by the way, I've just moved to New York.) It's called New York Geek and you should go read it.

Xx

Hi

2010-09-19T17:02:00.003+01:00

This is a blog. I used to write on it. I don't write on it any more. You can still find me on Twitter as tiedyeina, or elsewhere if you're lucky.

Bye now.

Xx

Skiiiing; a.k.a. A Week in 1984

2010-03-07T13:31:00.004Z

Going to Alpe d'Huez with 7 lads was an experience even if I discount the skiing...but we'll start with that.

I'd never been skiing before, and hadn't realised one thing (which now seems painfully obvious); the only hard part is slowing down. Sure, there's a bit of technical skill in shifting your weight gracefully during a turn, or getting some good height on a jump; but the majority of my time was spent trying not to go too fast, and learning how not to die when that wasn't possible.

My development was therefore aided greatly by my willingness to fall down a lot, and my decision to treat fear as excitement ("it's all the same hormones anyway", noted a psychology researcher I met out there). Unfortunately this resulted in what I can now confirm is a cracked rib and a collection of interesting bruises. The goggle-mark sunburn and chapped lips I have no such excuses for - that was just idiocy on my part.

Skiing then, was fantastic - and I'm definitely going again, but when I do, I'll have all the proper gear. However, by gear, I don't mean a beautiful pair of skis or well-moulded ski boots. I mean clothes that were at the height of their appeal in 1984.

Because, being on a ski resort really is like living in the 80's. The only songs that were playing (at all hours of the day) from post-1987 were ones that would still probably have hit the charts if that was when they were released. 80's sunglasses and headbands were in abundance and everyone on the slopes looked on in envy when someone in neon-green salopettes (with spiked hair of a perfectly matched colour) walked by. We even had little CB radios with our own call signs (and the obvious, endless Top Gun quotes).

Now, to spend the rest of the weekend doing absolutely nothing ^^
Xx

Subjectivity

2010-02-21T19:27:00.006Z

I hate racism, sexism, ageism and basically all forms of discrimination. This is not because I'm a morally reputable, virtuous person; I'm not. It's because these discriminations fly in the face of science, logic and that which is correct.

I care a lot about the right answer - be that to a scientific problem, an artistic ideal (the resolution to a suspended chord; the phrasing of a sentence) or even a societal interaction. There is always such an answer.

Here's why.

Proposition 1 - All is Matter
Every single thing in existence is made up of quanta. I refer not only to physical objects, but also to abstract notions and concepts. The word 'concept', for example, physically exists in a multitude of places: my brain; yours; paper and digital publications - to name a few.

Proposition 2 - Reality is Stateful
Every single thing in existence has a state space. Quantum Field Theory (and specifically, Quantum Mechanics) tells us that the eigenstate of an observable is fixed only at the moment of observation. However, a correct answer requires full knowledge of all variables. This paradox may be resolved once one considers that as the decision involves processing these variables, they must first be observed in order to be utilised, and therefore have a fixed state at the point of decision.

Lemma I - Objectivity Exists
Objective: adj; Of or relating to a material object, actual existence or reality; Not influenced by the emotions or prejudices; Based on observed facts.

Given that all is matter (proposition 1) and that all matter has a defined eigenstate at the point of observation (proposition 2), any problem may have an objectively correct solution, given a means of reaching such a solution and full knowledge of all variables at the point of decision.

Proposition 3 - Context is Everything
All problems exist only within the scope of their context. The most basic, seemingly clear problem - "What is 2+2?" only exists within the implied context "according to classical mathematics and assuming no unstated interference". Likewise, "can I trust this man?" is a question only valid in further implied context - the answer may be "yes" for medical advice and "no" for mechanical.

Conclusion
All problems have a correct answer. Given that problems exist only in their context (proposition 3) and that this context is entirely made up of observable matter (lemma I), all that is lacking is a means to process these observed states. Formal Logic provides a true conclusion given true propositions (et al.).

--

The above, whilst interesting, is of little utility in the majority of scenarios. If nothing else, the Uncertainty Principle states it is physically impossible to measure all required variables in a problem in unity.

This brings us to the area of subjective logic, for which I can only recommend the Wikipedia article (written nearly entirely by Jøsang, who defined the field).

Subjective logic offers a means for obtaining the correct answer to a problem with uncertain or unknown inputs. It also allows for the representation of belief - however, if a problem is fully defined within its context this is already taken into consideration, so this aspect of subjective logic is of little interest to this thesis (though obviously may be used in formally defining a context).

The answer to a problem with uncertain inputs is no longer a scalar, but a probability distribution. This distribution may be arbitrarily skewed, and of any dimensionality. The maximum value of the distribution, or the entire distribution itself, may then be used in taking a decision (cf. decision theory) but a correct answer has been ascertained.

--

We may now answer any question - from "what is 2x2?" to "is this art?" or "what brushstroke/chord/word should I use next?" correctly. Subjectivity does not imply an answer may not be found, just as objectivity does not imply that there is only one correct answer to any given problem. The objective reality of the full context of the problem both defines, and answers that problem.

I'm still not going to iron my own shirts though.

Xx

--

Finally, of potential interest, a lovely (if not quite so scientific) rant on subjectivity in art criticism.

London Jazz Festival - Highlights

2010-01-07T14:05:00.003Z

Naturally7 & Marcus Miller, hip-hop jazz fusion & intricate polyphonic free-jazz...and that's just some of the highlights from the fraction of the London Jazz Festival I managed to make it to in November last year. So that you don't shoot yourselves (or me) I won't review the lot, but here's some of the most fantastic stuff I simply have to share.

Look these people up. Find out when they (or similar artists) are playing live next. Listen to new, innovative music and realise jazz is alive; it didn't die with Davis & Coltrane.

Naturally7
If you haven't heard Naturally7 yet then, firstly - welcome to this blog, and secondly - you'll want to check out this infamous video. Every show starts with the thrilling "every sound you are about to hear is produced by the human voice alone"...but it would be fantastic even if that weren't true.

They're a vocal-play group from New York City, that started off singing in Church together and still show their evangelical roots in their shows; whilst also being complete rock-star showmen. Everything was perfectly choreographed, fantastically tight and still left room for improvisation and humour.

After a medley of Rapper's Delight; Saturday Night; Billy Jean and; Startin' Something there was quite literally a full five minutes' applause which the band couldn't stop (I'm sure we missed a song thanks to that). It wasn't all covers, but the overriding memory I'll take from that gig is hearing The Sound Of Silence in 7 part vocal harmony...amazing.

--

Sorry, I went on a bit there, I'll try and trim it for the rest...

--

_{Louise Golbey - the nicest person on the UK jazz scene}

Jay Phelps - find this man playing live, go and listen to him. A gorgeous sound from an old and battered trumpet, simply and elegantly composed.

Rebirth of the cool - an East London youth project. 2 DJ's, 2 rappers, 3 singers/choral backers and a jazz quartet from Trinity College playing together. I can't even begin to describe how fantastic this was; but this is a distinct, new sound I've heard fragments of elsewhere that I'm looking forward to hearing more of.

Louise Golbey - a soul/jazz singer with just the right mixture of poppy joyfulness, musical intellect and technical skills to make it in both the jazz and pop worlds, I see great things for this girl. A fantastic voice and superb backing band - all that's wanting is a bit more confidence and maturity before we hear her on Radio 1. Go listen.

--

There's more, much more, that I'd love to talk about. Buy me a drink sometime and I will - for now though, I'll leave you with a show where I thought I'd see one of my favourite musicians, and ended up finding a new favourite instead.

--

Marcus Miller (feat. Christian Scott)
The gig itself was actually just billed as 'Marcus Miller' (one of my favourite bassists), playing from the Tutu - the last album he wrote for Miles Davis.

"Miles never looked back, never played the old stuff", Marcus told us, "so the only way I thought I could do this tribute is if we got a whole bunch of new young musicians together to play it".

The support act (Gary Husband's Drive - also worth looking up) finished. Marcus walked on stage, and played an impossibly technical - but also beautiful - bass solo. A world-class drummer joined him, and a tenor sax player ran on to play a fantastically passionate and elaborate solo for at least a minute.

Christian Scott swaggered onto the stage.

There really is no other word for it, this was the most laid back entrance I've ever seen a musician make - of any standard and on any stage. The rest of the band looked at him, he waited. And waited. And played two notes. And paused.

The standing ovation was so loud I have no idea what happened on stage for the next minute or so. This is the best trumpet player I have ever heard, including any old recording. He's 24 years old and he's going to be massive - keep your eyes out.

Tenses - Help Me

2010-01-06T19:29:00.004Z

I've been brushing up on my grammar recently (guys: I expect you to buy me a drink every time you successfully use that line on a girl in a bar), and I've come across a small annoyance I simply can't resolve.

Normally these things are simply a lack of understanding on my part, rather than a fundamental crack in a system - and any thoughts/comments would be appreciated:

"I will sit" - Future simple
"I am sitting" - Present ~~simple~~ progressive (whoops)
"I am going to Egypt in a couple of weeks" - ...?

Looks like the present, but extremely commonly used to indicate future plans. I can't even see any potentially implied clauses that would help.

So?

Avatar

2010-01-05T14:22:00.002Z

Don't get me wrong, I thought Avatar was kinda fun, and had some nice 3D effects. The storyline, however, was a bit predictable - this is probably why:

_{Clicky clicky}

Here Be Dragons

2010-01-04T09:57:00.004Z

Whilst fiddling with some knobs I recently came across this gem in Firefox, that shows whenever you visit "about:config":

I'm also a fan of:

It's the little things...

:)

Stats

2009-12-29T18:30:00.002Z

When not focusing on the important and shocking fact that it's snowing outside, the news has recently been harping on about someone failing to blow up a plane. Hysteria has resulted and people are actually cancelling flights over this - despite it being 20 times more likely you'll be struck by lightning, than be a victim of a terrorist plane-bombing (per flight).

Another comparison drawn by that link (go on, click, there's a really pretty picture) is that there's one attack per 11.5 billion miles - which is the same distance as two round trips to Neptune. Which pretty much rules out any hope of gaining public confidence up for interstellar space travel. If you didn't like that joke, you'll hate this one:

"The odds of being on a plane with a bomb on it are 1/10,000,000. The odds of being on a plane with two bombs on it are 1/1,000,000,000. So I always take a bomb on a plane with me"

Accountants Can't Count

2009-12-17T11:46:00.002Z

Every day, on my way into work, I see a giant poster on the tube wall advertising the Institute of Charted Accountants, which reads thus:

"Over 84% of FTSE 100 companies have an ACA on their board."

- also available on their site. Now, whilst this may well be true, it seems an odd way to phrase things. There are, by definition, one hundred FTSE100 companies. As such, it surely shouldn't be too hard to come out with an exact percentage.

I was tempted to believe that maybe this was just some clever marketer trying to make it seem like there were possible many more than just 85 FTSE100 companies with an ACA on their board. But, frankly, having seen the rest of the advert (a picture of a fairly shoddy leather chair), I don't really believe they hired a marketing consultant. I'm more inclined to believe it's just a rounding error..

Möbius Bagel

2009-12-08T22:55:00.005Z

On Monday some new people moved into my office, to welcome them I went downstairs for 10 minutes, had a bit of a chat and ate some of their 'welcome' bagels. Because I'm a nice guy. However, being a nice guy will only get you so far, a real pro would have sliced and then linked the bagels to form a möbius strip.

Like this.

Even better is that this is actually practical - the increased surface area means you can fit more cream cheese onto the bagel. What a hero.

Holiday Planning

2009-12-07T22:36:00.004Z

Some people book holidays well over a year in advance, and have every little detail of the holiday and every minute of their itinerary accounted for long before they set off. Those guys are no fun. Here's how I do it:

1. Find a destination
Contrary to what bad American movies tell you, turning up to an airport and trying to board the next available flight is not a good idea. Quite apart from the cost and the fact that most of the flights going anywhere nice are full, there's the sheer danger of turning up at an airport full of edgy, armed police with no plausible explanation as to what you're doing.

My particular preference at this point is to find a hotel/hostel/b&b booking site - I like Lateroom - and abuse its search engine. Lateroom, for example, insists you search for a destination, but happily throws back nearly all of its database if you plug 'hotel' into its search engine. Other sites even allow wildcards, so a simple search for '*' gets the lot.

From here, set a comfort/adventure threshold. I find randomly taking 10 places, and forcing myself to pick the best of these 10 and go there, works best for me. You may wish for the thrill of taking whatever's at the top of page 6 regardless, or the cowardly safety of giving yourself an entire three pages to pick from. One important rule here, no more than a few minutes' research on any given place is allowed.

2. Buy a phrasebook. Study it.
You'll thank me for this as we progress down the list..

3. Turn up and make friends
Seriously, you may be tempted to get guidebooks, or to search around the Internet trying to find out where the biggest museums and most tourist-friendly sights are before you leave. This is boring. If you want to know what's exciting in a new place, go and find some local people and ask them. If they don't speak English, good, you can try out your new vocab. If they do speak English, try their language first anyway; if they start responding in English then speak Welsh at them until they believe you don't know any English.

4. Explore
Walk down alleyways. Stop and see what's happening whenever large groups of people are heading in one direction; or standing around waiting; or gathered around some attraction. When on public transport, don't be afraid to get off before your stop, or continue past it, if things look like being interesting. When driving, allow yourself to get lost and see what happens.

5. Act blindly
In a restaurant? Pick something you can't pronounce or translate. See a door with no sign on it? Go through it and find out what's on the other side. A lack of understanding regarding the local culture or language is something to be treasured, there are so many things this will allow you to do that you might otherwise have avoided or been too scared to try.

Enjoy. Let me know about your adventures.
Xx

Merry Hoffmas

2009-12-04T10:15:00.000Z

At some point in the distant past (presumably whilst drunk) I clearly found Facebook, Twitter et al. a touch bromidic and went hunting for alternatives. A wild night (again, I presume...I really have no recollection of signing up for and using this, but definitely did) later I was a fully fledged member of Hoffspace.

Hoffspace is a bit like Myspace, or Facebook, or other similar social networking sites, but with much more of a focus on David Hasselhoff. This is a refreshing alternative to the aimless, meandering approach of traditional social networking sites, and also leads to a much more vibrant and open community, open to meeting strangers and making new friends to undertake Hoff-related activities with.

I was only reminded of this by a couple of Christmas emails from HoffSpace (clearly David's just found out he has a mailing list, I've been on this site years and never got a mail before). In the festive spirit, I thought I'd share the benefits I'm reaping from my exclusive HoffSpace membership with you, enjoy!

1. 10% Off at the HoffShop
I think I know where I'm getting all my Christmas presents from this year. The HoffShop has "everything from HoffBags to t-shirts". I think they could do with a marketing department to write better slogans though. Just enter 'hoffshop09' to get your discount.

2. A picture of The Hoff with your own personalised message in His handwriting!
Frankly I can't say it any better than The Hoff did in his mail so:

"Tis the season to be jolly,
Fa la la la la, la la la la.
Deck the halls with
Pics of Hoffy,
Fa la la la la, la la la la."

Why not send your loved one a nice picture of me, you choose the name and write the message (nothing too naughty!) and it will appear in an exact replica of my handwriting and autograph on a unique personalised photo print. Check it out here.

On Italy

2009-12-03T22:55:00.005Z

I learned two key lessons on a recent holiday with Julie-oh to Bologna and Ravenna:

1. The fact that I'm on holiday, in the sunshine, has no bearing whatsoever on the temperature of the sea in mid-October.

2. Italians really do just sit around drinking espressos and wine all day.

I particularly liked the concept of 'cocktail buffets' that pervaded most of the cafes and bars we visited: buy a single cocktail and help yourself to the range of oft-replenished, gorgeous little savoury & sweet delights placed around. Then, get another cocktail, rinse, wash and repeat.

Although the aforementioned sun was a treat in October, I did manage to acquire a slight sunburn, about which I was inexplicably embarassed and self-conscious on my return to rainy London (I mean, really, sunburn in October? How pretentious). The looks we got from Italians as we walked down the beach were priceless (the sandals I inadvertently left there, unfortunately not).

Finally, pro-tip: plenty of food in Bologna is labelled as "..alla Bolognese" and none of it is remotely like the Bolognese sauce we get over here. In fact, most of it is *way* better :)

Yes, You Are On Google Street View

2009-11-27T11:42:00.002Z

In lieu of having time to write up anything about my adventures, have some hookers:

_{Clicky to enlarge}

Wii Prayer

2009-11-19T17:25:00.003Z

A family shouldn't have to wait until Sunday to worship the Lord...especially if they have a Nintendo Wii, complete with special Cross controllers and a Kneeler (all the fun of kneeling and genuflecting...in your own home!).

Yes, seriously, someone's making a game of this. Well, I think so anyway - if it's a spoof/hoax then it's being pretty thoroughly carried out.

If the minigames are good enough, I'll almost certainly be buying a copy of this. After all, WarioWare barely has any storyline at all and that's still one of the most popular Wii games..

Ina: AssItalia

2009-11-19T10:38:00.003Z

Somewhat unfortunately, I appear to have a fantastically* handsome rear end. This makes it very difficult to walk backwards for any extended period of time before I am stopped by a well meaning stranger and have to spend five minutes bashfully accepting their compliments.

Nowhere is this phenomenon more acute than in Italy. On a recent short visit to Bologna and Ravenna, the locals were particularly impressed. In particular, the Ryanair attendants were so thrilled they made me wait around for nearly an extra hour just so they could call up some more friends to stop and stare.

This started off fairly innocently; someone would walk past animatedly chattering in Italian about (I presume) my posterior. We'd go into bars and the waiters would immediately comment on this (again, I presume - my Italian is a little flaky).

However, things started to get a bit creepy when the artists and architects got involved. What started off as harmless stained glass graffiti:

Soon turned into the defacement of historic cultural buildings:

Whilst I'm naturally flattered, this is a bit worrying and I'm not sure I'll be showing my face (or rear end) in Bologna again anytime soon. It was, however, nice to win the annual 'Ass of Italy' award - a moment I'll treasure and have on my CV for many many years to come:

More Italy pics/stories later :)
Xx

--

* Understand that here I refer to both definitions of fantastic; 'great' and 'surprising'.

Mandelbulbs

2009-11-18T13:42:00.003Z

The geekier (or artistic) amongst you will no doubt have seen the mathematically generated beauty of Mandelbrot sets such as the below:

From a simple equation this wonderful pattern emerges again and again, no matter how far one zooms in to the image.

That's not the cool bit.

The cool bit is that a few fractal fanatics have recently been experimenting with 3D Mandelbrot sets - nicknamed Mandelbulbs. They haven't quite got the true three dimensional formula worked out yet, but the various approximations in use are already producing some fantastic graphics.

On with the pretty pictures, click for super-size (and I do mean super-size, one of these is 7000x7000px):

The basic form

Gateaux

Honeycomb Heaven

Lost Ruins

Cool or what? For those of you interested in the maths - using hypercomplex numbers - there's a bit more detail here and some pseudo-code is provided here.

Go See Some Jazz

2009-11-17T11:30:00.000Z

As anyone within range of my various streams of communication will know by now, this week is London Jazz Festival - and it's fantastic. Unlike a traditional jazz festival, this is spread out all over the city and instead of catering to any kind of elitist crowd is happy to move between hip-hop, classic vocal tracks, poppy piano and experimentalism; in addition of course to the more standard contemporary jazz which is played at a superb standard by a range of up-and-coming stars and established legends.

Personally, it's the former I've been a lot more excited about seeing - I know Sonny Rollins is great but I've heard so many of his albums, collaborations and live tracks already that I'm not going to get much new out of it. A 12-piece jazz/hip-hop youth collective last night, on the other hand, presented me with an entirely new sound; one that I've never come across before (presuming it even exists) and am really looking forward to hearing develop over the coming decade.

I'll post up some reviews of the more special shows I've seen shortly, but if you're near London (or prepared to travel) then there's fantastic gigs on right up until the evening of Sunday 22^nd November (when I'm hearing Marcus Miller play from Tutu - the album he wrote for/with Miles Davis). Get in touch if you want some recommendations/company.

You don't need to know a lot about jazz to come, it's not that kind of crowd - and I've rarely brought a newbie friend along that hasn't enjoyed some part of the show. Give it a try :)

Common Sense

2009-11-06T12:39:00.000Z

I've not blogged much about my new job - partly because I'm fantastically busy all the time and partly because when I'm not working I'd rather not think about work; fun though it often is.

One thing that's really impressed me at Thomson Reuters is their sensible working attitude. I haven't seen much of people prioritising their tasks based on what will make them look good; endless internal meetings that have little point; and clock-watching managers that care more about the office dress code than the quality of work:

Take, for example, this line from a recent email around our flexible working policy:

"We will focus on output and on what needs to be achieved; inputs such as where work gets done, and the hours worked, are not as important."

Perfect! Although, perhaps not so applicable in all cultures, as a German colleague pointed out:

"Send such an email in the German companies I've previously worked and you're fired before you can count to 3.

Anyhow, back to work...
Xx

Time Machine

2009-11-01T21:13:00.002Z

I don't quite remember where I found this image, but it's utterly fantastic. I'm definitely going to do a copycat job sometime this week - I'll post up the results :)

_{Click to enlarge. Right click -> Save As then view locally if you're having issues zooming.}

Grad Fair Fun

2009-10-31T20:22:00.002Z

For three years now I've been heading out to the various graduate recruitment fairs in the autumn to chat to students about where they should work: specifically, at Microsoft - or this year, Thomson Reuters. It's amazing how easily my loyalty can be bought with a bunch of cash (take note people).

I love these things - it's fun chatting to some of the bright students but it's a lot more amusing to watch the dumb ones come up and make fools of themselves in front of the people who'll be recruiting them in future. Here's a few of this year's classic quotes:

"I'm at University but I don't really like it so I'm thinking of something else, can you recommend anything?"
Yes, not going to a graduate recruitment fair.

"Are you guys French?" No. "Oh so you're posh then?" ...

"I've got a lot of experience as a bakery assistant, and doing cake decorating" I don't think we're the right company for you "No no...look at my CV [two pages of catering qualifications]".

"I've got a psychology degree."

It's also amusing to see different companies' approach to recruitment. Aldi go down the subtle route, with an Audi A4 parked in the middle of the fair and "£40k starting salary" - I think it would be a bit redundant to ask what kind of hours their grads can expect. It was also fun to see Royal Mail had a large stand at the fair (and their exhibitors turned up) - and to listen to the grads ribbing them.

Finally, at the Birmingham fair I wandered over to the Aston University stand to say hi to the folks there, which ended up turning into a nice little meeting point for the various ex-grads who've managed to land themselves jobs now. I think I volunteered to have a profile of my [ahem] fantastic success in the new Undergraduate Prospectus.

Free Money

2009-10-22T17:59:00.006+01:00

Someone recently turned me on to QuidCo.com - which offers varying levels of cashback on a superb range of online stores. I've seen similar offers before, but most involve selling your soul and/or buying lots of things you don't want. QuidCo is different, gives me lots of money, and isn't paying me in any way to say all of this.

The way it works is quite fantastic. Traditionally, retailers would offer a commission to any advertising agency or publication that sent business their way. The agency would then spend money trying to persuade people to click-through, and pocket the takings.

QuidCo on the other hand simply waits for users to come to it - and then hands over the majority of the commission. For very little work, they get their 10/20% cut, and their members keep coming back time and again for an 80/90% cut. It's really quite simple:

1. Find something you want to buy online.
2. Search QuidCo for somewhere to buy it (often the original site you found).
3. Clear all your cookies. Most stores put a tracking cookie on your computer to see where you came from, if that doesn't say QuidCo you won't get your money.
4. Click through to the store.
5. Buy.
6. Profit.

Here's my latest earnings:

Yep, that really is £100 from o2. All I had to do was re-order the very same 12 month, £20/month SIM only contract that I was just about to renew.

Enjoy.
Xx

Ryanair

2009-10-19T16:39:00.005+01:00

I just got back from a long weekend in Italy (and I'll gloat about how wonderful it was in a post replete with pictures shortly), bookended by flights from The Low Fares Airline.

Somehow (and not just thanks to the Microsoft expenses account) I've always avoided Ryanair in the past. Apparently their foibles are well known but, despite recent claims that they were considering charging for toilet access or planning a super-budget model, whereby passengers stand for the journey I still didn't quite appreciate what an experience it would be.

Boarding was fun, with a priority aisle available for anyone who paid for it, or the very old & very young. I thought this a lovely idea, until it actually came to boarding and we found that the priority passengers simply got to stand around on some stairs for an extra 10 minutes whilst everyone else waited by the gate. After that it was all equality...everyone got to stand around in a stairwell. Why on earth don't they just assign seats? It can't cost any more (not even printer ink, given that everyone has to pay £5 to check in online).

Onboard there was some beautiful classical music playing as we walked on (I later found this same 18 second file plays at the start of every flight, it's not an indication of their cultural aspirations). A soothing pre-recorded Irish voice talked us through everything and we were away with no extra charges..

..but the voice continued, offering us scratchcards, hot food, cold food, perfumes, gifts - there's less advertising in American TV than on a Ryanair flight. The voice was occasionally interrupted for a J20 advert (which could naturally be bought on board). The flight attendants spent much more time trying to sell stuff than...anything really.

It's not all negative - there was a little fanfare as the plane landed which prompted cheering from the passengers, and Ryanair are now giving away a million free seats (actually they're £4.99 and don't include taxes) after their recent tiff with the BBC.

I still wouldn't recommend it though.

Xx

Sniffer Bees

2009-10-14T15:57:00.002+01:00

Inscentinel's VASOR136 looks a bit like a hand-held hoover, but contains 36 specially trained honeybees that can alert a user to a whole range of dangerous or interesting compounds present in the environment.

Yes, seriously.

One loads up their VASOR136 with cassettes of trained honeybees (36 in total) and takes it into some threatened/interesting location; airport security or a prospective mine perhaps. Through Pavlovian Conditioning (I can't wait to have children), when exposed to ambient air (by default the bees are only exposed to purified air within the ~~hoover~~ VASOR136) the bees will stick their tongues out if whatever substance they're trained to detect is in the air. This is then monitored, and a probabilistic result is displayed to the human overlord.

For maximum accuracy, all 36 bees can be conditioned to one trigger, or for versatility the bees may be grouped into separate sensing groups. You can even bring along spare cassettes of bees to swap in and out as and when needed. Yes, seriously.

And, finally, for those of you concerned about bee welfare, there's a whole section devoted to it here.

Awesome.

Where Women Want to Work

2009-10-10T09:00:00.001+01:00

The Times has recently publicised a list of the top 50 places women want to work. Unfortunately it's more of a farce than an ITV phone-in..

This year there were ~62 entrants. All the winning entries are paid-up clients of recruitment consultancy firm Aurora (about £12k for their services for a year). The sole judges in this competition are recruitment consultancy firm Aurora.

Even better, there's one company in there, McKinsey & Company, that have won this award four years in a row. Every year they've had exactly 1,000 employees according to The Times (you'll note every other company gives a very exact figure). Can you guess how many employees one needs to be considered for this award?

Further, if one checks McKinsey & Company's reports, press statements, website...and so on - you'll note they have somewhere between 600 and 750 employees according to all their literature.

Nice :)

There's a bit more info and supporting documentation - albeit full of someone's opinions - over on Wikileaks (which, you may have seen, also recently posted a leak of the MoD's 'How To Stop Leaks' document).

Piano Stairs

2009-10-09T09:00:00.001+01:00

This innovative little trick, courtesy of Volkswagen, is a great little excercise in social psychology. I wonder how it would scale though..

Music in the street

2009-09-28T09:44:00.002+01:00

I headed out to Spitalfields Markets for Spitalfields Stew recently, a free, al-fresco jazz festival and generally fantastic idea. The sun was shining, the market was packed with people and there was a great crowd sprawled all around the stage. Also I had a picnic, I love picnics.

_{I never got a turnout this good for my jazz gigs...}

The Billy Jenkins Blues Collective were up first and I highly recommend the show if you can see them anywhere - suburban blues with a load of energy, and featuring (slightly unusually) a violinist, fantastic.

Ordesa played second - I've seen these chaps before but they were fantastic. Kenny Wheeler (nearly 80 years old, but you can't tell) on trumpet, playing with just a guitarist and saxophonist. Beautiful, simple music played perfectly.

Finally there was a 5 piece improvisation (two bass, two drums and Jan Kopinski leading on saxophone), which whilst slightly too wild and abstract for half the folks who came out for a day in the sun with some pretty music, was still a bit disappointing for me. I guess I listen to too much Ornette Coleman...

_{I'm behind his left ass-cheek}

After all this, we wandered over to Brick Lane (where all the oh-so-so-so-so trendy kids hang out) and saw Ben Walker singing his fantastic Twitter Song (and a beautiful ditty composed for Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall). Check him out sometime when you can.

_{Seriously, two hats. I'll never be that trendy.}

Good times in London abound! :)
Xx

Bacon Theft

2009-09-22T10:25:00.002+01:00

..had to share this one:

Xx

Edit: Image fixed.

I'm in London..

2009-09-20T12:19:00.000+01:00

..and far too busy to post much - just thought I'd drop you guys a note so no-one thought I'd died. I'll post pictures & stories when things calm down a bit (3 months or so I'm thinking).

In the meanwhile, Manu Delago is playing in Leicester Square next weekend, I'll probably be going on the Friday if anyone's about. Respond via phone/text ideally.

Xx

No blacks at Microsoft Poland

2009-08-26T00:20:00.006+01:00

Over on a certain less than savoury message board someone recently posted up this interesting observation. Take a close look at the Microsoft USA/World and then the Microsoft Poland pages for business productivity.

Notice anything?

For those of you reading this in the future, when Microsoft realise they've been rumbled and hastily pull the images, I put together this animation. Enjoy.

Note, you may say this is simply the USA branch of Microsoft over-reacting to some Affirmatve Action law. Whilst it's possible that's true, take a look at the hand of the magically changing man. Looks pretty dark to me.

Xx

Edit: Someone's beaten me to the next step of my idea: http://microlove.ytmnd.com

The Hardest Escape Game You'll Play

2009-08-23T23:17:00.004+01:00

This is one for the obsessive puzzlers amongst you:

Escape the room

Don't give up too easily, this game takes a while but there's nothing stupid in there and it's amazingly rewarding when you get to see this glorious, glorious sight:

Don't bother trying to decipher the Russian or Spanish text over the page - it's irrelevant. Enjoy. Try not to hate me too much.

Xx

The Midget Manifesto

2009-08-20T20:15:00.004+01:00

Do midgets have night vision?

Above we see four perfectly reasonable and apparently common searches regarding midgets. Google's 'intelligent' prompts aren't always quite so useful though, as highlighted in this ~~thought provoking and witty article~~ oversized image dumped on a shockingly bad webpage.

That aside, it's extremely hard to find a concrete answer on the Internet to the original question. Wikipedia doesn't explicitly say one way or another, and I can't find anything in the Lego Bible about it either.

The Orwellian (Swiftian? Swiftish? Swift? Quite fast really?) Midget Manifesto states that night vision (along with subservience and non-intelligence) are desirable traits for midgets, but until someone explains to me the point of the gladiatorial midgets described in that dystopia, I can't take the manifesto seriously.

I feel this post should resolve with a dramatic and fun-filled climax. Oh well.

Xx

Thompson Turkey

2009-08-19T21:18:00.005+01:00

This is the best recipe in the world:

Thompson's Black Turkey

Not because it produces the nicest food (it may) but simply for how hilarious the ingredient list is, and how detailed the process; which includes full instructions on when and where to drink, during the preparation of this turkey.

"About this time I generally have my first drink of the day"
"About now it seems advisable to switch drinks. Martinis or stingers are recommended.."

..and so on.

This isn't just an excuse to get drunk though. The whole thing tries to put any prospective chef off with its immense list of ingredients - but when I have 15 friends around for dinner and a lot of spare cash, I'll be trying this.

Final note: Like the author of that webpage, I found this recipe originally in The Time Traveler's Wife. Great book, but I think the film could really be awful.

I Went Diving Today And It Was Awesome

2009-08-18T00:17:00.003+01:00

Please note the word is diving and not driving. Don't congratulate me on not hitting any cars. Don't tell me about your driving test. Don't wish me luck with mine. Practically everyone on the Internet I've told about my diving adventure has made this mistake so far.

..and back to the point.

Diving is awesome. I wouldn't have believed a short stint in an empty swimming pool could be quite so thrilling. Underwater super slo-mo Frisbee is the best (and most dramatic-looking) sport in the world. I think I've found my new hobby (although I'm off skiing next week in case that's even more fun).

It wasn't all fantastic; I failed the 'take your mask off underwater, then replace it' challenge quite spectacularly - as soon as my nose was free from the mask I decided to try and breathe through it. This is not recommended when underwater. Diving centres need much clearer signage on this matter.

Diving is awesome.

Xx

--

_{I have to mentally struggle to restrain myself from filling the majority of this blog with meta conversation about grammatical conventions, phrasings and related minutiae. For example, the previous sentence was ambiguous - did I mean 'grammatical phrasings'? Probably not, given the end of the clause, but that's no consolation to the intrepid reader skimming from left to right. I could have rephrased the sentence, but the flow and intended structure would have been lost.

You see how bad this is? I started this sub-paragraph to talk about capitalisation in the title of the blog post and already I'm off on a tangent. I think I need to get back into editing and copy-writing and vent some literary steam there.}

Making XKCD Slightly Worse

2009-08-16T22:39:00.003+01:00

For some time, one of my favourite collections of comic strips has been Garfield minus Garfield - a brutally harsh and beautifully depressing cacophony of loneliness and angst.

In a similar vein, from the XKCD fora, comes the joyous Making XKCD Slightly Worse. I can't do any better than their introduction:

"It's time to find that little piece of magic that makes xkcd so special, and kill it."

Here's two I've lazily plucked from the first page of that thread (there's 99 pages, and many, many gems - click around for an hour or so then put it on your bookmarks for later):

And, here's my first effort, amalgamated from comics 208, 419 and 620:

_{Clicky to enlarge}

Victory

2009-08-13T23:37:00.002+01:00

I'm eating a coconut.

Many of you will have done this before. It's possible you've even opened your own. It was easy, you used the right tools, the right techniques, there's really nothing to it..

Screw you guys. I got to use an axe. I had fun.

Here's the final armoury of tools I required to get into my coconut:

_{How could I lose?}

The first step was to get the milk out. I didn't have a vice or a clamp, so I figured my legs would suffice. The fun bit was when the drill bounced off the shell and I had to activate pneumatic mode:

_{A bit closer to my testicles than the B&Q safety manual recommends}

The knife was a complete disappointment in most respects, but did serve well in lieu of a hammer when I needed something to bash the chisel with. We don't have any pics of that scary moment, so here's one of the knife disturbingly close to my fingers:

And, finally, success:

In other news my housemate has swine flu.

Xx

I Want To Learn Something In A Day

2009-08-09T22:15:00.001+01:00

Help me.

There are 18 days left until I leave for the excitement of London life with a new job; working every day and playing every evening - I don't plan on having much spare time. Right now however, I've got literally nothing to do and, given that there's only so much time I can spend staring vacantly at Jeremy Kyle and Flash games before their appeal ever so slightly starts to dim, I'd like to learn something.

Something, anything - I don't know what. Some skill, ability or trick that I didn't have at the start of the day, but I'll have at the end. I don't want to start learning something; to learn the fundamentals of an activity - I'd like this to be a complete exercise.

There are limitations. Something which requires a group of people will be very tricky, but I'm amenable to the prospect of having to get some resources/equipment first. Obviously, things I can get quickly would be better (I don't want to wait around for Internet shopping) and cheapness would be preferred. Something which would involve me visiting a specialised location isn't ideal, but could also work.

So, ideas?

My Favourite Bridge

2009-08-03T11:51:00.001+01:00

On the slim off-chance that any residual coolness from my university days is still lingering about the place, here's a blog post about a toll bridge in Bath. Not that toll bridges aren't immensely cool, but still making blog posts in 2009? Seriously?

On with the joy.

On a recent trip which in no way involved Bath, I happened to be in Bath for a couple of hours. Those of you who've made the thrilling journey from Bathampton to Batheaston (fabulous naming scheme by the way) will know exactly what's coming up, but let's build the suspense a bit for those who haven't yet had this life affirming experience.

I want you to imagine that you have a pressing, burning desire to get from Bathampton to Batheaston (the reverse is rarely true). You're sitting there, nearly in tears at the thought of having to take the A4 all the way to Bath proper, only to come back on yourself along the A36. "There must be another way", you cry, "I just can't bear this".

Enter the ruthless, inspired, creative genius that owns The Old Mill, together with its bridge. This man (it can only be a man) lets people drive across his private bridge for the princely sum of 60p, if it's sunny and he can be bothered turning up to work. If not, there's an 'honesty box' for you to contribute your fare, so the automated barrier of invisible karma can rise.

_{Click on the picture for an amazingly large version. Seriously.}

This bridge, this beautiful, tiny bridge, can only fit one car along its road surface. This leads to long queues in one direction, and then the other. The reason for this? Two excessively wide stretches of pavement (never used), one on either side of the bridge.

Finally, in a desperate bid to be accepted by the bigger kids over on the M6 and on the Welsh border, the masterminds behind the Bathampton toll have now got a list of charges for various types of vehicle. So, a car (crossing time, 5 seconds) will cost you 60p, but a car with trailer (crossing time, 5 seconds) will cost 90p. Dare to bring a caravan (crossing time, 5 seconds) and you'll be up to £1.20. Bring a lorry and it'll be about £100 for recovery I imagine.

If all this wasn't enough to sway you, I should point out that this bridge is really pretty. Really, very pretty. Unfortunately, in the 5 minutes of queueing to get on it, all you'll see is an Audi's exhaust pipe. In the 5 seconds of crossing it, you'll be too busy worrying about the narrowing at the other side, and the exceptionally high chance of losing some of your paintwork.

Xx

Original Documents

2009-08-02T17:26:00.006+01:00

I'm moving to London. Exciting.

Less exciting, however, is the process of doing this. Specifically, dealing with letting agents and a new landlord. I don't mind the letting agents stealing my wallet every time I enter their premises. I don't mind that the landlord is trying to slip a clause into the contract saying everything I move into the house becomes his property. I don't mind that all amounts in the contract are actually written in an obscure currency which has a symbol nearly identical to £, but means I pay triple what I expected - this is all fairly standard fare.

What I do mind, is the constant requests for 'original documents' and 'paper proof'.

I don't have any bank statements. I don't have any bills with my address on them. I don't have any 'formal letters' (whatever they are). I use the Internet* for everything. On the off-chance someone does send me something in such an archaic format as paper, I generally throw it in the bin unread.

Whilst we're on the subject, I don't have a fax machine. I don't want to print off the attachment you've emailed me, sign it and then fax it back to you. A fax machine isn't more secure than a scanned email. A digital signature is legally binding. The 80's are dead.

Frankly, the past couple of weeks would have been a hell of a lot easier if I just forged a document every time someone asked for one. I wonder when someone's going to notice I've just Photoshopped the signature from my driving license into every document they asked me to print, sign and scan. I wonder if they do notice, if they'll question quite how ridiculously insecure an unwitnessed signature is.

Finally, I get annoyed that 'insecure' next to 'unwitnessed' looks horrible. But I still don't think we should standardise anything. Except power supply connectors.

--
_{*And I'm still cool enough to capitalise the 'I'}

New (Old) Phone

2009-08-01T17:04:00.001+01:00

Finally, I've upgraded from my, frankly awful, Sony Ericsson w890i, which has been a thorn in my eye since I got it just over a year ago. This phone took up a to a minute to boot, the battery died quickly and, second-worst-of-all - it crashed.

A lot.

I mean, I read reviews online that said the w890i would crash, and laughed at all the idiots who couldn't use a phone properly. It wasn't until later that I discovered the little red light on the back of the phone, next to the camera, serves only one purpose. It's there to tell you your phone has crashed.

At the point when the designer is adding a 'your phone crashed' light, you've got to wonder how robust the rest of the design really is..

Worst of all, however, is the phone's complete lack of resilience to being covered in seawater and sand. A light drenching (more on that later) and the thing simply shorted out and corroded - an obvious design flaw if ever there was one.

As such, I've upgraded back to my beautiful old Nokia 6230:

Now, this phone has a screen so poor you can barely view any form of image on it. The speaker itself constantly makes that little interference noise you get when you put a ringing phone next to your speakers. It can only store 100 text messages before having a fit and making you either delete them all, or painfully remove messages one-by-one.

But. It can take a beating. I've proven this in the past by

Simply throwing it at a wall (the back sometimes falls off),
Setting it on fire (there's now a small raised area on the back cover) and
Putting it through the washing machine (that last one, I admit, was accidental).

I'm debating getting something a bit more modern but first, I need to know, is there anything out there which can pass the three stage test above?

Research

2009-06-14T19:03:00.003+01:00

Lots (read: more than one) of people have been asking what I'm up to nowadays, which has led me to the conclusion that I'm neglecting my blog. The whole purpose of this exercise is to avoid frivolous conversation by publishing the answers to questions which form the bulk of small-talk; that my conversation time may be better spent. The inefficiency of giving the same facts to different people in different conversations is amazingly annoying.

So.

Having finished university (results are out on Thursday 18^th with luck), I'm now...at university. I'm working as a research student for ten weeks, working in the same area as with my final year project.

I'll hopefully be publishing a paper in AAMAS (Autonomous Agents and Multi-Agent Systems), and then presenting it in May/June 2010, in Canada. Also it pays for rent and clothes shopping over summer - but let's pretend I'm doing this for the advancement of human knowledge.

We're still finalising a topic - I'll post a dumbed down (read: jargon-free) version of whatever I do up here :)

Xx

PS: I have a small office with (inexplicably) 9 chairs, yet on the rare occasions anyone stops by for a chat, they generally stay standing. Explanations on a postcard please.

One Million Giraffes

2009-06-12T18:26:00.004+01:00

Following a (presumably) drunken bet, someone on the Internet is looking to collect 1,000,000 hand-drawn giraffes by 2011. I really can't think of any more noble aim for the future - and it'll be one hell of a puzzle for digital archaeologists in a few hundred years when they find all these pictures without any context.

You can see the (pitiful) 600 or so he's collected here and you can submit your own drawing in myriad ways; the most obvious being simply to email it to him.

For reasons I really can't explain, here's my favourite so far:

For reasons anyone who has ever seen me draw anything will perfectly well understand, I won't post my effort up here. And I think I might even submit it under a pseudonym.

Get drawing :)
Xx

Crazy People

2009-06-10T18:15:00.002+01:00

It makes waiting for buses (and the subsequent journeys) so much more interesting when instead of a sullen Brummie looking annoyed at everything, there's a crazy* person repeating the same thing over and over to anyone who might vaguely listen. Top of the list, of course, is an old lady who wants to tell me how lovely my hair is; but crazy people are a close second.

There were two such folks who got the bus in with me today; one alternately shouting and singing "You can't go in this afternoon, mate" and the other with a more elaborate spiel about how "You only ever have one exam, that's music" (although he did then go on to contradict himself, saying how he'd failed two assessments).

That's not the interesting part.

These two, apparently entirely independent people were waiting at the bus stop at 8.30am (ok, 9.30am - but if my supervisor asks, I was in work at 9). They got the bus in to town. As I stepped on the bus at 5.30pm (fine, fine - 4.30pm) - they were both there again, shouting and singing their way home.

What kind of magical, wonderful day did they have? Were they perhaps just getting buses to and from town all day, entertaining the passengers? Or did they get to town, walk into the office and have a full, normal day's work before resuming their alter-egos? Maybe they're brilliant physicists who were doing important research all day, and just do the shouting for a laugh.

Or, even better, is there a club for such people? Do they have a full day at the club, with various shouting and walking oddly and talking to strangers rooms and sessions? Do they pop home at 5 to have dinner and get ready for the club's evening party, where they dress up in their best and bring their partners along for some couples shouting?

Next time I see one of these folks and I'm not so busy, I'll follow them and let you know.

Xx

--

*'Crazy' probably isn't the PC term any more, but I may as well continue my downward spiral into immorality.

Your Erdős-Bacon Number

2009-06-01T22:48:00.006+01:00

Your Erdős-Bacon number is the sum of your Erdős number and your Bacon number. With an opener like that, I'm sure I've got your attention - now to elaborate.

I've been looking into social network topology for a paper I'm writing (more on that later) - if that doesn't mean anything to you, try and recall the time you saw '6 degrees of separation' in some junk mail; the wildly unsubstantiated and poorly researched idea that everyone in the world is separated by just 6 links.

This has been a topic of some quite interesting research by a number of fairly important chaps you haven't heard of, and it seems a few of them either a) snapped or b) had a sense of humour. I'm banking on a).

_{Paul Erdos - he could easily have been in films with a face like that}

Post snapping (or Schnapps) some mathematicians came up with the concept of an Erdős number - this is your academic degree of separation from influential mathematician Paul Erdős. Your Erdős score is 1 if you've co-authored a paper with Paul, 2 if you've co-authored a paper with someone who's co-authored a paper with Paul...and so on.

A later take on this was a Bacon number - your degree of separation from actor Kevin Bacon. If you've starred in a movie with Kevin, score 1. If you've starred in a movie with someone who's starred in a move with Kevin, score 2...and so on.

_{My favourite bacon related picture on the Internet}

Your Erdős-Bacon number is the sum of these.

Unbelievably, there are a whole range of people who actually have an Erdős-Bacon score. There's a messy list of them here - some people have Erdős-Bacon numbers as low as 4 or 5.

I think this goes to prove two points:

1. Some of your favourite actors may be closet mathematicians and..
2. The mathematicians that didn't make it into Hollywood have way too much time on their hands.

Also, consider this post a standing offer from me to buy drinks for the evening for anyone who can prove they have an Erdős-Bacon number.

Mainstream Memes

2009-05-27T11:02:00.006+01:00

Since Christopher Columbus discovered Twitter in mid-2008, it's become pretty choked up with users who don't even know where the flux-capacitor in their ~~PC case~~ **I'm reliably informed this is actually called a CPU** is to be found.

It's not all bad though, it hasn't taken too long for people to realise that the 'trending topics' section of Twitter - originally intended to give an overview of the most important and heady up-to-the-minute current affairs - would be far better used for tiny tiny memes.

#geekmusic was a great one a week or so ago, as was #budgetbond (and its spinoffs). You've then got the slightly smuttier trends - #3turnoffwords, #3wordsaftersex et al., which are mostly unfunny - but it is very amusing to see how many people can't even follow the single simple rule of 'three words'.

There's also been some great efforts on Amazon reviews recently. The three wolves t-shirt is fairly infamous around the web now; but someone's just linked me to something which might actually top it: 20 inch box canvas of Paul Ross.

Here's a couple of choice quotes from among the 200 (nearly all amusing) reviews:

"If you only buy one 20 inch canvas print of Paul Ross this year, this is the one to get."

"Don't buy this picture. It looks fine on the website, but the one they send you is upside-down. My wife hasn't stopped crying for a week."

And finally, this masterpiece:

"He maketh me to lie down in green pastures:
He leadeth me beside the still waters.
He restoreth my soul:
He leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for His name' sake.

Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death,
I will fear no evil: For thou art with me;
Thy 20 inch print by MirrorPrintStore, it comfortest me.
Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies;
Thou annointest my head with oil; My cup runneth over

Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life,
and I well dwell in the House of the Lord with a lovely picture of Paul Ross forever"

Edit: Thanks to anonymousse for this priceless one too.

Merch

2009-05-25T21:53:00.011+01:00

A lot of people say to me, "Ina, I'd love to get a lot of merchandise with approximations of your image on it..." (the real image would cause the lesser objects it was placed on to implode) "...but I can only find an image of you facing forwards. I'd feel foolish wearing a t-shirt with just a picture of your front on the front of it; can you do anything about this?"

To these people I can now offer the following:

_{The left-hand picture belongs on the front of your shirt, the other on the back of your shirt. Similar approaches may be taken for mugs, house-painting and underwear. The images are not licensed for mousemats. Please consult an expert before attempting to transfer the images to stained glass. By reading this paragraph you commit to paying £2 in royalties for each commercial sale featuring these images.}

Now, before you go and get this printed onto a t-shirt (a mere £5 at Vistaprint at the moment; and I can get it cheaper if I bulk order elsewhere) - there's an important point to note. Merely blowing up this small image will lead to something which looks quite boring and fuzzy. Instead, I recommend you scale it up using no interpolation at all in your favourite image editor. Alternatively, just ask me and I'll send some I made earlier (with stickyback plastic).

Enjoy. Can you guess what you're all getting for Christmas?
Xx

A dartboard

2009-05-24T15:17:00.000+01:00

Well, my degree's over and I never have to do another piece of coursework, joy! More on that later, but for now, here's a still image from my final piece of coursework:

_{Click to embiggen.}

Unfortunately, that's a nicely rendered image and when played in real-time, the darts game actually looks a lot more...crap. I spent a lot of time choosing that word; it really is the most appropriate. Especially given that the networking (you can play the game online) is sketchy and the Wiimote controls are challenging at best.

Still though, looks pretty doesn't it?
Xx

--

Blender Game Engine, Blender Render. Grab me if interested in anything else or if you want a copy of the game.

Robot Dinosaurs..

2009-04-28T10:40:00.000+01:00

..that shoot lasers when they roar.

Seriously, it doesn't get much better than this.

Play to the end, there's only one level and the outro is more than worth it.

Disco Robot Teleporter

2009-04-27T20:32:00.005+01:00

The coursework specification for my Computer Animation module reads:

"Model and animate something you believe will exist in 2050"

Could you ask for anything better?

I combined three of my favourite words, a lot of spotlights and various other fun effects into the following:

Disco Robot Teleporter

There was a proper disco dancefloor underneath all that at one point, you can see an awful quality initial preview of it here - I'm not sure where that went in the final rendering, but as it took a day to render what I have, I'm not going to bother re-doing it.

Also, here's what the teleporter originally looked like - I couldn't get the fancy particles into the final rendering either:

Enjoy.
Xx

PS: I made it all in Blender, and it's a Blender Render. Grab me if you want more techie details.

Facebook's grammar tragedy

2009-04-26T20:25:00.000+01:00

~~On one of my many procrastination breaks~~ whilst my animation coursework was rendering (more on that later) I decided to stretch to the height of sociability and walk into my housemate's room.

_{Yes, I have the t-shirt}

It was there I saw this absolute travesty:

I think it's actually even worse to make an effort, and completely fail, than to simply not bother trying to use decent English in the first place. How long do you reckon it'll take the (American) Facebook team to notice?

Disney's Copy & Paste

2009-04-09T01:20:00.003+01:00

You'll never watch some of your favourite Disney films the same way again :)

This video's been floating around the Internet for a few weeks now, I'm sure it could be improved upon - there's definitely some Bedknobs & Broomsticks and Little Mermaid scenes that seem a bit dodgy to me too.

An hour and a half ago I went out to get milk

2009-04-04T01:17:00.003+01:00

I love Easter.

If you think that's good, wait 'till you see what I'm going to make next week:

And for the rest of you students out there - clicky click for a full recipe and instructions for your own full-sized creme egg. 2.25kg and 10000 calories! Seems a lot healthier than I expected to be honest.

Xx

Graze

2009-04-02T16:17:00.008+01:00

Some vegetarians over on Twitter have been chatting away about a trendy new business called Graze (wonder how much that URL cost them) - that delivers a selection of healthy treats to your home/office at a lunchtime of your choosing. One of them was generous enough to post a free-trial promo code.

~~I've no idea if that code's still valid~~ it's not, but WFF141C is, but it worked for me and today my very own delivery arrived:

_{More exciting than my usual post.}

_{Beautifully presented, and some of the stuff keeps for ages..}

_{The seaweed peanut crackers. I'm still unsure as to what these are...gorgeous though.}

All the literature and packaging is charming and eco-friendly, as with every health-food service since Innocent came along (and, many will claim, before those Cool Guys too).

To get started, you simply tell Graze what kind of things you like, and then go on to rate a range of their foods with 'Love', 'Like', 'I'll try it' or 'Never send this' - schedule a delivery and enjoy!

The website's an absolute pleasure to use, there's a lot of fun to be had from the surprise of opening your box and finding what's inside and the food is absolutely gorgeous. I'm still debating whether or not it's quite worth the usual price tag of £2.99 (even with delivery included), and I'm also unsure it's quite enough for a full lunch, especially for a carnivore like me.

Still though, give it a go - I have some other promo codes if the one above doesn't work (and I like you), and let me know what you think.

:)

NUS Nazi Newsletter

2009-03-27T16:40:00.006Z

A copy of the NUS newsletter just arrived in my inbox today, and I was quite surprised to find it entitled:

Vote Nazi?

A lot of the it was the typical tripe you'd expect from someone who loves cuddles and rainbows and everyone being nice to one another - 'let's all not talk to the BNP or invite them to our sleepovers'.

Now, I can't say I'm a particular fan of the BNP. For starters, their policies on expanding the country's technological framework are sketchy and badly thought through. However, I did find this newsletter to be frankly disgraceful.

It starts:

"NUS is an organisation which represents all students."

Now, I personally know (of) some students IN the BNP. Where's their representation here? Will a percentage of NUS newsletters be devoted to promoting the BNP, its aims and literature?

We then hear:

"We believe that everyone should be given the opportunity to participate fully in a society that celebrates diversity."

...everyone that is, except the BNP. They even encourage students to deny the BNP speaking platforms, events et cetera - hardly an incitement to democracy.

And so on. I could pick apart the newsletter point by point, but hopefully you get the idea.

Finally, I also love how on the NUS Campaigns Home Page there's a section nicely entitled 'Black Students'. Way to break down those barriers guys. In fact, why stop at some websites aimed solely at black students? Perhaps we could brand them all like cattle too..

--

Since emailing the NUS back this afternoon I've had two people grab me to bitch about how awful the newsletter was, and one ask me to proof-read her email back to them. I love you guys <3

Edit 28/03/09: I'm not in the BNP, I don't hate all black people, stop messaging me if you're incapable of basic reading.

---

People are asking for the full newsletter. The majority of it is available here and I've advise you to mail your discontent to either susan.nash@nus.org.uk or campaigns@nus.org.uk.

Except black students.

The NUS doesn't think black students should be treated the same. Black students should instead email the black students' officer - bell@nus.org.uk.

Happy Mothers' Day

2009-03-22T10:45:00.000Z

Mums are awesome, especially mine. Also, putting the apostrophe in the right place in Mothers' Day is awesome too. Ever feel like burning down card shops that are stuffed with poor grammar? I do...but enough about arson.

Mr T. - Treat Your Mother Right

Possibly the worst song on YouTube. Utterly addictive though and video is to die for. Skip to the last minute if the middle's getting boring.

Now, I'm off to call my mum :)

Xx

Extreme Sheepherding

2009-03-20T19:07:00.003Z

This one starts a bit slow, and then goes on to such epic degrees of win I nearly cried. Seriously, you've not lived until you've seen people playing Pong with flocks of sheep:

Enjoy :)
Xx

Our band room is pretty rad

2009-03-19T18:16:00.003Z

It only just occurred to me that the posters in the band room in my house aren't quite cohesive. Take the following example:

Here we have party plates, a rubix cube and a slinky, sitting beneath a very charming lady's legs, beneath a hand-drawn guitar, beneath a John Coltrane poster.

Also decorating the walls we have a used* Amy Winehouse poster sitting next to charming hand-drawn posters for a band you've never heard of (more on that later), Ice-T next to posters for a ska gig at Barfly and a Battle Of The Bands we had some entries in..

And on. It's all very exciting :)

--

* for games of 'get the blindfolded audience member to pin the crack on the crack-whore' at certain gigs.

Baking

2009-03-18T16:49:00.000Z

I've been unbelievably busy recently - between procrastination and actually doing work I don't appear to have any free time for other things (except shouting at the TV during rugby matches). One thing there's always time for though, is food.

If I'm working away hard and things are going well, then a plaintive shout is enough to get the more female of my housemates to bring me up some oven-warmed goodness. When everything's falling apart though, I turn to baking and fancy cooking to cheer things up.

Here's some fun pics from yesterday's baking (as ever, click for better quality):

Step 1.
Bake cake (we made normal sponge with nutmeg and cinnamon, and chocolate with chocolate and chocolate), cut to heart shapes.

Step 2.
Fill with white&milk chocolate spread, layer.

Step 3.
Fight, or charm your way past the deadly guardian of the garden.

Step 4.
Pick some pretty flowers.

Step 5.
Nom.

--

Tonight I think I'll try lamb sitting atop some mashed sweet potato (with tiny pieces of roasted parsnip and roasted leek in it), with a cherry and wine sauce. On the one hand I'm letting down students everywhere (and harming McCain's sales), but on the other...it's going to be so nice.

Xx

Mixtape

2009-03-17T16:55:00.001Z

At one of our recent drunken house parties (yes plural, we're Cool) I decided to bring down Queen: Greatest Hits.

_{They're all so beautiful. I shotgun Roger though.}

Now, if you're not aware (somehow), that's the greatest album ever compiled. I've personally owned three CD copies and one tape copy of it (I used to have a portable CD player that liked scratching CDs whilst whirring away in my pocket). Naturally every other part of the party (poker, drinking games, and on) was completely abandoned in favour of everyone in the room singing and dancing along to the music.

Once the album was over, it was time to grab my iPod and search for any songs that could possibly compete. We found a few...but I thought to be safe, I'd compile a mixtape of songs that could have a similar affect.

Now, you may think I got a bit carried away, but it turns out there are 650 such songs - which meant my mixtape turned into four mp3 CDs. Totally worth it though.

_{Does this apply to CDs?}

The problem now, however, is that I just sit in my room and listen to the mixtape all day and sing and dance along. I don't get anything at all done and it's getting quite worrying. It's a like a descent into drug addiction, but with better music..

Xx

Fun With Games

2009-03-09T18:11:00.006Z

Faced with the choice of taking Immersive Environments and Games Design paired with Computer Animation - or Geographic Information Systems and Data Mining I tried, I really did, to pick the sensible options where I'd actually learn useful, re-usable skills for my future employability.

Alas, I failed, and I'm now spending half of my teaching hours playing with various games engines and 3D models. I'm not entirely sure what, if anything, I'm learning - but it's fabulous fun and mostly coursework based (which I thought was great, until I realised how much more work I've got left for my Final Year Project).

Here's some samples of the fun:

1. An Unreal level

No, not one of the exciting kind of Unreal, like Unreal Tournament - but just the physics and graphics engine. Oh well, I still made a fun little 'puzzler' out of it - and managed to submit the coursework with 13 minutes to spare. Let me know if you want a copy of the map (the runtime's free to download) - and here's some screenshots for now.

_{It has flames and noises and smoke and everything in game ^^}

_{This holds a big glass ball, eventually - looks quite cool empty though I think.}

_{Stained Glass; technically impressive, visually quite nice too.}

_{The great outdoors.}

_{Holes in the walls o.O}

_{Another arty angle.}

Also, if anyone cares, there's a step-by-step guide to how I made the level, that I submitted as part of my coursework, available here (yes I know one of the links there is dead, you'll work it out though, you're clever people).

2. Pacman 3D

The end of today's lab class simply stated 'Create a PacMan-like game'. I always wondered what PacMan would be like if he was actually a sphere, rather than a circle, and obeyed the laws of physics, bouncing off and around things. Now I have my answer; rubbish.

_{Yes, the graphics are rubbish - but I did knock the whole thing together in 30 minutes.}

3. Pumpkin

I was quite bemused when we were asked to create a small game whereby a pumpkin (complete with flickering candle innards) bounced around, opened a door and jumped off the end of the world. I had endless fun setting up the pumpkin to be smashed miles into the air by the force of the opening door though:

Considerations

2009-03-07T14:50:00.002Z

In relation to my Trading project (actually it's a project based on Trust and Reputation...) - I've had cause to question a few assertions I made earlier on in the year, even though they were backed up by some credible sources.

Some items for consideration which I, at least, find really interesting at the moment:

When trading online, how much do the opinions of others about a potential trading partner influence your decisions, if you already have experience trading with that partner before?

Is there a limiting point as to how much others can influence you? Consider that you've had a bad experience with a trading partner. Would 100 people saying 'this partner is good' be any more influential than 50? Than 25? Than 5?

When trading online, how much does a potential trading partner's reputation (eg, eBay rating) influence your decisions, if you already have experience trading with that partner before?

How good is your memory of people you've traded with in the past? How much does this depend on how the community is set up? Do very good or very bad experiences stay in memory much longer? How much longer?

--

I've got some good answers for most of the above, but any thoughts are always appreciated. Any academically referenced thoughts are really appreciated :P

Now for the hard part - expressing all this mathematically. Ouch.

Pink Dolphin

2009-03-02T23:50:00.002Z

In a beautiful combination of two dubiously moral fields; marketing and genetics - a cheap headline and profiteering event to warm the coldest corporate heart:

Pink Dolphin Spotted In US Lake
_{From The Telegraph}

Enjoy.
Xx

The Bible - illustrated

2009-03-01T23:05:00.000Z

What? Simply because an entire label on my blog has been devoted to blasphemy, you immediately assume this is going to be some disgraceful and offensive link or set of pictures? Shame on you.

No, this is an ever expanding set of stories from the Bible, illustrated by an evangelical minister who wants to share the Word of the Lord with as many people as he can.

Through Lego.

You'd think I would have mentioned this in one of my previous seven posts about Lego - but apparently not.

Now, before I continue with the predictable hyperlink and some sample pictures, I feel compelled to post this following Not Safe For Work (NSFW) notice for those of you wasting your employer's time reading these ramblings. I believe it's a standard disclaimer at the front of all Bibles - let me know if not..

_{To be honest, this disclaimer was the only reason I started this post..}

The Hyperlink:

The Brick Testament

The Sample Images:

1. Epic battle scene. Literally, epic. And I'm sure it's not at all blasphemous to depict God as a bit of Lego.

_{And Yahweh struck down all of Israel before Abijah and Judah...}

2. You'll find some bits of the Bible you didn't know about too, like the following (which explains why Christians always look so uncomfortable on the tube):

_{'Whenever a woman has her menstrual period, she will remain in a state of menstrual pollution for seven days. Anyone who touches her will be unclean until evening.'}

3. I had other cheap jokes, and I was dying to end on a sex scene, but I couldn't resist putting in this one. It's given me so many ideas for a LoTR Lego photoshoot. Anyone got a spare year? It'll be an Internet phenomenon (the following is Sauron vs Gandalf in my head):

_{Moses then reported to Yahweh what the people had said.}

Manu Delago - Looking For The Core; Lyrics

2009-03-01T15:03:00.001Z

It's always nice when other people who like Manu Delago get in touch via my blog (for the record, it's less nice when East European boys wanting to marry me get in touch; sorry guys). A recent visitor's just informed me she plans on covering Looking For The Core from Handmade - that song's going to be really quite difficult for pretty much everyone in the band, so I thought I'd help out by transcribing the lyrics.

Here they are, for anyone who wants them - her voice and accent are really hard to understand (seriously, listen to her pronunciation of 'encyclopedia'. Seriously), but the whole thing makes a lot more sense now when you listen to the track. I personally always thought it was 'small taste of fear' in the refrain..

There's a world,
That'll take our tragedies.
Go downstairs in the dark room(s),
Enter the world of the moon.
He's called Earl, he's pretty old,
His eyes are empty.
Although your eye is red, you can't see more than Earl, 'cause it's too dark.

Now you're looking for the core [close your eyes].

Smell
Smell Taste
Smell Taste and Feel
You have to Smell Taste and Feel Listen
Smell Taste and Feel and
Listen Smell Taste and Feel and
Listen Smell Taste and Feel and
Listen You have to Smell Taste and Feel Listen
Smell Taste and Feel and
Listen Smell Taste and Feel
Smell Taste
Smell

Earl knows lots, he is an en-cy-clo-pe-dia,
But there is something, there is something, he won't ever know;
Green red blue, are only names,
He's never seen them fire on a sky.
How do you like black?
Is anything different?
Try to differ with your heart.

So are you looking for the core?
You're looking for the core.

Smell Taste and Feel, and
Listen Smell Taste and Feel, and
Listen Smell Taste and Feel, and
Listen You have to Smell Taste and Feel Listen
Smell Taste and Feel oooh
Smell Taste and Feel, [ah] Smell Taste and Feel
You have to smell you have to smell
You have to smell and taste and feel and listen
[yes] and feel and listen
[ah] you have to, [ah] you have to smell
[ah] you have to smell and taste and feel and taste and feel and listen
[ah] you have to, [ah] you have to smell, and taste, and smell and taste and feel, and listen
[and] you have to listen
you have to, [ah] you have to, to feel and taste, to feel and taste and smell and listen
feel and taste and, you feel and taste and smell and listen
you have to listen,
you have to listen,
[to listen]

Trading

2009-02-19T18:27:00.000Z

Amongst many procrastinations, trips to the pub and baths I've been working surprisingly hard on my Final Year Project of late; a Christmas idly spent will encourage guilt that way. I've changed from a civil violence scenario investigating artificial intelligence, through a multi-agent approach to an investigation into trust and reputation in an e-commerce scenario.

Don't Panic.

Let's explain..

Imagine, eBay. You want to buy yourself some electronic gadget. Everyone, co-incidentally, happens to be charging the exact same amount for this gadget - but you still need to decide who to trade with. Here you'll be looking at the reputation of users - as shown through eBay's central reputation system.

Now imagine Craigslist, GumTree, et al. There's no central rating system, instead you need to get at someone's reputation through a distributed set of other users. You'll likely ask people how trustworthy another user is.

My investigation is into which model works better, based on a variety of factors. For example, changing behaviours, communication trustworthiness (see below) and 'noise' in the system (making it hard to see what's actually happening).

A problem that crops up with both of these scenarios is that of trust. Note that trust is your perception of how likely someone is to be good/bad at a specific task. How much can I trust eBay's central server? What if people have been feeding it bad information? What if I can't trust the people who are telling me about other users on Craigslist?

--

I'm doing research into all of this, and it's getting pretty fun. The maths, however, is giving me some headaches - I don't like to see equations taking up half a page and filled with Greek. I think I'm over most of those hurdles, and I've been offered the chance to get some funding to stay on at Uni over the summer and put this together into a proper research paper, for publication in one of the fancier journals in this area of Computer Science.

Exciting eh? IM me if you'd like more detail on any of it :)

Musical Stock Exchange

2009-02-13T17:32:00.001Z

Ever wanted to take the spikes on a serious financial graph and make them the basis of a whimsical tune? Me neither. Enjoy:

Thanks to Will for the tip-off here.

The Epic Explosion and the Idiot Scientist

2009-02-12T17:09:00.003Z

In exciting (yet, questionably relevant, other than to theoretical physicists) old news;

Explosion from 7.5billion light years away could be seen with the naked eye

- worth a read. However, notice how I'm intelligent enough to say 'old news', because the explosion was 7.5billion light years away. That means, if we can see it now, it happened 7.5billion years ago. So, it's rather ridiculous that a 'scientist' on the project should claim:

"The passing of Arthur C. Clarke seems to have set the universe ablaze with gamma ray bursts"

I'm so, so annoyed that I might have to go and punch the scientist concerned (Judith Racusin of Penn State University, if you're in the area).

Tic-Tac Makes it up to Football Fans

2009-02-11T01:19:00.000Z

Many people on the Internet (and presumably in the so-called 'real world') seemed rather annoyed when ITV decided to broadcast a Tic-Tac advert rather than the thrilling last 20 seconds of the Liverpool vs Everton FA Cup game. There were calls for ITV to be banned from showing football, angry Facebook groups and even the odd 'flashmob' against ITV.

I wasn't, however, aware that anyone was blaming Tic-Tac. But, just in case (and also because marketing folks need salaries to keep the economy going), they made a video by way of apology:

Brilliant ;)

Grammar (I'm Right And You're Wrong)

2009-02-05T10:48:00.003Z

Recently, as an aside to another post, I showed a moment's weakness. Yes, that's right - not a moments' weakness or a moments weakness, but a moment's weakness. In this post I asked you to tell me which of the following three was correct:

Three minutes time

Three minute's time

Three minutes' time (my choice).

Folks commented, emailed, rang and texted* me to give me their opinions - which generally ran along the lines of me being wrong. This is why democracy doesn't work and hippy communes never make good profit returns on their marijuana plantations. Instead of everyone giving opinions, I should just tell you all what's right - that is the purpose of this communication medium, isn't it? That was rhetorical, it is.

The grammar is clear, if "time" belongs to "three minutes" then the apostrophe must surely follow the "s" of "minutes". The argument was that there was no genitive relationship; that two nouns had simply been dumped at the end of the sentence and left to their own devices to make sense. I never agreed with this, but I now have a counter example, the idiom:

"A Moment's Notice".

Now, listen here, nowhere** respectable I can find online or in print would ever write that idiom in any other way. Even the wonderful John Coltrane jazz composition is to be found with the apostrophe. The weak noun "notice" is very clearly possessed by the temporal concept of "moment" - just as "time" is possessed by "minutes" in my original example.

So, let's have no more debate on the matter. I, for my part, will endeavour never again to question my own brilliance, and I'd ask you to do the same by not planting little seeds of doubt in my head.

--

Yes, most of the grammar above is a bit tongue in cheek (Edit: Who am I kidding? It's hilarious. I bet none of you get it). But, here's a clarification on a word you'd otherwise hate me for, and one pun I couldn't resist drawing your attention to:

* I don't like it either, but that horrible verb and conjugation are here to stay.
** See what I did there? No? This is why I get to do the writing.

3D Chess

2009-02-03T19:40:00.004Z

On finding myself torn away from a computer screen for some reason, with alcohol in short supply, I'll often be found turning to nearby friends, family or strangers and offering them a game of chess. They decline, with a stuttered excuse and I get to feel intellectually superior for the rest of night.

However...

...every now and then, I'm caught out. Someone actually agrees to play with me and I have to start trying to remember strategies, to plan out moves and construct elaborate defences. Soon enough, I can simply use a delightful mix of verbal gamesmanship and bluffing to lead them into making a mistake and claim a win - but this is very risky territory indeed.

So, as an alternative, I'm going to learn 3D chess.

Now, my original plan was to learn how to play Asimovian Hyperchess (yes, named after our friend Isaac). This is just chess with one extra dimension - i.e., an 8x8x8 board. I have various ideas as to how I could construct a board, and the rules are fairly simple if you know how to play regular chess. Unfortunately, I can imagine games becoming impossibly long - just working out if you were in checkmate could take minutes.

There are other variants on 3D chess already out there, but only one appears to have any real following. In order to participate, I had to delve into the murky depths of Star Trek fandom, but I've been rewarded with what appears to be a full rulebook and guide to board-making for the Tri-D chess game seen in Star Trek.

_{Mine probably won't look this elegant}

At only $9.95, including international shipping, it seems a bargain. You can get your own copy here - I'll let you know how I get on.

Xx

Heavy Metal Band Names

2009-01-30T13:40:00.003Z

Ever wish there was a flowchart that concisely (but with more than little tongue-in-cheek humour) segmented and collated the names of heavy metal bands, and their common traits?

No?

Probably not much point in clicking on this link then:

Heavy Metal bands flowchart

Xx

Update: Music

2009-01-29T17:24:00.003Z

Things have been a bit quiet over with the Tie-Dye Quartet since Christmas - the novelty of getting paid nice bits of money for gigs wore off a bit and it almost became a bit of a chore, having to tailor our sets (and therefore rehearsals) around audiences rather than challenging ourselves and being creative.

I've found some new folks (including Rob Moore, aka I Have Clones) who are interested in having a play, and I've got some new material I'd like to show them. If it comes to anything, I'll let you have a listen.

My listening habits haven't changed too much and I'm ashamed to say I haven't found much that's particularly new for a while. One thing I have been getting into a lot is 50's jump blues, and I'd highly recommend you go listen to some Big Joe Turner or Big Maybelle if you have the chance.

I've also gotten myself some really old Duke Ellington bootlegs, with what sounds like an extremely young Ella Fitzgerald singing alongside him. Hit me up if that's your thing and I'll send them over.

Update: Jobs

2009-01-28T16:57:00.000Z

Other than exams, one of the main reasons I've been so quiet lately is that I've been out hunting ~~wabbits~~ graduate jobs.

There were a couple of lows - getting turned down first stage from Microsoft despite being recommended by various managers etc; failing a technical interview from RedGate quite spectacularly) - which I rationalised into 'I didn't want the job anyway'.

I also found a few places that seemed to like me, but which I decided weren't actually too hot anyway.

I then found some places I really liked. Top three on the list were IBM, QinetiQ and Thomson Reuters. I'm also technically still applying to Ericsson, but I'm so underwhelmed with their HR I might just give up with them.

I've currently got offers from QinetiQ and Reuters, and I'm through to the final day with IBM. I'll probably still go to IBM's final day, although it's a bit much that they're asking me to travel all the way down to Southampton twice - couldn't they have just done a proper job at the first assessment day? Hmph.

All's looking well though - I won't be unemployed come September!

Update: Exams

2009-01-27T22:16:00.001Z

It seems rather unfair that in my final year of University, modules that are no more important (and some - I believe - are far less important) than previous ones have such a stronger weighting when it comes to the class of degree that may be so important through my life.

I've just finished the examinations for the first half of my final year, and things went well...mostly. I'm fairly confident I got >70% in all four modules, and I know I got quite a lot higher than that in the various courseworks and labs that also contribute to the module marks.

I was, however, less than happy with my performance in the ~~Business Studies~~ Software Engineering: Management & Metrics module I had thrust upon me.

When I started at Aston, I was originally on a Business Studies & Computer Science joint honours degree. I quickly dropped the Business half of that, preferring to actually learn some hard facts, rather than discuss buzzwords. You can naturally imagine my dismay then, when I learned that a module based entirely around bad maths, silly graphs and buzzwords would contribute to more than 6% of my final degree mark.

Further to this, once in the exam I spotted what I believed were four glaring errors on the exam paper. This, please note, was an exam paper that had supposedly been checked and ratified by at least three separate groups of people. One was admitted on the day, two I mentioned to the lecturer during the exam but he was unable to understand them, and one was ambiguous, but I'm happy to accept wasn't an error - in retrospect.

I spent most of the exam seething at the lecturer's lack of English and Maths skills, and probably made some silly errors thanks to this. I was also extremely annoyed that any error could exist in a paper which was checked by the lecturer, a Computer Science committee and an external examiner.

Still though, I think it says something about how much of the joke the module is that I'm still sure I got >70% on it - despite not turning up to any of the tutorials after seeing quite how bad the lecturer's maths skills were in the very first one.

A letter of complaint to Virgin

2009-01-22T18:30:00.000Z

Sorry for the cheap post, but this really, really is hilarious. Enjoy.

Xx

I love this website

2009-01-18T18:15:00.002Z

Whilst procrastinating, I came across the following:

Osgrow Online

This is an online shop which sells meat. Lots, and lots of meat. Exotic meat. Here's a couple examples from their selection of hampers:

Safari Grill
Contains: 2x 125g Wildebeest Steaks, 2x 125g Kudu Steaks, 2x 125g Eland Steaks, 2x 125g Springbok Steaks and Crocodile Medium Tournedos
£47.75 (Including Delivery)

Summer Safari
Contains: 2x 170g Ostrich Fillet Steaks, 4x Small Crocodile Tournedos, 2x 160g Zebra Steaks (large), 2x 170g Venison Steaks, 2x 125g Kangaroo Fillet Steaks, 2x 160g Camel Steaks.
£55.00 (Including Delivery)

Now I just really need to convince myself it's worth buying some of this stuff. Anyone got any recommendations for fun meats I should definitely get, or avoid?

Xx

Star Wars: Retold (by someone who hasn't seen it)

2009-01-17T14:15:00.003Z

This has been flying all over the Internet since it was released a couple of days ago:

Not to be watched whilst drinking*, operating heavy machinery or becoming heavily pregnant.

*Exception: shots, as part of a formalised drinking game.

In My Bathroom...

2009-01-15T15:51:00.001Z

People don't read blogs to find out about world news, your latest achievements or your company's latest releases. They want to know the little things, the real things.

So, here's what my housemate Terra does with our loo rolls when their paper has been used for whatever things students do with toilet paper. Mostly cleaning out piercings, mopping up blood and wrapping up potatoes for baking as far as I can see.

_{This guy's great. Needs a hat though.}

_{I think this one's a work in progress...so I've shown it from both sides.}

_{Grammar fail :( - the wrench was my addition.}

_{Raaawr! I hope the eyes were intentional add-ons.}

In the spirit of realism, I've also tried to give an indication of how long it's been since one of us remembered to clean the bathroom. The problem, you see, is that the cleaning rota is on the fridge, and we like eating takeaway.

Another quote I've also liked recently (and seen attributed to too many people to have any idea who it came from):

"Facebook is for people you used to know, Twitter is for people you'd like to know better".

PS: Yes, in case you were wondering, I do have a Microsoft rubber duck, amongst all the other strange and wonderful branded things of theirs surrounding me:

Four Hands Boogie-Woogie*

2009-01-10T16:00:00.003Z

One of my favourite albums in my increasingly oversized collection has always been a little compilation innovatively entitled 'Boogie Woogie Piano'. I would give you a link, but I simply can't find it to buy online at the moment.

Edit: Thanks to 'anonymous' who got in touch via the chat widget on my blog. However, it's not this identically titled compilation which is available second-hand on Amazon. That one looks good though.

This album is a collection of pieces from Jimmy Yancey, Meade 'Lux' Lewis, Albert Ammons and Pete Johnson. If those names don't mean much to you yet, then the next couple of hours of your life should be very enjoyable ones.

Most special though, are the tracks featuring Pete Johnson and Albert Ammons playing simultaneously. I can't think of much which is more demanding than perfectly synced boogie-woogie pianos playing themes and trading improvised solos. So, you can imagine my excitement when I found the following video of two modern pianists, each famed for their sickeningly good technique, doing much the same thing:

_{Jools Holland and Dr. John playing four hands boogie-woogie}

This one's really special, I can't recommend it enough. Also, have you ever seen either of those guys concentrating so hard? None of Jools' usual hand-lifting, flicks of the fingers or looking up at the sky here.

--

* or should that be Four Hands' Boogie-Woogie? Go argue about apostrophes here.

Burning CDs

2009-01-09T20:14:00.001Z

I've recently had to re-enter the dark ages of technology and actually physically burn some media to CD, in various formats (audio CD, mp3 CD, data CD etc). If that's not bad enough - in a couple of weeks' time* I'll have to use a pen and paper to answer questions on a Computer Science exam. Ridiculous I'm sure you'll agree.

Anyhow, in doing so I found that Windows Vista can't actually burn mp3 CDs that any device can actually use. In searching for a free program that could overcome this, I came across Ashampoo Burning Studio.

It's amazingly simple to use, does everything you could possibly want (even burning Blu-Ray) and is also entirely free! If you ever find yourself burning discs for any reason, go get your copy here.

Xx

--

* This has always bugged me. Should it be:
"A couple of weeks time",
"A couple of week's time" or
"A couple of weeks' time"?

As you can see, I'm inclined towards the latter (the middle one just looks horrible), but I constantly come across the first choice in fairly respectable media. Answers on a postcard please. With justification.

WinDirStat

2009-01-08T13:16:00.000Z

Don't you hate it when your hard drives are starting to look full, but you don't really know what's taking up the space and what you should delete? On Unix simply running 'boabab' will lend a hand, but it's not so easy on Windows.

A decent approximation however, is WinDirStat. It'll scan any folder or hard drive - or all the drives on your computer. It'll then give you various graphical and list views of exactly where your space is being taken up, as with the below analysis of my C: drive (where I store Windows, and a few other bits and bobs):

You'll note that most of my space is being taken up by .dll and .sys files - the sys files I need for Windows, but I could feasibly remove some of the .dll clutter by uninstalling some programs. The pictures at the bottom help too - I'm just about to delete that large turquoise square towards the top-right, it's an old video I don't need any more.

The big red blob though, the one taking up 3GB of space? Unfortunately that's something called 'hiberfil.sys' - Windows needs it to hibernate and I can't do anything about that. 'pagefile.sys' would be equally nasty if I hadn't moved that elsewhere. Still though, it's a useful tool, and makes pretty pictures too.

Enjoy.

Love notes

2009-01-06T23:47:00.006Z

Upon returning home and turning it back on, I discovered the following filling my computer screen:

Hey babe, we needed somewhere to watch the IT crowd
and whatnot, and your computer was on. I hope you dont
mind. I havent clicked on anything HONEST. I think you
meant to lock it when you went out, so I will do
before I leave.

Love
<anonymised>
xxxx

PS: I tried on some of your pants on.

I then logged into my inbox to find a bunch of genuinely nice comments on various old blog posts from persons other than the usual suspects. A previously unseen Christmas present graced my desk, my bedding had been freshly washed and someone had sent me a free copy of his latest recordings.

It's these little gestures that make someone smile on the inside - rather than just the little grins you get during conversation. So, go do something nice for someone today - and I'll try and do the same once I'm awake.

Xx

Back from America

2009-01-06T21:50:00.003Z

..and ready to pollute the Tubes once again. North Carolina was empty, Washington DC was cold, New York was colder and I couldn't get a good cup of tea anywhere. Also the cheese sucked. There were probably some good points to the holiday too, I imagine I'll elaborate on them later, with copious pictures.

Now, to try and get some sleep so I'm not horrifically jetlagged for my interview in 36 hours.

Xx

I'm on the Gadget Show tonight

2008-12-22T15:47:00.004Z

It's utterly bizarre that a full two years after I appeared (and promptly lost) on the game show Brainteaser on Channel 5 some Wednesday daytime, people (admittedly, only rarely) still come up to me and say "Oh My God! You're that Brainteaser guy". Clearly some people need to pay more attention to their degrees.

Well, I was on that for a princely 15 minutes, and tonight at 8pm on Channel 5 I'll be appearing on the Gadget Show, as part of a test panel for some new toys. Not many of us had even bothered to watch the Gadget Show before, we weren't very impressed by the gadgets and I'm still not quite sure who 'recommended' me to get me on the whole thing.

If you're very bored, you can switch over and hope to catch a glimpse of me standing around in the background. They might even put on one of the glib remarks I made about the mostly pointless technology we looked at. More likely though, they'll just use the stuff from the people who said exclusively positive things.

Enjoy.
Xx

Christmas 3/4

2008-12-22T15:31:00.003Z

Apparently, flying out to America isn't enough for me over Christmas. I've been thoroughly spoiled with three Christmas parties (and sets of presents) already - with one to come in North Carolina! I get to open my Cool Stuff whilst others have to look longingly at the wrapping paper and shoot me jealous looks.

A surprising amount of people have taken it upon themselves to buy me toothpaste and shower gel. Is this really because people know quite how badly prepared I am and expect me to travel everywhere with a bagful of gadgets, but no underwear or toothpaste? Or a subtle comment on how pleasant it is to be in my confined company? Surely the first, at Christmas.

The main problem with the timing of my Christmas presents so far, however, has been that of timing. I love getting copious amounts of chocolate, I really do. It's just a bit galling when I have to fly off and leave them behind for two weeks the next day. Guitar Hero Aerosmith seems awesome...but I've only played it for a short while before having to leave my XBox behind. And so on.

A few presents have been based on things I've blogged about over the past year. Wouldn't it be nice if that trend continues on into the New Year and up to my birthday? On an unrelated note, here's some links from the Internet:

_{Did you know you could buy a full-size T-Rex}

_{But, I wonder if T-Rex will bounce on this?}

_{Incidentally, isn't the wood panelling here nice? You know, on the wall behind the 47inch Giant Chocolate Fountain}

Kids in America

2008-12-18T19:53:00.004Z

Tomorrow I'm off home to Cardiff...and on Tuesday I fly out to the US of A to spend Christmas and New Year with Lucie. We're going to be hanging around her home-for-the-year in North Carolina for Christmas proper before riding on over to do some touristy things in Washington D.C.

From there we're off to New York, where we'll spend New Year's eve in Times Square. The night before that though, we're heading over to the legendary Smoke Jazz Club to see the New York All Star Sextet play, and enjoy the whole experience. Can't wait.

Any further suggestions for places to go or things to see are much welcomed. Get in touch :)

Xx

Hallelujah

2008-12-16T22:11:00.003Z

When I heard that the winner of this year's X-Factor was to release Leonard Cohen's 'Hallelujah', I was mildly annoyed. Mostly because they'd picked the song before they even knew who was going to be singing it - not a great recipe for a good piece of music. Then, I promptly forgot about it.

Clearly I wasn't as annoyed as the creator of this Facebook group persuading people to buy Jeff Buckley's beautiful recording of the song, and hoping to get it to Christmas #1 ahead of the X-Factor winner's version.

Impressively, they've gotten onto Radio 1, and into a lot of online media (and to cap it all, they're now on my blog). Jeff's version is currently at #3 in the midweek charts and, although it has no chance of getting to #1, it'll still be amusing to hear it played alongside the inevitably worse X-Factor version on the radio chart shows. Not that I've actually listened to radio for about 3 years, but you get the idea.

Most amusing of all however, is the comments section of the Daily Mail's hilarious report on this 'news'. Now, Daily Mail readers aren't the most intellectual of stereotypes, and indeed the opening line of the article rather sets the tone:

"Anti-X Factor campaigners are trying to sabotage Alexandra Burke's chances of taking the coveted Christmas number one spot by downloading an alternative version of her winner's song.".

Or, as someone back at the Facebook group translated it:

"Pro-immigration eco-terrorist anti-capitalist Maddie-hoarding haters of Great Britain have launched a Nazi-esque attack on the poor defenceless winner of patriotic family-orientated show, the X Factor.".

I'll leave you to read the rest of the comments hilarity. You could even go and digitally download the Jeff Buckley version too if you have 79p to spare and aren't a fan of reality TV. Me? I really just don't care enough.

Campaign/BrandRepublic

2008-12-12T11:43:00.004Z

Most people think that marketing students are good for nothing - but this isn't quite true. You see, a couple of them keep linking me to fun pages on BrandRepublic (or its magazine, Campaign). These are generally focused on advertising and marketing - and with those being such wide-reaching and trendy industries, there's always something good to see.

There's loads of fun content to choose from, from farces such as Pizza Hut rebranding to Pasta Hut to disturbing news about direct marketing and the usual collection of 'top ten...' (I'm quite a fan of the top ten failed adverts of 2008).

It's in my bookmarks now so - marketing people, I don't need any more links - it's back to trying to discover the alchemy of viral marketing for you.

Fair Game

2008-12-11T19:01:00.004Z

As I mentioned below, Tesco.com haven't exactly been the best in terms of their recruitment. In fact, they've probably been the worst. They have an entire flashy website - tescoitjobs.com - which advertises vacancies and has an application process. I applied via this site, and received the following a while later:

"Dear Ian

Thank you for your interest in the Tesco Graduate scheme. Unfortunately I cannot process your application sent in this way.

..yep, seriously. The person on the other end of that email address has simply not bothered to reply to any further emails - nor has anyone I tried to reach via the 'contact us' forms. Nice.

A week or two later I decided to abandon principles and go and complete the other application process anyway - and for a .com company the shoddy web design was near unforgivable. So I stopped again. However, today I persevered through and got my application submitted, and was then presented with the following:

"Now that you've completed the application process, please spare a moment to tell us what you thought of our process...your reply will not be attached to your application form"

Even better, there's no word limit. Back in an hour.

Xx

Interview Time

2008-12-07T13:16:00.004Z

I've just had my first interview - in phone format, with a lovely lady from Qinetiq. Tomorrow I'm off to Cambridge to meet some other folks from Red Gate Software - so they can find out if I can still remember how to write any code.

I find myself being drawn to these two (and a couple of other) companies, simply because of the professionalism they're showing in their recruitment process. Others, notably IBM and Tesco.com so far, have done a pretty awful job. Confusing websites, ridiculous questions on the application process and if you do ever manage to put a human face on the communications, it's not someone you're very keen about dealing with again.

But, should I base my final decision on things like these? Will a job at <x> be awful just because the recruitment agency they hired wants to ask me inane questions? On that point - please, someone, tell me why the full name of my High School or the grade I got at GCSE Welsh are useful in the recruitment stage?

On the one hand, it's symptomatic of a lack of professionalism within the business. If a company is happy to put sub-par quality processes live, then they're probably happy to do the same with their shipping products and customer interactions. On the other hand, I know perfectly well they have some great products and switched-on staff...should I base my decision on the fact that they're let down by poor HR?

It's not a big/small divide either. I've seen small companies that simply don't bother to respond to their emails and big companies where you get a personalised touch - and replies straight away even at 8pm.

Right, off to find some more places to apply to. I'm not applying anywhere new that can't code a basic website though.

I don't have a stamp so I'm sending you this money instead

2008-12-04T09:21:00.000Z

As you all seemed to enjoy I don't have any money so am sending you this drawing I did of a spider instead a lot more than reading the stuff I actually write, you can have this one too:

I don't have a stamp so I'm sending you this money instead

Enjoy.

More Jazz Recommendations

2008-12-03T13:31:00.003Z

People often come up to me and say "I think I'd like jazz, but I don't really know where to get started or what to listen to - it's not like other music where you can just put on the radio. Can you recommend some stuff?". I'm not fooled, I know they're just desperate to be seen talking to me, to find out if my hair colour really is natural, to stare into my eyes...

..I digress.

1. Ramsey Lewis - Sassy Stew
Ramsey Lewis is a pianist probably most famous for his hit, The In Crowd - a perfect example of what a traditional jazz trio should sound like.

Sassy Stew, on the other hand, is more of a jazz funk track - a bit more Herbie Hancock than Bill Evans. The drums are great, the bassline and changes gorgeous and the alto sax hits notes that are barely even audible to anyone other than children and dogs. What I love best about this though, is that it's a pure jazz funk track, but the pianist's playing a real piano all the way through - rather than the keyboards that dominate the genre.

Well worth a listen.

2. Cal Tjader - Mambo Mindoro
Latin jazz is always popular. We've had club hits from Azymuth, Mas Que Nada has been on a million adverts and covered by some awful pop band. Recently, Bebel Gilberto has been letting down her father and her namesake (both Latin jazz greats) with some chart music.

Mambo Mindoro featuring percussionist Cal Tjader on the vibraphone is a great, and much less well known example of the genre. It's also highly worth a listen if, like me, you cringe at the mere word 'vibraphone' - mostly thanks to how awful it sounds within the music of the Modern Jazz Quartet. Trust me, he does it well.

3. Victor Wooten & Carter Beauford - Zenergy
This is not only a fascinating video - watching top-class musicians at work, but it's also a great track, easy to listen to whilst being extremely technically impressive. If the names Wooten & Beauford aren't enough to get you to listen, then note that Béla Fleck is playing banjo in this track too. Yes banjo. Yes, it works, yes he's that good. Just go listen already:

4. Lianne Carroll - Fever/This City Never Sleeps
It would be remiss of me to only mention past greats, and to just link you to freely available tracks that the artists possibly get pennies a year from. There's a decent jazz scene in any town, and if you're willing to make the effort to travel (central London's the only real UK hotspot) you can hear some unbelievably good performers.

Lianne Carroll is a pianist and vocalist playing around London and the UK, and is amazingly passionate and talented. For a preview of the recommended track, and a chance to buy your own copy, head over to her Amazon album page.

Better yet, go see a gig.

---------------

That's all for now. Enjoy.

I was planning to also recommend you go and see the Tie-Dye Quartet at The Yardbird tonight, 8.30pm, free entry, but that would be a bit tacky, so I won't.
Xx

I don't have any money so am sending you this drawing I did of a spider instead

2008-11-30T22:52:00.000Z

Too busy to actually write content, so here's some from elsewhere on the Internet.

I don't have any money so am sending you this drawing I did of a spider instead

Highly recommended.

Xx

Facebook 'lost' my data

2008-11-25T19:54:00.003Z

I recently received the following email:

'Unfortunately, the settings that control which email notifications get sent to you were lost. We're sorry for the inconvenience.

To reset your email notification settings, go to:

http://www.facebook.com/editaccount.php?notifications

Thanks,
The Facebook Team'

Interested to see what the Internet had to say about such a well executed hoax, I visited some search engines to take a look, and discovered it...wasn't.

Yes, seriously, someone with that many data servers (and presumably a whole ton of backups and archives) managed to lose a whole load of data. The O'Reilly blog post about the whole debacle is quite amusing, and I must admit I'm tempted to agree with their overall recommendation:

'It's time to fire the entire engineering staff.

And then go out and find software engineers who understand what the phrases "data redundancy", "system and data backup", and "system failover" actually mean.'

Amazing.

Swansea's only export

2008-11-25T11:09:00.002Z

Just as I was about to walk into a (cancelled...but that's another story) lecture today, I got a phone call from 01792 761030. Not recognising the dialling code (Swansea) I assumed that it must surely be someone calling to offer a job and asking whether £15k would be enough for the Golden Hello.

Having looked it up recently though, it appears to be someone randomly calling as many mobile numbers as they can. Quite what they do when they get through appears to be a subject of debate on the Internet. Either they hang up as soon as you answer, offer a new phone contract, or keep ringing and use a combination of the two approaches.

Bizarre. Maybe I'll ring them and offer them a new phone contract.

MTV African Music Awards

2008-11-22T23:33:00.002Z

I really can't do much better with this one than to just copy/paste and highlight:

From: MTV holds its first African music awards - Associated Press

Two Nigerian singers won top awards Saturday as MTV held its first-ever music award program for Africa, with acts from across the world's poorest continent being nominated for prizes.

Winners were selected by fans sending text messages, said Alison Reid, a spokeswoman for MTV Networks Africa.

And yet, after all that, it's still more credible than Eurovision.

I love mass production

2008-11-21T21:56:00.000Z

Take a look at this video from the BBC:

Inside a frozen pizza factory

When I first saw the link I was expecting some Panorama style hidden camera tour of immigrants working in amazingly unhygienic conditions - as with the ready meals for supermarkets a while ago. Instead, we're at the other end of the spectrum of journalistic integrity, with a straight-up presentation from a product development manager for the factory.

I prefer fresh food, though I'll happily eat frozen stuff like this. What I really love though, is seeing these mass-production factories in operation. There's something incredible about the precision and efficiency and ingenuity that's gone into every tiny part of the system...I almost wish I'd taken up engineering rather than compsci.

When I worked there, I was always really impressed by the level of detail that went into the efficiency of processes in a McDonald's restaurant. I still am, to some degree, but it's all too often ruined by the human element - which leads me to wonder why on earth such establishments are not more automated. The quality would be better, the waiting times lower and the food safer.

Plus, it'd kill off a bunch of low paying jobs and ensure that graduates weren't just ending up on the dole. Seems to be win-win for the economy. Get to work folks.

On responses to email

2008-11-20T15:52:00.002Z

I really do quite like it when I see people and organisations acting professionally. I also get quite annoyed when I see them not bothering to do so. Being a geek, I see a lot of this through the Web, and often get in touch with a short (generally fairly friendly) note to let people know if they could do with improving their service (or indeed, if they're already providing a great one).

I have, however, noticed quite a disparity in the replies I get. I'd have thought that the ones I send positive feedback to would just nod and get on with their work. The ones I send negative feedback to would immediately look into the problem, take some positive action and get back to me with an apology and a listing of how they intend to improve.

As you might have guessed, that's not always what happens. Here's some key culprits:

People failing with mailing lists
Here's an example - today I got an email which was sent to all undergraduates in the school of engineering and applied science at Aston. There's a perfectly good seas_ug mailing list which would hide all of the addresses the message was sent to. Alternatively, there's always the 'bcc' field. However, this mailer chose to put all ~2000 email addresses into the 'to' field, for any enterprising student to harvest and sell/abuse.

I sent a link to the Data Protection Act to the offender, and some kindly advice about how to use mailing lists and email in general. Based on past experience of sending similar emails, I'm near certain I won't get a response.

Edit: What're the odds? They replied a couple of hours later. This is literally the first time someone's replied to such an email. Their excuse of 'incompetence' wasn't really too reassuring though, especially as the damage has already been done. They seem a nice enough person though.

Recruitment agencies/departments
I've been applying for some jobs recently. Some of the companies have unbelievably awful processes - I actually decided not to go for one particular job because their recruitment process is that bad. If they don't care enough about quality to at least glance at what they're putting live, I don't think I want to work there. I won't name names, as the agency which put up that tat is also processing some of my other applications at the moment.

For the companies that have been particularly awful (or particularly good) I've sent some communication outlining this, and suggesting simple methods for improvement. The good feedback has gotten me a 100% response, whereas the negative has gotten me a 0% response. Presumably if they're so unprofessional they put that kind of application process live, they're also unprofessional enough not to care.

People putting information online in proprietary formats
Hint: Not everyone has a copy of Microsoft Office installed. Yes, I'm aware there are sub-par tools I can use to get a rough idea of the content of your .docx, but if you put one up online you can expect an email asking for an open document type.

Feedback (and a document anyone can read) is about 50% from people I email with this one. Although, that's dropping since I started mailing recruitment agencies that are (shudder) using .dot templates to, presumably, automatically extract data into their Access databases. Classy. Remember that these are technology companies that I'm applying to.

--

Right, enough bitching. Time to go back to coursework..

Depressing

2008-11-15T16:46:00.002Z

A while back, ZDNet reported that:

"IT graduates have the highest unemployment rate across all degree subjects at almost double the average for students leaving UK university courses...IT graduates have higher unemployment rates than students in performing arts (6.6 percent), media studies (8.6 percent), history (6.8 percent) and art and design (10.2 percent)."

Today, I'm guessing that Icelandic Studies and Finance graduates are probably a bit worse off, but it's still rather difficult to find a job.

So, who's up for a PhD then? :)