Year: 2006

Things are about to get funky around here, I think. In no particular order:

• I’ve updated The Daily Grind to the latest Movable Type. As a result, all the spam protection stuff has changed – we’ll see how well it performs. TrackBacks are back on for the moment, but I’ll need to keep an eye on processor usage. Ironically, my hosting plan is total overkill for the bandwidth and disk space I’m using, but the last time TrackBacks were turned on, all the spam brought the server to its knees. Oops.
• I’m going to nuke this template and start again… most likely to end up with something that looks rather similar. So at some point, it’s all going to look very odd. Bear with me when that happens. On the plus side – I’ll make the fonts a little larger this time around.

Meanwhile, outwith the Daily Grind:

• I’ve a project proposal in with NESTA that they rather like. Actually, that’s an understatement, and we’re all terribly excited about it. So far, we have pilot stage funding allocated and agreement on the goals, and there’s been an expression of interest from the big-wigs. The next step is to plonk a brief of the plan in front of them and say ‘this is what we intend to do’; so long as there’s still at least interest, we’ll press on with the pilot. Funding the full project could be tricky/weird/cobbled together, but that’s (a.) next month’s problem, and (b.) one I’d like to have. To NESTA’s credit – this has all happened in the last two weeks. Speedy.
• Fun night last night at The Stand, watching Gavin and Scrap It! presenter Will Andrews try out sketch material from The Comedy Unit. Will’s in-development sitcom for Channel 4 is very, very strange and potentially very, very funny.
• These are a terrific idea, but be sure to read the comments about environmental impact.

Bob Park. If you haven’t come across him, let me introduce you – Bob writes a weekly column for the American Physical Society titled What’s New. It’s a short, punchy little piece, with the emphasis on ‘punchy,’ since Bob certainly doesn’t pull them. Week in, week out, he launches broadsides at the Christian Right, manned spaceflight, energy policy… wherever he sees science being disregarded or misused, he’ll wade in swinging. Go Bob!

This week, one unlucky focus of his attention is the American Association of Petroleum Geologists, who have recently announced the recipient of their annual Journalism Award, to be granted in April. It’s… novelist Michael Crichton, being recognised for his recent best-seller State of Fear. Which – in the manner of Crichton – is a world-spanning conspiracy thriller taking as its premise the idea that global warming might not be for real.

Let me recap: Learned society. Journalism Award. Novel. Global warming hoax.

You couldn’t make this stuff up. Thanks to Bob Park, we don’t have to – he’ll point us at it. Bob’s own book, Voodoo Science – the Road From Foolishness to Fraud, is well worth a look too.

A week or two back, I mentioned that the council had nicked the road outside my flat, planing it away while my back was turned. Unfortunately, in their enthusiasm they managed to skim the top off a water pipe, with the result that – for the first time in two hundred years – Loch Skirving saw the light of day once more. This historic landmark was the location of the last great inland naval battle under sail, and more recently of a few traffic cones and a roadworks sign.

It’s also been frozen over on at least two nights, which has presented interesting navigational problems, since it stretches right across the road. And the traffic is cars, of course, hurtling down the road at impressively ludicrous speeds, suddenly finding themselves with a lack of traction even the Conservative Party would find impressive.

Alas, it seems the noble Loch’s days are numbered. They number three, in fact, for on Monday Scottish Water are turning up to drain and generally fix it. They’re also turning off the mains for the whole area, and warn there’ll be considerable noise. All this on a charming notice, posted on all the close doors around the area… except mine.

Given that the Loch sits right outside my front door, you’d think this was a bit of an oversight, no?

First up: I’m fine. Thanks to everyone who’s written and called for being so lovely. But really, I’m fine. No, I’m not quite sure why, either, but I am.

But now, this blog will return to its usual mix of sparse posting, rubbish, and dull geekery. I know you wouldn’t have it any other way.

First up: the curious case of the aeroplane on the conveyor belt. This is the sort of question that’s famously prevalent in Cambridge physics (so… you’d think I’d be better at them, but sadly not). In this case, however, there’s a crucial additional piece of information – the precise wording of the question is utterly dreadful. Once you know that, it’s entirely obvious that the aeroplane takes off (though of course in any real-world situation it would suffer horrific undercarriage mechanical failure and, very likely, grease fires. But this is a physics question so deal with it).

Next: Frasier Spears being deliciously cynical about the Danish Cartoons farce. Of course, the joy of a conspiracy is that one can usually construct arguments why either side might play the same game, which is the case here.

A very quick link: A Mac OS X weather widget that uses the BBC as its data source, rather than the flaky US-centric thing the standard Apple widget uses.

And finally: I had an entertainingly rambling conversation with my sister last night, who was holed up in some ghastly hotel near Euston between a council meeting of the Theatrical Marketing Association and another meeting with PR types. The latter thanks to a stage adaptation of a TV show that Kate’s theatre is putting on. Now, I’ve known my sister all my life – obviously – but she still surprises me on a regular basis. Last night’s shocks were: (1.) she can do a better-than-passable impression of girlie London PR types, which is so not her I found it slightly alarming, and (2.) she’s learning about the pros and cons of different SQL servers.

Understand that Kate is a fluffy arty type who’s worked in theatre management and marketing for about fifteen years: she really has no business knowing more about thread-safe transactions than I do, let alone load-balancing server configurations.

I’m unreasonably proud of her.

Digital watches. I’ve never really got on with them. I mean, it’s all well and good telling me that the time is ’13:03′ or whatever, but before I can make any sense of that I first have to parse it into something more human, like ‘just turned one.’ This is why I’ve always got on better with analogue watches – I just don’t need to know the time that accurately.

It’s a source of mild irritation, then, that my various computers all dutifully scurry off to talk to an atomic clock in Germany on a (presumably) regular basis, and smugly present little digital clocks that are accurate to tiny divisions of time than I personally consider to be entirely decent only within the confines of a physics laboratory. While such profligate accuracy may not be, strictly, wasteful, I do consider it… impolite.

For years, what I’ve wanted is a clock that can know the time as accurately as it likes – to the femtosecond if it wishes, I really don’t care – so long as it tells me the time on my terms. That is: vaguely. I want a digital clock that says ‘About noon.’ Or ‘just on quarter-to-three.’ Or ‘Time for elevenses.’

Imagine my joy, then, when I stumbled over FuzzyClock, which offers precisely this for the menu bar of my Mac. Hurrah!

Also of significance: the Talus Watch project, which is aiming to do essentially the same thing, but in a genuine wrist watch. Fantastic!

Tip of the hat to Martin and Gizmodo for the spot.

“Better to be born lucky than good,’ goes the old aphorism. Do you think there’s an exchange rate? Because, if there is, I’d be interested in trading some ‘good’ for ‘lucky.’ I’m cocky enough to believe I’ve a surfeit of ‘good,’ but right now I don’t feel like there’s a whole lot of ‘lucky’ floating around and waiting for a moment to make me happy.

The regular reader (hello, regular reader, how are you? That’s nice. The kids? Oh, excellent. Mind how you go) will have noticed that I don’t often blog about personal stuff. OK, so I don’t often blog about work stuff either – I mostly blog about inconsequential shit, come to think of it – but I certainly don’t blog about personal stuff. This likely explains the modest audience size of this blog, but also why I’m not ashamed to admit its existence to work colleagues. It’s a trade-off, see?

In a mild break from tradition, however, I’ll make a brief note. Pretty much purely in the interests of soliciting sympathy, you understand. Here we go:

Today, after a bit of a palaver, I singularly failed to win either the job, or the girl.

Result: I’ve had better days.

That is all.

Rhubarb. Marvelous stuff, rhubarb. My family refers to the ‘ancestral rhubarb,’ which has been passed down through several generations, and when I’m in Leeds I often enjoy a visit to the National Rhubarb Collection at the Royal (coughNortherncough) Horticultural Society’s base at Harlow Carr, near Harrogate. The finest rhubarb in the country, of course, hailing from the famed ‘Rhubarb Triangle,’ between Pontefract, Wakefield and Leeds (or is it Wakefield-Leeds-Morley?). At one time, ninety per cent of the world’s rhurbarb production came from this area, and it was whisked to Covent Garden via the daily Rhubarb Express.

It was with delight and, indeed, pride, therefore, that I espied the attached advertisement in Monday’s Guardian. A special reader offer for this finest of vegetables! Oh, happy day!

Be sure to check out the magnificent Rhubarb Compendium – online since 1994, no less – for a detailed history, recipe suggestions, and a guide to using rhubarb as a hair dye. Also be sure to explore the Wakefield Council Rhubarb pages, and consider attending the 2006 Rhubarb Festival, or ordering the DVD.

Hey, Martin! Remember that X-ray image you took of your Newton, that Lucy scanned, I futzed around with, and that used to be on the Pondlife website? It’s the ‘most interesting’ Flikr hit for ‘Newton’. Cool!

I nip down to the shops, and what happens? By the time I return, the council have nicked my road. Planed it clean off. Pfah!

The notice of work was helpfully posted on our doors seven hours after work had commenced, but luckily I’d parked around the corner and therefore my car wasn’t one of those towed away. Meanwhile, I’m even more baffled about the roadwork done late last week; two chaps turned up and dug a small patch out of every junction down the main drag, went away for two days, then came back and filled them in again. There were no cables involved – I looked. They don’t take core samples of roadbeds they’re thinking of replacing, do they?

Still, I’m looking forward to having a nice shiny new road surface. Middle of next week, they reckon, though presumably that’s only touch-dry and we’ll have to leave it for a good few days to set properly. With heavy frost forecast for the weekend, too. Hmm.

Cabel Sasser of Panic blogs about Nintendo’s DS game 東北大学未来科学技術共同研究センター川島隆太教授監修　脳を鍛える大人のＤＳトレーニング. Which, he assures us, translates loosely as ‘Brain Training.’ It’s a cartridge of logic puzzles and the like that’s sold over 400,000 copies. In a week. He has some interesting observations on the demographics (which isn’t a phrase I type very often), and about the environment that’s allowed the not-game to take off.

Aside from the fact that there isn’t enough madshit Japanese lunacy in the West, I’m still fascinated by the continuing popularity of brain-teasing games. Crosswords and Countdown are well-established, of course, but my mum’s been doing logic puzzles for decades, and judging by the range of books in the local newsagent, she’s not alone. What’s surprising about the recent Sudoku craze – aside from my having missed it so totally I first noticed the game when literally everybody in my Victoria Line carriage was playing it, which slightly freaked me out – is the range of ages to which it appeals.

And then, of course, we have all the older stuff, from tamagotchi to Rubik’s cube, and de Bono’s stuff (anyone else remember The L Game?).

Hmm. Perhaps it’s time to find the next de Bono.