Stats

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

_{Clicky to enlarge}

Wii Prayer

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

..had to share this one:



Xx

Edit: Image fixed.

I'm in London..

..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

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

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

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

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

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

--

<sub>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.</sub>

Making XKCD Slightly Worse

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

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

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

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

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

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

1. Simply throwing it at a wall (the back sometimes falls off),
2. Setting it on fire (there's now a small raised area on the back cover) and
3. 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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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..

..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

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

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

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

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

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:


<sub>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.</sub>

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

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

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

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

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

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