Ruth, JTA and I had a fabulous Valentine’s Day evening, last night. Over the last few years we seem to have drifted into treating Valentine’s Day as being a general celebration of love, and those we love, rather than specifically about any particular relationship, as Ruth explained quite eloquently to the student journalist that interviewed us the previous day – more on that in a future blog post.

You can tell that it's Valentine's Day, because there are even more flowers than usual on New Earth.

It’s true. Anniversaries and our “date nights†are already an opportunity to celebrate the individual relationships between Ruth and I, and between Ruth and JTA. Meanwhile, JTA and I’s “Greek nights†are our chance to reinforce our platonic bond (over copious quantities of beer and whisky, and generally, diversion into gossip, public transport, and philosophy – often in that order). Valentine’s Day is one of our slightly-rarer “vee nightsâ€: when the three of us make a deliberate effort to do something special as a threesome.

Paul‘s away this week, so we had New Earth to ourselves, and so mushrooms were on the menu (Paul really doesn’t like mushrooms, and the rest of us do, so it’s become a special treat that we eat lots of mushrooms on nights that we’re eating without him). We set a candlelit table, and I had a go at making a mushroom wellington, which turned out remarkably well despite the fact that I’ve cooked virtually nothing involving pastry for over a decade. Keeping with our “food that’s rolled up†theme, Ruth had produced a fantastic black forest roulade.

Mushroom wellington, courtesy of MushroomInfo.com.

And so the evening wore on, and we ate copious quantities of doughnuts, and drank a lot of pink fizzy stuff, and re-watched Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl.

Celebrating love (for as many people as you have) without buying into Valentine’s Day consumerism. Yeah, that sounds pretty good to me.

Well, my long winded whine about my life will have to wait, if it ever gets completed. Shows what happens when I don't just get on with something.

Things are not particularly brilliant at the minute, most of them revolve around work, lack of time generally and health still not quite sorting itself out.

Still, had a brilliant weekend in London with some old friends from uni. We realised as that particular group we hadn't been together in the same room for about 9 years, but you couldn't really. Between hot water bottle babies, pea soup serving missions and star feet, I haven't laughed that much in a very long time.

Work today hasn't been great for a variety of reasons, the net result being a few apologies tomorrow, for taking it out on people who had no reason to be on the end of my frustration.

It's strange where perspective can come from. It can be a comment from a child, something you hear randomly or in this case a death.

Tonight my Great-Uncle Clarence died. At least I think that's the relation, he's my grandad's brother.

The death was the result of a long battle with cancer, so is not unexpected. He has also been in quite some pain recently; was sent home, given 24hrs max and a decent supply of morphine, so this was all to be expected in a way. Doesn't make it any easier for my grandparent's though. Grandma is apparently quite upset and this just re-enforce to grandad (Popa)that, "he's next."

I didn't really know uncle Clarence. The most I remember seeing of him was at my great grandad's 80th Birthday party, where I met some of his grandchildren and discovered I wasn't the oldest grandchild overall, and then at the coroners court when establishing what had happened to great-grandad, when someone mowed him down on a pelican crossing. We talked a little about fencing, and it turns out he was into it when he was younger and said he'd fenced one of the German olympic champions before. Foil was his preferred weapon I think.

That is pretty much it. I don't think Popa and his brother were particularly close, at least they didn't seem to be. But they were with him over the last few days, so I guess they didn't hate each other either.

Arrangements will be made. I don't think I'm required to attend, and dad certainly can't.

So, Rest In Peace, Uncle Clarence. Thank you for the pleasure you gave to many and may you be free from the pain you were in and thank you for entering my life randomnly once more to grant me perspective.

Thank you.

I can’t remember how I first heard about Trellech, but it’s been on my To Visit list for quite a while. Fate conspired to combine a rare Saturday off with a beautiful sunny and frosty day, which felt like the perfect time to visit.

Trellech is in the Wye Valley, and is said to have been the largest settlement in medieval Wales. Nowadays it’s noted for its standing stones and sacred well.

After a quick stop at the lovely Lion Inn (which had a very welcome open fire), we went to visit Harold’s Stones, so called because, according to legend, three of Harold’s Chieftains died in battle at this spot, although the stones pre-date Harold by a couple of thousand years. Another legend says that they were thrown by a giant called Jack O Kent as he was having a competition with the devil!

The Virtuous Well, or St Anne’s Well, is just off the road, but felt like the middle of nowhere. The name is derived from Annis, the Celtic Goddess of water and rivers, but become the well of St Anne when Christianised. The water was historically considered particularly beneficial for ‘complaints peculiar to women’!

The trees overhanging the well were full of offerings, strips of cloth which have been tied to the branches. Apparently fairies dance round the well on Midsummer’s Eve, so that might be a good time to go if you fancy a visit!

It really was such a beautiful day when we went, frosty and bright.

“We have to split up… in case somebody better comes along!â€

Either from our own real life or from popular culture and the media, we’ve all come across a statement like that. It’s rarely quite so brazen: instead, it’s sometimes concealed behind another reason, whether tactful or simply false. But it still reeks of a lack of commitment and an unwillingness to “give it a try.â€

With thanks for Flickr user "i.am.rebecca".

However, it turns out that there’s actually a solid mathematical basis for it. Let’s assume for a moment that you:

Assuming that all of the above is true, what strategy should you employ in order to maximise your chance of getting yourself the best possible lover (for you)?

The derivation of the optimal policy for the secretary problem.

It turns out that clever (and probably single) mathematicians have already solved this puzzle for you. They call it the Secretary Problem, because they’d rather think about it as being a human resources exercise, rather than a reminder of their own tragic loneliness.

A Mathematical Strategy for Monogamy

Here’s what you do:

And there you have it! Mathematically-speaking, this strategy gives you a 37% chance of ending up with the person who – of all the people you’d have had the chance to date – is the best. 37% doesn’t sound like much, but from a mathematical standpoint, it’s the best you can do with monogamy unless you permit yourself to date exes, or to cheat.

Or to conveniently see your current partner as being better than you would have objectively rated them otherwise. That’s what love will do for you, but that’s harder to model mathematically.

Of course, if everybody used this technique (or even if enough people used it that you might be reasonably expected to date somebody who did, at some point in your life), then the problem drifts into the domain of game theory. And by that point, you’d do better to set up a dating agency, collect everybody’s details, and use a Stable Marriage problem solution to pair everybody up.

This has been a lesson in why mathematicians shouldn’t date.

Building on the success of last year’s Argh! It Burns! Night, we Earthlings once again hosted our “alternative†Burns Night this year, last weekend. Yes, we know that’s a little late for Burns Night, but many of us have been away touring Scotland or on honeymoon or otherwise busy.

The hallway whiteboard welcomes the guests. Why doesn't everybody have a hallway whiteboard in their house?

Again, the idea of the night is loosely based on Burns Night: we eat a meal of haggis, neeps, and tatties, accompanied by a dram of whisky (or Irn-Bru – Scotland’s other national drink – in the case of Paul, who doesn’t like whisky). But instead of making readings of classic folks literature and poetry, we put a twist on it by performing readings of really bad fan fiction.

At the appointed hour - five minutes to five - the whiskies are opened and drinking commences.

We got off to a late start because Liz and Simon got caught up in the heavy snowfall that poured down across this end of the country. But that wasn’t a problem, because the rest of us – Ruth, JTA, Paul, Matt P and I – just had longer to drink and catch up with one another’s lives while we waited.

As the snow began to fall, Ruth and I went out to make snow angels. So excited by the snow, Ruth didn't even bother to put her shoes on first.

To start the evening, Ruth – as last year’s winner – performed a reading of Garfield: King of Liberty, another Garfield-themed fanfic from “ShakespeareHemmingway“, the author of her winning piece from last year. I’m still not convinced that he’s not a troll, but he is pretty damn funny.

Highlight: With these words Garfield and his Liberty Ladies made love of passion that sparked skies like fireworks as they rubbed their bodies liked sand on water. Garfield delivered pleasure into their bodies like manly post office man delivering package of love explosion. Their love exploded like cannonball shots into night and went on for hours and days.

This year's prize - a can of premixed Famous Grouse whisky and caffeine-free cola.

First among this year’s competitors was Matt, reading Misadventures Of The ‘Tragedy’ Dorm, a 20%-homoerotic, 80%-creepy attempt to bring a variety of Shakespeare’s characters into the modern age.

Highlight: Romeo having a rant about what coloured board shorts to wear. “Which colour should I weeeeaaar!†Yep. All the usual stuff. 

JTA performs his reading.

Second was Simon, reading The Death Of Vince Noir, a Mighty Boosh fic, apparently (hampered by the fact that many of his audience have little to no experience of The Mighty Boosh). I hate to spoil it for you, but the twist is that it’s all a dream.

Highlight: When Mick Jagger stepped into the strange Daulston second-hand shop he was greeted by an odd sight. Instead of the screaming trendy fan who he had expected to meet, he was greeted by a giant ape comforting a man in the corner. Specifically, a bald man wearing last month’s leopard skin catsuit, wailing mournfully into handfuls of raven-black hair in a puddle of his own tears. The whole thing looked freakily fucked up.

Liz tries to explain why her story makes sense, and fails. Miserably.

Third up was Liz – strange that the random order put the three “new†players first – reading the first of two chapters of PokeAccident, a first-person perspective on a long bus trip with a pokémon with a full bladder. It reads like it’s been written by an austistic young teen with a urination fetish. And no grasp of geography.

Highlight: Charizard looked bored, and we were past Londen and into Edinbrugh, where it was raining. Now Charizard is used to rain, but he was now horrified to see it raining, it increased his need heavily by 15%, 38% of his meter were full , Charizard really didn’t see this coming at all, he tried to ignore it, but the rain was loud, making it hard to do so.

Ruth & JTA brace themselves for another piece of fiction.

Paul provided us with Halflife: Fulllife Consequences: the story of John, the brother of Half-Life‘s Gordon Freeman. It’s littered with awful spelling and abysmal grammar, all wrapped around a plot that makes no sense whatsoever.

Highlight: John Freeman had to go faster like the speed of sound and got there fast because Gordon needed him where he was. John Freeman looked at road signs and saw “Ravenholm†with someons writing under it saying “u shudnt come here†so John Freeman almost turned around but heard screaming like Gordon so he went faster again.

Matt, Paul, and Ruth listen as I read my story.

Ruth had settled on Frosty The Snowman!, an unusual take on the classic story, featuring lots of swearing and an Iron Man crossover, all in just over 200 words.

Highlight: With the power of magic, the snowman came to life and started to dance a bit, scaring the crap out of the children. “Hi there children! I’m Frosty the Fuckin’ Snowman! Follow me!†He said happily as he marched down the road. 

Simon & Liz listen to JTA's story. For some reason, they're not crying.

When it came to his turn, JTA has selected Legolas, now best known as “Legolas by Laura†after its author (who just coincidentally shares her name with the main character of the story – always a good starting point for a piece of really bad fanfic). With incredible run-on sentences and a complete disregard for any semblance of continuity, this is truly a work of epic failness.

Highlight: Mean while Legolas got to the cell where Laura is.Legolas saidâ€Laura are you in thereâ€and then Laura saidâ€Oh Legolas you finally cameâ€and then Legolas saidâ€are you alrightâ€and then Laura saidâ€no I am not alrightâ€and then Legolas saidâ€they bet you up and raped you also the Dark lord gave you the posionâ€and then Laura saidâ€how did you know thatâ€.Then Legolas saidâ€when I was your age they did the samething to meâ€.

An unfilled ordering/voting slip from Argh! It Burns! Night 2012.

I came last. This year, I’d chosen what is probably the only piece of fanfiction ever to be set in the universe of one of the worst video games ever made, Desert Bus. The story is Desert Bus Ride #1 – A Romance Story and for Ladies, and it makes about as much sense as actually playing Desert Bus in the first place.

Highlight: When they arrive, boyfriend was got shot. “He am hit by bullets!†Margaret thought very loudly. “This is all because terrorists!†Mr. Oakland punched fist into air with angry. He was angry.

Liz is awarded with her "prize".

After what turned out to be a remarkably close competition, Liz just barely beat JTA and won herself the “prizeâ€. In accordance with the traditions of Argh! It Burns! Night, we passed the drink around and all suffered in it together: a metaphor for the experience of the evening.

Having performed a reading of "Legolas" earlier, the winner's drink is the second-most disgusting thing JTA's had in his throat all evening.

For some reason, Simon actually enjoyed the drink, and finished the can on Liz’s behalf. Maybe he enjoyed the fanfiction, too. Maybe he’s a replicant. It’s just impossible to tell what we know for sure about him, after a revelation like that.

Simon "enjoys" the "beverage".

All things considered, a spectacular second Argh! It Burns! Night. If you’d like to come next year, let me know and we’ll try to arrange for it. Just remember: if you don’t suffer, you haven’t had enough fun yet.

Oh; and the following day was Matt's birthday, so we forced him to celebrate a little before he got back on the road.

On Sunday I risked the wrath of the Bristol curse (which makes me lost, every bloody time I go there), and went to a hooping workshop.

Of course I got lost on the way there. Thanks to Murray (my satnav) for deciding he would switch off just as I got to Bristol, I had to rely on panicking and going round in circles. Until I eventually stopped to check the map on my phone and found I’d ended up a couple of minutes away somehow! The hoops on the gate gave it away.

So I was a bit stressed when I got there. And it didn’t help that I haven’t really picked up a hoop since moving house last autumn (except for once when I managed to scratch the ceiling and quickly put it away). I was also only turning up to the third workshop of three, so I was wondering what I’d missed. Plus it was blimmin freezing.

I was soon put at ease. Baxter is an amazing teacher. The workshop, called Open Air, looked at using the hoop as a tool in movement meditation practice. We were led through a number of different exercises, from learning how to hoop warrior-style, to exercises without the hoop such as blindfolded dancing meditations. Once I got over the fear that I was going to be the only one still moving while everyone else had taken their blindfolds off (!) I found these exercises particularly beautiful, even if the hooping is what I’d gone for. It reminded me of how I felt at the 5Rhythms workshop at last year’s Hoop Gathering. I love having the freedom to just move in mad, crazy ways, and knowing everyone else was blindfolded definitely helped!

It was such an inspiring day. I’ve been sending out late night emails to local halls to see if I can take my hoops there for a practice session, so I don’t go knocking chunks out of the flat! You never know, one day Dinky Poo might follow Bristol in being Hoop Community of the Year! Erm…

 

So I figured I’m past due telling you all about wrote a short intro to a few weeks ago. The event was a stunning success, with our biggest ever crowd joining us for a day of talking tech, the web and the world though the medium of Welsh. There were some pretty cool sessions going, including a session on kinect hacking, hyper-local news media and creating iBooks. Not to mention of course the frankly marvellous Haclediad…

I obviously couldn’t waste the opportunity to climb up on a soap-box, and did a session where I shared my thoughts on applying Jeff Jarvis‘“What would Google Do?†principles to broadcasting (in the session, I asked people to imagine what an S4C 2.0 might look like, adopting Jarvis’ principles of becoming a network, sharing content and participating in the community it lives in). The talk appeared to be well-received, with some positive comments afterwards.

I was pleasantly surprised to see members of S4C’s governing body come to see what was going on. They asked some questions about what I was suggesting, and seemed to take it all on board. I had quite a long conversation with them the night before, and was pleased that they were at least saying all the right things. I’d also exchanged a few messages on Twitter with Ian Jones (S4C’s new Chief Exec), who apologised for not being able to make it, but was keen to get more input on modernising the channel (a theme he’s discussed at length in press interviews he’s done recently). I’ve actually been pleasantly surprised by Ian Jones’ level of engagement on Twitter, and he certainly seems to have a pretty good understanding of what their challenges are, and engaging with all the stakeholders.

I did however get the sense that the guys from the Authority were giving me the hard sell over Ian Jones’ appointment, which I guess is partly their job… but as I’ve said before (and to them), it’s one thing to say it, it’s quite another to actually do it, and all eyes are on the new CEO to see if he delivers on his early promise.

I’m really looking forward to seeing what comes out as a result of Hacio’r Iaith. A lot of very clever and talented people left with a lot of ideas, which should make Hacio’r Iaith 2013 even better.

B

While JTA was off breaking parts of his body (and showing off his injuries on Reddit) with Ruth on the second part of their honeymoon, the week before last, I too took some time off work in order to have a bit of a holiday. I’d originally hoped to get some cheap domestic skiing in, but the weather forecast showed that Scotland was going to consist of exactly two weather conditions, depending on where you were:

Scotland. Snowy, but with 55mph winds. It looks like this.

This kind-of put a dampener on my plans to get some snowsports done, but I’d already taken the time off work so I re-arranged my plans into a “make it up as you go along†tour of the highlands and lowlands of Scotland.

Highlights of my little tour included:

Ben Nevis. It looks slightly less-hostile here than it did on the day of my ascent.

A climber fights to free his axe from the wall.

The Falkirk Wheel. Photo by Sean Mack.

The Wallace Monument, photographed by Finlay McWalter.

All in all, a delightful little tour, particularly impressive considering that it was launched into with the minimum possible amount of planning.

Looking Back

On this day in 2011 I launched FreeDeedPoll.org.uk, a site that tries to make it as easy as possible for British citizens to change their names (and have those new names accepted as being legally-recognised).

Generate free UK deeds of name change at freedeedpoll.org.uk.

The thing that people often don’t realise is that, as a British citizen, you have the right to be known by pretty-much any name you like. You don’t need a solicitor to change your name. You don’t even need any money. You can just start using it. A deed poll, which you can make all by yourself for free, is just a piece of paper on which you write a promise that you consider your “new†name to be your primary moniker, and not your “old†one.

Over the last year, almost 3,000 deed polls have been generated using the site, including ones for my partner Ruth (who opted to keep her maiden name as a middle name after she got married) and my friend Jen (who now has among the coolest – and most hippyish – collection of names I’ve ever seen). As to how many of the other thousands of deed polls have actually been used, I simply don’t know: as a commitment to privacy, no logs are kept of the names people enter onto the form, so for all I know there are 2,000 all the same and 998 “blank†submissions.

Looking Forward

I’ve become a minor Internet guru on the topic of name changes, it turns out. The other week, a transgendered stranger contacted me via the “chat to Dan†link, to ask about the legal aspects of their (slightly more-complex than most) case for changing their name. And because I’m a fan of helping people, I did a little research with them in order to find the answers. I felt the need to keep stressing that IANAL , but I’m pretty sure I managed to help, anyway.

And over the New Year, when there were a few days of downtime for the site (I was part of an exodus of domains from my SOPA-supporing previous registrar, and they made the process difficult), I received messages from people asking when it would be back up again, so it’s obviously getting some use.

Most recently, a few days ago, a stranger emailed me asking for advice on the legal issues in changing the names of his children. After doing the necessary research, I’m now thinking of expanding the site to make this easier, too.

A (sample) deed poll document generated by freedeedpoll.org.uk.

A strange feeling for me has been that this project is, and has been for the last year, “finishedâ€. I’m not very good at finishing technical projects: one of the biggest and most important things that I’ve worked on – Three Rings – is now in its tenth year and shows no sign of being “finishedâ€. So it feels odd to have developed a website that’s complete, done and dusted, and probably won’t require more than a modicum of maintenance over the coming decades to keep it running.

It’s good, though, that I’ve been able to help people with something about which far too many are underinformed. It gives me a warm fuzzy feeling, and I like it.

To mark the ocassion, I’ve updated the open-source version of the tool so that it works “out of the boxâ€: it now includes all of the (free) fonts you need to get started, and can be used without setting up reCAPTCHA if you like. For more information about the history of the project, see my project page about it.

This blog post is part of the On This Day series, in which Dan periodically looks back on years gone by.

This post proposes to be bigger on the photos than the words, and brief nevertheless. Still, time I did an update.

Ruth & I postponed honeymooning after the wedding, going for a more traditional ‘save up for a bigger one later’ motif, which had the added benefit of giving us time to learn German first.

Then we decided not to go to Germany after all, and spent one week at a spa in Wales, and one in La Clusaz, a ski resort in France. I tried skiing in Chamonix with Gareth & Penny a few years back, and crippled my knees something shocking; given the unhelpful twist my shins make it’s about twice as much work for me to snowplough as it is for everyone else, which severely hampered my capacity to enjoy it.

Then last spring we went out to visit Owen in Meribel, where I continued to think the Alps are amazing, but was too busy with reading for my Diss to try and improve things (besides which, last year was afwul for snow late season). While we were out there, though, we met some awesome people who put the case that I should try snowboarding as something liable to combine the fun going-fast-downhill-with-spectacular-views bit of skiing with all the reduced horrific-boots-and-knees-discomfort of boarding.

So we took a couple of intensive jump-start lessons at Milton Keynes and duly headed out in search of some actual mountains.

 

After a lesson, and looking consequently tired. Also slightly distracted by the two people in the background who, if I remember rightly, couldn’t agree on whether or not Savoie belonged to the Nords.

 

It was really good. Button lifts confounded me all the first day, and I fetched myself a whacking great bruise when I came straight down on my tailbone, and when we had a powder day I had to take my hired board back for a wax, but Daniel, our awesome mountain/ice/anything that looks insanely hard work-climbing instructor did a really good job and I was doing pretty damn well by the end of our booked lessons on Wednesday (we wanted some free time to relax, too!). Plus there is something tremendously satisfying in going fast enough to create the sensation of wind whilst not on some mechanical thing.

 

I don’t remember exactly what Daniel (in blue) is saying here, but I am 100% sure it is either ‘tourne, tourne,’ or ‘compass!’. Awesome guy.

So aye, after a few years of feeling thoroughly grumpy because I wasn’t physically cut out for skiiing I have found a snowsport that fits! Give me a while to save up, and I shall have to get back out there (althoughI’m also thinking a post-season return to MK to keep my hand in wouldn’t hurt, either…)

 

Also, our chalet was awesome, which does make a difference. Plus, we got some killer views from the balcony, particularly in the sun towards the end of the week:

Just behind my head is the gondola up to the Beauregard Plateau, with the tail end of the long black run La Noire to its left. At right, the blue Guy Périllat also returns from Beauregard whilst Les Riffoids is a very gentle nursery slope.

 

 

Oh… Yeah. Also I fell somehow and apparently rolled over my own wrist and fractured the only rarely buggered pisiform bone. Apparently you can tell it’s broken on an X-ray, if you avoid the pitfall my lovely French doctor fell into and don’t get too distracted by my weird knuckles.

Not Owning a lightbox, I had to jury-rig one with a velux window. I’m pretty sure there aren’t really any trees visible in my bones.

Breaking the right wrist turns out to be a bit of a bugger, since my left arm is not only fairly malcoordinated but also unused to work, and liable to get tired quickly. And I can’t hold books properly at the moment. So I have bought a Kindle.

Mmm. We’ll see how that goes. But, in the event I turn out to like it, having one will save a significant quantity of luggage space next time we go out, which I can instead devote to the wrist guards they told my not to buy in Milton Keynes (don’t get me wrong, my doctor was awesome, but was totally cheated out of a run down Périllat, and that wants fixing…)

And that is what I did on my holidays. Which is a good title, because writing with my left hand does make it look like I’m back in Mrs Sutton’s class again…

 

I can’t believe I went to Egypt all those months ago without constantly playing this song. It only occurred to me today!

I adore this song! It was the last track on a compilation I bought in my last year of uni, called Girls go Zonk!!, a collection of mostly obscure US 60s girl group songs compiled by Mick Patrick. There’s loads of other gems on that album, but this one blew my mind!

Egypt itself was pretty mindblowing. We were there during the time of the Parliamentary elections so it was an interesting time. A great place for contrasts, as Flaubert said. Before going, I had read a book about trips taken down the Nile by Flaubert and Florence Nightingale. Their time, to me, seems so long ago, so to see these tombs and temples still standing as they’d described was pretty amazing. Really sad to read about the riot at Port Said this week.

The Camel Centipede

I am asked this at least once a day by someone or other so I thought I’d post about it. I have little in the way of content apart from what papers and reports I’ve already written for other purposes. I have a very long list of references which is only going to grow. I expect to finish my experiments within a month or two and then get started in earnest writing, which should take 3-6 months. Given that I’ve got 8 months in which to finish as a final deadline, this should be doable. 100′000 words is the limit, but it’s not really about size but content.

In case you’re not aware, dear reader, of what happens after that: you get a “viva voceâ€, which is a several-hours-long presentation and interview where you a) prove that you know your stuff and therefore probably wrote it yourself rather than paying someone on the internet to do it, and b) defend your work as significant enough, new enough, thorough enough and substantial enough to be considered worth a PhD (Doctor of philosophy, called DPhil in Oxbridge). There are 2 examiners in the viva, one internal and one external, neither of whom can have helped you with your work at any point. After the viva one of several things will happen:

What do I think will happen to me? Well, I’m probably major or minor corrections. If I did exactly nothing for 8 months it’d be an MPhil. So, some work done, some still to do. If you’re curious as to what it’s been like to do a PhD, Jorge Cham has it covered pretty well - Piled Higher and Deeper!

“What makes music beautiful, then?†- in large part, it’s not putting in things that are awful. After that, the parameters are quite similar to what makes music sad. I can’t really give too many details when I’m trying to publish them - some enterprising soul might get there first!

“Did you enjoy doing a PhD?†- No. But I don’t think that’s the point of a PhD, is it? I have had points of enjoyment but mostly it’s been a long hard slog. I expect to feel satisfied when it’s done. I wouldn’t want to do it twice. If I could go back and pick a different more useful topic, I would.

“Will you be more employable with a PhD?†- Yes, about 5% more employable - it adds the chance to be a postdoc, of which there are very few in the country at the moment because no-one has any money. Hopefully this situation will improve when we properly dig our way out of recession. Every so often people in industry want a PhD holder, too.

“What’s next?†- I have no idea. Research or software engineering, most likely. It is highly dependent on what jobs are out there. Location is no object. Maybe Jim will get a job first and I’ll find one wherever that is, or vice-versa. Looking at the options I am tempted to do a genetics degree so I can work in bioinformatics - that field is huge! Looking for jobs is now my top procrastination device, even above social networks, and, of course: blogging.

http://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.co.uk/2012/02/01/ms_attack_ads_google_privacy/

Hahahaha!

Ruth and I went out to the cinema last night and saw The Artist, and I’m inclined to agree with the critics: this film is spectacular.

For the benefit of anybody who hasn’t come out of hibernation yet, The Artist is a modern film whose production is heavily influenced by the cinematographic style and technology of the late 1920s movie industry. It’s shot in black and white and is, almost without exception, silent apart from the musical soundtrack. Title cards provide explanation of plot-critical dialogue, but for the most part the story is told through the (excellent) visual performance of the actors.

But there’s a warning – this is not a happy film. To go in expecting something dramatic-but-fun, as I did, then you’re in for a shock. This film is deeply tragic, incredibly sad and moving. On at least two occasions during the more despair-ridden parts of the story, I found myself begging the movie to find the twist and lighten up… and on both occasions it responded only by becoming more doleful still.

Beautiful, mournful, sometimes meta and fourth-wall-breaking, and a testament to the writer/director’s ability to work with the incredibly challenging constraints imposed by a now-archaic medium… well worth a look: in the cinema, if you get the chance.

One of my goals for the year is to try and take more photos. To help this I’m aiming to take at least a photo a day and save it in Picasa. I’ve made it a whole month so far! Which is about 29 days more than the previous two years I’ve tried this! Not that they’re particularly exciting photos. It feels like it’s been a pretty quiet January, with post-Christmas downtime, and finishing off my counselling course, and I don’t feel like I’ve been outside as much as I’d like! Although I have started new bellydance, burlesque and NIA classes to try and keep active. Which is good as there seems to be a lot of pictures of cake, considering I was trying to eat healthily this month…

Frosty Cardiff, on my way to a Youth Mental Health First Aid course (which was excellent). 

Shiny! The new coin belt I bought in Egypt, now being put through its paces in bellydancing.

Looking through baby pictures for a ‘team-building’ thingy in work. I seem to be covered in food in most of them. Explains a lot!

The other morning, I did a strange thing. I got up as normal and had my breakfast. I made myself a packed lunch, just like always. I went outside to begin my cycle to work, but when I got to my bike, in the back garden of New Earth: instead of unlocking it and riding to work, I locked it up.

Then, I had to unlock it again so that I could ride it.

Why did this happen? It happened because my brain has clearly made the association that my daily routine includes “toggling my bike lock†as part of it’s actions, rather than “unlocking my bike lockâ€. It’s become ingrained that I have to “change the state†of my bike lock (from locked to unlocked, or vice-versa) before I can go to work… so when I forgot to lock my bike up the previous night, it threw off my morning as I began the day by locking it up, rather than unlocking it.

A Kryptonite New York lock, like the one I use. It weighs about a ton but it's pretty-much bombproof.

Back when I had my concussion last May, I did a similar thing, swapping the contents of two cupboards that we’d already swapped. I couldn’t remember why they were being exchanged, just that they were, so I swapped them over.

It’d be nice to think that I only engage in this kind of “toggling†behaviour when I’m sleepy, perhaps, or when I’ve suffered a head injury. But sadly, that turns out not to be the case:

Over the River Thames near Friar’s Wharf, there’s a footbridge that forms a part of the National Cycle Network. It’s part of my usual ride to work. A few months ago, I spent my workday running training sessions in an office on the other side of the river, and so I didn’t need to cross it to get home. But when I was cycling home, along the towpath, and reached the bridge, I started to cross it! I got half-way over before I realised that I was now heading exactly the wrong way and turned back. Again: my brain clearly has a short-circuit there, in that when I come to that bridge during a journey, I feel that I need to cross it. What’s the deal, brain?

This phenomenon seems to be related to muscle memory and the so-called “driving tranceâ€: the same thing that traps you when you plan to run an errand on your way somewhere and somehow reach the other end of your journey having completely forgotten to run the errand. “I walked right past the post box with the letter in my hand! Why would I do that?â€

I wonder how others experience “togglingâ€. Do you “toggle†things when you’re on autopilot?

The other week I built Tiffany2, New Earth‘s new media centre computer. She’s well-established and being used to watch movies, surf the web, and whatnot, now, so I thought I’d better fulfil my promise of telling you about my other new smaller-than-average computer, Dana, whose existence was made possible by gifts from my family over Christmas and my birthday.

Dana‘s size and power-consumption is so small that it makes Tiffany2 look like a bloated monster. That’s because Dana is a DreamPlug, an open-architecture plug computer following in the footsteps of the coveted SheevaPlug and GuruPlug.

A dreamplug (seen here with a two-pin power connector, which helps to give you a sense of its size).

The entire computer including its detachable power supply is only a little larger than the mobile telephones of the mid-nineties, and the entire device can be plugged straight into the wall. With no hard disk (it uses SD cards) and no fans, the DreamPlug has no moving parts to wear out or make noise, and so it’s completely silent. It’s also incredibly low-power – mine idles at about 4 watts – that’s about the same as a radio alarm clock, and about a hundredth of what my desktop PCs Toni and Nena run at under a typical load.

I’ve fitted up mine with a Mimo Mini-Monster 10″: a dinky little self-powered USB-driven touchscreen monitor about the size of an iPad. Right now the whole assembly – about the size of a large picture frame – sits neatly in the corner of my desk and (thanks to the magic of Synergy) forms part of my extended multi-monitor desktop, as well as acting as a computer in her own right.

Dana's Mimo Mini-Monster touchscreen: Dana herself is completely concealed behind the screen.

So on the surface, she’s a little bit like a wired tablet computer, which would seem a little silly (and indeed: at a glance you’d mistake her for a digital photo frame)! But because she’s a “real†computer underneath, with a 1.2GHz processor, 512MB RAM, USB, WiFi, and two Ethernet ports, there’s all kinds of fun things that can be done with her.

For a start, she provides an ultra low-power extension to my existing office development environment. I’ve experimented with “pushing†a few tasks over to her, like watching log file output, downloading torrents, running a web server, reading RSS feeds, and so on, but my favourite of her tasks is acting as a gateway between the rest of the world and my office.

A network diagram showing the layout of the computer networks on New Earth. It's more-complex than your average household.

While they’ve come a long way, modern ADSL routers are still woefully inadequate at providing genuine customisability and control over my home network. But a computer like this – small, silent, and cheap – makes it possible to use your favourite open-source tools (iptables, squid, sshd, etc.) as a firewall to segregate off a part of the network. And that’s exactly what I’ve done. My office – the pile of computers in the upper-right of the diagram, above – is regulated by Dana, whose low footprint means that I don’t feel bad about leaving her turned always-on.

That means that, from anywhere in the world (and even from my phone), I can now:

That’s kinda sexy. There’s nothing new about it – the technologies and standards involved are as old as the hills – but it’s nice to be able to do it using something that’s barely bigger than a postcard.

I have all kinds of ideas for future projects with Dana. It’s a bit like having a souped-up (and only a little bigger) Arduino to play with, and it’s brimming with potential. How about a webcam for my bird feeder? Or home-automation tools (y’know: so I can turn on my bedroom light without having to get out of bed)? Or a media and file server (if I attached a nice, large, external hard disk)? And then there’s the more far-fetched ideas: it’s easily low-power enough to run from a car battery – how about in-car entertainment? Or home-grown GPS guidance? What about a “delivered ready-to-use†intranet application, as I was discussing the other day with a colleague, that can be simply posted to a client, plugged in, and used? There’s all kinds of fun potential ideas for a box like this, and I’m just beginning to dig into them.

There’s a word that seems to be being gradually redefined in our collective vocabulary, I was considering recently. That word is “nontheistâ€. It’s a relatively new word as it is, but in its earliest uses it seems to have been an umbrella term covering a variety of different (and broadly-compatible) theological outlooks.

Here are some of them, in alphabetical order:

However, I’ve observed that the word “nontheist†seems to be finding a new definition, quite apart from the umbrella description above.

In recent years, a number of books have been published on the subject of atheism, some of which – and especially The God Delusion – carry a significant antitheistic undertone. This has helped to inspire the idea that atheism and antitheism are the same thing (which for many atheists, and a tiny minority of antitheists, simply isn’t true), and has lead some people who might otherwise have described themselves as one or several of the terms above to instead use the word “nontheist†as a category of its own.

This “new nontheist†definition is still very much in its infancy, but I’ve heard it described as “areligious, but spiritualâ€, or “atheistic, but not antitheisticâ€.

Personally, I don’t like this kind of redefinition. It’s already hard enough to have a reasonable theological debate – having to stop and define your terms every step of the way is quite tiresome! – without people whipping your language out from underneath you right when you were standing on it. I can see how those people who are, for example, “atheistic, but not antitheistic†might want to distance themselves from the (alliterative) antitheistic atheist authors, but can’t they pick a different word?

After all: there’s plenty of terms going spare, above, to define any combination of nontheistic belief, and enough redundancy that you can form a pile of words higher than any Tower of Babel. Then… perhaps… we can talk about religion without stopping to fight over which dictionary is the true word.

So, in little under a week in Aberystwyth will host Hacio’r Iaith 2012 (28th January 2012). This will be third annual event, and is one of the largest ‘barcamp’ style conference in Wales.

I’ve been asked to explain exactly what a barcamp is… so here goes…

A barcamp is known as an ‘unconference’, it has no set schedule, speakers or events planned… all that is set up on the day.

Yes, sounds crazy, but it works. The conference schedule is decided on the day, by those that turn up. People who come are encouraged to sign up and give talks about whatever topic they like. Whilst the broad theme of the event is technology, this can be interpreted loosely to cover pretty much any topic, and discussions can range from the effect of Government policy on Web usage, through to the history of Internet memes…

I’ve been to quite a few barcamps and they really are that broad… during the 2011 London Barcamp, several hundred people descended to listen and give talks. In one room, a woman gave a talk about Chocolate (she’d set up a website where she reviews chocolate… as her day job… – she’d brought samples…), whilst in the next, a Whisky blogger ran a session “Absinthe for beginnersâ€, whilst in another room a talk was detailing how to build a game for the iPhone. All of this, at one conference, in the space of an hour…

So, at the start of the day, attendees will be asked to gather at the grid to sign up to give talks. As I said, the talks can be on virtually anything (like I said… chocolate and absinthe…). So the next question is, do you *have* to give a talk…

Well, you don’t have to… but you should. The attendees at a barcamp have come to listen to talks. They *want* to hear from you. Noone is there to shout you down, boo you or make fun of you. They’ve come to hear from people who have a passion for a given topic. You really don’t need a fancy Powerpoint, it doesn’t need to be technical, and you don’t have to prepare anything. You can just literally sign up for a slot and talk. It’s about sharing your passion and your knowledge.

You could do a talk about something that interests you, show off a project you’ve been working on, or host a discussion about a burning issue. Just name your session, pick a time slot and that’s it.

Want some ideas on talks? Have a look at this Lanyrd.com search page, it has a list of almost a 1000 talks delivered at hundreds of barcamps all over the world on topics, including “Fancy a Pint?†at Barcamp London (One of mine – my co-host was a woman I got chatting to at the start of the day, and by the afternoon we were discussing how great beer is with a room full of people… no slides, no anything), through to “How to Podcast for Free†at Barcamp Liverpool (not one of mine…). Like I said, *anything*.

If you’re unsure about giving a talk, you can get in touch with me before next saturday (bryn.salisbury@gmail.com, or @bryns on twitter), or come grab me on the day. I’ve had wonderful experiences giving talks at Barcamps, and you should too. It’s a great place to practice public speaking in front of a group who really want to hear from you, and want to support you.

Other than the talks, you’ll also get to see Sioned (@llef), Iestyn (@iestynx) and me do a live recording of our podcast (The Haclediad) there. It’ll be an absolute blast. This year is shaping up to have the most attendees ever, and I’m REALLY excited. If you’ve never been, there’s a tremendous buzz from gathering together with so many people enthused around a topic or area, you’ll want to rush off and start a dozen projects right away… and that, if anything, will give you plenty to talk about when you come along to the one in 2013!

See you in Aberystwyth guys…

B

Busses in Japan are surprisingly complicated and it's taken me a little while to get used to all the various methods of buying tickets/paying for rides/working out when its my stop. But I think I finally have it down:

Tickets

There are four possibilities when it comes to buying a ticket depending on the particular bus/operator:

When is your stop


Paying up

Depending on your ticket/lack there of:

Other notes

Sometimes, the opportunity arises to troll the real world. And these opportunities are too good to miss. Earlier this week, I found myself in Marks & Spencer, buying some food and wine for a “carpet picnicâ€-and-Angel date-night-in with Ruth.

The grand total at the checkout came to £26.38: I’d precalculated this and was ready: as the number came up on the checkout I handed over a “£5 off when you spend £25″ voucher, and a £20 M&S gift card.

“That’ll be… £1.38,†said the assistant, as I packed my shopping into a bag. Behind me, a young couple had joined the queue, behind me, and had clearly overheard the price. The looked stunned.

Naturally, then, I made sure that they saw the wine, the cakes, the fruit, the bread products, and everything else as I carefully loaded it all into the bag. “£1.38, wasn’t it?†I asked, as if I were double-checking, reaching into my wallet.

Catching the gaze of the shoppers behind me, as if I’d only just noticed them, I spoke to them as the cashier counted out my change. “It’s a great special offer, this one,†I said, “All of this for £1.38. Bargain!â€

And then picked up my bag and left, watching the gobsmacked couple as they tried to work out how I’d managed to get 95% off the value of my shopping. Delightful.

It’s the little things, really.

As you may have noticed, the English-speaking Wikipedia is “blacking out†in protest at SOPA/PIPA. This is a very important thing: SOPA/PIPA are potentially extremely dangerous bits of legislation (if you’re looking for a short explanation of why, here’s a great video).

I’m going to assume that you’re aware of the issues and have already taken action appropriate to your place – if you’re in the US, you’ve written to your representatives; if you’re in the rest of the English-speaking world, you’ve donated to the EFF (this issue affects all of us), etc. But if you’re in need of Wikipedia, here’s the simplest way to view it, today:

Accessing Wikipedia during the blackout

That’s all. You don’t even have to turn off Javascript in your browser, as others are suggesting: just surf away.

If you get sick of copy-pasting on every single Wikipedia page you visit… you can drag this link to your bookmarks toolbar (or right click it and select “add to bookmarksâ€) and then just click it from your bookmarks whenever you want to remove the blackout.

And if you just came here for the shortcut without making yourself aware of the issues, shame on you.

As I mentioned earlier, I spent some of the period between Christmas and New Year in Preston. And there, while taking a shower at my mother’s house, I had a strange experience.

My mother's shower is one of the new style of high-tech ones, with a dozen different washing functions as well as a built in light and radio. I gather that there are ones with built in phones, now, too.

One of the funky features of my mother’s shower cubicle is that it includes a fully working FM radio. Its controls are pretty limited and there’s no user interface to provide feedback about what frequency you’re tuned to already, so it’s hard to deliberately tune in to a specific station. Instead, the house policy seems to be that if you don’t like what you’re listening to, you press the “cycle to the next station†button until you hear something you like.

Listening to music is about the third or second most-enjoyable thing that one can possibly do in a shower, in my experience, so I gave it a go. Local station Radio Wave came on, and they were playing some fun tunes, so I sang along as I washed myself under the hot steamy “drench†setting on the shower.

Radio Wave (96.5FM), Blackpool, Lancashire

At the end of a couple of songs, there were some commercials and the show’s presenter shared a few words. And it occurred to me quite how very Northern he sounded.

Living and working in Oxford, I don’t in my day to day life come across people with that broad lanky dialect. Growing up in Preston, and going to school there, I came across it on a daily basis, but didn’t notice it. Now, in its absence, it’s starkly noticable, with its traditional short gutteral “t†instead of “theâ€, use of the archaic second-person “tha†(related to “thouâ€), and the ever-present pronunciation of words like “right†and “light†as “reet†and “leetâ€, and “cold†and “old†as “cowd†and “owdâ€.

It’s unfamiliar, but still “homelyâ€. Like that smell that reminds you of where you grew up, this sound to my ears filled me with a strange nostalgia.

It’s funny, because I’m sure I carry a little bit of that accent with me. To the folks in my life around Oxford way, I perhaps sound as foreign as those people in Preston sound to me, now. I spoke on the phone the other week to a couple of people I used to hang out with, back in the day, and my immediate thought was that they’d become more Lanky than I remembered – as if they’d somehow overdosed on butter pie and barm cakes in the years since I last saw them.

But that’s clearly not the case: it’s not their voices that have changed, but my ears. Untouched by the North-Western tongue for so long, it sounds very strange to me now to hear it over the phone, on the radio, or even in person.

It’s a strange side-effect of moving around the country. I wonder what it’s like for my American friends, who have an even bigger gap (both geographically and linguistically) between their homes in the UK and their families in the US, to “phone homeâ€.

The other thing (other than building Tiffany2 and a second computer, to be described later) that happened last weekend, of course, is that it was my birthday! I share my birthday with David Bowie and Elvis Presley, so if you were ever looking for evidence about how astrology is bullshit: that’s it right there (I have no musical talent whatsoever, although I’m pretty good at Guitar Hero).

I didn’t organise myself a surprise birthday party this year, but instead had a quiet – but drunken – afternoon in with the Earthlings. Ruth had asked me earlier in the week, though, if “there’s anything special that I’d like to eat?†And, of course, I answered:

“A gingerbread village under assault from enormous gelatinous bunny rabbits!â€

This was a convenient request, because we already had a lot of the ingredients to-hand. So Ruth and I spent some time building, decorating, and demolishing exactly such a scene.

Gummy-bear citizens gather around a candle lamp-post in the gingerbread village. Little do they know of the horror that approaches...

The village, under construction. The first bunny came out a little wet, so we decided that it was dead already, recently slain by the villagers.

Armed villagers spear the red bunny.

The green bunny, its maw dripping with gummy blood, advances through the ruins of the damaged North side of the village.

The first casualty; his gummy friends stand shocked around him. But with the orange bunny about to reach the South flank, there's nowhere to retreat: they must stand and fight!

The orange bunny proves to be a challenge to deploy. More warm water is needed.

The village is lit as the battle against the bunnies continues throughout the night.

This, you see, is what happens when I’m given cocktail-making equipment and supplies for my birthday. Nothing makes this kind of activity make sense so much as spending the whole day drinking champagne cocktails.

I’m not sure if it’s better or worse that as the scene came together I began developing a ruleset for a  tabletop wargame playable using gummy sweets.

In any case, it was a fantastic way to see in the beginning of my thirty-second year.

I hadn’t really talked about it yet, because I’ve been too busy… I don’t know… blogging about Marmite and beds and computers or something… but I had the most fabulous time at a New Year’s party hosted by Liz and Simon at their house in Macclesfield. There was drinking, and board games, and truly awful Troma films, and then at midnight we all counted down from 7, or 12, or something, and spontaneously broke out into a chorus of Auld Lang Syne. See: there’s a video and everything -

(can’t see the video? click here to watch on YouTube)

It seems that my mnemonic (as used in the title of this post) is broken, unless we reinstate Pluto as a planet and rename the fourth and eighth planets in the solar system to Lars and Septune, respectively. Which I think are better names, anyway.

It was a fantastic opportunity to catch up with folks I don’t see enough of, to talk about what had gone right (and wrong) about the year gone by, and what we were looking forward to in the year to come. Liz suggested that perhaps this should become a regular thing, a little like “fake Christmas†has begun to, and that seems like a good idea (and I’m pretty sure I heard Bryn volunteer to host it next year…).

By the way: do you remember how last year Paul, Ruth, JTA and I invented Argh! It Burns Night? We’re doing it again this year, and because so many of you expressed an interest in joining us, we’d like you to come too. It’ll be on the evening of Saturday 4th February (yes, we know this is a little late for a Burns Night, but the second part of Ruth & JTA’s honeymoon is going to get in the way otherwise): drop me an email if you want to come along for a night of haggis, whisky, and fanfiction.

This weekend, I integrated two new computers into the home network on New Earth. The first of these is Tiffany2.

Tiffany2 is a small "media centre" style computer with an all-in-one remote keyboard/mouse.

Tiffany2 replaces Tiffany, the media centre computer I built a little under four years ago. The original Tiffany was built on a shoestring budget of under £300, and provided the technical magic behind the last hundred or so Troma Nights, as well as countless other film and television nights, a means to watch (and record and pause) live TV, surf the web, and play a game once in a while.

The problem with Tiffany is that she was built dirt-cheap at a time when building a proper media centre PC was still quite expensive. So she wasn’t very good. Honestly, I’m amazed that she lasted as long as she did. And she’s still running: but she “feels†slow (and takes far too long to warm up) and she makes a noise like a jet engine… which isn’t what you want when you’re paying attention to the important dialogue of a quiet scene.

Tiffany and Tiffany2. Were this a histogram of their relative noise levels, the one on the left would be much, much larger.

Tiffany2 is virtually silent and significantly more-powerful than her predecessor. She’s also a lot smaller – not much bigger than a DVD player – and generally more feature-rich.

This was the first time I’d built an ITX form-factor computer (Tiffany2 is Mini-ITX): I wanted to make her small, and it seemed like the best standard for the job. Assembling some of her components felt a little like playing with a doll’s house – she has a 2.5″ hard disk and a “slimline†optical drive: components that in the old days we used to call “laptop†parts, which see new life in small desktop computers.

Examples of six different hard drive form factors. Tiffany2 uses the third-smallest size shown in this picture. The computer you're using, unless it's a laptop, probably uses the third-largest (picture courtesy Paul R. Potts, CC-At-SA).

In order to screw in some of the smaller components, I had to dig out my set of watchmaker’s screwdrivers. Everything packs very neatly into a very small space, and – building her – I found myself remembering my summer job long ago at DesignPlan Lighting, where I’d have to tuck dozens of little components, carefully wired-together, into the shell of what would eventually become a striplight in a tube train or a prison, or something.

She’s already deployed in our living room, and we’ve christened her with  the latest Zero Punctuation, a few DVDs, some episodes of Xena: Warrior Princess, and an episode of Total Wipeout featuring JTA‘s old history teacher as a contestant. Looks like she’s made herself at home.

(for those who are sad enough to care, Tiffany2 is running an Intel Core i3-2100 processor, underclocked to 3GHz, on an mITX Gigabyte GA-H61N-USB3 motherboard with 4GB RAM, a 750GB hard disk, and DVD-rewriter, all wrapped up in an Antec ISK 300-150 case with a 150W power supply: easily enough for a media centre box plus some heavy lifting if I ever feel the need to give her any)

[Background: A few years ago I was involved in several relationships at once with the knowledge and consent of all involved. This is known as polyamory.]

It didn’t work for me. I won’t be pursuing this type of relationship in future. Polyamory is a legitimate and happy way for people to live, and I support anyone’s right to do so and not be harassed into persistent justification of their lifestyle. What didn’t work for me was the plate-juggling aspect of trying to keep everyone happy with the level of attention they were getting. I have enough trouble keeping one person happy! I didn’t want extra emotional attachments, I just wanted to be able to sleep with other people. Not very poly. It’s also hard to openly maintain a lifestyle that goes against prevailing social mores - I must admit that’s part of the reason my life is so much easier now.

I am irritated to find myself included in conversations where poly and open relationships are derided, as if “all that’s behind her now, she’s one of us normal people again.†I am tired of speaking up and find myself nodding along to keep the peace. It’s funny - I am now free of being constantly put on the spot about it, but I can’t help but feel that an erasure of history is being attempted. “She made a mistakeâ€, “It was just a phaseâ€, “That was then, this is now†and other dismissive comments about a time in my life that was turbulent and unpleasant but still happened, because I wanted it to happen. I think I needed to go through that to find out where my limits were, so to erase that experience would erase my way of knowing what I want from a relationship. For me, it was a phase, but there’s no call for “justâ€.

Plenty of people who knew the situation are surprised that I still have anything positive to say about polyamory, but I just don’t feel that my experience is generally how it goes. I had some awful times, but I put that down to the people involved including my own inability to set boundaries until it was far too late. I have met and spoken to several poly groups who are happy (and not suicide cult happy, just normal, everyday happy). They are at the point where the fact they are poly doesn’t even come up that often, they are just getting on with life. I’d wish them the best of luck but they simply don’t need it and it would be patronising to do so. I also have some admiration for their ability to live against the norm, which they aren’t doing for the sake of being alternative but for the sake of their own happiness and authenticity.

Dan Savage recently has something to say about open relationships, which triggered this post.

The term iPod is synonymous with portable music, but when Apple chopped the iconic click wheel off the 6th generation Nano series and replaced it with a tiny square touch screen they opened the device to some interesting new possibilities. Along with the iOS style makeover they gave the iPod OS, they added a nice clock app that could be set to appear when the device is woken by tapping the sleep/wake button. Almost overnight the ever growing Apple accessory market started producing watch bands so people could wear the Nano on their wrist. Seeing the growing popularity of Nanos used as watches, when Apple updated the device's firmware last year they added a large selection of different watch themes to the clock app. Everything from glowing nixie tubes to Mickey Mouse.

When I first saw the announcement I thought "cool, that looks pretty neat", but I didn't have any great desire to run out and buy one. I already had a very nice chunky Black Dice Industries Cash watch and wasn't really in the market for another. Initially there was some speculation that the new Nanos were running a cut down version of iOS but this turned out to be false, it was a very faithfully restyled version of the iPod OS instead. Given that took away any possibility I'd be able to write apps for the thing any further reason to get one evaporated quickly. After the new firmware update was pushed out last year along with the 7G model, I again found myself interested by the Nano. But it wasn't until I finally got the chance to spend some time playing with one at Bic Camera in Kyoto that I got just how awesome the device was. So taking advantage of the relatively low price of the Nano in Japan (about £30 cheaper than the UK!) I decide to spring for one.

Since then I've been using the Nano pretty exclusively as my watch of choice. Originally with a fairly cheap, but comfy silicone rubber style watch band and now with a better looking and more sturdy TikTok strap.

So how does the Nano fare as a watch? Well it looks great, the watch faces are very nicely designed and there's going to be one in there to suit most people's tastes. It's also easy to change the style to match your mood or the occasion. After years of having watches with fiddly tiny buttons that require far too much pressure to actuate, it's a revelation to be able to use the same taps and swipes familiar from the iPhone and iPad, to set things like timers and change settings on the Nano. You also get the added benefit of having an MP3 player on your arm too; along with an FM radio, pedometer that syncs with Nike+, photo album and voice recorder when used with an iPhone headset. Overall I really like it, and it gives a little glimpse at what watches of the future will be like. Given the technology of digital watches has largely stagnated since the 80s it's about time someone breathed some life into the industry.

There are some downsides though - and they're not insignificant. So while all of the Nano's strong points weigh in the device's favour for a geek like me, I think the following probably count a little too heavily against using the Nano as a watch for most people. These negatives are in the order of severity:

- Lack of glanceability (it takes about 1 second to wake the Nano's screen)

- Short battery life (it will last a few days and I've yet to find it dead on me, but you do need to remember to charge it fairly frequently. Handily any standard iPhone/iPod dock lead will do).

- No built-in speaker for alarms (headphones need to be plugged in to hear the timer's alarm).

- You can't set an alarm for an arbitrary time, only use timers.

- No Bluetooth means you need a wire dangling from your arm to use the audio features (although this isn't so much of an issue with long sleeved clothing).

So it's definitely worth a look if you're into gadgets and technology, or just want a cool quirky MP3 player that can double as a watch. But it's not quite ready as a replacement timepiece for the average person just yet. Still it's only a matter of time!

I have left Live Journal.

My new blog is at http://reaperkit.wordpress.com/

thats all folks. I have moved a lot of stuff over, apologies for anything I have missed!

So, the tide has washed away 2011 and all that went with it (do you see what I did there, do ya do ya?). We saw out the last day with a quick dash between rainstorms to Lavernock Point, for a bit of hunting both fossils and geocaches. Nothing like a few fossils to make a year in your life feel like no time at all!

Still, I’m determined to make this year count, however insignificant in the grand scheme of things. In the time-honoured tradition, I’ve decided now is a good time to deal with the post-Christmas bleurgh, and get a bit healthy. So the last few days have been full of yoga, green smoothies (not as bad as I’d feared!), a whole lotta vegetables and even a run. We’ve been catching up with The Walking Dead and I can think of no better motivation for getting in shape than the thought of having to leg it from a load of zombies. I’m sure this won’t last past the weekend (for which is scheduled a trip to Purple Poppadom before watching Robin Ince, as well as afternoon tea the day after so I will need a will of iron to try and eat healthily, which I’m pretty sure I don’t have!).

I hope 2012 is a good year for you all, and is generally a lot less rainy than it is today!

Thanks go to Liz and Simon for hosting a great new years party! The films were truly troma - how he has made money, well, you have to ask.

It was really good to see so many people I haven't caught up with in person for a good while.

Today we have made lots of soup for Fiona to have at lunch over the next while. We also caught up on some household tasks and generally started the de-christmas process. Its all over so fast isn't it!

So there we go. I am thinking of joining Fi on wordpress. Livejournal feels somehow vacant these days...