Amber, our Boston correspondent (in the other Cambridge), witnessed the Fourth of July fireworks over the Charles River from an amazing vantage point at MIT. She recommends this Yahoo! slideshow featuring that event, and others around the States. It’s an epic collection of images, with over 100 frames; she didn’t bother after number 60.
Some of my holiday snaps are back from the lab. I’ll spare you the party and baby photos, but you might want to smile wryly at the Americana.
I saw this blunt window sticker on the freeway to the Norton Simon Museum at Pasadena.
General admiration of Britain even extended to the bumper (I mean “fender”) decoration of a classic car at a local fair I attended. The immaculate vehicle in the photo was the overall winner in the end.
I had to give chase on foot, then jump on and off a bus to get an action shot of one of only about three people I saw riding bicycles in a week in LA. Fuji Superia 400 film: it’s the dog’s bollocks.
The Genome Campus has been swarming with non-scientist visitors over the past couple of days. They are here to find out what we get up in our secluded, multi-million-pound, international research centre by viewing a range of exhibits and taking tours of the non-restricted parts of the premises. This is in celebration of the anniversary of the discovery of DNA and other things.
Many members of the general public believe all sorts of nonsense about biotechnological research, so hordes of mischievous plans ran through my head; my favourite: to dress up in a two-headed gorilla suit and knuckle-walk across the Campus lawns, pursued by two of my colleagues dressed in white coats, both screaming about an “escaped experimental subject”.
Mwah hah hah hah!
Got a few nice B&W pics back from the lab today. So Chris’s page has been updated with a new one of him and here’s a cute portrait of Lynn and Chris I took when they visited Cambridge at the end of May.
Today, I googled for an exact phrase from one of my definitions of bioinformatics—as used in my Bioinformatics FAQ. In that form, Google had crawled my definition in over 40 different locations, usually attributed.
Among other places, it shows up in a patent application, lecture notes, presentations, advertisements and homepages.
I’ve defined a scientific field! (If you follow the link, read the second paragraph.)
Another Website on this server was attacked this week. I have not been able to post over the past couple of days because the attack triggered a security block. This affected my access both from work and home.
I had the spooky experience of knowing that people were visiting my site and even received email notifying me that someone had posted to it, but I couldn’t visit PooterGeek or post to it myself.
The block is off now and I will deal with the backlog this evening.
I picked up two cheap CDs at Sainsbury’s this evening.
I bought Evanescence‘s Fallen on the strength of the single, currently being given away as an MP3 at MP3.com. Giving it away has not prevented it from lodging at number one in the UK charts for four weeks. All publishers of all content take note.
I also bought Annie Lennox’s latest, Bare. It will be going back to Sainsbury’s tomorrow, still sealed in cellophane.
I didn’t notice in the supermarket, but the CD is labelled as being “copy protected”, meaning it will only play on certain devices. Supposedly, you can listen to it on “most” audio machines, and on PCs running a later version of Windows than 95. It’s difficult to convey how angry this sort of thing makes me.
Let’s get one thing straight: issues of fair use aside, a copy-protected CD is not a CD at all because it does not meet the Red Book standard that defines what a CD is. Such a disc is faulty. It is unfit for its purpose. Purchasers are entitled to a refund under the Sale of Goods Act.
It will go back to the shop like my faulty copy of Anastacia’s Freak Of Nature went back to Amazon. To their credit, they refunded my payment immediately.
If you accidentally buy one of these faulty CDs I suggest you do the same. Given the feebleness of the “copy-protection” technology they use, I also suggest you “pirate” the music first before returning the medium.
Incidentally, I admire Annie Lennox’s voice and amazing instinct for melody hugely, but her lyrics and her public pronouncements are so often tosh that I hardly bother paying attention to them any more. The personal message on the back cover of her album is just embarrassing. And her Website sucks so badly I’m not going to link to it.
Vail Reese is a dermatologist in the San Francisco Bay Area. Despite being horribly designed, Skinema, his online collection of celebrity skin problems, has been a huge Web attraction for years. It was only recently (in the wake of the “vampire twins” controversy) that I stumbled upon Dermatrix, his special feature about the dermatological conditions of the Matrix‘s cast and characters.
Not only was my beautiful niece (and now Goddaughter) christened today in the brilliant summer sunshine (thank you, Clare and Steve for a lovely day), but this has happened too.
I have been pretty skeptical about the “Roadmap”, but I predicted this development in the peace process at a dinner party at Jude‘s before the Iraq war—it was, in fact, one of my reasons for supporting that war. Everyone (especially Hind) looked at me as though I was barking mad. I was, but I was also right. And now I am unbearably smug, too. It won’t last, but it’s a wonderful start.
Training Day and About Schmidt are excellent films. Rent them.
Surprisingly, in Training Day, Denzel Washington doesn’t play Denzel Washington and, in About Schmidt, Jack Nicholson doesn’t play Jack Nicholson. The Academy was impressed by both performances—and Denzel and Jack didn’t even have to act from wheelchairs.
[I take no responsibility for any lunches lost following the following link.]
If they could stop all those Jews and orientals and blacks and Arabs from polluting the gene pool, perhaps neo-Nazis could finally attain absolute racial purity.
Here’s my favourite quote of the day, fresh from the Quote Monster:
As an adolescent I aspired to lasting fame, I craved factual certainty, and I thirsted for a meaningful vision of human life—so I became a scientist. This is like becoming an archbishop so you can meet girls.
M. Cartmill
It’s also like becoming a scientist so you can meet girls. (Let’s face it, at least archbishops get to meet little boys.)
Next week I am going to stand up in front of a church full of witnesses, renounce the Devil and promise to bring up my niece as a God-fearing Catholic girl. And I like to think that I am a bright. As Dickie Dawkins writes it sounds better than "grouchy skeptical bastard".
I grew up in a miserable, violent, bigoted dump called Tamworth. Knowhere was originally an online community for skateboarders with information about places for boarders to hang out across the country. Now anyone can use the site to comment on any aspect of local life across the UK.
Appropriately The pages about Tamworth are full of barely literate nonsense, written by idiots aged between 12 and 20. One contribution struck a chord with me, though:
A word or two of warning. Tamworth people do not take kindly to strangers, children that smile, ethnic minorities, innovation, initiative or change. If they come into contact with any of these they will be likely to bite, spit, scowl, attack, curse or headbutt it whilst emitting a grunt of disapproval. Elderly Tammies are the ring-leaders.
It’s hotter than southern California, but the grotty toilets are enough to reassure me that I really am back in Britain.
A curiosity of two-leg flights is that you keep your seat while the identity of your neighbour changes. From LA to New York it was a woman who organizes promotional events for HBO; from New York to London it was the “VP Communications” for a British-based and American-owned theatrical production company.
The American HBO woman was surprisingly English; the English theatre man was surprisingly American. They both agreed that real innovation in performing media was currently to be found not at the cinema or on the stage, but in television. I agreed too—and I don’t even own a TV.
It’s the Sunday afternoon “Support Our Troops” demonstration on the corner, near the Warner shopping park in Canoga Park, Californ-I-A. As usual I have my camera and I am hoping for some pics of the demonstrators.
On the opposite side of the junction (five lanes away, of course) there are two anti-war protestors, a man and a woman. From this distance, the man could be one or more of a range of ethnic types common locally (Spanish is the first language of the neighbourhood where I am staying) and is wearing a bright red beret, cocked at smart angle. The vast majority of the “pro-war” types are white, but of mixed age and sex.
The organiser is a woman. She is in young middle-age, good-looking and slim, and her hair is neither blonde nor big. The various male participants defer to her when I ask permission to take photos and are happy to talk to me after I explain that I am not a journalist. They would probably have been happy to talk to me even if I was.
“You’re from Britain? There’s a country I’d die for.”
“Or Israel, I’d die for Israel.”
“Britain, Australia, Israel: we’ve always been together.”
“Do the British people support the war?”
“They certainly didn’t to start off with. I suppose they’re more in favour of it than they were before it happened.”
“Mass graves and everything?”
“I think that sort of thing has changed people’s opinions.”
The drivers passing by are honking their horns and waving support.
“You seem to have plenty of friends.”
“We don’t get as many people down here as we used to.”
I ask them to pose and take a few snaps; I grab a few extras more discreetly.
I want to cross the road and photograph the anti-war couple(?), but I’ve run out of film in the roll and need to buy some more of the same speed, so I wish them luck and walk on towards the shops.
Some good-natured abuse goes back and forth across the road.
“You say we’re fascists [a word on Red Beret’s banner], but try and do what you’re doing in I-raq!”
“Yeah! We don’t live in a police state!”
They certainly don’t, I think, but you try walking anywhere in this sprawling, car-crazy megalopolis and you’ll understand that freedom comes with a (small, but annoying) price.
Microsoft Windows XP Pro Upgrade: 247.00 EUR
Microsoft Office: 449.00 EUR
SuSE Linux Pro including OpenOffice: 74.95 EUR
Appropriate that I should be sitting in a Californian Internet café with Rammstein banging out of the sound system (“Ich will die Ruhe stören!“), as I point you at the “Pavement Terror Web page. Some years ago, an evil photographer drove around a British town scaring the bejesus out of random passers-by and capturing the results on film. Who’s sicker, the menacing German metallers or the man with the anti-social van?
Universal City, Los Angeles, California: I am in the lobby of the Universal City Hilton, wandering around looking for its seafood restaurant. As usual, I am dressed in black, albeit with a blue T-shirt on underneath my black cardigan. Yes, I am wearing a cardigan; it is the middle of what the local news stations are calling “The Summer Bummer“. It is hotter in London than it is in L.A.. A basic human right of being a Californian is being denied the People by God—and the People are not happy.
As usual my skin is beige and, thanks to the weather, it’s not getting any darker any time soon. It and my clothes are dark enough for me to be mistaken for a guest at the memorial service for the daughter of an apparently affluent local black family. Sadly, cancer has taken her away from them young.
I am guided/drift into the main hall, steered respectfully by a big black security guy. Once inside, I discover that this event is sad with style, however. The guests are indeed wearing black, but mothballed suits are not in evidence. I count two black leather top hats and a significant minority wearing sunglasses indoors. Did you know that there is an extensive sub-genre of music that might be described as “mournful hip hop”? I do because this is a wake with a DJ.
When I finally manage to escape and sit at the hotel bar waiting for my grilled prawn caesar salad, I overhear another sharply-dressed black guy explaining to the barman that he had been in the hotel talking with movie executives when he noticed some people he knew walking in. It turns out he vaguely knew the family of the deceased, but hadn’t heard about her sudden death. Once he’d finished up his business he had joined the “party”.
Welcome to California.
Remember this experiment in search-engine-ology?
PooterGeek is already 6th highest Google hit on the entire planet for the phrase “naked Harry Potter” and for the phrase “Charlotte Church nude“.
The first hit recorded hit in the logs from someone searching for “Charlotte Church nude” was last weekend—could have been a PooterGeek reader, though.
Unlike most of the anti-war, anti-globalization, anti-trade, anti-science wool-heads who clutter our Leftish press these days with their inane polemics, Bob Geldof manages to combine a passion for improving life in Africa with the complete absence of ideology. He also does something real about his passion. In comparison with Geldof, the Naomi Kleins, George Monbiots and Arundhati Roys of this planet seem to do as much good for the poor of the south as David Hasselhoff. Actually, I must correct myself; there are lot of people in Africa who enjoy Baywatch immensely (which is more than can be said for Roy’s over-written books).
Following his clear-headed analysis of George W. Bush’s contribution to the problems of the African continent
“Whatever one thinks about what else this Administration is doing, and we all have our opinions, on AIDS in Africa they are transforming the agenda against all expectations. The President is to be congratulated on his boldness. But now Bush needs to ensure that the cheque gets signed.”
(shockingly making the front page of The Guardian), Geldof published another piece in its sister paper The Observer this weekend.
In accounting for Africa’s woes, he has attacked the EU and Stalinist African regimes, scarily obvious corporate monsters the wool-heads prefer to ignore in favour of truly evil players, like, er, Starbucks and, that old favourite, The Military Industrial Complex. The MIC, no doubt, provided the Hutus of Rwanda with the “smart machetes” they used to slaughter hundreds of thousands of their fellow human beings, and Starbucks the refreshments during their breaks from genocide. (Cheap shot, I know, but that never bothered Arundhati Roy who claimed before the war that someone—she wasn’t exact about who—was planning to “bomb Afghanistan back to the Stone Age”. Looks like the old MIC missed out out big time there.) Geldof also, rightly, puts the boot into corrupt European leaders, again usually ignored by those on the Left, too eager to see the motes in American eyes, rather than the beams in their own.
You’ve got to hand it to the Wachowski brothers, they know how to maximise their franchise. Leasy kindly lent me her copy of The Animatrix so that I could enjoy the latest offshoot of the original Matrix movie without lining the Wachowskis’ pockets further. (So far I’ve paid to watch The Matrix itself in New York and London, bought the DVD and caught the The Matrix: Reloaded in Cambridge.)
As cash-ins go it’s an interesting, creative and admirable one. The Wachowskis pay their respects to the Japanese cartoons—“cartoons”: that word’ll upset the fanboys—that inspired their own work and display inspiration, acquisitiveness and shaky plotting as they guide a group of anime artists to produce a collection of short films based in the world(s) of the Matrix. They are so respectful that part of the extra “making of” material on the DVD cuts back and forth between American contributors speaking in English (or what passes for it in slacker-generation Hollywood) and Japanese contributors speaking in Japanese. There didn’t seem to be any subtitles, but it may be that I didn’t explore the menus fully.
In return for the loan of her DVD, little Lisa has been nagging me to review the thing here for days now. At last my torment is over. Why in Heaven’s name do so many of my friends want a mention on this ‘Blog? It’s like aspiring to be an extra on Crossroads.
Congratulations to Fiona Hood (second from left in this picture), the woman who named this ‘Blog, on getting a First! Viv, Neil and I have already ordered the spicy potatoes for your next outing with the Mill Road Massive.
Amir Taheri explains to the hard-of-thinking the single most important lesson of the New World Order: don’t fuck with the USA.
This made me laugh out loud. There was a debate on the geek news site Slashdot earlier this week about ageism in information technology hiring. “Gen X-ers“, like me, are reaching their 30s and people don’t want to take them on as programmers, preferring “younger minds” instead.
One thoughtful and informed comment on this was particularly well received (as measured by Slashdot’s “karma” system of moderation). So was one of the replies to it, a gem of nerd flippancy and bathos:
Re:Do younger minds absorb quicker? (Score:5, Insightful)
by RobPiano on Friday June 13, @06:29PM (#6193134)I’m a piano teacher, and a computer scientist.
For the most part younger kids learn piano better simply because they put in the time and are willing try new things. My adult students often progress much faster than my younger students. Its only that most adults also have complex lifes already and can’t put in the time a little kid can. My adult students that have trouble tend to do so because they are afraid of the piano. I must admit, however, that some young minds can simply make unbelivable progress for no single reason other than natural talent.
I think the same thing transfers to Computer Science. For the most part if you have used computers for years you are not afraid to try things. Many adults are very afraid of computers. Kids simply explore and enjoy them.
I think Gen X’ers get the rotten deal in all of this. The generation before them WAS worse at computers at an old age. This is no longer true since many Gen X’ers have had computers since Commodore 64 or earlier. It will take another generation before this is ammended.
And for all of you programming divas just realize that programming isn’t a “god given talent” and neither is piano. You simply put in the work, do what you love, and good things come from it. Don’t think you are special for it, because no matter how good you are there will always be an 11 year old asian girl who is better than you’ll ever be.
Re:Do younger minds absorb quicker? (Score:5, Funny)
by CausticPuppy on Friday June 13, @06:54PM (#6193458)
(http://j.bruce.home.mindspring.com)“…because no matter how good you are there will always be an 11 year old asian girl who is better than you’ll ever be.”
Well then she must be destroyed.
Are you a patriotic American? Do you want to express your love for your country in a material way? Do you find the idea of flying the Stars-and-Stripes a little dull?
Try this site.
Hands off the “Socks the Cat Wristwatch“. It’s mine.
Today one of my virtual colleagues linked to an article reporting on a study suggesting that computer use was not a direct cause of carpal tunnel syndrome.
At the same site I couldn’t help noticing the link to a D-I-Y online test for depression. The test is hilariously obvious, so much so that it reminded me of a set of multiple choices in a spoof self-assessment for schizophrenia written by a psychology student friend of mine:
“Do you hear voices?
- never
- occasionally
- sometimes
- often
- the Cornflake People won’t let me tell you”
No blogging this weekend because I’ve been slowly constructing the PooterGeek archive and working on a new version of Claire’s Web pages [currently broken: not my fault, honest] for her book Loose Lips. [Have I mentioned it enough times, now?] Yesterday evening, it briefly reached about 1400 in the amazon.com bestseller chart. It can go in my portfolio of Web sites for crazily ambitious American women, along with Kim’s Monotreme Records and Judith’s wedding album
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