James Birkett

09:26 pm: A bit of this, a bit of that
Since the last post, many things have happened. In summary:

• ( Russia )


• ( Alton Towers )

11:28 pm: Life's lessons number 3472:

Sneezing while brushing one's teeth is supposed to be messy. Don't try to fight it. It's better than forcing toothpaste and saliva out through your nose.

03:59 pm: I'm not sure if I'm insulted or amused...
I was talking to a lecturer here earlier today. The subject turned to Swindon, which he had just visited, and inevitably roundabouts, and hence The Magic Roundabout. He said it was clear evidence that town planners were the spawn of Satan. I pointed out that my father is a town planner - he looks distressed - I assume he was worried about having offended me, but no, he continues "Well, I guess that makes you the grandson of Satan. I'll have to be extra nice to you in future..."

08:33 pm: Long time no post
The PhD continues - working on a paper with my supervisor and the Ecrypt Aztec working group about something called "WIBE" - it's like identity based encryption but with wildcards. I'd explain further, but there's a lot of terminology and stuff. I'll post a link to the paper when it's published. :-)

Anyone else digging the really fine weather we've had? I love this time of year. Sunshine, lolly pops and raindrops :-)

Anyone have any suggestions for entertaining myself without my usual mixed bag of society evenings, or the presence of most people who seem to have gone home for easter?...

02:43 pm: violence
A European draws mohammed as a terrorist! That makes all Europeans evil!
A small proportion of Angry muslims get violent! That makes all muslims evil!

What exactly is the difference between adults and beligerent teenagers again?

I've been pretty upset by all this, not sure what to make of it. I do realise it's a minority making the rest look bad though, please don't flame me.

Update: if you look hard enough at the news, you will find some articles saying exactly how minor the beligerent minority is... I guess it's partly a matter of the press having no sense of proportion either.

05:15 pm: Geeky humour on IRC

< Slayeh> mew#
< dom> mew sharp?
< Slayeh> quite
< birkett> how does mew# compare with the Java-mew alternative?
< Slayeh> well its newer, steals ideas from other mono-syllabic noises and attempts
          to pass them off as its own invention, all the while claiming to be
          much better than it really is
< Slayeh> wow that was quite cutting
< birkett> :-)

06:32 pm: I rememeber normaility.
Discovered several interesting things while out with Andy and other former Bristolians in Woking. Firstly, if you order pernod and lemonade, and it tastes rather unpleasantly like pernod and soda water, it's probably because the lemonade pump has ran out. Took me two of them to figure out that. :-(

Secondly, even when the music is very loud, ordering drinks via predictive text and showing your mobile to the barmaid can be dangerous. For example "A shot of Smirnoff vodka" uses the same keys as "A pint of poisoned vodka". one to be careful of, that one.

Thirdly, the condom machine in the gents toilets at the Rat and Parrot in Woking displays unmistakeably a very large FreeBSD logo. We presume that it's running NetBSD and the owners just got the logos muddled.

Fourthly, Andy plays poker less well when drunk. Huzzah! Both lizzie and I felted him with J6 suited. Different occasions and different suits, but still, was entertaining :-)

and finally, I got bored on the train home, and really needed the loo. Obviously, south west trains don't clean the toilets on their trains anywhere near often enough, and there was no way I was going in there... So as the train sat on the platform at Virginia Water, I noticed that the departures board said it wasn't leaving for another 10 minutes or so. So I got off and tried to use the gents in the station which was locked. Then I decided to look at Virginia Water. It's very pretty. I didn't see much of it, but there are some pretty old buildings, and surprisingly, some new ones around them that compliment the old really well. I was very impressed. After having wandered for a while, I thought I'd just keep going, so I set off in the same general direction as the train line, hoping to find Saville Gardens, which are nearby, and I knew the way home from there. I found a footpath instead. I had been diverging from the train line somewhat, and it seemed to be heading back that way, so I followed it. It abruptly turned into a swamp. Ah well, never surrender, never turn back, so onwards until I find myself with very muddy feet and trousers in a field with horses. I decide that that's probably not where the footpath is supposed to go, eventually find an exit onto a little road. Wondering where I am, I meander along, admiring the scenery and watching dusk fall over the treeline. Which isn't a treeline at all, there's no way you can possibly mistake the roof of founder's building! Without trying I had apparently found a back entrance to Royal Holloway, with a big sign and everything. Win! :-) Only took about forty minutes too, and it's a much nicer walk that the twenty minutes up hill from Egham station.

That was a good day.

06:05 pm: Displacement Activity
I got my svg A4 go board down to 230 bytes!
A4 Go Board

Instructions for use:
Print out.
Play go using pencil.

09:50 am: Gah.
Apparently the Anglican church is schisming over women bishops. Wasn't the idea that women could be priests sorted out in the mid 90s? What's the difference? Haven't they seen The Vicar of Dibley? All good theology comes from BBC comedy as they should rightly know.

"Are people like me to be driven out of the Church of England or not?" (quote from same bbc article). If "people like me" means sexist bigots, then sure, why not?

I love the idea of "traditionalists, who say there is no biblical precedent for women bishops"... Don't remember Jesus mentioning the idea of bishops at all, female or otherwise. Almost as good as saying "they would no longer be able to tell whether a priest presiding over Holy Communion was truly qualified to do so." Yeah, very biblical, "Do this every time you drink it, BUT ONLY WHEN SUPERVISED BY A PROPERLY ORDAINED MINISTER!"

12:51 am: Sociability meme

Your Social Dysfunction: Normal Being average in terms of how social you are, as well as the amount of self-esteem you have, you're pretty much normal. Good on you.

Take this quiz at QuizGalaxy.com Please note that we aren't, nor do we claim to be, psychologists. This quiz is for fun and entertainment only. Try not to freak out about your results.

Huzzah! That means I win.

12:05 pm: Traveling
I'm sorry this is a long entry, but yesterday was a day characterised by bad decisions and mistakes on trains and want to share the fun.

Getting the train from Burton to London was hastle free and painless, it was after that it all went wrong. To save lugging my large heavy suitcase all the way to Esther's, I left it at the left luggage office at St. Pancras.

Happily I went into Kings Cross to get the tube to Hillingdon. I promptly got on the Picadilly line. As anyone who knows the lines might tell you, it's a lot lot quicker to get the metropolitan from king's cross to hillingdon, but that didn't stop me getting the Picadilly line to Heathrow. Fortunately a nice canadian woman asked me if we were on the right train to go to Heathrow, and I kindly explained we were going to Uxbridge, see here where the lines branch off. It turned out she was right all along, so I got off and got on the right train at Aston Town or somewhere.

Anyhow, even though the journey so far had lasted 4 hours, and I was an hour or so late, I still beat everyone to Esthers comfortably by half an hour. Had a very nice time with Esther, and I'm glad to have seen her before she left for Japan.

When it was time to leave, Andy told me he's going practically past Englefield Green, and offered me a lift... Whoops. My suitcase was still at St. Pancras, and I needed to retrieve it before the office closed at 8:15. That put a crimp on the idea of going out for the evening, and cost me about £20 but we'll come to that.

So I got on the train with Dom back to central london (Metropolitain line this time), had a nice discussion of music and codecs and whatnot, and reached Aldgate, which is about 5 stops past where I wanted to be. Dang. Back the way we came. Dom left me at Moorgate, and I proceeded to King's cross, retrieved my luggage, and made my way to Waterloo, via Picadilly and Northern lines. This was the only entirely successful underground trip I made today.

At Waterloo, I looked at the departures board. 12 minutes till my train. Damn, my favourite old fasioned ticket machine with a button marked "Young person's railcard day single" wasn't accepting notes. From past experience, I know it's not possible to buy a ticket from the modern machines with a young person's railcard, so I go to the ticket desk. The nice man agrees that the machines are crap, and explains that in about 10 button presses, I can in fact do as I had intended, compared to 2 on the old machine. That's progress for you.

Still seven minutes to my train. Time to use the loo, I figure. Ah. one you have to pay for. Turnstyle. Suitcase. Guard eventually lets me through the side gate, so I do my thing and leave again (turnstyle issues again), only to see the train depart as I'm 5 metres from it.

At this point, I start shouting obscenities, and shaking my fist at the departures board and so on. A few people give me pitying glances, many more distasteful looks, but I really don't care.

Next train to Egham is 35 minutes, it turns out, after the departures board on the next platform Flatly lies to me that it is going to staines and I nearly get whisked away to god know's where on the wrong train. More glares an cursing.

Fortunately, there really is a train to Staines (but not Egham) in 10 minutes, so I take it. It turns out to stop *everywhere*, even more stops than the one that goes via Egham it seems, do after much dum de dum false starts where I think I'm at staines but aren't, and listening to the most moody music I have on my player, I eventually make it to staines. The 20 minute later train to Egham is now only 8 minutes behind us, but I'm really past caring, so I jump in the first taxi I can find and whitter about it to the driver. He says he's on 40 grand per year. Why aren't I driving a taxi? Oh yeah, it's because according to him the train drivers are on £52,000 per year! I think I am in the wrong line of work.

£8 later I'm home (total cost £5 for the luggage locker, £2 each for the tube journeys, £5 for the train journey to Egham and £8 for the taxi makes £22 wasted thanks to leaving my luggage at St. Pancras), only to find a note complaining about the presence of my Bicycle (<sarcasm>thanks for providing Lockable bike sheds</sarcasm>) the stuff on the floor, which is on my floor not because it is rubbish, but because I have nowhere to put it in this storage limited room, and the state of my toilet, which I have to say, I cleaned immediately before leaving. The reason the toilet is nasty is because the plumbing here has this irritating habit of bubbling foul gasses and God knows what else up at random intervals. Combine that with being unable to sign onto msn for no good reason and I'll be glad to get out of this Hall.

I'm tired.

09:48 am: Musings on space travel
If we do ever colonise other worlds, we will probably have to leave all the Muslims here. I mean, just think how complex it would be trying to figure out which way Mecca is five times a day....

02:47 am: Quantum Mechanics
Quantum Mechanics: The dreams that stuff is made of.

01:57 am: Spam
I've just been informed that I can get a university degree from Everett Robinson, where ever that is... apparently they "have been qualifying people based on thier experiences in past and present jobs and are offering qualified degrees with transcripts for those that qualify."

One has to wonder if the spelling and number of Qs on the degree certificate are so impressive =)

12:38 pm: Quotation
The universe is vast. We are so small. There is really only one thing we can ever truly control.

Whether we are good, or evil.

08:37 pm: Ouch
Note to self:

House parties are fun. Drinking on an empty stomach is a very bad idea.

This is all.

05:10 pm: Training courses
Today I went to one of the "personal development" training course things I have to do by order of the research council who are funding me. The morning was all about "Assertiveness". This was alright, but the argument was somewhat circular in places (e.g. one bit seemed to me to be along the lines of:

1. being assertive == good
2. Sometimes it's best to be passive
3. thus being passive is being assertive
4. but passivity and aggressiveness are bad
5. ???
6. profit)

Anyhow, the fun part was the afternoon, with "teamworking". This means we get to do teamworking exercises. Huzzah. Out came the mashmallows and spaghetti - build the tallest structure you can. Woot. Being the mathematician that I am, I thought: "Tetrahedron". My team were happy to go with my idea and we count marshmallows, we have 57. Woot. so after claiming a spare table to give ourselves a bigger base, we promptly went on to thrash everyone else with a 56 marshmallow 6 layer tetrahedron with a spike on top. (217 spaghettis were used. should have been 211, but we added a few double struts). No one came even close :-)

One of my team mates took a photo of the pyramid with his phone camera. Check it out.

Afterwards, I asked the lady running the session, and she says she'd seen that idea before, which I expected, and then I kicked myself when she said that when doing it at IBM a team built a geodesic dome... that would have been sooo much cooler :-)

02:54 pm: Keys
I retrieved my keys! :-)

I had left them in a computer shop in Staines, and the shopkeeper was kind enough to look after them for me :-)

06:46 pm: Intense Badness
Today I went shopping in Staines with Nick, Carl and Sabina. This was well and good, but I lost my keys. AAARGH. I lost my keys!

I have got the security people to let me back into my flat, and tomorrow I can get a replacement flat key from the reception office, on payment of a fee of course... But I still need to sort out all the other keys on there... ;_;

11:40 pm: Woot!
I finally got this blasted internet connection to work.

I do not know what I did differently. But I *DO* know that the most evil of sysadmins have been blocking pings to anywhere, pretty much, so my test to see if the connection was working was always failing. It might have been working for ages, for all I know...

Ho hum.

They also seem to block port 6667 - irc. Swine.