I posted my essay through the leave-your-essays-here slot, and was done with it. At which point I walked outside and remarked as much to a classmate, who said ‘we just need the cover sheet, bibliography and two copies, right?’.

Two copies. Bugger.

I asked at the office and was told I could ’simply’ post another copy. This turned out to be way more difficult than you’d think. I’d started writing the essay in Google Docs for portability, but dropped down to OpenOffice due to GD’s (and, to be fair, HTML’s) lack of proper footnote support. I had the OpenOffice files, but no university computer could read them. Obviously their system doesn’t allow you to install anything so OpenOffice itself wasn’t an option, and none of the various third-party viewers had a no-setup-necessary download. I tried Zamzar - a website that converts file formats for free - but the conversion to Word format wasn’t quite right, and the footers were broken.

I phoned home with the intention of asking somebody to open up the essay in OpenOffice and save it as Word format, in the hope OO’s conversion worked better than Zamzar’s. While on the phone, however, I realised the obvious solution, and asked them to export to PDF instead. Zamzar probably could have done that, if I’d thought of it. This worked flawlessly, and I was able to print out the emailed copies and hand it in during breaks in the afternoon class.

I can’t believe how difficult it turned out to be. If file-types are going to cause this much hassle I’m quite tempted by the ridiculously cheap student version of MS Office.

Right, chaps. Here’s the plan. No matter what happens on next week’s Strictly, here’s what we do: vote for everybody but Kate and Anton. It is the only way. All she has to do is hit the bottom two and that’s it, sorted - she seems nice and all, but it’s just getting silly now, and perfectly good dancers are falling by the wayside for no good reason. So, spread the word.

Also, that professional jive was a hell of a thing.

I’m writing the first essay of my course at the moment, and taking completely out-of-proportion exception to the guidance. We have to write references in a specific format: name of author, title in italics, name of editor, etc.. But they’re not friendly about it. This is ‘the only format that will be accepted¹’. ‘This is compulsory.‘ ‘Please note that no other referencing format is acceptable, and marks will be deducted for improper format!!‘².

They’ve managed to say it so often, and in such shouty, patronising, terms, that my no, piss off reaction has kicked in. Obviously a consistent referencing format is convenient for the lecturers, but it is, after all, completely arbitrary and they should stop pretending like it actually matters for anyone but them. Or just ask nicely.

Ok, pointless strop over. Back to work.

1. Westminster University guidelines for essay writing. Unknown author. [↩]
2. I am going to deduct marks for using two exclamation marks [↩]

Whenever a scientific study confirms the supposedly obvious you find this kind of reaction, and I get fed up with it. It’s almost certainly just fun in Norm’s case, but I’ve met people who take it seriously and add it to the they-change-their-minds-all-the-time-anyway dismissal of science. In psychology particularly there’s plenty that’s counter-intuitive, and it’s only by this kind of ‘obvious’ investigation that progress can be made.

For example, today there’s a study suggesting that female ’sexy’ walks do not correlate with times of peak fertility - there are subtle signs of this, but they’re only detectable at close range. It was expected that the study would go the other way, and the result isn’t particularly intuitive. A few weeks ago a study reported that lap dancers have increased earnings during their most fertile phases, as compared with those on the pill all month. Also unexpected.

Of course, the cynic’s reaction will be to instead deride the studies as pointless, but you never know where this kind of research is going to lead. These studies add to theories of evolutionary psychology, and invite us to ask how much of our choices are determined by subconscious signals - how much free will do we really have? Not every result is going to be new and exciting, but investigation always reveals something. A quick browse of snopes.com will show how many ‘obvious’ things widely thought to be true are completely wrong. Confirmation of ‘common sense’ is worth having.

A row of large riverside trees in the centre of Stratford have been blocked off since the floods in July, and last week a decision was finally made. Here’s how they used to look:

but now:

It’s sad - they were a major part of the view, and it’s not like they’re going to grow back :-( I guess it was the only way to make them safe, though. What with this and the RST being in bits, Stratford’s looking something of a mess at the moment.

Anybody happen to know how to remove a stuck voicemail logo on a symbian OS phone? An N91, to be precise. I had one when the phone was set up, and this seems to have made it permanent. Only solution I can find online is to leave yourself a voicemail, then delete it, but this doesn’t work for me…

New gmail code is being rolled out at the moment, and it just hit my account. There are no major UI changes, but behind-the-scenes it’s apparently changed substantially. Differences I’ve spotted:

• Emails are pre-loaded, so there’s no delay when an individual message is opened
• The contact manager has been revamped and is much easier to use. I’m hoping there’s now an API, so we can finally sync gmail contacts with phones/outlook/whatever
• Searches are now bookmarkable, for example: http://mail.google.com/mail/#search/chickens
• There’s an ‘add event invitation’ option on new emails, linking directly into google calendar
• ‘More actions’ now contains ‘mute’, previously only available as a keyboard shortcut - this automatically archives email threads that are of no interest
• ‘More actions’ also contains ‘filter messages like this’, which sets up a filter with the appropriate fields already filled
• What was orange is now yellow

You’ll need your language set to ‘US English’ if you want to receive the new version (major difference - ‘deleted items’ becomes ‘trash’). It certainly feels snappier to use, although that yellow is pretty sickly. Google Operating System also reports:

• Individual emails are now bookmarkable
• The back button works (although I thought it did before)
• The pop-up ‘contact card’ that appears when you hover over a contact name is easier to use (good - damn thing always used to disappear half a second before I’d copied the address)

There’s apparently a new user-interface in the works, too, although there are no hints when this will be released. Unfortunately most greasemonkey scripts are now broken due to the code changes, but an upcoming API should prevent this problem reoccurring.

Can you identify them all? If man-with-gun-to-head is #1, I can’t get #3 and #5.

Religion = cult + followers + time. This is particularly obvious in the case of the Mormon church, which has enough of a profile to be considered ‘reasonable’, until you start actually reading about it¹, and also Jehovah’s Witnesses, in the news today for the usual reason:

A young mother has died after giving birth to twins, amid claims that she had refused a blood transfusion because of her faith.

I heard tell of claims she would have died anyway, but it’s immaterial - the issue comes up often enough for it to be a problem in non-secular societies.

Jehovah’s Witnesses, along with avoiding any notion of Christmas, evangelising non-stop, and awaiting the imminent armageddon after which they, Jesus and 144,000 friends will be all that remains of the human race, take certain parts of the Bible literally. One such sentence comes from Acts 15:29:

You are to abstain from food sacrificed to idols, from blood, from the meat of strangled animals and from sexual immorality.

God, as ever, considers this kind of arbitrary thing very important for reasons never elaborated. Meat of strangled animals? Yep, I can see that’s not so nice. Food sacrificed to idols? Standard divine jealousy. Sexual immorality? Begging the question: what’s moral? But blood? How the hell can you abstain from blood? Given that this was obviously written by some unknown person, it’s hard to see what this could be about. Is it just to sound dramatic? Or some primitive fear of vampires? Whatever the origins, the phrase is taken seriously by Jehovah’s Witnesses, who will regularly refuse blood transfusions in hospital operations.

Obviously, this is completely demented. But it’s too stupid, and just makes me sad - no rational brain comes to this conclusion without years of brainwashing, and it’s hard to feel anything but compassion for people who are taken in by it.

Of course, parents who demand their children not receive blood transfusions can go to hell. I may feel sorry for the parents, but it’s unquestionable child abuse: there is no other option than to take the decision away from them, and thankfully the state can and does override parents in life or death situations. Compassionately unwavering rationality is the only solution in such cases.

I don’t know what, if anything, should be done about adults who make a decision to die rather than receive blood. I’m all for adults being able to make their own decisions - if you want to believe the world’s going to end soon and tell me about it at every opportunity, sure, whatever - but when it’s a life or death situation I waver. There are possibly grounds for intervention on the basis of a lack of sanity: none of us would see any problem with forcibly pulling someone back from jumping off a bridge - why should claiming ‘religious privilege’ make any difference? I suppose the argument is the slippery slope, but I don’t see the issue with intervening in life or death situations. But, in a situation like this, what of the rights of the children? The BBC reports that:

a young woman in Dublin lost a lot of blood after giving birth to a healthy baby a year ago. A Jehovah’s Witness, she too refused a transfusion.

But an emergency ruling permitted the hospital to carry out the procedure, arguing that the right of the newborn baby to have a family life overruled the mother’s right to refuse treatment.

It’s a messy precedent, but I don’t have a problem with that.

I don’t have any theoretical problem with the NHS making minor concessions for religious believers, but in practice it simply won’t work: there’s no logical difference between the small stuff and the life/death decisions, and it will only cause problems. Medicine has to be secular if state-approved death-by-cult is to be avoided.

1. the story of the Book of Abraham is entertaining, and Julia Sweeney has a great introduction to the Church’s overtly racist overtones in ‘Letting Go of God’ [↩]

This is no fun: I’m not going to be a billion seconds old until 2011 2015. What am I supposed to do till then, have completely arbitrary celebrations? Closest round-number event is 10,000 days old in 2010. A.C. Grayling likes to point out that we live for about 1000 months, so I’m not looking forward to that one.

On the up-side, I’m bloody well having a toffee apple tonight. I only allow myself toffee apples on bonfire night; last year I was at Strictly, and in 2005 I couldn’t find anyone to go bonfire-ing with, so it’s been three years since I’ve had a toffee apple. It’ll happen today if I have to make it myself in a saucepan.

(edit: fixed practically all the information. Apparently I cannot read properly.)

“While we’re not here…“

After much panic and rushing about I finished putting the project together at 1940 on Thursday, and presented it this afternoon. Well, it wasn’t so much a presentation as a ‘critical assessment’, in which we split into groups, each critiquing the works of another and presenting their thoughts to everyone - it’s a little less stressful than an individual presentation + Q&A, although not much. The brief was 2-5 black and white prints on the theme of ‘interaction’ - basically an introductory project to get some indication of our abilities, I suspect - and my final display looked like this:

We were told not to say much about our intentions and let the images speak for themselves, so I’ll stay quiet.

It was the first time I’d seen everyone else’s work, and I was totally unable to get any perspective on my own project - I genuinely had no clue how it compared, or what people would think. The others had some great results, though, and I’m looking forward to an upcoming project where we work in teams.

The group’s reaction to my project was generally favourable: they liked the idea and thought the second image (knife in pumpkin) was the strongest, but recommended I remove the last two shots as they were weaker (particularly the final one), just leaving the first three more abstract photos.

Once they finished giving their opinions it was opened to the entire class, who said some nice things, and then the two teachers. They immediately completely disagreed, suggesting that if anything I should remove the first three as they didn’t seem to add anything to the concept and weren’t as good as the much stronger final two images anyway. The course leader recommended I enlarge the two to A3 and present them as a diptych.

It’s interesting to get such contradictory reactions and advice, neither of which I’d anticipated. I suppose the teachers have much more experience of this kind of work, and are, you know, grading it, but I want to produce work that appeals to my peers too. I’m not going to go into my intentions, but I don’t think I expressed my idea particularly well since neither the assessment group nor the teachers really picked up on the overall concept in my head. Having said that, at least one person definitely did have it all figured out, so there must be something there. It’s tricky to get any perspective now - I’ll take another look at them in a couple of weeks and try to see what works and what doesn’t. Plenty of food for thought, anyway. Thanks again to Nod for being a willing Pumpkin Man.

It’s a while since I’ve had a deadline project like this, and I’ve learnt a hell of a lot about how to manage my time. Major point: don’t end up doing it all in a week! The next project is entirely studio-based, which means playing with toys complex lighting equipment toys. Should be fun.

The wouldn’t-give-me-a-job-but-are-cool-anyway Photojojo crew have just started selling a 2gb wifi SD card:

Here’s how it works: You set up the card once with the included USB card reader, choose the photo sharing service of your choice, then slip the card in your camera. From then on, you never have to touch anything. Just take photos, and next time you’re near your wireless network, Eye-fi will upload your photos to your online photo sharing service. Next time your computer’s online, they’ll download there, too!

They also promise “no antennas, no protrusions, no subscription fees, and no cables.” And it’s $99, which by today’s mental exchange rate comes to £47. If it can actually do what they say, that’s a good deal. I’m not so bothered about direct uploading to flickr, but wireless transfer to the computer at 802.11g speeds would be useful. My SLR only takes compactflash, not that I can afford an Eye-fi anyway, but they promise there’s an adapter on the way…