Journal

Cycling to work

2009-12-21T15:36:31Z

In the summer there are too many cyclists to count inside the ring road, mostly students and schoolkids. Outside the ring road there are fewer and they are more distinctive. The first to go was hot, fit young woman (powder blue lycra with pink highlights, matching helmet, coordinated pink sunglasses and colour matched £2000+ bike - she was quicker than me though). She decided it wasn't worth it when it got cool enough so she would need to wear something thermal over her lycra. Next down was cool black dude (school uniform, 20" BMX bike). He stopped when it got wet so he couldn't pose in the school playground. At the end of term we lost weird old academic dude (street clothes, anorak and climbing helmet). Last to go was nice schoolmum - two kids in a wide trailer, very slow but she always pulled over and had a nice smile and a cheery good morning. I think end of school term stopped her. There used to be a few nondescript people in black with ill-fitting Halfords helmets and mountain bikes but the cold snap also saw them off. These descriptions are of course just my prejudices but I talked to a colleague who comes in on the bus and she knew who I meant. I thought of myself as electric guy but she says my distinguishing characteristic is a metronomic cadence and constant speed so I suppose I am robot guy.
I'd like to think it is fortitude that keeps me going but probably it is a combination of clothing (triple layered fleeces, long johns, a motorcylce helmet (more protection, more comfortable and a visor)) and a hatred of buses. Or perhaps robots just cannot be stopped. Today I was on my own as far as Summertown though I was following one set of tracks in the hoar frost.

Party

2009-10-30T15:15:47Z

Since it is that dull and dismal time of year again we thought it was about time for a party. We'll be having it on Saturday the 14th November starting at about 7:30pm but if you have children or just want to come earlier we'll have an open house from 3 ish. RSVP if possible so we can have a go at estimating food and let us know if you are bringing a partner, friend and/or children. We are at:
Springbank
Water Eaton Lane
Gosford
Oxford
OX5 2PP
01865 848663
07803 206932
Matbrock00@googlemail.com
We won't insult anyone by assuming you can't use Google maps but we are the first house in Water Eaton Lane. The house name is on the balcony. If you're catching the bus take the S5 (http://www.stagecoachbus.com/timetables/S5ttforweb.pdf) from Magdalen St and get off at the Kings Arms (Harvester) stop in Gosford just past the traffic lights. Walk back to the traffic lights and we are diagonally opposite the pub. Last time people who came by bus mostly got lifts home – particularly to East Oxford. If you are coming some distance and fancy staying over there are some spare beds.

Hope to see you

Eyesight update

2009-10-12T20:47:10Z

I went to the optician today. There is a small amount of haze which will get better with time and slight discomfort in the right eye which will also improve. The issue is that the prescription is -0.25/-0.75 (down from -6.25/-7.5). The -0.75 in the right eye means the vision is not as crisp as I would like (-0.25 is fine). They are saying this may improve with time and can be corrected if I want. I do want better vision than this but I need to wait 3-6 months to fully recover from the last operation.
Reading is now fine so it could be a lot worse.

zengineer @ 2009-10-06T09:30:00

2009-10-06T08:34:43Z

Had laser eye surgery yesterday and it didn't go well.
The operation was very uncomfortable and I passed out in the recovery room.
Today my vision is hazy particularly in the right eye. Not too much discomfort though so I suppose it could be worse.
Reading is my normal escape from this kind of thing and that is hard work at the moment.

Artisanal

2009-09-29T14:56:56Z

Drives and Controls magazine has an article this month about Honeytop Speciality Foods which produces more than 100,000 artisanal breads every hour on its robot production line. I know the term artisanal has no formal definition but I think it would be reasonable to expect at least some human input.

Astronomical art

2009-09-16T10:42:49Z

For those who are interested (and are in Oxford) there is a rather fine display of astronomical images in Parks at the moment. Start at the Keble road gate and walk towards the bridge. With autumn colour starting to touch the trees it makes a very pleasant lunchtime stroll.

xbox 360 doom

2009-07-28T09:47:56Z

I phoned up Microsoft last night trying to get my Xbox 360 fixed. Initially I got through to a voice recognition robot. This was a little surreal as it was pretending to be a person but eventually by repeating the word agent a few times it connected me to 'another' person. As expected this person was in a call centre in India. Now I don't object this per se and the young woman while having a delightful accent spoke English well enough. I don't even mind that she was reading from a script and tended to lose her place every so often - I'd lose concentration asking the same questions all day. The thing I resent is that her desk appeared to be in the middle of the road in Bangalore. I could hear the buses and traffic going by and the taxis hooting and on occasions couldn't hear what she was saying. Is it too much to expect for Microsoft to provide its employees with offices?

For those who care the problem was the 3 red lights of doom (hardware problem). This is extremely common and the second time my console has failed. Microsoft have decided to stop extending the warranty which is now limited to 3 years or 1 year after the last repair. My console is just over 3 years old and so they wanted to charge me the best part of £100. I declined their kind offer.

Thoughts of dogs

2009-07-20T12:54:00Z

As I was ambling back to work along George St today after my lunchtime coffee I noticed a wolfhound/greyhound cross. He was standing patiently waiting for his humans to stop chattering to their friends and get on with the serious business of walking and like me he was watching the world go by. Simultaneously we both noticed a young dachshund waddling along. Clearly overfed his chest nearly touched the ground. The mongrel and I looked at each other both thinking 'that puppy is too fat'. Projecting human thoughts onto dogs is a bit fanciful but I really feel we shared a moment and assuming that dogs do not have thoughts as well as emotions is as likely to bring about a misunderstanding of what it is to be human as the reverse.

zengineer @ 2009-07-11T10:07:00

2009-07-11T09:09:42Z

The fingerprint recognition software on my work laptop has stopped claiming that I am not me and is now claiming that I no longer have fingers. I shall slither off and bitch to my tentacled brethren.

Regrets, I've had a few, but then again...

2009-04-16T08:20:54Z

Toyota has just sent me a personalised email.

Hello Mr Brock
Everyone has regrets. The job you didn't take. The friendship you neglected. The words you wish
you'd said...
But the risks that paid off, when you look back, loom larger. The flirtatious glance you acted upon. The day you bought your home. That time, against every instinct, when you answered "Yes"...
Take a chance on the Toyota Auris.
» Book your test drive now

I bought the car 2 weeks ago. Are they trying to pimp me another one in some bizarre automotive threesome?

zengineer @ 2009-01-29T14:41:00

2009-01-29T14:57:03Z

I was wandering through the Oxfam bookshop yesterday and noticed D&D's Deities and Demigods priced at £20. I remember this as being the very weak fourth AD&D publication and feeling rather cheated when I purchased it new for about £10 when that was a significant sum to me. It had poor illustrations and weak descriptions of gods from a range of mythologies with some numerical characteristics that I could have made up off the cuff as a DM had it been necessary. Why does a work like that increase in value? What I actually was looking for and bought was The Moon is a Harsh Mistress by Heinlein for £2. I remember this rather fondly and my copy has gone missing (possibly to my brother). This does rather confirm my view that keeping books is a waste of space as anything you want to reread will be easily available if you look for it. Is the judgement of history that the worth of Hugo award winning Moon is a Harsh Mistress is 1/10 that of Deities and Demigods?

Car loans

2009-01-28T10:07:46Z

So the government will guarantee up to £1bn in car loans http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/7853149.stm.
The economics of building cars are quite well known. Car companies are geared up to produce a certain number of cars per year and the fixed costs of running the business are about equal to the marginal cost of each car. So if you produce half as many cars as you plan they have to cost half as much again to cover your overhead. The best companies that match production and demand to capacity manage a profit of about 10%. At the moment demand is down by 25% so this will bankrupt every manufacturer who cannot massively reduce capacity if it carries on for long. The companies are well aware of the economics and use their finance companies as one tool to boost demand so it has never been difficult to get a car loan. Because they are giving the finance companies an asset that they have (a car) rather than the normal intangible credit the credit crunch does not affect them in quite the same way as it does the banks. So what will the government underwriting loans do? Car companies must now choose whether to lend a car to dodgy customers in exchange for very useful cash (a deposit and the repayments) knowing that if the customer doesn't repay they'll still get paid or they can go bankrupt. As a scheme designed to fail it takes some beating.

Merit pay

2008-10-30T12:04:53Z

The University is having a debate on its merit pay system. Oxford is a strange sort of workers collective where the voting shareholders, congregation (made up of lecturers and above and senior support staff (of which I am the most junior grade)) get to vote on their own pay system (though the funding council does seem to exercise a lot of control. Currently the system is that every year you have to make a case to a department committee. As far as I can work out currently every academic gets a merit award of between 3K and 35k (where that leaves the funding council's UK wide equal pay for equal work policy I don't know but we'll ignore that) and support staff usually don't get one. At the moment it is supposedly there to attract global talent and has been criticised for people getting it by threatening to leave. Now the official proposal is to make department managers propose the most worthy. This is being criticised for requiring them to be fair which the critic seemed to regard as unduly onerous (either department heads are not used to being fair or more likely the process they would have to go through to be seen to be fair would be incredibly tortuous).
I've been involved in various merit payment schemes and I have never come across one that I think achieves its usually stated goals of promoting long term organisational improvement so I'd abolish it. Does anyone know of a system that does work in some sense?

zengineer @ 2008-10-29T09:02:00

2008-10-29T09:05:19Z

Night before last the darkening. Rain and cold with miserable people hunched against the weather.
This morning ice on the road. Drivers with steamed up windows navigating by clairvoyance. I'm wary of carnage. Winter has come.

Grass

2008-10-10T12:55:11Z

So I have finally finished my Open University Biology course. A huge amount of work but loads of useful info on plants, animals and microbes. For instance;
Grass is a C4 plant (as only about 1% of plant species are). This means it has a mechanism for fixing of Carbon into sugar by presenting it in a concentrated 4 Carbon compound to the sugar creating enzyme in photosynthesis. The upshot of this is that in the presence of fertiliser grass grows much more efficiently than most other plants. So if you want a good lawn then fertilize it, if you want a wild flower meadow then don't. I have been sort of aware of this kind of thing for ages but it makes much more sense having studied all these things as an integrated whole.

Icelandic banks

2008-10-10T10:13:06Z

Why have councils taken money off us and then squirreled it away in Icelandic banks?
According to the Times;
Cherwell District Council £7m
Oxfordshire County Council £5m
Underspending you budget is just as much bad management as overspending it.

Bonekickers

2008-08-13T10:07:09Z

Having just seen the final episode of Bonekickers I was thinking it might make a good Open University 10 point level 1 course - like Life of Mammals or Coast. S1xx The History and Science of Achaeology. No?

Robot pack dog

2008-08-05T12:53:24Z

http://www.bostondynamics.com/content/sec.php?section=BigDog
I'd rather have a St Bernard.

zengineer @ 2008-07-22T16:30:00

2008-07-22T15:44:42Z

From this image and article the naive might deduce that relaxing licensing laws causes a rise in alcoholism http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/7518843.stm. The naive might also suggest that generalising this kind of thing might lead one to believe that relaxing drug laws might lead to a large increase in hospital admissions. Of course the reactionary libertarian has no fundamental issue with this it being their choice but for those who believe in protecting people from the consequences of their actions it may suggests that progressively increasing control is the way to go. Certainly not relaxing it.
Are you a heartless libertarian or do you support government restriction of harmful activity?

zengineer @ 2008-07-17T10:04:00

2008-07-17T09:06:14Z

Pope hits out against consumerism http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/7510862.stm.
A bit hypocritical from someone living in a palace like the Vatican I think.

zengineer @ 2008-07-02T16:02:00

2008-07-02T15:04:36Z

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7484131.stm
Having collected more information on the population than they know what to do with the government tries to justify this by offering a prize for anyone who can think of a use for the data.

zengineer @ 2008-05-31T20:51:00

2008-06-01T04:01:00Z

In Canada at the moment
Highlights so far:
The Royal Tyrrel dinosaur museum at Drumheller in Alberta. Very good Burgess shale stuff though it sounds like the Smithsonian is the place to go for this and excellent Permian stuff in general. Also good dinosaurs Albertosaurus (of course) but also Styracosaurs. They also had a conservator on display so you could chat to her about how they do it.
Lake Louise still partially frozen but the legendary green colour under the ice. Wonderful climb up through the pine forest and the melting ice into the snow at lake Agnes.
Having trouble with the distances especially in Alberta. Went to sleep after an hour travelling along a straight road. Woke up half an hour later and it looked like we hadn't moved. Still the same straight road.

zengineer @ 2008-05-19T10:17:00

2008-05-19T09:23:57Z

Just when you thought the Moseley sex scandal couldn't get any more lurid
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article3953837.ece
For me the issue is why are all these people leaving their jobs for reasons that have nothing to do with their competence? Is it naive to think that you should have to demonstrate corruption or dishonesty before punishing someone for it?

zengineer @ 2008-04-29T14:07:00

2008-04-29T13:10:43Z

Grand Theft Auto IV has sold out in Oxford. Even Halo III didn't do that so it seems that what people really want for entertainment is brutality. I'd say simulated brutality but this morning a bus forced me off the road on my bicycle at traffic lights and yesterday a different bus tried to force me into the pit they are digging for the new mains in Summertown.

zengineer @ 2008-04-10T13:34:00

2008-04-10T12:35:24Z

A difference engine is just child's play.
http://acarol.woz.org/FullEngineFrontLarge.jpg