The final countdown!

Ok so I'm in the last few weeks of thesis writing. I'm aiming to get it done by the 28th of September, so I can go home for Mum's birthday. Don't worry dear reader I'm not wasting keystrokes writing my blog, I'm waiting for a program to complete so I get the final plots for my physics chapter done. All very exciting.

It's been a weird summer. I've not really enjoyed any of the sunshine, just been holed up in my room writing. (Don't get me wrong I have had a bit of a life, just not as much as I'd have liked.) Having this monkey off my back is going to be great, I feel like my life is on pause and as soon as I submit it can restart (ignoring viva and corrections for the time being!!).

So what will I do with all my free time, well, I'm thinking:

1. Start boarding again. It's been too long since I've had scabbed knees.


2. Start playing some sport. Probably badminton and football. I'd also quite like to start fencing again.


3. Get back into digital art. I've not done any significant amount of decent stuff since 2002!!


4. Get some gigs with the band. Think this will happen regardless, things are starting to come together nicely. Still need a bloody name though!!!!


5. Start writing tunes on the MPC. It's great, I love it, I spent a lot of money on it, so why the hell don't I use it!!!

And of course go out and see all my friends that I've failed to see for ages.

Right the plot job is complete, back to work. Though it is nearly lunch time....

Restless

Tonight I'm really restless. I can't concentrate on work, can't go out because I've got too much work and I'll feel guilty. Tried playing a bit of guitar but can't focus enough to practice or write something. Tried watching some telly but it's all crap. Think I'll go out for a walk or something...

Reminiscing

Old band from Reading. The mighty JFK!!

ID Cards 2

Interesting article -> http://www.guardian.co.uk/idcards/story/0,,1817559,00.html

Quote:

You will be required to attend an enrolment centre with some form of identifying material - bank statements, credit cards, driving licence or birth certificate, who knows what. Then you will be fingerprinted, photographed and the iris in your eye will be measured. You will give the authorities 49 pieces of information about yourself. If you don't, you may be fined up to £2,500. Additional fines of up to £2,500 may be levied every time you fail to comply.

If you fail to inform the police or Home Office when you lose your card, or if it becomes defective, you face a fine of up to £1,000. If you find someone else's card and do not immediately hand it in, you may have committed a criminal offence punishable by imprisonment for up to two years, or a fine, or both. And you will be fined £1,000 if you fail to inform the NIR of any change of address. You will also be expected to tell the authorities your previous addresses. Truly the government will be able to say with all the menace of the underworld enforcer: "We know where you live."

If you don't inform the register of significant changes to your personal life, or any errors they have made, you will face a fine of up to £1,000. Astonishingly, you may also face a fine if you fail to submit to being reinterviewed, rephotographed, refingerprinted and rescanned.

And for all this you will pay between £30 and £93 (or more) to be registered, with further charges to change your details and to replace a lost or stolen card. It's a devilishly clever scam because, in essence, the government is charging you so that it can charge companies that wish to confirm your identity.

Also (here comes the maths bit....):
Part of why MP's want to bring in ID cards is to reduce/eradicate Benefit fraud. The current estimate of this is £2Billion/year (from the DWP- which includes some seriously shoddy maths). If we take the Government's cost estmate (and do some equally slapdash maths) it's £6B to set up, and £0.5B/year = £11B over 10 years. If we assume that the introduction of ID cards immediately and completely eradicates benefit fraud (and for some reason fraud also include DWP mistakes...) thats a saving of £9B (£20B not spent on fraud, £11B spent on ID cards. Now thats a pretty daft assumption, I'm sure it'll take a while for Benefit fraud to stop, and I'm equally sure that after some time people will find new loop holes in the system.

Thats if we believe the Governments figures, which are strongly contested by the LSE. The LSE reckon it will cost ~£20B over ten years. Hang on a moment! That equals £2B/year for 10 years, which is what is currently lost on benefit "fraud" (this figure is decreasing as the DWP gets better at detecting fraud - a cut of £0.4B in 2004 for example). So if we go with the LSE's numbers at best the ID cards will get us back to where we are now (£20B spent on ID cards, £20B not spent on "fraud").

If we assume that fraud drops year on year by 10% (less than the 2004 figure of between 16% and 20%) then the cost of "fraud" over 10 years is actually slightly over £13B. This means the ID cards cost £7B more than they save. It even makes the governments own figures look a bit shakey (major uheaval of the the UK constitution for a saving of £2B???)

ID cards "doomed"

Thank fork. A totally stupid idea from a totally stupid little man with a big big grin.

From: Foord, David (OGC)
Sent: 08 June 2006 15:17
Subject: RE: Procurement Strategy
"even if everything went perfectly (which it will not) it is very debatable (given performance of Govt ICT projects) whether whatever TNIR turns out to be (and that is a worry in itself) can be procured, delivered, tested and rolled out in just over two years and whether the resources exist within Govt and industry to run two overlapping procurements."

Kingpin Beach party

After a busy three weeks of travelling (must fill in claim forms, must fill in claim forms, must fill in claim forms) blew off steam at the Kingpin Beach Party, which was really fun. Was also celebrating Caroline and Rob's birthday and Mark getting a job. All very exciting.

Pictures of the fun and games here and here.

Iron and Wine

Last night I saw Iron and Wine and Calexico at the Bristol Academy, not usually my favourite venue but last night it didn't matter. Iron and Wine were so good, brought a tear to the eye. Calexico were really good too, but Iron and Wine were on a higher level.

The gig also reminded me of something I've been thinking for a while, especially when I listen to GYBE! or when I saw Broken Social Scene. Alot of interesting music is coming out of the States and Canada at the moment. By interesting I mean complex arrangements, weird instrumentation, large ideas. I think this is because of how music is funded and taught in schools in Northern America. Their school orchestra's are just that - orchestras - not the cobbled together mish mash of saxophones, recorders, flutes and guitars you see in English schools.

The UK has historically, in my opinion, punched above its weight musically, the Beatles, Stones, Kinks, Pink Floyd for example. But now I think we as a nation are being relegated out of the top forty. I can't really think of any UK band that has the level of intricacy of the raft of US and Canadian artists. Gorillaz maybe, Mogwai certainly rock but it's not in the same league as GYBE! We do innovate still (dubstep would be a good recent example) but it's not on the same scale as what comes out of the US.

We are also in severre denial of our musical heritage. Not many Morris troupes left are there?

I guess my point, dear reader, is if you have a kid get them to learn a weird instrument. There can never be enough hurdy gurdy players.

Djing

So last night I was djing at the Hijack Poll Winners Party. It was ace! I want to play out more!!

We played a mixture of latin funk and heavy metal. It was very fun. Getting in at 5 and waking up at 10:30 wasn't so great...

Making me think of buying a couple of CDJ's, those Denon's were fun...

Photo's of the night here, here and here.

The Cutting Edge

Ok so I've had my new macbook pro two days. I still think its great, really great. In fact I'm thinking about getting a mini mac for home....but thats another post. This one is about something different, well sort of, something more abstract.
This is the first time I've ever had totally new hardware. Bleeding edge even. Now this, for me, is very exciting. I like the idea of being one of a small (well not that small) group of people who get their hands on this stuff first. Which made me think (or more precisely made me realise I had been thinking) about my job.
It's easy to get a bit complacent and bored when you realise that you have been doing approximately the same thing for three and a half years. But I started to realise last week that what we do is so far ahead of the curve. Yes we particle physicists make mistakes, some times some gloriously big ones, sometimes some painful ones, but we are doing something new. We are the cutting edge. I'm happy with my job and I'm looking forward to where it will take me. Something that I hope to get involved in more is dissemination/out reach - showing other people how to use the new fangled tools we are creating, helping them learn from our mistakes. It should be fun. I like helping people.
Oh and I just have to mention my friend Rosie. She wants to be on the internet. Her namesake is a sex therapist. Rosie King. Go google it!

No Reply = Yes

So this is the song thats nearest to being complete. Band still has no name, so give me a shout if you think of one :)

New toys for Simon

So I got my macbook pro today. It really is freaking sweet. I am very happy. One thing that has annoyed me is X11 has to be installed from the DVD, and weirdly its not that obvious. Everything else is, so far, utterly ace :)

Fun with beards

So I shaved off my beard this morning. Decided to have a bit of fun with it on the way and went for the James Hetfield/Ra's Al Ghul look. Whaddayareckon???

More than words

Ok so I'm downloading Extreme - "More Than Words" for my housemate. I say for him, it's more to annoy him. In one way its the greatest love song ever (I swear I'll have it played at my wediing, should such an unlikely event ever occur) and in another way its a complete bag of toss.
I love the idea that you could woo a girl with this track (I've seen it done, so I know it happens/happened). It's so saccharine, its scary! But at the same time that we've all become so cynical that playing a cloyingly sweet love song to someone is no longer enough. The whole dating game must be played, obeying all its arcane and shifting rules. Odd. I yearn for the simple days.

New blog from a friend

Apparantly an "Accident Waiting to Happen". Knowing Mark this will be full of reasoned arguements of a leftish bent. Actually its far more likely it'll be full of a wide range of rants :)

Skinning windows

With a bit of windows hackery (described here) you can skin windows without any third party software , which is pretty cool. Deviantart has some styles to download for starters.

Picasa: Welcome

Another nice bit of software from google :)

Today I took time out from work to take a stroll up to the downs. They are practically on my doorstep and I never go up there (well not as often as I'd like to - need a dog I guess). Took along my new camera phone and took some panoramic shots. I like them, hope you do to.

Really helped clear my head and I feel a lot more positive. Before Christmas I kept finding myself trying to do stuff but not thinking. I guess it was too much wood to see the trees.

I speaking with a friend over a drink after my birthday meal. He is telling me that certain vintage video games consoles have doubled in value in less than a year. Ideas I've been having for a while condense around his words. My generation are in the ascension. We are reaching that point where we can decide what happens to us, around us. We are starting to get powerful, starting to shine. We are coming into the focus of the twenty year cycle.
The twenty year cycle hasn't been around long, since the late seventies I suppose. In fact I think it might be shortening. It couldn't exist without the speed at which our media progresses, and it stands to reason that as the media gets faster (blogs, the internet, email) the cycle will shorten. The cycle is the product of people growing up and having the disposable income to purchase the weird and wonderful things they have wanted since they were children, or to replace something they had as a child for that nostalgia.
It's an interesting time. What will we do with our new found power? What sections of our childhood pop culture will be resurected?

Ok so I've added some nice fades to the background of text areas, which make everything a bit easier to read. Sadly IE does something silly as the transparancy is done using a png, so I have to use the (proprietry) gif format. I plan to do some browser sniffing serverside one day so the IE users get a (dirty) gif and the FF/Opera bods get a nice clean friendly png.

To be honest with you I don't know why I care, but for some reason I do!

Birthday Celebrations

Well it was my birthday on Sunday so the weekend became one long celebration of me :) Friday night a load of people rocked down to Mr Wolfs for a few beerios, which was nice. We stayed there until our numbers dwindled a little then wandered up to Giant Robot at the Cooler (didn't get in) then to The Woods. Stayed there till about 4am chatting with randoms then went to a friends house and carried on chatting drinking and eating pasta till the morning. Went home, sent a few texts to people basically saying do not disturb and fell asleep.
Saturday all the plans went awry. Had planned to be in The Woods most of the evening but there was a private party there and we wouldn't have all got in, so we went to Morphs for a few lagers (nice place, looked like it did good food, but not really an ideal bar...). Met up with the stragglers there then tried to get into Mr Wolfs, but that too was full, so we ended up in The River, which turned out to be pretty cool. There was a pretty decent blues band playing and I think most people had a good, or very good time. About 1:30am we decided to move onto somewhere else (the band had finished), tried Mr Wolfs again, and were again turned away, so wandered round to the Arc Bar, which was playing some fairly decent UK Hip Hop.
Left there about 2 I think, wandered home via a chip shop with Dee and Colin (carrying Dee a fair amount of the way), and was nicely tucked up in bed by half three.
Sunday went for brunch with Colin and his friends from Uni, mooched around the house and then went for a curry at the Redland Tandoori. Nice way to end the weekend :)
What made me really made me happy was how many people came out. I have a lot of very good friends, and I'm lucky.

::Photos::