Posts from 2013
14 Dec 2013
Sula skull sponsorship
Iris Sula Morrison has adopted an exhibit at the Grant museum of Zoology: the skull of a northern gannet, whose Latin name at the time the specimen was catalogued was Sula bassana. Gannets are awesome and so is Iris!
13 Dec 2013
Inverse crowing
While working alone in an otherwise quiet house yesterday afternoon, just as the sun was setting, I was surprised by the sound of a cockerel crowing from the living room. Baby Iris has a toy puzzle with different farm animal shapes, and it uses tiny light sensors to detect the presence or absence of the pieces. It plays the animal sound as each piece is put in the correct hole. As is usual in our house, the pieces were scattered around the room, none of them in their little holes.
04 Dec 2013
“Tændʒoʊ”!
On the face of it, putting a tangerine in a stocking is a strange thing to do. Why put something in there that’s neither novel, nor a surprise, nor particularly exciting? Dear Father Christmas - if you’re reading this, I’m grateful for my stockings. They had some great things in, but I must admit I always hoped that the toe bit would have something other than citrus fruit in it.
28 Nov 2013
A bumpy rise
An eyebrow-raising typo on the BBC News website, where Rory Cellan-Jones is analysing Bitcoin’s rise to over $1,000 USD/BTC. Did he mean to offer investment advice with his final sentence? http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-2512073115 Nov 2013
Black is the new grey is the new red...
…in the world of squirrels, that is. Where we live, red squirrels have long since been “out competed” by greys. In the past few years, though, the greys have been supplanted by black squirrels (this rodent revolution is the subject of academic interest). On a very local scale, we recently witnessed a good old squirrel squabble in our back garden, and the melanistic contender has won! Recently, the victor has occasionally woken us up with a dawn chorus of squirrel barking.
27 Oct 2013
On thermostats
Crawling into a cupboard with a headtorch and squinting at an LCD display while repeatedly pressing buttons isn’t much fun. Until recently, this was the only way we could control the central heating in our house. So it was with some pleasure that we upgraded our house’s thermostat. We now have a Heatmiser wifi thermostat, and we are truly living in the future. We can: reprogram the heating without needing a headtorch turn the heating on/off/up/down from any network-connected device tell the system we’re away for the next x days, and have it save fuel check on the system from anywhere Being able to “make fire” from miles away feels like such a step up from a caveman rubbing twigs together!
13 Sep 2013
More meta
Turns out my understanding of the word “meta” could be, er, better. Its use as an adjective post-dates its use as a prefix by quite a bit. One of my favourite authors, Douglas Hofstadter, popularised its modern meaning: X is “meta” if X can be about X. My love of metaphotography falls within this sense of the word. Yesterday I discovered another branch of meta: laws about laws. I particularly like Stigler’s law of autonomy, which, like a sentence that asserts its own veracity, obeys itself.08 Sep 2013
Smarty pants
There’s a lot about smart watches in the news at the moment. I’ve been watching (pun intended) and waiting: I’m on the lookout for a smart button, not a smart watch. The idea of one more device with an operating system, requiring upgrades, settings tinkering and constant checking of the battery level is offputting. I don’t want features on my wrist. I don’t want a glowing screen, although an e-ink one might do.
06 Sep 2013
Two bits of metajournalism
I quite like all things meta. Metacomedy and metaphotography especially. Anyway, I wonder if it’s a coincidence that these two articles were published on the same day: Opening paragraph just repeats the headline, claims journalist - NewsBiscuit My ‘shameful secret’: I’ve learnt to love clichéd journalese - Daily Telegraph
04 Sep 2013
Running a race backwards
How do you (reasonably fairly) handicap a race without information about the competitors' abilities? The idea of handicaps is a pretty simple one: it’s used in golf, chess, tennis and horse racing. It relies on participants' performance data being available, and being trusted: if I’m expected to go round the course in three shots fewer than you, I’ll start with a three shot penalty, and then we’re equally likely to win.
30 Aug 2013
Can you hear me now?
You know when you’re on a call to someone, mobile to mobile, and the call drops? How often do you ring back, only to find the other person is ringing you back, so you both end up talking to voicemail. Wait a second, though: are they ringing back? You’ve no way to tell. Perhaps they’ve gone into a tunnel or something. It’s a bit like looking for someone in a supermarket: if they move around looking for you, while you’re walking around looking for them.
20 Aug 2013
Unsearchableness and homochirality
Is there a word for things whose existence is hard to uncover by keyword search? I’m thinking about concepts, or solutions to problems, that aren’t too tricky to describe in words, but are difficult to find in a computerised system. For example, having an amateur interest in zoology, I find organisms like sea gooseberries interesting. Taxonomically, they branch off high up in the “tree of life” - but they’re pretty common, occurring all round the world in decent numbers.
16 Aug 2013
Leafy avians
Slight taxonomic inaccuracy in this drop-down box on the website of the GB non-native species secretariat…
28 Jul 2013
Survival Night 2013
As I needed to air my tent and check my camping stove in preparation for a Scottish expedition, it seemed a good opportunity to think: how would Sarah and I - and Iris! - manage if our house was without power, gas or water? I’ve a fair bit of outdoor kit anyway, but have indulged my inner caveman by putting together a bit of a “survival kit” at home. Checking it over once a year seems like a good thing to do, so Survival Night will become an annual event.
23 Jul 2013
Washa simu yako
I got two new gadgets in one day today. One is my shiny new Leap Motion controller (about £77 delivered, mine was less because it was an early pre-order). Waving your hands and waggling your fingers takes a bit of getting used to, and it doesn’t work flawlessly, but it adds a new dimension to things. Using Swish and a bit of AppleScript I can now sign in and go “online” in Skype with a two-finger mid-air gesture - and set my status to “away” with the opposite gesture.
11 Jul 2013
Brainmaking
…or how to 3D print your own brain. I recently got hold of an MRI scan of my head. Not the sort of thing that’s easy to do for yourself! I volunteered at the MRC Brain Sciences Unit and asked (very) nicely. If you get your hands on a Nifti file (.nii or .nii.gz), here are some fun things you can do with it. View your brain in Mango Mango is a great, free download for Windows, Mac or Linux.
09 Jul 2013
Suggested train ticket pricing algorithm
The image illustrates what I feel would be a dramatic improvement on the status quo. That is all.
01 Jul 2013
Only people with shaved legs overtook me
Just back from a wonderful week spent in Soller, Mallorca. There were lots of highlights - one of mine was a bike ride I did from Soller. Mallorcan roads are super smooth (much better than Cambridge), and extremely well engineered - constant gradients up the giddiest of mountainsides. Details like the leg-shaving habits of people who overtake you become important when you’re cycling up passes like the Col de Soller or Puig Major.
18 Jun 2013
Further brainery
Earlier this week I volunteered again at the MRC Brain Sciences Unit in Cambridge. This time I had my performance measured in two types of task, before and after transcranial direct current stimulation. Did having a current of about 2000mA passed through my occipital lobe lateral occipital cortex for 20 minutes improve my performance? I’m not supposed to say, I’m afraid. Like last time, it wasn’t entirely a pleasant experience, especially having electrodes and electricity in yer heed.
17 Jun 2013
Two more metaphotos for my collection
I’ve mentioned my liking for metaphotos before. Now, with the hugest of thanks to photographer extraordianaire, Quentin, Sarah and I have a great set of photos of wee baby Iris. Equalling Iris’s toy collection in size and quantity but probably surpassing it in terms of expense, the contents of Quentin’s photographic kit bag were put to deft and skilful use, and the results are brilliant. Grannies/grandmas/granddads reading this: we are deliberately witholding the full set, but don’t worry, just be patient!
17 Jun 2013
j = 100i
Yesterday Iris passed an interesting milestone with one of her parents' parents. Grandma was (near enough) exactly 100 times Iris’s age at the time of this specially arranged video call. By the magic of maths, although her grandparents' ages span a few years, she will pass the equivalent milestone with all of them in the space of a week. I hope to compile a full gallery - technology permitting. Since it fits so nicely, and because her “turn” came first, I’ve decided to remember this moment in Iris’s life as… a Janniversary.15 Jun 2013
Pleasing taste, some monsterism
Advice about babies comes with large error bounds. It’s reassuring, up to a point. “Oh, that? Anything between three times a day and once a month is normal, yes.” “Aha, right - OK: sometimes there are three of them.” That sort of thing. Due to the “red book”, all parents know their child’s weight, and also know which percentile that puts the little blighter on. Slightly worrying to hear, though, that a health worker told a friend of ours “mmm, well, 99th percentile is quite high.
12 Jun 2013
Spaced repetition and remarkable carrots
Memories are blurry. Asked to recall our earliest experience, most of us have vague recollections of some childhood incident. Facts, on the other hand, are sharp little points of knowledge. The Battle of Hastings took place in 1066. Alan Partridge’s middle name is Gordon. The capital of Kenya is Nairobi, and so on. Try to recall your earliest memory that could be described as “factual”. I admit to being slightly unusual in this regard (in fact, I admit to being slightly unusual).
06 Jun 2013
Their tables were stored full, to glad the sight
About a year ago I came across a great open source resource: the complete works of William Shakespeare, in an SQL database. I couldn’t resist tinkering with it and got a few things done. What I really wanted was to open up the database so that people could run their own queries on it. Thanks to Webfaction, I’m able to do this now. Click the link below to see what you can do.
01 Jun 2013
Signage sightings
Since I work in a related industry, I feel a sort of heightened awareness towards all types of signage. A couple of examples I’ve seen recently around Cambridge. The first one, from a barber’s shop, had me wondering how a restyle from short to long would go. The second one appears to have happened accidentally, but I wonder if the proprietors of the Prince of (W)ales in Hilton, Cambridgeshire, have decided to leave things as they are: quite striking!
25 May 2013
Starting early
Iris’s first typing. She hammered away on the keyboard until I saw windows starting to open - at which point I grabbed the keyboard back! Here are her first “words”: . gnmnm g n b v hnmjk Not that different from her current speech.
10 May 2013
The structure of a smell
This is a post about the power of pictures and the smell of wee. Chemicals, in the macroscopic, room-temperature-and-pressure world that we inhabit, are defined by what they do. Cyclopentane is a flammable liquid, a solvent, it smells a bit like petrol - and so on. Structural formulae, to give them their proper appellation, are graphical representations of the arrangements of atoms within a molecule. Usually a few lines represent a carbon skeleton, and other atoms' elemental symbols are connected by lines representing covalent bonds.
07 May 2013
News flash: broken stuff continues to exist
Massive news flash/amazing coincidental discovery: broken objects do not cease to exist. Having recently made a trip to the Bowes museum, this afternoon I had the pleasure of a personalised tour of Dr. Nicky Reeves’s exhibition at the Whipple museum of the History of Science. Nicky’s exhibition touches on a variety of subjects, mentions Jeremiah Dixon and encases a carefully calculated amount of stuff - the “bits” of scientific endeavour. Nicky and I mused about how we view these “bits” today; how they are treated once they enter the domain of the archive/museum; how they might have looked at the time they were used; and their different meanings in different contexts.
05 May 2013
Iris celebrates half a lap of the Sun
6 months ago, Iris Sula Morrison entered the world. She marked today (her sexemensary?) by: rolling over for the first time. We missed it! Just turned around for a second, turned back, and there she was. directing a poo so precisely out of the leg of her nappy that all three members of her family had to change their clothing. learning to jump up and down properly in a Jumperoo.
01 May 2013
Passing up an opportunity
I occasionally shout at the TV: it’s a weakness of mine. Feel free to imagine me slumped in a chair in a Rab C. Nesbitt vest, clutching a scan of Kestrel and sputtering at: football lack/triviality of “science” questions on University Challenge. “Who discovered the electron?” is no more a science question than most of the “maths” questions that begin with “Answer as soon as you buzz”. mispronunciation of the word “the”.
29 Apr 2013
Broken thermometers no longer exist
From a caption at the exhibition at the Bowes museum, Barnard Castle (Jeremiah Dixon - Scientist, Surveyor and Stargazer): This thermometer is probably identical to those taken to Cape Town by Jeremiah Dixon and Charles Mason in 1761. The actual thermometers they used got broken on the way home, so no longer exist. If things that got broken ceased to exist, a lot of museum exhibits would take on a whole new dimension.
20 Apr 2013
Digitising books
Having acquired a new document scanner, I chomped through most of the paper in my life, scanning receipts, letters from the bank and so on. It took a few hours. To really put my scanner through its paces, I wanted to digitise a few books. Here are a few thoughts and pointers for future reference. It’s particularly useful to digitise reference books that you might want to refer to. This is a matter of opinion, but I think they are better suited to the illuminated screen, random-access type of reading/research that things like iPads are so good at.
18 Apr 2013
On Easter Eggs and Pigeon Brains
Not too long ago, it was Easter. I’ve written before about my belief that using a computer ruins your working memory. Well, setting an (indoor) Easter Egg hunt for my wife generated another data point in favour of my hypothesis. I found myself really struggling to remember where the eggs were: these were eggs that I’d hidden, myself, less than 10 minutes previously. Try it for yourself: hide 20 eggs round your house, in places sufficiently obscure that your other half would have fun finding them.
15 Apr 2013
Two Swallows Don't Make a Summer...
…but my cycling tan is going to bed down nicely, I think. Ouch! Great bike ride yesterday to The Green Man in Thriplow - recommended. I saw this year’s first swallows on they way: presumably they’d been riding the strong winds and decided that the weather had finally got warm enough to cross the English Channel. For the interested, here is some evidence of how windy it was. Cycling downhill while pedalling, you’d normally expect to be accelerating, rather than maxing out at about 12mph.
12 Apr 2013
Be careful on your birthday
I’ve long thought that this would be the case: you are statistically more likely to die on your birthday than any other day of the year. People do unusual things on their birthdays - drink more alcohol, push their front door open and get a shock from a surprise party, parachute jumps… Idly browsing the internet, I’ve just discovered that this has been studied, and the results show “the overall death excess on the day of birth was 13.
30 Mar 2013
Outsourced brainpower
I can’t remember when I first noticed TL;DR appearing on web pages. On the face of it, a TL;DR is a kind of “executive summary”, intended to save the valuable time of the reader. I wonder whether the rise of the TL;DR is a property of the medium - it’s harder to read extended passages on a screen than it is on paper - or of the reader. Demands on our attention are so intense and frequent, especially while online, that spending longer than few seconds reading something feels like a major commitment.
26 Mar 2013
Not quite paperless
Going paperless is all very well, but there are some bits of paper that it makes sense to keep, or that you have to keep for legal reasons. Documents relating to tax, receipts, utility bills (for when you have to prove your address), and so on - all have to be kept for x number of years. David Allen, of GTD fame, recommends filing material like this in an alphabetical system.22 Mar 2013
The missing article
Grammar can be important in bank statements. Glancing at the statement for the account I share with Sarah, I saw the following withdrawal, to her personal account: EVENING OUT MONEY -300.00 “Rather an expensive night out,” I blustered. Sarah, in the interest of brevity, had omitted the definite article. I was mistakenly led to believe that the first word of her explanation was part of a compound noun, rather than a present participle.
21 Mar 2013
A new toy for digitisation
I’ve crunched through scanning two carrier bags full of paper since getting a new Scansnap ix500 a few days back. The scanner is so quick that the rate-limiting step was not digitisation, but staple removal. Fujitsu should include branded staple removers with their machines.
18 Mar 2013
Crunching the Cloud
The news that Google Reader is to shut down is disappointing. Anyway, it made me think: “what if Google closed down GMail?”. There’s no indication that they plan to, but I don’t like the idea that it might go away one day. So I checked out a few solutions and have downloaded my email using Gmvault. It’s a script that, once you authenticate it with your Google account, merrily churns away, saving your emails into files organised by month.12 Mar 2013
Not all invoices are created equal
This is a post about invoice numbers. Don’t say I didn’t warn you. I started a company recently. Starting a new organisation is an opportunity for certain indulgences: you get to choose a name you take decisions on how things look you get to set things up the way you want As I’ve amply demonstrated already, I like thinking things through (some might call it overthinking). There won’t be many people affected by my invoice numbering scheme, and quite possibly even fewer who are interested, but here are the reasons why I have not gone for just ANG001, ANG002.
02 Mar 2013
Grey matter
I went for a voluntary brain scan yesterday, at Cambridge’s Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit on Chaucer Road. Having been interested in brains for ages, and after going to their lectures last year during Science Week, it was the natural thing to do. They’re always on the lookout for volunteers. Undergoing an fMRI scan is not a pleasant experience, but it’s really alright. It’s surprisingly tiring to lie still on your back for 50 minutes.
01 Mar 2013
Another milestone for Iris
Iris passed another milestone this afternoon: 10 megaseconds. It’s a sobering thought that she probably has only two of these decimal events left in her lifetime. I hope I’m around for her gigasecond on 14th July 2044.
28 Feb 2013
Not a damp squid
Last night an inaugural “memo geeks” meet-up was held. Topics of conversation of course included memory and Anki. Some bullet points on other areas we talked about: “reading” an audiobook is just like reading a book. In the latter, writing is used as a way to transfer ideas from one brain to others. In the former the transfer just uses recorded audio instead. Readers of audiobooks might therefore be expected to encounter words which they can pronounce but not spell.
26 Feb 2013
Coffee hack
Mmmm, coffee. A subject that generates a lot of passionate opinion, and there are more knowledgeable and more motivated coffee experts than me. I don’t claim that this method is perfect, or unique, or original. Nevertheless here is my cafetière method; for which I assert the following properties: time efficient warms the mug(s) maximises strength of coffee per bean no wasted energy in boiling water avoids water-too-hot-bitter-coffee syndrome Parallel tasks 4tw!
11 Feb 2013
Rockhoppercam = awesome
Easily the best bit of TV I’ve seen recently. There’s not much I wouldn’t swap for my own Rockhopper Cam. Penguins - Spy in the Huddle
24 Jan 2013
Digital Spring Cleaning
I heard this quote from my good friend Quentin. A philosophy with which I wholeheartedly agree: “You know you have reached perfection in design, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing more to be taken away.” Antoine de Saint-Exupery There’s no such thing as a perfect software project, but the results of my day’s work included a net deletion of 5,359 lines of code - satisfying, in a way.
22 Jan 2013
How many nappies to go?
Recently, wee Iris experienced a nappy surplus. We had too many of the things in size 2, and she outgrew them. In an attempt to avoid this happening again, and so as to avoid wastage and expenditure, I have developed The Nappy Predictor Module (TM). I used data from Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and a statistical function from StackExchage. The results show that Iris is about 86th percentile (weight-for-age).21 Jan 2013
Two-factor forgetfulness
I left my mobile phone at home today. There are so many ways of staying in touch, at least from a desk, that it doesn’t really matter that much. Although I missed one scheduled call which will have gone to my voicemail - sorry! It’s been inconvenient for a different reason: if you use two-factor authentication to access your online accounts, though, it’s very annoying. I can remember most of my passwords, although more and more of them were generated by LastPass - you can’t forget something you didn’t know in the first place.
16 Jan 2013
Pointy-headed reed dwellers
I continue to be intrigued by the capacity of my brain for memorising new things. I wanted to test myself on learning things that’re (essentially) useless (to me), that I wouldn’t accidentally rehearse during ‘normal’ life. Over the past 3-and-a-bit months, in about 7 hours' total study (less than 5 minutes a day), I’ve learned 350 cards. At the beginning of the process, I knew nearly none of the facts contained on them.
01 Jan 2013
Please find enclosed a blog post
One of the more pointlessly redundant pieces of paper I’ve received in the post recently. “Please find enclosed a letter providing you with information about your Santander UK account.” At least there was an (additional) enclosed letter. This is surely even more pointless than the pages of exam scripts that have the words “This page left intentionally blank” - although they at least provide a kind of paradoxical irony.Favourite posts
- On wiggly lines and being normal
- On infinite villages
- Running a race backwards
- Brainmaking
- Their tables were stored full, to glad the sight
- The structure of a smell
Recent posts
- Skill swaps
- Times Table Hack Stars
- Long, crustless hypotenuses
- Standing up a prototype
- Optimising the FA Cup
Blog archives
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