Palfrey's life

I've spent today (and also soon tomorrow) at Barcamp London 7. I've been to sessions on non-relational databases, split fares for trains, filtering and determining data about large scale real-time events (the recent BBC Question Time being a good example), issues with building push systems for mobile phones and a session on building a Scheme interpreter in Ruby in 17 minutes (coded effectively 'live' during the presentation). I've also played 2 games of Werewolf and ran a 3rd (for the first time, and it *rocked*), which makes me really glad I got around to getting that set printed on free Moo business cards, which have been very useful today, and I'll be building a thing to make these packs for others the moment I can get an API key...

Tomorrow, I'm giving my talk "Cool Things in Sensor Networks", and a lightning talk on the Travel Compare app, which really needs fixing as Google have noticed I'm scraping their maps interface. Oh dear. Meanwhile, I need some sleep.

(I'm briefly bored, so let's go with a meme!)

The problem with LJ: we all think we are so close, but really, we know nothing about each other. So I want you to ask me something you think you should know about me. Something that should be obvious, but you have no idea about. Ask away.

Then post this in your LJ and find out what people don't know about you. (But only if you feel like it.)

I've spent a little bit of time wandering around the Imperial College Fresher's Fair today. Despite having never been a Fresher here, and the last time I could have conceivably been a Fresher anywhere is back in 2003, I figure it's worth finding out what's going on, and at a bare minimum saying hi to the SF and Gaming folks. As it is, I signed up to a mailing list for a new Go society, got on the announcements list for another Drama soc's plays, and generally enjoyed browsing it.

Things I've noticed here, is that the undergrads appear to be really quite slow. Generally this is worst when they're directly between me and my office, but in general they appear to be moving far too slowly. Last year I got a few months in before yelling at anyone (a simple "Excuse me" at sufficient volume seems to work), and I had decided to reduce that time this year (as I felt I'd been far too polite last year), but thought it would take longer than today. I'm fine when I'm with other people, but on my own when I'm walking, I want the *minimum* time between points A and B, and if you're being slow in front of me with no good reason (talking on your mobile is not a good reason), I'm going to get pissed off. I was getting a bit frustrated with the crowds, then some pillock decides to stop dead right in front of me, and I end up yelling "Don't just bloody stand there!" (this wasn't that loud, he was remarkably oblivious and I got around him fast enough, so no idea of the results of that). Grr. Shouldn't let it get to me, but this does tend to annoy me a lot.

Also, managed to mistake the Catholic society for a Cat society (they're called "Cathsoc" and the "h" was very yellow and slightly hard to read). I then walk out of the relevant room and get handed a leaflet just saying "Kitty Magic". It takes me a good few moments (and some conversation with the person handing them out) to conclude they aren't either a) the should-be-created Cat society or b) a random religious group excluded from the room I've just exited (which contained many of them), but a band playing in the area later on...

This weekend promises to be the usual social whirl, so figured I might as well update folks on the plans in case anyone's interested in coming along to any of this

• Friday: Inferno @ Electric Ballroom - been meaning to get there for ages, and now I'm actually living with someone (kazmar) who goes regularly, this should actually happen this month!


• Saturday: John's 29th - John is an old friend of mine (we think we've known each other for at least 18 years), and he's holding his birthday in the Zeppelin Shelter pub which is owned by his former boss, so we've actually got the whole place to ourselves! Went there a little while back and it's a good pub


• Sunday: regularly scheduled time at the Pembury in the evening

(Apologies for people who have seen this entry already, but LJ was being a bit weird with dates and hasn't put this entry in my RSS feed...)

Couple of people have been asking what EcoMo was and why I've been wittering on about it on Twitter on Friday night/Saturday morning. ( More details (long) )

For those of you not aware, arXiv is a repository for electronic preprints in various fields (physics, maths, CS, etc). It's not particularly reviewed, but does appear to have a bunch of at least nominally valid stuff, which is kinda cool. OTOH, there's about 5000 new items there every month, so sifting through it would be an exercise in insanity. But today I found the Technology Review Physics arXiv Blog, which despite the name has a bunch of non-physics as well. Particular items of interest thus far:

• How Dragon Kings Could Trump Black Swans - looking at extreme events and how they effect power law systems


• How to Forecast Malicious Internet Attacks


• Basketball and the Theory of Networks - I think I've seen something like this before, but the core idea is that losing the best player can sometimes be good for a team (also the idea of drivers varying their route slightly occasionally resulting in notably less traffic jams)

While looking for something else, I found this. I'm not organising this, but it sounds like a fun idea, and I wonder if anyone else is interested?

Copy+paste from http://www.bigi.org.uk/2009/06/03/is-rhetoric-a-dirty-word/

The term rhetoric is most often levied as a term of abuse, deployed when someone’s empty words are not backed-up by their deeds. More often than not, that someone is usually a politician, spinning a yarn.

But do we only refer to rhetoric when it is done badly? Are the classical skills of rhetoric, something that we more usually associate with slime-balls and salesmen actually a higher art form that all of us would benefit from having reintroduced onto the school curriculum, where they could be found during the Renaissance?

If we all learnt these skills, rather than sub-contracting out responsibility for them to sub-standard communication consultancies, perhaps it might have saved Gordon Brown from his recent You Tube nightmare? It might save us all from ever playing bullshit bingo in a meeting ever again and our personal lives could be made more effective. It could encourage a politician to articulate the case for an otherwise unpopular policy position, rather than live in fear of the Daily Mail or the Today programme (or the Daily Telegraph!).

Paul Simpson will argue that, rather sticking to the facts, we should all be telling more tales. Without greater use of rhetoric, and the art of storytelling, ideas will increasingly cease to matter. Paul is a senior lecturer in public relations at the University of the Arts London. He is a former head of PR for BBC Radio 1, and has also spent time working in PR in politics, the civil service and the voluntary sector, as well as running his own consultancy.

Date: Tuesday 25th August 2009
Time: Doors 7.30pm for 8pm start
Venue: The Wheatsheaf (upstairs) - 25 Rathbone Place, London W1T 1DG

(I also made a Facebook event page for this)

Damnit. It's flaring again... Current items of particular want:

• "Confidence is sexy... Right?"


• "I am become death, the destroyer of worlds"


• "It Came Out Of Nowhere"

Today I've just finished "Under the Paw: Confessions of a Cat Man", which is quite remarkably funny. I'd never heard of the author before, and given it's effectively an autobiographical work, normally this would be important. However, the major focus of the work would be the cats that he's had through his life (by the end, him and his wife have *7*), and all the crazy crap they get up to. It's a fairly light read, but I found myself sniggering all the way through. Now, I seem to remember promising to lend this to someone, and I can't remember who... Anyone care to remind me?

Also, at some point I think I leant my copy of "Dr Horrible" to someone (either that or it's lost somewhere in my house), but I can't for the life of me remember who and I'd really like to see it again. Again, external brain powers unite! (and hopefully someone who reads this will go, "oh yeah....")

Tomorrow (well, later today now), I'm going to go and see "Let the Right One In" at the Roxy cinema near Borough. Going there in particular because it's only £3. Because of this (and also because as a non-Roxy member I can't book ahead of time) I'm planning on getting there for about 7:15pm for the 8pm screening. For those of you who haven't heard about this film before, it's a Swedish romantic vampire film, but without the sparkles and the vomit-inducing nature of things usually associated with those terms. It's also apparently very good.

Any takers?