So, here we are in Vienna, and today it isn't even snowing! Further to this post, we managed to see a pair of nuns, though not in bins.
Next month, just after Easter, I have a business trip to Vienna for a project meeting (hopefully - the project coordinator has *still* not sent the details for a planned meeting that's now less than a month away), and so ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif?v=91.6){kind=small}
ias, the garklet and garklet2 (WINYOLJ) are coming over to make a short break of it. We've been trying to enthuse the garklet with the idea of the trip, but he's currently being quite grumpy and negative.
On the way to school this morning, I broached the subject with him again. After an initial "it's boring", he advanced the notion that it might be fun "because they have lungans in bins there".
- nmg:
- What's a lungan?
- garklet:
- They go in bins. We saw it in a film.
- nmg:
- We? You and I? I'm not sure what a lungan is.
- garklet:
- Yes, we saw them in the film we watched about Vienna.
- nmg:
- Are lungans animals or people?
- garklet:
- (with an odd look) They're people, dad!
- nmg:
- Sorry, I'm just being a bit dim this morning! Was this film in black and white? (thinking that it might be a dim and toddler-memory-accented recollection of The Third Man)
- garklet:
- No, it was a colour film.
- nmg:
- Gosh. You've got me stumped here. Can you remember anything else about the film?
- garklet:
- Yes, there were people in bed and they were talking about things.
- nmg:
- What sort of things were they talking about?
- garklet:
- Interesting things!
- nmg:
- Of course.
- garklet:
- And he had a blackboard in his bedroom.
- nmg:
- (realisation dawns) You're talking about A Very Peculiar Practice! They're not lungans, they're nuns!
- garklet:
- (embarrassed) Yes! Nuns, not lungans!
- nmg:
- That programme is set in, well, a made-up university, not Vienna. There will almost certainly be nuns somewhere in Vienna, but I very much doubt that we'll see them going through bins.
- garklet:
- (disappointed) Oh.
- nmg:
- Vienna has other things. It has very chocolately chocolate cake!
- garklet:
- (brightening) Oh!
No wonder the lad has been lukewarm about Vienna - he's been under the misapprehension that we're going on holiday to a crumbling 1960s university campus!
I appear to have been mentioned in the Huffington Post.
So, Apple posted a teaser for the new version of OS X yesterday, and in amongst the goodies was the following image. Note the name of the user.
I'm quite surprised that there hasn't been a larger reaction to this (but this may just be my own prejudices*). So, to the poll!
Poll #1819593 Apple marketingOpen to: All, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 39
Is "Spazbert":
| A cute-sounding username? |
   5 (13.2%) |
| Derived from a pejorative term for the cerebral palsied? |
| 33 (86.8%) |
Apple is a US-based company. Therefore, when marketing overseas they should:
| Aim not to use locally offensive terms. |
| 33 (84.6%) |
| Use whatever language they want because they're goddamned Americans. |
| 1 (2.6%) |
| Use whatever language they want because they're goddamned Apple. |
| 1 (2.6%) |
| Use only brightly-coloured shapes. |
| 4 (10.3%) |
Who cares, everyone speaks American English now
You're thinking too hard about this.
* two of my cousins are CP
- Music:Ian Dury
While squeezing some Seville oranges at the weekend (for duck a l'orange, as you do), I realised that what Seville orange juice really, really needs is tequila. I therefore present the following:
Marmalagarita
40ml tequila
20ml Cointreau
Juice of a Seville orange
Dash of orange bitters (Fee Bros. preferred)
It's been a very busy few weeks here, with no sign that work is going to ease off before Xmas (or before the arrival of Garklet #2), but I ought to make an effort to at least record what's been going on with my life.
After the failed trip to Stornoway last month, the candidate and his supervisor came down to Southampton (they were in London for a meeting) for a second attempt at a viva, and I'm delighted to say that he defended his PhD well.
On the 6th, I headed off to Luxembourg for the kick-off meeting for a new EU-funded project that I'm involved with. Travelling on a Sunday wasn't quite the way I'd wanted to support UCU's work-to-contract, but this was unavoidable. Still made to feel guilty by check-in at Heathrow; when told that I was travelling on business, they wanted to know why I was travelling on a Sunday. Well, quite.
The hotel I'd booked turned out to be reasonable, but the area was less so (by the railway station). My keen colleague N had booked his hotel a few weeks before I had, and had managed to choose a hotel that was given an average score of 2/5 on TripAdvisor (most frequent comment: "I would never stay here again"). I picked the hotel over the road (average score of 3/5), and was generally pleased, but the proximity to three strip clubs was less than desirable.
Had a good time on my birthday the following weekend. Didn't get a pub lunch (due to trip to the big B&Q), but ended up seeing The Ides of March (v. good, much recommended) and Chris Addison's warm-up gig in New Milton. Now have boxed sets of The Prisoner and Twin Peaks to work through in my spare time, ha ha.
Work is still busy, but highlights have included my teaching on the hypertext module and my two new PhD students. Hypertext was what attracted me to Southampton back in the mid-90s, so it's been fun teaching this. This is my second year teaching this module, and I took the opportunity to radically revamp the material from that I'd inherited. The lecture on hypertext narrative went down particularly well, as did that on the history of hypertext.
As part of the Web Science doctoral training centre, I have two new PhD students, neither of them traditional computer scientists. One is a teacher who is studying the myth of the digital native, and the other is a cuneiform paleographer. Yes, I've spent part of the last month looking at tablets and familiarising myself with Sumerian grammar and orthography - not the usual.
In other news, I didn't have to appear at Westminster Magistrate's Court on Wednesday. As some of you may know, ias, the garklet and I went on the TUC protest march on the 26th March, and ended up in Fortnum and Mason (for a post-march ice cream for the youngster to reward him for putting up with us) at the time that UKUncut occupied the building. We were there when the fighting kicked off outside, but left by the back door (the front door having been closed by the police) before the non-UKUncut lot outside broke in. When we found out that the police had arrested the UKUncut protesters (who were being "non-violent and sensible", to quote the senior police officer on the scene, and who were doing nothing more than chanting "pay your taxes") but not the lot who were smashing things up outside, we were more than a little disappointed, to say the least.
Over the summer, I found out that the son of one of my colleagues was one of the protesters who had been arrested on a charge of aggravated trespass, and so I offered to make a statement in his defence. The case came to trial a week and a half ago, and I was originally to have appeared as a defence witness, but the defence considered that the prosecution case had been so poorly made (see the quote from the police officer above, called as a prosecution witness) that it wasn't worth calling witnesses of their own. Unfortunately, DJ Snow found against the ten defendents, so it looks like I may be called when the case goes to appeal (and possibly for the trial of the remaining twenty protesters).
In other news, I'm getting really rather depressed by the state of the nation; having screwed over the Universities, targetted the most vulnerable in society with their welfare reforms, and initiated the privatisation of the NHS and the school system, the coalition is now killing off publicly-owned social housing by reviving and accelerating the madness of right-to-buy. "Lower than vermin", as Aneurin Bevan rightly put it (and I very much doubt whether he would have distinguished between today's Tories and Lib Dems in this estimation).
Consider today's XKCD.
For the record, I like Isaac Asimov and XML, I've been thinking about buying a pair of Vibrams for the last year, I think that the Segway looks neat (and, as a child, quite the sort of vehicle which I was led to believe would be in my future), and I've been looking for an affordable head-mounted display for the best part of a decade. And yes, my favourite map projection is Dymaxion.
(although not because of Bucky Fuller, but rather because of my youth misspent on certain games)
A new record! Last time I kept them on the line for 37 minutes before pointing out that I knew what they were doing. Result: they phoned me back to insult me.
This time I managed to wind them up enough *within 15 seconds* that they phoned me back to insult me.
You know what they say: lunch in Southampton, dinner in London, breakfast in... Preston?
By now, I should have been mid-viva in Stornoway. Instead, I'm in the Apple Store on Buchanan St. in Glasgow.
The original plan had been to get the sleeper overnight from London to Glasgow (arr 0720), then hop on the 1050 from Glasgow Intl to Stornoway, viva the candidate, hop back to Glasgow on the 1935 flight and then get the sleeper back down south.
Instead, I got up this morning at 0730 (having been wondering where my 0645 wake-up call and breakfast had gone) to find that I was still in Preston: signal failures on the West Coast overnight due to cable thieves. To top it off, my phone had managed to kill itself overnight so badly that it needed to phone home to Apple before it would let me do anything (like turn off my alarm, for example). The Caledonian Sleeper doesn't do wifi, or, as it turns out, 240V AC at more than about 0.5A, so I hadn't been able to keep the laptop charged either.
Eventually we crawled into Central at 1110, so clearly the viva is a bust.
Today, therefore, I will be cruising the streets of Glasgow looking for fun (or at least food, drink and a film) until about 2200 this evening.
Edited to add: to top it off, there was no water coming out of the taps in my berth, and Glasgow Central doesn't have a first class lounge (pay for a shower when I'm travelling first class??), so I'm verging on fragrant. Also, the breakfast on the train, when it arrived, was cold.
The shame of it is that this is just a flying (day!) visit to examine a PhD; if it hadn't been for the demands of work, I would have happily spent a couple of days in Stornoway.
No, I will not pay you an extra £10 for booking a Flybe flight from Glasgow to Stornoway, especially if you insist on passing my details to the TSA.
In fact, your flight booking software seems to be a little kooky in general. While Stornoway is relatively remote, I find it hard to believe that the quickest flight from Stornoway to Aberdeen (a possible route considered while planning my journey) involved stopping off in Inverness, Kirkwall and Lerwick en route (5.5h). Similarly, flying from Inverness to Southampton via both Manchester and Jersey seems a little excessive (7.5h).
I'll be taking the sleeper to Glasgow and flying from there.
No love,
Me
So, after yesterday's heavy rain in Southampton, which school found out that its roof had been stripped of lead on Monday night? Why, the one that the garklet starts at next Monday.
Back from the monster tour of England and Scotland (Southampton to Windermere and back, via Dunblane), and it turns out that we had monster produce waiting for us (alisdairo - did I forget to tell you to help yourself?):
That's 7.26 kg of courgette (1st2lb in old money). I had to get the bathroom scales to find that out!
garklet: Tonight, I want you to make me a statue when we get home.
nmg: Oh really, what sort of statue?
garklet: I want a statue with a cross with somebody on it.
nmg: o_O
nmg: Uh, why do you want a statue of someone being crucified?
garklet: Because I think it would be good.
nmg: No, I mean why do you want a statue of that rather than of something else? A crucifix is a religious statue, and we're not religious.
garklet: Because I like cross statues.
nmg: o_O
The washing machine has chewed up my Front 242 "PUNISH YOUR MACHINE" t-shirt.
While I am as narked as the next user by the alleged actions of certain arms of a certain state towards my blogging platform of choice and the embattled citizens of that state, I'm sure that most of us by now have seen double-digit reposts of deathpixie's original.
It's not often that my first experience of an LJ feature (in this case, the repost facility) gives rise to the urge to kill, but I'm very close to that point now. Please stop pressing the bloody repost buttons:
When I was at school, I used to get anxiety dreams in which I found myself sitting tests for which I hadn't prepared. Usually, I'd also be naked.
When I was a student, I used to get anxiety dreams in which I turned up to exams only to find that I'd forgotten that they were open book and that I was naked (this actually happened to me in real life - the former and not the latter, I should add).
Now that I'm a lecturer, I get anxiety dreams in which the students turn up to the exam, only to find that I've forgotten to set the paper. Still naked, though.
mhw - died on Wednesday night. I first met Kay when I was a callow CS finalist at Warwick in the early 90s. He'd come up to DCS from Cov Uni for a research seminar on autostereoptic displays (odd what you remember), and stayed on to chat afterwards. I'd heard of Kay much earlier; I recall seeing him and his .sig all over the same bits of Usenet that I read, and
gothick_matt had spoken about him quite a few times. I can't say that he was the sole or even the main reason that I went on to a career in academia, but meeting a young, approachable (but not horribly intense) lecturer certainly helped.
My thoughts are with his friends and family.
Just taken another call from an Indian scammer. 37 minutes! A new record!
And they've just called back to insult me further! Victory is mine!
There was me, that is Alex, and my three bencoves, Julian, Sandy and Bim, Bim being a naff bimbo, and we sat in the Korova Milkbar making up our moyekhs what to do with the evening, a flip dark chill winter bastard though dry. The Korova Milkbar was a bijou milk-plus logo, and you may, O my sisters, have forgotten what these logos were like, things changing so rapido these days and everybody very quick to forget, newspapers not being read much neither.
Well, what they sold there was milk plus something else. They had no licence for selling liquor, but these was no law yet against prodding some of the new cosas which they used to put into the old gin, so you could bevvy it with vellocet or synthemesc or drencrom or one or two other cosas which would give you a nice quiet fantabulosa fifteen minutes admiring Gloria and All Her Fantabulosa Fairies and Santos in your left slingback with lights bursting all over your eke. Or you could bevvy gin with efinks in it, as we used to say, and this would sharpen you up and make you ready for a bit of a palaver, and that was what we were bevvying this evening I'm starting off the story with.
(this has been threatening to be written for the past few weeks; luckily, exam marking has prevented it until now)
I've had this great idea for a short story. It's going to be a Richmal Crompton pastiche in which William and the Outlaws get into a scrape when they 'accidentally' lose Violet Elizabeth Bott's pet white mouse and try to replace it with a sewer rat that Jumble has caught.
The catch is that I'm going to update it by writing it in the style of Harlan Ellison.
I'm going to call it I Have No Mouth, and I Must Thcweam.
ayethenkewverreemuch
(and for an encore, I have this great idea for another short involving Violet, William and his dog Jumble in an updated postapocalyptic setting, but I'm blowed if I can think of a title)
Various people on my friends list have greeted with dismay the news that Connie Willis has won this year's best novel Nebula for All Clear (step forward nwhyte and bookzombie).
I have enjoyed a few works by Willis in the past, but they've almost all been her shorts. For me, Fire Watch and Blued Moon are the stand-out shorts.
Her novels have mostly left me underwhelmed, partly because poor research and lazy plotting seem to be her bywords. For example, the farcical bits of To say nothing of the dog work well enough, but I lived in Coventry for long enough to find her descriptions of the city and the cathedrals to be jarringly wrong, with errors that could have been avoided had Willis read any tourist guides. Similarly, Doomsday Book didn't work for me because the plot around the future epidemic would collapse as soon as someone used a phone or sent an email. I haven't dared to give it to ias to read, mainly because I suspect that she will have Issues with the medieval bits.
The reviews I've read so far for Blackout and All Clear have not encouraged me to read either of them (there was a particularly memorable discussion of elementary gaffes in Blackout on drplokta's LJ back here)
2. Bosnia and Herzegovina. First mandolin spotted. Also dull. Nowhere near as good as their 2008 entry.
3. Denmark. Boys does not rhyme with choice.
4. Lithuania. Having murdered an English lyric, she's now working on the French. I cannot read her signing, but can only assume that it's similarly challenged.
5. Hungary. Norton tells us that it's described as retro-pop. Sounds ominous.
ias reckons that she's channeling Jennifer Rush. Still, all credit to her for a verse in Hungarian.6. Ireland. I've never heard Jedward sing before. And thanks to a well-timed bedtime for the young lad, that record is unbroken.
7. Sweden. The 80s want their fashion sense back. A single glove? Really? Slightly creepy lyric in places ("my body wants you girl / I'll get ya when I'm popular")
8. Estonia. Poppy and fun, even if the lyrics are a little odd in places ("1273 down the Rockefeller Street")
9. Greece. The University of Westminster's finest? I feel that his rap is missing a letter. The remainder is passable, if bombastic.
10. Russia. It's Wham! Oh, for pete's sake - lyrics in txtspk? Actually quite fun.
11. France. Corsican lyrics! Very brave - they'd get my vote for this alone. Fantastic voice too.
12. Italy. I am liking this, despite the attempt to rhyme 'disappear' with 'nostalgia'. That said, the song itself isn't living up to the performance.
13. Switzerland. Competent pop song. Song is better than the singer - mike problem?
14. United Kingdom. Fuck me. A UK entry that's not an embarrassment. They're *actually good*.
15. Moldova. They appeared to have crossed the Beastie Boys with Devo with a klezmer band. Unbeatable. This may well get my vote - best so far.
16. Germany. Very good. But not necessarily Eurovision good.
17. Romania. Competent Eurovision song, but I don't think that it stands out enough from the rest of the pack.
18. Austria. The song starts a cappella, but it's engineered so that she can discreetly correct her pitch if necessary. Good overall.
19. Azerbaijan. Rather pleasant little song - sweet lyric, some good harmonies.
20. Slovenia. Meh.
21. Iceland. Quite charming, but also a slightly weak start.
22. Spain. Fun and energetic - this is what I'm looking for in my Eurovision entries.
23. Ukraine. More sand painting. Less singing. kthxbye.
24. Serbia. I like this. Quite apart from the fab duds, it's a fun song, sung well.
25. Georgia. Clothes by Cyberdog? And she has 80s soft rock hair. And there's rap too. Why not throw in some accordians and mandolins and try and cover all the bases?
The agriculturalist and not the prog rock band, that is.
We have an allotment, the one in the NW corner of this map.
Many things about it are good, principally the price (£3.58 per annum) and the location (our house is four houses away due west). What's less good was the state when we assumed the lease: thigh-deep in brambles. We've been gradually clearing them - currently about 20% done - but what's clear is that the previous leaseholders didn't bother clearing the brambles by hand, preferring to chop them up with a rotorvator. I'm pulling out about a dozen large roots the thickness of my thumb per square metre, mostly rooted about 50cm down, and many small fragments around 15cm long.
This could be a long struggle. Suggestions welcome.
As sushidog says, hello LJ! How are you? I am rubbish at posting to LJ, so here we have an easy meme in lieu of anything substantial. Actually, this turned out to be significantly harder than I thought, because I've had to go digging through decades-old emails in order to work out where I lived in 2001. Ah, the frailties of memory.
March 2011: Living in a mortgaged mid-terrace in Southampton with ias and the garklet. Loving the rock'n'roll life of a lecturer.
March 2001: Living in a shared house in Southampton just round the corner from the Uni. Not entirely sure who was in the house with me at the time - possibly squirmelia, Colin and Heather (I think that Mike and Rachel had moved out by that point). Still writing up the PhD, though working as a research fellow on AKT.
March 1991: Living at home with my parents in Upminster, studying towards A-level exams in the summer.
March 1981: Living at home with my parents in Upminster. Adjusting to life in junior school (having moved from the adjacent infants school the previous September).
(I wasn't around in 1971)
The Gatiss version. Our intrepid heros, Bedford and Prof. Cavor, are about to land on the moon. Suddenly, a klaxon sounds...
( Cut for the spoiler-phobic, not that this counts as much of a spoiler )Compare with this. Gatiss is *such* a geek (as am I, for getting the joke).
Too depressing for words. If I can muster the energy, I'll write a longer commentary later this week. For the time being, let me echo the words of Sally Hunt: "Lord Browne's recommendations, if enacted, represent the final nail in the coffin for affordable higher education."
From gnommi, on Facebook:
The rules: Don't take too long to think about it. Fifteen albums you've heard that will always stick with you. List the first fifteen you can recall in no more than fifteen minutes. Tag fifteen friends, including me, because I'm interested in seeing what albums my friends choose. (To do this, go to your Notes tab on your profile page, paste rules in a new note, cast your fifteen picks, and tag people in the note-- upper righthand side.) AMENDMENT TO THE RULES - DON'T SELF CENSOR, BE HONEST - WRITE ONE SENTENCE TO EXPLAIN WHY IT'S IN THERE - LOOK BACK OVER YOUR WHOLE LIFE TO KEY INSPIRATIONS (in no particular order..):
1. Blowzabella - A Richer Dust
I'm a bit of a folky at heart, and I think that I picked this up second hand at a record stall when I was an undergraduate. Blowzabella have a sound that could best be described as 'challenging', if you dislike hurdy-gurdies and bagpipes. Fortunately, I like them.
2. Les Troubadours Du Roi Baudouin - Missa Luba
I have Simon to thank for introducing me to this, via the Lindsay Anderson film if.... I then waited for the best part of twenty years for it to be released on CD (even to the extent of buying scratchy second-hand vinyl and getting Steve Harris to rip it).
3. The Pentangle - Basket of Light
Another schoolboy introduction, I have Jon Baldwin to thank for giving me a C90 that he'd taped from his parents' LP. Jazz-influenced British folk rock.
4. The Grateful Dead - Aoxomoxoa
I got into the Dead in a big way when in sixth form and an undergraduate. I prefer their earlier stuff - fresher, more vital - and this is no exception. For me, the high points are Mountains of the Moon and live favourite St. Stephen (although I prefer the recording of the latter on Live/Dead)
5. Various - London is the Place for Me
I've acquired many of my favourite albums by chance; this was picked up in the stock clearance at the Andy's Records in Boston (2003ish? whenever the company folded). This is a collection of Trinidadian calypsos from London in the early 1950s that record the experiences of West Indian immigrants in Age of Austerity Britain (two of the musicians - Lord Beginner and Lord Kitchener - arrived at Tilbury on the Empire Windrush in 1948). Touching and acidic by turns.
6. Various - A Treasury of Library of Congress Field Recordings
This was a recommendation by Phin Head, back when he worked in Southampton (2002ish?). A collection of American folk recordings from the 1930s and 1940s, mostly collected by Alan and John Lomax - think of the soundtrack to Oh Brother, Where Art Thou?, but authentic and better.
7. Outback - Baka
Heard by chance busking in Covent Garden in 1990 or thereabouts. Mandolin and didgeridoo two-piece.
8. Carter USM - 101 Damnations
Matt Gibson was responsible for this in my first year as an undergrad. I'd heard Sheriff Fatman (who hadn't), but he raved about Midnight on the Murder Mile so much that I (eventually) bought the album.
9. Moby Grape - Moby Grape
Cheery, late 60s San Francisco band. If they'd had the luck that the Dead had, you'd probably have heard of them. I listened to this a great deal as an undergrad.
10. Bob Dylan - Subterranean Homesick Blues
Obligatory appearance by His Bobness, included mainly on the strength of Love Minus Zero (which I once, while in a sleep-deprived and hungover stupor, accused Dave Warry of snoring in tune to). Again, I listened to this a lot as an undergrad.
11. The Velvet Underground - White Light/White Heat
The second Velvets studio album - still with John Cale, but significantly harsher than VU and Nico. Plus, it has Sister Ray. I got into the Velvets while I was in Edinburgh,
12. Philip Glass/Kronos Quartet - Dracula
Glass's re-scoring of the 1931 film with Bela Lugosi. Really, really rather good. I'm not a goth, btw.
13. Pulp - We Love Life
Somewhat of a return to form for Pulp after the bleakness of This is Hardcore. I've never understood why Bob Lind and The Night That Minnie Timperley Died didn't get singles releases - I think that they're the strongest tracks on the album. I always associate this album with Issy's time as an SRT in Bath.
14. Ludwig Van Beethoven - Symphony No.9
But which recording? I'm torn between the Furtwängler recording from the 1951 Bayreuth Festival, and von Karajan's 1962 recording with the Berliner Philharmoniker. And it's the 9th - what's not to like?
15. Ozric Tentacles - Strangeitude
Emmeline introduced me to the Ozrics in 1992, and I still have a well-worn C90 of Pungent Effulgent with a track listing written in her fair hand. Their inclusion on this list probably means that I'm some kind of crusty hippy, but you'd probably worked that out yourselves.
Tagging:
andrewducker, atommickbrane, burkesworks,
drdoug, hsw, ladymoonray,
makyo, marypcb, mr_tom,
purplestuart, ruthj, sbisson,
steer, titanic_days, zotz
So, Top Gear's man of mystery, the Stig, has unmasked himself in order to sell his book. The BBC is objecting to the publication of the book on the grounds that it breaches contractual and confidentiality agreements.
HarperCollins, the would-be publishers of the book, have issued a press release in which they say that they "are disappointed that the BBC has chosen to spend licence fee payers' money to suppress this book".
Remind me again who owns HarperCollins, and why they might want to make political capital at the BBC's expense in the run-up to the renegotiation of the BBC charter, and possible abolition of the license fee.
...cats, bears, wolves and monkeys playing Uno.
(Wolfie has just played a blue 1, and play is passing clockwise; Brown Bear is therefore just about to win. Cat has managed to stitch Monk up something rotten with a few well-placed +4s, and has left him with a hand worth upwards of 120)
The garklet keeps asking what Cat and Monk get up to while he's at nursery, and we've started to stage vignettes to indulge him and amuse ourselves.
Last Friday, ias reminded me that a) it had been a very long time since I'd made bread and that b) the nursery's attempt to get the kids to make bread last week had ended in abject failure, so I might as well enlist the garklet's help when I made bread at the weekend.
I like making bread, but it is time-consuming. Elizabeth David's English Bread and Yeast Cookery has been one of my favourite cookery books (along with Jane Grigson's English Food, Diana Kennedy's Art of Mexican Cookery and the first Moro cookbook) ever since the mother-in-law gave me her copy, and I've had success with David's instructions for a tinless Coburg loaf every time.
At Easter, we spent a week in Malta, and my abiding memory of that week is the bread. Maltese bread is a thing to behold: flavoursome and well-textured sourdough. I can offer a pair of anecdotes that explain how seriously the Maltese take their bread:
- Malta was briefly occupied by Napoleon's forces from 1798 to 1800 (the end of this period marks the start of Malta's status as a British dominion). Napoleon's soldiers decided that they didn't like the local bread, and so imported their own flour to make proper French bread. To this day, the Maltese refer to cheap white Chorleywood process bread as "French bread".
- During the Siege of Malta in WWII, many Maltese men were conscripted. However, not only were bakers a reserved occupation, but also bread-sellers; bread was considered vital for morale.
I picked up a copy of Anne and Helen Caruana Galizia's Food and Cookery of Malta (on the strength of a quote by Elizabeth David on the back cover, and after a conversation with the Vallettan bookseller in which she tried to persuade me to buy the glossy illustrated books and not the book "for chefs"), which spends a chapter on bread.
So, on Saturday I made a Coburg loaf with the young lad and started on a Maltese loaf. The process for the Maltese loaf is unlike anything I've tried before, and certainly takes much longer: you start with a basic dough, knead and let it prove for six hours or longer, add extra flour and sufficient water to turn it into a very soft dough, knead and let it prove for another six hours, then dissolve the dough in water, add extra yeast and flour, knead and prove for another three hours, shape into a loaf before a final prove, then bake. I finished the loaf this evening.
I can't say that I'll use this method every time, but the results are quite astonishingly good (albeit not quite up to the work of Maltese professionals), and I'll do this again in the future.
Why yes, that is a pair of Rolls Royce RZ2 engines.
Well, the previous post inspired some interesting discussion, as did andrewducker's related poll. ahnlak asked for the source of some of the figures that I'd quoted, and this got me looking. I'd wanted to be able to give some more detailed figures initially, but was surprised (given the current funding debate) that they weren't that easy to find.
Using the data on the number of graduating students from the Higher Education Statistics Agency and population demographic data from Office of National Statistics, I put together the following table:
| Year | Students | 21 year olds | % of 21 year olds |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1994/1995 | 194,275 | 733,300 | 26.4% |
| 1995/1996 | 205,805 | 708,100 | 28.9% |
| 1996/1997 | 206,081 | 685,000 | 30.1% |
| 1997/1998 | 206,389 | 659,700 | 31.3% |
| 1998/1999 | 210,176 | 669,200 | 31.4% |
| 1999/2000 | 212,340 | 711,800 | 29.8% |
| 2000/2001 | 215,425 | 745,300 | 28.9% |
| 2001/2002 | 216,230 | 749,400 | 28.8% |
| 2002/2003 | 220,905 | 727,400 | 30.2% |
| 2003/2004 | 229,250 | 749,800 | 30.6% |
| 2004/2005 | 237,735 | 787,100 | 30.1% |
| 2005/2006 | 241,100 | 826,800 | 29.2% |
| 2006/2007 | 244,195 | 830,100 | 29.4% |
| 2007/2008 | 256,830 | 836,100 | 30.6% |
| 2008/2009 | 253,720 | 855,600 | 29.6% |
Sources: HESA qualifications obtained, ONS population pyramid
There are several assumptions in these figures:
- I only consider full-time students graduating from their first degree. This is what people typically think of when they think of university students, and full-time students greatly outnumber part-time.
- HESA don't publish enrolment figures, only graduation, so this underestimates participation by assuming that no students drop out. That said, the drop out rate should be largely constant.
- In order to map graduate numbers onto the total population, I've assumed that students all enrol at age 18 and graduate at age 21. Given that the UK population is growing, that bachelors degrees are a minimum of three years, and that the majority of students enrol at age 18 or older, this systematically underestimates participation.
There are some interesting observations that we can make from this data (and the supporting data in the sources above):
- The number of UK part-time students is typically less than 12% of the total number of UK students each year, and the proportion remains roughly constant.
- Over the period from 1994/1995 to 2008/2009, the proportion of full-time overseas and EU students (compared to the total number of full-time students) studying for a first degree increased from 8% to 15%. This is a direct consequence of the reduction in per capita funding for UK students (see below), and is the main reason that UK universities survived the expansion of the 1980s and 1990s.
- The number of full-time UK students graduating with a first degree from a UK university increased by roughly 25% between 1997 and 2008. However, the proportion of graduating 21 year olds has stayed roughly constant at 30+/-1%
Of course, after I'd put together these figures, I then found that BIS (as DIUS) had published the data I'd wanted in a report (DIUS SFR02/2009) on a corner of the DCSF website. Not where I would have looked, and probably not where the report will be after the new lot finish obliterating all traces of the old lot. If you want to take a copy of the report (here) do it now before it disappears.
This report estimates participation differently; it takes enrolment rather than graduation (the Higher Education Initial Participation Rate), and does not make the simplifying assumptions about the ages of students that I do. Consequently, my figures systematically overestimate the population who could become students, and underestimate the population who are students (in part because I only look at FT students).
On the other hand, my intuitions about retention and drop-out are broadly correct; the drop-out rate remains static at roughly 8+/-1% over the period 1999/2000-2006/2007.
The report gives FT HEIPRs that vary as follows:
| Year | FT HEIPR |
|---|---|
| 1999/2000 | 34% |
| 2000/2001 | 34% |
| 2001/2002 | 35% |
| 2002/2003 | 36% |
| 2003/2004 | 35% |
| 2004/2005 | 34% |
| 2005/2006 | 37% |
| 2006/2007 | 34% |
Not a great deal of variation, I think you'll agree. The HEIPR for FT/PT combined - which is what New Labour wanted to rise to 50% - stayed in the 39-42% region in the same period. Hardly the increase that we're being lead to believe by our new masters, or that is being raised as a justification for cuts on certain right-of-centre on-line forums. The big increase in student numbers happened between 1980 and 1997, not under New Labour (various sources, including Gombrich and Greenaway and Haynes [mirror] - and you can just see the tail end of this expansion in the first table above).
The current debate on HE funding and the nigh-inevitability of cuts assumes that there are gross savings to be had. The problem with this is that the big expansion in the 1980s and 1990s was largely unfunded; student numbers went up and total funding stayed the same, or to put it a different way, per capita student funding went down. This post-1980 expansion was bankrolled by the increase in overseas students noted above. Greenaway and Haynes (p. F152) give a drop of 50% in real terms per capita funding during 1980-1999, while this briefing by Universities UK to the House of Lords (para 4 in the PDF) tells a similar story for 1989-2010, but then goes on to note that i) our spending on HE as a percentage of GDP is less than the OECD average (1.3% compared to an average of 1.5%) and ii) more than £1 billion had already (as of February 2010) been cut from spending on HE committed in the 2007 Comprehensive Spending Review. The new government added an extra £200 million to that, and now we're being told to prepare for cuts of up to 25%.
If UK HE survives this, whatever is left will be unrecognisable.
So, Vince Cable is proposing a graduate tax. Haven't we been here before?
It's been a while since I posted about HE funding (posts passim), but it's worth repeating some of the highlights:
- Back in 1997, the Dearing Report recommended that because "those with higher education qualifications are the main beneficiaries [of higher education], through improved employment prospects and pay", "graduates in work should make a greater contribution to the costs of higher education in future". The report goes on to recommend an income contingent scheme along the lines of the Australian Higher Education Contribution Scheme.
- Richard Gombrich's article from 2000 is still worth reading, and an indication of what HE is likely to suffer in the lifetime of this government.
- Roy Hattersley was generally right in 2002, and he's still generally right now.
- The then Education Secretary Charles Clarke heavily hinted at a graduate tax back in 2003. It didn't happen. Instead, we got top-up fees by a vote of 316:311.
- A graduate tax will not be hypothecated, therefore Universities UK will not support it.
- A graduate tax will take over forty years to reach steady state (being the period between graduation and retirement), but HE will continue to require support from other sources during this period. Ignore this at your peril.
- David Willetts is wrong. Before he starts calling for us to "give more value to students and taxpayers", he should be aware that per-capita tertiary funding fell by 50% over the twenty years to 2000. During the same period, staff:student ratios fell from 1:9 to 1:17 (or 1:23 if research funding is excluded). The increase in funding under the last government did not substantially correct this. How much more value does he think there is to give?
I could say more, but not without repeating things that I've said over the past decade.
Compare and contrast the following two scenarios:
1. A prime minister phones the CEO of a popular social networking service and enlists his support in using the service to foster a public debate on the prime minister's programme of severe public spending cuts. This move is highly publicised, and the prime minister is consequently hailed as 'net-savvy'.
2. Following a spree of violence from a recently-released prisoner, a prime minister contacts a popular social networking service in order to complain that some users of that service have posted messages that appear to support the actions of the ex-prisoner. The social networking service declines to remove the messages on the grounds that the site promotes public debate about current affairs.
Discuss.
Scene: I was taking the garklet for a haircut, and we happened to pass a church that was ringing for matins. He asked why the bell was ringing, and misheard 'matins' as the name of one of his friends who moved to Cambridge last year (who I shall refer to as M). The important thing to note is that M is the child of a lesbian couple.
- garklet:
- Where M?
- nmg:
- M's in Cambridge.
- garklet:
- Why M in Cambridge?
- nmg:
- Because his mummies got jobs in Cambridge.
- garklet:
- What about him daddy?
- nmg:
- I don't know - M lives with his two mummies.
- garklet:
- No, M not got two mummies. M got a mummy and a daddy.
- nmg:
- No, M has two mummies. Remember, you saw them both at G's house earlier in the year. And you saw them when you went to M's birthday party. And you saw them almost every day when they picked M up from nursery.
- garklet:
- *upset* No, M got a mummy and a daddy. M not got two mummies. You pooey!
- nmg:
- I'm not pooey! Not all little boys and girls have a mummy and a daddy; some have two mummies, like M, and some have two daddies.
- garklet:
- *very upset* NO! YOU WRONG! YOU POOEY! M GOT A MUMMY AND A DADDY! pthpthpthpt!
- nmg:
- On that we'll have to disagree.
I mean, what else can you do in this situation?
Bumped into while waiting for the bus with ias and the garklet after work today. Cue the following conversation after Dave left:
- garklet
- Why that ?
- nmg
- Well, that's his name.
- garklet
- Where is going?
- nmg
- He's on his way home to see gnommi.
- garklet
- Why?
- nmg
- Because he's gnommi's boyfriend!
- garklet
- Why he gnommi's boyfriend?
- nmg
- Because they like each other a lot. That's why they live together.
- garklet
- *nods sagely*
- garklet
- I think they need a boy.
- nmg
- Pardon?
- garklet
- I think they need a boy.
- nmg
- What kind of boy? A little boy, like you?
- garklet
- Yes. They need a little boy like me.
RIP Alan Plater. I'll never think of Leeds without thinking of The Beiderbecke Affair. A Very British Coup may have been more gripping, but for me it's the whimsical W. Yorks thriller every time. After all, how can you not like a series that brought the world Big Al and Little Norm, and the Alderman What's-His-Name playing fields?
Barbara Flynn and James Bolam also help, obviously.
Earlier today, major_clanger brought the sad news that the excellent Playin' Games opposite the British Museum has closed down. I was passing that way a few weeks ago, and had planned to drop in, but I was too early for them (they opened at 1100). This got me to thinking about the number of games shops that I've known (and loved) that have closed. Off the top of my head:
- Barad-Dur, Coptfold Road, Brentwood
- Virgin Games Centre, Oxford Street
- Gamers in Exile, Pentonville Road
- Gaggle of Games, Basildon
- Alternate Earths, Eastgate Centre, Basildon
- Phoenix Games, Eastgate Centre, Basildon
- Games and Puzzles, Green Street, Cambridge
- Games World, King Street, Hammersmith
- Warlord Games, Leigh-on-Sea
- Beatties! (everywhere)
Several of these were doomed from the outset; while it helps to know something about games if you want to run a good games shop, it also helps to know something about running a shop (Barad-Dur, Alternate Earths and Phoenix were the most obvious examples of this). The games shops that have survived (Orc's Nest, Leisure Games, and the like) have done so because they're run by people who know how to run a business.
On the subject of Orc's Nest, Dr gnommi mentioned that she felt uncomfortable going in there as a single female. Well, *I* felt uncomfortable (as a post-pubescent male) in Orc's Nest the last time I was there (about two years ago). Far too GW for me, but then it was that way when I first went there in the mid 80s. However, it isn't the most uncomfortable games shop experience I've had - that honour belongs to Caliver Books in Leigh-on-Sea.
Way back in the 80s, when I first started gaming, there were two choices for gamers in South Essex: travel into London (Virgin Games Centre, Leisure Games, Orcs Nest, etc) or travel out towards Southend to Leigh-on-Sea and go to Warlord Games. They were old-school board- and wargamers who had got into RPGs, and had a pretty comprehensive selection.
Move forward to the summer of 2006, and ias and I were doing our tour of Essex before the garklet arrived. We were driving out towards Southend (I think that we'd already been to Hadleigh Castle) and as we passed through Leigh, I told her about Warlord. "Is that it there?", she said. Well, Caliver was in the right place (816-818, as ane White Dwarf-reading fule kno), but it didn't look quite right.
Went inside for a closer look, and realised that Caliver *was* Warlord, just with an extra twenty years of kipple - random crap piled hip-deep throughout. At this point, my gamer-nerd instincts kicked in, and I started burrowing while ias browsed through the history books.
There's this recurring dream that I had as a teenager (when I was in the most serious throes of my Traveller completist fetish), where I'd happen upon a games shop that I'd never seen before, and they'd have a Traveller book that I'd never heard of before (I could never remember the titles when I woke, alas), but the shop was so disorganised that I couldn't be sure that I hadn't missed any other books. Caliver was that shop.
Tried asking one of the *three* (long-haired, metal-tshirt-wearing) assistants in the otherwise deserted shop for help, and got a bit of a brush-off (I was trying to see what they had in new-ish wargames rules, and they just suggested with a sneer that I look at WH40k). I only got somewhere when I started to (metaphorically) wave my willy about, and demonstrate that I knew something about gaming by listing my precise requirements (micro-scale or 15mm at a pinch, SF, combined arms, not insane like Command Decision, published since 1990). Compared to this, the chap that runs Orc's Nest is a paragon of helpfulness.
To cut a long story short, I ended up with a few odds and ends. ias was quite chuffed too - she'd found an interesting book on costume history, and had noticed that the shop's inventory management was so bad that they had three copies of the book in three different places at three different prices. We contemplated pointing this out to them, but felt that they'd probably take such a suggestion poorly.
There's probably an important lesson in here somewhere, but I'm not sure if the lesson is "you can't cross the same river twice" or "the one who dies with the most books, wins".
Cavilling hack Andrew Orlowski sticks in the boot following the withdrawal of funding for the Web Science Institute.
Nice to hear one's research described as "webtastic wankery of dubious intellectual merit and zero commercial potential".
From here, summarising BIS contributions to the announced GBP6Bn cuts package:
£18 million by stopping low priority projects like the Semantic web and the SME Adjudicator
That's either data.gov.uk or the funding for the Web Science Institute scuppered (or possibly both), then.
Okay, you win. You've ignored my missives [*,*] on the fashion crime that is the wearing of badly-fitting Ugg boots. Go ahead and shuffle around in those sheepskin monstrosities - I won't complain any longer.
But for heaven's sake, lay off the gladiator sandals. They looked silly on Russell Crowe, and they look silly on you, especially the sparkly ones (swisstone will correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think that the diamantarius is a proper class of gladiator).
No love,
Me
Of late, there have been two main impediments to our working more in the garden (apart from the perennial problem of too little time at the weekend): the cats, and the rats.
We have a problem with the neighbourhood cats fouling in our garden, including our lawn. At a rough count, there are probably upwards of a dozen cats in a two house radius of us. Ours is the only cat-free house, not because we don't like cats, but because we don't want to bring yet another cat into the area; our garden in contested territory, with frequent fights. Any reasonable suggestions for dissuading the feline vermin from shitting everywhere will be gratefully received. Given that we're having to check the lawn for cat shit before letting the garklet run around on it, and that I can half fill a carrier bag (a couple of kilos of shit) every few weeks, the definition of 'reasonable' could stretch quite a long way.
The problem with the cats wouldn't be quite so galling if they were actually any use at doing what cats do: eating small creatures, or rather the right small creatures. Right-hand next door's kitten has demonstrated that she's perfectly able to take on slow worms (alas), but they won't tackle anything larger. And this is where the rats come in.
Long story short, we have rats in our compost bin. We don't put meat, bones, skin or cheese in the compost bin, but they turned up nonetheless. To begin with, we weren't too bothered (they only seemed to be infrequent visitors, and were doing a better job of turning the compost than I was), but the veg peelings in the compost were disappearing far faster than microbial processes could usually manage and there was a bit of a whiff by the shed (next to the compost bins).
Bought a couple of rat traps (and warned the garklet off them), and set them up on Saturday night. This morning, nothing. One sprung but empty, one not even touched. The garklet was off on a playdate this morning, so ias and I took the opportunity to do some work on the garden - scarifying the lawn, turning the compost and so on. Reset the traps and got on with the jobs (in the process discovering a rat nest in the compost that consisted mostly of scraps of plastic bags). After a short lunch, headed back into the garden to find that both traps had gone off, one with a mouse and one with a largish rat (14" or so) that had, uh, 'exploded' messily.
A good start, but I doubt that we've caught all of them.
I think that I've just been given a spoiler for last night's Doctor Who by the garklet (who, lest we forget, is three). I think that I may need to do some explaining.
In other news, we (ias and I, sans garklet) had a lovely time yesterday at the wedding of swisstone and ladymoonray, wherein we ate too much, drank too much, talked a lot (but not nearly enough) with folk we don't see often enough and generally had an ace time. We wish them all happiness in their future life together.
An account of a conversation while waiting at bus stop with ias and the garklet:
- garklet
- My1 like coiley-wotey.
- ias
- What's coiley-wotey?
- garklet
- Coiley-wotey!
- nmg
- Colley Wotty?
- garklet
- Coiley-wotey!
- nmg
- What sort of a thing is coiley-wotey!
- garklet
- *pause* Coiley-wotey!
- ias
- He's making this word up.
- nmg
- Are you making this word up? Is this another silly word?
- garklet
- No, coiley-wotey!
- ias
- How big is coiley-wotey?
- garklet
- *looks confused*
- ias
- Is coiley-wotey big or small?
- garklet
- Coiley-wotey!
- ias
- He's just saying that! Stop saying that!
- nmg
- *has flash of inspiration* What colour is coiley-wotey?
- garklet
- Grey.
- nmg
- *thinks* What sort of animal is coiley-wotey?
- garklet
- He a woof, chase roadroader. Roadroader goes beep-beep!
- ias
- Aha! He's a wolf! You're talking about Wile E. Coyote and Roadrunner, aren't you?
- garklet
- Yes, my like coiley-wotey.
- nmg
- That's Wile. E. Coyote. Can you say it after me? Wile E.
- garklet
- Coiley-wotey.
- nmg
- *sighs*
1. This is a persistent verbal tic that he's had for the last six months. My, how we've tried to cure him of it.
The garklet (a normal, energetic three year old) fell asleep during it.
I don't know whether to be appalled (he should have been hiding behind a cushion, not sleeping) or impressed with his critical judgement.
