Back on the internets!

Man oh man, it's good to be back on the 'net at home. Lemme just get this out of the way then: if you're in the UK, don't go with BT. Broadband being set up should not involve 10+ phone calls and a two-week delay...

Anyway, moving on. So much has been done in the past few weeks, so I'll stick to the really recent stuff. It's term time again! After the summer I've had (especially the last two/three weeks), it's a welcome change. Of course, it means I have added constraints on my timetable and have to get up early (occasionally), but I can live with that. My new courses are quite groovy as well, and a rather heteroclite bunch that range from the really easy, such as programming (managed to finish the first 5/6 weeks of lab work the day before the first lab, which frees up my thursday afternoons for a while), to the really hard, such as nuclear physics (which is expectable, I suppose), to the really interesting, such as philosophy of maths (Bob Hale has a hypnotic voice, too). Plus, if I play my cards right (and am prepared to write a dissertation of Xmas), I can get away with having only two 10-credit exams this semester, which would be quite a treat. In other (academic) news, I've just been assigned my physics project today, which will be to design a 10 lecture course for 3rd years on a general physics topic. Whoop-dee-doo... At least it's theoretical (in that it will involve no labs... will it?).

In terms of extracurricular work, I'll probably have enough to keep busy as well. As victim chair of the British Undergraduate Philosophy Society (Facebook link), I'll be spending the next few weeks trying to set a date and venue for our next conference, and get the ball rolling... As well as checking in on some other projects (all currently in the expert hands of people who know what they're doing).
I've also founded a local Wittgenstein Reading Group (Facebook link), to read through the Philosophical Investigations (which we could have done as a module, but the professor teaching it retired), based on recommendations by my pal Robbie (props).
Finally, I can imagine the usual SSC stuff will take a bit of my time. Aaaah it's nice to feel active again.

On the personal front, all is well (I believe). I've actually gotten off m'lazy arse and joined the gym (hell, might even go today). The house is nice, too. I have the smallest room, but it has the biggest storage space (which in the end works out for the best) as well as the most pimpin' skylight (I can't say that with a straight face), and unlike last year, a really great wireless signal (which, knowing me, is a necessity). Now the internet is working reasonably well, let's hope it stays like this.

Righto, enough dilly-dallying about. It's nearly 10:30 am, and that means it's time for sweet sweet espresso (of which I need to order more) + breakfast.

Damn Straight, Steve!

Work work work. Still need to finish writing this presentation for the BUPC. Loads of stuff on the side. No rest for the wicked.

I was watching the WWDC keynote the other day, and have nothing more to say than the obvious "wow". Amazing stuff.

Speaking of which, I've just come across this video, after a few days of reading comparisons between Vista and Leopard (no contest, if you ask me), and what Steve is saying in this video still strikes me as amazingly true.

Click here to expand movie player.

There. I hadn't posted anything on this blog that clearly identified me as a machead. Mission complete.

Poor Chrysler: We hardly knew ye...

Man. Who knew putting together a conference could be so tiring? (answer: a lot of people, it's fairly obvious, and I'm probably stupid for asking myself the question). Have just (3 days) been asked to give a 5000 word~ talk on the first night of the conference (friday 8th) on a work/research in progress, and had to give the title off the top of my head. So it looks like I'll be giving a talk on whether or not language is contingent or or conventional (a cheeky jab at Chomsky, through the exclusion of "necessary", I suppose... although something could well be conventional and necessarily so, although that doesn't really fit the bill for universal grammar). Gotta re-read my notes on the matter, and try and fit that particular debate into a presentation on my research interests, and make it seem plausible, and make it seem non-boring... sheesh. I've got work to do (and was not expecting a deadline before the start of term.

In other news, I've finally got the respondents, and the final version of the programme sorted out (lightweight version available here). It's nice to see so many budging academics being so ready to help, and to be able to rely on them for some good quality philosophy I certainly cannot always produce (at least not for such a variety and depth of topics).

Moving on. Got the vacation pictures sorted out.
Click here to see them...


No, I had no idea the arrow was pointing to me at the time. I'm not that narcissistic.


'Tis only a flesh... errrrr oil wound.


The other car (aka "Chickenfuckermobile").


From Newton's First Law: "[...] objects at rest tend to stay at rest unless an outside force acts upon them".
I'm not lazy, I'm a physicist.


My new cousin Liuba and I, demonstrating our obvious resemblance. I've got a PhD in Pout-ology. She's still going for the BSc in Pout Studies.

A series of (really rather) unfortunate events

Ever get that feeling that everything is going wrong, whatever you do? Well, that sort of feeling is always an exaggeration to a certain degree, except this time that degree is a little smaller than usual.

The setting: Atlantic Coast of France, somewhere between Talmont and Thaims (are these places even on the map?).
When: Errrr, last thursday.

We were driving back from a series of Roman ruins ("Le site du Fâ") in our trust Chrysler voyager (my father at the wheel, me in what the french call "the seat of death", and loads of kids in the back), and we come down at a regular speed towards an intersection where we have right of way, but those having to yield (coming from the left) have little visibility of the oncoming road to the right (and must stop accordingly). Some jerk decided the law didn't concern him, cut us off at a what I'd call a "beyond cruising speed", and the inevitable crash happened, sending us ploughing into our airbags and him, his fat wife and fat kid (seriously) flying into the ditch (180 degree turn and all). Fortunately no one was seriously hurt (a bit of a stiff neck for the next few hours, and some bruises) but our good ol' Chrysler is no more.

Three days later, we're at the beach. My brother had bought one of these cool new skim boards and was playing with it on the sand. My mother wanted to try, my brother gives her the talk about it being more dangerous than it seems and requiring proper stretching, she insists and next thing you know, she's being whisked off the hospital with a severely broken right-wrist (being right-handed), where she still is at this time (having been operated upon sunday night).

Same day, my sister goes out with her bike (the non-motorised kind) to pick some blackberries, only to return with loads of (thankfully non-serious cuts) all across her, having fallen into the blackberry bramble with her bike.

To add some spice to things, there are a few (possibly viral) strains going around the house, with two boys who were visiting the other day displaying symptoms of gastroenteritis (and having seemingly passed them on to at least one or two people), and my sister's friend Margaux having had weird flu-like symptoms for the last week (touch wood that we won't get some o' that).

And to put the cherry on top, I had to whisk off to Paris this (monday) morning to take care of some BUPC-related work (of which there is a lot), and am now going to take the earliest train back down to Saintes, with my laptop and workload, to continue in our summer house (with a crappy 56k connection) and tend to my aching family members.

Other than that (which is a lot) we still manage to have a rather smashing time, with some occasional warm sunny days at the beach, and good food, and good company.

Life could be better, but it's still pretty damn good (which is easier to say when you're not the one with a broken wrist or car to replace).

Be kind to your web-footed friend

Not that there's any particular need to apologize, but sorry for the stint of absence on my part. I've spent the last few days oscillating between the couch and the router (with occasional jogs in Versailles). Nothing too exciting.

The couch serves the purpose of providing a reading and writing space for my BUPC-related correspondence. Had one hell of a day processing all the submissions (an activity rendered much less painful by my helpful assistant for this task), reviewers, and getting it all to work (hopefully). One of my pet-peeves when I used to live back here (or anywhere, but the french administration and its love of red tape seems to best express this feature) was being impeded in my enjoyment of everyday life by base incompetence. Well, it is now I am on the other side of the fence, in being surrounded by people who not only do their job(s) well, but are keen to do so, that I realize that the opposite also holds to be quite true: it's very soothing to see things go smoothly.

So all's good in that hood. The router thing, however, is another matter. We've gone through quite a few netgears, and I've become well acquainted with the (thriving and friendly) netgear-gone-wrong support community, but to no avail. Fact of the matter is, our phone lines are archaic, and our router is fitted with a crappy over-sensitive Texas Instruments (who make damn good programmable calcs, go Ti89+!) chipset which reboots the damn thing every twenty minutes or so. We ordered one of those nifty Linksys WRT54Gs (that you can tinker with the firmware of) to replace it. Hopefully that'll be less stressful to deal with. Fixing the damn thing just sucks my energy away, meaning I haven't been so good with my reading as of late.

In other news, I had to go to the doctor a few days ago, on my mother's orders, because I've had a tickly cough since June. He put me on 8 different meds (mostly anti-allergic stuff) and wants me to have a blood test... ugh. Hate the damn things. The meds taste like crap too (and I'm not a huge fan of putting all that crap in my body).

But no worries, I can get faulty routers and vampiric needles out of my head for a few days, 'cause I'm a-headin' down south(-west) to our summer home in Cozes, to catch some rays on the beach with my buddies Swann and Eduardo, and his mother Helene (also a good friend). So life's good in the end... I just flippin' hate this 19th-century grade house.

Ooh, and one more thing: I got published again, but this time it's a paper, not a book review (Free e-copy of this edition here. *PDF warning*). Yay.

Paris vaut bien une messe...

I thought Easton, Pittsburgh and DC were bad enough, but it's actually just as hot here in Paris. You'd think that thick stone walls and leafy shade would prevent that, but in fact... not really.

My parents and sister are down in the south of France, or were, as they are now on the atlantic coast for my grandmothers' errrr... 72nd birthday? Anywhooo, I would have sort of liked to go down to our summer house in Cozes as well, but I didn't want to spend three hours in the train for just a weekend. Plus, my friend Liam from Sheffield is in town, so I might hang out with him a bit (as my friend Eduardo is at his girlfriend's all weekend), but so far no luck: he's not answering his cell phone, and I'm rather bad at answering my landline. It's sort of sad when a man becomes more reliably reachable by IM or email than by phone.

But back to the heat. It really takes the energy straight out of you. I have loads I want to do, including getting a hair cut, but the prospect of sitting 45 minutes in a non-air conditioned commuter train to go to Paris and get a haircut in a decent place is a bit daunting. It's a bit funny that, being rather fond of having my hair long and slightly ruffled (blatant understatement), I'm still so picky when it comes to haircuts. The reason, I guess, is that when your hair is long there's a rather large gray area when it comes to how it looks. I mean, either you don't look good at all with long hair, or you look okay-ish to good. Whereas for short hair a bad haircut is instantly noticeable. Less artistic license, har har. Nonetheless, I'll try to brave the heat and go into town one of these days, if anything, to have lunch/dinner with my grandmother (when she comes back up) or with Jim & Millie (my godfather and his spouse). Or maybe with my grandfather. We'll see.

Other than that, I have loads to do here. The first step towards actually doing some of that load is bit difficult though, and involves resisting the temptation to play DoD all afternoon. My friend Eduardo brough his (quite powerful) PC up to Paris with him, and it now resides in my room. After two years of having a Mac (G*d bless it) which not only helps me work efficiently, but also prevents me from feeding my gaming addiction, I now realize that playing a few rounds is probably equivalent to sticking a needle back into your arm after two years off smack (previous statement not from personal experience).

I had to get off m'arse on thursday to revise/edit a paper I wrote on qualia and epiphenomenalism, which I have been informed would be published in the next edition of the British Journal of Undergraduate Philosophy (finally... got something published other than a philosophical book review). Aside from that, I've got loads of papers (quite a few courtesy of Yorick Wilks) to read and/or re-read, as well as some books on Linguistics, and K&R's White Book on C, all of which I hope to get through before the summers' over. Over a month left. I think it'll be fine.

That's about all there is to say for now. Time for a cold bath, a book, and a beer. Even with work to do and humid heatwaves, life is pretty damn good.

Peace.

Where geeks congregate

Whew. Got some catching up to do on this whole blogging thing. Quick summary of the past two weeks:

On the weekend on the 8th (of July) I went up to Boston to visit MIT, where I'd like to do some [post]grad research. I was shown around by a friendly local postdoc, Hugo Liu, who was kind enough spare some time and give me an eccentric tour of campus (Hugo: "So... this is the green building. A few people kill themselves here every year". Me: "That's... nice"), including the media labs, and answer my boring ol' questions. We had lunch and a chat. He's a truly fascinating guy. Consider yourselves lucky if you know him. Peace out, Hugo.

But let's get back to the Media Lab part. As a potential philosophy postgrad, I'd have nothing to do there (or would I... I mean if I could justify my presence there, well... score.) but as a self-confessed geek, it's probably the closest thing to heaven you can get (in life or death). Being quite a tech-blog aficionado (or at least very keen for them), it was a treat to be able to see all the crazy-cool inventions you'd read about just lying around, semi-finished, on tables with notes and leaflets and whatnot. It was quite the experience...

Following a brief return to DC, I went up to Pittsburgh for a week, spending time with my Grandparents, my Aunt Mary Jane, and my cousin Conor. It was nice to see Pittsburgh again (after what... two years almost?). I even got to visit my former neighbour (and babysitter) Erica, and dine at Ol' Max & Erma's, for old times' sake. I wish I could have stayed longer, but I would have gotten no work done there... not that I'm doing that much now, either. But more about that in my next post...

Word up.

DC: Behind the Scenes

I'm currently spending a few days in DC with my cousins and aunt and uncle (and father and sister). My cousin Bridget is an intern at the White House, so we made plans to have lunch and visit some of the buildings not accessible to the public. Lunch was great, but what was even better was that her boss got me access to the Old Executive Office Building (not open to the public), where most of the senior staffers work. That was pretty impressive, and the architecture (both inside and out) was beautiful (and very french, hon hon). After that, I visited the Decatur House, which was fairly cool.

Next, my cousin's boss got me access to the White House for a departure. We got to stand next to the White House door as Marine One landed.


Click here to expand the landing pictures.










Then Bush came out, just a few steps away from me. It's no secret I'm not a huge fan of the guy, but it was pretty damn weird seeing a scene you'd usually see on your TV screen happen at a distance where the only thing preventing your from leaning out and pun...err touching the guy is the sniper bullet you'd get for doing something so intensly stupid. (Disclaimer: This is but jest. Political debate is done with words, not fists. Plus... I dislike cheap jabs. Please don't kill me, Secret Service people...).

Pictures of The Man himself:


Click here to expand the Bush pictures.

A caption which comes to mind is Ace Ventura's "A**holes in the mirror [lens] may be closer than they appear..." I kid, I kid. Again, SS peeps, please don't hunt me down.



We also had some time to take a few pictures of us in front of the White House. Pretty good day all around. Quite an experience, I must say...

Click here to see the rest of the pictures.Here are some more pictures:


Bush's dogs: Barney and Mrs. Ihaveknowfrigginclue.


My cousin Bridget and I in front of the south lawn.


Me, in front of the White House.


Bridget, ditto.


Bridget and I, ditto.

That's all for now folks.

News from the Bay

Got back from Easton (Chesapeake Bay) yesterday.

I had a really great week of just lazing about across a house roughly five or six times the size of mine, with pool, hotub, and people cooking for us and bringing us drink. You'd think this extremely opulent lifestyle might be morally objectionable, but it turns out the considering the good company and the good wine, it's suprisingly not.

Anywhooo, not much exciting happened (no explosions, man eating sharks, magical racoons), and what did happen isn't of much concern or interest for people outside the family (then again, does anyone outside the family actually read this thing?).

Amusing anecdote though...
One morning, I woke up and went down to breakfast. One of the caterers greeted me with "There's a Scottish Man outside serving ice cream". I must admit my first thought was that either I was not completely awake, or that he was on crack, but as it turns out...


Click here to see more selected pictures.And now, for more pictures from the Bay:
The house, as seen from the bay.

Who's that sexy beast?

Conor catches up on some World Cup action.

The "adults" take the pool...

... and the "kids" claim it back.

Ben: about to discover that you can't really see anything underwater in the hot tub.

Ellie: The best fishergirlie ever. Beginner's luck, or natural talent?

Who on earth needs two boats?

Carol attempting to get everyone's attention.

Everyone, not paying attention.

What the hell, Sofia?

Yessiree, life is good in Grenoble. But no time to write about that... Let me just say this: I unfortunately suffered my biggest cinematographic disappointment today. I went to see Sofia Coppola's Marie-Antoinette with very high expectations. After all, Sofia Coppola is an absolutely fantastic director whose past work I've greatly enjoyed, and Kirsten Dunst is a good actress (and incidentally features as #3 on my list of supremely beautiful women I will probably never sleep with).

However I found the film to be, despite good acting, well thought-out casting, and some great photography, extremely boring. This comes as a complete surprise, as Lost in Translation doesn't have much action either, but I believe it to be quite the masterpiece. However this film was just slow moving and boring, to the point where I walked out 3/4 of the way out, not wanting to waste much more time (plus, y'sorta know what's going to happen at the end). Quite a shocker, given the wealth of content to write about. Marie-Antoinette being quite an interesting historical character, I regret that Sofia Coppola was unable to display her usual talent in painting a moving picture of her.

Actually, that's a bit unfair. I think everything was excellent except for the absence of a hook to keep the movie interesting (and I dont' really require that much). Cinematographic Parnassianism just doesn't work when it's pushed to the extreme.