Furthermore: May 2004 Part 2

May 28, 2004

Darfour - response from Anne Campbell

I emailed Anne Campbell MP about Darfour, and got a response quite quickly. This hasn’t always been the case, but I may switch to using email rather than faxyourmp to talk to her if she’s able to turn round emails more quickly.

She seems genuinely concerned, and has already written to the Minister for Africa, Chris Mullin. I should get a copy of the reply when she gets it.

Beyond publicising my own concerns about the situation, I feel rather powerless to affect the situation. I ought to just mention the Passion of the Present website though, as it now has it’s own site.

Albatross Stories

Ka Wai Tam (see previous post) also has a page on what he calls Yes Or No Questions but which I learned as Albatross stories (though this seems not to be a common usage, at least as far as Google is concerned). The idea here is that you are presented with a bizarre scenario, and you have to work out what happened using only yes or no questions.

One fairly easy example is, “A man pushes his car up to a hotel and goes bankrupt.” There are lots more, so I may post a selection at some point.

Cambridge Mao

I played this game a few times when I went skiing with a group of computer scientists and mathematicians of my acquaintance. I could never really get to grips with it, but the concept fascinated me. The key points are that you are not allowed to explain the rules, and as the game progresses, more rules can be added by the players.

A lot of the links for Mao on the web seem to have rotted, but the following still work as of this post:

• Overview


• Ka Wai Tam - this chap has done a neat trick, by giving a transcript of a typical game, so he doesn’t give away the rules as such.

May 25, 2004

Software Patents Responses

Credit where it’s due - I emailed my MP and one of my MEPs (Andrew Duff) about the patents issue, and they’ve both managed to get back to me within a couple of days.

Bruce Sterling

Transcript of an amusing Bruce Sterling talk on how to solve his party problems.

May 23, 2004

Bits and Bobs

I seem to have had quite a busy few days. I’ve been working in London to try to learn about one of our systems from the chap who knows everything about it at present. Tomorrow I’m going to go into my local office to try to replicate what I’ve done down there.

I’ve finally managed to write my MP about Darfour (only a month or so after I said I would). Faxyourmp still seems to be down, so I’ve sent an email - I hope my MP will respond or it will be even more of a waste of time.

Tomorrow I’m hoping to go to the Cambridge Beer Festival. With a bit of luck this year will be the first when it hasn’t poured with rain the day I decide to go.

What else? I got the new Morrissey album, but so far I’m just not that impressed - it doesn’t really seem to have moved on from where he was when the last album came out, which was years ago now. Also finally finished the bloody REM book. Not that it was bad - far from it (apart from some woeful solecisms) - just that it took me so long to finish it. I only really did it because I had time to read on the train. At the moment, reading just doesn’t seem to fit into my day. Well, that’s not true - I read blogs, but I can do that while waiting for a build, which I can’t do with a book.

I went running too today - standard circuit, just under an hour. Weather was very hot though, so I had to walk a few sections.

May 21, 2004

Software Patents

I emailed my MP to protest at the plans by the council of ministers to overrule the European parliament who had sensibly decided to restrict patentability of software. Probably a bit late to have much effect. Lots of information on this at FFII.

I guess I ought to lobby my MEPs too, but I only have so much energy for this sort of thing.

Links

• Foe Romeo - I saw the slides of her presentation Y’know, for kids! from the O’Reilly emerging tech conference and I thought it looked interesting, as I have a young daughter who is going to grow up in a pervasively connected world. The site is a goldmine of stuff - I’m sure I shall be mentioning it again soon.


• Paper CD Case - may have mentioned this before, but it generates a printable page, with labels, that you can fold into a CD slip case.


• Little, Big - subscription venture to create a really nice 25th anniversary edition. I’m very tempted.



• New Yorker - scary Sy Hersh backgrounder on the Abu Ghraib scandal.


• Back To Iraq - subscribe! Interesting independent journalism from Baghdad.

ID Cards latest

There’s a useful summary here of yesterday’s Mistaken Identity conference at the LSE. I quite wanted to go, but it would have clashed with work commitments.

I also noticed in the latest FIPR news that there’s now a one stop shop for opposing the ID card bill at No2Id.net

May 19, 2004

What I did on my holidays, part one

I’m just back from a week in Cromer, and a week-end in York. Both very enjoyable, though the weather was a bit iffy at the start of the week. Anyway, I thought I would just record a few of the places we visited or ate at, in the vague hope that it might be useful to anyone going to those places. You can assume anywhere we ate takes children, because we were travelling as a family.

We set off for Cromer on Saturday 8th from Cambridge. We stopped for lunch on the way at a pub called The George & Dragon at Newton by Castle Acre, King’s Lynn, Norfolk PE23 2BXTel/Fax: 01760 755046. Food was good, and they didn’t quibble when I complained that the beer didn’t taste right, just went off and changed the barrel. I’m not saying it deserves special praise, but it’s a good sign.

In Cromer we stayed in a rented cottage at a place called The Grove (95 Overstrand Road, Cromer, NR27 0DJ. 01263 512412). There’s a guest-house too which is fine, but we found that last year it was hard to have any evening to ourselves if we stayed there, so this time we self-catered, and it worked out much better. No complaints about either the guest-house or the cottage, and the setting is really nice - it’s a little bit out of town, but you can walk there in less than 10 minutes, and there’s also a footpath up to the cliffs, where I did a couple of good little runs.

As I said, the weather was not so good in the early part of the week: we stayed in Cromer on Sunday, and went to Norwich on Monday. Norwich was nice, I recommend the castle as a place to visit.

Tuesday we went to Sheringham, and stopped on the way at the Priory Maze and Gardens which is pretty much what you’d expect. Bit pricey for what it is, especially as the gardens aren’t really in full bloom yet, but our daughter enjoyed running in the maze. We had lunch at The Lobster, which has a nice quiet back-room for families. I think there was a beer garden, but it was too cold that day. The grown-ups food was good, but the fish fingers were not so great. Not bad overall though.

More later when I can be bothered to write it.