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June 22nd, 2009
 | 22:20 - town of the 	s
I'd never been to Cambridge before today. I know it's a pretty major failing for a long-distance foreigner like myself to have spent so much time in the UK and never been to such a famously pretty university town, but I've never quite gotten around to it. Until today.
I've been taking a couple of days off work to spend with my parents, who are in the UK visiting, because I haven't seen them in months and what with being off to CA soon I'm not likely to see them again for quite some time. This morning, my mum more or less arbitrarily decided she wanted to see Cambridge, because she'd never been, and what with a car being conveniently to hand... we went.
Cambridge is... different from what I expected. And quite different from Oxford. Arguably prettier. I'm not sure how I feel about it, because I love Oxford and I loved my time at the Uni and I have a (slightly absurd, really) loyalty to the Dark Blue. But I think Cambridge might win at Pretty University Town. And, in some ways, win at Town in general. (Even if they do punt backwards).
Now, the part of my brain that is persistently pointing out that the Tabs officially Cannot Win is coming up with all kinds of reasons why they haven't, but I've spent all of an afternoon in Cambridge and about five years in Oxford altogether. Anyone else have any thoughts?
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May 14th, 2009
| 17:47 - quick followup to the last one
Yay! People like books! I'm really glad that people are using my book giveaway page -- can I ask, though, that you start leaving a surname / LJ username ? And/or just comment here to let me know if you've put in a request? I only ask because there's a couple of ambiguous names on the request list so far...
And if you haven't gotten to my Big Book Giveaway, please do! It's right here, and I'd rather my books went to friends than to an anonymous charity shop or some such!
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May 13th, 2009
| 14:23 - books! lots of free books!
I have nowhere to keep them until I come back, and I can't take them with me. So go to my Big Book Giveaway to potentially profit from my book-collecting nature over the last couple of years.
NB: If you get an error saying MySQL has gone away, please try reloading. I threw together the web app in an afternoon, and in particular my web host's database server is being a bit unreliable. I'm trying to sort it out with them, but it may take a while... their quality of service has declined dramatically lately.
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April 19th, 2009
| 11:25 - another one
So I was at a wedding yesterday. Quaker weddings are interestingly different to the weddings I've been to before and (I think) beautiful in their simplicity. And I was given the coolest best-man gift ever, and I didn't choke over the speech, and I met some interesting people (some of whom understood what the hat meant), and... yeah. Generally great day :-)
Current Music: Nightwish - The Islander | Powered by Last.fm
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April 14th, 2009
| 10:52 - something cool
Has anyone else seen this? I found FiveThirtyEight.com really good during the US Presidential elections, and it seems they're continuing their trend of interestingly insightful political analysis. According to Mr Silver, there's a fairly good chance there won't be an anti-gay-marriage state left in the US by 2024.
I'm a bit uncertain about the maths: 30 instances, in my limited knowledge of statistics, makes a rather shaky basis for a regression model, and I'm particularly concerned about the methods he used to estimate the effect of the year and derive his projections of how fast vote tendencies are shifting. But it's a very interesting result, and I'd kind of like to believe that the maths is solid. Can anyone I know verify this?
Current Mood: ![[mood icon]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/mood/growf/pengies/happy.gif) chipper
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April 6th, 2009
| 12:18 - i don't know what it is about Western weddings...
...but the last couple I've been to have made me feel extra-single. I really don't know why. It's an oddly melancholy feeling. On the other hand, I had a great time seeing people I haven't caught up with in ages (although as ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) andy_godfrey points out it's somewhat bittersweet because of the disconnect between nostalgia and reality) and a brief go at cèilidh dancing, which while good fun was also really tiring and has left me with aches in various leg muscles. I wonder if I was doing it wrong.
Only two weeks until the next one, with the stag do this weekend. I need to do more prep for that. Eeek in advance!
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April 2nd, 2009
| 10:18 - i'm officially √(576)
...and I haven't really done anything with my life. I suppose I'd best get on with it. Any suggestions?
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March 24th, 2009
| 13:28 - oh dear
I didn't want to get into it. I didn't want to go near the swirling maelstrom of RaceFail. But I did.
I followed a couple of links and found this, which is absolutely brilliant. It says a lot of the things about colonialism and cultural imperialism and their effects that come to mind when I think about the issue, but I just can't put them nearly as well as she did.
Some links later, I also found this massive WTF. Seriously. I should know better than to expect sense from the American educational system but it still really makes me want to punch someone in the face.
Current Mood: ![[mood icon]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/mood/growf/pengies/livid.gif) angry
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March 1st, 2009
| 22:49 - a silliness
I went down to Santa Cruz this evening to see a friend from school who's at uni there. (Pro tip: Highway 17 + rain + night-time + automatic transmission = seriously unpleasant drive. Don't do it). While perusing the dessert menu I came across a cake that came doused with a shot of port. I checked with the waitress and yes, you do have to show ID to be able to order that dessert. Silly America and its Puritanical alcohol laws.
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February 27th, 2009
| 14:49 - to continue my recent flurry of posts
So I spoke to my boss yesterday, and he was fairly clear that he'd quite like me to come over here permanently as soon as possible; he even offered for the company to take care of my rent in the UK, if that was what was keeping me over there. Wow. I know my clients like it when I'm over here nearer their time zone, but I didn't know they liked it this much!
I suspect one of the reasons he likes the idea is that, when I'm over here, I have very little better to do than to put in absurdly long days at work ;-)! Anyway, with my boss and family pressuring me I will probably be moving sooner rather than later :-( but I still have a few months left.
Relatedly -- since I've managed to acquire transportation and have a good bit of time on my hands during evenings and weekends... does anyone want anything from the US? Any books / board games / electronic devices / etc that haven't made it over the pond yet? Let me know soon -- it'll probably be easiest for me to get things this weekend :-)
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February 25th, 2009
| 23:31
Just got back from my first trip in a rented vehicle with my name on the paperwork (I went to see aidansean. It was brilliant). I feel almost grown-up, or something.
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| 10:12 - also
Bruce Schneier's blog pointed me at this, so it'll get a much bigger audience than I can provide anyway, but this annoys the hell out of me.
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February 23rd, 2009
| 00:22 - back from dc...
...where I had the most wonderful time. I spent a lot of time with a couple of my favorite cousins (and my new cousin-in-law), met up with a couple of friends from my first internship (at a DC think-tank) over a very nice dinner and evening out, and then had an early lunch-ish get-together the next day with a bunch of friends from school, including one I used to be really close to but haven't seen since he moved away from the Desh when we were 16.
Jetlag, lack of sleep, and the hassle of two cross-continental flights in less than 48 hours will probably catch up with me in the next few days. But it was all worth it. I need to go visit DC more often. Even if I do have distant relatives there who look at me thoughtfully, confirm that I'm as old as they think I am, and then ask me why I'm not married...
In further general coolness, I managed to strike up a conversation with the complete stranger sitting next to me on the flight back, and we chatted for a good hour or so and I didn't die. Yay!
Anyway, back to work tomorrow. Mleh.
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February 17th, 2009
| 17:14 - question for the coders, or anyone else who might be vaguely interested
It's been a long-standing problem for Viverra to localize configuration data to a particular application using the framework, so that multiple applications could use the same simple set of libraries. Currently, there's a bit of a horrid hack in place that actually inspects the module's call stack to find out where it was imported from, and then tries to get a local configuration from there.
It is looking more and more like the way to go is to stick the location of the configuration module somewhere invariant, and have it read every time it's needed. Django does this, with the DJANGO_SETTINGS_MODULE environment variable.
So the question is, what would you prefer from your framework if you were developing a web application? It could... - make you copy it into each new app and set up its config file (clumsy and difficult to update or change)
- try to automagically discover where your code lives, and load configuration from there (hackish and error-prone, as evidenced by an earlier version of my code that went too far down the call stack and found itself inspecting Apache's internals)
- pass configuration data around to each relevant function (inelegant and clutters the API)
- dynamically read the configuration location out of the environment and load it from there (hard to do if you don't control the environment, as with shared web hosting)
What do you think? Are there options I haven't thought of? Which do you prefer?
Current Mood: chipper
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February 9th, 2009
| 10:03 - update from the other side of the world, part 2
The sun's come out again here, after most of a week of hiding behind some clouds and rain -- which I'm told we could use rather more of, as the water reservoirs need filling up over the winter to last during the summer. So, somewhat oddly, I'm hoping the clouds will come back again.
( legal residence? what a novel idea! )
( what is this 'social life' you speak of? )
( what kind of sad git can't even appreciate california? )
( o, btw )
Current Mood: ![[mood icon]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/mood/growf/pengies/blank.gif) blah
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January 26th, 2009
| 17:38 - CA
I had the unenviable honor of getting to the airport this morning too early to check in for the right flight -- I had to sit around reading for forty-five minutes before they'd accept my suitcase because of limitations in the system. How silly.
Now I have to try and stay awake for another couple of hours so I can try and get my circadian rhythms right for this time zone. This is nontrivial when I didn't sleep last night (due to packing and whatnot) and my body clock is currently telling me that it's 2.30 in the morning. Wish me luck!
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January 23rd, 2009
| 10:08
I get this unfamiliar feeling when I read some of the news coming out of the US these days. Could it be... pride?
In other news my mum is visiting for the first time in years and years and while I'm obviously quite rushed over the next couple of days (and then off to California on Monday :-() I'd like to see if I can arrange some kind of get-together where she could meet a couple of my friends. She's met a couple of the people I lived next door to in the first year of uni, so I know she's got a deeply skewed view of my social circle...
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January 21st, 2009
| 11:37 - Privileges meme, from hecticred
Taken from What Privileges Do You Have?, based on an exercise about class and privilege developed by Will Barratt, Meagan Cahill, Angie Carlen, Minnette Huck, Drew Lurker, and Stacy Ploskonka at Illinois State University. If you participate in this meme, they ask that you PLEASE acknowledge their copyright.
( meem )
I, too, am intrigued to see where on these scales my flist lies...
Current Mood: ![[mood icon]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/mood/growf/pengies/confused.gif) curious
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January 19th, 2009
| 09:40 - software communities
(see last paragraph). Huggy geeks. Where do I sign up?
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January 16th, 2009
| 14:09 - a public update
Thanks to everyone who gave me advice -- I'm trying to look at it in a non-paranoid fashion and we'll just see how it goes. What came out of that email exchange with my boss, though, is that he very definitely wants me to be over there, and soon, working on these projects for a few weeks. So I'm off to SJ on the 26th (i.e. Monday after the coming one) and will be gone for about a month. :S!
Also, FerretBrain has apparently had people lurking on it (and being impressed) for a couple of years. Woo! I'm not quite sure what the relationship is between real years and Internet years, but I'm sure two whole years of consistent ferrety goodness is pretty unusual. Congrats to everyone who's kept FB going -- you rock!
Current Mood: ![[mood icon]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/mood/growf/pengies/bouncy.gif) bouncy
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January 11th, 2009
| 23:20 - yeek
Yet another pair of friends have gotten engaged. I guess I must be getting to that age where the first wave of marriages washes over one's social circle. I don't want to be old enough for people my age to be getting married!
Current Mood: ![[mood icon]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/mood/growf/pengies/amused.gif) amused
Current Music: Nightwish - 7 DaysTo The Wolves | Powered by Last.fm
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January 7th, 2009
December 30th, 2008
December 17th, 2008
| 08:07 - oh, what a surprise
ZOMG TERRORISTS are cashing in on Xmas! (right down at the bottom). Next week, they'll be soberly telling us that SNEEZING FUNDS TERRORISM SO THINK OF THE CHILDREN AND HOLD IT IN!!1!
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