Budgie Video

My brother-in-law has posted a video on Facebook of my sister's budgie, Faure, playing with his toys. Not to be outdone, I've made a little video of mine doing their little hat trick:

You wouldn't believe how long it took me to do this!

Good Friday = Oxfam Friday

Yes, folks, we were open all hours today (10:30AM - 3:30PM). When I arrived to do an afternoon shift, John and Michelle, mortal enemies normally, were engaged in heated discussion. Turns out they were hammering out an agreement regarding each others surplus and, as usual, what defines "literature". John has wandered over into Michelle's area a little as he now has two sub-catagories, classic sci-fi and transatlantic literature. No sooner had Michelle departed than Anne pulled him over and pointed out to him that if any agreement with Michelle turned sour she wasn't going to be too pleased to have to sort it out. I mentioned to him afterwards that he was in trouble with two women today, all before one o'clock. He did manage to make an odd sale though. Someone wanted a lot of old Penguin books to make their wedding book-themed and were going to have old paperbacks as decorations for the various tables. £30 for as many copies.

I also spotted some old W40K Codexes that someone had donated and bought them. There were a little worn, but OK otherwise and averaged £4 each. Nice:

The Return of The Man With The Expanding Brain

Today I went along to to see Andrew Vladimirov give his second lecture in what looks like becoming a series entitled "Hacking Your Wetware", hosted by the London Futurists.

For a change, we were up amongst the Gods on the fifth floor of Birbeck College, rather than the basement. This was because there were fewer attending, fifty-odd as opposed to a hundred-and-fifty-odd. Cosy, plus what would have been a view had the weather been more pleasant:

The presentation was very similar to last time with Andrew blasting us with brain biochemistry that would have Crick and Watson reeling. For those who didn't attend last time, he gave a recap, concentrating on the criteria he uses for gauging whether a particular method is effective in enhancing the brain's intelligence. To use an electronic metaphor, increasing the strength of the signals, increasing the number of signals and reducing the noise interfering with the signals.

His talk this time was to do with physical methods rather than chemical. He detailed auditory and visual methods, including ultrasound and the use of infrared lasers, which you stick up your nose. This is because that's where the bone of the skull is thinnest and it's also quite close to the Hippocampus, the part(s, you've two) of the brain that govern the processing of short-term memory into long term.

He then detailed transcranial electrical stimulation, beginning with direct current (tDCS). This is an old method, one originally worked on by Charles Darwin:

You stick a cathode on one side and an anode on the other and put 9v across your head (there's a bit more to it than that, but not much). Done right, there are some measurable results. He then detailed the use of alternating currents, both waves (tACS) and pulses (tPCS). He finished by giving a demonstration of measuring brain waves (his) when stimulated by certain auditory frequencies, specifically the "Om" frequency:

This is supposed, by Eastern mysticism, to be the sound that created the Universe and he's detected it's effect on the part of the brain that's associated with a deep, meditative state.

All-in-all, it was an informative and entertaining presentation.

Oblivion

Pretty much from out of nowhere, there's this intriguing new film out next month:

Might be pretty awsome in 3D!

Banlieue 13 - Ultimatum

The heroes from the first film are called upon to save District 13 again:

Pretty much a repeat of the first film, but with a simpler plot. David Belle and Cyril Raffaelli reprise their roles and the action is as intense as the first, with a lot of martial arts and parkour.

I don't know about you, but I find it oddly comforting that the French love martial arts almost as much as we do, and some of my favourite action films come from across the Channel, especially Brotherhood of the Wolf.

Alien Invasion - on Rollerskates

I've got two new Lego minifigs today, an Alien Invader and a roller girl:

They both look angry enough to start a fight in an empty room.

Here's a thing. How lucky was I that I got these two, which I didn't already have, given that I already had ten unique figures and there are sixteen in this series? It should, I recon, have been 8-3 each, or 5⅓-1 together. Now the odds are 4-1, so should I get two at a time or one? Would it make a difference?

College Thursday - Pope Eric

One of the chaps on the course is Roman Catholic and we've been discussing the recent resignation and election of Popes. He was saying that, in theory, any Catholic can become Pope. I couldn't resist and for the last few weeks I've been calling him Pope Eric the First, but Pope Francis got the job in the end. By coincidence, the third season of The Borgias is out in the 'States after Easter.

Cor, blimey! It was all a bit racy in Rome!

Oxfam Tuesday - Hat's Off To The Thief

Anne asked me to do the afternnon shift at the shop. It was absolutely freezing upstairs and I spent most of the shift slumped against the radiator, which was turned on full blast. Lee had left a soul/blues compilation on the CD player and it had some rather good Nina Simone:

The most annoying thing about the shift was that we had some old 78's pinched. Dave had put some on a shelf near the till and a rather shifty-looking chap was examining them. I told him that there were some more nearby, but he said that he didn't like the look of them as they had price labels on (Hmmmm...). Anyhoo, another customer asked me to look for something away from the till, and when I looked around he was gone, along with the 78's. Bizarrely, in his haste, he'd left his hat, so I stappled a note on it to the effect that whoever wanted the hat back had stolen the 78's, a description of the culprit and his possible accomplice (the woman who'd distracted me at the too coincidental moment).

After today's bad luck, I wonder what will the rest of the week be like?. Maybe I should ask a fortune teller?

Snow Time

It's been snowing at Chez Lemon and Essex has a light covering, like the rest of the East Coast. I wonder what the traffic is like...

Saturday - Touristing in London Town

I thought I'd blow the cobwebs off a bit today and went for a walk in London.


View Larger Map

It was all a bit meandering, but one shop I do like to browse is Daunt Books in Cheapside, not far from St Mary-le-Bow Church. It's one of the few independents left in the City and has a delightful sprung floor, like walking on the deck of a ship. I bought a pub guide to London, published by CAMRA:

I walked down Fleet Street and took in some of the architecture, notably the art deco of the Daily Express building:

I noticed that there seem to be a lot of clocks in Fleet Street:

The first is Gog and Magog outside St. Dunstan-in-the-West and the other The Royal Courts of Justice.

Oxfam Friday - It's Gonna Rain!

Mark asked me to pull a shift upstairs this morning, which I was more than happy to do. It started lashing it down towards the end and I had to walk back through the rain. It put me in mind of this:

Steve Reich is a composer of the minimalist school (like Philip Glass, more famous for his piano compositions which turn up in movies). I'd heard of the piece before as it's cited as an influence on modern sampling, but it cropped up on Howard Goodall's BBC series The Story of Music. It was made in 1965, but it sounds like it was made last week.

There wasn't much trade in the shop, but I managed to play Ibrahim Ferrer's Buenos Hermanos all the way through:

Dates

Date formats are a bit of a problem in software and xkcd has published a little cartoon to explain...

So now you know.

Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance

Yup, another Nick Cage film. Johnny Blaze is asked to guard a young boy who may be the key to removing the demon possessing him.

With a plot that must have taken all of twenty minutes to write, Nicolas Cage again gets acted off the set, this time by Ciarán Hinds and Idris Elba, and, to some extent, by himself as the demon. There's a fair abount of bangs and crashes and good stunt work, but there's the feeling that this could have been a much better film in the hands of, oh, I don't know, Johnny Depp? Still, it's better than watching Keanu Reeves trying to be Klaatu.

A Trip To Greenwich To See The London AI Futurists

For the inauguration of the new London AI Futurists, I attended a meeting at the Forum in Greenwich.

I took the DLR from Stratford to Cutty Sark, which took me through Docklands:

I must have been about seven or eight when I was last in Greenwich. It's a bit like a theme park, with Sainsbury's, M&S, etc., but that changed rapidly as I walked down the road towards the Forum.

The meeting was titled "Human Uniqueness or Simply Repeating Patterns?" and was given by a rather nervous German called Rob Wenzel.

His idea for the future of Artificial Intelligence was to model human personalities via the Myers-Brigg Type Indicator system. This gives sixteen broad types, each one matching another as the "ideal" partner. Thus an AI can be matched to an individual person and we could then relate to them better. Yes, folks, Genuine People Personalities (Marvin the Paranoid Android) might be a way of implementing AI for real. What was dissapointing was that Robert did not go further and explain his ideas for how it would be implemented, only that they serve as a guide for the future.

On the way back I passed through North Greenwich on the way to the tube station and saw the cable car system across the Thames near the Millenium Dome.

It was a long weary way home as the District line had engineering works and I was glad to get back to Chez Lemon.

The Eastleigh By-election

I'm a great one for statistics and the recent by-election (admit it: do you know where in Hampshire Eastleigh is? It's a suburb of Southampton, basically) had made me curious about the voting turn-out and the results.

	2010			2013
Party	Votes	Share of Vote	Share of Electorate	Votes	Share of Vote	Share of Electorate	Change from Previous
Liberal Democrat	24966	46.53%	32.25%	13342	32.06%	16.93%	-46.56%
Conservative	21102	39.33%	27.26%	10559	25.37%	13.40%	-49.96%
Labour	5153	9.60%	6.66%	4088	9.82%	5.19%	-20.67%
UKIP	1933	3.60%	2.50%	11571	27.80%	14.68%	498.60%
Other	496	0.92%	0.64%	2056	4.94%	2.61%
Total	53650		69.30%	41616		52.80%	-22.43%
Electorate	77417			78818			1.81%

Source Wikipedia.

The first thing you notice is the massive drop in turnout, more than 20%, even though the electorate has increased slightly. This gives lie to the supposition that immigration issues, which UKIP campaigned on, have made people vote who hadn't previously. It may well have turned people off voting. In more general terms, though, you can see that the successful candidate only represents one in six of the electorate. Democracy in action.

Secondly, you can see the massive increase in votes for UKIP, which has been made much of in the press. If even half of the UKIP vote had gone to the Conservatives, they would have got nearly 40% and won, so it's easy to see why Ed might be smiling at this point. However, the Labour party might have to deal with UKIP on their own turf.

New Lego - Waiter!

While in Chelmsford today, I got judged and served!

The waiter reminded me of this old Madness number:

Have a nice weekend!