Sarcasm

Sarcasm is very useful, but it can sometime be hard to work out if someone is being sarcastic if,
1, You don’t know the person very well.
2, Can’t see their face to interpret their facial and tonal expressions.
3, Both of the above due to them writing a blog.
It’s handy that blogs have sarcasm tags that clearly explain when people are being sarcastic.
Please take note to use them or at least explain that you are being sarcastic.

: 17 Oct 2006 14:55 |  Tags: Humour Rants |  Comments (2) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Rant About The Killers Lyrics

With their new album out people have started again with “the Killers lyrics are soo good”. If one more person says that the Killers lyrics are so good because they are original and no one else could come up with them I am going to have to hit them. OK I’ll give them “I’ve got Soul but I’m not a Soldier”, but the whole of “Mr Brightside” is homage to David Bowie “Queen Bitch”. As proof here are a few of the Bowie Lyrics …

Now she’s leading him on
And she’ll lay him right down
But it could have been me
Yes, it could have been me

David Bowie

And I’m phoning a cab
‘Cause my stomach feels small
There’s a taste in my mouth
And it’s no taste at all

David Bowie

Sound familiar! No-one in music is truly original. It is an art form and hence is built on the things that have gone before. It evolves and changes. Sometimes improving and sometimes not. Please people remember that by listening just to modern music you’ll have no idea if it is good or not! Don’t assume that the piece of music that you are listening to is the best so far… keep listening to music that you haven’t heard both new and old. And I’ll leave you with another of the original “Thin White Duke” quote from Queen Bitch…
“She’s so swishy in her satin and tat, In her brown coat and bipperty-bopperty hat” (which is in no way referenced in Mr Brightside but it is great anyhow).

: 13 Oct 2006 10:51 |  Tags: Rants |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Matlab, Beer(RGB)=BlueMing(BGR)

I was playing around learning Matlab and the suggested .jpg was of a apple… this seems much better. In this I have just swapped the RGB values of the image to give false colour shuffles of the file. Yes… I could have done this in Photoshop… but this is more impressive I think! What is worrying is BlueMing is beer with the colours reversed!

: 12 Oct 2006 14:50 |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Learning Matlab

I can’t wait for my new computer! At the moment I’m trying to learn enough Matlab for multi-variate analysis of SIFT and E-Nose data on a reduced version of Matlab on my laptop! The version of Matlab has no toolbox’s (handy when PCA and stats toolbox’s are referred to in the literature) and as my laptop only has 256Mb of RAM (Matlab requires a minimum of 512, and prefers a gig!) so my laptop is prone to crashing every time I try something new!
I have managed to make basic bar graphs of some of the data I have been given and am beginning to see the benefits of all variables as matrices but I’m not too keen on the fancy environment that Matlab provides.

: 12 Oct 2006 11:13 |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Update 06/10/06

Well, its been a long time since I blogged and a lot of things have changed. I’ve moved flat. I’m now living in Bedford just of the Embankment which is a nice part of the town overlooking the river. Me and e looked at loads of places in Bedford and many of them were awful.
My MSc thesis has been completed and handed in… I’m just waiting to find out when my viva will be so I can defend it against all the harsh criticisms that are bound to be thrown around.
And, I’ve just started a PhD. It has something to do with computational data analysis of chemistry related machinery looking at biological molecules to try and determine if badgers have TB or not. So this should be interesting … though at the moment its just reading lots of biochemical data analysis papers and learning Matlab. Anyhow, enough time wasted… back to work.

: 06 Oct 2006 09:49 |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Update (V, Poppers, Car, Thesis)

I haven’t blogged for a while (mainly due to manic thesis writing) and to be honest I haven’t got much to say. Having said that I did attend the V festival in Stafford where Radiohead where amazing as expected, We Are Scientists were brilliant (which was a little unexpected seen as they had managed to lose their guitars somehow), Bloc Party were good (but not as good as I had hoped), and Hard–Fi were crap. Groove Armada were great and we were right near to the front but some twat who was stoned off his face pushed forward and behaved like a fucking moron. Can anyone tell me the point of Poppers? Sniff this chemical (that resembles the alcohols in glue if I remember correctly) which will fuck up your nose and make you light headed an woozy just like you have the flu. Pillicks!
I have also bought a new car. To replace the one I bent slightly (well Ok wrote off). It’s a white Citroën Xsara. It’s slightly bigger than the Polo but not as big as a Golf… but yer, its French.
My thesis is due in on Monday, though I had to go and get the forms for submission from Registry my self as they are about a month and a half behind, so my supervisor doesn’t think I should worry too much about meeting the deadline. One question though… I’ve had one year to do this MSc and I’ve had to write a thesis that is half the length of a PhD thesis and I get absolutely no writing up time… Is that fair? I think not… though if you started a PhD this year your writing up time will be a maximum of 6 months due to new research council guidelines (and you will have to apply for it here).
I notice a fad a while ago that made Blog reading much quicker and somehow its faded out… so I want to start it up again… so…
The Stanbury: Not blogged for yonks, went V, bought car, writing thesis.

: 30 Aug 2006 12:56 |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Quiz thingy magig bout Majors

You scored as Mathematics. You should be a Math major! Like Pythagoras, you are analytical, rational, and when are always ready to tackle the problem head-on! Engineering 100% Mathematics 100% Philosophy 92% Biology 83% Chemistry 67% English 58% Sociology 42% Journalism 33% Psychology 33% Anthropology 33% Art 33% Linguistics 33% Dance 17% Theater 8% What is your Perfect Major? (PLEASE RATE ME!!<3) created with QuizFarm.com

I guess this means that I should have done something that involves Maths and Engineering and the main bulk but ask (and usually solves) all the big questions about the world asked by Philosophers… hay wait… thats PHYSICS!!!!

: 25 Jul 2006 15:43 |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Soya? Is it bad for you?

Writing about web page http://www.guardian.co.uk/food/Story/0,,1828158,00.html?gusrc=rss

Apparently, if you feed Soya beans to Canaries it kills them, or a least makes them infertile. Soya contains plant oestrogens which heavily disrupt the hormone balance of the birds. Yet Soya is used heavily in all processed food. Soya is also seen as a healthy replacement to milk. The arguments for it contain references to the health of the orientals who include it in their diet. But traditional Soya is fermented for approximately 18 months to release the proteins and remove the anti–nutrients and the only reference to raw Soya consumption comes from the monks who used it to remove the libido. So Soya could just be another health fad gone wrong!

: 25 Jul 2006 10:15 |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Window Live Messenger

Ok, I’ve been putting off upgrading to Windows Live Messenger for a while. Mainly because they ruined my Hotmail account with Windows Live Mail (could only log in from IE not Firefox). But now that is up and running smoothly I thought i might as well upgrade messenger so that it checks my emails (as the old version of MSN messenger doesn’t like Windows Live Mail but it seems to be only me that this has happen to).
So clicked on the link from the Live people about upgrading and 30 sec later was installed and signing in. Then crash!
Grrr, not a good start!
So after reboot its signing in again….................................. goes to make cup of coffee…........ has a sandwich and then finally it signs in to a total of 1 contact! What where have my contacts gone?
So I sign out and sign in using the original Windows Messenger and few all 39 contacts are still ok.
So trying Live again…. oh 13 contacts… better but hay wait 6 of them are E-mail only so that only leaves 7?
So after 20 minutes of Google searching in the depths of some sort of slightly official windows live blog I find that they are having trouble with people timing out and hence if you are using a wireless network for you might not be able to see all your contacts all of the time. Cheers for the warning guys!

: 19 Jul 2006 16:21 |  Tags: Rants |  Comments (19) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Project (RED) Bandwagon – Personal attack on myself

I'm not a big fan of Bono methods of pushing aid schemes onto the western world however I have just received a Motorola Red phone. As you can guess this has caused a bit of a personal debate. Have I just jumped onto a corporate bandwagon that is nothing more than a scheme to sell more mobiles? I decided that the arguments for and against needed to be raised so that I could form a justified opinion (as long it was for the phone so be warned this is probably highly bias).

Getting a RED mobile is just jumping on the bandwagon. My first justification was that I am getting a new phone anyway and I didn't like the Nokia's that the phone company was offering, but I did like the SLVR. So I had the choice between a standard SLVR and the RED SLVR. So where choosing the RED was jumping on the bandwagon, not choosing the RED would say that I am not willing to give the tuppence to RED which just seemed tight!

But Motorola are a huge Chinese company so I am effectively funding part of the Chinese industrial revolution that is going to see the production of a coal powered power station a week for the next ten years. I justified this with “but at least 1p in every £1 goes on improving peoples health. But it could be worse. I could be donating nothing.”

OK so the correct thing might have been to give all the money for the phone to charity and remove Motorola from the picture but as this was a free upgrade this isn't an option. And if I do that the extra money that the phone company will give to RED whilst I'm using the phone they will get to keep.

Bono, when asked if he was being used as an advertising stunt just pleaded ignorance and claimed that if millions of pounds are raised for AIDS, TB and Malaria who cares if it has come from the man (well he actually said that if it is the case “I'm not a cheap date” which the press assumed he meant that it will cost the man). And so far this is the best argument that I've heard. OK the phone companies might be bad but even if I help just a tiny bit I have done something slightly useful.

Sorry, about the rambling style of my entry but I needed a platform to craft my arguments when I get asked about the phone. I didn't want to look a complete fool when someone comes up with a negative argument about the phone and just say “well it looks nice” follow shortly after by a damming thought that, yet again, I'm a huge 'pillick'.

: 14 Jul 2006 12:19 |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem