Research, Hawkins, Censorship and Stumbling

[Denizens Only] I get all academic'd up for a day, meet up with Dr Hawkins of a famous company, drink whiskey, decide modern life is a template I'm bored of, eat Tapas, bitch about censorship, introduce StumbleUpon and some new Icar graphics. It's all in one blog post. Hopefully I'll do more.

O'Neill's Magical Circus

Yesterday, I took a day off work. I've been collaborating with Mark O'Neill (from Newcastle Uni and Tumbling Dice) and Liz Parkes (from Glamorgan) on a paper submission to a Marketting conference Trondheim. The main thrust of the work is that current statistical technique for analysing marketing data are all linear and assume variables are all independent. For those that think I'm babbling on, it means that if you printed out the data, they assume you can draw a line to split the points up. This doesn't yield very good results so we're going to throw some AI at it and see what non-linear multivariate clustering will do to it. Probably a lot of good, methinks.

It means I'm writing my PSOM algorithms in C, which is a bit of a pain but the end result is something that Mark can take and throw at his stupidly powerful computing grid. That should be quite fun. After that, it's time to write the conference paper but that will be light for Mark and I as the conference is more Liz's domain.

The deadline for the paper is the beginning of april, so we got together in the Natural History Museum. Mark is a fast moving, fast thinking sort of chap who's velocity would escape even the strongest corporate gravity. No company would be able to keep him down. He's unbelievably well qualified and has more than 150 publications to his name. Meeting with Mark is more like signing up to the O'Neill's Magical Circus, I met with some people who would be classifying bugs Mark had got from an unknown source - the bugs would be used for some sort of AI classification experiment. We walked behind the scenes in NHM, where row after row of metal cabinets hold millions of examples of bugs. We then met up with Norm Mcleod, reader in Paleotology at the NHM, the editor of the book I wrote a chapter for last year. It was a random meeting, really. We chatted about problems faced by those trying to use technology to assist/replace experts (depending on your point of view). He noted some future projects he might like some input on.

From there, we met up with Stig Walsh, another Paleotologist and chatted about the state of the world today. The day went pretty quickly and Mark and I have an outline for the paper we'll be putting together with Liz. We decided to call it a day a bit early and I phoned John, who invited me to his office. Google London is a bit like a nursery when I walked in. Lots of primary colours and bright interesting shapes on the walls. It's big too. Loads of developers. They all have their areas decorated and John showed me some of the video conferencing kit byt 'phoning' his office pod from a meeting room 11 feet away. Really confused his co-worker, which was funny. He played pool in the well equipped games room (all consoles, GH present natch). It looked like a really fun place to be and John was utterly proud of his company. So he should be. Microhoo! can get fucked, it seems.

Hawkins and Philosophy

We headed back to chez Hawkins, he lives in a big, beautiful 1930s block of flats. Art deco in design and very plush indeed. He's bitched recently about paying more for it but then, it's in Pimlico a really posh bit of London for those that don't know. I'm surprised he doesn't need to give over an internal organ each month. Looking back, I'd say it was nicer than his place in Hampstead.

We enjoyed some whiskey (suitably posh stuff), set the world absolutely to rights and discussed life challenges and setting them. When you've got to the top of what you do, how do you continue aspiring? Just for objects or money? That doesn't seem very important to me. It seems we're all programmed to try and tick all of these social boxes and for the more competitve among us *cough*Me*cough*, *cough*Pete*cough* exceed them. It's annoying really. You need to get educated. Get a car. Get a house. Get a bigger, better job than your friends, get a girlfriend, get a prettier, more successful girlfriend (shit, I'm going all Johnny Nmeumonic), marry the girlfriend. Settle down. Earn more money. Get a better car. Faster car. Be promoted more often. Buy a bigger house. Have kids. More kids. Even more kids. More kids. More kids than your friends. More kids than the unfortunate nymphomaniac Catholic family down the road. And on it goes.

Fuck that.

Sound familiar? Should do. We see it all the time in soaps, in magazines and fed to us over the years as the right way of doing things. Makes me want to say "Fuck it" and go and build an Isengard on a Welsh hill somewhere. Realistically, I'm going to seek new ways of shaking my life up a bit.

John admitted, somewhat ashamedly (given his leftie, green, treehugging, veggie leanings) that he'd become more obsessed with money. I couldn't quite believe it (I thought it was the whiskey at first). I have something of an easy come/easy go attitude to cash to be honest. I don't mind that Kate doesn't earn anything. It's not a problem. If, in the future, I need time off work to do something I really want to do, she'll have to support us. Doesn't bother me I'm not earning the maximum amount for my age or qualification. I can do what I need and comfortably. I think this is a reaction to a somehow evil best practise.

We diddled on down to a Tapas bar and had a lovely selection of plates. I remember the chorizo and potato being particularly good, as well as artichoke hearts. I'm surprised John didn't suggest I went Radstock old school and put it between two bits of bread. Add ketchup. Bosh. Job done. The food was excellent and mein host kindly paid. Next time, it's on me, Whoarekins. Thanks for putting up with me. Got in just 1 hour and 45 minutes after departure from Pimlico, pretty good, all told.

Censorship

This brings me onto something else. I don't really post on the Maison Board anymore. I read it but I don't post. It's because I'm being censored. Aparently, I can't say what I like on there because others are worried it might get banned by their work sites. Well, for fuck sake. I rather liked the uncensored outporings of old and now that's gone, it's descended into talking about the weather and parents of posters (including mine) doing that annoying "embarrassing" thing of putting your kids down. I'm thirty fucking one, now mother, it's time to stop. I can't really tell her to stop posting there, so I will just lose interest.

Stumble

Every tried Stumbling? It's a bit like browsing the web of old. You install a button on Firefox (or IE if you're a homo), set some preferences and then hit stumble. A web page you've likely not seen before, yet recommended by others pops up. You set what your preferences are by category. You can also say you like something (a simple thumbs up button on your toolbar) and that helps stumbling in the future. Things you like are aggregated into an RSS feed, as normal. A lot of the weblinks I post are through stumbling at lunchtime. It's quite addictive. There's a social element too but I've not used that because the digital bitches I know aren't on it.

Lies, damn lies and statistics

I've been trying to see the effect of posting a generic question on RPG forums (1, 2, 3) and other marketing activities (such as releasing a new version of the equipment index) on the number of hits on the Icar site. As yet, it seems I've just next to bugger all effect. Perhaps with sustained forum bashing, I might get some results. I'll keep you posted (heh heh).

Creativity

Been really creative recently with the new Icar Equipment Index (thanks for proof read, Byrn) and have been enjoying it. I want to get onto doing some Steampunk Pirates but that will have to wait until after this research is done.

Is that it? I think so.

P.S. I've marked this post as Denizens only to make it obvious it's not public. You can do the same if you feel the need. I'll work out a way of doing it automatically in the future.