Dr Laura James's writings

Today, Michael and I built the Kre8 Mangonel which we'd acquired at the Duxford Children in Need event earlier this year.

The new iBunny, Violet 's Nabaztag/Tag , arrived whilst I was away for the holidays. I haven't dared connect it yet - partly, I'm waiting for Amyas to be here too, and partly I'm letting Violet's servers recover from a rather rough few weeks, by all accounts . More on the bunny when I've turned it on. My first impressions are that the high gloss finish is a mistake, it's awful; the "belly button" is somewhat weird; and the new, purple, tail seems to be a volume wheel. Now that could be useful.

Just back from the IOP East Anglia family Physics event at the Cavendish. Mark Lewney gave a talk on the physics of rock guitar, so at last I've seen the longer version, having previously only seen his abbreviated show at the Famelab launch. Dr Lewney is a great speaker, and is worth watching out for. He's on TV twice on Tuesday (Channel 4, around 2pm, and Newsnight on BBC2). Whilst at the Cav I did a survey to find out my carbon footprint; I suspect this will be worrying, and I await the result via email.

In other news of glowing pretty things, the i-Bar provides an illuminated active bar surface. Their video is very impressive, although the bar doesn't seem to have any practical purpose. I wonder how long they can keep that company name before Apple goes after them? (Thanks to Michael for the link!)

It's affordable (ish) and you can buy it now. The Heliodisplay uses water vapour, rather than holograms. Thanks to the FT for the link, some weeks ago now!

AlertMe.com is hiring! We actually have a webpage giving details of who we are and what we do, but we're trying to keep it slightly quiet, so I won't post the link here. We are looking for (a Senior Embedded Software Engineer, an Electronics Engineer (board-level), and on a contract basic, an Embedded Linux application programmer). If you're interested, drop me an email (laura at alertme.com) and I'll send you the full details (and even the link - to the first actual AlertMe webpage with more on it than just an image!).

I'm relocating this blog to a different URL. From now on, you can find the main page at http://lbj.dyndns.org/~laura/blog/blog.html . If you like feeds, click Atom .

Office furniture It's the next generation. 3D noughts and crosses, anyone?

River The Cam is being drained at the moment.

On Saturday I was in Duxford to judge technical robot design for the Eastern region First Lego League competition. Having read the briefing notes the night before, I felt the challenge was probably beyond me! In 8 weeks, outside of school, building a Mindstorms robot to autonomously accomplish 9 missions in two and a half minutes is an impressive accomplishment. Luckily, some of the NanoQuest missions turned out to be easier than I'd initially assumed, but it was still a very hard task. But a surprisingly large number of teams turned out excellent robots which performed, in some cases, stunningly well. Kudos to all the teams! Judging was great fun, and it was good to hear the kids talking through their designs and being so enthused about engineering. This is the baby brother competition to the First Robotics challenge, but seems to manage a more international presence. Hopefully some of the FLL teams will be able to have a go at the major challenge when they're a bit older; ...

In the run up to Christmas I'm becoming more aware of things I need to organise. If only there was enough time to try out all the nifty organisational tools online now! Ta-da lists from 37 signals would let me write a gift list, assuming all my gift-givers are online. I should probably use it for my todo lists instead, as suggested by lifehacker . Or I could try hiveminder . The one slightly annoying thing about all this wondrousness is that if your company is a tiny bit paranoid, you can't put work-related items up on these sites, as their privacy policies tend to make managers fret, perhaps with reason. Meanwhile, I regret not realising that I could have drawn sheep for the Sheep Thesis . That would have used up time too, though, alas...

Early Thanksgiving morning, where I used to work. It's as if we never left :)

Just back from California, where I've enjoyed catching up with former colleagues. Good to see that all my old haunts in Palo Alto and Menlo Park are pretty much exactly the same too :) The only notable changes seem to be the new Apple store on University Avenue, and of course people are still talking about the arrival of Ikea... There's also a shiny new skate park in Menlo Park which caught Michael's eye, but he was under-equipped to partake, alas. Thanksgiving was a gloriously sunny day, and we drove North to Muir Woods and Beach. In fact, on my personal calendar, it's still Thanksgiving for me - that was, or perhaps is, today. In-car soundtrack was the fabulous Bowling for Soup . Sadly, going away meant I had to give away tickets for Faust , an NT/Punchdrunk production. From the people I know who've now seen it, reports are mixed, but I shall try to rebook for one of the 2007 dates. Promenade theatre is always worth going to.

It's another champagne moment for AlertMe.com !

Dropped by the William Gates Building this weekend, and visited my old office. It's different, now. Fewer desks to start with! The takeover of the old photonics space seems nearly complete. Only our laser safety signs are left.

To my surprise, I already own a classic car (according to the Independent ). Now to find a house with nice off-road parking for it!

A quiet month on the blog front! The iBunny went away for repair, and came back a whole new bunny last week. I've been cycling to work and haven't collapsed from exhaustion yet. I'm also househunting, which is mostly tedious. Very much enjoyed The Alchemist at the National Theatre this weekend, and watching people sliding in Tate Modern. Most people were sliding down the newly installed Test Site slides in the Turbine Hall, but quite a large number of kids were sliding on various wheeled devices down the gentle, smooth slope of the hall. Some had scooters, or three-wheeled scooters with/without steering. A great many had wheeled trainers - a wide variety of techniques and skill levels could be observed. Didn't queue to brave the slides myself - will wait until they're less over subscribed.

Smart London to Brighton rally pictures .

Preview of the video for "White & Nerdy" from Weird Al's new album (out Tuesday). If you're reading this blog, it will probably amuse you - and apply to you, quite possibly.

You know you're a real company when you have a meeting table.

Of course it look like I might have a few tweaks to make to get blogging to work perfectly...

-- This Orange Multi Media Message was sent wirefree from an Orange MMS phone. If you would like to reply, please either text, phone or send a photo message to the sender directly by using the phone number listed in the sender's address. To learn more about Orange's Multi Media Messaging Service, find us on the Web at http://www.orange.co.uk/mms I never cease to be amazed by technology, even when i probably shouldn't be. I've been emailing and surfing on my new phone here, and it works very well. I've not knowingly used an EDGE network before either.

Alas, I don't have any good techie questions to ask at the moment, but I'm sure I'll think of some to test Qunu with.

Or rather, ears...

Weird Al has just released a preview track from his forthcoming album, Straight Outta Lynwood . It's on his MySpace site, along with another track which I believe won't make the album - You're Pitiful - which I now hear in my head whenever James Blunt is played at me.

Today, a hawk took down a starling in the garden. I was glad it wasn't one of the more interesting / rarer birds!

Playing with Lego NXT. Writing programmes with little icons on the iMac; downloading them via Bluetooth; driving motors, playing with sensors, trying to figure out these complicated new Lego parts... It's rather fun.

The trendy wine of the moment! For once I am up to date with the in-crowd :) Not the cheapest - you need to go to Waitrose, or other posh shops apparently. But it's unusual and good. Waitrose now has a wine chiller thingy near the dessert wines, so I was able to chill this bottle rapidly (4 minutes) before taking it home.

is one heck of a lot of wires. Nonetheless, I'm chuffed - new dev kit to play with (from Ember ), and plenty of different shades of red to admire.

Lots of roadsters, too :)

Lots of cars this month!

Gray turned 50 today. I met Taco for the first time: Gray looked splendid as usual Paul wore his new glasses There was cake

I was in London yesterday for Claire's hen night - a super time was had by all, between the fondant fancies, garlic bread, Mamma Mia, and lovely cocktails... We didn't half feel underdressed compared to the hens on stage at the show, though!

Paul's new car arrived yesterday :) He is very happy about this! We're now a 2-Smart household, although his rather outshines mine...

In the background of the last post, you can see Ikea desks. We have a lot of Ikea furniture here; it's been something of a trial unloading, unpacking and building it in the current hot weather. At least we were sober , though! (Thanks to GMSV for the link!) It takes 2 PhDs in Engineering to assemble some items though.

It's been a busy couple of weeks as we moved office. Now we are nearly settled in the new place, although it's a tad hot at the moment... This shows only a tiny fraction of our cardboard mountain though. Deliveries keep coming, and so it's lucky we have clear carpet space to pile packaging on. We are slowly filling up the space with desks (and people) though.

My parents have bought me some super Leica binoculars , so I can see things more clearly :) It would have been good to have them this weekend, but alas this wasn't to be.

It was nice to get away and do some walking this weekend. The weather was excellent, making for a very clear view, although perhaps a little too hot for big hill climbs...

Today our office split in two - the back being full of desks and filing cabinets, for marketing, and the front becoming a proper lab with kettle, lab benches, scope, roomba, coffee table and pouffes, and barefooted engineers :)

We now have a Roomba in our office. Unhacked, as yet :) And a bit loud to operate during the day. Although it would drown out the grasshoppers which are evidently the source of the ongoing chirruping sound, not birds after all. We were wondering what birds would cheep all day... The morning was spent building a giant lab bench. We now need scopes to fill it - please, send us your unused network analysers too! Tomorrow, there is an Ikea delivery to build. How can we ever get work done amidst such excitement?

You can now design Lego models online . When you've finished, you can design the box - and then - they ship you the blocks you need to make it! Amazing stuff indeed. Priced by what blocks you use, just as you'd expect. Wow.

Well, after a good few months in our original offices, with amazing family connection for me, we've moved to Bridge Street. The main characteristic of this office is that it's big. Really big. You just won't believe how vastly hugely mind-bogglingly big it is... Sorry, I was getting carried away there. As you can see, our 2 desks (being valiantly assembled by Amyas here) are rather dwarfed - and this is just a tiny fraction of the floorspace we are confronted with. Still, it's another nice central location, and as soon as we have more reliable broadband, we'll be very happy... Still unpacking in the meantime and wishing it wasn't quite so warm.

Mary Dejevsky has a good column today, pointing out that bloggers are predominantly male, and that this might be more because they have more time to type away than women, rather than because women have less to say. So that's a good excuse for my never getting around to posting the interesting things I intend to then! (Alas, the article is probably behind the Indy's paywall.) This is something I've often felt about blogging, playing and tweaking new applications, hacking OSes, and open source development. Women can, and would like to, contribute to these things, but have other things to spend their time on. The iBunny is offline at present as we're moving office, and everything bar laptops, one desk, and the kettle is in boxes. Hopefully we'll be up and running somewhere new (we don't know where yet) soon.

If everything works, you can now check my status (or at least, what I've told my bunny by setting his ears) on my webpage ... Weird, huh?

It took a while, but iirobotics finally came up with the goods (I still have an order in with Firebox but nothing from them yet). iirobotics were great, regular email updates and a personal apology in the box. But: the Nabaztag is here! I'm now a paid up Full Friend bunny so you can message me (or rather my office) as much as you want. Bearing in mind that everyone in my office will hear whatever you send... We're thrilled, of course, although we have no idea what the bunny is up to most of the time. He flashes lights and talks at us, and waves his ears. But what does it all mean? (If you'd like to play with the API of our bunny, drop me a line and I'll give you all the authorisation codes etc)

If you can make her out amongst the planes of the American air museum at Duxford IWM , you can spot a woman on a cherry-picker, vacuuming the top of the B-52. This would clearly be a fun task - at least the first time you had to do it.

It's Techlinks at the IWM in Duxford again. Today, day one, I've been building rockets with primary children of various sizes. Unlike most years, we're only running activities for half-days this time, so I'm still quite functional afterwards; and for once it's not 30C out there. Usually a whole day of Techlinks leaves me a sweaty and voiceless heap...

Hunts Sailing Club in St Ives had an open day today, and Paul and I went along. The pic shows Paul returning to dry land from a turn out in the Fireball (in the middle). I had a longer go than him, helming the Fireball most of the time, which was fun as it's bigger than anything I used to sail, with far too many sails, and had a centre main which made for a few tiny yet confusing differences! The wind was fairly gentle but somewhat erratic, which put me off taking a Topper (the ones to the sides) out by myself - coming back to the boathouse against a very weak and changing wind wasn't pleasant, and I felt too out of practice to manage it reliably. Still, I had lots of fun :-)

Marriage may end your career in scientific research, vice versa, or not. There's an interesting article discussing the issues in AAAS Science . The spookiest part is when one apparently successful marriage is described: the couple sitting together in bed, both doing work on laptops, and instant messaging each other. Ouch! Whatever happened to voice?

I don't believe in just recycling links, but if Cambridge-based people haven't seen MySociety's latest offering it's worth a look. Fascinating to see where you should live if you work at Microsoft Reearch.... now, with some data on real bus arrival times and delays, and some more destinations (city centre, science park), this could get very useful very quickly.

It's been good weather in Cambridge, mostly, this week. I've even quite enjoyed the rainy phases! Still, I haven't really appreciated it all, as I've been resting up after being ill last week. It's amazing how much I can sleep per day without feeling I'm overdoing my time in bed or napping. I'm hoping that I'll be properly recovered soon, and able to be awake for more than, say, 4 or 5 hours at a stretch without really wanting not to be. And perhaps I'll have woken up in time for the next beer festival, given that I totally missed this one. Today's link is to tips for making sure your startup is bulletproof . Doesn't mention making sure you are awake...

Inspired by the iDucks from BugBash, we're getting an Nabaztag for our office - we're going to see how long we last before it drives us mad . At least we won't feel guilty when we dismember it, unlike if we forget to water the office plants we don't have.

Not only am I Dr Laura now, I am also a Chartered Engineer, at last...

Just back from a lovely week in the Dordogne, staying at Maumont near Hautefort. (Many thanks to Rosie's Mum!) Also, I'm now officially Dr James, as shown in these pics. Both sets of photos are somewhat out of order for a variety of complex technical reasons :-D

... designing gadgets on a new page from Scenta .

Watch a Smart outpace a Ferrari F430 over 400m. (The Smart has a bike engine, not a Smart engine, but it's still cool.) Cambridge UK restaurant menus now listed online (Thanks, Samuel, very useful!)

ARM-based and open source firmware. I can't wait to get my hands on this :)

died this week. She was a computing pioneer during WWII, and described herself as one of the computers which ENIAC made redundant. There only seems to be one, rather sparse, obituary online sadly. I met Kay at GHC in 2004, and she was a witty and insightful woman, with many tales of the early days of computer development which still reflect today's computing realities.

Rendezvous - up to 140mph through Paris in 1978 (on google video) . It's as old as me, but still looks like a lot of fun. Makes a change from WEEE which I've been looking into today for work, and which promises to provide me with my very own personal skip of electronics waste some time in the future. What more could I want?

Today we went to Sutton Hoo and Aldeburgh. Mahon got his photos up already, quicker than us, which is probably for the best as they are likely to be better than mine anyway!

Beer-based cocktails in the NYT - not my thing, I suspect, but knowing people who like both beer and cocktails, perhaps there is a market for them.

List of online note-taking apps. There are so many nifty sites online now that it is lucky there's a large number of people with nothing better to do than try them all out. Those of us with other work are still left trying to work out which are actually useful without an inordinate effort to configure them in the first place, which are still going to be operational in a few months, and which are secure enough to be useable for work...

CITB-Construction Skills (a strange organisational name, but a good bunch of people) have a great new TV ad to entice people to consider careers in their industry. You can view it by clicking "How will you make your mark?" at BConstructive (also works with the e, for spelling geeks). One day, all engineering fields will have professional skills bodies like this...

Multiprotocol IM via Meebo for those away from their machines with IM clients or behind firewalls. Still, no Skype, so it's not the all in one solution I'm ultimately looking for. 

Just as I was about to seriously start using iCal (which conveniently integrates with my new project management tool, Merlin , which is super btw), Google finally launches their calendar offering. Very nice too, although the SMS alerts seem to be US only at the moment.

The first ducklings I've seen this year, at Sheene Mill . They made it up the stairs, amazingly.

Paul and Ivor next door have been building Ivor's new garage the last 2 weekends. Today they put the roof on.

Not that I am planning on driving over my MacBook Pro, but this is reassuring...

Laptop count: most people weren't using them. Of those with them, I'd say at least 50% powerbooks (some could be macbook pros, it's hard to tell at a distance, but the ones I got a closer look at are all powerbooks so far), 40% wintel, and 10% weird tablets and other similar oddities. Gender count: 20% women, give or take. That's not a formal count ;-) Unformatted writeup of some of the sessions (straight from my outliner): here

Compared to the evil Linksys , I spent a little more for an Axis 207W, which is both dinky and works - really works. Plug into Ethernet, my Mac finds it on Bonjour, set the wifi key, unplug the cable, and it's there, serving up some nice html with actual MPEG/JPEGs too. And it has lovely concentric LEDs around the lens. The web interface is easy to use, and lets me do complex things or simple things. I like this one. Shows what you get when you spend an extra £100, though. Ouch.

I'm at the International Symposium on Intelligent Environments this week. Like Less Is More last year, this is organised by MSR in Cambridge , and has an unusual (to me!) mix of compscis (mainly on the HCI and AI sides), designers, artists, and sociologists (I think). So far, Don Norman has given an interesting keynote - as usual for such things, nothing especially new, but lightly amusing coverage of fairly obvious high level material. No call to arms in this one. I'll write up my notes at some point; I could of course be blogging in realtime, in a terribly cliched way, but I think I'd rather digest the material before writing it properly. For once I've been happy to take notes electronically - the lighting in the auditorium is rather random and so in general the audience is in pitch darkness, meaning only those of us with glowing screens or amazing writing ability can take notes at all. I've been very glad of my glowing keyboard!

I'm playing with webcam systems at the moment. My first purchase was a Linksys WVC54G, a wireless camera, and compared to most of the other wireless cams around quite reasonably priced. It comes with a bunch of nifty services on free trials (such as MMSs when the motion detector is triggered). Setup was fairly simple (although it is notable that running WPA on our wifi net seems to defeat the small brain of this type of attached device). However, I can't say I'd buy another - because it only feeds IE or Linksys's custom software viewer. What kind of webcam is that? I've had a trivial prod at trying to access the MPEG4 stream otherwise, but the internal webserver seems determined to thwart me. Time to go buy one of the nice expensive AXIS ones, I think, to see if they do any better...

Finally, Oblivion is out. As expected from the screenshots and trailer, it is astonishingly pretty. Really shows off the capability of the XBox 360 (not that we're playing it on ours - that's still off at Microsoft having unexpectedly turned into a brick after a software update - we have a borrowed box for now). Very much a next generation game - Morrowind was beautiful and insanely complex, but Oblivion takes this to a new level. Sadly with Paul having got a head start, and since I've got work and other things to keep me busy at the moment, my battlemage is still struggling at level 1 without a single axe to wield yet.  

One possible rebirth for Smart roadsters: as MG Midgets :-) This is encouraging because it turns out that my Smart has more passenger legroom than an Aston...

Paul bought a blood pressure meter a while ago, because he was worried his BP was high. Invariably, it's turned out to be quite normal, whereas mine is pretty low - Paul seems surprised I can function at all. Today we finally got around to checking out what is a low BP online, and luckily mine is just high enough to keep me safe from fainting. We also checked our BMIs (I'm very annoyed to find that I've moved from underweight to healthy since I last checked mine). A cholesterol test is next on my list, as that's more concerning given my cheese consumption, but there's no rush on that. The one Paul used, bought in Boots, was expensive, astonishingly complex to operate, and required a non-colourblind person with quick reflexes to determine the result. Also, embarrassingly, I'm not sure that I'm up for lancing my finger to access some blood - it's hard to imagine that I'm capable of pumping out a "falling drop" quantity anyway, with such low...

Which desperate housewife are you? Answering the questions I felt I'd come out very evenly distributed between all 5 (which is usually how I feel watching the show, too, although generally I don't relate much to Gabrielle, and even less to Edie). But I'm a Lynette. Hmm. Should I buy the T shirt ? I was unaware that so much DH merch existed - although I should have guessed that one could buy Bree's pink dish gloves somewhere...

And, judging by things yesterday on the New Museums Site, one of the busiest Science on Saturdays ever too. We worked out that I've been involved in Science Week since practically the dawn of time; it's not always been jitterbugs, but I was around the first time ExSciTe ever did them, which was Science Week, ooh, many years ago. We must be doing something right though. One family who visited yesterday said it was the fourth year in a row that they had built jitterbugs with us, and that their small son had been planning his for most of the previous year... My extremely unrepresentative sampling shows that Bottle Your Genes (which when spoken invariably makes one think first of blue denim) was one of the most popular activities, or one of the least well sign-posted; but I think the former, as the queue once you got there was not just out of the door but down the stairs, round the corridor, etc. People were so desperate to find activities which didn't have huge queues that the...

The Copper Kettle is an old Cambridge landmark, but is barely recognisable now following its refit. It's much lighter and brighter now, and opens in the evening to serve Greek (ish) food. Still, they do a nice pot of tea, and have an awesome coffee machine, adorned with many LEDs in both blue and red. I've never seen the like of it before; very shiny indeed. I tried to take a picture, but my cellphone isn't up to much on that sort of indoor pic, and my new camera perhaps would have managed, if I'd been happy to use the flash, but I didn't want to distract the guy serving the carrot cake...

I didn't know there was such a thing, but I guess the social scientists I met today at the Technology and Gender Inequalities seminar hadn't heard of Science Week either. Some interesting points (from memory - notes at the office, doh). Ingrid Schoon reported that women's aspirations to work in SET (at age 16) were more critical than men's, when considering whether they ended up in SET careers aged 30. (So men are perhaps more likely just to "fall" into a SET career, whereas women only go for it if they really want to.) If teachers thought that a girl was good at maths, she was more likely to opt for a SET career. Single sex schools didn't seem to affect whether girls chose SET or not (surprising - goes against the received wisdom on that front). Mia Gray talked about networking, mentoring and social capital with reference to a study about two Cambridge chip companies (can you guess who it is yet?). Admittedly a small sample, but she found that tech supp...

Far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the Western spiral arm of the DNA message board system, lies a small unregarded yellow forum . This is currently the home of an excellent 5-part hybrid between The Archers and H2G2. It resides here (and continues here , here , here and here ). The author, Mr Snowy, is a giant amongst men; it's particularly wonderful that he's managed to produce 5 of these, when he started out planning only 3 ;-)

Yet more for me to listen to :-) NPR are hosting a recording of their recent DC concert. (Thanks to Hanna for the link!)

Today, you can make your own Cat and Girl comic. My effort is here .

Find out how fair FairTrade coffee is. Does it have a soul ? ( TMCM is accessible this week; the How to be Happy theme has made it more mainstream.) We got overexcited without the benefit of coffee at the Smart Home Show last week. I'm buying a remote control doorlock (as soon as I get a quote - get a move on people!) and after a brief excursion into the Homebuilding and Renovating show Paul's sorting out some Solatubes for the hallway. I think we should get some in the kitchen too, definite lack of natural light in there. Give us a few months and we'll be ready to go for the full rewire/automation refit :-) But with which system or systems ? Tricky. Compatibility? The automation community ain't heard of it.

Some proverbs to bear in mind.

I heard that in France, women shopping in certain supermarkets were each given a rose at the checkout to celebrate International Women's Day and the progress women's rights have made worldwide. Somehow I doubt that I'd get a flower of any sort if I went to Tesco later. An interesting article about how the increasing societal pressure for an active/adventurous sex life in later life means that women never get a chance to relax and accept their bodies as they are, but must maintain the tiresome and tiring beauty regimes society, and most men, still expect. A funny piece in the Washington Post about dating and the extreme pickiness in selecting or ruling out dates which is sometimes present these days (one warning sign mentioned is indecisiveness: "Where do you want to go?" "I dunno, you?" ; evidently one should also steer clear of men who wear backpacks - hmm).

Today is International Women's Day . It is also the day of the annual Global Women's Strike for the return of military budgets to the community, for caring work to be paid for, and for equal pay for men and women worldwide. I feel somewhat inadequate for not striking for the cause; however, I can at least contribute by Blogging Against Sexism . Why? Because women are still undervalued and underpaid; still underrepresented in the higher echelons of academia, of politics, of industry, of the arts; still oppressed either directly or indirectly; still trafficked as slaves in some parts of the world. Indeed, however frustrating the situation in the West is, things are much worse for women elsewhere. Feminism still has a long way to go even here, and in some places (South Dakota, anyone?) is in the process of being set back a few decades. You might like to read some more hardcore feminist blogs than this today. There's a wide range, from the extremely passionate and personal, to...

Just back from Google HQ in London, where Vint Cerf was speaking to a random selection of Oxbridge and London academics (and other hangers-on, like me). Perhaps more about his talk tomorrow, but one of the more notable things to me, as a Women@CL attendee, was the audience behaviour. It was between 90 and 95% male, I'd say. No laptops out at all (rare indeed), and I didn't see any men taking notes in any form; but of the women I could see, every one except the Google employees took notes, in small books or on scraps of paper.

I've now found the first bit of my usual software which doesn't run on Intel-based Macs :) NeoOffice hasn't been ported. Luckily there's an alpha build of OpenOffice for Mactel... (ick, what an ugly word!)

It turns out that I am a: Encouraging Director Quite an interesting personality test .

The dude who was playing in the National Theatre foyer yesterday was John Crampton . Damn fine music.

Custom polystyrene! It's all far too exciting round here. (Although, to be strictly fair, the speakers didn't sound stunning when they played the Apple turning on noise - is there a proper name for that?)

Very girly - rose wine jelly with champagne rhubarb. Mmm.

Collector's Edition Smart Roadster pics ; a nice video showing what would happen if Microsoft designed ipod packaging . (Both make a positive change from the gender pay gap news today!)

Radio 4 has a new programme about, well, the website says Big Business, but the trailers suggested more small business and entrepreneurship. You can read about it or listen again (later) here .

Found these teabags in Waitrose last night. I had to buy them because of the packaging; the shape is just lovely. And it's green/honeybush tea, I would buy it anyway, honestly ;-) It took me 5 minutes when I got the tea home to figure out that the way I was planning on opening the box wouldn't be destructive. It opens at the base . The teabags are made of some kind of shimmery, silky material, not paper. I looked at one and then drank normal tea - it was all a bit much for me by then. I did, however, read the ingredients - cornflowers and heather - sounds sublime. When I am feeling suitably awake and refined, I'll try again...

Americans with designer, gourmet kitchens and a plethora of household gadgetry may love their material possessions, but still spend huge amounts of time on housework . Meanwhile, computers which don't run may work better than those which do (warning - quantum physics - don't read if your brain has already turned off ready for the weekend). (Thanks to Mahon for the link!) .

Paul seems thrilled by Google Page Creator ; Dave Winer is uninspired ; I haven't had time to look at it. However, I have found out why I, unlike all my friends, still don't have googletalk integrated into GMail! This is quite convenient in fact, as when I was briefly using one of my other gmail accounts the chat features were quite intrusive, and as I use gmail exclusively for email at present, I was quite glad not to have the feature yet. However, being able to chat anywhere, on PCs where one cannot install software, say, is useful. Anyway, I now know how to toggle between the 2 states of chat and no chat - they correspond exactly to having gmail's language set to English-US and English-UK, respectively. Gmail chat in other languages is, of course, on the way. Hmm. And I leave the following as an exercise to the reader. Is getting to a state where one is waiting for one's startup to be bought by Google a good goal to have in life?

Unfortunately, even some maths educators make horrific mistakes, says the Telegraph (Thanks to Mum for the link!) . The Independent has a piece on why it shouldn't be cool to be a whore . In more positive news, work continues well, it's Science Week soon, and my MacBook has shipped!

New York Times article (free reg required) about some ongoing gender issues in science and maths, from the point of view of the first female science editor at the NYT. Sexism in these fields ain't dead yet; even young women entering technology and engineering fields in the last few years often have tales (of varying unpleasantness) to tell. It's slightly frustrating to hear that a number of young men working at senior levels with the IEE (my main professional institution) see absolutely no need for the Women's Engineering Society , and other similar organisations.

The Acute came up on my most random iPod playlist today. I forget who pointed me at them some months ago, but thanks, whoever it was. I particularly like Live on Hope (horrible site, though, if that link works it will be a miracle). I also listened to No Commitments on Radio 4; I've always enjoyed Simon Brett's work, and I think I relate to NC more than ever these days.

It turns out that if you just go with your gut instinct on big decisions, you will probably be right . Helpful stuff. (Thanks, Kathryn!)

I was chuffed with the only Valentine's-related greeting I received today, which suited my mood very nicely. (Thanks, Ko!) On a related note, this condensed Hardy is quite appropriate to the time of year. (Thanks, Mustardland!)

It turns out the Wirral is now one of the "North-West's boom towns" , full of conspicuous wealth. Can't say I'd noticed any five-carat diamonds on trips back home! I've never thought of the Wirral as a town at all anyway, mainly because it isn't. It does have some nice coastal webcams , though.

and has brought a colleague along too.

Channel 4 are getting closer to a show which could sell engineering to the public with this - a fairly mainstream show about people who work with computers. It may be somewhat stereotyped, but it has its moments of hilarity and shows a fairly fun work environment (better than that shown in most Dilbert). If nothing else, the set is festooned with EFF stickers (I spotted this before realising it was the result of actual consultation with real techies). The first two episodes (of which I think the second is superior) can be downloaded from a variety of sources , although the official site originally only supported Windows (doh!). Still, it's better than the disaster which was/is Happy Valley . Getting more engineers shown as real people can only be good for recruitment into the field, but the decision to try a soap opera rather than, say, a drama (a format which has worked for a number of shows about forensic science) was probably a poor one. If only I'd been able to make it t...

Betty Friedan , who did an incredible amount for women today, died. I started drinking white tea , which will undoubtedly reduce the amount of coffee I consume (I drink it very rarely outside cafes already). Either is probably better for me than whisky . I spring-cleaned. The superbowl ads will be appearing online (previews already are ). Now it's time for me to write up my (paper) diary; I'm currently a bit bored of the hardback notebook which is its current incarnation, but can't stop before I reach the end :) It's difficult to find good diaries, takes a lot of shopping time to track down options, as sadly Moleskine notebooks simply don't go big enough.

There's been a minimum of 3 fire engines outside for a while now. I'm not one of those girls who go all gooey over firemen, but the shiny ladder mechanisms, which I've got a good view of from up here on the first floor, are pretty cool.

I recently found Death to the Extremist and am working my way through the archives during teabreaks. The nihilism is appealing. This strip is rather more normal than some of the others.

Turns out evil isn't as black and white as you might think. Google checked against a whole scale of evil before making their recent China decision.

Beautiful two-page comic from Eleanor Davis.

Pandora is a neat site which creates a radio station based on music similar to stuff you tell it you like. (Thanks to Guy for the link!)

It happens all the time: I am sitting down enjoying a cup of coffee, when I realise that I'm looking somewhat pasty and white, and that I must so something about this straight away. Finally, the answer, in a Peterborough cafe.

We went shopping earlier, and I was able to relive the scary experience I had at Tesco Bar Hill last week. At the time I was shopping for bits for the office, and so was going around the non-grocery aisles which I normally avoid. During my perambulations, I happened to spot a number of fitness balance balls. Now, since taking up pilates, my parents have been urging me to acquire one of these, so I was sufficiently tuned in to notice them all. But they were everywhere! I passed no less than 5 distinct varieties, not all together, but spread out throughout various sections of the store - Fitness, Seasonal, Pilates/yoga (in an entirely different area to Fitness). I even thought I spotted tie-dyed balance balls, which I dismissed as a Tesco-induced hallucination, or perhaps a mangled shelf labelling system. Tie-dyed yoga mat bags seemed much more likely (yes, these not only exist, but are all over the online yoga shops I've looked at). However, I was mistaken. Today I finally gave in a...

Today is my Smart's first birthday! To celebrate this I am baking a cake (currently looking extremely flat in the oven, ho hum) which will hopefully be edible in time for my post-PhD party tonight. Our first guest has arrived, bearing Krispy Kremes, mmm, which will not survive until later I fear. Also, Happy Birthday to Ambo, who amazingly shares today with my car :)

I feel rather like Bristow now. I'd offer him some biscuit crumbs, but I fear that if I open the window at all I will freeze to death.

Only yesterday I was talking to someone who asked me whether Smart also made motorbikes, and now this !

We're only lacking a fridge, and the half of the cupboard for which Ikea delivered the wrong parts. We have net access, and so can continue to use Skype for phone calls too.

Usually I don't get much further through the LRB than the ever-delightful personal ads (a particularly fine crop, this issue, I thought, although more transparent than some batches). There's a intriguing review of The Google Story there too at the moment. In the Guardian, Tim Dowling has an amusing article about the rise of the podcast ; good to know my decision not to bother with podcasts, with the exception of certain Radio 4 programmes and a very few quality lectures, was the right one.

with FlyGuy . Made me happy.

The awesome dudes over at MySociety have set up a site to bug you randomly via email until you do stuff - HassleMe . Like a helpful but annoying friend, only less personal (there's no one to hit when you can't take it any more). When they add in support for hassle over IM, I might actually get things done!

The new CAPE building has the poorest communal area of any workplace I have ever seen. Not only is there an almost total absence of natural light, the box-like walls are matt white, enlivened only by a few orange and pink rectangles painted on. I appreciate there were probably budget constraints, but still, they would have been better off leaving it plain, or perhaps getting some art students in and giving them cheap paint. An improvement could be implemented by the unfortunate occupants themselves: retro game art using postits . If the pixelated designs were of photonic or electronic devices, they would even be appropriate to the building.

Mildly interesting article about Alison Richards , who is making waves at a male-dominated level of academia. Further down the chain, Computer Clubs for Girls (CC4G) seem to be taking off . One can only hope that they do the right things, given the funding and press coverage they are getting. At a Women@CL talk about CC4G last year, concerns were raised about whether the girls were actually aware of the computer science behind the fun, pink activities, and the organisers weren't very reassuring on that score unfortunately. They also seemed quite happy to blow large amounts of cash on software, which seemed a poor choice, when they could have gone open source. This is reflected somewhat in the article - girls learning MS PowerPoint skills, eh? - not exactly computer science. I bet the "geeky, long-haired boys playing war games" (I quote) stereotypically associated with ICT won't be using PowerPoint when they hack around on computers, so whether CC4G is going to help...

Newsnight has been running a week about technology and Silicon Valley, and includes a broadcast by Paxman et al in Second Life in which MMORPGs and other online environments are discussed. It's worth watching if you aren't well up on these things. I'm not that online (yet), but it's interesting to see Newsnight covering these issues, especially in CES week, when a lot of technology reporting has been of variable quality (I've heard too many reporters saying how CES is showcasing nerdy products, when these are items which regular consumers will be buying this year).

Cuteness vs beauty in the NYT, both being irrelevant for platonic friendships (in the Independent), and if that's all too much for you to cope with, find out which sorrow-drowning wines to buy at your local supermarket by picking 17+ rated ones at Superplonk .

I'm hanging out with a dodgy crowd these days. People who actually, regularly, voluntarily eat fudge from the Kings Parade fudge shop. People who don't like cheese made from goats' milk. And people who go to Ukelele Orchestra gigs and rave about them, until I get worn down (doesn't take long) and end up filling my ipod a little more with covers of Ms Dynamite amongst others. I'm enjoying them though :-) Whoever said online forums were strange?

I don't normally do this, but I'm planning to do some different things with my life this year. It always seems to be in vogue to resolve change one's life, to become a whole new person. That seems like both a lot of effort, and also somewhat alarming - what if one didn't like what one became? Instead, I'm aiming to be more like me this year. Being how I like to be and doing the things I like; not just taking the easy choices, but setting my personal priorities above others', and trying to keep to them. All the best for 2006.