Dr Laura James's writings

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.