Invigilation

From my perspective as an invigilator of exams, the main task during a three hour paper is to stay awake. From the students' perspective, my main task is to give them more paper when they run out. From the university's perspective, my main function is to make sure nobody resorts to "unfair means", i.e. cheats.

The exams show is run by the examination office and the various departments, and overseen by the university internal police, the proctors. I was surprised to find out that the word 'proctor' has no etymological link with the Greek word proktos, the origin of words like proctology etc. Nevertheless, I suppose anally following and implementing largely irrelevant or archaic rules is seen as part of the vital tradition of the ancient university, as the sine qua non of its academic excellence. Never could I guess that allowing only water to the exam halls would be the "Ravens of Tower" of Cambridge...

The candidates are allowed to bring a small bottle of water with them for the three hour exam. In the invigilator training this vital issue is discussed in more depth and detail than any other issue, including fire alarms and people falling ill during exams. The only thing that gets an equal amount of airtime in the two hour training is how to prevent cheating. Cheating, to my experience, is the only thing that is even less problematic in the exams than the supposed chaos and havoc caused by orange juice and Lucozade.

During the exams, the proctors go around Cambridge, from hall to hall in their gowns and mortarboards, checking that all rules are followed. Since the drink issue is of the highest importance in running the university exams, it's no surprise that the purpose of these visits seems to be to spot potentially hazardous apple juice bottles among the Evians and Highland Springs. Last week, one of the proctors found two suspicious containers in the classroom I was invigilating. One guy had a can of Red Bull in addition to a bottle of water on the floor next to him. The Proctor was clearly deeply shocked to discover this, as he twitched (on the British Scale of Expressing Emotions this equals to 6.8 on a Richter Scale), and then told me "the gentleman up there has a can of beer." This shows how up-to-speed these people are with the so-called real life, and so I advised him that it's just an energy drink. To which he stated that it is still an "illicit drink" and that I should confiscate it immediately. So I did. He then, having discovered how I had completely neglected my duties and not properly screened the room for these hazardous chemicals, continued hawk-eyeing the room, and spotted something suspicious. He pointed to me that the "gentleman in the yellow shirt" had a "non-transparent bottle". I looked up and saw this dude at the back, in a faded yellow t-shirt, and he had a bike bottle on his desk. I confessed that I hadn't checked the contents of that bottle, to which he said "you probably should". I didn't.

I think bothering people with nonsense during their exams is not the best thing you can do, when you are there to bring them more paper so they can keep writing incessantly for the three hours the exam takes. It would be rather silly, wouldn't it? But, undoubtedly the illicit drinks debackle will only gain in momentum, as next year in the training session for the invigilators they will undoubtedly emphasise how important it is to keep this issue under control, as some students have been known to try to smuggle beer into the exam halls.

Not working

Just can't start working yet. Can't waste my time in here doing boring work. Finding a proper work/space/time -combination is becoming more and more problematic. Now, it's all too nice, I like the view too much to bury my eyes to an article, or even worse, to some datasets. I feel I should have the next 4 hours off since they are going the be the last ones Edinburgh has for me for now.

This was an easy decision, and I'm kidding myself to believe it's due to the exceptional circumstances. (Not even so) deep down I realise how skipping work has become easier and easier lately, and I barely need an excuse. My attention will jump to an interesting newspaper article about genetic makeup of lemurs or the 78th anniversary of the beheading of a Kirgisian union activist like a paperclip to a magnetron. And these diversions have a gekko-like hold of my mind, while the the mountain of work seems to be made of hot-oiled nanoparticle-coated glass that is impossible to take a hold of.

Volumewise, my work has been rather down lately. Somehow the celestial constellations of work-enabled timepoints and good-vibed places have not been in conjunction. Surely, I'm droning on, doing stuff, but having lost virtually all perspective and much of the motivation it has been a struggle. I haven't been inspired, but I must say, I haven't really perspired much either. I've given up too easily; if the work hasn't been progressing or didn't "feel right" I have avoided it, tried another time, another place, but rarely successfully. And I've been annoying myself in the process, obviously. The stuff I'm doing now is important only for me and nobody else will be screwed if I do it late or leave undone. In the short run, that is. On the longer timescale, the timescale of graduations and getting proper jobs, there is of course an impact to others around me, but somehow I've not paid any attention to those issues. That's what cloudy horizons and lack of perspective do to you.

So, what to do now? As I said, Edinburgh has restored some of the motivation (as visiting nice places and getting positive feedback in conferences does) and so I guess I just have to start making better plans and force myself to stick to them. And pay less attention to those genetically modified Kirgisian gekko-lemurs and their atrocities against labour union activists.

(written 05/06/06 in Elephant House, Edinburgh)

Edinburgh

I like this city. After stuffy Cambridge it feels like a breath of fresh air. Not just academically, but also in terms of the surroundings, the hills, sea, the wind... I'm always "surprised" to see that not all of Britain is boring and flat like East Anglia. But then again, we're in a different country now.

I've been here for a couple of days now, in a conference, how else. I now have about a day of "free time" before I'm heading back down, "south of the border" as they say. And I feel revitalised and refreshed - partly because the conference was a resounding success, but also because my brain had somehow got stuck on this very short track of thoughts and the trip up here seems to have broken the loop, and my mind flows more easily now.

There's a whole different vibe here, a dynamism, easygoing but sturdy feel, that somehow is similar to Ljubljana, or actually, Helsinki. Cambridge is about keeping things as they've always been, and while it's very beautiful and nice, it somehow feels stagnated and boring. And I'm not even talking about the university yet... :-)

Our host was right - the spirit of the Scottish enlightenment and David Hume is still around.

(P.S. Most Scottish football fans have started to support Trinidad & Tobago, since they play against England in the World Cup. Similarly the German football fans are now donning Scotland jerseys - it would be too rude for the polite hosts to be openly against England, so supporting Scotland (who unfortunately didn't make it to the final tournament) is the next best thing. The jerseys they are buying en masse are replicas of the 1978 Scotland shirts, voted most stylish ever by a magazine. But, I like the political statement there more than the fashion statement.)

Super Mario sucks

Literally.

No, I think this is a very cool hack. Who would come up with this thing? What was the original idea, or the original "need" that made him do it? Boredom and too much free time? Anyway, great stuff, I'm eagerly awaiting the Roomba-orchestra!

I'm glad it's finally sorted

I can go to sleep now.

Almost there!

This is painfully true... :-)

Monsters Inc.

They did it! As BBC put it, "Lordi came. They rocked. They conquered."

The first ever victory for Finland in the Eurovision Song Contest, and it was a sweeeet one. It's so easy to be cynical about the ESC; how the music is so bad, the performances so cheesy, how it repeats itself year after year and is just a waste of time and money. In one word, it's Eurotrash.

What these cynics forget, is that ESC is entertainment and a bit of tongue-in-a-cheek fun. It has immense camp-value for exactly the above-mentioned reason: the songs and performances are cheesy. We like to hear the mock-ABBA -tunes, the johnnylogan-esque power ballads, the freak shows and hare-brained entries from "weird" countries. We like the fact that the show follows a clear formula, and that we can mock the frocks and laugh at the jerky dance moves and banal choruses.

This doesn't mean it's all a joke. No, you have to take it seriously enough, but not be serious about it. It's about entertainment and putting on a show people can enjoy. Lordi did just that. For too long the Finnish ESC-establishment has had a false idea that it's about the tune. But, ESC is not a competition for composers, it's a competition for performers. And the Finnish acts before this year have been bland, boring, and insignificant. Some of them might be good artists, some of the songs have deserved better than the 3 points they got, but now for the first time we sent a full, proper show.

To win the ESC you need to grab the attention of the masses, make yourself known.
Finns are usually not very good at that, but this time the show was so strong that they didn't need to push themselves - the media was after them. Rather than trying to do it with sex, they did it with fire and a hell of a stage show.

Undoubtedly there will be copycats. But as much as people like the repeating formula of ESC, they like uniqueness, and the more outrageous your idea, the more likely it is to work only once.

Just like any entertainment, ESC can be seen as more than it is, a symbol for - well, many things. For example, for the Estonians and the Ukrainians, winning the ESC was about belonging in Europe, being accepted as a nation after decades behind the iron curtain. While that's a bit grand, it seems that the ESC has often been seen as a force that brings Europe together, promoting understanding and plurality. The freaks and weirdos have been knocking on the doors of Europe and the Europe has welcomed them in. Odd countries, strange LBGT-types and Nordic monsters, all in harmony with the pretty boys and girls in white suits and their good old three chords.

(cynical post scriptum: I wonder how valuable the ESC victory will turn out to be for Lordi commercially...)

Edit: The Eurovision website has a nice interview of Mr Lordi that ends in a typical way: a quote from Mr Lordi: "‘Kitos’ means ‘bye-bye’ in Finnish.” ESC replies: "Kitos, Mr. Lordi."

(Pic: Eurovision.tv)

High horses

This must be a world record in hypocrisy and double standards. Fox News "debating" with the Westboro babtist church (yes, the ones who hate Sweden for being gay-friendly etc.) representative about whose side God is on in the Iraq war and what he wants etc. It's either hilarious or appalling, depending on your point of view. No, I couldn't watch all of it either - 15 seconds is my personal record of continuous Fox News watching in general. Scary thing, I almost started to agree with the Westboro nutcase.

Just a bicycle

They say Cambridge is a city of cyclists. At least it seems to be full of them and they are the only sane mode of transport that can get you to places in the town centre. It might not be the city FOR cyclists, however. The facilities for cyclists - well, I've seen worse but I've seen better. There are good bicycle lanes here and there, there is access to the historic city centre (that is closed from cars other than buses and taxis) and there are places you can leave the bike while shopping, at lectures etc.

On the other hand, many cycle lanes are shared with the buses, who don't give a damn about cyclists, the city centre is so full of tourists walking here and there on the roads that you can't really cycle through the centre without killing a few of them every time, and there are not nearly enough parking places for cycles in the centre.

So, some good, some bad. I'd still rather cycle in Cambridge than drive a car in Cambridge. But that brings me to the issue that has annoyed me a lot lately. The behaviour of car drivers, and the utter disregard of cyclists. When turning across the lane, pulling over for parking, making a u-turn or doing anything else similar, any driver would first need to make sure the road is clear for them to do the manoeuvre. And for 95% of the drivers, the road is clear if there are no cars. For the rest 5%, the road is clear if there are no cars larger than the one they are driving. No one gives a fiddle about cyclists.

Today I almost crashed to a car that was coming towards me on the opposite lane, but just in front of me changed to my lane, stopped, and started to pocket park to the parking space on my side of the road. She would have left any car to go first before doing this, but since I was just a cycle...

Cyclists are better off crossing roads with pedestrian greens rather than waiting for the car signal to go green, since the cars turning right across your lane will not look, stop or wait for you to cross the road first, they are cars and can comfortably mow a few cyclists down without blinking an eye.

Sitting in the inevitable queue in the car is a skill as well. Most people already know to stay in the middle of the lane or closer to the centre line, so that cyclists can pass from the left, between the sidewalk and the cars. Some people don't. Some people will move to that space without looking, possibly to give more space (a lane and a half) to the oncoming vehicle and to save their precious wingmirrors from scratching. I will personally thrash the other mirror of the next idiot who does that, since I'm getting rather pissed off with these I-can-only-see-it-if-it-weighs-two-tons-and-has-four-wheels -bimbos.

BTW, how come so many crazy people still cycle without helmets?

(Pic: answers.com)

Another talk

I gave a talk in my college last week. With my parents and girlfriend in the audience, I was feeling a bit more giddy than normally, also because this was the first "popularisation" lecture I've given. On the other hand, since the theme was more general than my own work (actually, I didn't talk about my own work at all), I found it easier. It was easier to truncate things, leave irrelevant or uninteresting stuff out, just surf on the waves of anecdotes, and in general, just have fun with it rather than worry and frown over the academic validity and complexity of the issues.

Other than being half an hour late, then failing to get the data projector to work, and having to cut the talk a bit short as a result, I think it went OK!

It was a bit hilarious, actually, I was sure it was supposed to start at 6, and at 5.30 a friend of mine calls and asks whether I was planning to attend my talk: they all were there at 5.30... Luckily they had some wine and crisps to keep themselves content. The data projector just refused to power up, I suppose a fuse had blown somewhere, but since he projector was permanently fixed to a high ceiling, there was no way to even reach it properly, not to mention repair it or change the cord or anything. So, I had to just speak, try to explain things without the help of graphs and figures, and try to keep the audience entertained without the help of the funny stuff and visual jokes I had put in the slides.

It was a positive experience, and the dinner afterwards very nice.

Google Notebook

In their quest to organise ALL the information in the world, Google (and other companies involved in the search-business) are doing great services to scientists and students, who often spend most of their time trying to find and organise information. And often, the crucial info turns up too late: as the article or thesis is being submitted, a random search produces hits of previous research that should be referred to. In the worst case, the stuff you find last minute demonstrate your approach wrong or second-grade, or at least not as innovative and unique you thought it to be. Nobody likes to make major changes last minute (or after), and while everyone is aware that there is no way they can find all the relevant information, researchers like to think they've got the major parts.

Google entered the "academic market" with their Google Scholar, a search engine that searches databases of scientific publications, providing links to abstracts and full-texts (which you of course can access only if your institution has the subscription to the services it links to). Google Scholar saves time, as it searches several sources at the same time. It still has a bit to go in terms of integrating the search results to a form where they can be manipulated and downloaded to citation managers, but it's great in finding what there is.

Google Books has been in the centre of a debate over digital copyrights, as have been other similar initiatives to digitise books and publish them in searchable form in the net. In spite of its limitations, I've found this service useful for the purpose of quickly checking the reference or quote I vaguely recall, and verifying the "correctness" of other people's quotes, especially if I think they are being misquoted or quoted out of context.

Now another product hits the campuses, and why not homes as well. Google Notebook. It's a beta-version, i.e. not a finished product but a test version, which in Google lingo means it is available through "Google Labs". (Actually, Google Scholar and Google Books are also beta versions, although they've been around for longer). You download a little item to your toolbar (for those using Firefox, as you all should, it's just another extension that shows up as a icon in your browser bottom bar) and you are ready to go. While you browse the net, you can highlight stuff and by clicking "add" in your notebook toolbar, add that text, picture and the link of the source to a notebook for later use.

This is brilliant, and I've unknowingly wanted one of these for long. I've done my explorations by arduously copying stuff from browser to TextPad or Word, with the result that some text is huge, some tiny, and all tables look skewed and corrupt. And then I often have to copy the links separately, and of course I can't be bothered with the pictures. Naturally, the Google notebooks that users have made public are searchable by everyone, and your private notebooks are searchable by you. Good stuff, having just downloaded this thing makes me feel I accomplished something worthwhile today! :-)

Florida

If baby buggies are large in the UK, everything is larger in the US. Even the pensioners. Rather than being the tiny shrinked-down grey-haired grannies and old-timers with their cuppas and teacakes, the US third-age population, at least in southern Florida, seems to be well-tanned, blue-haired and wide, gulping down huge lattes and carrot cakes the size of Wales.

And they tend to be very demanding and unapologetic, it seems. They want service, know how to demand it, have the green to pay for it and are stopping for no-one in their pursuit to get it. Including other guests or customers. That's what I heard from the local graduate students, who have the pleasure/pain of doing academic work in what is basically a beach resort. Florida Atlantic University's modern campus is in Boca Raton. Relatively unimpressive and unidentifiable architecture, surrounded by huge parking lots and a lot of nothing, it probably provides very nice functional facilities for higher learning and research, but doesn't really impress you like some campuses do.

Cambridge is a tourist attraction as well, but unfortunately we don't have the beaches or the sun. But, we don't get the type of tourists beach resorts usually get, which is a good thing. One-all score, I suppose. All in all, even though the trip was nice, the morning swims in the Atlantic really great, I'm glad to be back home. It all seems a bit more real and genuine. I'm sure it's just in my head.

It's not just the SUV's...

It's not only the SUV's and other gas-guzzlers that are getting bigger. The baby buggies are going through the same thing. Just saw a mother trying to push the baby in a pushchair through a crowded cafe. The pram had all-terrain wheels and the same aggressive look we're used to seeing in the Humvees and other Chelsea tractors. Also, the modern muscle-buggies seem to be loaded with similar useless extras as their motored counterparts: cupholders, storagespaces, disc brakes, suspension systems and cooling/warming units.

I guess having huge cars means that you don't need to worry about how to transport the buggy, so you can boost the size of both. In this case, both the baby and the pusher seemed to be size XL as well, so perhaps I just landed to a strange Swiftian parallel reality.

Certainty and scientific method

This brilliant article on certainty takes me to a topic I've long wanted to address in this blog, as it's one of those issues that every scientist deals with every day, and which at the same time seems to be the most difficult to convey to the "general public".

Won't write more now, as there's too much work to do at the moment (I'm off to Florida for a workshop in two days, and it's +35 degrees there!!), but perhaps the necessary evil of transatlantic travel, the endless hours in airports and jumbo jets will produce the next post on these topics.

Meanwhile, think why Woo Suk Hwang wanted to make up research results, and why he didn't get away with it, and why a seemingly "proper" British scientists come up with formulae for perfect toast, most depressing day of the year, or perfect ways to dunk bisquits to their tea? And in return I promise to think why I didn't feel guilty for passing my opinions and impressions as scientifical results to a TV crew last week.

Chuckle

Hoag has developed a guitar with optical picks. I.e. instead of microphones, the sound is picked up off the strings using optical detection of the string movement. MusicThing decided that this is "just wrong", which is understandable for a vintage / retro-oriented blog.

Most guitarists I know are so fussy, geeky and "analogue" about their gear that I expect this to be eaten alive anyway. Want to know a secret? Guitarists spend hours and hours discussing the minutiae of the technical features of their guitars, amps, and the miscellaneous hoovers and moulinexes they plug in between them. It's all about them having this or that component that makes them superior. Or they have the fret board that only uses bio-organically heat-molded spruce from the southern hillside farms in Guatemala, where the optimal micro-climate has enhanced the porousness of the material in such a way that it allows 2% more upper-range vibration-damping when playing fast passages. In each guitar that a proper guitarist owns, there are at least 3 such features, which, so they say, have been the criteria for choosing that particular guitar among the 3 655 430 they have tested in various music shops around the world, by playing 'Stairway to Heaven' and the riff from 'Smoke in the Water' driving all music shop keepers to become the edgy nervous wrecks they are. And the secret? They just buy the guitar that looks the coolest.

The makers of the optical guitar clearly know their target group, the geeky hifi-guitarists who publicly claim to prefer progressive rock, while they secretly hope they could play in Bon Jovi. So, the guitar actually looks as boring and mainstream as Bon Jovi sounds, and to give them the argument their proge-hifist side-personae would approve, according to HarmonyCentral the "pickup is responsive to string movement below and well above human hearing".

Fan-tas-tic. As blogger M brilliantly put it: "That's awesome. I've been working on some compositions that are outside the range of human hearing, and now I can finally not hear how they sound."

Great idea

Just read about this in CNet. (I know, I should be in bed by now...) This goes to the category "could work once", just like the Million Dollar Home Page. Kyle wants to trade his one red paper clip for a house. Rrright. The amazing thing is that he's almost there. He first traded his paper clip to a pen, and then via owning among other things a generator, snowmobile and a van, he went on to obtain a record contract, and currently he has a year's lease of a duplex in Phoenix in his hands.

I'm sure there will be hundreds of imitators, some of them just copying the idea, some others modifying it, maybe even coming up with something equally impressively simple and elegant. The same happened with the MDHP, selling pixels become a fad and everyone tried to follow Alex Tew's footsteps. Of course, the advertisers are interested in the novelty, the media coverage and curiosity of the masses, and only the original inventor and the first one to do it will be internationally newsworthy and get those interviews in the FT, NYT, CNN, BBC and other world-class acronyms. The rest will have to do with KACL, PBS, KCNA and the rest of them. And of course, only the original website will be generating the insane volumes of web traffic that makes these kinds of projects commercially viable for those who take part. While MDHP was just about business, the paperclip bartering seems to be more like mountain climbing, in that the people who take part seem to be more interested in making the project happen rather than any immediate financial gain.

Anyway, these two projects have really captured people's imagination, it's the "go west, young man" all over again, this time in the net.

(Pic: The Famous Paperclip from oneredpaperclip.blogspot.com)

Murphy...

Why is it that every time you get both your hands dirty, be it in the kitchen or when fixing a bike, your nose starts to itch? It's probably connected to the process that makes your rolled-up sleeves slooowly drop down when you're doing the washing.

Wikipedia vs. Encyclopaedia Britannica

Remember the news@Nature study that compared Wikipedia and Encyclopaedia Britannica, and found that the two were almost equally matched in terms of accuracy?

EB responded, saying the research was "Fatally flawed", to which Nature said it wasn't. While Nature and EB were swapping hate-pdf's, (I do think it would show more class if they'd behave more like gentlemen and publish their argumentation as books. So sad the world is too fast-paced for such gentlemanly behaviour...) the media and all sorts of wise-noses started debating on the issue.

What is the point of old-fashioned print-publishing, is there any credibility in on-line publications? Is this the beginning of the end or the end of the beginning, and which one of the two media is at the thin end of the wedge? Someone pointed out that Wikipedia actually has an entry for Encyclopaedia Britannica, but the EB doesn't yet have an entry for Wikipedia. Funny...

What I found today was even more hilarious (I know it's not actually even funny, but for boring people the smallest speck of comedy will be a laugh). Some entries in Wikipedia are actually copies or adaptations of articles originally published in the EB. If Wikipedia has got it's facts right, the US copyright law states that the copyright term is 95 years for corporate authorship. This makes the 11th edition of EB from 1911 now public domain!

I was looking for more information about strophes and antistrophes, and Greek poetry in general, as I wanted to know more about the structure of Euripides' plays. I have to say, his plays are pretty tough, and those Greek gods are guite a bunch of a**holes, to be frank. :-) Euripides wasn't holding it back. He must have had a pretty dark imagination to come up with all these schemes... And you can see his ideas and turns of plots being utilised in every Tarantino movie and sick Korean flick about revenge and suffering. That's imitation, or even plagiarism and watered-down as that. It's all been said over 2000 years ago, which is sad in a way (any new ideas, anyone?), but since it also means it is public domain, what can you do?

Oh, about writing books as a way of arguing. My favourite example is the debate about studying cognition, figuring out the inner workings of The Human Mind. Steven Pinker, of Harvard University, wrote a book "How the Mind Works", in which he, according to his humble website, provides a "grand synthesis of the most satisfying explanations of our mental life that have been proposed in cognitive science and evolutionary biology, with insights from disciplines ranging from neuroscience to economics and social psychology. [The book] is also fascinating, provocative, and thoroughly entertaining." Pinker's book was published in 1997. Right after that, in 2000, another cognitive scientist Jerry Fodor published a book called "The Mind Doesn't Work That Way", where he criticises cognitive science, including Pinker, for getting some of the epistemological issues fundamentally wrong. Pinker has been publishing stuff since then, but to my disappointment, none of it is titled "Does too!".

(Pic: Penguin Classics cover of Euripides' "The Bacchae and other plays", from amazon.co.uk)

Wow, I want it. What is it?

It's a Monome. A box with buttons on it. You can press the buttons and control your MIDI with it. Check out the video, is that cool or is that cool?

It's so simple and elegant, I like it, and I want it, even though I can't think of anything I could use it for at the moment. But that's the beauty of it, it's all open source and modifiable, and everyone will come up with an individual way of using it. And that's great, there are too many over-defined and focus-group oriented and very limited gadgets and tools out there. The ones that genuinely promote creativity and are open-ended deserve good karma.

(Pic and the original story, thank you musicthing.blogspot.com)

Pass

Yesterday I forgot my laptop at work. I was going to take it home because I was planning to watch some DVD's in the evening, but halfway home I realised I didn't remember to pack it. I just had the empty backpack. I didn't feel like turning back, so I decided to read instead.

Well, during the night (I like to think this way, even though it was probably early this morning) someone had gone through our lab and sticked a "Pass - Electrical Safety Test" sticker to all the plugs in the room, including my laptop's. Thank you,"NS". I don't know what this test entails, but it must be a quick one, since I came here at 10.30 and already all approximately 100 or so plugs in the facility had been labelled.

Now I actually would be allowed to use the adapter in the University Library, as well. They insist that if you want to plug in your laptop to their grid you need to have the university electrician to test, approve and label your plug first. I have to say that I have so far adopted a slightly freer interpretation of this rule... as in not having any stupid checks and plugging in anyway. I'm sure one of the reasons my laptop power adapter is so big is that they needed more space for all the safety stamps and standard insignia they have printed in the bottom of it. I know, the CE stamp only says that the product has been intended for sale in the EU, and is not a proof of safety as such, just an indication that the producer is claiming they've followed the rules and standards. But still.

In my welcome pack (the material my college sent me prior to starting my studies) they said that no adapters would be allowed. Meaning adapters you buy at airports to fit your two-pin plug to a three-hole socket. All plugs for electronic devices would need to be changed and those plugs tested by the above mentioned university electrician. Again, I took what I think was a more common-sense approach. It is strange how a nation where the general building standards and house technology in particular are of a good old pleistoscene standard, electricity safety issues are made to such an artform. It could be the general obsession with stamping and labelling things, and the innate ability of English people to focus on the irrelevant nitty-gritty.

For instance, what is all this about plugs? BBC just run a feature where they were making some sort of a point by canvassing people and asking if they could wire a plug. Why? Is this a survival skill I've missed? Do people need to show they can wire a plug before they are allowed to buy a house or cash they paycheques? Are dextrous plug-wirers more attractive to the opposite sex than those who don't give a damn? In my opinion, if you are serious about electrical safety, you don't start messing around with plugs on your own in the first place, especially if they are of the moulded type that can't be changed without braking them, as the one in the picture in the BBC story.

At the same time as plugs are being an important skill that old people are excellend and the younger generations can't be arsed about, the BBC is running a series of stories about people's ideas on how to save energy. As you could guess, they are concentrating on the truly important things like the amount of water you put in your kettle or whether you could run a poster campaign or a competition on who switches off their stuff the most. The debate on the site is very typically British. One commentator said that while an inter-county competition in saving energy could drop the consumption of energy by 25% for the duration of the competition and 10% permanently, it might not be good since "for some people it would smack of "nanny knows best". Right. Why would anyone in their right minds give a dingle about such intelligent and well-founded opinions?

It's amazing how people prefer talking about these small details while the actual culprits of poor energy-economy are so glaringly obvious. Newsflash: this is not a tropical island, and never will be, no matter how much you try to globalwarm. Double-glaze your windows, insulate your houses and stop warming them to 27 degrees at day and then letting them freeze at night. Second suggestion: ban the bulb.

(Pic: news.bbc.co.uk)

Dead day

This day is so dead. I haven't really been able to get anything done, so I'm actully going to pack my stuff, go home, do something else, and then perhaps try again later.

Hasn't really been my day, I had a flat tire in my bike, then my iPod run out of battery when I was walking to work. The weather is awful and my girlfriend's away in Finland. Poor me. :-)

Priorities first

When it comes to work, there are three categories of it. "On topic", " "on topic" " and "off-topic". The last category is also known as "procrastination" or "pseudo-work". Cleaning the floortiles under your cooker with a toothbrush when you actually should be writing your thesis is "off-topic" work. So is ironing the curtains, alphabetising your DVD-collection or re-partitioning your hard-drive and organising your browser bookmarks. Usually it is very difficult to do any on-topic work while there is any off-topic work around.

On-topic work is like an unicorn: easy to define but rarely seen. Writing your thesis when you need to write your thesis is clearly on-topic, and so is looking up the reference to the article with the study you are writing about. But looking up references is where the slippery slope to "on-topic" work begins. Sooner than you think, looking up a reference leads to spotting an interesting article you had put aside for later reading, which brings into mind the other article you needed to find. And in just a few seconds your perfect on-topic work of producing concrete output has turned into yet another literature search and hours spent going through the clutter of hits, with the result of finding 3 articles you already have and 79 others you will never need.

So, doing "on-topic" work means you are actually working around the subject but not actually making any progress. I just noticed that I'm procrastinating in "on-topic" work for the third day running. For some weird reason, I all of a sudden decided that I need to understand how the statistical procedures I'm planning to use actually work. And therefore I'm now implementing them to the computing environment I usually use. While this would qualify as on-topic work any other time, now when I'm actually in a hurry just to churn out the results, it is actually not just "on-topic" but borderline off-topic. Especially since most of the stuff I've programmed is not working and I already have all these tools (that actually work), albeit in another environment.

Did you spot the point where on-topic became "on-topic"? Let me highlight: "therefore I'm now implementing...". So, while the intention was pure ("to understand how [they] work"), the vague definition of "understanding" let the "procrastinator within" to take over and start spending time in writing and testing code. Sneaky...

And, the "p w" has managed to convince me not to mend my ways, even though I now see what is going on. I have actually consciously decided to keep on writing these implementations, because it actually is an efficient, if a bit slow way of learning the procedures. But since I need to cut to the chase and get those results as well, I think I need to work overtime. Or just cut down the time I spend in full-blown procrastination or "off-topic" work. :-)

(Pic: www.hse.gov.uk)

Oops not an oops?

Remember the Chinese vases in Fitzwilliam Museum that broke to pieces when a museum-goer tripped on his shoelaces? The museum announced its plans for glueing the vases together, and conservator Penny Bendall was set on the task. And now, as The Dude would put it, "new shit has come to light".

First, the guy who broke the vases, Nick Flynn, was not allowed to attend the museum press-conference. Then, a week later, he was arrested and then bailed by the police, who now suspect he might have broken the vases on purpose! The police have released no details about why they think his tumble was not an accident, but they refer to an earlier arres on King's Parade.

So Mr. Flynn is a bit of a hoodlum, but why would he smash three priceless vases? Publicity, probably. I don't think anyone would harbor a grudge against some 1700th century Qing vases. Or was Mr Flynn traumatised by the decor of his childhood home to the extent that he now goes "tripping" in places that have fancy China? The story continues, and I'm sure the local press will have a ball with it, even though it seems that the national media has been quiet about it, perhaps unwilling to give the crook the publicity he yearns. This or that, the story continues...

(Pic: Conservator Penny Bendall doing a preliminary assembly of the vases. Photo (c) Fitzwilliam Museum)

My day as a commuter

It is so true that you don't really appreciate what you have, until you lose it. As a Finn, I took clean water and air, having a lot of space around me, nature, forests and lakes at my doorsteps for granted. In England I have realised that things are different: the few square feet of land that you need for parking your car is more valuable than the car itself. Especially if the lot happens to be within a mile of your house.

Location, location, location. The three most important features of your apartment or house. Or property, as the proper word is. I always thought there was property of all kinds, like intellectual property, or that your pair of skis and collection of Peruvian mouth-organs would qualify as property. Well, they might, but what counts is your proverbial castle. There are two kinds of programmes on TV nowadays; celebrity/not-yet-but-soon-to-be celebrity reality shows, and property/renovation/home & garden shows. Oh, and occasional re-runs of Miss Marple and football.

The reason why people in these English, i.e. hideously small, mildewy, wall-to-wall carpeted and inconvenient houses are so obsessed with the properties of their properties, is that they are so expensive, and that they often are situated a few counties away from where people go to work. Which is London.

Cambridge is close enough to London to be inside its commuting circle. That would at first sound ridiculous for two reasons. First, to me, having to sit (or actually, stand) for an hour in a train to get to spend another hour in the tube to get to work, and then reversing the process in the end of the day is too much. Also, the property prices in Cambridge are hideously high as well, so you wouldn't even save much. Not enough to offset the human costs of the commuting, anyway.

I tried this "lifestyle" for one day this week. When I go to London, I usually avoid peak hours in the trains, not only because you get the tickets half price, but also because you get a seat. This time, however, I was going to London in business, had to spend the whole day, and so needed to take the 7.15 commuter express from Cambridge and the 18.15 zombie-transport back.

You think you know how to travel in trains and tubes, but one trip in the early train with these people is enough to show you what a total amateur you are. These people are professional commuters. The crowd on the platform waiting for train, is not uniformally distributed across the length of the platform. It's in about 8 clusters and one row behind them. There will be 8 cars in the train. The train doors will stop at the centres of the clusters. The people who form the row are those who came too late to make it to a good spot in the cluster, and are waiting for their chance to dash to the doors in case the driver makes a mistake and goes a bit too far and parks the doors between clusters.

There are no happy faces. No one is really looking forward to the trip, there's no sense of excitement, no glow in the cheeks that would reveal inner musings of the prospects of the travels ahead. Any glow is more likely to be a result of a hang-over or overdose of caffeine that they have injected themselves with to battle chronic sleep-deprivation. These people are not going to see their loved ones, or new exciting places. They are going to work, and had to wake up too early. In fact, they ARE at work already. Meeting agendas and business correspondence are being drafted in the minds already, telephone calls are made (clearly to other commuters or business partners in other time zones, since it's about 7AM...). Then the train arrives, and the platformfull of suited grey mass will be sucked into the train that's already half-full of people who live even further away. They might have to get up earlier, but they will be guaranteed a seat in the train. At Cambridge (and there are four other stops between Cambridge and London King's Cross) the train will reach its full capacity and some people will have to sit on the floor or stand.

80% of those who get a seat will take a memo or a laptop or both from their briefcases and start working. To get a competitive edge or just to fight off boredom? Not everyone is wearing a suit. There's also a handful of people who don't trust public transport in London and are equipped with folding bicycles and gore-tex jackets and lycra pants with lots of reflectors everywhere, and are going to hop on their bikes on the station and cycle wherever it is they are going. Assumedly their suits will be there waiting for them.

There's a sense of belonging that you get in here. It's not really solidarity, since you can feel that these people are already mentally preparing for the competitive environment they will face in City, but everyone feels like they are in the same boat. The professionalism of commuting is enshrined in the unspoken rules and codes of conduct. If you see a free seat, you grab it. It's yours even though an older lady would walk past. Since everyone is fit enough to work, they are also fit enough to stand. It's their own fault if they are too slow to board a train. Better luck next time. No loud conversations, even in mobiles. People are working, this is an extension of the office, just without the water coolers and stationery cupboards. You shouldn't pay too much attention to other people's papers or work. You wouldn't want someone to peer over your shoulder to read your memo's, would you? No initiating unnecessary discussion. It is alright to talk with people who are travelling with you, but not initiate stupid chats with strangers about weather or the nice laptop they have. They have the laptop because they are working, even if they would be playing solitaire. There's mental work or mind-cleaning going on and it should not be disturbed.

Efficiency is the word. At King's Cross, people who queue for their coffee fixes all know what they are going to have when their turn to make the order comes. None of that touristy procrastination and thinking aloud, pondering whether to get a large or medium, should we get cream or not in the mocha. It's mostly double espressos and large americanas, all to go, all quick, all routine. You grab the free Metro paper, since it's routine. You read the stories without taking any of it in, since it's the established routine. Everyone is wearing their commuting class uniform, a grey suit or similar. Being there means having a job, a job that is well-paid enough for you to be coming to do it from anouther county. You are important enough for the company for them to pay you enough to make it worth your while to do this every day. Success!

But, it takes its toll. Even though the public transport in London is phenomenal and works astoundingly well, considering the number of people that use it every day, it is still a drag. At 6 pm, about 12-13 hours after getting up in the morning, the same lot will crowd another train and head back to Cambridgeshire for the night. This time many of them are going to their loved ones, but the weight of the day is still too much for them to crack a smile. Someone is still working, although it's predominantly evening rags and not working memos anymore. Competition for seats is different, since this time the train waits for commuters at the platform, but the same rules apply. "I've worked so hard today that I deserve this seat. If the granny needs a seat, one of the young students can give up theirs. I pay for their education anyway in my taxes."

What would you do with 3 extra hours in your day? How valuable would they be for you? How much would you be willing to pay to get the hum of train-travel out of your head? I don't know. I know I wouldn't want to commute like that, and I'm now much more appreciative of the fact that it takes me 5 minutes to cycle to work, in case I decide not to work at home. But, it might be that some day I will join the grey mass, know where the train doors will be, or even get myself some reflecting gore tex and lycra and a folding bike.

(Pic © www.FreeFoto.com)

Mind-cleaning

In other words, procrastination. Or actually not really. Mind-cleaning seems to be necessary, anyway. Which could be just another excuse to feel better about procrastinating, but before you judge me, let me explain. What I mean with mind-cleaning is the kind of activity you need to engage in when your thoughts get so tangled that you no longer know what the initial question was. Logically, that's when it becomes impossible to find answers.

I've been in that situation a lot lately. The challenge of the last couple of weeks has been trying to sort the technical minutiae of the analysis procedures I've been building. So, more than often I have found myself staring into the red brick wall of a dead end. I would be tinkering with pieces of code or some calculations or whatnot, and all of a sudden I would realise that I've been trying to fix something that isn't broken, or trying to use fixes that won't ever work because of some other fixes I had made earlier etc. Being a grown-up, sensible person, instead of losing my temper or all of my hope, (or indeed instead of starting over without any new ideas), I would take a step back and clean my mind. Sometimes so effectively that it would take literally hours to get back to work, but there are risks in every strategy, right? :-)

There are many methods. Reading the latest news is one, writing a blog entry another. But the better you can engage your mind in something totally different from your work the better. This is the key to the success of Sudoku. All you think of are 9 numbers... In addition to Sudoku, I find the online quizzes quite effective. The "classic" challenge is of course the news quiz, or the Uutisguru (News-guru). I'm back on the top-20's of the monthly rankings thanks to this latest data-project. :-) The engaging part of this quiz-format (Who wants to be a millionaire -style, a question and 4 options for answers, the faster you answer, the more points you score) is that even though the pool of questions is relatively limited and tends to repeat itself after a few dozen games, the game still maintains its addictive nature, since to get top scores you also need to be fast.

In fact, you have just about a second to give the right responses if you want to get to the very top. Which means that you need to learn very quick associations between questions and their answers. For many of the questions, I don't need to read the question at all, since I know which must be the right option just by seeing the answers. So I glance instead of spending time reading. With one glance I get an idea of the question, hopefully recognise it and then sweep down to find the right answer, following it with mouse. Sometimes the right answer is easy to find, since it is the shortest / longest of the options. So you save the time you would spend reading the options, just go for the one that is correct, based on the shape.

The makers of the quiz are aware of these tactics, since they tend to device nasty traps, like using answers of similar length or appearance, or in questions about years tend to use the right answers for one question as the wrong ones for the others. There are also some questions that have so much text or where the dates for instance are written out so that you actually need to read them thus losing time. As in "Who wants to be a millionaire", there are 3 lifelines, but if you need to use them, you are pretty much screwed for getting a good score. If you have done well otherwise, there might be time for a quick "50-50" but that's about it. Having to think for an answer is bad, since it takes too much time.

And that's why these quizzes work as mind-cleaning. Nothing beats good old asoociationism as a way of getting rid of congestion higher up in the cortex!

(Pic: my brain (there is one, hoorah!), fMRI photo taken last Thursday in MRC-CBU in Cambridge)

Read and re-read

I'm not reading much these days. I should, and I will, once I get some of this data analysis backlog cleared. I have about a dozen books and a wad of articles lined up for reading. In addition to this new stuff, I am now beginning to realise that I would need to read some of the "old" stuff again...

For the first half a year of my PhD I did nothing else but sat in a library reading (studywise, that is). Books, articles, conference proceedings and review papers (oh, how I love GOOD review papers, you get the essence of dozens of articles and only need to read one - as long as it is a good one, which means it doesn't miss important articles and doesn't misrepresent their findings).

I used to take notes of what I read, since I thought I'd go back to those notes when writing up and would then easily find where this or that piece of information is, who said what and where. Now when I'm doing just that and visiting these old notes, I find that there are only two minor problems: I can't find the right stuff and what I find is useless.

The first problem arises from the fact that my system was "designed" to find the relevant information from the given book, as long as you knew in which book it was. And this is the critical fault. I'd first need to find the word-file with the notes of the correct book, to be able to access my fancy notes about quote x being on page 223. Luckily EndNote (with it's facility to store abstracts as well as references) and Google Desktop search help somewhat in overcoming this problem.

But, the second problem is of a more fundamental nature, and is the reason why I need to start re-reading the books. If I'm lucky to find the right notes, I find them mostly irrelevant. What I thought to be important and interesting 3 years ago, now seems more or less trivial, while the important bits are not at all covered by my notes. My research focus has shifted just enough to
shift the light spots into shade and vice versa. Of course I can also blame the inevitable ignorance of a first year PhD-student for not being able to see the forest from the trees.

Well, I suppose it is rather normal not to remember everything you read 3 years ago, and with a bit of searching and browsing quite a lot can be recovered from the notes I wrote - it definitely was worth the while writing them at the time. But this necessity to re-read seems to work on a shorter time-spans as well. Sometimes I read an article or a text, fail to be impressed, then go back to it from a different perspective, and get completely blown away. The current mind-set has a huge effect. Unlike prose or poetry, scientific texts are always read "with an agenda", there's something you need to know, something you want to find out. That might be the methodology used, the results obtained, or the theoretical framework and references, for example. Therefore you always tend to read these things with different hats and glasses of different shades on. And then either fail or succeed to find significance in the texts.

This mindset- or agenda-effect can be seen clearly in scientific conferences. In any given thematic session, most researchers will have read the same books and articles, and are all quoting the most seminal ones. But they all are "using" them differently. Sometimes the interpretations differ from each other so much, that you start to wonder if there are two completely different editions out there (unlikely if it is an article, more possible with books). This illustrates that it's just a case of "read what you want to read". These events always make me re-read some of the old stuff, just to check which of the presenters got it right and who was wearing the least transparent, self-reflecting glasses when reading it.

Difficult conclusions

When is it ready, when is it good enough? I suppose every PhD student battles with this question. After numerous drafts, revamped structures and re-written sections, a final version has to emerge. At some point, you just need to let go, resist the urge to go through it one more time, change the word order, polish the grammar.

I'm nowhere near this stage yet, but I'm already aware that when I am, letting go might be a major issue for me. Currently, I'm having difficulties in making some of those decisions that will be "final"; in the way that once they are made, I can't go back and change them. I wrote about this earlier, when describing my experiment preparations. I've lately discovered that this is a more common issue in my work than I've realised. I often find myself procrastinating before taking a step that will finalise a relatively meaningless little step of the work. Perhaps it is the feeling that everything has its consequences, and I'm now on the "final lap" and there will be no "next time", no second chance to go back and do things differently. Last experiments, last analyses, last literature reviews and last revamps of the theoretical framework... And each small decision weights a lot more than it used to a year ago, when everything was still "in process", "just a draft", "a penultimate version", "a suggestion" or merely "a digress which may never lead anywhere". And also, there are no excuses, since I should have learned my lessons already and be the expert of the field...

The new CEO of Nokia, Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo said recently in an interview that he has always been quick in making decisions. As a PhD himself, he probably developed some of these skills when getting through this process. I find some comfort in the thought that if someone is able to make big decisions concerning 57 000 employees and millions of customers, I should have no problem with getting on with the nitty-gritty issues of one small PhD thesis.

Chaos

Auugh, too many people around... The "lab" where I'm working is currently undergoing a mild to moderate mayhem, as all undergraduates with their graduate supervisors are trying to run their "experiments" before the term finishes. This means that I can no longer assume that the tablespace and network cable that I usually use as my "homebase" would be free. On the contrary, it is most likely taken over by an undergraduate eating some of the chocolate that was reserved as a reward for the participants for her experiments. There are papers and laptops everywhere, people coming and going, students giving instructions on how to respond to their behavioural experiments, how to fill in the questionnaires and so forth. Some others are debriefing their participants on why they made them listen to the same boring stimuli 35 600 times and trying to pretend that it doesn't matter if they responded '4' on a seven-point scale on every occasion, while inconspicuously trying to write "outlier - delete" on their notes.

I needed to evacuate to my "branch office" for most of the day, just to get something done. It's just too much to have all this commotion around while trying to think about how to process your data. I don't like open offices and it is especially difficult if someone is on "my" reserved space. But, the term ends this week and the mind-numbing peace will prevail again. I wonder how long it will take before I get bored with having no one around and start blaming quietness for not being able to work at optimal efficiency... :-)

Googlism

One of the many google-based fun-applications out there (I'm sure everyone is familiar with the googlefight...) is Googlism. It takes a name or a noun, googles it and presents results in "X is __" -format. Pretty funny.

According to Googlism, TH is:

• our finnish hero
• iceland's most popular dj (this would be so cool...)
  
• a licensed minister with new life church in colorado springs
• speaking norwegian into big white plastic bag after wild night of drinking vodka and beer and whatever was available (as I do...)
  
• de sympathieke naam van een heel vernuftig toestelletje
• quite enourmous
• small and he's definitely beatable
• a medium size compact black and gold male
• still heavier than her normal size but she looks fine
• all woman
• married with nanna and has 2 children (oops...)
  
• a cat with great balance problems
• emerging as one of the most original talents to come out (come out where, a closet? :-) )
  
• a leader in machine learning and will be a welcome addition to our faculty (wehea, a job!)
  
• unamused
• there
• right

I try to resist doing all my friends and family, as there is quite a lot to do today at work... This thing is as old as time itself (dated 2003), but I only tumbled upon it today. When googling something, its googlism page came up in the top 10... A bit inbred, I'd say. :-)

Concentration

If you see one around, could you please tell it to come back. I'd need it to finish some work but it's nowhere to be found.

Damn it. Seems like there's at least one Monday each week. Yesterday didn't feel like Monday at all, probably because I had a nice dinner in Teri-Aki to look forward to. And work was OK, too. I managed to get my experiment ready to run, apart from one technical detail. Which I'm now too bored to fix, since Monday's caught me up. I just haven't been able to concentrate on my work properly, and I was really incoherent in supervision earlier. The quality of my thinking was so shoddy that I decided to just do laundry.

In all respects, it feels like a Monday. First of all, the weather is awful; cold, rainy, damp, grey and dark. Second, the construction site next door has been excessively loud, and they have done some work right below my window, as they've dug up the lawn and made some sewer connections or whatever. Seems to require loud, heavy tools and blocking the footpath, anyway.

Third, my college is showing it's incompetent side again, as I've been inundated with false bills. Some of these bills go up to £4500 and are definitely wrong, some are smaller and less obviously wrong. The big bill for four and a half grand was for fees, of which I'm exempted for being a 4th year PhD student. Well, they tried to bill them from me anyway, I guess just in case I had some loose change I would like to part with.

Their previous strike of genious was sending me a bill for £946 for "Sage Balance Transfer", which I of course didn't pay since I didn't understand what it was for. Now they have explained that it's my rent for 3 months plus £10 for key deposit. By adding this "random term" they made the sum unrecognisable, and the name "Sage balance transfer" was still not explained. I've paid my key deposit in 2003 when I moved in to my room, and this is now the third time since then that they've tried to re-charge it from me. I guess some people don't check their bills and just pay anything, so it's worth trying. Sounds like those scams where people sell adspace on their website by sending bills to companies for their appearance in "business directory service".

Finally, today I heard that the college had lost my travel grant application after it was processed half through the system and now I need to do it again. Oops, they say, and you get no confirmation that anything would be changed next time. Just random mistakes that seem to be cropping up a lot lately. Lack of concentration?

Lent Bumps

Yes, rowing.

I have to admit, it still at times fills my mind and my world. Or, should I say it IS my world. If Cambridge can be a bubble, rowing is a bubble in Cambridge, and those who take it seriously enough to be in the captaining-coaching-running regattas or boatclubs -circle form a bubble within that. Luckily, I'm only one foot in in the last bubble, but there are still enough bubble layers to keep the real world out of reach.

College rowing in Cambridge has two events above others: Lent Bumps in the end of the Lent term, and May bumps in June. (Please don't ask stupid questions, of course May Bumps are in June, just like May Balls and the May Week. This is Cambridge, remember.)

In this insane form of racing, boats (racing eights, each having 8 rowers and the cox) line up at the bank, start rowing on a cannon shot, and try to catch each other and "bump" them. In each bumps week, there are four races, and if you "bump", you move up one position, and if you get bumped, you move down. A "row over" simply means you rowed through the course without catching anyone and no one caught you. If you bump on all four days, you get "blades", your names painted on an oar and that commemorative blade mounted in a special place in college. Usually in the bar.

So, I've spent my week at the river. mostly in bank crews, pushing boats off and cycling alongside yelling and whistling etc. I did have to row two races, as well, but I was just subbing in our first boat. What I'm really proud of, is our second boat, the one I coach. We started working together in the beginning of last term, and they were complete novices. And I was a complete novice as a coach. And when I look at them now, rowing together as an 8, having a good technique, and winning bumps and other races, I feel a kind of pride I have rarely if ever felt.

First of all, it's different from the kind of feeling of achievement you get when you reach a goal on your own. It's a team effort. But that's not all there is to it, since being a coach is being a special member of the team. I don't feel they won their races because of me, but almost like they did it FOR me. I don't know if it's a really weird way of thinking about it, and I know it's not really all true, since in a rowing crew you work for the crew and yourself, and the coach is simply a facilitator, but it's still a very nice feeling.

Well, now we party a little and celebrate and enjoy these achievements. All those early mornings and cold wind at the river, all the sweat and pain has now paid off and we were rewarded with good results. We take a bit of a breather and then start training for the Mays. And since they luckily aren't in May, we have plenty of time to get ready...

(Picture of this year's Bumps, first day. Copyright Jet Photographic)

Ring ring...

Retro is in.

I like sleek, modern, smooth, elegant things (like my new iPod Nano, for instance), but I have to say, the new mobile phone accessory pictured on the right is sooo cool. A friend of mine got this recently, and he showed it to me before a seminar last week. At first, I didn't quite realise what it was, I thought it was a replacement part for an old phone (he's the kind of guy who just might be repairing and renovating old phones...), but then he plugged it in to his mobile. More comfortable to hold between your ear and the shoulder than the tiny mobile, he says. I think it even came with a USB-adapter, so you could plug it to your laptop and Skype with it...

I'm tempted, this is one of the coolest new gadgets
out there now. :-)

Edit: comes only with a headphone jack, so you'd need to have a splitter to plug it in to the usually separate microphone and headphone jacks in computers... And of course doesn't work with the cell phones that have a "special" headphone plug like Nokia's phones, for instace. It's still cool...

(Pic © firstSTREET)

One question per customer

A good lecture stimulates discussion. Thought-provoking ideas are presented, new theories floated, and the audience gets to participate in the question-answer session in the end. The 20+10 -format that is in use in most scientific conferences and meetings doesn't really allow much discussion, especially since most presentations run over their time limit. It is also always the discussion time that gets culled when the whole conference is running late and the organisers are trying to make up the lost time so that the confrence dinner can start on time.

In normal lectures and talks there is more time for the speaker, more time for questions. However, it seems not everyone is familiar with the end-of-lecture question etiquette. Even though the convenor or chair often thanks the speaker and then declares the discussion "open", there are still rules that need to be followed. For a good reason, they don't declare a state of anarchy. The offenders usually fall into the following few categories.


1) Show-offs

These people are most often found in conferences. They feel the need to comment on every single talk they hear and tell everyone how it relates to their work (sometimes stretching it beyond all limits) and how the speaker should read his (yes, these are usually men) latest article on the topic, as it will be published in Nature next month. A subcategory of show-offs are final year postgraduate students who see every conference and lecture as a venue to promote themselves and hope that being thoroughly annoying and making lots of comments, people will be impressed and offer them jobs.


2) alt.lecture.org

These people don't ask questions. They have "a couple of comments and remarks" to make. They want to give an alternate explanation to the speaker's data, or provide an alternative reading to the theoretical background, or just lecture for 10 minutes about their views on the topic.


3) Serial queryists or microphone-hoggers

This is by far the most annoying group. Once given the permission to ask a question, these people think they can keep asking questions until they run out of them. You are only allowed one question or maximum two short questions, and then you need to give other people their turn. These people exploit the kindness of the speakers; when after answering the first question they would politely ask "did that answer your question?", the serial queryists don't just say "yes, thank you very much", but rather seize the opportunity to keep going: "yes, thanks, and now to my second question...".


4) Rude people

There are only two acceptable answers to the above-mentioned "did the answer satisfy you" -question. In other words, it means "that's my answer, take it or leave it", with a slight undertone of "if you think I was unclear we should talk more about this over coffee, but let's move to other things". So, the accepted answers are "Yes, thank you very much" and "For the most parts, yes, but I'd like to continue about this topic over coffee". The latter is strictly reserved for senior scientists. Students have no right to "book" speakers for coffee company. They need to queue to get their turn to exchange ideas (and promote themselves in hopes of being offered a job). Needless to say, some people fail to follow this rule (the annoying show-off postgraduates often break both these rules), and use the rudest possible answer: "Not really, but I guess we don't have more time to go into this now". Which directly points to the fact that the speaker run 2 minutes over in the presentation and the discussion will need to be cut short.

Amazing...

You've seen it in sci-fi films, but now it is reality. The multi-touch interactive screen developed by researchers in NYU. This is absolutely amazing, just check out the video and screenshots!

Hmm, seems like the whole world is trying to see how this thing works, and the video servers are refusing connection. I promise, it's worth trying again...

University Library

Q: What do the University Library staff and terrorists have in common?

A: You can't negotiate with either.

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Q: What is the difference between University Library staff and terrorists?

A: The terrorists sometimes give the impression they might be willing to negotiate.

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OK, I admit, it was my fault to return the books late, and to have only £7.50 with me instead of the £7.70 the fines made up. Still, I wasn't too pleased to hear that you have to pay either "all or nothing" of your fines, and as long as you have ANY outstanding fines (be it .20 or 2159.20), you are not allowed to loan any books or renew your loans. So, I needed to run back to the faculty, luckily found the missing .20 in my backpack, run back, and pay the fine, before finally managing to renew the loans. To be fair, they were flexible enough to keep the 7 books I had from various parts of the huge library on the loan desk, so that I didn't have to wait for the day it usually takes them to reshelf those books and then look them up again.

As the keeper of invaluable literary treasures, the UL is very strict about which books can be read where. Also, only a fraction of the books are on the "open stack", and can be taken out of the library. One "patron" is also only allowed 10 books out at once. The most restricted material (apart from the truly old and rare books and manuscripts that you are not allowed to even talk about without a letter of reference co-signed by the vice-chancellor, Queen, and the Archbishop of Canterbury) is delivered on request to the West Room. This material is for example soft-bound journals, pamphlets etc. that are vulnerable for wear and tear.

West Room has a couple of copy machines, for taking copies of the material that can't be taken out of that room. Once I had literally only 3 pages to copy (a short article in a journal), I had come to the UL just for the purpose, and had the material fetched for me. But I wasn't allowed to take the copies, since the person in charge of the room had decided to be absolutely rigid about the shut-down time of those machines 15 minutes before closing time of the room, and the guy using the copy machine before me was truly taking his time... Again, I could have gone there earlier, but since I thought I could do a quick 40 second copy-thingy just about any time, I had left it late. Since she surely saw me waiting there in line for 10 minutes, I would have thought she might have allowed me an extra minute or two, but I guess it wasn't my day.

To be fair, the staff in the UL are really good in finding the stuff you need among the 7 million + items they have in stock. And if they don't have it, they can get it from elsewhere. And they are genuinely helpful if you have an intellectually challenging data-mining operation you need their help for. But when it's about something mundane and boring like photocopying or renewing loans, the statutes start to speak through them, and it's all rules and policy from there on.

Happy happy joy joy...

People often perceive us Finns as being quiet, inwardly people with a more-than-latent tendency for depression. Quite accurate, I'd say. This is now also confirmed in a popular poll in Finland.

The three most popular songs in Finland in 2005 were (my translations): "I'm Falling", "It Didn't Go Like That" and "Let's Cancel the Wedding". None of that artificial pseudo-happy have-a-nice-day -rubbish for us. :-)


The victorious orchestra Yölintu (Nightbird) celebrating riotously as the results were announced (Pic © HS.fi)

Supervision

What makes Cambridge education special? Apart from the opportunities to row (to row as in 'row, row, row your boat', not as in 'row with your parents over bedtimes') it must be the emphasis on one-to-one and small group teaching. For all of the 'papers' the undergraduates take, they are assigned a supervisor; someone whose responsibility it is to make sure the students do their homework and learn the things they need to for that paper. The supervisors make the students write essays, give presentations, quiz them about the reading, organise mock exams (to perfect that "Cambridge exam answer" style) and in general ensure that they have understood the lectures given by the professors and lecturers. The supervisions usually take place in groups of 1-8, 3 or 4 being the typical group size.

Interestingly, organising this supervision (and paying for it) is in the responsibility of the colleges, not the departments who provide the lectures. Usually, it is the more junior members, junior fellows, post docs, and postgraduates who give the supervisions, since it is a bit tedious and has to do with going through the basics over and over again, correcting essays etc. Plus, the postgrads and postdocs never say no to extra income...

Since small-group supervisions are the bedrock of Cambridge academic excellence, you can imagine me being not just a little scared when I was asked to start giving supervisions myself a year ago. Coming from a system that is completely different, I had no idea what the supervisions were about, but was nevertheless very keen to get involved. In Finland we had "small group teaching" only when the course was so obscure nobody was interested in it. I went through many courses in my MA by just emailing the professor once to let him/her know I'm going to take the book exam, and the only reply I got was the grade after it was all done.

In Cambridge, I had had supervisions with my own PhD supervisor, but those were always one-to-one and about my project, not about any course or lecture. So graduate supervising (which exists in Finland as well) has nothing to do with undergraduate supervision. Having never sat a Cambridge examination, I also had no idea on how "demanding" I should be. I didn't know whether the students were expected to be argumentative (which of course is the general Cambridge style) and how much detail they needed to know to support their argumentation (essentially, what's the balance between content and rhetorics). Since the topic of the paper was linked to natural science, I had to also find out how much of the physics and equations etc. I could demand from the poor humanities students. I got some very good tips and instructions from my own supervisor, who was the lecturer of that paper, but eventually had to just follow my instincts.

The university organises courses for new supervisors, but the content of these seems to be geared for people who don't have a clue about or ability for interpersonal communication. I skipped the course, because having chaired and attended literally hundreds of meetings I didn't think those would be the problematic issues for me. There was no course where the international postgrads would get a in-a-nutshell -introduction to the British education system, Cambridge examinations and course requirements. That I would have attended.

In the first supervision I was petrified. Not so much because I felt I didn't know what I was talking about, since I had spent countless hours preparing myself and reading the course reading list in advance (something I've now learned is not the usual practice...), but because they seemed to believe every word I said, and even worse, were writing them down!

Much of the material on that course (in which I'm supervising again this year, much more confidently, and needing about 10% of the preparation time I did last year) was very basic, in fact so basic that I hadn't looked at it since my very first undergrad years 10 years ago. So I needed to do a lot of work to check my facts, read the material and re-learn the things properly myself. I truly agree with the old saying that you don't really know anything until you've taught it to someone else. Teaching something means that you need to be exact with your terminology, know all its connections to other areas, have an idea of the relevance of it and finally, you need a way to express yourself accurately and clearly. Plus, I found out, it's great fun.

At least with motivated and smart students. I've been lucky, since all the people I've had the pleasure to supervise, have been just that. Some seem to rely more on their wits than hard work, while others are so engaged with extracurricular activities that they have very little to no time to do their assignments "properly". But I think these are fair enough excuses, as long as the student shows progress. Students need to live and experience things as well as learn the books, I think.

So, teaching is fun and useful. Also time-consuming if you want to do it properly. And I think it would be extremely irresponsible not to. Even though the exam marks are not the most important thing in the world, they have an effect on people's future opportunities. Giving people the chance to do their best in the exams is what supervisions are for. You can't do anyone's work for them, but you can motivate them to put the necessary effort in, and by giving good feedback you can help them improve.

And as a postgraduate student I need supervision as well. My supervisor is a star, and has helped me immensely to get where I am now. He has opened my eyes in many ways. But still, perhaps the best individual piece of feedback I ever got, was earlier this week from a visiting professor. He had come to see my talk (the story below), didn't like it, and wanted to give me personal feedback over lunch. I'm still analysing his feedback. Not so much for the content of it, since it was clear enough. (And as I said, I sort of try to forget the talk...)

What was stunning was the way he gave his feedback. It was so constructive: even though his evaluation of the talk was negative, his feedback sounded positive. He wasn't trying to find the positive things in the talk, since there weren't many, but he focused on things I should do differently next time. He was analysing the kinds of audiences I might encounter, the relevant points in my research for those groups, and how the talk could be structured so that it would better reflect the interesting aspects of my research (which he likes very much). I really, really appreciate the time he gave me, and the honest, direct, even blunt feedback. It all seems so clear now. I now know what kind of a talk I would give next time around. Even more clearly, his comments showed me what kind of a supervision and feedback I'd like to learn to give myself.

(Picture: Johann Friedrich Greuter: Socrates and his students)

LEGO difference engine

A couple of weeks ago I wrote about Charles Babbage's difference engine in Science Museum. And today I found out that Andy Carol has built a similar thing, using LEGO. These things always make me smile. I used to play a lot with LEGO as a kid. But I never felt like building difference engines or harpsichords out of them, though. (EDIT: there's one made of Meccano as well...)

These small building blocks offer limitless possibilities, and while the basic blocks are - well, "blocky", the creative and imaginative minds of children will smoothen out the rough edges and turn the lumps of cubes into sleek spaceships, ray-guns and supercars, houses, castles and treasure chests.

A friend of mine was looking for a birthday present for a nephew of hers, and I suggested LEGO. Unfortunately it seems that all they have in local toy shops were some LEGO Bionic monsters and such. What happened to the sets of basic blocks and the more generic cars, ships, planes etc.? If I wanted teenage idiot ninja mutants I would probably go and get them, but since when did LEGO get involved in this shoot-explode-bang-bang ADHD-inducing no-concentration-what-so-ever -lunacy?

The great thing about the old sets was that you would build the "intended" thing, a plane or a car, just once. Then you'd take the thing apart, and add the pieces to your big box of LEGO, where they would get a new life. As long as the blocks were generic enough, and could serve many purposes. The idea was always in the blocks, not in the pre-determined particular way of putting them together to form the thing in the cover of the box. That's why LEGO was always such a perfect gift, it could never fail. Sometimes there were exciting special parts in the boxes, that would be adopted for something completely different just seconds after the original model was built. The propeller was soon stripped of its wings, because the rest of the part looked like a jet, and jet engines are cooler than propellers. Antennas would be used as swords for LEGO men. Roof tiles became spoilers for supercars.

To all the LEGO people out there: don't ruin the whole idea, stop pre-determining and overdefining the sets, blocks and designs.



(Pics: Andy Carol & Henry Lim)

Around the world - and beyond! (to Kent)

Steve Fossett is on his way with the Virgin GlobalFlyer. He is trying to fly further than any other plane, around the world once and then cross the Atlantic ocean and finally land in England, in Kent.

For a normal, even a frequent flyer, crossing the Atlantic is just about long enough haul. Steve (age 61), however, is planning to circumnavigate the globe for a warm-up before that. And while I don't need to spend 80 or even 8 hours in a plane to complain about abysmal airline food and lack of leg space, Fossett is crammed into the tiny cockpit with nothing but milkshakes to eat/drink.

On the other hand, I bet he doesn't have to wait worriedly for his luggage to arrive, or spend hours in customs or passport control queues. Also, he probably has a car to pick him up from the airport and so he misses the fun of trying to get onto a bus or a train with suitcases and bags. He will probably miss the opportunity to buy tax-free goods, but I'm sure that if he really likes the calendar-torch-pen or miniature jumbo that are usually for sale in Virgin Atlantic planes, his buddy Richard can send one for him.

The plastic wing with fueltanks is at this moment entering Africa.

Presentation

Phew. Had to give a talk in the faculty colloquia series. This is a series of weekly talks by invited speakers and our own graduate students. The audience is mostly from our faculty. This sounds nice enough, familiar crowd and so on. Unfortunately, I'm in a "special" branch of the faculty that does very different things from the rest of the people. And there is not much communication in between the two "camps", since there aren't many commonalities: approaches, methods, backgrounds etc. are all very different. Typically for an academic institution, there's actually more or less open hostility between the two groups.

So I knew that it would be a tough crowd. There are a couple of professors of the "dark side" who take pride in their total ignorance of and contempt for the work we do. There's only one correct way to do research: theirs. Anyway, I like to provoke ignorant people and enjoy the challenge of being put to the spot. But it is very, very difficult to prepare a presentation that would be general and approachable enough so that the audience would get something from it, but also detailed enough to qualify as an academic talk. And my problem is, and will always be, the multidisciplinary framework: writing a catchy story is difficult, when you need to visit and revisit so many different starting points and theories.

I think I did reasonably well with the structure. There was a bit of repetition, and I forgot to mention one crucial thing, but other than that, it was all right. I started with a silly joke and ended with the picture I posted above.

But I am not happy about how the thing in between went. I was finished with preparing the presentation too late to have a proper run-through before the actual lecture, so I found myself babbling senselessly every now and then. A couple of times, the PowerPoint surprised me by bringing up a slide I didn't remember including... Also, I said things too vaguely and lost all the elegance and nice formulations of sentences I had in mind when preparing the talk.

On the other hand, surprisingly, I kept time very well. I usually run over. And I answered most questions well, which I knew I would do. Also, I have to say that apart from one demonstration of ignorance, the questions were pretty good.

But, as an overall grade, I'd have to give myself a low pass. I didn't want to write this entry yesterday, because I was too mad about the whole thing, and would have used my annual quota of curse words before finishing the first paragraph.

I got polite, positive feedback from people, but I can tell when the feedback is positive for politeness, and when it is genuine. And I hate, absolutely hate to "underwhelm" people. Many of my colleagues (both from "my" side of the faculty and the other) said beforehand that they were really looking forward to my talk, and I feel I disappointed them. But mostly, I disappointed myself, since I know I can do so much better. I didn't get the nice feeling of being in control of the crowd, and providing them with something they can relate to, but also surprises them and makes them see things in another light. I felt they left with having just listened to another talk, and not with a better understanding on how we do things on our side, and perhaps an idea of how they could use that n their work.

I think I had a bit of an attitude problem, I took this lecture as a "necessary evil" and left the preparation too late. The lack of rehearsal was an amateur mistake, and I'm not professional enough as a public speaker to compensate for lack of preparation.

But then again. I'm being very hard on myself here, as there were good things in it, and it wasn't a disaster or anything. It's just the discrepancy between expectations and delivery. I'm used to having it the other way around, delivering more than people expect, and now swinging to the other direction was not fun at all. But now the "necessary evil" is behind me, I survived it, and can go on with my work. And make a real killer of a presentation next time around.

Onni on...

...megapitkän työpäivän jälkeen, jääkaapin ammottaessa tyhjyyttään, pakastimen perukoilta löydetty, ystävän aikoinaan Suomesta tuliaisiksi tuoman RUISLIMPUN neljännes. Kiitos!

(Can't be translated. At any level. Sorry. :-) )