Inspiration. Some people find it on quiet strolls through the country. Some people find it through seeing enormous furniture on Hampstead Heath. Baseball players, apparently, find it through putting cabbage leaves under their hats, although that practice was today banned in South Korea. Me, I prefer coffee and doughnuts.
Having not taken the development of the Mousehole/Frog Monster universe seriously since scribing the conclusion to the Frog Monster story on the beach in New Zealand a couple of years ago, focusing instead on the curry-travel-write-up-thing, I decided this was to be the week of returning to the world of AZCC, netside connections and the spiralling inevitability of global consciousness. A week of genuine I'm-not-doing-any-work holiday. A week of no commitments to be Doing Things. A week of sitting down with the notebooks (both paper- and silicon-based) and hacking out the next story in the series. And for this, I need inspiration.
The overall story arc has been there for some time, although it's more a fractal than an arc. The plan was to zoom in Mandelbrot-style and focus on particular subsections of the story, which would in turn become stories in their own right. If I hadn't been so distracted with 'Six Months' and this AKTing lark, maybe I'd have written more than two by this point. But the world I created while sitting on the roof all those years ago refuses to go away, the characters refuse to leave me alone, often returning on sleepless nights around 2am when the baseball isn't sufficient to put me to sleep.
Among these characters is one I've come to regard as a friend, albeit at a distance. Wounded One has a depth not so obvious in her contemporaries, although I'm sure they have their levels too. Wounded One has a story of hurt and betrayal more corporate than personal. While a lot of her past can be traced in my own experience at more than one company, her response to these wounds is utterly different to my own: she still believes in the core of what her job was and she continues to perform it, day by day, in her own way and in her own settings. There's a fear in letting go as much as a flat-out belief in what she does, but mainly she continues because it would be too difficult to change. Not yet, not yet. She has to finish the work. So every day, she dresses the part (usually dirty denims and non-descript light-coloured sweater) and commutes to the West End. Her playground, where she spends all her days.
Wounded One is twenty-seven, maybe twenty-eight, and sees her science as art, or at least as elegant mathematics. She takes the problems of the human brain and the interface to it so expertly created by her predecessors, looking to break through the beyond the most basic understanding of the subconscious. Jung's Sea, as William Gibson once called it, and instead of just noting what happens when you throw something in this sea, Wounded One is obsessively interested in noting its tidal patterns, the nature of its waves, the strange monsters that lurk within. At night she sleeps alone, haunted by these same waves that may at once be hers and someone else’s.
As I sit under the apple tree this hot June afternoon, smelling the sneeze-inducing grass from next door's garden, I watch the breeze blowing the leaves a couple of feet above my head and see an apple fall down, the same action that inspired Newton centuries ago to figure out it was gravity (rather than, say, love) that made things fall. I wonder about the route he took to reach that conclusion, the thought processes that had to take place even to open up the possibility of the inspiration hitting at the moment. As my own research heads increasingly towards the study of scientific development and Kuhnian analyses of such turning points, it becomes increasingly clear that there are no formulae for development and prediction. Things happen stop-start, breakthroughs occur on a non-regular basis and stagnation is as likely as steady development in any scientific discipline. When breakthroughs do come, the catalysts are usually unrelated to the work itself: wars and paradigm crises seem to be the mother of invention. Plucking the fish from Jung’s Sea may require both a crisis context and an apple moment.
Wounded One scoffs at me. She is happier with her research than I could ever be with mine. She already has many of the answers, she just can’t tell anyone. She doesn’t care about the big picture and scientific revolutions, she just wants one more answer, one final response to the big question of her day: if I connect my mind to your mind via the netside connection, and you are afraid of spiders, will I also become afraid of spiders?
The battle between the rational and the irrational, the ego and id, the conscious and the subconscious rages, in all generations. And as soon as we think we have the answer, our dreams jump out and surprise us again. For all our measurement, the twin agents of irrationality – pride and neuroses – come out time and again to remind us: ‘no, you don’t know it all.’
Fuelled by scars and driven by a desire deeper than she herself can understand, Wounded One at least has the guts to stand up and say ‘maybe not, but I’m certainly going to try.’ And thereby points to an inspiration deeper than I’ve experienced myself.
That said, the cabbage thing might be just as good.
Wednesday, June 22, 2005
Wednesday, June 15, 2005
15 June 2005: 5 Mins
As I write this, the Podium area of KMi at the Open University, Milton Keynes, is empty, apart from me. It's 8.59am, and the agenda shown on the big screen in front of me distinctly tells of a 9am start. Still, I would guess everyone's still in bed, recovering from the excitement of yesterday. Get a bunch of AKTors together and you can guarantee there'll be much talking about semantic enablement, ontology mapping and potato-powered computers (please stand up Steve and Nick). And much drinking too, no doubt.
Yes, it's that time again, the AKT six-monthly workshop has this time gathered in the sunny climes of Milton Keynes, a town of which it is unfair to say it has no soul: perhaps it simply has yet to discover it? This is Day Two, Day One having been filled with the yes-it-actually-happened-this-time Doctoral Colloquium, which featured myself and a few other misfits chairing a series of talks and posters by the various PhD students from around AKT, the best part of which was holding up the '5 Mins' and '2 Mins' signs when they waffled for too long. My talk, inevitably, turned to the discussion of the definition of 'semiometrics': AKT has its own definition, but the rest of the world seem to have settled on something different. Which isn't usually a problem for AKT - the normal solution is simply to put either of the words 'Semantic' or 'AKTive' in front of it and therein solve the problem. 'Semantic Semiometrics' though... sounds more like one of the possibilities that the Random Band Name Generator came up with for Martyn's group.
Later followed the cheese and wine session, which featured a wide variety of cheese and a greater amount of wine (adding further weight to my theory that everyone's hung over, given that the time is now 9.10am, the agenda still says 9am and I'm still the only one here), followed by me heading back to Aylesbury to see Gareth, Helen and the new Imogen baby. All of which is very nice, although Gareth looks like he's about two days short of sleep (he should listen to my talk on semiometrics, that would put him out), but that's five-week old babies for you. Still, she's growing faster than my overdraft and seems to be doing very well indeed, leading Gloria to ask if there was a rival for my affections, another girl she should be watching out for. I confirmed that was indeed the case.
Well, more coffee I think, and then perhaps I'll do a little work. Unless, perchance, people start showing up. Hasn't happened yet though.
Maybe the clocks changed and nobody told me?
Postscript: First person joins me at 9.19am.
Yes, it's that time again, the AKT six-monthly workshop has this time gathered in the sunny climes of Milton Keynes, a town of which it is unfair to say it has no soul: perhaps it simply has yet to discover it? This is Day Two, Day One having been filled with the yes-it-actually-happened-this-time Doctoral Colloquium, which featured myself and a few other misfits chairing a series of talks and posters by the various PhD students from around AKT, the best part of which was holding up the '5 Mins' and '2 Mins' signs when they waffled for too long. My talk, inevitably, turned to the discussion of the definition of 'semiometrics': AKT has its own definition, but the rest of the world seem to have settled on something different. Which isn't usually a problem for AKT - the normal solution is simply to put either of the words 'Semantic' or 'AKTive' in front of it and therein solve the problem. 'Semantic Semiometrics' though... sounds more like one of the possibilities that the Random Band Name Generator came up with for Martyn's group.
Later followed the cheese and wine session, which featured a wide variety of cheese and a greater amount of wine (adding further weight to my theory that everyone's hung over, given that the time is now 9.10am, the agenda still says 9am and I'm still the only one here), followed by me heading back to Aylesbury to see Gareth, Helen and the new Imogen baby. All of which is very nice, although Gareth looks like he's about two days short of sleep (he should listen to my talk on semiometrics, that would put him out), but that's five-week old babies for you. Still, she's growing faster than my overdraft and seems to be doing very well indeed, leading Gloria to ask if there was a rival for my affections, another girl she should be watching out for. I confirmed that was indeed the case.
Well, more coffee I think, and then perhaps I'll do a little work. Unless, perchance, people start showing up. Hasn't happened yet though.
Maybe the clocks changed and nobody told me?
Postscript: First person joins me at 9.19am.
Tuesday, June 07, 2005
7 June 2005: Echoes
The BBC are today doing "One Day In Iraq", taking a look at daily life in Baghdad, Mosul, Basra et al., looking at the blogs of the ordinary people who live there.
BBC, that is so last month.
Meantime, IsraCast (via Slashdot) report that an Israeli inventor has figured out how to make underwater diving apparatus that extracts the air dissolved in water, thus allowing the diver to breathe. Apparently it's the same principle used by fish (yes, most fish are small, but sharks are large) and could provide enough air for your average diver to stay down without big oxygen tanks on their back. Perhaps it's the only bit of the Phantom Menace (relevant part of that link is right at the bottom of the page) that was slightly predictive and therefore better than slamming your head in a car door, the baseline Mark Kermode uses as a standard against which he measures the Star Wars prequels.
BBC, that is so last month.
Meantime, IsraCast (via Slashdot) report that an Israeli inventor has figured out how to make underwater diving apparatus that extracts the air dissolved in water, thus allowing the diver to breathe. Apparently it's the same principle used by fish (yes, most fish are small, but sharks are large) and could provide enough air for your average diver to stay down without big oxygen tanks on their back. Perhaps it's the only bit of the Phantom Menace (relevant part of that link is right at the bottom of the page) that was slightly predictive and therefore better than slamming your head in a car door, the baseline Mark Kermode uses as a standard against which he measures the Star Wars prequels.
Monday, June 06, 2005
6 June 2005: Shorts
Yes, I know I didn't blog last week. I've been busy, what with the AKT PhD conference to organise, the Fujitsu work, some IFD proposals on 'health of discipline' (what is an IFD, anyway?), some more Citeseer bits and pieces and some stuff I didn't really understand from Norway's equivalent of EPrints. Not forgetting the fact that at some point I really need to do some of my own research.
But fear not. If you thought my blog was bad, consider Ahmed's Blog, the diary of an Iraqi young man. Far from falling into any of the categories mentioned in my previous entry on Iraqi blogs, Ahmed seems to have simply realised that maybe blogging isn't for him. I hope he isn't disappointed that his is not my favrouite blog.
Incidentally, for a good fun puzzle and an answer that will make you groan, have a look at Maas's blog from Mosul. The puzzle is here, and the answer here. Made me smile to think that such things can be considered even in the midst of the situation Maas describes in her blog.
Now, back to the juggling act of my own work...
But fear not. If you thought my blog was bad, consider Ahmed's Blog, the diary of an Iraqi young man. Far from falling into any of the categories mentioned in my previous entry on Iraqi blogs, Ahmed seems to have simply realised that maybe blogging isn't for him. I hope he isn't disappointed that his is not my favrouite blog.
Incidentally, for a good fun puzzle and an answer that will make you groan, have a look at Maas's blog from Mosul. The puzzle is here, and the answer here. Made me smile to think that such things can be considered even in the midst of the situation Maas describes in her blog.
Now, back to the juggling act of my own work...
Saturday, May 28, 2005
28 May 2005: Prison
Unusual for me to link to a messageboard thread, but this one contains word of warning. Never become a mailman in California. Sheesh!
Thursday, May 26, 2005
26 May 2005: Monobrow
Bill Bailey sings a tribute song to the monobrowed purveyor of ultimate filth, a song that begins thus:
"Beautiful ladies in danger,
Danger all round the world,
I will protect them,
Because I am Chris De Burgh....
Beautiful ladies in emergency situations."
Apparently, it's all true. And she's only eight.
All together now:
"Kill kill kill kill, kill the trolls,
Look under the bridges, that's where they hide."
"Beautiful ladies in danger,
Danger all round the world,
I will protect them,
Because I am Chris De Burgh....
Beautiful ladies in emergency situations."
Apparently, it's all true. And she's only eight.
All together now:
"Kill kill kill kill, kill the trolls,
Look under the bridges, that's where they hide."
Wednesday, May 25, 2005
25 May 2005: Daily
It has not escaped the attention of numerous correspondents that despite the name of this Blog, I actually refer to AKT rather less often than I refer to politics, football, baseball or even emailing the Pope.
OK, I admit it, my daily life in Bay 10 of the Zepler Building isn't usually sufficiently interesting to merit inclusion in the exciting non-stop roller-coaster of fun that is this blog. I arrive around 9, do some coding or paper-writing, talk to Gloria for a bit over lunch, work some more in the afternoon then go home. Gym and football is often woven in there, as is the occasional meeting. Sometimes, if I'm just doing coding that day, I'll work from home. Thus rolls along the PhD research, this AKTing lark in its day-to-day form.
Presently, however, I'm working on a non-thesis-related piece of research, and it's made me realise that my daily routine is neither normal nor mundane by the standards of most people in the world. In particular, I've been looking at the writings of a number of fellow-bloggers, specifically those in Iraq. While my job is simply to build tools to do some automated natural-language extraction from their pages, it's hard not to glance at the content of the pages as I flick through them with my efficiently-constructed Java and Perl tools. And then you realise, it's not just an academic text extraction system, we're actually dealing with real lives here. Individual lives, people with families, upbringings, histories, favourite places, favourite ice-creams, aspirations, perspectives, cynicism, hopes and fears. No shortage of fears.
The daddy of them all is Salam Pax. He started blogging back in the days of Saddam and was openly critical of the regime, his only hiding place being his internet identity and assumed name. As the war came, he continued, describing daily life in the middle of the war, ostensibly for his friend Raed who couldn't always read his emails, but increasingly for a global audience who began to pay attention. I first heard of him when William Gibson spoke in glowing terms of this brave blogger who was describing the war with an incisiveness none of us outside Iraq could begin to imagine. Pax, naturally, read Gibson's blog and for a couple of days there was some drool-inducing mutual appreciation, but overall Gibson was right: "My man Salam. I'm a total fan. Tells it like he sees it, and sees it like I can't." Salam's thoughts can now be read here.
Raed started his own blog, of course, and soon others popped on to the scene as the 2003 Iraq invasion quickly became the most-diaried war of all time. Riverbend, G, Alaa and the rest soon joined in, often referencing each other both in virtual and real life, leading to a fascinating intermeshing of community viewpoints, and many of them continue today. Some blogs make political points, some make religious points, some flat out make it all up, but almost all of them do something which television reports can't: they tell you what it's like to live a daily life through all this. What's it like to hide out in a small room with no electricity but still have a cellphone and a charged-up laptop with internet access? What's it like to have the security forces search your house so frequently it becomes something you prepare for? What do the frightened residents of Mosul and Basra have on their MP3 players and in their kitchens during these days? How about their pet cats?
The strangest thing is when you come across blogs that have clearly finished. Latest post usually quite a normal one in the context of the blog, but maybe dated September 2003 or January 2004. Some move on to new places (such as Salam), some ended their writing as the 'overthrow' phase of the military action drew to a conclusion and, most movingly, some finished because the author of the blog was blown up in a terrorist act or military push. It's often hard to tell because the blog just stops - just as you feel you're getting to know the person, reading their archives, suddenly it stops - and then a couple of days later, studying a totally different blog from the same timeframe, you read that such-and-such was killed and you think, oh, so that's what happened to them. And the friend you just made is gone, like that.
It's hard not to be affected, even in what is really an academic exercise in text processing. And it makes me realise more and more just how amazing daily life is for all of us, whether we recognise the fact or not.
OK, I admit it, my daily life in Bay 10 of the Zepler Building isn't usually sufficiently interesting to merit inclusion in the exciting non-stop roller-coaster of fun that is this blog. I arrive around 9, do some coding or paper-writing, talk to Gloria for a bit over lunch, work some more in the afternoon then go home. Gym and football is often woven in there, as is the occasional meeting. Sometimes, if I'm just doing coding that day, I'll work from home. Thus rolls along the PhD research, this AKTing lark in its day-to-day form.
Presently, however, I'm working on a non-thesis-related piece of research, and it's made me realise that my daily routine is neither normal nor mundane by the standards of most people in the world. In particular, I've been looking at the writings of a number of fellow-bloggers, specifically those in Iraq. While my job is simply to build tools to do some automated natural-language extraction from their pages, it's hard not to glance at the content of the pages as I flick through them with my efficiently-constructed Java and Perl tools. And then you realise, it's not just an academic text extraction system, we're actually dealing with real lives here. Individual lives, people with families, upbringings, histories, favourite places, favourite ice-creams, aspirations, perspectives, cynicism, hopes and fears. No shortage of fears.
The daddy of them all is Salam Pax. He started blogging back in the days of Saddam and was openly critical of the regime, his only hiding place being his internet identity and assumed name. As the war came, he continued, describing daily life in the middle of the war, ostensibly for his friend Raed who couldn't always read his emails, but increasingly for a global audience who began to pay attention. I first heard of him when William Gibson spoke in glowing terms of this brave blogger who was describing the war with an incisiveness none of us outside Iraq could begin to imagine. Pax, naturally, read Gibson's blog and for a couple of days there was some drool-inducing mutual appreciation, but overall Gibson was right: "My man Salam. I'm a total fan. Tells it like he sees it, and sees it like I can't." Salam's thoughts can now be read here.
Raed started his own blog, of course, and soon others popped on to the scene as the 2003 Iraq invasion quickly became the most-diaried war of all time. Riverbend, G, Alaa and the rest soon joined in, often referencing each other both in virtual and real life, leading to a fascinating intermeshing of community viewpoints, and many of them continue today. Some blogs make political points, some make religious points, some flat out make it all up, but almost all of them do something which television reports can't: they tell you what it's like to live a daily life through all this. What's it like to hide out in a small room with no electricity but still have a cellphone and a charged-up laptop with internet access? What's it like to have the security forces search your house so frequently it becomes something you prepare for? What do the frightened residents of Mosul and Basra have on their MP3 players and in their kitchens during these days? How about their pet cats?
The strangest thing is when you come across blogs that have clearly finished. Latest post usually quite a normal one in the context of the blog, but maybe dated September 2003 or January 2004. Some move on to new places (such as Salam), some ended their writing as the 'overthrow' phase of the military action drew to a conclusion and, most movingly, some finished because the author of the blog was blown up in a terrorist act or military push. It's often hard to tell because the blog just stops - just as you feel you're getting to know the person, reading their archives, suddenly it stops - and then a couple of days later, studying a totally different blog from the same timeframe, you read that such-and-such was killed and you think, oh, so that's what happened to them. And the friend you just made is gone, like that.
It's hard not to be affected, even in what is really an academic exercise in text processing. And it makes me realise more and more just how amazing daily life is for all of us, whether we recognise the fact or not.
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