28 June 2007: Bravely

What was that I said in my last blog about Tim Henman?

"My tip? Expect Tim to lose, bravely, later this week."

http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/tennis/6244822.stm

If you want the rest of the results before they happen, you'll have to pay me. Cheques payable to "The Wise Man In the Ninja E-Defence Grotto" please.

26 June 2007: Tennis

Bizarre sight here on Level 4 a few minutes ago. I was meandering through the lab and was suddenly faced by a whole slew of people walking out of the coffee room and back to their desks, all smiling.

Turns out they'd had the Wimbledon coverage on in the coffee room and they'd just witnessed Tim Henman winning his first-round match against Carlos Moya, an epic five-set battle eventually won 13-11 by Henman this afternoon after it just got too dark last night to finish the game.

"He won!" exclaimed one happy IAMer.

Of course he did. It's round one. Even though Timmy's powers are definitely waning, he's still a better tennis player than me, you or most of the rest of the world. He's a better player right now, for instance, than Jeremy Bates was at his peak, or Mark Petchey, or any of the other nonentity players we used to cheer wildly for as they bravely lost in the second round or, maybe once in their careers, played with real heart and incredible luck to make it through to the fourth round. And it seems to me that the optimism and excitement shown today much more closely mirrors those good ol' days than the last ten or twelve years when we've had at least one (always male) player with a not-totally-unrealistic shot at actually winning the thing.

My tip? Expect Tim to lose, bravely, later this week.

My reason for meandering through the lab, incidentally, was to do with the still-tight deadline for graduating this year. Despite getting the amended thesis back from the bindery and actually handing it in, the process remains every-so-slightly incomplete as Dr Les, my internal examiner, still hadn't (as of this morning) handed over the necessary paperwork to the admin folks. So a quick chat with Dr Les (during which he assured me - and I repeat this for reasons of public record - that he will get it done before he leaves today) and that was, hopefully, that.

Meaning not only will the visiting relatives from the US be able to see me graduate this year (passports pending...) but I'll also be in the same graduation ceremony as my second bunch of students to whom I had the joy of teaching programming. Their results came out on Friday and showed a slew of 2.1s but just one first-class honours degree being awarded: congratulations to Kerry, and indeed to the rest of them.

25 June 2007: Norwegian Blue

This was the scene from the lakehouse in Hamar over in Norway. Not bad, especially considering the sunset lasts a good three hours at this time of year.

We were there a week ago but today's the first chance I've had to blog about it, what with visiting IBM for three days of ITA stuff, racing to get the thesis signed off and to the bindery in time to graduate this year (it's looking hopeful for Thursday's deadline - Dr Les said 'ok' and the bindery said 'we'll turn it around in two days if you give us lots of money'). Not to mention the laptop dying over the weekend, of which more anon.

Norway first: we went as Gloria's college buddy Kelly met and married this nice (and very tall) gentleman named Vegar, a Tolkein-loving Norwegian. They were married in Texas back in December (and we were there for that ceremony), but decided to wait for the good weather in Norway (about three days of the year, I gather) to hold their 'blessing' ceremony - like a wedding, but with the vows in the past (past-continuous I suppose) tense. So over we went, paying £160 for 2 return train tickets from Southampton to Stansted and £20 for two return flights from Stansted to Norway (there's a time, incidentally, where irony over prices is overtaken by sheer bewilderment at the price differential). Flew into "Oslo (Torp)", which is naturally nowhere near Oslo (it's like having an airport named London (Manchester)), bussed and railed it through the capital and a couple of hours north to Hamar, not far from Lillehammer (of Winter Olympics fame), and stayed with Kelly's family in a gorgeous lakeside cabin affording the almost continuous sunset view above. Celebrations all went well of course, and there are more photos online at: http://www.duncmcrae.com/norway.html if you'd like to take a look.

Back home, of course, things were a little crazy. The stupidly-large eucalyptus tree is now gone from the garden (due, I'm happy to report, to tree surgery rather than high winds - photos also available at the above link); the car engine no longer smokes; the thesis is signed off and at the bindery and the laptop is, well, currently undergoing a form of therapy known locally as "a complete reinstall of Windows because Microsoft, Intel and Dell can't get their act together".

The reason? Try a Google search on: ialmrnt "infinite loop" and find a nasty problem to do with graphics cards, driver updates and the Blue Screen Of Death, a problem about which Dell support seem (from these sites) to be in continuous denial. All I did was allow Windows Update to perform a driver update for me, which it duly did, and naturally asked to restart the computer. When it did, it started ok, let me log in, but as it was running through its startup script (and before it gave me the chance to open anything), up popped (ever so briefly) the BSOD, and the computer then immediately restarted. Logged in again, waited 10 seconds, there's the flash of Blue Screen and reboot. And again. And again.

Eventually I got the camera out and started trying to snap the message on the blue screen before it vanished. After about eight attempts I got this, and discovered that something nasty was going on with this ialmrnt thing causing an infinite loop. The solution? Roll back the driver! Of course! Except the computer reboots itself before I can do anything, and good ol' Dell/Windows/whomever is responsible for such things have elected not to give me a "start up in safe mode" option (of course, that itself may not have worked either, but it would have been nice to try).

So out came the Windows XP disk, let's try rescuing this Windows installation. Well - it worked, kind of: a whole slew of "missing DLL" error boxes came up in the process, but eventually (and very slowly) it did let me back in to Windows. Of course, the Wireless connection threw lots of errors and Internet Explorer and many other things were totally corrupted; so all there is to do is to back up all the nice photos from Norway on to a safe place (thankfully the CD writer was still operational) and attempt a total format-and-reinstall-and-do-it-again-from-scratch. Currently the format operation is at 23% - maybe it will finish in time for a spot of lunch.

Or dinner, at this rate.

Vegar is right: PC bad, Mac good. Or maybe Macs are just as bad, they just look better when they fail?

10 June 2007: Doctor

Very little time to blog this morning as we're off to London on the yes-you-can-actually-go-to-London-for-one-pound Megabus. And the eucalyptus tree is to start being chopped down this morning so I need to get some photos of that before it goes to remember just how disproportionally huge it is compared to the garden and house we're currently renting.

But it's probably important to note a milestone event in this AKTing Lark which took place on Friday morning, a 'viva voce' meeting between three professors and myself at which, subject to minor revisions, my thesis was successfully defended (somewhat vigorously at a couple of points) and thus I became Doctor Duncan. Got to turn the whole thing round and get the final hard-bound versions handed in by June 26 in order to graduate this year, but the wonders of email, word-processing and laser printing mean this is actually a relatively simple process, give or take going to London/London/Norway (as is happening this week, and yes London is deliberately mentioned in that list twice).

I'm not totally sure of the implications of this successful outcome for the rest of my life but graduation will take place at a ceremony on 23 July, at which I expect to receive my Tardis.

Happy days!

Postscript: What kind of dictionary does Blogger use such that the spellcheck function doesn't recognise 'Tardis'?

23 May 2007: Final AKT

It's time to dispel some rumours.

• There will be no immediate takeover of Southampton Football Club. Yes, they're in a bid situation, but nothing is imminent and it may be that missing out on promotion means Saints are much more likely to be the next Leeds rather than the next Chelsea.
• My head operation went well and I am alive and healthy, despite the frighteningly massive gash and stitches currently on display to anyone slightly taller than me. The surgery took a little over thirty minutes, the first twenty of which were spent trying to stop the bleeding that took place after the initial incision. Conversation (local anaesthetic, you see) went as follows:
  Doctor Armstrong: You've got a very healthy heart.
  Me: Why do you say that?
  Doctor Armstrong: You're bleeding heavily.
  Stitches come out next Tuesday.
• Virgin births are possible among sharks, although any babies will only ever have mummy DNA and thus will be girls. Raising the interesting if theologically unsound notion that Jesus could, just possibly, have been a female shark.
• This blog is not actually about AKT, nor has it ever been. Proof of this will be evidenced by the next blog entry after this one, because today is the final day of AKT, ever.

To give a little background to the uninitiated (which, frankly, is most of the world, including a number of people in my research group), AKT stands for Advanced Knowledge Technologies and has been a six-year five-university research project aimed at inter-disciplinary research. Admittedly, it would be fairer to label it inter-sub-disciplinary since almost everyone involved is a Computer Scientist in some way (even me), but still it's been all about promoting smart computing which, almost since the start, has meant 'Semantic Web'.

The Semantic Web, of course, may in time turn out to be another myth to be dispelled, but for now it's Sir Tim's vision of a web where URIs are used to represent things with some degree of consistency, RDF is used to describe the relationships between these things, and SPARQL is a query language where you can ask about such relationships. Of course, there's a lot more to it than that (rdf:seeAlso ontology), and there's something about owls in there too, but essentially that's the vision. And since 2001, AKT has been pursuing this with a fair degree of effort.

And today it ends. Some people from the Research Council are in town, along with a few other important folks, to review the project, look at some posters and have a spot of lunch. Us AKTors are gathered for the final time, hawking our wares (and indeed wearing our hawks) and generally showing off. From my perspective it's a little weird to be wearing a collar and tie and yet also have a huge gash in my head, but it's worth it for a project that has not only funded my PhD but helped me learn a lot about the semantic web, citation analysis and supervisors with too much on their plate (not necessarily in that order). I just hope they don't notice the scar and start asking about that instead of my work.

On the other hand, maybe I'll just tell them that now AKT has finished, they've let me take the implant out.

Be afraid...

18 May 2007: Imminent

The rumour mill is in overdrive. Sounds like there's an imminent bid for Southampton Football Club coming from person or persons unknown, but who might very well actually be Paul Allen from Microsoft.

The club's shares have been in 'bid condition' for a couple of weeks now, and now the playoff circus is out of the way, things seem to be actually on the move. In some ways it might just be rumours, of course, but these rumours smell a lot like the ones that had Harry coming to Saints late in 2004 and Harry scurrying off back down the M27 to fishtown last year. Sources seem to be reliable, and varied, so who knows what the summer holds for the Saints?

Can't say for sure just yet, but let's see what happens on the Stock Exchange... if anything...

Edit: As Becky points out, it's not yet July, as I previously stated in the title of this entry. Rumours have died down a little, although some sources predict an announcement as soon as Monday morning. If nothing happens by 18 July I'll be pretty disappointed. By the way, Nottingham Forest 2 - 5 Yeovil Town: what's that all about?

17 May 2007: Number Four

Got some strange looks walking through the level four lab this morning.

Simple enough reason: been to Mauro's again. And this time the radical haircut is nothing to do with Italy losing at football/rugby/World War II (delete as applicable) but instead I actually went in there and asked for "four on the top, two on the sides". The reason for this near-shaven buzz-cut is not that I've decided to audition for Ewan McGregor's role in 'Trainspotting', but instead I'm in for some brief head surgery on Monday where a local doctor will take a rusty scalpel and attempt to remove a sebaceous cyst from the top of my dome. A nice short haircut now means that it'll all grow back roughly together after the event... at least that's the theory.

But what it reminded me of, and devotees of previous incarnations of this missive (such as the Street Level Reports of 1997/98) will know about this, was the barber shop I used to go to when I first moved to London. Back in those days, a fresh-faced graduate from Southampton University's Department of Politics, I had relatively lengthy hair, which I didn't worry about getting cut until I'd been in London some two months. Eventually, however, the hair-in-the-eyes syndrome necessitated either something to tie it all back with, or a haircut, and I went with the chop option.

Of course it was one thing deciding to get a haircut, another entirely trying to find the right place. Hoxton, a small highly diverse corner of Hackney, featured roughly three such establishments. One had constantly-closed red curtains in the window, which scared me witless; the second, down by Old Street station, seemed to be shut most of the time. So on a dark Thursday evening in November, at about 6.30pm, I wandered into 'Dad's Unisex Hair Salon' on Hoxton Street, sat down and awaited my turn.

There were four barber chairs in the place, and three barbers working. I was fourth in line, so figured it wouldn't take too long to get me in and out. At one point, a small boy (maybe six years old) shouted at one of the barbers, "I'm next, innit?" and said barber instead pointed around the room, saying "It's 'im, then 'im, then 'im, then 'im, then you." My place in line was secure.

Two hours later I got to sit in the chair. I don't know why it took so long, but the sign on the wall saying "Barbers need a break too" seemed to be a statement of policy rather than a two-minute breather every so often. That said, the atmosphere in the place was fantastic. The humour was ongoing, and I was included in it even though I'd never been there before, and the older gentleman proprietor ("dads" was what they all called him) reminded me sufficiently of Norman Beaton to make me wonder if, despite being outside Peckham, the comedy show 'Desmond's' might actually be partly based on this place.

But I digress. I sat in the seat nearest the window and Andy set to work on my hair. Now, what I haven't mentioned so far, unless you picked it up from the Desmond's comment, was that this was something of a not-very-racially-integrated shop. In fact, I was the only white person there. Which was fine with me, and with them, but it meant one thing: Andy was not very confident when it came to cutting my lengthy, lifeless locks. His first comment, as I sat in the chair and he picked up a handful to begin the process was: "How am I supposed to cut this?" "Wiv' scissors," grinned Keith, working at the next seat along. "Man," replied Andy, "It's like cuttin' the grass, innit?"

Fully an hour later I emerged from the shop with a haircut akin to the one I sport today. Andy never actually did use scissors, but buzzed his way over my head several times until he was happy. Took forever, it seemed, but it was an experience I'll never forget. Over the months that followed I went back many times, usually during the day when it was less busy, and usually had a different barber each time. (How many of them worked there? I'll never know.) The one constant was the haircut: no matter what I asked for, however I asked for it, I would always get the buzz-cut, usually grade four on top and two on the sides. 'Dads' would occasionally play around with scissors before giving up and going to the buzzing machine, the others just got straight on with it.

After about three years of this, a gentleman from the flat upstairs informed me that the barber near Old Street station actually was pretty good and if you went at 8am he'd be open and willing. I tried it, got a normal haircut for a change, and never went back to Dad's. Mauro seems to be the Southampton equivalent of George, the barber from Old Street, except from Italy rather than Cyprus, and so I've been happily going there since moving back to the south coast.

Today, however, reminded me of those happy, bizarre days at Dad's when no matter what you asked for, you knew what you were going to get.