Jamie’s Weblog

It seems that one dog felt a little left out of the International Rules match
update: BBC News have finally picked up on the story

Doing a PhD is like living in a cave. You can hibernate for a while, sheltering from the fierce winds and harse conditions of the real world. It gives you time to work on something creative, like putting up an umbrella - it’s easier to put up an umbrella in a cave than [...]

If smart people question themselves and the validity of their work, I must be a fucking genius.

I use Subversion as a version control repository for all my source code and I’m now using it to store all the documents, papers, reports or presentations that I write.
Here’s a tip (based on my current setup):
Store your bibliography, which is probably common across many documents, in a folder /trunk/phd/references
Store your documents in [...]

The Penguin Dictionary of Mathematics. They should really issue this to every student as they pass out the college gates for the last time. “You’ve passed your exam but you will have forgotten it all in about 15secs. Here’s a book to remind you…”
I’ve got this nice paperback edition with rounded corners [...]

The International Sunbelt Social Network Conference will be held in February, 2005. The conference is described as
“an interdisciplinary venue for social scientists, mathematicians, computer scientists, ethnologists, and others to present current work in the area of social networks”
I should really try to submit a good paper there but the conference is being held in… [...]

So, last week The Guardian launched a campaign to avoid a Republican vistory in Clark County, Ohio. To do this, they will send the address of a registered voter in this county to Guardian reader that request one, allowing politically-minded Brits to try and persuade them to vote against Bush. It’s a novel [...]

Ireland beat the Aussie team in the first round of the International rules test. Ireland 77, Australia 41.
Frankly, I’m not that interested in sport but it reminded me that this time last year we were in Melbourne watching the second match (which Ireland also won, but lost the test). I miss our trip. [...]

Why do they bother? Why does United Pictures insist on showing their little intro sequence before every film or trailer they make? Why do we have the roaring MGM lion? This type of brand advertising would make sense if there was the possibility of brand loyality but for cinema-goers there isn’t. [...]

I can’t say I’m a fan of William Gibson’s writing - I’ve made it to about page 5 of Neuromancer - but this joke is quite amusing for a Friday morning (it is a joke right? nothing sounds implausible these days).