Andrzej's Adoxography

House party preparations are going well, viz:


(Clicky for large, label-legible image)

I've also got 19 alcoholic jellies setting in the fridge. But not your usual vodka - here we have Aftershock and raspberry. The vodka is currently being funnelled through a watermelon, to make fruit as nature intended (you know - alcoholic, but without having to wait for fermentation).

All go for Saturday... :)

Current Mood: excited
Current Music: Vetting Claire's party playlist

Hello everyone,

As you should now yourselves be presently aware of, my grammar sucks. Also I'm having a housewarming next weekend and it's pretty much turn up if you fancy and bring who you want. Anyway, I shall be the one wearing a suit and recapturing my halcyon days by dispensing a variety of yummy cocktails. I haven't relived the glory of the legendary Cocktail Kit since wicker_girl's house party a good two or three years ago.

To this end, I am taking requests. Cocktails involve lots of ingredients and spirits are pretty pricey, so I can't provide absolutely everything like a professional bar can. As a result, I want everyone to request their favourite cocktail(s), and I will do my best to get hold of the required ingredients so that I can mix them up on the night. I'm prepared to put a goodly sum of money towards the night being a success, and a large proportion of that towards cocktails, so there's a very high chance that if you ask for something you'll be able to get it. Just throw ideas at me, anyway.

Muchas Gracias.

Current Requests:

• Vodka Mojito (apparently rum conjures memories of stolen kisses in a golf course bunker
• White Russian
• Brain Tumour
• Snowball

Current Mood: artistic

Today I have exploited the pleasant weather with ken_ners to actually get out and about. ( And out and about we got... )

Before I forget, does anybody have any recommendations on the best cocktail bar in Oxford? My thoughts are Little Clarendon St way, either The Duke of Cambridge or The Beat Cafe (if it's still open - not sure)... any offers?

Current Location: Home

Hi all. Since it's hard to post when you haven't posted recently (as I keep finding out when I bring up the Update page but can't quite manage to write an entry), I thought I'd get that out of the way. So here be a pseudo-entry that may have no value whatsoever other than allowing me to post trivial things in future. Which despite what you might think is actually good news... ;)

So recent events include

• Moving into the new house. 40 Mill Street, down Botley way, and there's a housewarming that people can just roll up to. It's a nice house for the price, already feeling cosy and home-like and should be even better when designergall and resiak make their way down in the next few weeks.
• Saw Pirates of the Caribbean 2 and wasn't particularly impressed. It was OK, but I dunno, it seemed like a series of vaguely interesting events rather than a good story. Plus there was too much ridiculousness.
• Saw Jonathan Creek and found it very good. ken_ners is to blame for that one.
• Feeling vaguely popular for once, what with multiple people staying over in our spare room (well, we have three right now!) and nights out with others.
• Enjoying The Order of the Stick a lot
• Occasionally doing both squash and Aikido despite intending to make both regular occurrences. Hmm...
• Good old-fashioned full-time work.

Current Mood: productive

Going to Wales for a week, although wonderful for leisure and relaxation (see ken_ners' pictures), doesn't help with the already sporadic internet presence. Neither did coming back to find that in a convoluted story of corporate ineptitude that I don't completely understand, we lost both our phone line and internet access at home. The phone's back now (with a different company) but so far as I can tell broadband can't be back for a few weeks.

Thus it's all dialup and handshaking, and speeds measured in single-figure kilobytes per second. It lets my parents check their business email and do critical stuff, but frankly it's no good for leisure activities so I haven't even bothered to hook up my box to the connection. Ah well.

Asides from the holiday, there be not that much to report. I've been reading copious amounts recently, including:

• Jerome's Three Men In A Boat
• Hardy's The Return of the King Native
Contant's
• Adolphe
• Leviathan
Jerome's
• Three Men On The Bummel (when my train back took 5 hours - and I read basically the whole thing in that time)
• Payne's The Rights Of Man

Current Location: Harwell International Business Centre
Current Mood: cheerful
Current Music: Soulwax - Miserable Girl

I am now the ripe old age of 23. This was celebrated by ken_ners and myself having chocolate croissants for breakfast this morning, while opening a rather sizeable pile of presents.

The weekend was most excellent, a big thank you to everyone who made it to the picnic! I had a wonderful time; possibly writeup and pictures to follow when I can pull everything together.

Today I have been learning about the Monkeysphere - an incredibly accurate concept presented amusingly. Sorry about the pop-under ads!

Current Mood: older

I've just finished watching Loose Change with ken_ners. It's a conspiracy-theory film about 9-11, but really well done, and the result of careful assessment and copious evidence rather than the ravings of a tin-foil hat wearing loony.

When you gather all the information in one place, it all becomes so obvious. And as the guy says at the end - ask questions, demand answers. Share this film with people you know, get the word around. Take the time to watch it, and then let others know.

Current Mood: thoughtful

Right, so I did go and see The Da Vinci Code last night, with ken_ners and designergall. And it turned out to be better than expected. I'll note now that I haven't read the book, so don't have that to compare it to, but as a standalone film it was rather entertaining, and as worth £6.80 as a film is likely to be... Plus I was impressed by the amount of accurate French and Latin, and while the translations were generally right, some of the exact wording used was interesting.

( Here be spoilers - and thus you might get some in comments too )

If any of you have ever heard me complain about how the syntax of English is dreadful ("need more brackets!"), you'll be either pleased or horrified to discover that I have become aware of Lojban (LOZH-ban), an artificial language that, amongst other things, aims to remove unwanted ambiguity. In other words, you can still be ambiguous if you wish (in order to tell a story, use poetic license or just plain lie), but it's a deliberate choice - and it's unambiguous that you're being deliberately ambiguous. I'd never thought of that and always assumed ambiguity was a trade-off between accuracy and artistic license.

Also, despite the fact it was originally created to test the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, one of the really interesting aspects (IMHO, of course) is the potential for speech recognition. One of the major problems of current speech recognition is merely parsing the sound waves into words - but as well as an unambiguous grammer, Lojban has unambiguous sounds, such that there's never any doubt where one word ends and another begins, or how it's spelt.

This means a computer can take a sound clip of someone speaking Lojban and, assuming the sound quality is adequate, turn it with 100% success rate into the spoken phrase (correctly spelt and everything, even for words it doesn't know). When you couple that with the unambiguous grammar, it should be able to easily understand the phrase too. It's a really exciting concept for voice recognition/automation, and bringing about the whole Star Trek speaking-to-the-ship thing.

Besides which, as a linguist-cum-computer scientist I have to say it's the best language I've ever seen.

I've somehow managed to find a way of passing my time that doesn't involve playing computer games. Not quite sure how I managed that one (or exactly what it is), but that's a good thing, I guess. Looking back, it's probably The Count Of Monte Cristo that's done it - I have been reading that book a lot recently. And damn good it is too. I have about one hundred and fifty pages left; by my reckoning I'll have it finished at the weekend sometime.

The weekend is also my birthday party, to which you're all invited (just in case you missed my previous post). I've even got together enough to deface a perfectly nice picture and create a Facebook event for it. Though I still haven't had enough foresight to arrange it at a time that doesn't clash with the England game, tut tut.

Last weekend was spent up in Chesterfield, taking a homesick ken_ners back to visit her parents, and very nice it was too. My new bike was behaving itself, doing the trip up in 150 minutes and back in 130, making it well worthwhile nipping up for the weekend. Twas a weekend of flying saucer barbeques, sunburnt forearms, sparklers by tilly-lamps, boating accidents, ice cream, knitting, ideosyncratic bookshops, and reading the ubiquituous CoMC. Yet in spite of all that, it all went by at a welcome sedate pace, so was a relaxing weekend before the return to work. Relaxing but busy - surely the way that weekends should be?

This evening I went to circuit training at the University gym for the second week in a row. They work you hard, that's for sure, but it's well worth it. I still have a very long way to go, but I'm already feeling the improvement. Not just in the fitness - I've always found exercise to be very settling for the mind too, and circuits are no exception. Ken came last week too, but had a sudden attack of the laziness this week after it turned out that Becca wasn't coming either. Weaklings ;)

I've also taken action to fix my crime-damaged bike (the engine no longer turns on when the ignition is switched to OFF - this is good!) and the boring financial jiggery-pokery that no-one actual cares about (possibly myself included) but that's a weight off the chest to get done. It's all going well.

Film tomorrow (Da Vince code, probably - and yes I know, but I'm going to see it anyway). No <lj-cut>s tonight.

Current Mood: accomplished
Current Music: The Music - Welcome To The North

Today I missed a good IMSoc football. Oh yes. But I did get to drink Pimms on Worcester lawn, so all was not lost. For it was Woostock, Worcester college's attempt to emulate Wadstock, which itself is an imitation of a larger festival - safe to say, it wasn't very big indeed. In fact, the main stage consisted of a chair and a music stand. But they were serving free Pimms, sandwiches and cake, and since even the sun itself came out over Worcester for an afternoon it was well worth being out for. The music was... nice, though it seemed to be more about the atmosphere than the performers themselves. Still, from tiny acorns...

ken_ners introduced me to the (vaguely) Yorkshire breakfast of egg and beans on oatcakes, which was great. We've also stocked up on copious amounts of vegetables, beans and lentils since she's starting a 3-week (IIRC) detox diet tomorrow - I say this is a good thing, though it took a little juggling to get it all to fit in, on and around our little mini-fridge.

Work is going really well, as I'm sure you're all thrilled to hear! Friday was especially good, with lots of little things that made me realise how I actually am starting to know what I'm talking about - being able to solve a senior consultant's problem was especially good. I'm getting more in the mindset of a professional software developer too, which may or may not be a good thing.

Bank holiday tomorrow (as I found out on Friday), and I wasn't entirely sure what to do with it. Apparently, according to my colleagues, I "have to think of something good to do" and "can't just sit and play computer games all day." OK, fine... Luckily ms_zoe finishes exams tomorrow, so I can actually be there to see her out and celebrate. Hopefully the rain can hold off for another day...

Current Mood: content

Yesterday I popped back to Basingstoke to check up on my parents (or was it vice-versa? I forget), and got to catch up with all the gossip down there. These including Terry unfortunately not getting a job he was going for, us having a new high-quality fence (as well as other garden plans) and how Janina's manager is holding her back for fear of being shown up herself. Then I got to read The Independant and The Mail, and reminded myself how and why the former is vastly superior.

( In A Different Light )

Yesterday was my introduction to the delights of Fopp, and five CDs the better, I can confirm that it is in fact fantastic. As are some of the smaller shops on Little Clarendon Street, especially the chinese crafts one.

Miss ken_ners and I just had a rather interesting talk about who would win in a fair fight (no weapons, in a moderately sized, e.g. 30' square, steel cage) between a man and a kimono dragon. Apparently they eat people occasionally, but I maintain that if you kick their faces in they won't be so eager. Then again, they have sharp claws, leathery skin, are apparently faster and more agile than humans and have poisonous saliva (though this doesn't take effect for a few days so doesn't come into this discussion). We got there by considering humans vs. dogs and humans vs. wolves, so... discuss.

Current Mood: happy
Current Music: Chromeo - Mercury Tears

Since my last post you can take it as read that most ofmy time has been spent working. I mean, work's pretty cool and all (as these things go at least) but by golly, does it eat up your time. Ah well, I wouldn't be able to get a Platinum Plus credit card otherwise. In fact, I probably shouldn't be able to get one anyway, but there you go - consumer credit these days, marvellous.

I did have a couple of days off last week - but that was ( for motorbike reasons )

And looking at the time, I should really head off now if I'm to make my train and not be hideously late for work. Until the next sporadic update, adeiu.

Having just watched it on TV (I was going to give the channel, but realised I don't know. It had ads, so was probably ITV) it filled me with happiness. I'm not sure why exactly - I think it was seeing the kids actually kept in check, taught manners, science and culture at the same time. Though of course one thing they couldn't do is hit or cane the children, which was a bit of a shame as it took away their 'nuclear option'. Given that it was even more impressive hold they manage to keep bad behaviour in check. The program also exposed for the blatant gulf it is, the gap between GCSEs of today and exams of yesteryear - bollocks are standards improving (though we knew that).

It's quite sad, though - I think the main reason it made me happy is that it vindicated my unwavering belief that the old-school (no pun intended) ways were much more conducive not just to educating children academically, but turning them into better people. You can see it happening. And yet, nothing's going to come of it. It's just going to be a novelty for television's sake, a few hours of "Ooh, isn't that interesting" before it gets lost in the quagmire of all that's gone before and doubtless will come after it. Reinstating the old-style schools (and, more importantly, teachers - with the same powers as before) could make a massive positive different to our society, but it won't happen. We'll likely go on with these Foundation schools, that ditch the 'outdated old methods' and have 'learning facilitators' instead of teachers in order to underperform even the failing schools that they replaced.

That'll teach them, sure - but it won't teach our leaders, or more importantly, the people that choose the leaders. Such a shame.

Current Mood: cynical
Current Music: Soulwax - Proverbial Pants

Anyone thinking of buying a new CPU in the near future? I've been a fan of AMD pretty much since their first Athlons came out, and heard about their challenging Intel to a "dual-core dual" - a challenge Intel wouldn't take up.

And now I can see why. Food for thought, it would seem...

Current Mood: working
Current Music: Röyksopp - Eple

Happy birthday to ken_ners!

MPs voted on Tuesday by a margin of 200 votes to impose a ban on smoking in all enclosed spaces, despite months of wrangling over the issue.

Opponents say the ban is an infringement of civil liberties.

Current Mood: pleased

Honestly, I tell my girlfriend that I have a nice restaurant lined up for valentines dinner, and when we get there she orders a kebab! What's become of the world?

Current Mood: confused

designergall's recent entry somehow managed to remind/persuade me that I did in fact want a digital audio player (I keep wanting to call them portable media players, but that tends to imply video too). In theory, I didn't want anything fancy but I really like cool things so I wasn't likely to settle for just a 256Mb mp3 thingy. My list of essential features was

• Not an iPod
• Support for Ogg Vorbis
• OS-agnosticism, if not full-blown Linux support
• 'Decent' battery life
• Scan within a track (some players I've seen, admittedly on phones, don't have this!)

• FLAC support
• FM Radio
• Recording ability
• Remote
• Open source/easily upgradeable firmware
• Other coolness

Current Mood: happy

Anyone remember Transformers? It seems it may be a self-fulfilling prophecy...

Current Mood: amused
Current Music: No Doubt - Don't Speak

So last night, ken_ners, resiak and myself headed down to Reading to catch Mew playing the Fez Club. After a minor detour to the wonderfully-named Gun Street, the first thing that struck me was how impressive the decor is. The club is owned by (I believe) the same people who own Po Na Na's in Oxford, and has the same theme, but with those extra touches that really make the difference. Especially in the VIP area, which was open to the public for the gig; wood panelling, actual palm trees and other exotic plants, and the whole terracotta mediterranean theme. Very nice place, and it'd be interesting to go there for a club night.

First up were The Perishers, from Sweden. Although, until a recent Google, I thought they were called The Parachutes because of their accent... anyway, rather good for a support - nothing astounding, but some solid tunes and reasonable stage presence. The singer didn't look particularly old, and apparently they've been going for eight years now, so he must have been pretty baby-faced back in the day... Just before their last song they announced that there were 20 EPs going for free at the merch stall - cue a fair few people leaving the gig to go get them. I'm not sure whether that's a good or bad thing, but giving people an incentive to go away and not hear your last song is an interesting strategy! :)

Cue a half-hour or so of soundmen fiddling in the dark (ahem). Mew's entrance was impressive, with the drummer sneaking onstage, and suddenly laying down the beat for Special at the same time as a burst from the stage lights hit the stage - not unlike a brief firework display. Then we had a walk-on, each member adding an extra layer to the extended intro, which worked so well (especially with the funky bassline). And boy, was it loud. The Manics, louder than war? Pah, that was nothing compared to Mew last night. For a band I've never really thought of as a loud, rocky band they really pulled off that effect without losing the soulfulness in their music, it was wonderful. Plus you got their videos (as funky as ever), pole-dancing jokes and the last song dedicated to the guy that signed them (who was apparently at the gig). And all the best songs. Excellent.

--

In other news, I can see why bootcut jeans are so called, as opposed to slipper-cut jeans... :) And my ear (yep, just the right one, oddly) is still ringing from last night. Anyone know the science behind that?

Current Mood: happy