The Lair

First there was the political compass (where I am completely and utterly smack dab in the center), now there is apparently the new political compass. We were discussing the right-wing, left-wing nature of posts and topics in the lkblagozphere (term used without permission) and I displayed my usual bipartisan tendencies. I call this being a centrist. Those less kindly call it flip-flopping. We might both be right.

So we all collectively decided to do the new political compass test. Post your results in the comments kthxbai.

FWIW: I couldn’t decide what my country of residence was, since I’ve lived in the UK for a few years now. So I picked the UK. Perhaps that was an error. Perhaps not. I have no idea.

My scores:
Left/Right (This axis is quite like the familiar left/right political division. It mixes economic issues — varying from laisser faire to interventionist perspective — and social or “moral” issues such as recommending the death penalty to punish criminals. We choose to give “the right” positive values on this axis)
-3.6613 (-0.2204)

Pragmatism (This axis is much less important than the first. It represents a combination of philosophies you could call “pragmatism”, “utilitarianism” and so forth, mixing social, religious and economic issues. We have chosen to give an atheist, utilitarian perspective positive values on this axis)
+5.3560 (+0.3224)

So, to my slight surprise – I’m a little bit more far left than I expected. I thought I’d be closer to the center. To my complete lack of surprise, I’m utilitarian/atheist/pragmatic/whatever you want to call it. Again, though – the values -3 and +5 respectively aren’t very far from the dead center of the chart; so at least I’m consistent in that way.

Most stages of my life have a few defining works associated with them. When I joined the workforce a good few years ago; I obsessively read Joel Spolsky, related to a lot that was being said. In my more cynical moments, I’d nod knowingly at the themes covered by Dilbert. If there is one defining work that describes my graduate student era perfectly, that’s probably PhDComics.

So, yeah. Last night I attended a talk by Jorge Cham (he pronounced it Hoar-gay); a guy who does a comic about graduate students. Crikey. The allegedly monstrous training and skills development budget actually produced something useful. Huzzah!!

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I couldn’t resist invoking a Canadian artist (I use that term loosely) lyrics here; considering her large fanbase and all. No, not really.

It was billed as The Biggest Sporting Weekend for Britain; so in the grand tradition of looking dejected and woebegone on the Monday after, let’s just take stock, shall we?

1. Pre weekend teaser. Russia vs England, Euro 2008 qualifier. Result: England lost 2 – 1. Because looking good (or somewhat decent at least) on paper doesn’t really mean jack when you draw at home to Macedonia. For my next party trick, ask how Spain have been doing in recent football World Cups.

2. South Africa vs England, RWC. Result: England lost 6 – 15. Both teams executed their gameplan to a greater or lesser degree. The vaunted England pack didn’t really make a massive impact (guess that makes the Aussie forwards look even sillier, eh?), the Saffers won incredible amounts of lineout ball, England conceded too many penalties and … crucially, England had Jonny’s boot. The Saffers had Percy “lookit ma hair” Montgomery and the fricking fantastic Francois Steyn to do their kicking. Fair result, I’d reckon. For my money, I thought the Cueto disallowed try was legit, though the replays later indicated otherwise.

3. Lewis got pipped to the title. That lil crybaby Alonso got pipped too, but that’s a separate matter. After all the hype, the championship lead of several months – well, he didn’t make it. I suppose I could rumble on about the endless soap opera of “Why did he three stop? Why didn’t the team call him in sooner in the Shanghai Grand Prix? How did his engine cut out? Was it sabotage?”. I really like the Anthony Hamilton response about no one being unhappy in the Hamilton camp though. It is his rookie year, after all. And the commentator speculation about Alonso possibly stepping aside and retiring from the race if Hamilton had muscled his way into 6th place was all sorts of fun. (“Considering he’s going to leave the team as soon as this race is finished, you think he’ll listen? I think he’ll have some radio trouble if the team boss tells him to retire”).

4. Ronnie O’Sullivan loses to Marco Fu in the Snooker Grand Prix. O’Sullivan? An English name? Well, I never. But anyway. What it said. Perhaps one of the lesser known sporting calamities of the weekend, but there we are.

So, that’s umm.. 0 for 3 then. And on a somewhat related note, I got a new monster TV handmedown last night from my landlord. It’s so fricking large (ok, just 30 or so inches) that it dwarfs even my generously proportioned room. Thus, I am now forever scarred by seeing Graham Norton’s head at roughly double the size that makes for safe viewing. And capping off a thoroughly marvellous sporting weekend, Les Bleus lost, again, to the Argies. Yeah, the Argies play a bit fast and loose with the rules at times, they slow the ball down, prevent teams from running (which I personally hate to see in Union games) – but it’s not really like the French had anyone else to blame but themselves. Not that they will, of course – if the linked article is any indicator. The Argies had the French number from day one. End of story.

Ya know, 1997. Ok, so we heard about Dolly, which was rather cool. There was also the coup attempt in Papua New Guinea, Soundgarden breaking up, the ascent of Tony Blair, Hong Kong handover, some random blonde got killed in a car crash, some random Aussie committed suicide. Ok, so a fair few events but no more and no less than any other year.

Except – the term weblog was coined ten years ago. If I cared more about blogs, I’d be excited about this. As it was, I didn’t hop on that particular bandwagon till a good few years later. So a blog was really turn of the century stuff for me. But more importantly from a geeky perspective, Slashdot is ten years old. And Winamp turned 10.

I don’t really remember when I started using Slashdot (or indeed, if I did use it in 1997). I definitely was using it in 1998, though. And considering that Winamp was the only player around for the new fangled mp3 format; well, yeah. I was using it from the pre 1.0 days. I definitely started using Winamp by about November or December 1997.

Ten years ago, all those things. I have now officially descended into the “You young whippersnappers don’t remember the Great War, do you?” old timer territory. Has it really been ten whole years? A decade? Good grief.

update: Pissu Perera points out that some religious figure died (and was later beatified) and TinyLittleFascist points out that the first Harry Potter book was published in 1997.

If there’s one thing I hate about the area I live in right now, it’s the lack of decent supermarkets/shops within a reasonable walking distance. It seems like a very simple thing, really – but I actually like to cook. Not particularly domesticated, but I find cooking to be a relaxing activity. Go figure. The thing is, I have a strong opinion about the sorts of food I like to eat (and consequently, cook for myself) and that requires frequent trips to the shops.

I’d like to say I’m militant about fresh produce, but it’s something slightly more old school. I want to look at the item (not online and in pictures) and figure out for myself if I want to buy it or not. I want to see scanned labels so I can check ingredients. Unfortunately, the closest supermarkets that allow me to do this sort of thing are well … slightly far away; so I can only shop once a week at most.

So, sauntering down the road to get my allergy meds from the pharmacy yesterday, I noticed that a new supermarket had opened up enroute. The pharmacy is on Badger Hill, said location always makes me grin a little bit (remember badgerbadgerbadger?). It’s not a route I’d usually take, so I had no idea that a new Somerfield had opened up in the vicinity. Wewt. Obviously, I ducked into the supermarket to grab some food.

Went around buying stuff, noticed an offer for butter. 500g tub, I was told. Buy one, get one free.

Seemed like a fair bit of butter (an entire kilo?!) but what the heck, it’s an offer. I use butter in place of oil anyway, so I run through it fairly fast. So, grabbed me two tubs and went to checkout.

A while later, I connected the “Hmmm. That was a little bit more expensive than I expected” with “Hmm. The bag seems a little bit heavier than I expected” and realized that, in fact, I had bought two 1kg tubs of butter instead. How sickening fattening. But hey, it’s butter. Waste not, want not – maybe Salem and Mitzi like butter on their catfood.

When I got home, i had a slightly better idea. I also have flour, eggs, sugar, dried fruit and raisins (since I eat that sort of thing when I get the munchies). Why don’t I bake a cake? There is just one small problem. I can cook. Baking, on the other hand, is a black art. By which I mean that I expect my attempts to turn out of the oven blackened and charred. Still, I have the ingredients. I have a general idea about what I need to do (I tend to be just a little bit obsessive about figuring stuff out instead of following some prescribed recipe).

All I need now is some icing sugar and a cake tin. Oh, and chocolate powder, I think. Let there be cake.

This is going to be fun.

I find myself remarkably productive when I stay at home, devoid of the distractions provided by the internet. It seems slightly strange, but when I really want to get some work done (D-Day being a couple of weeks away, it’s not like I have a lot of choice) – I stay at home. I unplug myself from the internets, after having gathered sufficient material to get my work done… and stuff occasionally gets done. Oh and I play Capture-The-Flag Quake 3 with bots too. And Tetris. And the occasional round of DesktopTD. Actually, this isn’t about my bizarre work habits or my internet-avoidance-as-work strategy but about diet.

There has already been a post on circadian rhythms and diet so let me hop on the “near enough to be tangentially related” bandwagon. When I stay at home, I eat differently. Specifically, I make myself something to eat roughly (it’s an inexact thing) every four hours. Considering that I fix my own food, it’s really easy to time. Contrast this with the usual workday, where I tend to subsist on random vending machine and junk food eaten more or less every hour when I go walkabout. I also invariably eat lunch when I’m at home, since I can fix my own (hot) food. I got tired of the samey fare and long walking distances involved in lunch at the department a long time ago.

And in random IRC chatter (hilarious in or out of context), there was a too-much-information conversation about confectionary related skidmarks on underwear. No. Don’t ask how that started. Something about missing drawers and going commando, I think it was. That in turn led to interesting marketing slogans for various uh… bars. Complete with juvenile yet funny innuendo.

Snickers has “get some nuts” and Mars has “pleasure you can’t measure” (which works really well with the mental image of sliding a chocolate bar into your pants, does it not?). There is also the local favourite Yorkie bars with an interesting slogan. There is even an official military version of the Yorkie bar (with a slightly different slogan).

Any more confectionary slogans that work will with the uh… inadvertent skidmark theme? No? Me nether (sic).