Something funny happened to me last Tuesday. I was in my Neural Networks class in the late afternoon, and the lecturer approached Andy for a chat. We both expected it to be something about Bidirectional Associative Memory Networks we were talking about, but we were both unprepared for what we were about to hear…

“Have you thought about what you’re going to do after you’ve got your degrees?”

We found out there was a new member of staff who was looking for a research student, i.e. someone to do a PhD in the field of Neural Networks applied to Data Mining (I’m contracting it a bit so as not to confuse the world). Apparently, we were the only two people in the school who they thought would be both interested in and capable of doing the job.

To be honest although I find the field fascinating it’s not really my sort of thing so I left it to Andy, who really likes AI and Neural Networks. I felt so flattered though!

DABS.com is really starting to piss me off. I ordered a new hard drive for my laptop, along with an external enclosure for some of my other hard drives lying around. Now when I ordered the drive I knew it was out of stock, and thought that DABS would order in a new batch when I placed an order, as they usually do. Wrong. 18 days after placing my order, I decide to contact them to get some status on the thing.

Now to get in touch with them, you have to send them a message through their forms on the web. They simply don’t do telephone service at all, nothing, nada. So I go through their help system in order to try and find an email form and eventually find one that kind of suits my query, then send it off. A couple of days later, I receive a canned (i.e. templated) email with just the same information I read through their help system and no details relating to my query. I cancelled my order.

I then set about finding an alternative supplier, which in this case happened to be Misco. I placed an order on Friday evening, had the order confirmed over the weekend, and the hard disk enclosure was shipped Monday morning first thing, and arrived on Tuesday morning. The hard drive was listed as having a 5 day lead time, so no surprise it hasn’t arrived yet, but I thought I’d tempt my luck and phone up their customer services and see if I can get some info.

I phone up their number, and I hear just a couple of notes of hold music before being put onto an operator. She puts me on hold to contact her colleague who is in charge of that particular batch of items, but she isn’t picking up her phone. So what does she do? Takes my email address and emails her colleague for the information.

Now that, my friends, is customer service. Bye bye DABS!

First things first, Happy New Year!

I upgraded to WordPress 2.0 earlier today, and while the upgrade seems to have gone very smoothly indeed, there might be teething problems! So, if you encounter any trouble please let me know by leaving a comment below!

Yesterday, Jess, Alex and I went to see the new Chronicles of Narnia film. We went to a cinema in the small seaside town of Lynton, because we fancied going for a bit of a drive; it was a bit cold though, Alex still hasn’t had his heating fixed! Once parked, we make our way up to the tiny little cinema, which consists of an entrance hall with snacks, a ticket booth, and a door into the screening room.

As soon as we got into the room and sat down, we were faced with a very cheap-looking yellow nylon curtain and the smell of the 1960s. While we were waiting for the cinema to fill, they played music that can only be described as carousel music, the sort played off an old electronic organ. As people poured in, it became apparent that everyone knew everyone else. The time of the showing was approaching.

The curtain was peeled away perfectly on time, revealing a decent-sized screen. No adverts or trailers were played and the film began straight away. To our great surprise, the quality of the screen was amazing, giving an excellent picture and not distorted around the edges at all. The sound, while not THX Digital Surround (or whatever it is) was much better than expected.

We all loved the film. I didn’t remember much of the story at all, and was reminded as the film played on, so I can’t comment how faithful it is to the original story. The effects were very good and entirely believable, and the battle scenes really sucked you in.

That’s a film I’d like to see again at some point, and we will certainly become more regular users of that cinema!

Christmas has been and gone, and as usual I’ve been terrible at keeping this blog up to date! Jess and I went to France for Christmas to see my parents. My dad celebrated his 70^th birhday on the 24^th, and Christmas Day was nice.

We’re now in Devon until the 6^th of January, and looking forward to the New Year. We’re also hoping to see the new Chronicles of Narnia film at some point in the next few days.

Other than that, I’d say there’s been very little news here!

Microsofties always wonder why I dislike Microsoft so much. Some may even understand me, along with the thousands, if not millions, of other people who share the same dislike. But I’ve never really been able to put my finger on why until now…

This latest story is an account of how Microsoft managed to have edited a UN document, removing references to Free Software and changing the stance on DRM. I’ll let you make your own mind up by reading the story (it’s quite short): The Complete Story of the Vienna Conclusions by Georg C. F. Greve.

Since quite a few people have been asking me what I’d like for Christmas, and I keep forgetting things I want to buy, I’ve written up a wishlist. I don’t expect anyone to buy me the expensive stuff, but it will remind me that I actually want those things!

Anyone who has enjoyed early versions of Mario, specifically Mario Brothers I-III and Super Mario World, will love this little collection of Mario theme tunes performed in various ways. From bOING bOING.

A particular story made me very angry on the news today, and particularly what a certain person brought in to be interviewed said. It was about the NHS using data mining to map out areas where, for example, there might be a high instance of diabetes. It is common knowledge that there are 1 million people in the UK who have diabetes but don’t know about it.

That sounds like a great idea on the surface, but it raised several questions in my mind… They use data like what supermarket you shop at, what newspaper you read, etc… Where the hell did they get that from?! Surely the Information Comissioner has something to say about the use of such databases by the NHS? And when did I permit my supermarket to sell this information about me? Never.

What angered me the most however was a person from The Mirror tabloid who was talking about everyone hating cold calls and the NHS shouldn’t do it. Now that’s all fine and dandy, why not. But what got me was her suggestion that we should keep an eye out on our neighbours: where they shop at, if they smoke or not, if they “look” ill, if they eat junk food! Pardon? My neighbours?! I’d get very angry about my neighbour if he knew that much about me.

Call me paranoid or something, but it already worries me enough that my supermarket knows that much about me. What’s starting to worry me is that the supermarkets seem to be readily selling this data onto my government, who can probably use it how they see fit. That’s rather alarming.

In other news, there is finally some evidence that keeping warm helps you prevent getting a cold: some researchers took candidates and dipped some of their feet in cold water, and kept others’ dry. 33% of the ones who put their feet in cold water got a cold, but only 9% of those who kept warm. Why? Apparently it’s because when you’re cold, blood gets redirected from your nose into your cold bits to warm them up. Your nose is your primary defence against the common cold virus. Intriquing! Mothers ‘were right’ about colds (BBC)

If you’re a student of the University of Huddersfield, or considering applying there (or have done so), or used to study there some time ago, you might be interested in a new web site Andy, Dan, and myself (see right) are setting up.

Huddersfield Student Voice aims to fill a gap that the University and Students’ Union have in their sites: a fun and safe online community for students to talk to one another and express their views and opinions about the University, Huddersfield as a whole, or anything else for that matter!