A Bug's Life

A missive from the Cambridge Geek Night organisers, shared because this looks like it will be a good one!

The next Cambridge Geek Night is confirmed for Tuesday 21st August, and we’ve got a bit of a special evening lined up for you. As before, we’re holding August’s Geek Night in the Cambridge Union Society on Bridge Street, with the evening kicking off around 7:30pm. Sponsorship for the event will be provided by the kind folks at ecm.

The Click programme from the BBC World Service will be recording parts of the evening. It’s radio, so there are no cameras, but please clap extra loudly when CGN friend Bill Thompson requests it.

Beyond the Geek Manifesto
Does science matter in a policy and political environment? How can it matter more? What can we do to help? What shouldn’t be done?

Mark Henderson wrote a book, “The Geek Manifesto”, to address some of these questions, and the book has now been out in the world for a few months. What’s changed? How has the geek community reacted, and what does he know now that he wishes he knew then?

Dr Julian Huppert has been MP for Cambridge since the 2010 election. He’s known as “the Science MP”: unfortunately, he’s the only one. He’ll comment on what can be done to change that, what possibly shouldn’t be done, and whatever else he wishes to talk about. Mark and Julian will comment on each other’s ideas, and then answer your questions. Michelle Brook will be keeping them in line as moderator and chair.

For those who haven’t read the Geek Manifesto, (and Mark will happily sign as many copies as you wish to buy), Mark's standard talk is available online and there are extracts from the book on his blog.

The evening will follow the usual timing formats (i.e. two halves), but will be a slightly different structure due to extended Q&A. Lightning talks (more elevator pitches) will be towards the end of the evening, looking at what people may be interested in doing related to the evening's discussion, principally looking to get like-minded people to chat about your project in the bar afterwards.

We expect this event to be somewhat busy, despite it being in the middle of August.

For more information, our website is http://cambridgegeeknights.net, or you can follow @camgeeknights on Twitter.

Books read (47-51)
The Contaminated Man, Daniel Keyes (1971)
A Martian Odyssey, Stanley G. Weinbaum (1934-36, 1962)
Gunnerkrigg Court vols 1-3, Thomas Siddall (2008-11) (graphic novel)
The Islanders, Christopher Priest (2011)
The Reassembled Man, Herbert D. Kastle (1964)

Films watched (81-92) 2 at the cinema, 9 DVD/videos, 1 tv
Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter
The Adventures of Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn (rewatch)
The Lives of Others
Mirrormask
Star Trek: First Contact (rewatch)
Ocean's Thirteen
Cube (rewatch)
2001: A Space Odyssey (rewatch)
Blade Runner: The Director's Cut (rewatch)
Contact (rewatch)
Tyrannosaur
The Dark Knight Rises

Gigs (none this month)

Books incoming 25-26 (2 loans) (read 24/26) Keeping on top of them though I had intended to focus more on reading things I already have...

This was the month of re-watching videos to see if I want to keep them.

I remember now, last time I had a cough that went on for ages they said it wasn't unusual (just unpleasant) for a cough to last 6 weeks and I had to wait it out. Same this time. I should be glad I'm not prone to chest infections. The earache is less but the hearing is still poor, I'm unwittingly doing rude things like talking over other people as I can't hear that they're saying anything (sorry!), I need to start looking round the group before I speak. Inhalations over a steam bath should allegedly help. Excuse me while I go boil my head at you. And July! Why get a cold in July??

Also, looking forward to getting back to exercise without feeling wobbly or falling over coughing.

Books read (40-46)
The End Specialist, Drew Magary (2011)
Adrift on the Sea of Rains, Ian Sales (2012)
The Magicians, Lev Grossman (2009) (Book Club)
Candle Man, Glenn Dakin (2010)
Dark Currents, ed. Ian Whates (2012)
Fables from the Fountain, ed. Ian Whates (2011)

Films watched (68-80) 3 at the cinema, 9 DVD/videos, 1 tv
Invasion of the Body Snatchers (rewatch)
Prometheus
Alien (rewatch)
Aliens (rewatch)
French Kiss
The Blob
Men in Black 3
The Producers
Snow White and the Huntsman
The Tree of Life
Beware! the Blob
Midnight in Paris
Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix

Gigs (5-7)
Hot Chip (Cambridge)
Django Django (Cambridge)
The Crash of the Elysium (Ipswich)

Books incoming 22-24 (3 loans) (read 19/24) Keeping on top of them though I had intended to focus more on reading things I already have...

This was the month of watching Prometheus (124 mins) and talking about it afterwards (12 hours and counting) so by that metric it was worth watching :-)

Giggity giggity. Hot Chip and Django Django were both great live, and I am reminding myself it's not feasible to go see them in Brixton on a work night even though one band is supporting the other.

Crash of the Elysium was a Doctor Who experience, jolly good in an I-can-tell-this-is-really-for-children way, you're taken through various sets on a mission and get to run through tunnels with ducts hanging from them etc etc. This is much more impressive to watch on screen than to actually do, I thought as I floundered around. Great detail on the sets, lots to look at when you could stop for a break. It seems on a good day I can travel by train as far as Ipswich and do some gentle trotting and get home again without giant back pain afterwards.

Kind of slothing out of going dancing tonight, though I claim to enjoy it. Dancing will be there next week, and I have a list of 20 things to do to start on - a mixture of chores and fun things (sewing projects, beading projects, listening to new CDs etc).

I went to Wimpole Hall today with my Mum and StepDad, we went round the house mostly, not the farm and the lambs people tend to associate with it. Things I learned: an owner of Wimpole Hall (Lord Harley) is the same chap as owned large chunks of London including Wimpole Street and Harley Street. He had 50,000 books and built an extension for them. When he died the books were sold, but given to what were the beginnings of the British Library. Beautiful view stretching for miles down an avenue of limes, used to be elm but they lost them in the 1970s to disease. A lot of different owners, each adding extensions or tearing bits out, or refacing the house. The Victorian furniture went in the 1936 sale, but the new owner went about refurnishing in Georgian style, and a living room more like my grandmother's I have never seen, down to the 1976 Country Life magazine in the rack. Some 600-year old stained glass in the chapel, still vivid. Painting of a young lad bearing a small platter or letter or something looking just like he's texting on a smartphone, the way it's held.

Two more days of holiday left.

A few years ago I walked to Ely. Today I walked back again! My sense of direction is shot, I took three wrong turnings (follow ye not the shiny obvious routes for they steer you wrong), luckily my map reading is good (when I look at it) so I found my way back again. The weather started turning bad as I got to Waterbeach so I hopped on a train home instead. I've done the Waterbeach walk a few times and think I made up the mileage on my unintentional detours. I'm feeling good, handled the walk well, but my feet are glad to be up on the sofa now!

Fuzzy things: cygnets (lots, it's a good time of year for them, and giant nests and eggs), goslings, cows' ears.
Red things: poppies, not a lot else
Pecking order: I move for cows, but sheep and geese move out of my way. I wasn't expecting the sheep. Surprise sheep! The most in-the-way cow was one standing on the footpath which runs along a bank, feeding three calves at the same time.
Thoughts which aren't as profound as they seem: why is it that you pass a lot more people going the other way from you than the same way?

ozymandias_cat insisted on leaving the house at the same time as I did, so my escape home was driven in part by him sitting outside the house in the rain with no dinner. He is now quite clingy and definitely sitting on my lap. Perhaps I should add that as a suffix to my list of things to do this evening, let's see how that goes.

• Have a nice cup of tea with a cat sitting on my lap - DONE


• Have a hot bath or shower with a cat sitting on my lap - DONE WITHOUT CAT


• Make dinner with a cat sitting on my lap - DONE WITHOUT CAT


• Do stretching exercises with a cat sitting on my lap - DONE WITH CAT SITTING ON FOOT AND WALKING UNDERNEATH BUGSHAW WHEN SHE IS ON ALL FOURS


• Pack bag for work with a cat sitting on my lap


• Phone Mum with a cat sitting on my lap - DONE WITH CAT


• Go to bed with a book with a cat sitting on my lap - CANNOT GET OFF SOFA TO GO TO BED AS AM PINNED BY CAT

EDIT: Numbers - Walked 14.4 miles in 5.25 hours, minus lunch break but including other breaks (ooh a birdie! drinkie, whereTF am I? etc). 2.75 mph is slower than my usual speed, but the terrain was rougher. There were 6 miles to go to walk all the way home from Waterbeach, my diversions added up to 3 miles, so I'm a bit short of the whole route which would have been 17.6 miles. Maybe one day. The body was certainly up to it.

Books read (35-39)
Mechanique: A Take of the Circus Tresault, Genevieve Valentine (2011)
Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, John le Carré (1974)
Science Tales, Darryl Cunningham (2012) (graphic novel)
Rotten Row, Chaz Brenchley (2011)
The Cyberiad, Stanislaw Lem (1965/74)

Films watched (57-67) 1 at the cinema, 9 DVD/videos, 1 tv
Captain America (rewatch)
Die Hard
The Day the Earth Stood Still
Pecker
Yojimbo
The Raid
Gattaca (rewatch)
Potiche
Face/Off (rewatch)
Johnny Mnemonic
When Worlds Collide (rewatch)

Gigs ()
No new gigs this month but a couple to look forward to in June

Books incoming 20-21 (1 proofread, 1 loan) (read 12/21)

I'd never seen Die Hard before, I'm not planning to watch Johnny Mnemonic again.

At work, we have recently had an online reporting system set up. M'colleague and I are sharing the administrator role, and have been trained to set up users and groups for security levels, scheduling jobs, stopping/starting services etc. At the moment, refining security settings and permissions to perform actions on files in certain folders is the bulk of our activity. So far, so good.

What I'm interested to learn about is good strategies for logging the work we do so it is recorded, reproducible, and reduces risk of chaos and confusion; also, ways to communicate and share a workload. We do not currently have any sort of job ticketing/signout system, this is the first time our team has had to manage something like this. If there is software you'd recommend, we do not have authority to install things ourselves but we can ask - I'm as interested in the human side of the processes.

Any top tips or things you wish you had known when starting out on a system like this?

For context: SAP BusinessObjects, 50 user accounts so far.

That's how long the back has been bad this time, that's bad as in cannot-always-put-on-socks bad, and cannot-sit bad. Luckily there are laptops and sofas and wifi so one can work and footle and stuff, and I'm improving to a 15-20 min walk three times a day.

Two weeks is a long time, especially if you are impatient and want to get out and do things.

Quite worried about how I will cope with upcoming trip to London - Sun 20-Fri 25 May - for a training course. I have a quote for a cab (£98 each way) and asked my boss if I can get a cab there instead of the train (£42 return) but not heard back yet. It's not the sort of thing the NHS as an employer usually funds. But there's no way I can do the bits of the train journey that involve getting my luggage off the train and to the cab rank, and darn those London black cabs throw you about a lot inside anyway. I'm going to press for a door-to-door minicab as it gives me the best chance of getting there in adequate condition to attend the course.

It does occur to me that several of my friends will be in Cambridge on Sun 20 May for a wedding - I wonder if any of you will be travelling back to/through London and could give me a lift, help me with bags on train (if I train), or are interested in sharing a cab if I get one?

Would be lovely to catch with people of an evening when I'm in London, but I'll have to see how I am - probably not up to going out to a pub/restaurant but I will be doing my best to improve between now and then.