Writing about Am I a nerd? Duh. from Gadget’s Workshop

(and yes, I answered honestly!)

Writing about web page http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/4194669.stm

Yay! We’re famous!

Looks like John Dale’s had a promotion too :-)

Follow-up to Assessment from Group IV

Well, I got through the eTray thing, apparantly my people skills are relatively strong compared to my handling of information, which is stronger in turn than my self-development skills. Which is a curious analysis, but there we go :-)

I went down to London for an open day on Thursday, which was very interesting since it was the first time that I really got a good handle on what kinds of things Faststreamers end up doing in the civil service. I’d already tried to find out what I could, but there’s no substitute for talking to the people doing the job. It certainly confirmed what the bumpf says – you can’t really predict what you’d end up doing, but they’re all interesting, challenging roles. Apparantly if they want a faststream person in a position, that position needs to be very well defined and specified before they can make the request, so it tends to be well defined roles that get approved. Which is cool.

Next stop assessment centre. Being govermental, it has its very own acronym FSAC, and it’s the same building where I went for the open day. 7:45 – 18:00 though!

Bring it on.

I’m very much a believer that there is a distinction between good and bad geekery. Good Geekery may be any of: messing with things for the pure pursuit of knowledge, to provide a useful service, to build a clean application, to make things nice, to tie up all the loose ends. Bad geekery is making half-arsed applications that don’t quite work, disregarding protocols, wasting time and other people’s efforts on things that are a waste, and so on.

Now. Justin Frankel (creator of Winamp) has always been on my list as a Good Geek. He left AOL/TimeWarner (who had bought winamp from him) about a year ago, for pastures new. So what’s he working on now?

The Jesusonic CrusFX 1000 Guitar Effects Processor

No, I’m not kidding.

Sadly, this to me counts as Bad Geekery, for a few reasons (and I recognise that this is still a prototype):

• It looks like it’s designed by computer people rather than guitarists


• Stick a computer in a wooden box on stage? Destined to fail the “Roadie’s Boot” test


• Switches where you can’t switch them with your feet?


• It’s HUGE


• Most importantly, the example sounds from it are rubbish! Sounds like the old Digitech RP6 that I passed on to my younger bro when I bought my Tonelab last year.

Using DSP for guitar effects isn’t a science, it’s an art. This thing looks like it’s got the science, but not the feel and sensitivity that you get from FX units from, shall we say more musically-focussed creators.

I don’t enjoy having my photo taken. I enjoy setting things up so I can take my own photo even less. Considering how many photos of other people I’ve taken, I wondered what right I have to put them up on the web, anonymous or not. Legally, I can, but isn’t it hypocritical if I don’t do the same of myself? So I guess there’s a time for everything, so here we go: it’s me.

Colour Version

I’ve always had issues with having my photo on the web. I’m not sure why it is really – I guess the sheer number of people who could find and stalk me kind of put me off. But a couple of people on here asked if there was a photo of me in the plethora of my photos of other people anywhere… there is, but you’ve got to go looking for it.

I’ve found it good sport to spot bloggers around campus this year so far – if anyone spots me, do say hello :-)

“Catalyst design”, meaning the rational invention of a well-defined active species for a targeted application, is often associated with the metallocene and post-metallocene breakthroughs in stereoselective olefin polymerization. The rapid and apparently endless implementation of new catalysts, leading to an amazing variety of largely unprecedented homopolymer and copolymer architectures, is actually perceived as a most convincing demonstration of the said association. In reality, designing one such catalyst from scratch is still a dream, and behind all reported discoveries is the classical mix of hard work and serendipity.

G. Talarico, V. Busico and L. Cavallo, J. Am. Chem. Soc., 2003, 125, 7172–73.