Phil's Blog

Facebook

2010-08-01T11:29:00.000-07:00

I think a centralised model for social networking is living on borrowed time.

There's no reason why social content can't have its own protocol, just like HTTP for web pages, and people can host social information where they want, set their own privacy policy. (They could use a free hosting service, and trade off how much loss of privacy / advertising they'll put up with. This would create a market in such things, whereas Facebook is a monopoly). They could also choose how they use/collate/view this information. Instead of having to view it through one web site, the whole thing would be completely open.

I hope Diaspora succeeds.

Cycling

2010-08-01T08:32:00.000-07:00

Only been able to mountain bike once since Boxing day. Even if I had the chance to ride, the lap at Llandegla has changed a lot so I wouldn't have the satisfaction of beating my PB.

I bought a Garmin Edge 705, and it's great. I like that it shows up as a mass storage device, and the file formats are in the public domain. So it's quite a good gadget for a geek. The downside is that there doesn't currently appear to be a way to run your own firmware on it. Other problems I've found is that it loses reception under thick foliage, so the speed accuracy suffers drastically, and that the calories burned seems to be a massive overestimation. I'd hope that if I had a cadence/speed sensor, it would use this if satellite reception worsened. It's kind of important because a climb I like to sprint up has heavy tree cover and I want to know how fast I'm going so I can sustain the same speed. With a PowerTap I'd hope that the Garmin can work out calories more accurately. I don't know. Another disappointment is that my Trek Incite Team Link ANT+ sensors don't work with it. Yet the Bontrager DuoTap ANT+ sensor does work. I thought the whole point of ANT+ was interoperability?

Winges aside, it's a unique experience to go out somewhere on the bike and never have to worry about getting lost (other than equipment failure).

In an ideal world, my phone and my sat nav would be one and the same thing, so I'd only have to carry one. It would use low-power bluetooth to communicate with the cadence, heart rate, and power sensors. Some smart phones are nearly there, but there are no bluetooth sensors yet and you've got to wonder how long the battery lasts with the screen on all the time.

As for fitness, my recovery has massively improved over last year, I can ride the bash twice a week doing quite a bit of work on the front. I'm still crap at time trials, and I haven't been doing many club runs. I'm struggling a bit on the hills compared to last year. (I won one of the two club hill climbs last year, not bad for someone who regularly comes last in other time trials).

Since last year I put some Dura-Ace carbon laminate wheels on which are fantastic, and some carbon bottle cages. I've decided I'm not spending any more money on the bike.

Llandegla

2009-09-14T07:46:00.000-07:00

Another minute off... 1hr 3min 30s

Cycling

2009-08-23T09:18:00.000-07:00

Having problems at the moment with motivation, and lack of sleep is playing havoc with my energy levels. When the energy levels are OK, I do far too much in a week and then struggle the next week. So last week I only rode about 40 miles. The week before that it was about 200. Given that those 200 miles were no more than 10 hours on the bike, over 7 days, and this leaves me completely drained, then I'd say there's massive room for improvement.

But before this spell I'd managed to lap Llandegla in 1hr 4min 30s. And last time I rode on the bash I managed the whole loop, averaging 23.5mph.

I need to try and keep putting the miles in, do some core strength work, and some intervals on hills, and hopefully I'll see massive improvements on last year in the hill climbs. Then over the winter I'll get a training programme sorted out, and next summer I should be much quicker. Maybe even try racing.

Bash

2009-06-30T12:52:00.001-07:00

12 miles at 25.0mph. I got dropped at about the same time as someone else so we rode the whole course together, so at least I know the whole course now.

Ten Under the Ben

2009-06-06T14:50:00.000-07:00

I've never actually been up to the highlands before. The scenery is awe-inspiringly amazing. It's completely humbling.

Anyway, the camp site was horrible, it was just a marsh and had no running water. Registration was half way up a mountain almost the size of Ben Nevis, reached via cable car. The views were spectacular, we watched the sun set from up there, while eating the free curry.

The course was a bit technical for my liking. I was flying past people on the climbs and losing out on all the technical bits. Our team ended up in the top third, and I know with more training and technical ability I can get a lot faster.

Cycling

2009-05-25T02:37:00.000-07:00

Llandegla: 1hr 8min. New PB. Must have lost at least a minute held up behind a rolling blockade of chavs on bikes. One was taking up the whole trail and aggressively told me to ride round him if I was so much faster than him, when I politely asked if I could get past. Nice.

Uni training loop: 21mph. New PB. The wind was working against me and I didn't feel all that fresh, so the Madone must be a lot faster.

Cycling

2009-04-26T12:52:00.000-07:00

1hr 11min lap at Llandegla. Personal best. Was raining and I had summer tyres on, so the trail was slippery, thought it was going to be a slow lap so I just relaxed, and I think relaxing was the key because I beat my personal best by 7 minutes. I think this enabled me to be smoother on the descents, hence faster and less fatigued. I felt quite fresh at the end of the lap. Next target: 1hr 5min.

Also did the 24 mile loop at uni on the road bike over 20mph for the first time this year.

Government advertising

2009-04-13T04:57:00.000-07:00

I've had a cash machine telling me to catch sneezes in a tissue then wash my hands. I've seen a poster telling me it's my right to be watched by CCTV. A TV advert pointing out that it's not a good idea to leave scolding cups of water where they may tip onto a toddler. A poster on the bus telling me the benefits of breast feeding.

It's all our money paying for this, and it's saying stuff that's either propaganda (about CCTV, for example) or just common sense.

I wonder about how they decide a new advertising campaign is needed. Is there a check list of things it's required to meet? Is the cost of the ungood behaviour multiplied by the effectiveness at stopping it weighed against the cost of the advert? Do the civil servants at the various government departments responsible for these adverts lose sleep over not being able to prevent every failure of common sense, because a helpful poster wasn't seen in time?

Compulsory voluntary community service

2009-04-13T04:53:00.000-07:00

Prime Minister Gordon Brown has pledged to ensure every young person has done 50 hours of voluntary work by the time they are 19 years old.

Mr Brown said a promise to bring in compulsory community service would be a part of his next election manifesto.

From the BBC.

Are the BBC having a laugh at Brown's expense, or is failing to apply logic to contradictory doublethink just a Pavlovian response for them?

What concerns me about it is that the government has always had a vision of correct behaviour which it is willing to bribe and coerce people to act according to, or use legislation to control otherwise legal behaviour (ASBOs), or to spend millions advertising to tell us how to behave. And apparently now this moralising has passed into the realms of temporarily making all young people slaves. It's entirely predictable as more ways have to be explored to shape society as people look to the state in the face of every problem and expect solutions. But things like this undermine respect for the law, because it makes boundaries into one big evolving experiment orchestrated by grubby dishonest politicians who have no respect for empowering people by leaving them alone.

Update: BBC have edited the article to play down the doublethink aspect. Unfortunately I didn't quote the whole thing so I don't know if they've edited a direct quote from Brown.

Simple idea on VAT

2009-03-31T05:22:00.000-07:00

How about if you present a crime number and a sales receipt to the taxman, you get VAT refunded on an item you only bought to replace a stolen item! It would certainly take a bit of the sting out of crime if the treasury wasn't a beneficiary of crime.

This would also make insurance cheaper, as what you're covering has a lower replacement cost. Then there's the insurance premium tax. If you have a car accident, they already benefit from the VAT on the repair work the garage does.

Court of Public Opinion

2009-03-24T15:13:00.000-07:00

What does the court of public opinion have to say about McNulty and Smith?

We'll just file this in the list of populist soundbites that come back to bite Labour in the arse, like British Jobs for British People, and Whiter than White.

New Bike

2008-10-15T14:26:00.001-07:00

Trek Madone 5.2 Pro 2008, Race X Lite wheels, full Dura-Ace, and Specialized Toupe saddle. Weighs 16.0lbs with pedals and bottle cages.

I did the Cat and Fiddle Challenge on it, in the awful weather, and it's incredible - very obviously more bike than I'll ever need. I don't know enough to comment about subtleties but I notice it's planted to the road and when you stamp on the pedals it just surges forwards.

It had a very thourough clean afterwards and now it's in storage for the winter.

Anyway, since I last posted I did a 6.7 mile time trial in 17"00 on my older bike (which is more than 4lbs heavier) and a club hill climb, in which I did a lot better than I thought I would do. There's another hill climb next weekend which might be more my cup of tea than the last one.

Barclays Bank

2008-09-10T15:17:00.000-07:00

My brother decided to close his Barclays accounts, because Barclays had been nothing but trouble for him. A perfect example is when he wrote to them with instructions regarding the closure of his accounts, including a cheque to return the total balance to zero, it sat on someone's desk in the branch for over two weeks before it was opened. Because of this, standing orders continued to go out, interest on his overdraft continued to acrue, and bank charges continued to be levied.

I wrote a letter saying he'd send a cheque to return the accounts to zero, not including overdraft interest and penalty charges, on condition they send him a bottle of wine as an apology. It worked! They even sent two bottles!

The bottles weren't quite an expensive vintage from the vineyard of one of the members of the board, but I googled them and they're £10 each which in total is about one penalty charge's worth of cash. Not bad.

More cycling

2008-08-23T05:19:00.001-07:00

Did two laps of my uni training loop at 20.2 and 20.6mph.

I did some mountain biking and got my time at home down to 1hr51min, and really struggled with the new Panaracer Fire XC Pros on au naturale wet and loose slatey/limestoney stuff. I've put some blue skewers on the bike to go with the blue hubs (sad I know) and have ordered a blue seat clamp. Next up is blue floating rotors. The hope brakes are great, although the levers rattle around a bit on the rough stuff which gets a bit annoying since I'm used to the silence of a road bike. Shame that the tyres will have to go, they have a blue side wall!

Cycling

2008-08-01T12:01:00.001-07:00

Llandegla - 1hr18m, personal best but still a long way off a decent time. The new wheels (blue Hope Pro 2 hubs, Mavic 717 rims, blue Panaracer Fire XC Pro tyres) made a huge difference though.
Sunday club run - 19.0mph over 57 miles, in 30 degree heat.
I also did a individual time trial, 21.1mph over 13.4 miles.

Cycling

2008-07-15T15:02:00.000-07:00

Road again with the road club on Sunday. 63.1 miles at 19.2mph. The 36.5 miles to the cafe were at 19.8mph. It was a lot of fun and I finished feeling a lot fresher than last time.

Cycling

2008-06-27T11:24:00.001-07:00

I rode with Coventry road club on Sunday and just about managed to keep up with the middle of their groups - 17.2mph over 65 miles. And today I got round the 25 mile loop at uni at 19.5mph. It was a welcome ride because I was trying to grapple with a maths problem and I needed a break. I saw the strange sight of a buzzard hovering quite close to the ground, beating its wings like a Kestrel. I didn't know they did that.

In May I took part in the Merida MTB Marathon, which was a lot of fun but I hadn't eaten or slept before the event, so it was a lot more demanding than it needed to be.

Cycling

2008-05-13T13:46:00.000-07:00

I think I've been getting quite a bit fitter recently - stronger legs and faster recovery times. I got my time down from 2hr 6min to 1hr 58min around the 22 mile loop at home. I would have gone faster except I was unsure about the water situation or the temperature, it was the hottest day I've ridden on since last summer.

Letter to Labour MP

2008-05-03T15:30:00.001-07:00

Thought I'd join in and write a letter to my Labour MP, although I would probably be wasting my effort if I sent it.

Dear MP,

I'm not sure if this email is wasting your time or not, as I have no pressing constituency issue affecting me, other than not wanting a Tory landslide next election.

I think Labour have to realise that on current trends they're going to lose the next election, that they have their back against the wall, so they only have one shot and they have to fight. This should be liberating, and make the party feel that large changes are acceptable and necessary, and that the public will find U-turns palatable and understandable.

Fighting does not involve carrying on the same track telling the public how good we have it, and how wonderful Labour are doing, and how good the statistics are compared to the early 90s. Stop the spin and listen. The public might be cynical and think you're just doing it to cling on to power, but so what, as long as you're giving them what they want, your actions speak louder than your words, and you have nothing to lose.

I know a lot of party supporters will be thinking that voters are worried about an economic downturn and are also typically bored with a party that's been in power for 11 years. I think it's deeper than that, Labour don't listen, they're complacent, they rule rather than represent, and people are particularly tired of the paternalism and posturing over things Labour tell us we need, like a perpetual cycle of tougher anti-terror legislation, and ID Cards, and oath-swearing patriotism, etc, etc.

David Cameron still hasn't announced much in the way of policy. While this is bad, people are reaching the "anybody but Labour" point, so attacking the opposition won't be very successful. However, the traditional Tory schisms haven't gone, they've been papered over because they can smell power. The Cornerstone group is still there, as is the upper class feeling of entitlement, and the privileged upbringings. They don't represent the people at the bottom. But if Labour are no longer the natural answer to that then it shows how bad things are.

So may I make a few suggestions:
- Apologise (properly) and bring back the 10p tax band (properly). Here's one comment from an online Newspaper article about the 10p band: "Brown cheated me out of a third of my pension putting me well into the 10p tax loser bracket and wonders why he is hated. He says we don't understand. I do everytime I look at the price of something and have to use savings for necessities that were intended to pay for a little comfort in old age."
- Drop all the illiberal legislation like ID Cards and 42 days. You can't get more British than freedom and the rule of law, so stop trying to erode those things.
- I'd like constitutional reform but don't like the idea of Jack Straw being in charge of it. Set up a commission, to examine problems we have now and look at proportional representation. Have the humility to listen to people, and to realise that any power you try and keep for yourselves now, rather than give back to the people, is probably power you're giving the Conservatives at the next election. Then offer people a referendum on the resultant bill. The Power Commission was a great start, but Labour completely ignored it.
- Don't listen to the first Blairite who comes along saying "We told you so about Brown", I think another change in leadership would be catastrophic. But don't go too far the other way and think about re-introducing Clause Four!

I think these things only scratch the surface of changes we need, but that's another subject. Apologies for the length of this email. I will happily vote Labour at the next election if you demonstrate some serious changes.

Yours sincerely,

Phil

P.S. Here are some relevant links from newspapers and the blogosphere:
http://www.labourhome.org/story/2008/5/3/53533/63012
http://www.labourhome.org/story/2008/5/3/54131/09346
http://tinyurl.com/4pnyrw
http://www.chickyog.net/2008/05/02/constructivism/
http://tinyurl.com/6e3x5k

Cycling

2008-04-13T09:32:00.000-07:00

Did my 22 mile loop in the Peak District yesterday. This is the first time I've got round since January because of a knee problem, and fortunately my knee seems to be OK and I haven't lost any time. I've lost strength but since then I've gained efficiency, a better position on the bike, suspension closer to how I want, and more confidence. So in summer I should be able to get well under 2hrs.

Nothing to hide, nothing to fear

2008-02-28T15:12:00.001-08:00

There's a renewed debate about having a compulsory national DNA database.

The government say it they are against it for civil liberties reasons. I don't know what the difference is between being required to give DNA versus any other biometric database. I don't know why they're less willing to use the argument "nothing to hide, nothing to fear" here. I suppose it's all rather about public perception rather than actual arguments.

By the way, as a panelist on Question Time mentioned, "nothing to hide, nothing to fear" also applies to government cabinet discussions in the run up to war. They appear to have committed a crime in invading Iraq, so they forfeited their privacy and there should be a public inquiry. However, if they don't have any privacy to start with, and all their discussions are made public, then don't have full liberty to make frank decisions. There's an interesting duality here, and when the government are tempted by the nothing to hide argument, they should always think about their own affairs.

The Holographic Universe

2008-02-07T12:44:00.000-08:00

On the cover, the book is billed as a new "theory of reality". The book starts off by introducing holograms, which the author states exhibit fractal behaviour, namely detail at all scales - some sort of self-similarity where an arbitrarily small chunk of the fractal contains the same information as the whole. My interest piped up, I never knew holograms were such fascinating things, so I read on.

I think the following chapters are so far a bit of an anti-climax. I'd call his "theory of reality" scientific mysticism. I can't see how it describes (hence predicts) phenomenon, and I can't see how it explains them either. The format of the book is a general theme for each chapter, lavished with numerous accounts of experiences of the paranormal (i.e. that which is outside our current scientific understanding), which he then ties in to his 'theory' in a way which he evidently feels resonates just right. I never found any clearly laid out axioms, or system of logic for deriving these explanations. So with no terms of reference, no mechanics, they really could just be anything that sounds good, anything that provides enough abstraction to tie the evidence together. The point is here is that when there are no terms of reference for these deep explanations, anything and everything could be an explanation. It's language-games.

As for the evidence, there were about two things on each page that one could spend all day Googling. Mohotty, an Indian guy who could scewer his back with meat hooks and not bleed or show scarring afterwards. Medieval saint somebody-or-others holy relics which bleed real blood. Some dead nun's heart. Accupuncture. Stigmata, stigmata, stigmata. Psycho-kinesis. Sai Baba. Zeitoun apparitions. Etc, etc.

Now I have no vested interest in these things one way or another (I don't leap at the idea of them being evidence for my chosen sky-pixie, I don't claim that science has it all right). But these things are rare, at least this much can be surmised from the $1m which James Randi has unclaimed. I already try to be aware of my preconceptions, so these chapters were certainly no awakening that made me feel like I'm missing out on something 'other worldly', beckoning me to throw myself at some partial ideas explaining these elusive things. For me, there is no tempting trade-off which allows me to feel the religious fervour but maintain a scientific dignity. Imagining some tantalising thought that we can know and understand the cave (whose walls we cast shadows on) simply does nothing for me of the kind that I don't already feel when I look at the night sky or watch a natural history programme.

There's a section in the last chapter called "The Need for a Basic Restructuring of Science", which contains about the only graspable machinery of the author's views on the world. And it's woolly at best. "Obviously, the first and most necessary step is to accept the existence of psychic and spiritual phenomenon," he writes. This is a complete perversion of the scientific method, to follow the scientific method in general but have a specific list of facts we just accept prima facia, such as the existence of certain phenomenon which we (arguably) can't even reproduce in a lab. It's reversing it. It's ignorant, we have this fantastic vista only because science has raised us to these lofty heights, but now we propose demolishing it to see further. It's taking a dump on the doorstep of enlightenment values. Why not accept intelligent design? Or any other non-falsifiable ideas? There's absolutely nothing (in theory) stopping a scientist pursuing work according to his own interests, and the research, being objective, shouldn't be affected by those views. There's nothing wrong with speculative research, the people conducting it should just not delude themselves into thinking words like "holographic universe", "implicate order", etc, are anything more than linguistic cogs for the time being.

After mentioning the usual ridicule and ostracism from the scientific community, he says "another feature that must be part of of the restructuring of science is a broadening of the definition of what constitutes scientific evidence. ... because [the phenomenon] are not easy to to rope in and scrutinize in a laboratory setting, science has tended to ignore them." What should a scientist do about a report in some journal of parapsychology? When there's no data, precisely what can science do with such papers? Understanding the mind is in its infancy, you could say it's exciting because the more we find out, the less we realise we know. But that we know so little is no reason to go away and start believing what we want to believe. It's impatient.

Next, "the idea that the universe began in a single, primordial explosion, or Big Bang, is accepted without question by most scientists." A proper scientist never accepts something without question (except that paranormal phenomenon exist, obviously). "And this is odd because, although there are compelling reasons to believe that this is true, no one has ever proved that it is true." And Darwinism is only a theory. "On the other hand, if a near-death psychologist were to state flatly that the realm of light NDEers travel to during their experiences is an actual other level of reality, the psychologist would be attacked for making a statement that cannot be proved." More specifically, it would be pointed out to them that they are making unscientific claims, i.e. those which cannot be tested, and cannot be falsified. Like saying God exists, or something like that. So they're two entirely different things. I think the author misunderstands a basic point about science if he thinks it's about proving anything.

By the end of the book, I started to feel cheated - many things were compared to holograms, and said to have a "holographic nature". There was never any maths or physics or handles to grab hold of anything by. I think the book would have been great as an exploration of the evidence for paranormal phenomenon, and to challenge preconceptions, but if someone wants a book to do just that, I wouldn't recommend it because of its few pages on how science needs to change.

Finally, it irks me a lot that these new-agey sort of books go off on a tangent about a collective awakening of some higher consciousness in the human race, and then all our problems will be solved. That's a cop-out. We have the potential to be nice and love our neighbour right now. We have the need to do that too. Science is telling us all sorts of things about how unsustainably we live. Why wait for some spiritual awakening?