This page
This page is a central point for all of my 'stuff'. It is updated automatically, though there may be a short delay between the source material being changed and the update. The most frequently updated section is probably the blog, and the headlines can be seen on the right. Also displayed are a few other bits and pieces - some will be for my own use.
If linking to murky.org, it's probably best to link to the blog.
Things I've Seen
Below I've included interesting and/or cool items which I've seen whilst using Google Reader. Do visit the originating site, as it will usually have lots of other good stuff.
None of these articles will be permanently linked from this page, as I share new items, old items will be automatically removed.
You can read more about Google Reader here.
There is a Google Reader Page with these items. It may be up to an hour more up to date.
Over on DIY Photography, photographer and artist William van der Steen, has a nice tutorial on creating sliced fruit photos. [Thanks, Udi!]
Create Wonderful Sliced Fruit Images
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Yesterday, Neil Denny and I hung out backstage at The Big Libel Gig to talk to performers about science, skepticism, and the UK’s crap libel laws. We asked each performer to libel one of the other performers, and got some very interesting stories out of it. Here’s part one of two, featuring Simon Singh, Ariane Sherine, Tim Minchin, Tracey Brown, and Richard Wiseman:
(Also available on iTunes or via RSS)
In addition to the audio, which will go on the Skepchick podcast and the Little Atoms podcast, I also got a few videos. Here’s Tim Minchin, with more to come soon:
EDIT: Once again, sorry for not hanging out right after the show and sorry for any loopiness in the interviews; both are related to the fact that I only just got my voice back and was still really ill. Bleh.
Video transcript (thanks Jeff) after the break!
>> Tim: Who am I going to libel?
>> Rebecca: Anybody you want.
>> Tim: What about Rebecca Watson, is she on the bill?
>> Neil: She’s not on the bill, but you could libel Rebecca, that’s fine.
>> Rebecca: You could libel me.
>> Tim: [quietly] slut?
>> Neil: No, that’s not nice.
>> Rebecca: No, it can’t be true.
>> Tim: Oh.
>> Neil: It’s supposed to be libel, that’s the whole point.
>> Rebecca: Yeah
>> Tim: Um
>> Rebecca: saying I was a -
[talking over each other]
>> Neil: -nunnery.
>> Tim: She’s, uh, frigid.
>> Rebecca: Won’t do anal.
>> Tim: Rebecca Watson’s just totally frigid.
>> Rebecca: Yes, ok.
>> Neil: Right, should we start?
>> Rebecca: I think we should.
>> Neil: I was going to lead back here-
>> Tim: So this is our third…
>> Rebecca: I’m going to go back-
>> Heave we started? We’ve started, haven’t we?
>> Neil: Yeah, but I can um…
>> Rebecca: Not officially.
>> Tim: No, I think you should always start ‘in medias res’.
>> Rebecca: Yeah.
>> Neil: Yeah?
>> Tim: Yeah.
>> Rebecca: You just like using Latin.
>> Tim: Yeah.
>> Neil: What does that mean? Can you translate as well when you do that?
>> Tim: I think it’s-
[talking over each other]
>> Neil: – translate afterwards.
>> Rebecca: Or as you know, you know, yeah.
>> Tim: I don’t know, in the middle of things. It’s just one of those – je ne sais quoi.
[chuckling]
>> Neil: how are we actually doing this thing anyway.
>> Tim: This is it: we’re doing it now!
>> Neil: Are we doing the whole you thing again, or are we-
>> Rebecca: Yeah!
>> Tim: I’ve been on the show three times.
>> Neil: Exactly, but we have this ludicrous gimic where we do: ‘Who are you, we don’t know you, we’ve never met you before.’
>> Rebecca: It’s all right, I’ve got it under control.
>> Tim: Ok.
>> Neil: Ok.
>> Rebecca: Neil and I are sitting here with someone who’s been on the
show many times. What is your name?
>> Tim: Tim Minchin.
>> Rebecca: Tim Minchin. And what do you do for a living, Tim?
>> Tim: I’m a musician.
>> Rebecca: Ok [chuckling]
>> Tim: Everybody laughs when I say that.
>> Neil: Why are we all here tonight?
>> Tim: I’m here tonight to do a show to widen people’s understanding of the need for Libel Reform UK – my home, adopted home.
>> Rebecca: And why do we need to reform libel laws?
>> Tim: Because they have been crap for years and years and years, and it’s a total embarrassment. It’s an international embarrassment, UK libel laws. It’s too expensive for normal people to defend themselves, basically, if people want to sue them for libel.
And that’s really bad. And I was thinking, it’s what — it only really hit me today. The thing that’s really — reason it’s sort of come to a head now, even though, as I say, it’s been questioned and people have been trying to sort of massage the existing laws for years and years. The reason it’s come to a head now, that actually needs to change, is that the way we get our information has changed. Because the people that we get our information from now, like bloggers and podcasters and all that, they are even more ill equipped to deal with the hundred and forty times average cost.
>> Neil: They’ve not got media conglomerates with their money behind-
>> Tim: That’s right, and they don’t get to benefit from the um, what they call, there’s a couple of legal loop-holes that journalists can claim.
>> Neil: The Reynolds, and-
>> Tim: Yeah, and the qualifiers, you know. And they don’t get to use them because they’re not officially journalists, and if they’re not they’re they’re just spotty nerds in their mom’s basement. And so, And they have to, and as blogger’s power increases, so too is it important that they are held to account. It’s not that we don’t need a law holding people to account if they’re completely out of control, even if they are spotty nerds in their mom’s basement. But they need to be able to defend themselves from libel litigation, and they wouldn’t be able to afford it. Because they’re spotty nerds, and spotty nerds don’t have jobs.
>> Rebecca: So what gets you interested in the cause of bloody nerds?
>> Tim: Um, I don’t know what my fuckin’ thing is. I like stuff that just makes sense, doesn’t it? I get turned on by shit that makes sense. I came to this story of Simon Singh’s case, which is the thing that sort of got this particular version of the ball rolling. And Simon had become a vague friend through these sciency nerdy gigs, and through having read his books. And when I write my material, although I’m a comedian and I can get away with pretty much anything, ’cause- really is carte blanche when you’re on stage. People – if someone tried to see, they might be able to, but hey, people don’t, and if they did you’d go what’s the theatrical construct you’re doing.
But I actually, on a personal level, try to never say anything that’s not demonstrably… true. Well no, that’s not true, but when I’m talking about science, and medicine, and all that I try to be really through. And Simon’s always been one of my sources, you know. Because someone else has to do the work (because I don’t have time to do it).
>> Neil: At the same time as well, this is – the Simon Singh thing is about scientists should be able to go about scientific research without worrying about libel.
>> Tim: Yeah.
>> Neil: You’re an entertainer, and last year we had the Jonathan Ross – Russell Brand thing and there’s been a sort of chilling affect about, particularly at the BBC and whatever, about offends and stuff, which sort of, it’s a similar thing.
>> Tim: Yeah, absolutely, I’m extremely interested. You happened to point out something that should be really obvious to me, from the inside out. That my whole shows are about what’s offensive, in a way. I mean I’m not a sort of cutting-edge trying to offend everyone comedian, but I’m extremely interested in why we’re offended by what we’re offended by, and even the notion of offense. And there’s no doubt that the law in the UK, the libel laws in the UK reflect a general sort of conservatism that is born of some by-gone era, you know. They are two- they’re obviously very married, but they are two issues, aren’t they? The legal, the sort of legal conservatism, but the sort of seeming rise of moral conservatism beginning of this century. I don’t understand it. And is- we’re inclined to see patterns where they don’t exist. Am I right? Is there a rise of moral conservatism?
>> Neil: I think so, definitely.
>> Rebecca: I would agree with that.
>> Tim: Since the seventies probably, you know, it’s like-
>> Neil: Perhaps it’s something that is always there.
>> Rebecca: Well-
>> Neil: It manifests itself in different ways. It’s computer games at the minute, isn’t it? Whereas it would have been comics twenty years ago or something.
>> Rebecca: Well yeah, and if you look at, I think that the atheist movement has been responsible for a lot of backlash from Christian conservatives who see atheists like Richard Dawkins and Chris Hitchens and those people as threats. So they really ride that moral conservatism train.
>> Tim: I think we really need more cuddly atheists. [laughing] I try to be a more cuddly atheist. I’ve got a song! Does anybody want to hear a song? I can do a funny song.
>> Rebecca: Yeah, you can do it right now. [laughing]
>> Tim: yeah, it’s just, yeah, it’s a poem… prickly atheist.
>> Rebecca: Now you’re, I’d say you’re fairly cuddly, yeah. Scale of one to ten, I’d say what, like seven.
>> Neil: I’ll give you eight.
>> Rebecca: Really?
>> Tim: I try to be- I have Christian fans, you know. [car horn] So. They’re obviously a bit thick, but still…
>> Neil: Well, to finish up then Tim, we’re inviting everyone that we speak to tonight to, in the spirit of the evening, to basically say something libelous or defamatory about somebody they know or another performer tonight or something.
>> Tim: Who’s on the bill?
>> Rebecca: We’ve got Richard Wiseman, Evan Harris-
>> Tim: Richard Wiseman’s illiterate, he gets someone else to write books. Evan Harris is, um, into bestiality.
>> Rebecca: Simon Singh?
>> Tim: Um, ah, has a got a false leg.
>> Rebecca, Neil: [laughing]
>> Rebecca: How is that defamatory?
>> Tim: Well, if people knew that, he wouldn’t have a leg to stand on. That is not, I didn’t mean that, that’s wasn’t why I said that. Just where we ended up.
>> Rebecca: That’s… Niel brought us here, really we can-
>> Niel: Yeah, I apologize.
>> Rebecca: How about one more for Ben Goldacre?
>> Tim: Goldacre? You can’t defame him, he’s perfect! Talk about cuddly. He’s so sweet.
>> Niel: I think that’s defamatory enough.
>> Rebecca: [laughing] I think he’s- he’s writing his MP right now.
>> Tim: Goldacre’s a homeopath.
>> Rebecca: You heard it here first, from Tim Minchin. If anybody wants to sue.
>> Niel: Thanyou.
>> Rebecca: Thankyou Tim.
>> Tim: Ciao, Ciao.
A leaked memo from label lobbyists shows they expect Parliament to pass their plans for draconian disconnection punishments without debate.
The BPI, lobbyists who represent the four multinational music corporations in the UK, say that:
[MPs] will have minimum input … from this point on. … John Whittingdate MP [DCMS committee] … has said this week it [the Bill] could be lost if enough MPs protest at not having the opportunity to scrutinise it. Whist true in constitutional terms, the hard politics of the situation makes it seem unlikely … Come the week of 29th March the main political focus is likely to be on the … Budget”
This will allow all the decisions to be made in dirty last minute deals behind closed doors between the party whips in what they call “wash up”.
This way, disconnection penalties could be agreed with no democratic scrutiny whatsoever.
No debate.
The memo, published by Cory Doctorow, shows BPI lobbyist Richard Mollett, who hopes to become a Labour MP at the next election, telling music bosses that if MPs do their job and debate the Bill, the BPI's disconnection proposals may face defeat.
Mollett also claims that there is not the sense of a groundswell of opposition to the Bill. Well, we have seen nothing but a torrent of outrage at the Bill, and now Lib Dem candidates are saying that they are hearing the same thing. This week, many people threatened not to vote for the Lib Dems because of their stance in favour of web blocking and the likelihood of censorship. This Bill could cost MPs their seats: that's how controversial it is.
Do MPs really believe that they can pass disconnection without debate? Something so appalling as removing people’s basic tools to get on with their life, education, work and political expression, without actually needing to be guilty?
It is more or less impossible to disconnect someone’s water supply. It’s extremely difficult to disconnect someone's gas or electricity, even after non-payment.
Yet the government plans would mean that disconnecting families from the net for alleged copyright infringement will be automatic and very difficult to contest.
We need to show MPs that is not possible to agree to a measure like this on the nod. To refuse to exercise their democratic duty to debate legislation on a matter this important would be as corrupt as the Expenses scandal. We pay MPs wages. We expect them to do their job.
What to do
Write to your MP. Say that you are worried and appalled that something as serious as disconnection and interference with people’s freedom of speech, their right to work and education, could pass without debate. Point out that businesses, schools, universities are worried the Bill is unworkable. Ask them to ensure that time is given to such a controversial and ill-thought out Bill, especially clauses 11-18, about disconnection and web blocking. If you live in a marginal seat, let all your candidates know that supporting disconnection is something which would cost them your vote.
Kansas pastor Fred Phelps and his family run Westboro Baptist church totally hates your face, oh and the rest of you too. And they don’t just hate you. They pretty much hate everybody. If you are not familiar with the shenanigans of the vitriolic hate-spewing-sign-holding clan watch the video below. I really recommend you check it out cuz it’s creepy. Go ahead. I’ll wait.
Did you see that? Did you see his kids? Did you see the little one sing at the end? They don’t even know what or why they hate. They just hate because that’s what they have been raised to do.
So in a nutshell, the big news of the day is that the family of a dead soldier sued the Phelps after they picketed their dead sons funeral with signs that said things like, “God hates soldiers” and “You’re in hell.” The family originally won an 11 million dollar settlement for invasion of privacy and emotional distress but the Phelps first negotiated the settlement down to 5 million and then had the case 
overturned on appeal. So now the family of the dead soldier is appealing that decision and the case is now going to the U.S. Supreme Court.
I am a strong supporter of first amendment rights but I also don’t think these people should have the right to further their opportunistic hate-filled agenda at the cost of bereaving families. It will be interesting to see what the Supreme Court decides.
What do you think? Should the Phelps have the right to have their angry religious protests at funerals? Or is telling them to hit the road going to jeopardize our first amendment rights?
The Afternoon Inquisition (or AI) is a question posed to you, the Skepchick community. Look for it to appear Tuesdays, Thursdays, Saturdays, and Sundays at 3pm ET.
The only version of the sport that makes sense for city folk is on bicycles. Anything else is, well, a bit pony
If Daniel Fox-Davies wants to get more inner-city kids into polo, he needs to get wheel. Horse polo is played with ponies and equipment costing thousands of pounds, and a pitch 300 yards by 160 yards. Despite Jodie Kidd's encouragement, this makes it completely inaccessible to most kids in inner London.
However, polo, which is one of the oldest organised team sports, can be played using a variety of pitches and mounts. Just as the horse disappeared from London's streets once people had realised how much more efficient the bicycle was, so, too, should potential polo players eschew equestrianism in favour of cheaper mounts, and smaller, lower-maintenance pitches.
Hard-court bicycle polo, which was devised by Portland bicycle messengers in the late 1990s, requires little more than a patch of concrete or tarmac, six bikes and mallets, a ball and four traffic cones. Although you can now buy purpose-built polo bikes, most polo players assemble their own from cheap parts. Mallets can be made in minutes from secondhand ski-poles and off-cuts of plastic gas pipe, although some players use bamboo and other, more esoteric, materials, such as titanium.
The basic rules are simple: don't put a foot down, only shots off the short end of the mallet count, and don't be a dick; three players to a team, first to five goals the winner. The goals are usually set to a little wider than the length of a bicycle, and the pitch is whatever you can find. Although not used as much as it once was, the basketball court at the top of Brick Lane hosted many informal games, and the first ever London bike polo tournament in 2007.
And hardcourt polo is truly a growing inner-city sport – unlike horse polo. Some of the most popular bike polo spots are in Hackney, and there are often sessions on the upper floors of the Peckham multistorey car park in south London. The first ever European Hardcourt Bicycle Polo Championships were held in Southwark in a school playground (a London team lost the final to a team from Geneva).
The London Bike Polo League is in its second season, and is being contested by 17 teams, and the London Hardcourt Bicycle Polo Association organised sessions (funded by Play Sport London) for novices last summer, which were attended by over 100 new players. Hardcourt's older brother, which is played on grass, was once a demonstration sport at the 1908 Olympics, and, although not as popular as it once was, is still regularly played at international level.
With teams all over North America and Europe playing hardcourt every week (in some cases, every day of every week), the bicycle looks like the future of polo; whereas the horse looks like what it is – fit for the sport of kings, but completely impractical for the rest of us.
Neil Fraser's Lava Lamp Centrifuge is 10' across, weighs 50 pounds, and spins at 42 rpm generating 3 Gs. It uses a Nexus One's accelerometer to measure g-force. Excellent!
Will lava lamps work in a high-gravity environment such as Jupiter? This topic spawned considerable lunch-time discussion and no clear consensus emerged. Most people initially assumed that the wax would sink to the bottom and wouldn't cycle, but as the physics was examined in greater depth this assumption became difficult to defend.
To find out how lava lamps behave in super-terrestrial gravity, I built a large centrifuge in my living room. This was intended to be a fun activity for a long weekend in January. However the project's size and power requirements were well outside my previous experience. Thus it was a rich learning experience as I encountered one metal-shredding and wire-melting failure after another. In the end, perseverance paid off and I obtained the answer to the original question.
[Thanks, hectocotyli!]
Read more | Permalink | Comments | Read more articles in Robotics | Digg this!
I didn't know such a thing as scientific cookies existed, or even that a round-up (or two) were needed to show off all the flavors and possibilities that creative people have come up with. But now I realize I was living in the plain white flour and possibly moldy pantries of mundane cookiedom. Why make a star sugar cookie when you can make a sugar cookie atom?
Luckily, Ms. Humble of Not So Humble Pie is blogging about all the geeky baked goodies she can find, and she's gathered them up in two (so far) round-ups. Of course our inspired cooking pals over at Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories are included!
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As photographers, we spend a lot of time thinking about how to take the most beautiful photos ever.
How often do you back them up, though…? If you have to think for more than a fraction of a second to answer that question, the real answer is ‘not often enough’
Here’s a couple of tips to poke you in the right direction.
There are a few important steps to creating a backup strategy.
Choose what to back up
This is the easiest bit. Think about this: What do you want to back up? The answer, here, is probably either ‘my photos’, or ‘my photos and lots of other stuff’.
I do both – but I go out of my way to take better, more frequent, and more redundant backups of my photos, because they’re more valuable and important to me.
Choose how to back it up
Automatic back-up at home – Personally, I’m using an Apple Time Capsule (usually available a smidge cheaper on Amazon.com / .co.uk) which has a huge benefit: It takes automatic back-ups every hour. Which means that every time I come within WiFi range of my house (which happens frequently, unsurprisingly), the computer automatically starts backing up my important files (i.e. all my photographs). I love this solution because it’s a no-brain approach to back-up: I don’t have to do or remember anything, it just does it for me.
Along the same trait is Automatic back-up over the internet – In addition to my Time Capsule, I use a service called Mozy, which is an online backup service (for more about why, see ’store the backup’ below). It’s pretty clever, actually, for about $5 per month you get unlimited storage, and it takes backups in the background, all over the internet. By having your back-ups off-site, your stuff is still safe even if someone steals everything in your house, there is a fire, or similar horribleness. I signed up for a 2-year subscription, set it up, and haven’t looked at it since (apart from checking if it’s still backing up every now and then. It is. I’m impressed.)
Fully redundant backups… – Finally (can you tell I’m slightly paranoid?) I have a hard disk RAID solution, also at home. This is a little box I can plug into my computer. The box contains two harddrives, which are ‘mirrored’. This means that both disks have the same content in them: If one of them fails, in theory all you have to do is to replace the broken disk. The other disk will copy all the information back onto the new disk, and you’re safe again. This is a pretty hard-core solution, but it works very well to ensure data integrity.
That's 50,000 photographs just waiting to be destroyed because someone opened the hard drive enclosure to take a photo...
… Over a network: RAID solutions can work in many different ways – you can do them over a network (Check out ‘Network Attached Storage’ on Amazon (.co.uk or .com)).
… Hooked up directly to your PC or Mac: As far as stand-alone RAID goes, you can buy ready-built solutions (Like the G-Tech G-Raid 3TB FireWire 800 / Hi-Speed USB solution available from Amazon.com, or the WD MyBook 2GB solution from Amazon.co.uk) – but there are loads of other options available, too.
If you’re feeling thrifty and a bit DIY-tastic, you can build your own RAID solution by getting two big harddisks. I’m rather fond of Western Digital Caviar Green drives; they are reliable, quiet, and cheap-tastic: Amazon.co.uk / Amazon.com. In addition, you’ll need an enclosure. Look for Firewire 800 if your computer supports it – if not, USB2 or FireWire should do the trick.
Check your backup integrity
I was kicking myself when I thought I might have lost this photo - turns out that I did have a backup of it, despite deleting the folder by accident. Phew! Click for bigger version on Flickr
Remember that you have to be sure that what you are backing up is actually working: There’s no good in taking a backup of a corrupted file. Obviously, you can’t check every file for integrity every time, but what you can do is to ensure that you keep older backups, too.
Only recently, I discovered that I had deleted a folder of pictures by accident several months ago. If I had only kept a recent snapshot of my pictures folder (as it were, pun fully intended), I’d have been buggered. Luckily (or rather: due to having a sane backup strategy), I was able to dig out an older backup of my photos folder, which still contained the deleted folder, and I was able to restore my photos. Phew!
For important shoots, I immediately burn them to DVD – that way, I know I have a backup somewhere which isn’t being touched.
Think about where you store your backups
Okay, so perhaps this bank vault is a bit over-kill, but if your photos are valuable to you (say, if you're a commercial photographer, or if you can't stand the thought of losing them), you might want to consider renting a deposit box, and keep a backup of your photos on an external harddrive there. You only need a tiny bank box, so it shouldn't cost the world.
It’s important to think about how you are storing your backups. Remember that you’re backing up for all sorts of reasons: If your computer breaks, and external harddrive is handy. But what if someone breaks into your house? It’s no good having a full set of backups on external harddrives if the thieves can just take them with them, too. House fires, floods, etc – there are lots of reasons why keeping your backups in your house is a good idea (they’re easily available), but there are risks, too.
Personally, I keep my Time Capsule hidden away in the attic. That way, a casual thief is unlikely to run off with it, so even if my computer is stolen, I don’t lose my photos.
In addition, I keep a backup on an external drive which I leave at my parent’s house – it’s low-tech, and the backups are generally about 2 months old every time I swap the drive over, but it’s better than not having it handy.
In addition, I have the Mozy backups – although they would be a pain int he arse to restore: I’d have to download hundreds of GB of data. There’s an alternative way, too: ordering DVDs or an external harddrive with your data, but that, too, is a pain… In short, Mozy is my absolute last resort.
And finally… Try recovering the backup
The best thing that might happen to you is that you go your entire life without ever having to restore a back-up. Nonetheless, it is an extremely good idea to try it anyway.
If you’re unable to restore your backups (perhaps there’s a problem with the backups? Maybe the restore feature of your favourite backup package isn’t working?), you may as well not bother with the hassle of backups at all: they’re only useful if you can use them if the worst happens.
Couple of notes
The links to Mozy and Amazon in this article are affiliate links (more about those on the ‘Advertising on Photocritic‘ page, if you’re curious). That means that if you buy something, I get a small kick-back from the seller for sending you there. I am using all the equipment that I’m suggesting in this post, however, and would never recommend something purely because I could make a few pennies off it. Amazon is not always the cheapest retailer, so do shop around, you might be able to find the things you need cheaper elsewhere.
The bank vault and harddrive photos are from iStockPhoto.
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