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Thundery wintry showers

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Blog Entries posted by Thundery wintry showers

  1. Thundery wintry showers
    The Andy Gray story has developed widespread publicity now and I've given some opinions of my own in the relevant thread of the forum. I felt that the comments on Sian Massey crossed the line between "jokes" and "personal sexist remarks", and that the reprimand and suspension was a fair punishment. However, I then felt that the sacking as reaction to the stuff that was leaked afterwards was OTT.

    The overall verdict on these things is that the punishments should fit the crimes, and that the rules should be the same for everyone. The norm is for men to be punished harshly, and women leniently, for equivalent offences and we need the genders to effectively "meet in the middle" on this front. We can't necessarily score this as an example though, because it's possible that some people didn't like Andy Gray (e.g. repeatedly blasting referees when replays showed their decisions to be 100% correct) and just wanted him out.

    In the meantime I recall a discussion on the Martin Brundle "Pikey" issue (where he used it in a jocular sense, unaware of its stronger usages):
    http://forum.netweather.tv/topic/47973-is-the-term-pikey-racist/
    ...where I noted in that thread that I could have caused myself similar trouble with "nonce" as until 2006 I only knew of its jocular use to describe idiots and not its stronger sex-offender connotations. As it happens, Danny Kelly has now fallen foul of this one- he got 130 Ofcom complaints for calling Rafael Benitez a nonce (by which he meant nonsensical, as he pointed out in an apology 15 minutes later) and Rafa is now taking him to court over it.

    I think what these kind of incidents illustrate is that we should be careful of throwing insults at people we don't know, but also that we need to be careful to avoid letting choice of words carry more weight than the intended meaning. Any word can be corrupted and evolve offensive meanings, particularly if it becomes widely used among the likes of racists and criminals- and for instance if we take a line that no potentially-offensive words are acceptable and "idiot" is then corrupted in this way, a lot of us will have problems!
  2. Thundery wintry showers
    We're getting close, not only to the end of the season, but also to the review of the rules concerning team orders. Here are some thoughts of mine on the issue.

    I think that the main problem- certainly the one that gets up many fans' backsides- isn't so much team orders, but rather team favouritism, in particular requiring one driver to defer to another while the "number two driver" still has a significant mathematical chance of winning the Drivers' Championship. In seasons where one team runs away with it, it denies fans the possibility of an in-house battle for the title. In close seasons, it puts the lead driver at an advantage in the Drivers' Championship (as opposed to team-mates taking points off each other) and thus rewards non-competition.

    Most F1 insiders see F1 as a team sport and the drivers as employees who should do as they're told, point out that F1 has always been a team sport, and argue that the fans are deluded if they think otherwise. In fact, I think they're the ones who are being deluded, via the black and white assumption "either it's a team sport OR it's about the drivers". F1 has always been both, and most fans don't like the way its emphasis shifted towards "teams over drivers, business over sport" between the mid 1990s and the mid 2000s.

    Just because the current rule is haphazard, too broad-brush and impossible to enforce, I don't think that's a conclusive argument for abolishing it completely- it can just mean that the rule needs to be reduced in scope, and made clearer, more specific and easier to enforce. I reckon that teams should be prohibited from ordering one driver to defer to another unless it will clearly lead to the loss of the Drivers' Championship, or one driver is in with a mathematical chance of the title and the other isn't, while other team orders should be legalised. I think that would be easier to enforce against and would still prohibit the two main instances that got the fans' backs up in the last decade (Austria 2002, Germany 2010) as well as recognising that driver swaps in the last race of the season, when the championship is at stake, are usually considered acceptable by a large majority of fans.
  3. Thundery wintry showers
    Well, after plenty of heated discussions on the TV forecasts, notably recent trends at the Beeb, it's become clear to me what the main problem is: forecasters being encouraged to make people "feel good" by "emphasising positives", and to do that, naturally, they have to second-guess what the majority of the population consider to be good and bad weather.

    The easiest (though certainly not the best) source of such guesses is the general media, so my feelings that the BBC might be trying to "educate" us to see the weather in a certain way have receded- it's probably more that the media makes it look as if we all make an enemy of the weather.

    The equivalent of this, in sports coverage, is the backing of British competitors to make people "feel good" by "emphasising positives"- e.g. ITV F1's strong bias towards Lewis Hamilton in 2007/08. The equivalent of "it will be dull and drizzly but at least it will be mild", in F1 terms, could be "it will probably be a dull processional F1 race but at least Lewis Hamilton has the best chance of anyone on the grid"... so in a nutshell it is definitely a part of the dumbing down process.
  4. Thundery wintry showers
    I think even sleet is unlikely to occur in Norwich next week, because of the long airmass track over the North Sea- Norwich often seems to struggle to get much snow from northerlies early in the season (22-23 November 2008 was a notable exception, but that one really caught East Anglia full in the face, and it was still very marginal).

    But could it possibly snow in Cleadon in Tyne and Wear? That really would be a "first" because the north-east coast is particularly prone to being warmed by the North Sea and I haven't come across any recorded instances of snow in October near the Tyne and Wear coast.

    It'll be interesting to see how that one pans out.
  5. Thundery wintry showers
    Some people, after seeing my contribution to threads relating to copyright, might be under the impression that I think people should be allowed to perpetuate illegal activities.

    In reality, I don't ever take that stance on legal issues, on the contrary I think "lawlessness" tends to be unregulated and potentially dangerous. What I do take issue with, though, is over-restrictive rules, and hence I tend to take the stance that they should ideally be relaxed, and that in the meantime I don't object to a bit of civil disobedience.

    It's this perspective that propels me into preaching "copying isn't the same as theft". Some acts of copying [i]are[/i] strongly analogous to theft, but when we come to defining what is "Fair Use" and what isn't, we're inevitably going to end up with very limited "Fair Use" if we define the pros and cons of copying in terms of those of theft. I will admit to having committed acts of "casual copying" over the years but I feel confident that I haven't bought less products as a result. It may be stating the obvious here, but it's remarkable how often this is overlooked: copying is only a bad thing if it results in people buying less than they otherwise would. (I don't "do" peer-2-peer file sharing though, as I believe this practice mostly does result in people buying less, with honourable exceptions existing, but being few and far between).

    I could say a similar kind of thing about various other common legal issues- road traffic offences are the other major one (some people regrettably received a rambling message from me recently about my concerns over ever-tightening "road safety" restrictions as a sneaky way of discouraging car use). I don't want to see a lawless society but I also believe that "what's legal isn't always right".
  6. Thundery wintry showers
    I had a decent birthday yesterday, got lots of good wishes on Facebook, and got a few pressies, plus had cakes at 4pm.

    The temperature reached 27C during the afternoon at Norwich Airport- fitting since 27 is my favourite number. I like to have showers/storms with sunshine on my birthday most of all, but a warm/hot sunny dry day is my second preference so I'm not complaining about what I got.
  7. Thundery wintry showers
    Perhaps not a strictly accurate title. However, as a couple of recent experiences have starkly reminded me, while I sometimes misbehave and sometimes get punished for it, I usually get punished less for my own misbehaviour, than by association with other people's misbehaviour.

    The process is that others misbehave, I behave in a way that is innocent, but which gets tarred with the same brush as their behaviour (often via some unwritten code of etiquette, sometimes by a rule) and so I get sternly reprimanded for misbehaving. The argument is: their behaviour is bad, my behaviour is associated with it, so therefore my behaviour must be bad.

    If I defend my behaviour it's interpreted as condoning the associated misbehaviour perpetuated by others. Also, if I have a strong case for my behaviour, it poses a threat to authority (unlike those who attempt to justify harmful behaviour, which can be refuted on moral grounds). Thus to defend their authority they have to fall back upon authoritarian lines like "rules are rules", "I'm right because I say so", and "we're watching you- accept you're wrong, or else!" Thus I often get dealt with more harshly than the actual offenders.

    For those who were wondering about my big issue with "the minority spoiling it for the majority", the above should give strong insights.
  8. Thundery wintry showers
    There is often a large debate over whether we should keep updating the 30-year reference period every 10 years (the World Meteorological Organisation does it every 30 years, the Met Office traditionally does it every 10 years but has partially held onto 1961-90 in the recent update).

    My view is that it depends on what analysis we're doing and that there is often plenty of room for argument. When we're comparing current weather (or the past month or year's weather) with the "average", i.e. what the public are used to as being "average" conditions, I think repeatedly shifting the reference period forward is a good idea, because it is the most representative of the average that they're used to. For instance if we compare January 2010 with the 1961-90 average we're using a reference period that ends before a fair number of people were even born!

    But I think when we're doing an analysis of long-term climatology, it is often better to stick with one reference period. For the period 1993-2009 my Cleadon weather records are always compared with the estimated 1971-2000 averages, and I don't think I'll be updating to 1981-2010 anytime soon. It would have the effect of masking any long-term changes in Cleadon's climate. In fact I think a much longer reference period (say 1951-2000 or even 1901-2000) would be most ideal for this kind of analysis, but such reference periods are harder to get data for than the 30-year means.

    I suspect that these sort of considerations might be behind the Met Office's inconsistency in updating to 1971-2000, e.g. the monthly assessments are clearly in the former category, but one could argue that, for instance, the CET diagnostics are more the latter type and so are arguably better served by a reference period that is more representative of the longer-term (and 61-90 is more so than 71-00).
  9. Thundery wintry showers
    I have resisted "My Documents" and "Program Files" for many years, and the main reason is user choice: if we all "give in" to having no user choice, there'll be no incentive for Microsoft to keep it in future versions of Windows.

    [b]My Documents[/b]
    Proponents of the "My Documents" system say that it's good because it gives each user a standardised home directory and makes it easy for multiple users to have multiple accounts on one system with their own "My Documents" directories.

    If this was all that it amounted to, I wouldn't have a problem with it. It would be no different to using C:/ as a home directory except that the location is standardised and set up for multiple users. But unfortunately, it's also come at the expense of users who want to set up files and folders how they like within their home directories. Microsoft has set up a standardised pattern, e.g. "Pictures", "Music" and "Videos", and applications religiously default to them. In addition applications increasingly install various things into subdirectories of "My Documents" which you can't choose- in the past you could usually define where they should be installed.

    In addition there's a trend towards all programs defaulting to using My Documents instead of "the last place you saved to", at least every time you restart the computer. This is a flaw as far as I'm concerned, because it encourages users to bung everything into My Documents instead of subdirectories within My Documents- it's not much better than bunging everything in C:/. Some default to specific subdirectories, but those contain the problem described earlier- users don't get a choice as to what subdirectories they go into.

    [b]Program Files[/b]
    Microsoft's idea behind Program Files appears to be to move towards a standardised system where all of your program data is stored in Program Files and can't be modified in any way, and all editable files go into My Documents. It's argued as a "security feature"- I guess this refers to the fact that multiple users can log on without risk of one of them deleting program data that the others rely upon.
    However, many of us don't have multiple users on one machine, or can trust other users not to modify/delete our program data, in which case this security provision isn't necessary. My personal home computers are usually used only be myself.
    On Vista and Windows 7, it is extremely problematic with many computer games that require modification of the game's installation directory for mods and the like. For example stories are rife about how on Vista and Windows 7, you can only make/install mods for most games if you install them outside of C:/Program Files or remove User Account Control altogether (thereby defeating the point of the system).
    Again, it's also enforcing a specific file structure and removing choice from the user. What about those who liked the system of having games install to C:/Games and general tools to C:/Program Files? What about those who want to install to drive D instead of drive C?

    I also note that installers, while providing the option to change the installation directory away from the default, are increasingly hiding that option, e.g. tucking it away in "Custom Install" or even a small print checkbox. One problem is that the default directories are often quite hard to locate, e.g. instead of defaulting to "C:/Program Files/Program" they default to the likes of "C:/Program Files/Company Name/Publisher Name/Applications/Games/Program". They call it "putting all programs in one place for ease", but the way it is at the moment, it's not much better from that perspective than bunging all programs in C:/. Although Microsoft probably assumes you won't ever need to find where the programs are installed...

    [b]Useability Testing for Newbies[/b]
    One common justification for the "removing user control" is that users need to be protected from themselves because computers have to be set up so that "Granny" can use them intuitively. But this goes back to the "black and white priorities" problem- newbies are considered more important than experienced users so experienced users get completely ignored, instead of being assigned a lesser weight.

    It wouldn't be too difficult to simply make the factory defaults easier to modify without them keep resetting themselves, or even provide two installation options: "Standard Install" and "Advanced/Experienced User Install" where the former applies default settings suitable for newbies and the latter for experienced users.
  10. Thundery wintry showers
    I've seen quite a few debates on so-called "man flu" which is basically a swipe at men saying that they exaggerate how ill they are whereas women just "get on with it". I don't know how much truth there is behind this stereotype.

    Basically we have two extreme positions in circulation- one being "I'll have a day off work if I'm even slightly ill, e.g. a few sniffles" and another being "It doesn't matter how ill you are, you should just get on with it and come into work through thick and thin". I suggest that both extremes do more harm than good.

    I also think that it's too black and white, for instance, to try to encourage people with colds to come into work, because colds come in hugely differing degrees of severity. This weekend, I've had a headache, coughing and sneezing fits, sleep deprivation, sapped energy, asthmatic complications and a slight temperature. I don't think it's a good idea to encourage people to come into an office while suffering these symptoms- they genuinely do affect one's ability to work, just "getting on with it" can make it take longer to get over the symptoms, and the coughing and sneezing are the perfect recipe for spreading it around the entire office. But I never have qualms about coming into work while I have just sniffles- they don't have much of an effect on my ability to work, and as long as I wash my hands from time to time, I am unlikely to pass them around.

    I suggest that a similar analysis applies to other illnesses- people should be expected to work through mild illnesses, but not pronounced ones.
  11. Thundery wintry showers
    http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/football/8553629.stm

    As someone posted in the Comments section, the main arguments against any kind of technology seem to be:
    [quote]1) it slows the game down
    2) controversy is part of the beauty of the game[/quote]

    I'll give my twopenny's worth:
    1. too much "black and white" thinking and slippery slope fallacies I reckon. It's important that we don't implement technology to such an extreme that it will seriously disrupt the flow of the game, but there is such a thing as "striking a balance" that seems to pass over quite a number of the nay-sayers.

    2. I do think football needs a bit of controversy, but there is a big difference between controversy over contentious issues (which is often good for a sport) and controversy over obvious injustices which annoy a lot of those involved. No amount of technology would remove the need for referees, at times, to make decisions that are open to considerable debate. Of course there's also the usual "maintaining the status quo" arguments to defend point 2, e.g. "the traditional approach to the injustices associated with officiating always used to be 'that's life', so why change that?"- without the dominance of arguments like those I reckon the world as a whole would be a fairer place.

    I don't just look at this from the players' and supporters' point of view, I also think of it from a referees' perspective (as presumably does Graham Poll as an ex-referee). The "respect" campaign is always at risk of being one-sided if there isn't an onus on referees to do a good job as well as players/managers, but referees are only human like the rest of us and it would help if it was made easier for them to do a good job.
  12. Thundery wintry showers
    My latest word on intellectual property is: we need the masses to start seeing past the premise that "copying is theft". Theft is a relatively black and white issue- barring exceptional circumstances it is wrong to take physical property away from people, and in a large majority of cases, a theft from a retail outlet equals a lost sale. The popular argument, therefore, is that since "copying is theft", "every copy made is a lost sale", and therefore that copying should be kept to the absolute minimum just like theft is.

    But copying is actually quite different, and its effects on sales can go either way- you have to weigh up the lost sales from people receiving clones of things [i]that they would otherwise have paid money for[/i] (this last bit is important) vs. the extra sales that result from the increased product exposure/brand awareness. Too much copying and the losses probably outweigh the gains, vice versa for small amounts of copying, and we also need to bear in mind that too much IP risks stifling the advance of information and technology, giving consumers poor value for money, and giving too much power to a small minority of powerful companies. The current trends in IP are, frankly, quite worrying, and heading strongly for this latter scenario. The stifling of debate on the issue is also a worry- increasingly if you argue against tightening IP laws you get roasted alive for "condoning theft".

    This consideration is why I take the stance that "casual copying", which is mostly moderate, is probably not the threat to the industries that it's made out to be, whereas the en-masse stuff is a real threat. The industries of course focus on the former because it is easier to police with DRM, and they assume that every copy is a lost sale... but they are wrong. Indeed I doubt that "casual copying" (dating from back in the days of the cassette recorder) should ever have been made illegal.

    That's not to say that I think all IP infringements are overstated in terms of their severity. The hacking into and leaking of unreleased stuff, for example, is not just an infringement of IP but also infringes upon privacy and security, often alongside many other things, and so morally speaking it is usually very serious.

    An interesting case study is "Steam", which I've been using quite a lot recently. I think its online support, and requiring log-in access for it, is a very good way forward, as it creates a big difference between a copy and the original, as is offering digital distribution as an alternative to retail. But the online activation DRM aspect of it is an unnecessary evil, giving the IP owner a huge amount of control over the end user, making software functionality dependent on external servers, and if they got rid of it, any lost sales due to increased "casual copying" would probably be at least offset by extra sales from people who got exposure to the products and went on to buy them in order to get easier access to the support on Steam. Thus, I reckon that Steam without the DRM would most likely give a "win-win" type of balance between content creators and end users.
  13. Thundery wintry showers
    So, how late does spring normally arrive in this country? And what do we mean by "spring"? Personally I am happy to accept and follow the meteorological definition (1st March to 31st May) and think in terms of spring as meaning increasing daylight and sunshine hours and plant growth. I can certainly see a case for arguing that wintry weather persisting largely without a break well into March (as per 1996, 2001 and 2006) might be realistically considered as a "late spring".

    But no, let's try the Net-Weather Definition. For it to be "spring" it must meet the following criteria:
    [list]
    [*]it must be warm and settled, with temperatures regularly in the teens,
    [*]there must be no more snow or frost for the rest of the season.
    [/list]

    By this definition, when did Spring arrive across the UK as a whole since 1990? Answers below:

    1990- 29th April
    1991- early May
    1992- mid May
    1993- we didn't have a spring that year
    1994- 28th April
    1995- 20th May (or, if the period around 20 May wasn't settled enough, perhaps we didn't have a spring that year either)
    1996- 30th May (OK, no real spring that year either!)
    1997- 24th May (yes, a 1-week spring- now what were March & April 1997 like again? Doesn't matter, it snowed in May!)
    1998- 30th April
    1999- 25th April
    2000- 30th April
    2001- 30th April
    2002- 25th March
    2003- 14th April
    2004- 30th March
    2005- we didn't have a spring that year
    2006- 15th April (or if you count late May 2006 as "wintry", maybe this year also failed to feature Spring?)
    2007- 1st April
    2008- 5th May
    2009- 12th March

    So by this measure many people are probably going to have to wait quite some time for "Spring"!
  14. Thundery wintry showers
    In recent years Philip Eden has repeatedly voiced a concern that as a society, our reactions towards normal wintry weather have become more and more intolerant, and it could get very ugly if we were to get a severe wintry spell. The latest wintry episode has shown that it isn't the general public who are intolerant, it is the media, which makes an enemy of the weather and wants us all to do the same.

    News broadcasts around 4-8 January were full of stories of the misery and inconvenience that the snow causes, footage of people telling the reporters how disgraceful the snow is, and how lovely it would be to enjoy two weeks of drizzle, 3-5C and hardly a glimmer of sunshine. They clearly chose their cross-sections carefully. Had they gone to UEA they'd have had a much harder time getting their message across, amidst the hundreds of people sledging, chucking snowballs, building snowmen and laughing their heads off.

    Meanwhile, there are far more than just a few childish weather enthusiasts getting sick and tired of the current dull drizzly spell and wishing that we could have the bright snowy weather back. The news and tabloids and weather forecasts seem blissfully unaware that those people actually exist. But they do.

    The bright, snowy weather was perfect for alleviating symptoms of SAD, with the combination of sunlight and reflective snow cover. It helped gather communities together, playing out in it, appreciating the impact it had on our surroundings, and helping out the less fortunate among us that were heavily inconvenienced by it. For many weather enthusiasts, in the meantime, there was a lot to discuss and a lot to appreciate.

    In our world of market economics and Health & Safety we are becoming too disconnected from the physical world around us, and losing sight of the social factors which contribute to making people happier. Weather enthusiasts are doing society a service by illustrating that there is value in appreciating the asthetic and pleasurable things in life, things that economics alone cannot measure, things like the awe of an electrical storm, the beauty of a double rainbow, the eerieness of a misty, hazy, bright red sunset shining onto layers of illuminated cloud. They should not be made to feel guilty for appreciating unusual or dramatic weather out of "respect" for those who suffer from it- this is otherwise known as martyrdom. Why are those who love mild dull drizzly weather not required to feel guilty because of the misery it causes to snow lovers, sun lovers and SAD sufferers alike? Because mild dull drizzly weather doesn't damage the economy, that's why.

    So, by all means, let it snow, let it snow, let it snow. Not just because it keeps snow enthusiasts happy, but because it continually highlights the fact that our world is too focused upon money, and that we should really start taking more notice of the other things that help to make the world tick over.
  15. Thundery wintry showers
    In some ways this spell is starting to remind me of the sense I had during July 2006. Until that month, I'd thought that I had a limited tolerance of prolonged heat and sunshine- but I soon found that if it's generally on the low side of 30C, and interspersed with the odd showery/thundery outbreak for variety, I can easily "tolerate" it for upwards of an entire month (more like "find it very enjoyable").

    The same is happening here with the cold snowy spell. Having had a fair dumping up in Tyneside (12cm on New Year's Day) I am now finding myself willing Norwich to catch up with the Tyneside snow depths. It's a tall order, but with a dumping likely tomorrow, not out of the question.

    It hasn't changed my stance on what I would like to see for February and the spring either- a February of alternating cold snowy and milder spells, and then a spring with frequent warm sunny weather but interspersed with switch-arounds and northerly outbreaks. As far as January is concerned, we're locked into this cold spell and Norwich only has about 3-4cm so far, so it may as well continue through to at least the middle of the month, as I don't see myself tiring of it before then.
  16. Thundery wintry showers
    We are increasingly looking like being locked into a prolonged cold spell, which may be snowy in the east and south- similar to January 1985. February looks at this stage like being somewhat milder, but whether it will be mild throughout, or a mix of mild and cold spells, remains to be seen.

    I reached 12cm snow on New Year's Day and had 2 large snowmen built in the front garden- 12cm is the deepest snow at Cleadon, alongside February 2004, since February 1991. There is more chance of snow on every day through to the 5th, when I head back to Norwich, as long as there isn't too much disruption on the trains (oo-er!). The 4th looks quite marginal, but less so than the 1st/2nd.

    There probably won't be much snow in Norwich before I get there, but after I get there, with a pronounced easterly or north-easterly flow likely to set in for a week, that is likely to change. I may miss out on the largest snow depths in Cleadon, as there will be more accumulating snow there after I leave, but similar depths may well be reached in Norwich by around the 10th January as prolonged ENE'lys are ideal for snow streamers in the Norwich area.

    The question is, when does the point come when I get sick of all of this cold and snow? I had initially assumed it would be about a week or two, but in practice it is proving to be a lot longer than I'd expected. I'm becoming less averse to the idea of a pattern change to milder weather as time goes on, but it isn't approaching the stage where I start actively hoping for one. Perhaps the fact that we've had such a long run of mild winters, the sense that this could be a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to witness an 80s style cold spell, and the fact that the snow depths haven't been extortionate, are contributing to this.

    As John Holmes has often indicated, in a cold spell like this people need to take care of elderly and fragile people they know of, as many of these will suffer, particularly in areas hit by heavy energy bills. Cold/snow lovers should not feel guilty for enjoying this cold snowy weather, or for wishing for more of it, especially as the weather is something that we can't control, and making an enemy of snow or suppressing one's desire for it doesn't achieve anything positive (contrary to what the media seems to think!). But the health of those who struggle to cope in these situations is something that many of us can and should help.
  17. Thundery wintry showers
    At the moment I think there is a 70% chance for eastern coastal parts of the North East (yes that means my area!) and 80-90% for inland parts of the region. The current snow cover doesn't look like thawing significantly until Christmas Eve, and unless that channel low gets far north enough on Christmas Eve to draw in a modified easterly, it probably won't thaw significantly on Christmas Eve either!

    In the coming days I expect many media forecasts to be expressing a desire for a warm-up by Christmas, so here's my latest revision to the "At least it will be mild" version of Bing Crosby's song:

    I'm dreaming of a mild Christmas,
    Just like the ones we usually know.
    Where the stratus glistens
    And children listen
    To hear south-westerlies blow.

    I'm dreaming of a mild Christmas,
    With every Christmas card I write,
    May your presents please every child,
    And may all your Christmasses be mild.

    Personally I am hoping that this snow does stick around till Christmas- but I won't mind if it melts on Boxing Day.
  18. Thundery wintry showers

    Christmas

    By Thundery wintry showers,

    I may well be very fortunate with cold/snow over the coming week. The snowfalls from the easterly look like kicking in just after I get back to the North East, so hopefully no disruption to the train journey. And then the upcoming northerly looks like the sort of spell where it would definitely be better to be in Tyneside than in Norwich, as the warmer air will be further south. Could get a hefty spell of snow cover from this.

    It is uncertain how long this cold air will hang around for. Until around 27th/28th December would be most ideal as it would mean a white Christmas, and after a 10-day cold snowy spell I would most likely not be averse to a pattern change to warmer weather- especially if temporary, like the one near the end of December 1981.

    An interesting article on the death of the Christmas party:
    http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/8409155.stm

    Interesting because I've had a few Christmas dinners already! But the article makes a point that it cannot easily explain- and I can:
    [quote]He believes it's happened because the media suggests it is inappropriate for companies to throw parties, using terms like "squander".

    "There's a perception that spending on events like Christmas parties is somehow wasteful. The point I try to make to people is there's no such thing as good or bad spend, there's just spend in the economy from one part to another. I find this distinction bizarre," he says. [/quote]

    The distinction is quite simple actually. If it's pleasurable, it's deemed non-essential. If it's work-related, or a health and safety issue it's deemed essential. This is becuase of a perception that we all "need" to work and be healthy and safe in order to fund ourselves and make a living, but we don't "need" to enjoy ourselves. The fundamental flaw in this is that the whole point of making lots of money is so that we have a larger "pot" to tap into in order to raise overall quality of living. So if it's essential to have lots of money in order to fund this, why is it non-essential to enjoy ourselves even though the latter contributes even more directly to well-being than having lots of money does?

    I'm afraid the above is a significant factor in why we are having so-called "nanny state"-ism. If a minority abuse a work-related activity in a way that presents a risk to health and safety or money, since work is deemed essential, people look at the issue objectively and look for ways of addressing this abuse that do not curb this essential activity too much for it to be justified. But if the activity is pleasurable, it is deemed non-essential and thus curbing it altogether is considered justified even for the sake of negligible risk reduction. Arguments like "nothing to hide, nothing to fear" and "the minority have to spoil it for the majority" can then be trotted out whenever anyone complains.

    This is my biggest area of contention with the philosophy of free market capitalism- it's not the market freedom in itself, it's the tendency to measure attainment purely in financial terms and ignore social factors and we end up free [i]financially[/i], but not [i]socially[/i]. Somehow, we need to engineer some kind of "social capitalist" system that measures well-being in terms of the broad spectrum of socio-economic factors that contribute to it, rather than just money and health & safety.
  19. Thundery wintry showers
    For those of you who think that the trend towards increased subjectivity in forecasts, like the increased frequency at which the phrase "at least it will be mild" is used, is more due to the BBC than the Met Office, here is an article from 2005 that strongly supports that view.

    http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/4310702.stm

    Now I'm not sure what to say about the first part of the Met Office's advice, moving away from using scientific language, as of course you get the problem of confusion vs. perpetuating lack of understanding by taking away information- it's a tradeoff. But the second part of their suggestions actually make many of the same points re. spin and subjectivity as I've been making for some time (the paragraph relating to telling people what is good and bad could just as easily have been lifted from one of my posts!). It is clear that the BBC has taken on board the first part of the Met Office's advice and not the second.

    So next time you hear that accursed phrase "at least it will be mild"... don't go blaming the Met Office!
  20. Thundery wintry showers
    I had my swine flu jab on Tuesday (probably much to the angst of PersianPaladin). It gave me a mild headache for a few hours yesterday and my right arm has become fairly sore. Other than that there have been no problems- and in the meantime I feel at far less risk of ending up on a ventilator (somewhat fittingly, the remnants of last week's cold has set my normally-mild asthma going at times over the last few days).

    Am hopefully about to get an academic paper published, which should be good!

    In other news I've been playing a lot of table football (thanks to UEA's Table Football Society where you pay a one-off fee of £3 then get unlimited free games on Wednesday & Sunday evenings) and also a social event at Quasar tomorrow with another society.

    I am also waiting for the "Left 4 Dead + Left 4 Dead 2" pack to come down below £40 on Steam. I missed an opportunity to get L4D1 for £12.49 a while ago, but it's worth noting that if I'd bought that and then got L4D2 separately it would still have come in at over £40- a lot considering that digital distribution cuts out the publisher. Hopefully Valve will issue some kind of offer once L4D2 "activates" on 20 November, whereupon they'll get my money. Meanwhile the "Escape from Enemy Mountain" mod is still progressing- slowly- for Doom 3, but in relation to the above, I've implemented a Left 4 Dead style random monsters system.

    Regarding the weather there's not much to say. October 2009 came in at 1.1C above average at Cleadon making it the warmest October since 2006, and the most recent below-average month (using the 1971-2000 reference period) was January 2009. The first half of November has come in close to average with warm days and cool nights, but I expect the second half to raise temperatures much above average. I can't say I'm a big fan of these relentless "Atlantic" patterns when pressure is frequently high to the SE and fronts move across at regular intervals, preventing those sunshine-and-showers polar maritime regimes from taking hold. They may be changeable, but for me, changeable in quite an uninteresting way!
  21. Thundery wintry showers
    http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/football/article-1219753/GRAHAM-POLL-Sorry-Fabio-referee-spot-Robert-Greens-red-card-Ukraine.html

    Some comments here highlight a key problem:
    [quote name='Graham Poll']...stated at half-time that he felt that both a dismissal and penalty are too harsh in such instances.
    But given that only 75 per cent of penalties are converted in the Barclays Premier League, you can see that if the penalty was the only sanction then more players would be tempted to bring down opponents as they were about to score.
    It is vital that referees correctly differentiate between a goalkeeper bringing an opponent down with a mistimed tackle and an attacker forcing contact with a prone goalkeeper.
    [/quote]

    [quote]The idea of a penalty being enough punishment always annoys me. It isn't punishment. The attacking player is in a position where he can score. That get's stolen from him by a player breaking the law. The penalty gives it back, but it doesn't mean the other player has been punished for breaking the law.
    If someone steals your car, the police give it back, how is that punishment for the thief?
    Cards and sendings off have to be used to punish the player for cheating. The penalty has to be given to give back to the attacking team what the other side tried to cheat them out of.
    [/quote]

    The main defence of this rule appears to be the automatic assumption that if a defender or keeper commits a foul on someone who is through on goal, it must be a deliberate attempt to cheat by stopping the other person from scoring.
    In reality there's such a thing as a mistimed effort to get the ball, or an accidental collision with a player, and I can't see how this can suddenly cease to be the case just because the person who commits the foul happens to be the last defender.

    The mind boggles at how effective the "the rules are right because the rules say so" approach can be at removing logical thinking from the equation.

    I actually think the idea of making professional fouls a sending off offence is sound, but the implementation of this rule has resulted in the term "professional foul" being defined far too libertally. Imagine if, in Formula One, they brought in a rule to stop moves like Schumacher on Villeneuve in Jerez 1997, where if A tries to overtake B and gets the line into the corner but B doesn't allow enough room and they collide, B must be disqualified for three races for denying an Obvious Overtaking Opportunity... Even the FIA wouldn't be so stupid as to pass a rule like that, but that's what the Obvious Goalscoring Opportunity is like.
  22. Thundery wintry showers
    In the past I have had a habit of purchasing one of those football games for PC every few years (there's little point IMHO of buying one every year or two as they are usually just incremental upgrades).

    The first one, FIFA 2000, was accidental as I was given two PC games for Christmas but accidentally got someone else's in the post. FIFA 2000 was the game that got me interested in football. Since then I took some notice of PC ZONE's ravings over Pro Evolution Soccer, tried it and immediately preferred it to FIFA, so I went on to get PES 3 and PES 6.

    This year, both FIFA [i]and[/i] PES 2010 have impressed me, so I am seriously considering getting one of them- the question is which one? Well, it seems clear that as far as consoles are concerned FIFA, which has made big strides relative to PES's slow incremental changes in the last couple of years, would be the better choice. But for PC, EA have decided to leave the PC out of its next gen capabilities, whereas Konami have chosen to make the PC version as good as the console versions. EA's official line is "we want it to run on a standard PC" but I wouldn't be surprised if their real argument was "PC games are heavily pirated so we would rather people used consoles instead".

    I am increasingly convinced that PC games are heavily pirated partly because DRM measures and tightening of copyright restrictions, and now this, are resulting in paying consumers being increasingly ripped off. For example, consoles encourage 2-4 player multiplayer with one copy of a game, whereas on the PC companies have greedily abused the "war against piracy" to recategorise it as "piracy" and insist that you must buy 3 copies to play 3 player multiplayer or be a "cheapskate".

    The neglect of the FIFA 2010 PC port may well mean that I end up getting Pro Evolution again. It does have a much better edit mode, and I like to play with custom teams.
  23. Thundery wintry showers
    http://www.nzherald.co.nz/science/news/article.cfm?c_id=82&objectid=10565358

    I see that according to this link, there's a project to make the world's weather records freely available on the internet. I can see a lot of advantages behind this, including the points made on the site. It may make it easier to get access to all climate data for use in climate change analysis (such as for the IPCC reports) and studying of local climates to help identify hazards and recurrence of extreme events.

    The points about curiosity about past weather events should not be overlooked. I'm always on the lookout for North East weather data from the period 1993 onwards to see how other nearby sites' observations differed from my own observations for Cleadon, plus it would be interesting to finally see what the weather was doing on June 22nd 1984 for example.

    In addition it would help clear up all of the arguments surrounding availablility of the climate data that is used by various climate scientists, as I quite often see the scientists getting flak for hiding data when really it's more of a copyright issue.

    Talking of copyright, that's the one disadvantage of making these records freely available. Do weather companies make much in the way of money by making them available only commercially, and does this help the weather community as a whole? I'm not knowledgeable enough on the rights and wrongs of this to know the true answers to that- plus I have vested (mainly curiosity-based) interests in it, but it's clear that this will be the main barrier to making records freely available.

    One feasible middle ground for those worried about copyrights and revenues could be to make records freely available for non-commercial use only, or Philip Eden's method of restricting the use of long quotations without permission, or quotation without acknowledging the source.

    On a related note, I'm currently doing a major redesign of the "Cleadon Weather Records" section of my website, where I will soon be uploading a new revised version which will hopefully look more professional and user-friendly and contain a bit more information on the observational side (a section on "significant events" for each month). This approach is inspired partly by an article of Philip Eden's in "Weather" where he correctly points out that the recent move towards automated weather stations is coming at the expense of traditional observational diaries. I'm aware that one day, these records could potentially be of use to people, and I am happy to employ a similar approach to what Philip himself does with making his weather records available.
  24. Thundery wintry showers
    PhD still going okay, and still enjoying the work for the most part. The fine spell of weather looks like being downgraded, here's hoping that the NE'ly brings my favourite convective "sunshine and showers" stuff and not the usual low cloud.

    I continue to strongly dislike the way the UK is going regarding personal liberty:
    http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/8249020.stm
    As an individual measure it might not seem too bad, but the logical end result of incremental steps like these is a society where you cannot go within a few metres of a child unless you can prove that the child is "family" (i.e. related to within a few generations). Meanwhile of course child molestation will continue to occur on an infrequent basis within families, a consequence of families being exempt from these measures.

    I just hope the UK doesn't follow the USA's lead and become similarly hysterical over harassment and sex abuse in general, rather than just against children.

    On a lighter note, I'm liking the look of the upcoming football season. Man Utd haven't got as strong a squad as in the past, and are missing Cristiano Ronaldo rather more than they would like. Chelsea have a formidable team but their current manager is unproven and they are facing a transfer ban- which might not affect them too much, it depends on how many injuries they get. Arsenal are looking quite good. I felt quite gutted at their loss to Man Utd, as they were IMHO the better side for most of the game, but they are showing encouraging signs of being close to their best. Arsenal were, in my view, probably denied a stonewall penalty early in the game because of the memories of Eduardo's blatant dive. I don't think Liverpool will be challenging for top spot this year though.

    And as for England- I always had high hopes that Capello might be able to mould the team into a cohesive unit that plays well. It is looking strongly as if my hopes were not misplaced. I don't expect England to win the Cup but a quarter or semi final spot would still be a success after the depths of the Steve McLaren era.
  25. Thundery wintry showers
    Have just had a two-week holiday to Cleadon, and expect to be going back to Norwich on Monday. It's been a pretty fruitful holiday, and I went on three walks "out in the sticks", the second two of which were very interesting. It's also nice to spend some time in a nice big house after a while spent in either rented or student accommodation.

    I also recently went on a computer game shopping spree as a result of some of my gaming friends picking up Steam accounts. For various reasons I am strongly against mandatory online authentication for offline use/installation of games- for me, the best balance between DRM and consumer rights is probably what Stardock uses, where offline use is DRM-free, but downloads and online multiplayer require a valid Impulse account. But I can't deny that Steam has a lot of good points as well, and the Orange Box (5 of Valve's high quality games for £16.99) was too tempting an offer to pass up. After that I downloaded a load of id Software's old classics on Steam, and then a few more (Descent 1-3, Painkiller, UT2004) from the download site "Good Old Games". GOG is particularly good in that the prices are competitive and the games are DRM-free, but it turns out that many of the old games you can get on Steam can be rendered DRM-free as it is often possible to use a source port to run them instead of Steam.

    Other than that, the storm on the 31st August was somewhat unexpected. I just expected a bog-standard frontal rain event, and was surprised when a large amount of convective activity appeared along the front which eventually gave rise to a big thunderstorm- making Summer 2009 go out with a bang. As for the summer itself, I was quite lucky in that I spent June in Exeter (where it was a mostly warm, sunny and varied month, with two cracking storms), July in Norwich (where sun, showers and thunder dominated). The first third of August was pretty dull, dry and boring in Norwich, leading to my clashes with those who said "you can't complain about boring weather after we suffered all that rain in July!", but plenty of warm, sunny weather in the remaining two-thirds easily made up for it.
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