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Thundery wintry showers

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  1. Thundery wintry showers
    After a couple of what were, by North East standards, feeble cold snaps in January and February, something with rather more substance happened over the last few days.
    Monday had sunshine and wintry showers throughout the afternoon, although it did feel more like a potent early to mid-April cold snap, or a half-hearted late March snap. I recorded a max of 7.8C, but it frequently fell to 2-3C during wintry showers, and there were impressive Cb cells around.
    Tuesday: I only got up to 3.8C, which is a notably low maximum for a day in the second half of March that brought with it a fair amount of sunshine. I had 3cm lying snow in the morning, and some of it survived the daytime thaw, though by 1pm there was less than half-cover. There were some impressive near-'blizzard' conditions at times, with horizontal blowing snow, it looked almost like puffs of white smoke moving from north to south. Snow cover returned last night but not to the same extent; it's now thawing in the sun.
    So possibly a bit warmer by night due to the high SSTs, but overall a fairly potent northerly once those -10s at 850hPa came down on Tuesday.
    Looking further ahead, it's quite possible that the cold could be followed by a very warm spell, if those easterly winds subside; the GFS 00Z then has a white Easter in the offing (though the GFS should not be trusted at T+360!) Maybe this year we might end up with a variable spring.
  2. Thundery wintry showers
    Firstly, a reminder of what copyrights are for: they are to give content creators some control over the use and distribution of their work, typically to protect ownership and/or financial revenues and thus give them an incentive to continue producing. There is a balancing act to strike between copyrights and "fair use", because too much copying can erode revenue margins (and in some cases produce plagiarism) while too much protectiveness over copyrights can stifle spread of information and result in consumers having to pay more for less.

    Firstly, copyright infringement is not the same as theft (because the copyright owner and/or seller is not deprived of a physical unit). The reason why it's important to recognise this is that the "copying is theft" propaganda serves as a way of campaigning for ever-tightening copyright laws. Consider the following argument, which crops up regularly on gaming forums:[list]
    [*][i]You think that some aspect of copyright law is weighted too far in favour of the copyright holder?[/i]
    [*][i]Well, all copyright infringement is theft, and all theft is wrong, so therefore all copyright infringement is wrong.[/i]
    [*][i]Thus if you maintain that belief you are condoning the theft of people's work and you should be shot.[/i]
    [/list]
    The reason why copyright infringement is not a black-and-white issue is because of its wide-ranging definition. I'm sure most of us will agree that counterfeiting is morally wrong (where people make copies of other people's work and sell them) as is plagiarism (making copies of someone else's work and then passing them off as one's own work). Those are the two infringing activities that are the most similar to outright theft.

    The illegal downloading scene is rather more controversial. In this case, the potential revenue losses due to the copying have to be offset against the potential long-term gains due to increased product, industry and brand exposure, the social benefits of being able to "share" and increased consumer welfare. The overall effects of the file-sharing scene are dubious, as while it's unlikely that a large percentage of the illicit copies translate to lost sales, even a 10% erosion of sales margins could put the smaller, more marginal companies out of business. However, the online file-sharing does have some uses that can be more beneficial than harmful, e.g. distribution of non-commercial products, products that are no longer sold, and people who download using a "try before you buy" mentality. The problems stem from those who "leak" private information as well as those who use them as a reliable means of getting commercial products for free that they would otherwise have paid for.

    We then move into "casual copying"- e.g. purchasing a music CD then burning it to a couple of computers and playing it in a car's MP3 player. This form of copying has traditionally been the main target of most copy protection over the years, and in some circles is vilified/accepted as "wrong" more than the illegal downloading scene. Because such copying occurs in relative moderation, I have greater doubts that such copying actually results in lost sales. The exception is when it occurs en-masse- I think making 16 copies of a product, then heading into a school and distributing them to 16 of your friends, for instance, is a morally dubious act. There are other ways of generating the same kind of benefits, such as providing "built-in" rights (e.g. the console games that allow split-screen multiplayer, while regular sales and product "bundles", of the "5 for the price of 1 or 2" variety, have similar benefits). The UK coalition government is currently looking into ways of legalising some forms of "casual copying".

    But there are areas where it begins to get silly. For instance, could you imagine a world where playing 3-player games of Scrabble was considered "piracy" unless each player had his/her own copy of Scrabble, and where playing 3 player Scrabble with one copy of the game was perceived as "stealing" the equivalent of 2 copies of Scrabble? Computer gaming has trended in that sort of direction recently. In many circumstances, singing "Happy Birthday" at a party would be considered a "public performance" and would thus infringe the copyrights of Time Warmer.

    The issue also crops up with game mods. Of course, it is unethical to use other modders' assets in your own mods and pass them off as your own, thus plagiarising them. But there are more controversial ones, e.g. a recent furore over the Minecraft "Technic pack" suggests that, for instance, it is illegal to produce installers for "mod packs" to help make installing multiple mods more convenient (a modder might want his or her mod distributed exclusively through an ad-supported site to make money, or control the distribution on the basis "the law says that I can, and the law is the law"). A similar issue arises when modders refuse to allow any of their assets to be used in other projects whenever they are asked for permission- that of the modders' legal right to "sit on" their assets vs. hindering the mod community as a whole by doing so.
    Then it starts to get ridiculous, e.g. if you download a mod that includes assets that are used without permission, [i]you[/i] are technically infringing copyrights (and thus, according to some, "stealing" modders' work), which strikes me as absurd (how can you ever be sure that all the assets within someone else's mod are used with permission?). A similar issue arose with the "Risen 3D" port for Doom, which temporarily became illegal as it infringed the GPL- suddenly all those who used that source port were classified as software pirates, despite having no way of knowing that it had become illegal unless they'd specifically researched it on the internet.

    So no, copyright isn't a black-and-white issue.
  3. Thundery wintry showers
    I've complained quite a bit about the BBC recently, particularly re. their weather forecasts and dumbing down of documentaries. So, to balance the books, it's only fair that I give them credit when they do a good job.

    One example is the Formula One coverage. I think this has shown a definite improvement over the ITV coverage. The online coverage is more comprehensive, while the TV coverage is far more objective- there seems to be far less bias towards the British drivers than there was on ITV, and more interest in the rest of the field. I don't think Jonathan Leogard is as good as Murray Walker, but he's a lot better than James Allen. In addition with keeping Martin Brundle on board and adding Murray Walker to the online analysis, the BBC certainly showed it was prepared to listen to the popular consensus among fans. Brundle remains as good as ever.

    The other is the recent weather documentaries- rain, snow and then wind. I honestly can't remember a better documentary series on the weather- so far it seems to have struck the perfect balance between being informative, being unbiased, and not being too technical for those with limited knowledge of the subject.
  4. Thundery wintry showers

    Dawdlers

    By Thundery wintry showers,

    There's usually a clash of "rights" when it comes to people being slow, say, at the front of a queue in a supermarket. There's the right of the people at the front to be leisurely and not be in a rush, vs. the right of the people behind to be able to progress in the queue without being heavily delayed.

    The need for consideration towards others works both ways and both sides can be guilty of being inconsiderate. We know about the impatient people who put pressure on those in front of them to hurry up, but there are also the dawdlers who feel that others should just let them take as much time as they like and have infinite reserves of patience and allow an infinite amount of extra time for their day-to-day activities- some of whom get a boost from watching others get annoyed in the queue behind them.

    I think all too often, the "dawdlers" get the benefit of too many doubts. There's a perception that people just need to slow down, be more relaxed, allow more time for everything and be more patient, and then it will be better for everyone, and thus that "dawdlers" are well within their rights. However, there's a difference between being slower because you aren't in as much of a hurry, vs. being slower because people dawdle more in front of you- the latter is a recipe for [i]more [/i]frustration and impatience, not less. There should be limits as to how much extra time people should be required to allow, and how much inconvenience and discomfort it is OK to subject them to.

    This issue is relevant to some motoring-related discussions that I've been involved in on this forum (the belief that people should be entitled to drive as slowly as they like, fuelled by the war against speed) and a similar argument can be put forward for the slow-walking people who walk 6 abreast down an alleyway.

    Personally I think that if possible, if you want to be slow it is good to occasionally let other people past. For instance if I'm walking down a pavement and someone is going for a jog, I'll step out of the way, I won't stand in his/her way and say, "stop being in such a rush!". Similar with people who want to drive very slowly- when holding up queues of 10 vehicles down a country lane it would be good to pull over once in a while instead of saying, "they should all have to bow to my right to slow everybody up". Of course, this often isn't possible in the likes of supermarket queues, in which case the only considerate thing to do is not to take a lot more time than you really have to.
  5. Thundery wintry showers
    I had two projects to hand in on the 18th November- one of which was a Project Proposal for studying convective cloud initiation (a bit technical I'm afraid, but very much down one of my main interest areas)
    Went to a couple of parties the last couple of days. I nearly didn't go to either of them because it was difficult to find where they were, but Friday's was particularly good once I got there. I saw some of the people connected to those on my course- close friends, sisters, boyfriends etc and got on generally with them. It also helped that some of the pubs were open until late so I didn't have to leave until 0:30am (well it was either that or go to a nightclub) Hangovers? No way, I don't drink anywhere near enough alcohol- I consumed one Bacardi Breezer and one Vodka & Orange, and that was my lot for the last two nights!
    One thing about Leeds is that they seem to put out burger stalls at early hours in the morning. I have been tempted twice so far, including the night of the 18th/19th.
    I may have sung Lancaster's praises in previous years, but I have to say that for me, so far Leeds appears to be considerably better in almost every area of consideration.
    And now onto the sunshine. My main associations with November are anticyclonic gloom and mild damp windy weather, so to have six days on the trot of non-stop sunshine is almost surreal. I may not be a SAD sufferer, but there's no doubt that I tend to feel much happier and more contented with life when the sun is frequently shining.
    I remember November 1996 and early November 2001 being quite sunny where I was at the time, but nothing like what we have now. It's not beyond the realms of possibility that parts of NE England might have more than twice the amount of sunshine they had in October.
  6. Thundery wintry showers
    Here is a summary of what happened in Cleadon, Tyne & Wear, during December 2005.
    Mean Max: 7.1C
    Mean Min: 1.6C
    Mean Temp: 4.3C
    Highest Max: 13.2C (11th)
    Lowest Max: 0.9C (29th)
    Highest Min: 8.3C (11th)
    Lowest Min: -6.0C (29th)
    Air frosts: 12
    Note that the lowest max was recorded using the standard Met Office 0900-0900 recording system: using an 0000-0000 system, the temperature on the 29th got no higher than -1.2C, the lowest day maximum for exactly 10 years.
    Precipitation: 35mm
    Days of falling sleet/snow: 3
    Days with hail: 2
    Days with more than half cover of snow at 0900: 4
    It was the coldest December since 2001, and after a wet start, was generally dry with generous amounts of sunshine. The 'beast from the east' may have disappointed for some, but it certainly didn't disappoint here: the 28th to 31st all had lying snow although by the 31st this had turned to a patchy covering of ice. The mean temperature was certainly below the local 1971-2000 average, and may have also been a fraction cooler than the 1961-90 average- making it two below average months in a row at this location.
    In terms of quantity it was only the snowiest December since 2001, but the persistence of snow cover was the greatest since late December 2000.
    I awarded the month 63% overall, which is pretty good for December.
  7. Thundery wintry showers
    Like many forecasts, my forecast for December started off well then veered rather wide of the mark.
    [quote]Changeable and generally cold, some snowfalls


    During December 2012, the jet stream will be tracking from north-west to south-east over the eastern North Atlantic and Europe for most of the month, and this will enable a succession of northerly and north-easterly outbreaks to affect the British Isles. It won't be as intensely cold as December 2010 was, but it will be cold enough for snow at times, particularly over the north and east of Britain but less so in the west.

    Following two cold bright days and then a milder interlude on the 3rd with some sunshine and a few showers in the west, another northerly outbreak will arrive on the 4th/5th December. A wintry mix of showery precipitation will spread southwards on the 4th, particularly affecting northern and central parts of England, though snow will mainly be confined to high ground. On the 5th most places will be cold, dry and sunny, but sleet and snow showers will affect eastern coastal counties with snow generally from Teesside northwards.

    Between the 6th and 8th December another low pressure system will slide south-eastwards, and will bring an active belt of rain (preceded by a brief fall of snow in eastern Scotland and north-east England) on the 6th, which will aggravate any flooding problems left over from November's rain. The rain will clear away southwards early on the 7th, with some possible snow on its northern flank, but the wintry showers that will follow behind into eastern areas on the 7th/8th will generally produce rain/sleet at low levels and snow on hills.

    Another depression will slide south-eastwards between the 9th and 12th and this low is associated with considerable uncertainty- the weather during the following week of the month will be strongly dependent on its precise track. A belt of rain and strong winds is expected, followed by another northerly/north-easterly outbreak with sunny intervals and wintry showers. Temperatures will be rather below average but not exceptionally so, and towards midmonth a north-easterly type is expected to prevail with high pressure extending from Iceland to Scandinavia. It will be generally dry and sunny in the west, while eastern areas will have some sunny intervals mixed with wintry showers, mostly falling as a sleety mix near the east coast but with snow inland.

    Around the 15th-18th low pressure will start to attack from the south-west which will eventually result in milder air coming up from the south, but not before many of us see some sleet and snow on the northern flank of the weather systems. The Midlands and central and western parts of northern England will be most prone to snow, while eastern coastal areas will mostly see rain due to the winds off the comparatively warm North Sea.

    The last third of the month is somewhat uncertain, as we will most likely see a burst of polar air coming down from the north around the 20th of the month, while depressions will continue to take a southerly track. Thus, a cold snap is likely shortly before Christmas, with north-eastern districts most prone to snow showers, while southern areas will be prone to belts of wintry precipitation associated with lows passing by to the south. It is hard to place much confidence on the chances of a white Christmas at this stage but the wintry spell may hang on for long enough to give some places a white Christmas, more likely the further north-east you are. A milder, changeable south to south-westerly type is expected to finally establish towards the end of the month.

    Overview
    Notably mild Decembers have been rare in recent years- the last one was way back in 1994 in the south, and 1988 in the north. This December won't be breaking that run, though nor will it be quite as cold as December 2010- temperatures will be about 2 to 2.5C down on the 1981-2010 average over most of the country, with a Central England Temperature of 2.4C expected. Much of northern and western Scotland and Northern Ireland and south-west England, however, will only be 1 to 2C short of average.

    Rainfall during December 2012 will mostly be below the long-term average, though with considerable regional variation. Western Scotland and north-west England will have the largest shortages, of 50% or more, but some parts of eastern and southern England will have slightly above average rainfall, and heavy rainfall in the second week of the month may cause further flooding issues in south-west England. Averaged nationally the shortfall will be aruond 20-30%.

    It will be a sunny December over most of northern and western Britain, with excesses of 50% or more over much of Ireland, western and northern Scotland, Wales, and western England. However, eastern and southern England, together with south-eastern Scotland, will only have slightly above-average sunshine. Averaged nationally sunshine will be about 30% above average.
    [/quote]

    The first 10 days of the forecast went pretty well in my opinion, but after that it went downhill. There was strong ensemble support for the link-up between the Siberian and Icelandic highs after the 10th which would have produced an east to north-easterly blast with sunshine and snow showers, perhaps a sleety mix near east-facing coasts and mostly dry in sheltered western areas. It would also have delayed the return of the Atlantic. However, in reality the Siberian high stayed put and the Icelandic high threw up a weak ridge down to Britain, giving a few dry cold sunny days and then a fast Atlantic breakdown.

    As an aside, I remember a couple of comments talking of a fast breakdown being a case of greatest risk/greatest reward. Whenever I see that phrase it always seems that the "greatest reward" involves, at best from a snow lover's perspective, a limited area of the UK having a shot at a major snowstorm like the one that hit the south-west in February 1978 or the Midlands one on 8 December 1990, while the rest of us make do with a brief snow-to-rain event. Mid-December showed us the other side of the coin- the breakdown was so rapid that most of us just saw rain.

    My forecast for around the 17th-20th fell into line with what actually happened, but then the trough in the eastern North Atlantic proved far more persistent than I had predicted (though I sensed that there was always a possibility of this- I just didn't consider it very likely). As a result there was no northerly pre-Christmas and a traditional mild west to south-westerly type increasingly became established towards the month's end.

    As a result of the greater Atlantic influence, mean temperatures were a couple of degrees higher than I predicted, rainfall was markedly higher, and sunshine totals were lower, though the sunny first half more than counterbalanced the dull second half in most parts of the UK. In the end, the forecast from the 11th onwards was pretty inaccurate, though in my defence, most forecasts got heavily de-railed this month.
  8. Thundery wintry showers
    This is a slightly controversial topic that used to be referenced quite frequently by Philip Eden- how does one define "showers"? The dictionary typically tells us that a shower is a brief fall of precipitation, whereas most meteorologists use the term "shower" to refer to convective precipitation.

    I don't agree with Philip Eden's assertion that a shower should be termed a brief fall of light rain and that a brief, torrential fall is a "cloudburst" (it has to be said, I rarely disagree with what he says, but this is one such occasion). Think about it, most non-weather definitions of "shower" (e.g. taking a shower, being showered with gifts) involves short, sharp outbreaks, so I don't see why a cloudburst can't reasonably be called a heavy shower. However, I do agree with his point that to most of the "lay" public, the type of cloud that the precipitation falls from is not really relevant, and if a frontal system breaks up to give brief falls of precipitation, to most people, they would constitute "showers".

    In my view, though, when talking about showery weather on a large scale (such as when making a forecast) the distinction based on convective vs non-convective precipitation makes a lot of sense, because it is very rare for brief falls of precipitation to occur on a wide scale without them being at least partly convective in origin- plus it is much easier for forecasters to differentiate convective vs non convective precipitation than to differentiate prolonged vs short-lived precipitation (in addition to the fact that the two are strongly correlated anyway). It wouldn't surprise me if this was the main reason why "showers" as referring to convective precipitation came into widespread use.

    Another part of confusion concerns the definition of my favourite weather type, which . In the old days, it was sunshine mixed with brief falls of precipitation. These days my favourite weather type is rather more specific- sunshine mixed with [i]convective[/i] precipitation.
  9. Thundery wintry showers
    We often hear southerners talking about how the correct way to say words with "ath" is the "ar" sound, rather than the "a" sound that's common up north. E.g. barth, carstle, grarss. But is it really the correct way? The South East biased media think so, but these links suggest otherwise:

    [url="http://lairdofglencairn.spaces.live.com/Blog/cns!FA29A59CC6777652!3323.entry"]http://lairdofglencairn.spaces.live.com/Bl...!3323.entry[/url]
    [url="http://digitalspy.co.uk/forums/showthread.php?t=837551&page=2"]http://digitalspy.co.uk/forums/showthread....7551&page=2[/url]

    Yes, the "r" pronounciation only came into being up to a few hundred years ago as a dialect around London, which then spread to the rest of southern England.

    So if there is a "correct" way of saying it, it's actually the northern way! Although I personally prefer to think of there not being a "correct" way, but rather a difference of dialect/opinion.

    Howay man!
  10. Thundery wintry showers
    Well, my life has pretty much stagnated recently- being at home with lots of time on one's hands is great initially, but after a while I feel that I'm not getting as much out of life as I could do.
    The weather meanwhile has been ridiculously cloudy here; hardly a glimmer of sunshine. There have been a few showers and storms this month, but it has been difficult to see what's going on as there's always been North Sea "haar" in the way.
    It makes my blood boil on days when the rest of the country is having sunshine and showers/storms, Cleadon is dry but dull with coastal low cloud and temperatures several degrees lower, and I hear that my area is being very lucky with the weather, because at least it isn't raining. Looks like my birthday on the 22nd could turn out to be one of those days, if the low pressure ends up as far south as the GFS is currently showing.
    Have two weeks in France coming up in July, which should be good as I enjoyed my last three summer holidays there. As for the PhD, currently sorting out accommodation; so far things are going okay. Whatever the pros and cons of the Norwich climate, it's bound to be much more interesting than the weather we get up here. And of course, if I'm doing a PhD my life should be a lot busier.
  11. Thundery wintry showers
    I've had some discussions over on the environmnental thread where I argued for reducing the extent to which our society revolves around money and economics, but didn't qualify it particularly well (it may have sounded to some like I was arguing for abolishing capitalism, which is a common agenda among some environmental circles).
    I do think that in moderation, capitalism is a very good thing. But the problem at the moment is that most policymakers tend to consider only the economic perspective on issues, and ignore all other perspectives. For example:

    Developers building mass housing in the South East using supply and demand economics
    Greenfield sites and flood plains preferred over brownfield sites because it maximises short term profit
    Public transport companies providing minimum service for maximum profit
    Deliberately building appliances with a limited shelf-life to make people keep shelling out, maximising profit, consuming a lot of excess resources
    Councils reluctant to install energy saving streetlights until it will provide short term economic gain
    Pleasurable things are considered unnecessary, work is considered necessary

    What I'm thinking is that we need to see factors other than economics, including social and environmental factors, being assigned value to a much greater extent than they are nowadays. Even if money is "most important" it doesn't mean other factors should be ignored. The problem with relying upon free markets to bring this about is that, ultimately, they won't. They will continue to do whatever is most profitable. Thus, we probably need some kind of government incentivising for them to start changing emphasis away from being focused only on the one consideration.
  12. 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.
  13. Thundery wintry showers
    I've been singing Facebook's praises over the last few months, as it's enabled me to get back in touch with a large assortment of people, some of whom I thought I'd never get in touch with again. But it's not all roses.
    Some idiots have been spamming the site recently, so they've brought in anti-spam filters. Which is all very well, but some of the spam filtering is punishing a lot of responsible behaviour. I got warned last night, presumably for one of the following:
    1. Posting twice on someone's Wall in 6 hours, in both cases in reply to their post,
    2. Posting two messages with vaguely similar content (the spam filter might have counted that under "repeated posts")
    3. Mentioning an application that I have (the other person was discussing it with me, but the spam filter may have assumed I was spamming the person's account by "advertising" it)
    I've backed up my contacts to cut my losses for if I do get banned, but it was a big scare to be threatened with a permanent ban for doing nothing wrong. However, it's perhaps more symptomatic of a general issue- you can't take any luxury for granted, because if a few idiots abuse it, blanket restrictions on it are likely to be deemed necessary because "that's life". However, I'd have to be unlucky to fall foul of this again, as it seems only a tiny percentage of legitimate users do so.
    If Facebook dies a death in the near future, chances are it will be because of an over-reaction against idiots. If it isn't through too much anti-spam control, it may happen due to idiots abusing it for identity theft (bringing about such stringent privacy control that it becomes useless for social netowrking), or it may be banned/severely restricted because a minority become addicted to it. Addiction is a genuine problem, but most people I know just use it to keep in touch with people and regain lost friendships, essentially as a more interactive/sociable alternative to just emailing them.
  14. 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.
  15. 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.
  16. Thundery wintry showers
    Is this phrase catching on? There is an excellent site from Reading University's Meteorology department documenting the daily weather going back to the late 1990s:
    [url="http://www.met.rdg.ac.uk/~brugge/"]http://www.met.rdg.ac.uk/~brugge/[/url]

    ...and in its summary for the 3rd February it says the following:
    [quote]Overnight into the 3rd snow fell mainly in E areas of England and Scotland although some falls were reported in Ireland, SW England, the Channel islands and other places. To the S of the snow most places in England and Wales had an air frost - with Cent and E England then having a cold day. During the day there were further falls of sleet and snow in N and E Scotland resulting from fronts circulating around a low pressure area centred over S Ireland (MSL pressure down to 985mb). There were also some snow showers over Ireland, Wales and SW England that gave some heavu falls in places. The Met Office also reported some [b]thundery, wintry showers [/b]in S countiews of England which died out as they moved N.[/quote]

    I remember being affected by those showers in Exeter on that day- there was no thunder here but there were certainly some quite dramatic showers of snow, sleet and hail.

    The 15th June was an amazing day of weather in Exeter. It started off dry and sunny but shower clouds shot up during the morning and there was a colossal rainstorm at 11:30am, which led to some limited flash flooding around the Met Office. After some sunshine and showers over lunchtime, a thunderstorm came over from 2 to 2:30pm, with even more torrential rain- rivalling the deluge of the 6th June, although it was of more normal duration for rain of such intensity (about 10-15 minutes). There were about 20 rumbles of thunder in total and some overhead lightning. Flash flooding again occurred and although I didn't specifically notice any hail, it was reported from the location as well. The rest of the day was mainly sunny with a few showers, and at 7pm there was a "sunny shower"- a moderate shower with bright sunshine throughout leading to a vivid rainbow.
    True, the Norwich area got rather more severe thunderstorms (as per usual!) but from what I've seen and heard the rain was no more intense than in Exeter and the storms constituted one long spell of thunder- a large part of me feels happier to have had the short sharp cloudbursts that Exeter experienced.

    On a related note I am leaving the Met Office in three and a half weeks' time. The place and the people who work there will certainly be sorely missed, but on the other hand it will also be good to be reunited with UEA and the people who work there. The MetO has made an excellent account of itself while I've been there, and I hope to end up back there at some point during my future career.

    As for the climate of Exeter, I don't like the climate as much as that of Norwich overall, but I have to say that it's rather better from my perspective than I expected (and that's not just because the winter was unusually snowy- though if that is ever a problem there's always Dartmoor which is about as snowy as inland parts of North-East England). Sunshine hours are good, anticyclonic gloom relatively rare, summer weather pleasantly warm, and although thunderstorms aren't that numerous, there is no shortage of heavy convective rainstorms at any time of the year. Certainly more interesting than the climate of Lancaster, which is the other part of western Britain that I've lived in.
  17. Thundery wintry showers
    I would like to have an opportunity to take a photograph of proper snow using a digital camera. The last time I saw more than a few granules on the ground was on 26 February 2004- just before I got my first "digicam".
    For there to be an opportunity for snow photography tomorrow, those showers drifting down the North Sea need to come inland early tomorrow morning. The GFS has it progged to happen at around 9am which is pretty ideal, but things can easily change. Another issue is that my camera's lens only half-retracted when the battery ran out, so hopefully it hasn't knacked the mechanism, which would in turn trigger those dreaded E18 errors.
    Waiting with baited breath. If those showers in the North Sea were Weebl and Bob, I would be putting plenty of pie in my garden to entice them over.
  18. Thundery wintry showers
    I have just finished my MRes course in Physics of the Earth and Atmosphere- got a Merit in it as well, so all in all a positive result.
    The positive result summed up a very positive year- the period September 2005-August 2006 probably represented the best year of my life so far. The course was very good with a lot of meteorology content, and it was good to be able to get involved in research into convective storm initiation and converse with the Environment department, the lecturers and PhD students who were all well-versed in the academic side of meteorology. At first I questioned whether academia was really something I would get into, but in the end, I certainly did.
    Not just that, but it was also excellent socially. There was very little of the suppression of individuality ("you have to fit in with the norm or you get ostracised") stuff- people generally respected each other as individuals, rather than putting pressure on them to conform. Consequently, forming frienships was remarkably easy. I also found the city of Leeds to be surprisingly good- I expected it to be just another city, but it has a very vibrant atmosphere with a wide variety of things to do, yet does not suffer from overcrowding, even on a Friday or Saturday night. There was also ample scope to do things other than go to nightclubs and get drunk- playing pool and going tenpin bowling were two favourites.
    I certainly have far more confidence in making friendships than I've had for at least a good ten years. In Lancaster and my old school I learnt how to deal with social problems; in Leeds I learnt how to deal with not having social problems- a very welcome experience indeed.
    Now for the bad news- I'm not there any more, and I'm in the position of looking out for a combination of job and PhD/research opportunities from my parents' home instead. On the research front the main thing will be to apply for the next batch of research funding early next year (or something might turn up before then; some PhD projects are available all year round, but funding is a problem). However, paying the odd visit to Leeds is certainly on the agenda, especially since three of the people on my course still live around there (two are doing PhDs). Ideally I'd love to be back there again doing some kind of research next year, but you can't put all your eggs in one basket- I have to look elsewhere as well, and for jobs as well as research courses. I guess that if I don't land anything in research by mid-next-year and haven't found a job in an area of my interests in the North East by then, I will have to put more emphasis on jobseeking and search outside of the North East region for jobs.
    People might be thinking "why do you want to go into research, or jobs in environment/meteorology, when they don't give much money". They may well not, but my main priority in life isn't to get loads of money- it's to have a happy life with an enjoyable work and home life, and to get enough money to sustain a basic living. Work isn't such a burden if you're working in something you take an interest in anyway.
  19. 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.
  20. Thundery wintry showers
    Had quite a hectic week this week.
    On the work front, I had to sort out my project for my MRes course- am doing investigations into a convective cloud initiation project. This will hopefully be relevant to my interests as convective clouds have always been a major fascination area.
    The Atmospheric Science Away Day on Tuesday was good- if a little bit intensive, it is hard to maintain concentration through 3 hours at a time of talks! Also had a good party on Wedensday evening with the Tenpin Bowling Society- I brought a Halloween mask and scared the pants off a few people, and was the only one to bring a mask. Also improved my score this week- 294 in 3 games, so I am back to my usual standard of about 100 per game. Now to break 300 in 3 games! Also saw Man Utd vs Lille- a rather disappointing game in which they lost 1-0 and, IMO, never really looked like scoring. What on earth has happened to the Mancs, they'll be lucky to get in the Champions League again at this rate!
    Some students were talking about snowfalls in Leeds during February 2005, including one day when there was a large amount and there were some large scale snowball fights. So it does snow here, although I am reliably told that it snows rather less here than it does in Sheffield. Whereas during my Lancaster years I wasn't too fussed on easterlies, I would be all up for a good 'Siberian' blast this year, provided that it brought snow showers rather than days of dull dry stratocumulus dross and temperatures between 2 and 5C the whole time.
    There were a couple of impressive firework displays in Leeds last night. I just don't grow out of things like that- many of my posts on the forum may appear serious, but in reality the inner child still lives on. Probably the best displays I have ever seen with a great variety- and free, too.
    The main difference between Leeds and Lancaster continues to be the social side. As I have lamented about before, traditionally friendships have been hard to make and even harder to keep, but it doesn't seem like that in Leeds- I have found it remarkably easy to make friends here, and so far, there haven't been any problems with 'friends' showing themselves to be unreliable, or 'true' friendships being prised apart by possessive and jealous outsiders. Long may this continue, please!
  21. Thundery wintry showers
    The holiday in France was actually quite a good one- mainly spent around the swimming pool and messing about, sitting around in the sun (though I usually went in the shade to avoid sunburn) and playing table tennis. And also, getting lots of posh ice-creams. The first week was spent in the eastern Dordogne near Perigueux, the second not far from Magny-Cours.
    Some good visits to various places- my favourite was Chenonceau, which had a good castle and outdoor area, a boating area and a maze.
    The weather was very hot, especially in the second week. In fact, the second week, at 35-40C, was a very close approach to the ridiculous heat of my French holiday in August 2003, and I generally spent very little time outside between 1 and 5pm on those days. The first week (Dordogne) had scattered thundery showers dotted around but we missed them all; however the second week had two big thunderstorms, of similar nature to what the Dordogne storms are supposed to be like (strong gusts of wind, then a few hours of frequent lightning strikes and heavy rain). Without doubt, the biggest storms I've experienced so far. Although 35-40C is still far too extreme for my liking, I think I coped a lot better with it than I did three years ago, when I felt ill after going out into it for just two minutes.
    In Leeds, there's not much going on, most of the other students are stressed out with worrying about getting their projects finished on time, though I had an evening out playing pool and drinking Coke yesterday.
    Allegedly, Cleadon (Tyne & Wear) has not experienced much in the way of sea-fret, unlike last month, so when I get the July records in, it could well turn out to have been a scorcher. I reconstructed my earlier weather records by comparison with nearby stations to work out how hot the months of 1994-1997 were, and came out with August 1995 as the month to beat (estimated max 22.7, min 11.9, mean 17.3) so that's what July 2006 has to beat.
  22. Thundery wintry showers
    I am preparing for my holiday in France with my parents, should be going away tomorrow and coming back on Monday 23 July. The region in question is near the Massif Central, more or less in central France, though will be spending the two weeks of the holiday in slightly different places. Most likely I will be spending much of the holiday lazing around, playing table tennis etc, consuming crusty French-stick bread and ice-creams. My holidays in France in the last three years were all very enjoyable so hopefully this one won't be an exception!
    Meanwhile the weather here in Cleadon has been uncharacteristically exciting- until last month I hadn't recorded more than three thunder-days in a month, yet today makes it four on the trot! Just as remarkably, I have heard thunder on 8 days out of the last 22. I don't like dull unsettled weather, but I'll take these convective "sunshine and showers" days anytime.
    That said, while sunshine amounts have been okay here over 1-4 July, it appears that this emphatically hasn't been the case over much of the rest of Britain- although to be fair we did fare particularly badly sunshine wise during June, so it's merely redressing the balance a bit!
    The weather outlook for Cleadon for the next two weeks is dreadful- the exciting weather set to end tomorrow, with lots of dull wet Atlantic dross to come. Although it looks pretty unsettled for central France too, I'll be hoping that we miss most of the dull wet dross and get sun, showers and thunderstorms instead.
  23. 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".
  24. 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.
  25. Thundery wintry showers
    [url="http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7755641.stm"]http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7755641.stm[/url]

    I would not take that survey as gospel simply because three of its four indices only reflect the breakdown of so-called [i]family[/i] communities (marriages, people living in rented accommodation, being in it for less than a year). The one about living alone is a more complete, but still far from foolproof, measure of loneliness.

    This is strongly reflected in its point about increased student populations contributinig to loneliness. Er hello, most students are far from "lonely", in fact many students have the best social lives of anyone in the country! Most don't have families close at hand, but their networks of friendships are often much wider-ranging than is the case in traditional family units, who often socialise with a very limited circle of people.

    Social networking sites, society groups, employee lists etc. all provide communities that were relatively lacking 30 years ago. In addition it is much easier to travel to meet people than it was 30 years ago, even when the credit crunch is factored into account.

    In short, it's far from being as bleak as the article suggests because while traditional sources of communities have declined, new ones have sprung up to offset this.
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