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Thundery wintry showers

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  1. Thundery wintry showers
    Having scanned through various motoring threads I regularly see the term "comfortable" bandied about. Of course, while it's being used with reference to the comfort of travelling in a car, it can equally apply to a train, bus or boat journey.

    When it comes to the actual seating and space, I have no arguments with the traditional definition. The more pleasant to sit in, and the more spacious, the more comfortable.

    But it's in ride quality where my definition of "comfort" seems to be distinctly unique. "Comfortable" in that sense usually means "as smooth as possible". I agree that being jolted over potholes and the like is pretty uncomfortable, though if just on a short trip I can derive pleasure from being thrown about as I would be on a rollercoaster.
    However, I can genuinely say that I find being gently rocked about [i]more[/i] comfortable than a ride where if I closed my eyes I'd hardly know I was moving. For instance, I find the clickety-clack of the Newcastle to Carlisle trains to be more comfortable than the ultra-smooth Virgin trains. Similarly, if well built, I often find cars with fairly stiff suspensions more comfortable to travel in than travelling in cars with soft suspensions, for much the same reasons. Yes, sometimes I can get out of such a car or train feeling like I'm still rocking about on a boat, but such a sensation is rarely troublesome and doesn't last long- it's not like the sea-sickness after being on a boat in stormy seas.

    But in practice it's just taken as given that a car with a stiffer suspension is less comfortable by definition, and thus less pleasurable to travel as a passenger in. Sometimes I really wonder if there's something wrong with me, as my instincts and preferences end up totally at odds with the accepted norm!
  2. Thundery wintry showers
    At the University of East Anglia we have Wellbeing Week.

    Today, the main restaurant Zest appeared to cancel the roast dinner it normally provides on a Wednesday, providing "healthier" alternatives like rice, chicken, new potatoes etc.
    Now, since when was a roast dinner unhealthy, and burger and chips (which it had on offer yesterday, as is normal for Tuesdays) healthy?


  3. 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!
  4. Thundery wintry showers
    In the current climate of negativity, I think it's worth noting that while a lot of negative things are happening and we should do something about them, there are also some very positive things happening.

    1. More recognition of environmental issues. I have to admit, I don't like the current orthodoxy of "pleasurable things are non-essential, work is essential", resulting in a risk of a general "cutting-down" causing decline of recreation and an even more work-oriented society, but at least we're understanding that the current maximum consumption isn't sustainable, and hopefully, in the future, better ways of cutting down will become accepted and implemented.

    2. More tolerance of individuality. 50 years ago, it was a lot harder to be an individual. Yes, there is still large scope for improvement, but there's a lot more scope for people- especially women- to be their own individuals, and lead their own lives, and make their own choices. The decline of things like racism, homophobia etc. are other good examples.

    3. More tolerance of friendships. These days, particularly in the younger generations, keeping in touch is becoming the norm, and forming networks of friends is also the norm. There is a greater tendency for people to support their friends and stand by them in the face of adversity, and it's less acceptable for families to control people's friendships. The rise of platonic male-female friendships also helps towards reducing the extent of sexism.

    4. A slow, but sure, move away from judging employees on the amount of time they sacrifice for work. The traditional "nine to five" culture is still going strong, but increasing numbers of employers are experimenting with things like allowing flexible working, work from home, and performance-related pay. I strongly believe that this kind of thing will reduce inefficiency and require less employee self-sacrifice to generate a given rate of productivity.

    5. England have a greater chance of qualifying for the World Cup next time around.
  5. Thundery wintry showers
    My view on the rising petrol costs is that if current trends continue, regrettably, we may miss a good opportunity.

    At the moment, a lot of people feel they "have" to drive (especially for work) primarily because there is no decent alternative. Provide a decent alternative, and many (not all, but many) of them will use it. There are also many instances of people driving around the corner just for "convenience" when they wouldn't really lose anything if they just walked or cycled. School runs can be shared or even avoided in some cases. In addition, if only there was more effort going into cleaner fuels, people would be encouraged to use them.

    Under the above kind of scenario I could see rising petrol costs helping to spearhead a mainly positive outcome. For the most part, the people who don't enjoy driving get the chance to cut down, while the people who enjoy driving get to continue doing what they enjoy, the environment benefits, and while certain people lose out (primarily people whose work or condition makes it physically near-impossible to use alternatives to the car) most people gain. More sociable use of cars, with people taking passengers with them who contribute to the cost of the petrol.

    Unfortunately, current trends are not in that direction. Instead, I can see recreational aspects of driving being marginalised. As it becomes more known that oil is becoming scarce and we need to cut down car use, in conjunction with the popular view that pleasurable things are "unnecessary", as in nobody "needs" to enjoy themselves, I can see pleasure driving becoming socially unacceptable. In addition, when an activity is frowned upon it's usually frowned upon most when it's pleasurable. The social and recreational benefits "don't come into it". So I expect little effort towards reducing the need for people to drive for work, school runs etc, leaving most people with no choice but to cut down on their recreational use of cars.

    There are other reasons for the emphasis on cutting out recreational aspects of driving. One is the policy of making driving unattractive relative to the alternatives in the hope that it might put enough people off driving to reduce traffic, which might make the alternatives more attractive (i.e. bring in the stick and hopefully the carrot will create itself). Plus the notion that restricting recreational aspects of driving is a necessary evil to legislate for the few idiots that abuse it (take current policy on speeding for example).

    The current trends might still give us more positives than negatives, but nothing like as positive as the scenario I envisaged above. Instead, it looks like it's primarily the people who most enjoy driving who will be forced to cut down, while the people who hate driving will have to continue driving because there's still no alternative. It reeks of a missed opportunity- though we aren't quite there yet. If we can somehow engineer changes to the current trend, there's still time to gravitate towards the former scenario.
  6. 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.
  7. Thundery wintry showers
    I see a lot of posts, particularly in the Model Discussion, about "settled" weather. But what, specifically, is "settled" weather about? In my experience it means different things to different people- and most people's definitions don't entirely match the dictionary definition.
    Most of us, when we think of prolonged settled spells, imagine those weeks on end of clear blue skies, heat, absence of rain, and sunshine, like in the famous hot dry sunny summers, or the Mediterranean summers. But some people use "settled" as a synonym for "no rain", so perhaps a long dry spell like in August 2003, with a combination of dry sunny weather and dry cloudy weather, would qualify as a prolonged settled spell.
    Yet the dictionary definition of "settled" is, simply, not changeable. So, for instance, the two weeks of south-easterly winds, cloud and drizzle that Tyne & Wear experienced in March 1996 were a settled spell by that definition- as the weather hardly changed at all during those two weeks. Or even the week of near-continuous cloud and rain between 25 June-1 July 1997, again the weather hardly changed. Few call those "settled spells" though.
    There's also the consideration of whether you're looking at it from a weather type perspective, or synoptic perspective. From a synoptic perspective, rampant westerlies and fronts, with frequent changes in weather type, is generally regarded as a more "unsettled" pattern than a slack low or col bringing sunshine, showers and thunderstorms. Yet the daily weather is the opposite way round- the boisterous Atlantic often results in it being dull and wet, dry and sunny or dry and cloudy for several hours at a time, whereas with sunshine and showers, you often get frequent changes in the space of just one hour.
  8. Thundery wintry showers
    May Bank Holiday- and plenty of sunshine, if a bit windy. I'm coming up to having a meeting shortly with my PhD supervisor about the last batch of work I've been doing and the set of results I have, so hopefully some advances in the PhD soon!
    A bit of a drab Sunday/Monday coming up weatherwise, but there's nowt that we can do about it- it's the weather after all, and it does as it pleases. Some places do need the rain but I'd much prefer it if the rain moved through quickly and/or fell as thundery showers.
    Making some people at UEA that I could start to call 'friends' - but most of them are undergraduates!
    Also keeping tabs on the Arctic ice situation- looks pretty bleak actually, we could be in for a second consecutive year of record melt despite the fairly impressive winter recovery.
  9. Thundery wintry showers
    Okay, after a few rants, I thought it was worth redressing the balance with updates on my own life.
    PhD still continuing at a steady rate, while in the meantime I had another reunion with old schoolfriends back in March- a very satisfying experience. Then I enjoyed the storms and convection during the first half of April (I forgot to upload my subsequent photos of cumulonimbus cells and lightning- will do soon). I like to pop down to the Grad Bar on some evenings and get a game of pool in- the recent snooker championships have spurred me into a desire to play more cue-based games. (I'm particularly proud that I can play snooker/pool with both hands, though obviously not as well as Ronnie O'Sullivan).
    The current weather is quite amazing for the time of year, not exceptional in itself, but if current model runs are near the mark, its persistence will be unusual- temperatures widely into the 20s and mostly unbroken sunshine rarely lasts for more than a few days in May. I didn't feel as enthusiastic about this kind of weather in April 2007, after the abnormal warmth of the preceding half-year, but this feels different- we've had quite a varied spring so far with plenty of cold synoptics and wintry, showery weather, so a notably warm, sunny May would provide a suitable contrast with the frequent average to cool weather of March and April.
    Indeed, as I started taking weather records in 1993 (just after the remarkable May 1992), the only really summer-like May that I can vividly remember was that of 2001, although 2004 was also pretty good in Lancaster. But I really do think that May 2008 is likely to be every bit as exceptional as those of 1989 and 1992, maybe even more so.
  10. Thundery wintry showers
    We learn from an early age that life isn't fair, but learn to accept it, cope with it and be pleased that there are people out there who are much worse off than we are. But few ask the question, why isn't life fair?
    Life isn't fair partly because of random chance, unplanned events, or 'fate' or 'God' if you believe in that sort of thing, things that generally can't be helped, though their ill-effects can often be helped. However, a large proportion of unfairness is caused by human behaviour- something that generally can be helped.
    So, some perceived unfairness can be reduced in extent, but should it be?
    1. There's the "some people can have it, so why can't I?" type of unfairness. I contend that we should address some aspects of this type of unfairness- especially inequality of opportunity, by helping give the less well-off access to the same opportunities as the well-off. However, what we must be careful of is the dreaded lowest common denominator policymaking, where we address it by denying everyone access to the opportunities that only some used to have. That's a case where reducing unfairness isn't necessarily good.
    2. Then there's the "I want it, why can't I have it?" type of unfairness.
    Again, there are cases where I contend this should be addressed, and others where it shouldn't. If people want something that is likely to have harmful effects on themselves/others in the long run, or that is unrealistic, giving them it will create more injustice than it solves.
    But otherwise, why shouldn't they have it? In practice, the main reasons why they don't get it are because of the harmful behaviour of other people- or, the enforcement of unjust laws or norms that restrict responsible behaviour as well as irresponsible behaviour. Again, these issues need to be addressed, by getting the balance right between authoritarian rule vs. liberty to do what you want.
    The problem with us Brits is that we love to moan about issues, but the second someone suggests doing something about them, we get defensive, and we say "that's life, it's just the way it is" and "there are much worse things to worry about, like the starving African kids, therefore we needn't address them". Injustices don't annoy me in themselves, what annoys me is when injustices happen that can, and should, be avoided, but in practice people are resistant to the idea of avoiding them so they continue to recur.
  11. Thundery wintry showers
    So onto another topic where I have issues, the entitlement to have opinions.
    The main issue I have with letting people have their opinions, is that there's a line between letting them have opinions, and letting them force their opinions down everyone else's throats. It's like the question of how much a tolerant society should tolerate intolerance- if there's no onus on the intolerant to let people have their opinions, on the grounds that they're entitled to the opinion that nobody should be allowed an opinion but them, then what happens is that the intolerant people force their views on everyone else.
    There are circumstances where opinions are highly likely to be forced down people's throats. For instance, when people are debating laws and rules, or making committal decisions that impact upon others, by definition, a decision will often involve imposing an opinion on others. Or, when "opinions" are just beliefs that are widely accepted without question, whereupon many people will impose those beliefs on others without thinking, because they're accepted as givens. For instance, very few unjust laws or social norms are overturned by people just "letting their followers have their opinions". As an extreme case of where entitlement to opinions can be mutually exclusive, if someone's opinion is that it's okay to murder people, unless we suppress the person's opinion, the person will murder someone, thus imposing their opinion on others.
    There are all kinds of issues surrounding this. For instance, in environmental policy, it's increasingly widely accepted among environmentalists that the only way to solve global warming is to marginalise and alienate motorists, hoping to deter them from driving by making driving worse than the alternatives. If I try to challenge that view- even just with the purpose of making it known that other, potentially legitimate, opinions on the issue exist, I often get told, "let them have their opinions". Of course, if everybody just "lets them have their opinions", their opinions will be imposed on everyone through incremental changes in legislation. Then the hypocrites can come out with "yeah, but people force their opinions on others and that's life". So let's see now, I have to let others have their opinions, but have to accept it as a fact of life that their opinions will be forced on me?
    Tolerance is a great thing, but just as with freedom, it has self-limiting points- if we are too tolerant of the intolerant, the intolerant will force their views on others, by definition making the society less tolerant.
  12. Thundery wintry showers
    So, onto another of my pet rants, the idea that we should be of a two-season persuasion, one being "winter mode" where we're interested only in cold and snow, and another being "summer mode" where we're only interested in heat, sunshine and thunderstorms. So once a certain time arrives in spring, you're supposed to "move on" from "winter mode" to "summer mode", and if you show any desire for cold/snow, you are clinging onto the past instead of moving on.
    I've never agreed with the idea that moving on is about cutting old things out of one's life (for instance, the old family values saying that you need to periodically cut out old friends to make way for new ones). But this is something else, because spring is a time of year when traditionally, it can still snow, indeed in many regions snow is no less likely on Easter Day than it is on Christmas Day. So, basically, the argument runs that we should be cutting out all desire for something that still exists in the present, in order to "move on" to circumstances that don't apply for another two-three months. What part of 'living in the present' does this come under?
    Let's be fair here, people are entitled to not want cold weather or snow in spring, or indeed any time of the year. But I can't stand views like this:
    1. I don't want cold weather in spring.
    2. Therefore, all spring cold must bring miserable weather.
    3. Therefore I hope that any spring cold snap brings miserable weather, to show the stupid snow lovers who are clinging onto the past instead of moving on, that I am right, and cold weather in spring is useless. I don't care that it would ruin my ability to go outside more than sunshine and scattered wintry showers would, the most important thing is for me to be right and people who cling onto winter to realise that I'm right, and move on.
    Rant over.
  13. Thundery wintry showers
    One popular misconception that's ingrained in our society is the idea that productivity is a linear function of working hours. Even at a scholarly level, it was generally assumed that the more hours you revised, the better your exam result. There was even a maths module where they stated "A person's performance in a piano exam can be expressed as y=mx where x is the number of hours per week the person practiced for, and y is the exam performance..."
    The problem with the "productivity = working hours x constant" is that it ignores two areas of inefficiency. If people are working longer hours, it only means they are sacrificing more time for their work, it does not necessarily follow that they use that extra time efficiently. People naturally tire out if they're working long hours (so when the relationship does hold, it's a diminishing returns curve, not linear). In addition, it doesn't take into account how useful the work is. Extra layers of bureaucracy, laborious methods of solving problems and finding useless extra work to fill in time with, results in longer working hours and more effort being put in, but no extra gain.
    It strikes me that the social norm of rewarding and judging people for the number of hours they spend at work is rewarding them primarily for the amount of self-sacrifice they make, rather than how well they address the work, and to some extent encourages inefficiency (there's no reward for working efficiently as you still need to fulfill regimented hours regardless). It encourages the long hours culture, and the inefficiency has the double whammy of wasting employees' time that they could have taken off or spent doing more constructive work, while employers have to pay them for working inefficiently.
    I believe that a good way forward would be to move towards rewarding people for their performance and effort applied, rather than the number of hours they spend at work. Less of a need for regimented working hours and a pronounced rush hour, more scope for working from home, and encourages employees to work hard because if they work very efficiently they may get paid more and/or get extra time off. By reducing inefficiency we may be able to reduce working hours without offsetting productivity. Some work does physically require people to be around certain premises for certain hours, so regimented hours are sometimes necessary, but even in those cases, an element of performance-related pay can sometimes be smuggled in.
    I wouldn't advocate abolishing working hours altogether though- we'd need to be sure that everyone was getting a fair workload under such a scenario, and the easiest way to ensure this would be to give them an estimated number of hours' worth of work over a time period. Thus, people would still be expected to work a certain number of hours on average, but in many cases it wouldn't have to be as regimented as is the norm today.
    The main barriers to the above initiatives being more widely used are, I think, the "productivity = working hours x constant" assumption, and as per usual, social inertia (the idea that a job should, by definition, mean working regimented hours in an office, because "that's the way it's always been done"), but there are signs of a slow trend in this direction.
  14. Thundery wintry showers

    Piracy

    By Thundery wintry showers,

    Here's one topic that often gets up my backside, in particular the way we only ever hear one side of the argument ("piracy is killing our industries") and rather poor counterarguments from downloaders which can generally be refuted in two seconds flat. There is a middle ground to be charted, and as is my nature, I'm one of those to chart it.
    It's far from clear that copying in moderation actually erodes sales (such as the "casual copying" that dominated in the 1990s, when people made copies for friends and 'shared' copies around a household). The potential lost sales, which arise if someone gets a copy of something they would otherwise buy, may be outweighed by the increased brand awareness and exposure that the industries receive. On the other hand, mass copying/distribution probably does erode sales, for if copies are very widely available, many people just snap them up instead of buying anything.
    The biggest problem is counterfeiting- people creating copies of products and selling them, which is essentially a form of theft, as the money goes to the pirate and not the creator of the product.
    However, the main focus on anti-piracy measures has been to crack down on the "casual copying" using intrusive copy-protection measures, and only recently has the efforts expanded significantly to address the organised piracy. The definition of what constitutes "piracy" has expanded with time. So, legitimate users have been punished, criminalised and treated like thieves, so many turned to the stuff the organised pirates were using (hacks, peer-2-peer downloads etc) to reclaim their previous activities and by-pass the copy protection. This will have contributed to the current culture of downloading copyrighted material which is distributed on a wide scale.
    The notion that "piracy is killing the industry" is backed up by statistics. But why aren't there any statistics on the contrary? Answer, because they made it illegal to conduct research that questions the correctness of copyright law. It doesn't suggest they're very confident in the correctness of the law if they defend it by making it illegal to provide evidence against it! Computer gaming forums are littered with arguments like "All forms of piracy should be lumped together under one brush, because it's all illegal, all illegal activity is bad, therefore it should all be illegal", which is essentially a circular argument.
    With systems like Valve Software's Steam in operation (requiring online authentication to play computer games), we may well cut piracy to very low levels in the near future. But, if the industries continue to follow the mantra of zero-tolerance and punishing the many because of the few all the time, we're only ever going to eliminate piracy by eliminating 90% of liberty- which may mean customers being cheesed off, and thus, ironically, lost sales.
    In conclusion, while piracy is a genuine issue, the industries' anti-piracy measures have probably been harming their sales more than piracy itself.
  15. Thundery wintry showers
    Jan '84 was an exceptionally snowy month from the Midlands northwards, but quite mild with relatively little snow south of the Midlands. Certainly an interesting-sounding month.
    But I think January 1958 was even more interesting. It began with a rather chilly NE'ly:
    http://www.wetterzentrale.de/archive/ra/19...00119580102.gif
    Then the Atlantic came pouring in for about ten days, with some cooler NW'lys interspersed with mild SW'lys and some rough winds:
    http://www.wetterzentrale.de/archive/ra/19...00119580107.gif
    http://www.wetterzentrale.de/archive/ra/19...00119580109.gif
    Then an anticyclonic spell in the third week:
    http://www.wetterzentrale.de/archive/ra/19...00119580116.gif
    Then a remarkable northerly, assisted by a strong Greenland/Atlantic block, that persisted for a week and brought severe cold and heavy snowfalls from polar lows over much of the country:
    http://www.wetterzentrale.de/archive/ra/19...00119580121.gif
    Then an exceptional mild end:
    http://www.wetterzentrale.de/archive/ra/19...00119580127.gif
    We hear a lot about Januarys 1984 and 1987, and rightly so- those months featured some remarkable weather. But for me, the Holy Grail has to be January 1958, as it was the month that had everything.
  16. 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.
  17. Thundery wintry showers
    There's been a lot of discussion on Net-Weather about a supposed downturn in society in the past 50 years, and it's often suggested that it stems from it being more acceptable to be 'different'. I'm afraid I can't agree. I don't have a problem with condemning 'difference' if there's an independent reason as to why it's unacceptable (e.g. it's socially unacceptable to drive on the wrong side of the road because you're likely to cause accidents). But some behaviour is condemned purely because it's different, suppressing individuality and forcing people to conform just for the sake of it, or be rejected. For instance, it's often socially unacceptable in some circles not to want to have children, or to welcome snow.
    Some such traditions are also of dubious origin, like the wife taking her husband's last name for example. It's mostly harmless as long as you're happy to follow it (though I have come across men who do associate it with its origins), but there's plenty of women who would rather keep their names, but feel forced into changing them. Similarly, it's socially unacceptable to shake with the left hand because left-handedness is evil because it is. There's a legitimate case for following both of those traditions, but I can't stand the general intolerance of those who dare to deviate, or even question them.
    Then you get norms that are harmful even just through people following them, e.g. when a few idiots in a group misbehave, you punish the whole group, or else get sued for negligence. Or, it being considered inappropriate for men to show affection towards non-'family' members, which used to severely restrict men's friendships, and nowadays severely restricts their ability to interact with young children.
    Once norms, good and bad, are ingrained in society they can be very hard to challenge or question- social inertia is strong. There's the argument that "it can't be helped because it's just the way it is", "life is unfair and that's life", rejecting proposed reforms as soon as someone can find a flaw in one of them, the argument "adults can make their own decisions, therefore it's their decision to follow the norm, and you can't force people to change, therefore that's life", and "it's meant to be that way because everything happens for a reason", for example. Ironically, the traditions people tend to get most defensive of are the ones that enforce negative behaviour and/or suppress legitimate individuality, probably because those who challenge them have a very good point, and need to be silenced through force for the 'status quo' to be effectively maintained.
    The problem in society isn't the tolerance of difference, it's the tolerance of harmful behaviour. In fact, this has always been a problem- it seems new nowadays because we get less abuse of authority, and more abuse of 'freedom of speech and expression', but it still stems from the same sort of thing. Becoming less tolerant of those who are different is not the answer- sometimes, a harmful behaviour can actually be the norm.
    Rant over.
  18. Thundery wintry showers

    UEA Norwich

    By Thundery wintry showers,

    I arrived on Saturday to UEA, and have been getting to grips with the campus. With being here for Fresher's Week I can get my bearings for a week before the PhD work starts on 1st October.
    I'm going to see what sort of societies are about tomorrow. Of course I'm going to need to do plenty of work for the PhD, but hopefully I should be able to fit work and social events around each other so I can both get the work done to the best of my ability, and have a good social life (which I managed to do pretty well during that fantastic year at Leeds University). I'm also hoping that, as in Leeds, 'work' and 'leisure' may overlap to some extent; the work I did over there often didn't feel like work, and I sometimes did work-related things in my leisure time.
    So far I've been very impressed by the UEA campus. The student's union is very good, the IT facilities look good, and there are plenty of good restaurants and pubs around the campus.
    As for the weather, I may as well quote an extract from Trevor Harley's site here:
    I don't know if Norwich really is the thunderstorm capital of Britain, but I've only been here four days, and there was thunder today.
  19. Thundery wintry showers
    It's been ages since I last updated the blog- so I will dutifully make amends!
    I had a pretty successful end to 2007, with getting the PhD underway, and getting back in touch with a large number of old schoolfriends through that notorious social networking site Facebook (a subject of heated debate at times on this forum). I even met up with some of them on 29 December, which considering that I was hardly in touch with anybody four months beforehand, was pretty amazing.
    Getting back into the swing of PhD work now- I think the real 'nitty gritty' work is upon me now, with plenty of data analysis and manipulation of UK rainfall data. However, as long as I don't have too many problems on the programming front (the main downside of PhDs generally), the work should be pretty interesting, making motivation reasonably straightforward.
    I'm also updating the weather records section of my website as it's poorly arranged at the moment and a bit cumbersome to update. Within the next month I should hopefully have all the years (1993-2007) up online again, though of course it will depend on how the PhD work goes.
    As for the weather, I enjoyed that little taster from the east on 3 January, but at the moment it's a westerly train. I quite welcome this sort of westerly weather when it first sets in, but grow tired of it when it persists for over a week, which looks likely at the moment, unfortunately for snow lovers living away from high ground in Scotland and Ireland.
  20. Thundery wintry showers

    Update

    By Thundery wintry showers,

    The 8-week period before starting the PhD is down to 5 weeks- trying to make the most of what I'm up to now, while part of me is looking forward to the PhD and another part is apprehensive.
    Been continuing with the level episode I'm doing for Doom 3, with only one level (a short level as well) to go, I hope to finish that last level before I start my PhD as I'm aware I won't be spending as much time on level editing once the PhD gets underway! It will most likely be a 'beta' product, for as most amateur level designers know, level editing skills tend to advance as one progresses through the episode- so the earlier levels aren't as good as the later ones. Thus I expect to be tinkering around a bit with the earlier ones.
    It's all very much a hobby- ever since I first got the original Doom, I had always wanted to create a Doom-themed level episode. I have no intention of becoming a professional level designer.
    As for the weather, it looks like the pattern of downgrading of settled spells is continuing. To be honest, the first third of August wasn't too bad at all in the North East, indeed sunshine was much above average, but we're starting to return to the sort of summer we got used to in June and July. Haven't had any thunder-days yet either up here.
    Had to get a new power supply for my computer as the fan was deciding to pack in, but fingers crossed, it's now fitted.
  21. Thundery wintry showers
    Going off to Norwich in two days, and the apprehension increases; it's very much delving into the unknown. I don't know how much different doing a PhD will be to doing the research part of my MRes; hopefully the two will be quite similar, because if they are, it should be a very rewarding three years ahead.
    Some will remember that I had some friendship issues some years ago. Most people seem to follow an unwritten rule that all conflicts involving friendships are the friend's fault and that you need to "move on" by "cutting the friend out of your life". Although I didn't have many issues at Leeds University, one of the people on my course fell foul of this one, she had an unfortunate clash with someone else, and everyone assumed she was stringing the person along and cut her out. She was effectively a scapegoat.
    I believe that principle stems from the general idea "family matters, friendship is unimportant", as in family conflicts this principle never seems to apply. However, if a person follows it, it doesn't mean the person sees friendship as unimportant- as it's widely accepted without question, most people tend to follow it regardless of their other related beliefs. Whatever, it causes many innocent friends to become scapegoats.
    In recent weeks, I've got back in touch with quite a number of people I never thought I'd get back in touch with again. And, if I'd followed the above unwritten rule, chances are I'd have "cut most of them out of my life", rendering myself worse off in the long run. Yes, I know it's seen as "moving on" in the sense of moving from old friends to new friends, but I've never been keen on the idea that moving on means holding lifelong grudges against people, often for things they haven't done, and that letting go of said grudges is a sign of not having moved on! Another line of evidence for my argument perhaps.
  22. Thundery wintry showers
    One week further on, and somewhat surprisingly, I finished the Doom 3 level episode- today! The penultimate level took three months to create (although I spent a lot of that time doing things other than level editing), then the last level took just one week.
    Thus I should even get some tinkering done with the earlier levels before I go to Norwich.
    Otherwise have enjoyed two nice sunny days, after the persistent cloud cover of the past week. Yesterday had a nice meal at an Italian restaurant and got pretty stuffed. The Bank Holiday weekend looks like a 'sunny intervals' fest, on the eastern periphery of our high.
  23. Thundery wintry showers

    Work

    By Thundery wintry showers,

    At the moment, I am a week and a half into an 8-week break at home, before I go to University (again!) to do the PhD. It's both exciting and apprehension-inviting at the same time- I don't know what it will be like! However, since I'm going to be researching into the realms of meteorological statistics, the work is bound to be interesting regardless.
    Other than that, relaxing. It's been a relaxing year out, but at the same time, I've been finding that with regards 'work-life balance', it's possible to have too much 'life' and not enough 'work'! I found doing my MRes at Leeds gave rise to a suitable work-life balance- hopefully the PhD will be similar.
    Having read about a certain member of N-W's recurring job problems, ranging from 70-hour workweeks to emotion-sapping office dragfests, reminds me of what lots of people have preached to me over the years. "Your mentality of 'I want to pursue a career working in areas where I enjoy the work' will have to change." they say. "You'll learn that money has to be the top priority- the mentality should be 'I can put up with work I can't stand, as long as it pays well'. That's life- it's necessary because it's just the way it is."
    There are plenty of social norms that I can't stand, and this is certainly one of them. I'm very used to being at odds with the social norm, and it can be a risky business (delving into the unknown, and if you encounter resultant troubles, it's seen to be your fault for being different.) However, so far, I've done a pretty good job at dodging this one, and it looks hopeful that I should be dodging it successfully for at least three more years.
  24. 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.
  25. Thundery wintry showers
    I am away in France from 5 to 23 July- starting to prepare for that. In the meantime, I've been busy uploading my weather records into the internet; finally finished doing so yesterday, so that's that done! Meanwhile, this month looks set to break all kinds of weather records for the wrong reasons (e.g. record flooding, June locally in the northeast, the dullest of any month since Feb/Mar 2006!) I expect to be updating my website with monthly data not long after the turn of each month, rather like Paul Tall does with his Newton Aycliffe summaries.
    Other than that, had an enjoyable bowling alley trip on 24 June with my mates (as I often do at around birthday-time), and been raising some laughs at some of the Tom & Jerry DVD cartoons- apart from the censorship issues I ranted about in the last blog, it's a top-notch collection.
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