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Thundery wintry showers

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  1. Thundery wintry showers
    In Leeds, this was a very warm and extremely dull month. The statistics on Philip Eden's site suggested that the North East had barely half the normal sunshine, and I can believe it.
    The first week saw near-normal temperatures, and persistent anticyclonic gloom- layers of stratocumulus covering the sky the whole time. It became brighter in the second week with some notable warmth around the 10th and some sunny spells, but then it became dull again.
    The 15th to 26th was another extremely dull period, and this time it was generally wet as well, with an exceptional lack of cool nights. Only three days stood out as featuring any sunshine of note- the 16th was dry warm sunny and quite summerlike, while the 20th and 25th featured a mix of sun and showers together with a few rainbows.
    The 27th was a remarkable day- sunshine all day, and it must surely have maxed at between 18 and 20C. After the dullness of the past 10 days, it was amazing to see the sun again, let alone see it all day! However, after a day of sunshine and showers on the 28th, it became extremely dull again, while staying warm.
    At 42%, this October would appear to have been the lowest scoring October since I started taking weather records, and the lowest scoring of any month since November 2004. Sunshine (or lack of it!) was the main factor here.
    Data is again patchy, with no temperature records from 6 to 16 October inclusive, but here are the stats from the dataset I have:
    Mean Max 14.5C
    Mean Min 9.5C
    Precipitation: 75mm (this is the whole month's total; the device kept a record of total rainfall even though it stopped transmitting to the computer)
    Highest max: 18.1C (27th)
    Lowest min: 6.7C (23rd)
  2. Thundery wintry showers
    Here was my forecast for October 2012:
    [quote]October 2012 will start off changeable with low pressure dominating, but high pressure over the Azores and mid-Atlantic will often influence our weather, particularly around the middle of the month.

    After a showery spell during the first five days of October, with some longer outbreaks of rain on the 2nd, the weather will dry up from the west on the 5th/6th as a ridge of high pressure pushes in from the west. The night of the 6th/7th is expected to be cold, with a widespread ground frost inland. There is then some uncertainty over the track of a southerly-tracking low, but I expect wet and windy weather to sweep in from the south-west between the 8th and 10th which is likely to produce high rainfall totals in some places, with the Midlands, Wales, Northern Ireland and northern England most at risk from the heaviest and most persistent rain. Northern Scotland will stay mostly dry, while southern England will be brighter with showers once the initial rain belt moves through, where it will also become warm with highs of 17-20C in places.

    High pressure sat in the mid-Atlantic will settle the weather down towards midmonth but it will still allow weak Atlantic weather systems to penetrate around its north-eastern flank. Thus, the period 11th-16th is likely to be mostly dry, particularly in southern areas, but sunshine will be variable rather than plentiful, and some belts of light rain will crop up from time to time, particularly over Scotland, Ireland and northern England.

    Long-term teleconnection signals keep pressure high in the mid-Atlantic around midmonth and this high pressure will most likely start to extend its influence further east in the third week of the month, which will promise a few days of dry, brighter weather with some cool nights and widespread ground frosts.

    The high pressure is then expected to pull out into the North Sea during the last third of October which will allow Atlantic weather systems to increasingly influence the weather, particularly over western areas, where some belts of heavy rain and strong to gale force winds are expected at times. Eastern England will hold onto the driest weather during this period. With southerly winds expected, temperatures will rise above the seasonal average.

    Overview
    October 2012 will have close to average temperatures for the most part, but the last third of the month will raise the mean slightly above average. I envisage a Central England Temperature of 11.1C, with mean temperatures set to range from 0 to 0.5C below the 1981-2010 average over much of Ireland and western Scotland to 0.5-1.0C above in eastern England.

    Rainfall totals will be above normal over much of Wales, the Midlands and northern England with excesses of 20-50% likely, bolstered by a wet spell between the 8th and 10th. Conversely it will be a dry month in East Anglia and the south-east, and also in northern Scotland, with rainfall shortages of 20-40% expected. Other regions of the UK will have close to average rainfall.

    Sunshine totals for October 2012 will be near or slightly above the long-term average, with an excess of around 10% taking the UK as a whole. Southern England and eastern Scotland are likely to be sunniest relative to normal with excesses of around 30%.

    Forecast issued by Ian Simpson (aka TWS) on the 3rd October 2012.[/quote]

    This wasn't one of my more accurate forecasts. The first week went as expected but the wet weather on the 8th-10th in reality passed away to the south with only the far south seeing any rain at all from it, and then an Atlantic-driven regime took over midmonth with a flattening of the expected mid-Atlantic high.

    The weather temporarily moved into line with my forecast around the 19th-25th with an anticyclonic interlude followed by warm southerlies, but an abrupt change saw an unusually cold northerly outbreak on the 26th/27th with snow for some, and the month ended changeable with below-average temperatures. As a result, temperatures were over a degree down on what I had predicted, while sunshine totals were mostly lower over the southern two-thirds of England although similar to what I had predicted over Scotland and northern England. Rainfall totals weren't far off what I forecast.

    Overall, though, after a series of forecasts which I felt were quite accurate, September and October's forecasts were rather wide of the mark and illustrate how hard long-range forecasting really is.
  3. Thundery wintry showers
    Going to France for two weeks tomorrow- one week in the Dordogne and another in the eastern side of the Loire region.
    I had a great birthday this year, but things seem to have gone downhill a bit since then, with many people leaving and social events becoming very few and far between. As I go through life, I'm becoming more and more convinced that the main factors influencing my state of well-being are the amount of social interaction and the scope to do things that I enjoy. Workload doesn't seem to be as large a factor, provided that there is scope to play hard as well as work hard.
    So in many ways this is great timing for a 2-week break; maybe my time in Leeds will pick up again for those last six weeks before I hand my project in. I'll have to take my thesis document with me to make sure that I don't end up overworked when I come back!
    For some reason one of my favourite French phrases is "Il y a des averses". It is French for "there are showers" (i.e. showers of precipitation. In the Dordogne region these have a reputation for producing severe electrical storms, but only time will tell.
  4. Thundery wintry showers
    This blog article will explore the future of PC gaming using DRM on the one hand, and online extras/support on the other, and how things may pan out if we see numerous competitors such as "Origin" compete (if that's the right word for it, as we will see below) with Valve Software's "Steam".

    As many will already know, I am a strong opponent of forcing Digital Rights Management (DRM) on consumers because of the vast potential for abuse (as DRM basically gives the DRM owner scope to set whatever restrictions that he/she wants). On the other hand, I support the use of account-based activation to access online extras, as it's a good way of rewarding paying customers and creating a difference between a pirated copy and a legitimate copy.

    I've been using Valve Software's "Steam" quite a lot recently, which is an interesting case in that it follows both models (it uses DRM but is also pretty good on the "rewarding paying customers with online extras" front) and as of November 2011, in my experience the benefits have at least counterbalanced the reservations about the DRM. For instance, the "you can't play 2-4 multiplayer with 1 copy of the game" issue pales into insignificance when I pick up the games for 2-4 times less than the retail price due to taking advantage of Steam's offers and "5 for the price of 2" type "game packs". But the main subject of this blog is, would it be better for PC gaming if we were to have Steam as a near-monopoly on clients and digital distribution or better to have a lot of competition? There are those who say competition is better, while there are others who are dead against it because they want all their DRM-authenticated titles on one platform. I actually think both sides have a case, and will outline two relevant scenarios below.

    1. If gamers get a free choice as to which client they use for their games, with at worst a one-time activation on the developer's own service, then I think it will certainly be a good thing. PC gamers will have a choice as to whether they use multiple clients for their games or are happy to stick everything on the one client. Competitors would have to become good in order to get many PC gamers to flock over to them and away from Steam, and if they succeeded, they could offer benefits that Steam doesn't currently have, prompting Steam to improve. Gamers will get a better all-round experience.

    2. If we get the competitors selling titles exclusively on their own systems and making the games exclusive to their own clents, then I think it will actually be a bad thing. The likely scenario there is gamers getting no more choice (as each game is tied to the developer's own client), having to use lots of different clients just to play their games. The more powerful companies (such as EA with Origin) could well take a lot of market share away from Steam by forcing essentially inferior imitations of Steam onto their customers. Valve has opted not to heavily abuse the control that Steamworks DRM gives them, but if competing companies choose to abuse the control that the DRM gives them, and manage to eat heavily into Steam's dominance by doing so, it may well make Valve feel they have to use bully-boy tactics to avoid losing a lot of custom- so even Steam ends up an inferior version of what it is now.

    In my view, it would be most ideal if these services only required account-based activation in order to access online facilities, and not to install and play the game (going back to my first paragraph). Then, companies wouldn't be able to force people to use their clients with DRM, so it would be harder to "push" the second of the two scenarios. Companies would have to seriously consider both making their online facilities as good as possible and offering access to patches and DLC via alternative clients including Steam, so as to encourage gamers to buy their products for the online extras instead of pirating them, all of which would "push" the first of the two scenarios. I don't really see that happening though, because of the "copying is theft" mantra, the desire to "push" clients on consumers, move away from gamers "buying" games and towards "renting" them, and scupper the used games market, all of which companies address with DRM- although if Good Old Games.com (a DRM-free digital distribution outlet) gets more successful, you never know!

    I'm not at all sure which direction the PC gaming industry will go when it comes to clients, digital distribution and DRM, but it is unlikely to be my problem anytime soon, as a large majority of the PC games I get are produced by Valve, Bethesda or id Software (now taken over by Bethesda's parent company incidentally), and the latter two seem quite happy to either use no DRM at all or use Steam.
  5. Thundery wintry showers
    Reading through Summer Model Discussion threads... sometimes I wonder what it would take to abolish the air of negativity in there!

    Hot and sunny for at least a week won't do, people complain that it's too hot.
    Modestly warm, dry and sunny (or cloudy) for at least a week won't do, people complain that it's too boring.
    Anything less than either of those two won't do, because people complain that we aren't having a summer and pray for a prolonged settled spell (hence "at least a week" in the above).

    I find the convective discussion threads a breath of fresh air because they involve people finding positives in the weather we're having. True, some people don't see anything to like in convective weather, just as I don't see anything to like in days on end of stratus trapped on the periphery of an anticyclone. We all have different preferences after all. But it would be nice if those who despise particular types of weather would stop imposing their misery on everyone else when they occur.
  6. Thundery wintry showers
    Excellent news- I have just been offered a PhD position at the University of East Anglia! The project is based on analysing precipitation variability across the UK and includes 6-9 months' working with the Met Office, in conjunction with the well-known Climate Research Unit at UEA.
    I have to admit I was always against the idea of living in the south-eastern third of England, but then again I had always considered that Norwich might not be so bad, because of being in a relatively rural area, exposed to thundery wintry shower activity from the north and east, boasting a relatively high "sunshine and showers" frequency compared to the rest of the region, etc. Should get some pretty beefy thunderstorms there too.
    I applied to quite a number of places this year, the UEA one was the first one I applied for and I initially thought that if I was accepted, it would be "a good banker" for while I was hunting for other opportunities. However, on the UEA open day, the PhD topic, the University and the local area all exceeded my expectations, and the other places I applied to were less convincing, particularly in terms of the topics offered. In the end the acceptance of the offer wasn't a difficult decision to make.
    Note: this blog entry was originally posted on 3 May, and edited at 11:26am on 5 May to make it more to the point.
  7. 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.
  8. Thundery wintry showers
    Following on from the discussion with WBSH et al, I will add some of my own thoughts in here, especially since there have recently been positive developments in this area.
    In my experience, one of the main issues with these relationships are knowing where the line stands between platonic and sexual love (in theory it is easy; a platonic relationship has no sexual involvement, a sexual relationship has at least some, but in practice it is complicated). With regards sex and love being different things, I think it would help people understand if more analogies were made with "family" relationships, e.g. someone might love a platonic friend as they would love their mother, or a close sibling, neither of which are usually associated with sexual involvement.
    The bigger issue in my experience has been third parties spreading nasty rumours about the male constituent of the friendship and undermining the friendship. This kind of thing is hard to deal with due to the social norm that whenever a third party interferes with a friendship, you assume the friend 100% guilty, and the third party 100% innocent. Thus, if either of the friends go to anyone for advice on how to deal with this third party, they will be told that they are being shat on by each other. There's also the social norm that if a man is accused of abusing a woman, you believe the accusations, thus people tend to believe whatever rumours are spread.
    The issue of a "true" friend is double-edged here, as when the friendship is broken up, the male constituent usually ends up in trouble for what he is rumoured to have done. The truer the friend, the more trouble will be required to break up the friendship and thus the more likely it is to survive, but also, the more trouble the male constituent will end up in if the friendship falls apart. The concept of a friend who would stand by someone "no matter what" is unrealistic, e.g. if someone is made to choose between one person or another (which can happen in these situations) then he/she can't be a "true" friend to both of them. Again, an analogy with "family" makes this more clear; this stipulation of "stand by you no matter what" is rarely if ever applied to "family".
    I think the social segragation of the sexes also makes platonic relationships difficult, particularly for men, as male shows of care and affection are often misinterpreted as being sexual. Like-minded constituents of a platonic relationship may violate gender norms and be put under pressure to conform, which causes them to be pulled apart as they lose the things they have in common. In general platonic relationships seem to work best if they occur within a "family", mainly because society considers "family" to be trustworthy and "friends" to be unimportant, so "family" are given a lot more leeway (plus, "family" relationships are normally assumed asexual by definition) so third parties are less likely to take offensive action (and less likely to get away with it if they do).
    In the past couple of years, however, I have been able to form some platonic relationships with women without encountering the above issues, which has helped my confidence in them and shown me that it is possible to make them work. They are becoming more acceptable in society than they used to be, but as long as gender and "family vs friends" stereotypes continue to be accepted without question and enforced by society, there will always be barriers to them being accepted as they are.
  9. Thundery wintry showers
    Just watched a few more of those Tom & Jerry episodes I got for my birthday. The cartoons themselves are fine, but there's been some annoying 'censoring' of them going on, especially the redubbing of Mammy Two-Shoes (I grew up on the uncensored versions that the BBC showed until 2000 and the uncensored VHS editions from the 80s and 90s). As it happens, the versions I have are the best available, and remarkably, there are no uncensored versions available any more.
    Yes, if some find the originals racially offensive, by all means release censored versions alongside the originals, but phasing out the distribution of the originals really is a case of 'political correctness gone mad'; a large majority of people didn't find them offensive.
    Okay, so maybe the 'blackface gags' were originally intended as racist jokes (which is totally unacceptable, but more a symptom of the way society was in the 1940s than anything else). However, there's a perfectly non-racist reason for people appearing in blackface following an explosion- I always assumed until recently that they went black because they were coated in charcoal. If we're to censor that sort of thing, should we do that with all cartoons that feature explosions, and should we censor the burning of toast because the fact that burnt toast is black could be used by bigots to perpetuate racism?
    I say all of the above as someone who is a big advocate of equality of opportunity and who despises discrimination of any form. But the real problem stems from people judging each other by stereotypes rather than as individuals, and embedding such stereotypes into social norms (such that they are accepted without question), and it's this that we need to be tackling. Most jokes about stereotypes, TV showings of stereotypes etc. are actually harmless as long as they aren't taken seriously (and Tom & Jerry is one of the most non-serious cartoons in existence).
    This obsession with "avoiding causing offence" is only scraping the surface of the problem, and is posing a real threat to freedom of speech and expression. I mean, in future will it be politically incorrect to like snow because it might offend those who have suffered bereavment of elderly people who died?
    Rant over.
  10. Thundery wintry showers
    I was pleased to see Obama get into power even though I have doubts about some of his policies. The alternatives were a continuation of the current status quo in the USA- economic liberalism and social conservatism- and in particular trying to shore up holes in the economy in the short term only to suffer greater in the long term. And I can't stand social conservative policies, so Sarah Palin was never an attractive proposition as far as I was concerned. For once, the USA are prepared to try something different, and while it may not work out very well, chances it will work out better than keeping the status quo would have.

    I have generally downplayed the significance of his skin colour, but it will certainly set a precedent that will reduce the chances of skin colour being an issue in future political battles in the USA.

    Related to my rant about authoritarianism a couple of blogs ago: it is not the fault of the "Liberal Lefties" that it is happening. Firstly, it is not the result of socialist ideologies. The idea that things that aren't work/health/safety-related are non-essential and disposable (meaning a large percentage of personal liberty) is an economics-driven view of the world, it is not left of centre by any stretch of the imagination.

    In addition, straight from the definition of authoritarianism, any policy that punishes the many because of the few is authoritarian. Not only that, some of these nanny state policies help to reinforce traditional values- which is usually branded conservative policymaking. Take the way men are unable to interact with kids these days without being accused of being sexual abusers, except if the kids are deemed to be in their families. That sort of double standard invariably has its roots in traditional family values.

    In short, this is not a "liberal lefties" problem, this is a problem stemming from conservatives- particularly social conservatives (now you see why I didn't want Sarah Palin in)
  11. 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.
  12. Thundery wintry showers
    The Andy Gray story has developed widespread publicity now and I've given some opinions of my own in the relevant thread of the forum. I felt that the comments on Sian Massey crossed the line between "jokes" and "personal sexist remarks", and that the reprimand and suspension was a fair punishment. However, I then felt that the sacking as reaction to the stuff that was leaked afterwards was OTT.

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

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

    I think what these kind of incidents illustrate is that we should be careful of throwing insults at people we don't know, but also that we need to be careful to avoid letting choice of words carry more weight than the intended meaning. Any word can be corrupted and evolve offensive meanings, particularly if it becomes widely used among the likes of racists and criminals- and for instance if we take a line that no potentially-offensive words are acceptable and "idiot" is then corrupted in this way, a lot of us will have problems!
  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
    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.
  15. Thundery wintry showers
    On this occasion I was priveleged to be at the centre of where all the weather action was happening. In East Exeter by the Met Office, a set of localised but very intense convective cells targetted the area giving over an hour of thunder and lightning around 8-9am. Although the rate of lightning was not outstandingly high (about 20 strikes over that period) most of the thunder and lightning was right overhead, making it very dramatic. But even more remarkable was the rainfall- it was torrential for most of the entire period. Some of the cumulonimbus clouds were extremely dark.

    The remainder of the day continued with heavy rain. At around 5-6pm, another torrential pulse again concentrated itself over my area, and again there were big cumulonimbus cells and it was very dark- dark enough for the streetlights to come on- but no thunder on that occasion.

    Reports suggest that a localised area close to the Met Office, possibly including my specific location, had over 100mm in 12 hours. For comparison, the average rainfall in Exeter for the whole of June is about 50mm. What was particularly unusual about it was the way extremely intense rainfall persisted for most of the day- it must have been from a succession of convective cells embedded in the frontal system, because rainfall of that intensity rarely lasts longer than half an hour.

    So it may well have been a driech dull wet day- but what a day all the same!
  16. Thundery wintry showers
    A very warm first half. I spent the first third of the month on the Isle of Arran, with some very warm, sunny and summerlike weather during the first week, but the second week was somewhat more cloudy.
    A funny 'quirk' on the 10th- while I travelled from Arran to Leeds and then Tyneside, it was dull everywhere apart from a 10-mile radius around Lancaster (!!) where it was very sunny.
    The second half of the month didn't contain any particularly memorable events in Leeds (where I went to university after midmonth) but it was consistently sunny and generally warm.
    The month averaged 60% on my ranking system, and was the third September in a row to make a sixties score- by contrast, most Septembers of the 1990s 'achieved' forties scores.
    I doubt October will achieve anywhere near that kind of score though!
    Statistics from 17-30 September in Cleadon, Tyne & Wear:
    Mean Max 17.6C
    Mean Min 9.0C
    Mean SLP 1006mb
    Total precipitation 6mm
    Highest max: 21.1C (22nd)
    Lowest min: 3.6C (24th)
  17. Thundery wintry showers
    [quote]High pressure will be dominant over central and northern Europe during the first half of September, which will bring plenty of warm dry sunny weather to most of southern and central Britain, although Scotland and Ireland will always be more prone to banks of cloud. During the second half of the month, low pressure will take up residence to the west of the British Isles giving us a changeable but rather warm south-westerly type.

    Dry, sunny weather will dominate over most of England and Wales on the first three days but with more cloud over Scotland and Ireland. A weakening belt of cloud and drizzle will head south-eastwards over England and Wales on the 4th, with brighter weather following from the north-west, and bar a few isolated showers over western and northern Scotland, it will become dry again.

    Between the 5th and 9th September, the weather over Wales, together with central, southern and eastern England, will be consistently sunny and dry, with generally warm daytime temperatures, though not exceptionally so. Most places will see highs between 21 and 24C. Scotland, Ireland and Cumbria will be prone to more cloud and some light rain, particularly on the 6th and 7th, although these areas will be dry and sunny on the 5th.

    High pressure will start to pull away between the 10th and 15th which will allow a changeable south-westerly type to establish over north-western Britain. This will bring some rain belts interspersed with brighter showery weather, with the majority of the showers confined to northern and western Scotland. For most of central, southern and eastern England, though, there will be long dry sunny periods and rainfall amounts will be very small. Temperatures will continue mostly above normal, although daytime temperatures may drop a little below normal at times over western Scotland and Northern Ireland.

    Around the 16th/17th we can expect a large depression, containing the remains of a tropical hurricane, to approach the British Isles, and this will herald the shift towards more unsettled conditions. A bout of wet and windy weather is expected, with gales possible in western areas. After that, the winds will be mostly southerly or south-westerly and this will bring belts of rain interspersed with brighter showery weather, with some of the showers heavy and thundery, particularly in the west and south. Temperatures will continue rather above normal except over western Scotland and Ireland. During the last week of September lowest pressure will transfer north-eastwards and give us a more "traditional" westerly type, with temperatures returning to normal, and the majority of the rain will affect north-western parts of the country, with small amounts over central, eastern and southern England.

    September 2012 will be a warm month. I am predicting a Central England Temperature of 15.4C, with temperatures generally ranging from 1.5 to 2.0C above the 1981-2010 average in eastern England to 0.5-1.0C above in Ireland and western and northern Scotland.

    Rainfall totals will be slightly above normal over western Scotland and Northern Ireland, but elsewhere it will be a generally dry month with rainfall shortages of 20-40%. Shortages of over 50% are expected quite widely over the eastern half of England and also in south-east Scotland.

    Sunshine totals will be 10-20% below average in western and north-western Scotland, but near average over most other parts of Scotland, together with Ireland and Cumbria. Elsewhere it will be a sunny month with excesses of 10 to 30% in most places. Sunshine is likely to be 40-50% above at some places across a belt of eastern England from Northumberland down to East Anglia.
    [/quote]

    I was pleased with how the June, July and August forecasts went, but my September forecast wasn't one of my better ones. The first 10 days of the month went much as predicted, as did the change towards less settled conditions in the middle third of the month, but the weather turned out somewhat cooler than I expected after midmonth and we did not get a large depression around the 16th/17th. That prediction had been based on the likelihood of an ex-hurricane approaching the British Isles, but in reality its remnants passed by harmlessly to the north of Scotland. A second ex-hurricane then swung across the country on the 24th-26th and gave those exceptionally large rainfall totals in northern England.

    It goes to show how much of a difference these depressions containing remnants of tropical storms can make to the UK's weather, and they can certainly provide forecasting headaches especially at long range.

    As a result of the above, temperatures were generally a degree or two down on the values that I had forecast. Rainfall totals were looking set to be similar to what I had predicted before the big depression on the 24th/26th raised totals above average over many parts of the country, while sunshine totals were quite similar, maybe a little higher than I expected in N and W Scotland and lower in eastern England.

    The saying, "you win some, you lose some" certainly applies to long-range forecasting!
  18. Thundery wintry showers
    My piece of insight for the day: when it comes to the erosion of our freedoms, watch for the "small incremental measures add up" problem. When deciding to curb a freedom, no matter how small, before thinking, "well this loss of freedom is a small price to pay for 'doing something'", we need to think, "are our arguments for this measure case-specific, or can they be used as arguments for curbing most other freedoms?".

    Why? Well, typically, we don't accept an "all in one go" curb on 100 activities to legislate for idiots, but we do accept a curb on any one of those activities because it seems like just a small price to pay, and then rinse and repeat individually for the other 99, thus unwittingly achieving the same result as an "all in one go" curb. It just takes longer to get there, that's all, but most of us fail to recognise this.

    Arguments like "you don't need Freedom X to be able to enjoy yourself or survive, so what's wrong with banning X?", "X is non-essential so we have no right to complain about its disposal" and of course "prohibition is necessary because that's life" are common arguments with huge "slippery slope potential". The biggest one, though, is probably the rejection of alternatives because they aren't flawless (e.g. "you can't always tell if something's being abused") while not subjecting prohibition to the same "it has to be flawless" requirement on the basis that it's a "necessary evil". Since there rarely is a flawless way of dealing with misbehaviour, this double standard can be used as a basis for prohibiting almost anything. However, if we can show that a particular act of prohibition is probably less flawed than the alternatives, then OK, we do have a good case-specific argument that doesn't lend itself to a slippery slope of incremental curbs on our freedoms.
  19. Thundery wintry showers
    In this second part I'll present some questions that I occasionally get asked, and provide some answers.

    [b]Q: Do you think Barry Hearn is doing a good job for the sport?[/b]
    A. On balance yes, I think the vast majority of his ideas (e.g. expanding the number of tournaments, experimenting with different formats, promoting snooker overseas and making the ranking system more of a running thing) are all good for promoting the game and increasing interest. Snooker as a televised sport was becoming rather stale under the previous owners.
    I will add one caveat though, I sometimes have a concern about Hearn taking things too far from one extreme to the other, particularly in the interests of maximising his own revenues. The schedule of 27 tournaments over 50 weeks, when considering the amount of overseas travel, is very punishing and I would like to see a shift to a rankings system that encourages players to play in most, but not all, of the events.

    [b]Q: Do you think Judd Trump should shift to a more percentage-based shot selection instead of taking large risks?[/b]
    A. Toning down his attacking instincts will make it easier for him to grind out wins when not playing well, thus boosting his consistency. However, despite it objectively being better for results, I hope he doesn't do this significantly until much later in his career, as it will make him stand out less from the other players. I feel that the game has lacked a real all-out attacker a la Jimmy White since Ray Reardon persuaded Ronnie O'Sullivan to refine his attacking game back in 2004/05, and I would really like Trump to carry the flag for that style of play and win a few world titles with it.
    On the other hand, I wouldn't object to Trump improving his temperament and tactical play- those would improve his results without necessarily making him any less different or entertaining to watch.

    [b]Q. Why do players decline as they get older?[/b]
    A. During their 40s and 50s the aging process makes it harder to keep the concentration levels up, but I think the main problems lie elsewhere. It can be hard to maintain motivation levels after a while, and if a player suffers a crisis of form it is hard to recover confidence from the fear of missing and the fear of going into a long-term decline.
    The early decline of Steve Davis and Stephen Hendry was partly due to a drop in consistency and confidence past age 30 but mainly down to improved opposition- Hendry's game was still generally strong until the 2005/06 season (age 36-37), and Davis's until 1998/99 (age 40-41).
    Ronnie O'Sullivan, John Higgins and Mark Williams are currently in that precarious "35-40" age bracket- it will be interesting to see if Higgins and Williams can recover the form they showed about 1-2 years ago.

    [b]Q. Should successful players tone down their attacking instincts when they get into their 30s/40s?[/b]
    A. This is related to the Judd Trump question, and it really depends on whether they are happy to grind out wins when not playing well. Playing a more conservative game is better for grinding out results when not playing well, and thus may help to prolong longevity within the top 32, but it doesn't necessarily help to win major tournaments- players tend not to be in contention for victories unless their potting and break-building are holding up well.
    Thus, I don't think it's fair to criticise Steve Davis for doing this, or to criticise Stephen Hendry or Jimmy White for refusing to back down on their aggressive shot selections- consistency of results isn't everything, it really depends on the player's mentality and priorities.

    [b]Q: You were a Jimmy White fan in the 1990s; how on earth did you also end up wanting Stephen Hendry to do well?[/b]
    A. I'm a little unconventional in that in fierce sporting rivalries, supporting one player doesn't necessarily cause me to hate the other- it often has the opposite effect due to the fact that it takes two players to make a great rivalry.
    During the days of the Stephen Hendry vs. Jimmy White rivalry, I strongly wanted Jimmy to win their important matches, mainly because I found his playting style the more entertaining of the two, but I also developed an appreciation for Hendry's more "refined" attacking style and for what he was achieving- the result was that I became a fan of both players. It's similar to the way that I became a fan of Ayrton Senna (Formula One) and Garry Kasparov (chess) in spite of wanting Nigel Mansell and Nigel Short, respectively, to beat them.
    I particularly enjoyed the subsequent Hendry-O'Sullivan rivalry because, as a supporter of both players, I ended up as a neutral, and thus could enjoy their matches to the full.

    [b]Q: How could you possibly dismiss the great 1985 world championship final?[/b]
    A. I did, in fairness, downplay it too much in my previous blog entry. It was indeed a great final, arguably the greatest World Championship final of all time, I just feel that in terms of match quality it was an inferior relative of the 1998 Masters "re-spotted black" final, and (understandably) gets the more recognition of the two because it decided the World Championship rather than the relatively unimportant Masters.
  20. Thundery wintry showers
    I think even sleet is unlikely to occur in Norwich next week, because of the long airmass track over the North Sea- Norwich often seems to struggle to get much snow from northerlies early in the season (22-23 November 2008 was a notable exception, but that one really caught East Anglia full in the face, and it was still very marginal).

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

    It'll be interesting to see how that one pans out.
  21. Thundery wintry showers
    It is often considered that as we pass adolescence, we become old enough to decide for ourselves, therefore we cease to be influenced by social pressure and we never follow the crowd; supposedly only "weak" people follow the crowd. This argument is often used to dismiss the idea that any form of social pressure can be a factor in people's decisions, so if a person makes a negative choice the person gets 100% of the blame, end of story.
    To my mind, that idea is flawed. Yes, we make decisions for ourselves, but social factors attach 'strings' to our decisions. For example, if I have a choice between X and Y, but the real choice is "choose X and be rejected, or choose Y and be accepted", if I then choose Y, it does not follow that the external social 'strings' (rejection vs acceptance) didn't influence my decision. Also, saying that we are all influenced by society is not necessarily a criticism; if we were never influenced, we would never learn from anyone.
    I'd agree that only "weak" people are easily influenced into making negative decisions, but even strong-minded people can be swayed, if strong enough social 'strings' are applied to their decision making processes. It's probably fair to say that, as a general rule, the more social pressure is required to 'sway' someone, the stronger the person, but there's no such thing as a person with an infinite 'stubborn-ness' threshold.
    So what sorts of social pressure influence us? It ranges across a variety of spectrums, from individual peer pressure, manipulation and outright bullying, to social norms representing codes of behaviour or belief that are generally accepted without question, and where it is often socially unacceptable to deviate from them. In larger-scale forms, people are often also influenced by the weight of consensus (if everyone believes/does it, it must surely be 'right'!)
    Even the "we are who we are" concept cannot accurately be used to dismiss the influences of social pressure. People learn to conform from an early age, particularly in the school years, and this helps to mould our personalities as we get older. In all of these cases, I include myself under this bracket; I like to think of myself as an independent thinker but I, too, can be 'swayed' given enough pressure in that direction.
    I think it's important that this preconception is challenged, because in reality, many problems do have social pressure as a root factor. At a small-scale level, people can manipulate and bully others into making negative decisions; it makes no sense to me that the bully should be absolved of all responsibility on the grounds that "a strong-minded person could withstand an infinitely high amount of social pressure". This is relevant to many issues, such as school bullying, employer abuse of working hours (manipulating employees into 'wanting' to work 70 hours per week) and friendship issues (if a jealous third party tries to break apart a friendship, a 'true' friend is expected to withstand an infinite amount of manipulation, such that the third party never gets any of the blame and the friend can never get any support)
    Negative social norms also contribute; people often make negative decisions based on the blind acceptance of codes of belief or behaviour that are passed down the generations. For instance, take discrimination against women in the early 1900s; I'm pretty certain that the campaigners had to tackle and break down various social norms before they could make any significant headway against the issue. Accepting that people made their own decisions, and absolving social norms of any responsibility, would almost have been tatamount to resignation, and a 'that's life' attitude to the sexism.
    So, we need to recognise that social pressure can be a factor- in order to enable it to be addressed!
  22. Thundery wintry showers
    I have to say I've been very impressed with the recent changes to the N-W charts in the datacentre. Until recently, I have to admit, I tended to prefer the Wetterzentrale versions, but recently the team has been implementing changes to give the N-W versions the advantages that the WZ versions have.

    I particularly like the Northern Hemisphere orientation that in my view is better than the one at WZ- finally our set of charts are looking professional!

    And incidentally, some very tasty synoptics out in f1:
    [attachment=70569:f10000.jpeg]
  23. Thundery wintry showers
    I follow snooker very closely and have done since the late 1990s (basically ever since Stephen Hendry stopped winning everything in sight), though I'm sometimes afraid to admit it due to the "boring" reputation that televised snooker has.

    [b]Favourite snooker players[/b]
    It has to be Jimmy White and more recently Judd Trump for their all-out attacking styles and spectacular shots. Other favourites over the years have been Ronnie O'Sullivan, Stephen Hendry, Mark Williams and Steve Davis. Ronnie O'Sullivan blows hot and cold- there are periods when I want to see him win, and other times when I want him to lose. Over the years I've followed Stephen Hendry's matches more closely than those of any other player, and he has featured in most of my favourite matches, but I was nonetheless rooting for Jimmy White in those 1990s world championship finals.

    [b]Best snooker players of all time[/b] [b]in terms of ability[/b]
    For me it's between Stephen Hendry and Ronnie O'Sullivan. Ronnie has the best "A" game that I've ever seen (Stephen's potting and break-building were similarly good but his safety play less so) but has so far lacked the consistency that Stephen Hendry showed in the 1990s.
    John Higgins is arguably the greatest all-round player, but in my view potting and break-building count for more than safety.

    [b]Best World Championship[/b]
    For me that would be the 2002 World Championship. There were many entertaining matches, and in particular Stephen Hendry's matches with Ken Doherty and Ronnie O'Sullivan were classics, while Peter Ebdon's determination produced an enthralling match with Matthew Stevens, in which he almost lost but potted a very difficult pink down the cushion to stay in the match. Then the final produced a "twist in the tale", as Hendry could not perform as consistently well in the final as in earlier matches and Peter Ebdon came out a deserving winner in a tense deciding frame. Ebdon is most often associated with tedious slow grinding play these days but I used to find him quite entertaining to watch when he got a bit of fluency going.

    [b]Best finals[/b]
    For me it's a close-run thing between the 1998 Benson and Hedges Masters final (Stephen Hendry vs Mark Williams, which went to a re-spotted black in the deciding frame) and the 2006 Masters final between Ronnie O'Sullivan and John Higgins (which was also won on the black in the deciding frame). The 2006 final was the higher-quality encounter, whereas the 1998 one ranked more highly for drama and tension. Both finals had a combination of high breaks, good potting, good safety duels on the colours, and unexpected misses under pressure.
    In my opinion no World Championship final has quite ranked up there with those. The 1992 and 1994 ones (between Stephen Hendry and Jimmy White) were very entertaining, but spoilt by Jimmy bottling it at critical moments. The 1985 final was before my time, but doesn't look like it was particularly enthralling until the closing stages of the deciding frame.
  24. Thundery wintry showers
    I have resisted "My Documents" and "Program Files" for many years, and the main reason is user choice: if we all "give in" to having no user choice, there'll be no incentive for Microsoft to keep it in future versions of Windows.

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

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

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

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

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

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

    It wouldn't be too difficult to simply make the factory defaults easier to modify without them keep resetting themselves, or even provide two installation options: "Standard Install" and "Advanced/Experienced User Install" where the former applies default settings suitable for newbies and the latter for experienced users.
  25. Thundery wintry showers
    Well, with a lot of help from my dad, I finally have a kind of Stevenson screen set up to house my automatic thermometer sensor, which is placed by the side of my back garden near a fence (and at the opposite side from the house). It is louvred at all four sides, and has a plain white top and bottom.
    Some inflated readings while the sun was shining on the screen today that I might have to look into; don't know if the sun is somehow causing the screen to radiate heat despite it being 100% white, or if the sun shining on the solar panel has anything to do with it. Readings were fine after 2pm.
    Hopefully, next summer it might mean not having to correct for inflated maxima due to warming from the hut, wall or various heat source that my thermometers were previously situated on.
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