myResearchSpace

I spent a completely negligible amount of time all weekend thinking about my thesis. Bliss! Ben organised a nice little surprise over the weekend: he secretly bought tickets to the Wil Anderson show 'Wilosophy' at the Octagon on Saturday. As you may well remember, stand-up comedy is our 'thing': we went to see a spurt of shows just after our ...

After briefly flirting with the idea of setting up at blogger, I've decided to revive my trusty Procrastinatrix. Perhaps if one day I really desperately want more people to read my insights and insipidity (is that a real word? it should be) I'll migrate, but for now I'll stay. Research So far all my excellent gimmicks at becoming more ...

There are millions of children around the world that don't have access to the basic necessities of life - enough food, clean water, healthcare, education, security. So it seems a little crazy that the One Laptop Per Child Foundation is trying to not only give all children a laptop, but to start with some of the most disadvantaged children in ...

I've just finished reading Raj Patel's excellent Stuffed and Starved, which has (rather predictably) shifted my axis of middle-class guilt over to the 'food' quadrant. Luckily, I'm getting better at channeling my guilt into experimentation with alternatives these days. Patel argues that the world system is profoundly ill, causing huge problems ...

In 2007, Thomson has released its new version of EndNote called EndNote X1 (X1 means eleven). The trial version is downloadable at http://www.endnote.com/endemo.asp, and I personally have tried using it. In one word, I can say it is GREAT! Before I start sharing my EndNote X1 experience, let me tell about my status as EndNote user. I ...

Right, I've had a good whine about HP7 to a few people, and I have no intention of repeating everything here again. I'm not going to list spoilers as such in this post, except towards the end maybe a bit (just for Karen), so avert your eyes now if you must. Basically, I can accept everything that happened, even every pointless death that offered ...

I'd had good intentions - ''hey, I know, since I'm going to see a few stand-up acts this year, maybe I could blog a review after each performance! I'd actually have some content!'' And then I didn't. Oh sure, you got Little Britain and Danny Bhoi, but what about the Umbilical Brothers, Dylan Moran and the latest performer (and object of a ...

(I'm writing these partly as little summaries to remind myself, partly just to practice writing. My writing feels a little creaky right now, rather rusted and slow-moving.) Guns, germs and steel, Jared Diamond A wide-ranging book that stretches across a range of disciplines to give ''a short history of everybody for the last 13,000 years'' in an ...

So, it was Danny Bhoy's turn today, and I was quite looking forward to it. He's always been very amusing when I've seen him non-live, and of course it doesn't hurt that he's unnecessarily good-looking as well. The show started with a fabulous bagpipe gag, the only real visual effect of the evening. It was actually quite fascinating to compare the ...

Hello all, I have just returned home from seeing Little Britain Live. Challenge Stadium may not have been the best venue (a bit too school gym-like), and occasionally the show was in danger of plummeting into recitals of catch phrases - but overall it was a good performance. The backdrops and setting changes were very well done - a great example ...