Had fun with some high-speed shots of Tilly chasing her ball on the college hockey pitch this morning.
You can click here to see a few more.
Tilly still had energy left afterwards to do her meerkat impression, though…
Author Archives: qsf
The Mill on the Cam
Hauxton Mill, just south of Cambridge, was the last commercially-operating water mill in the area. It ceased operation just over 40 years ago.
I walk past it regularly with my dog, and it’s always been a mysterious, intriguing, and very closed, building.
Until today. As we approached, I noticed that the door stood ajar, and it turned out to be because a man was inside checking the electricity meter. (I was struck by the irony.) He was just about to leave, but kindly let me stick my head inside. It was one of those moments when I was very glad I happened to be carrying my camera, even though I only had time to fire off a couple of quick shots.
If only, as they say, these walls could speak…
(Click for larger versions)
Update – I later tweaked one of the photos and posted an improved version here.
A passionate Patrick Stewart
This is all over the social networks this morning, and for good reason. Patrick Stewart is asked what he’s most proud of outside his acting career… Worth watching through to the end.
Link here if the embedded version doesn’t show for you!
Making moonlight
I discovered how to make moonlight. Well, sort of… Set your camera’s white balance to ‘tungsten’ and then use predominantly flash.
Self-esteem
Quote for the day:
You wouldn’t worry so much about what others think of you if you realized how seldom they do.
— Eleanor Roosevelt
Great Gate
The Great Gate, Gonville & Caius College, Cambridge.
You can probably just make out the helix on the floor which is part of a new memorial to Francis Crick.
Harmonious Control
Here’s a quick and simple recommendation. About three years ago I decided I needed a new all-in-one remote control, since my (splendid and extravagant) old Marantz RC2000 mk II was struggling to keep up with the latest innovations in infrared.
So, after some pondering, I looked at the Logitech Harmony series – which I’d first seen at a CES show long ago, before they were even part of Logitech. The basic idea is that you use a special website and utility to put in details of the hardware you’ve got – which models of TV, Amp, DVD, etc – and how they’re connected together. It asks questions like “When you want to turn up the volume on the TV, do you use the TV or the amplifier?” Then you plug your remote in to a USB port and it gets programmed with all the appropriate codes and configuration. I went for a middle-of-the-range one, the Harmony One, and started thinking of all the ways I’d be able to customise it to make it do what I wanted.
And… I didn’t need to. After I’d set it up with something pretty close to the default configuration, it just did what I wanted out of the box. And has done so ever since. I haven’t gone back and fiddled with it once, which, knowing my propensity for such activities, is quite a recommendation.
Enlightenment
When you live here, it sometimes can be easy to forget how lucky you are.
A Cambridge Cowboy
Spotted in the city centre this evenin’.
Good work, nicely explained
My friend Rose Goslinga has been working to create affordable insurance for African farmers. This is not only exceedingly good and valuable work, but I’ve just discovered this Poptech talk she gave about it a couple of years ago.
I think it’s quite brilliant, because, while I haven’t heard her give a talk before, I remember Rose as a quiet, humble lass who I wouldn’t have considered a likely natural public speaker. But I can think of few if any talks I’ve ever seen which convey their message so simply and effectively in under five minutes. If you don’t watch it because you’re interested in how technology can help the poor, watch it as a lesson in public speaking done right.
Going back to my roots?
Recently, I’ve adopted the somewhat complicated habit of having several jobs at once. It’s not always the most productive way to work, but it keeps me on my toes, and life is never dull! And so, today, I started a new job, as a Research Associate in the Cambridge University’s Computer Lab.
Now, this is only one day a week, and it’s a fairly junior post, but it has significance for me, for several reasons. One is that it’s with an old friend, Frank Stajano, helping on what should be an interesting project. A second is that it’s nice to have at least a modest foothold back in academia, doing stuff that isn’t primarily profit-motivated. But thirdly, I’m enjoying a bit of nostalgia.
You see, I’ve been here before.
Just before I started my PhD, I also had an R.A. post in the Computer Lab. And many great people from that time are still around. So in some senses it feels familiar.
I have a shiny new Linux machine on my desk. Well, I had a Linux machine back then, too, but it was rather different. I had commandeered a spare PC and installed this newfangled operating system on its hard disk. I’d experimented before with booting Linux up from floppies, but to have a machine which I could, at least temporarily, dedicate to this skunkworks experiment was wonderful, and it had a decent CPU with enough RAM and disk space that I could run a graphical interface on it! I think I’m probably the first person in the lab to have used Linux with X Windows, which seems remarkable now, when it’s on the majority of desks in the department.
Other things have also changed, not least the building in which the lab is located. The phones on the desks are connected by ethernet cables, not by phone wiring, but of course, I’ll scarcely use it because I now have a phone in my pocket as well. Wow.
But the other thing that really makes me feel old is that the last time I started a similar job to the one I started today, in the same organisation, not one of us had ever heard of the World Wide Web, for the simple reason that it didn’t yet exist.
Gosh, I’m ancient…!
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