Sally's Journal
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Below are the 25 most recent journal entries recorded in the "Sally" journal:[<< Previous 25 entries]
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03:53 pm
[Link] |
Poll #1827891
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 57
Number of times you have been to the top of Snowdon
View Answers
| 0 |
   29 (54.7%) |
| 1 |
| 13 (24.5%) |
| 2 |
| 4 (7.5%) |
| 3 |
| 3 (5.7%) |
| 4 |
| 1 (1.9%) |
| 5-7 |
| 2 (3.8%) |
| 7-10 |
| 1 (1.9%) |
| 11+ (Comment to say how many!) |
| 0 (0.0%) |
I got up Snowdon by
View Answers
| Llanberis |
| 10 (22.7%) |
| Pig |
| 5 (11.4%) |
| Miners |
| 6 (13.6%) |
| Crib Goch |
| 5 (11.4%) |
| Y Lliwedd |
| 1 (2.3%) |
| Train! |
| 11 (25.0%) |
| Snowdon Ranger |
| 2 (4.5%) |
| Watkin |
| 3 (6.8%) |
| Rhyd Ddu |
| 1 (2.3%) |
| Helecopter |
| 0 (0.0%) |
I got down Snowdon by
View Answers
| Llanberis |
| 9 (20.0%) |
| Pig |
| 4 (8.9%) |
| Miners |
| 6 (13.3%) |
| Crib Goch |
| 2 (4.4%) |
| Y Lliwedd |
| 4 (8.9%) |
| Train! |
| 12 (26.7%) |
| Snowdon Ranger |
| 2 (4.4%) |
| Watkin |
| 2 (4.4%) |
| Rhyd Ddu |
| 3 (6.7%) |
| Ski-ing |
| 1 (2.2%) |
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05:41 pm
[Link] | I broke a Billy bookcase a long time ago, and kept the shelves, because I thought spare Billy shelves would be useful. I don't know, maybe I thought I'd fill an entire Billy with paperbacks, and so want the extra shelves, or maybe I thought I'd saw the shelves in half longways, and make cute minishelves so the books behind the books in front could peep over their heads.
But I clearly haven't done any of that. So I think I'm going to throw them away. Before I do, do any of you want them? It was a dark grey Billy if that makes a difference.
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07:52 pm
[Link] |
Things I like that I may have to decide are bad...
This article claims the sleeper train is subsidised by £17,000 per departure. This is a ludicrous sum of money. [I did a quick google, and can't actually find out where they got the figure from]. As far as I can tell, the sleeper is already generally more expensive than flying, and is mostly used by people wanting to go on holiday, visit family, or commuting for work. These are all things I don't disapprove of, but I'm not sure they're worth 17,000 per train.
In other news, the RSPB are running this strange campaign. It turns out there is the Landfill Communities Fund, where landfill companies give money to Good Environmental Charities, like the RSPB, and get 90% of it back as tax relief. Obviously, this results in landfill companies losing out to the tune of 10%, so there is a clause that an independent 3rd party can make up the 10% they've lost, presumably to encourage landfill companies to do this 'good thing'. So the RSPB are encouraging people to donate money to the Nature Trust (Sandy). This is a charity that is, in the words of the RSPB, "an independent charity set up to help unlock money from the Landfill Communities Fund for RSPB conservation projects". Sigh. I'm sure most of you know that I don't like gift aid and other tax-back schemes at the best of times, but this just feels like the ikkiest sort of playing the system...
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10:27 pm
[Link] | I have a set of 11 pretty old Dickens's I'm trying to ebay at the moment. Thought I'd blog about them here just in case anyone was interested...
[For the avoidance of doubt, they are pretty, and pretty old]
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07:04 pm
[Link] |
Chancellor of the University of Cambridge
Who should I vote for? There are four candidates:
I am mostly ignoring Abdul Arain, because while I fully respect his right as a small business man to protest about big businessmen, I'm not sure 'supermarket chains are evil' is the key priority I wish the chancellor of the university to be focussing on.
I am quite divided on Michael Mansfield. On the one side, he is highly educated and highly lefty, both things I should approve of. His election statement makes all the right noises about being anti-fees and anti-privatisation, and in favour of access to education and free education. He marched in March, he's anti-cuts, he's pro-AV, and what's not to like about someone who gets Legal Aid lawyer of the year? He keeps a blog, and I agree with him on things like the punitive sentences against the riots. Then again, while I'm very much in favour of improved animal rights, I'm not sure whether overly rhetorical quotes like 'This is massacre, this is genocide', really move the debate forwards... and I would see the election of a raving right-winder to the chancellorship as a divisive and political statement, so it might be a bit hypocritical to vote for a raving left-winger.
Everybody loves Brian Blessed. Not only does he have a great sense of showmanship, his entire response to 'wouldn't it be cool if Brian Blessed was chancellor' has been warm and engaged, yet wise and professional. Stephen Fry thinks it's a good idea. And he's a coal minor's boy from Yorkshire, the romance and rags-to-riches aspect is adorable. His video is very convincingly full of the sort of love for Cambridge that I have and think the chancellor should have. It's quite rambly and name-dropping though. He has climbed Everest and been to the North Pole, which is Cool. And he is running on an Better Access card, which I approve of. Still, I'm not sure I think the 'we are all unique' and 'there is nothing in the world we can't achieve if you set your mind to it' rhetoric is actually true, although it's gloriously uplifting. Although anyone who puts 'don't let the bastards grind you down', and reads poetry in their election speech has style. And my husband and lots of my friends nominated him.
[Oddly, he finished his speech with what I thought was a pretty good rousing cry of 'The chancellor should be a guy with huge vision, a love of life, and a love of people, and a deep appreciation of people. He must sweat blood to help people who are under-privileged.' Sadly, I thought it was a better description of Michael Mansfield and what he has chosen to do with his life than Brian Blessed...]
And where does that leave us? David Sainsbury. If you had said to my 15 year old self 'there's a guy with lots of money who wants to be the chancellor of Cambridge, should we give it to him' I'd have been outraged. Also, it is quite telling that of all the candidates, he seems to have hidden the 'why I want to be chancellor' and 'what I would do if I was chancellor' page quite deep on his website, and even then it's a bit content free - 'I would stay out of policy and champion Cambridge at home and abroad' is really a rather weak statement. On the other hand, he is the only one of the candidates who actually went to Cambridge, which while it shouldn't be a prerequisite for the post at least suggests a meaningful connection with the place. And... this is a very embarrassing thing to write, but now I am old and reactionary, I actually find myself trusting the establishment. Things are hard for universities at the moment, and they convened a panel of very educated and thoughtful people to try and work out who to nominate as chancellor. The panel even had Dr Cowley on it, and while I do not always agree with him, I think he is thoughtful and wise and principled, and entirely not the sort of person who would go along with nominating a rich useless person just because we want their money. I think if you're going to select some very clever people to think very hard about a problem, you have to be really careful before just disagreeing with them because you've thought of something cooler[1]
So, I think my gut feeling is that I will vote Sainsbury, Mansfield, Blessed, Arain, in that order. But I'm very keen to be told why I'm wrong in the comments
( Cut for poll! )
[1] The rant about government advisory bodies has been elided ;-)
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07:48 pm
[Link] |
Poll #1762445
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 111
Knives as presents
View Answers
| No, that's bad luck |
| 4 (1.7%) |
| That's bad luck but it's OK if you pay a penny |
| 18 (7.6%) |
| But it has to be a shiny penny |
| 6 (2.5%) |
| I've heard the superstition, but I don't hold with such nonsense |
| 31 (13.1%) |
| I've never heard of that superstition |
| 67 (28.4%) |
| I don't need any more knives |
| 12 (5.1%) |
| Knives killed my grandparents, you insensitive clod! |
| 2 (0.8%) |
| Superstitions killed my grandparents, you insensitive clod! |
| 10 (4.2%) |
| Tickyknives |
| 44 (18.6%) |
| Tickypresents |
| 42 (17.8%) |
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02:03 pm
[Link] | I've lost my copies of Only You Can Save Mankind and Johnny and the Dead. Anyone borrowed them from me years ago?
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04:55 pm
[Link] | Musing on Ben Parker's blog post, I came up with an interesting thought experiment about the AV/FPTP debate.
Parallel run the next set of elections, letting people vote twice, once under AV and once under FPTP. Announce the results under AV, and the results under FPTP. Then in every constituency where the outcome was different, let everyone vote for whether or not they wanted the candidate elected under FPTP, or the candidate elected under AV, in a straight fight between the two candidates.
I think, trivially,[1] that the majority would vote for the candidate elected under AV over the candidate elected under FPTP when these were different, because that's what AV does better at finding. Which suggests to me AV is a better system for finding the people we want to represent us.
[Not to mention that it's better for increasing information on voter preferences, avoiding tactical voting, etc etc etc. Let me encourage you all once again to read Prof Gowers' fabulous article on AV]
[1] assuming conservation of voters - if you suddenly got lots of people turning up to vote the second time who were too apathetic to vote the first time then things might jump around a bit.
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10:39 pm
[Link] |
In which Sally has a sense of humour failure...
I have just finished reading Angus, Thongs, and Full Frontal Snogging (and the first sequel), at the recommendation of a friend's daughter. I usually really like trashy teenage fiction, even when it is basically no more than soppy romance and chick lit, so I was surprised to find myself really frustrated and annoyed at it. ( Cut for spoilers )
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07:33 pm
[Link] | I have marched. It was awesome. It was exhausting. There were students, and teachers, and NHS staff, and firemen, and social workers, and medics, and theatre people, and disabled people, and... hundreds of perfectly ordinary yet unique and awesome people, all giving up their time because they believe (as I do) that what they do makes the world a better place. It was both amazingly inspiring (because the world has people like that in it, and we can come together and be heard) and petrifying (because this is what's at risk, and it's bright and brilliant and good)
[If you were hoping from anything from me that requires more brain power than this LJ post, it's not going to happen until tomorrow afternoon. I have to cook a roast dinner for four now, and run Sunday school tomorrow morning. Ah, life, always busy, always fun.]
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08:07 am
[Link] | I know other people's dreams are dull, but I had a great sort-of-anxiety dream last night.
In real life, I really want to go to the Alcester contra dance, but I didn't want to strong-arm my parents into it too much, so was going to leave it and see what we all felt like on the day. Then Nicky texted me last night to ask if I'd be going, and strongly hinted it was going to be a sell out (which I'd have realised if I'd thought about it for more than 6 seconds)
So I had a dream where I was at the hall for the contra helping everyone to set up, and trying to buy four tickets, which I managed. Then I had the strangest realisation that this was just an anxiety dream and I hadn't actually bought any real tickets and solved my problem. Upon realising that, I 'woke up', desperately hoping that the laws of physics would bend and let me really have bought tickets by my strange out-of-body experience and sheer power of will, and was utterly surprised to discover I still had the tickets, slightly dog-eared but definitely there. I was well chuffed!
Sadly about 10 minutes later (having gleefully shown the tickets to all the family) I woke up again. Wow, dreaming's weird if you think about it too much, and the brain is turtles all the way down.
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11:11 am
[Link] | I've been thinking about the AV referendum, and one of the things that I've been pondering is why people might be against AV.
![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif?v=92.1) andrewducker posted a link to the arguments people are using against AV, and I think it's fairly clear Paperback Rioter is right, and they are mostly rubbish arguments.
So what might actually change under AV, and why might people think that was bad? I think there are [ETA] two three major things:
1) Some people under the current system cast their vote for a party they are fairly certain can't win in their constituency. It's hard to estimate how many votes this is (well, it's easy but lengthy, as there's lots of constituencies in the UK) but 6% of people voted for a party that didn't get a single seat, and I'm sure some of the lib dem voters are in areas where the battle is tory/labour[1], so guessing it's about 1 in 10 voters seems approximately right.[2]
Moving to AV effectively gives these people a vote that counts. Now, putting my cards on the table here, this is the major reason I'm in favour of AV. Every election I am faced with stressing about whether or not to vote for the party I actually want to support, or whether to be pragmatic and pick the best of two evils. So far I've tended towards idealism, on the grounds that maybe everyone is just like me and if we all wake up and vote idealistically the Good Guys will get in[3]. But it would clearly make me more comfortable to have a voting system where I can say 'this is who I want to vote for, but pragmatically A are better than B'
I'm not sure what we can say about these non-pragmatic voters as a group. But I am sure that lots of right wingers probably see them as a group of greens / socialists / lib dems / communists / respect / unions / 'people who will want pretty much anyone, especially labour, before the tory party, except possibly the BNP'[4]. From that point of view, enfranchising these people with a meaningful vote is something that will make your party less likely to win. Now, there's an idealistic question about whether it's better to make democracy more democratic even if it means you're less likely to get the government you want running the country. And I think it is quite common, and even defensible, if not very politically correct or palatable, to actually not want some people to have the vote. I'm not a big fan of democracy myself - I think there are lots of things that if we put them to a straight referendum the Bad Guys would win them (gay marriage, the death penalty, europe) - so I'm glad that we have an elected body of clever people to keep us from our own excesses. Which means I do think that there is a defendable position saying 'look, if a grown adult genuinely wants to cast their vote for the Lincolnshire Independance party I want them as far away from influencing the outcome of this election as possible', (which is more subtle and idealistic than 'this system makes us less likely to win so it's bad', although the two things probably get muddled up)
And if you want to keep these people disenfranchised while on paper giving them the vote, FPTP is much better than AV.
2) Secondarily, there are some people who do vote pragmatically, ie they vote for one of the two parties they think have a chance of winning even though they would prefer to vote for a less popular party. I think these are the great unknown - we can see how many people vote non-pragmatically, because they turn up counted next to the Pirate Party, but as far as I know there isn't very good data on how many people were voting pragmatically and would vote differently under AV. [That surprises me, as it seems an incredably interesting and incredably topical question, and you'd think someone would have done a poll to try and quantify it.]
Anyway, with no numbers, that just creates a lot of fear, uncertancy and doubt that under AV everyone will leap out of bed on polling day, and think 'oh, I've always wanted to vote for the monster raving loony party, now I can do it without wasting my vote' and we will see a huge swing towards fringe parties who aren't actually very good at running the country.
I can see how if you were one of the current major parties a voting system that might encourage a giant swing away from you probably doesn't look like a good thing. But that gets back into 'I don't want to give the people what they want, I want to give the people what's best for them, which is me'. A valid position, but one worth being honest about.
I think I don't actually think this will happen. I think a lot of people honestly think the middle of the road parties are best, and don't secretly want to be ruled by Peace or the Communists. Also, even for those pragmatic voters that are about to jump to their True Love under AV, I think they will jump in too many random directions to actually rock the boat. And also I think if it did happen it might be a good thing. A parliamentary term isn't very long. Give the people what they want, teach them that their vote can make a huge difference (not necessarily a good one) and maybe people will become more engaged with politics.
3) Finally, first past the post is a system that's better for ideologies / political positions that don't tend to split, and AV is better for those that do. If you have the Blue party versus the Crimson party, the Scarlett party, the Maroon party, and the Pink party, then first past the post is going to work better for the Blues, whereas AV is more likely to get a red party in power.
Now, you could argue that political positions with a tendancy to schism into lots of parties should be gently skewed against by our voting system. You could say that if they can't even play nicely together and agree when they're just working with people who broadly agree with them, they're not going to be very good at running a country without falling out and disagreeing and and generally bickering a lot.
I think (although I haven't thought very hard) that political positions that involve the government Doing Stuff [5] are by their very nature more likely to schism than ones that want the government to Butt Out and let the free market do its thing. Because if your policy is 'Give all the forests to the free market' there is fundamentally less room for dissent than 'Manage all the forests ourselves', as that will inevitably lead to the question 'how'.
So moving from FPTP to AV probably means we're more likely to get parties in power whose supporters have historically been split under FPTP. And these might be more left wing.
So there we go, the main three reasons I can think of of why people might actually be against AV. These don't seem to be the debates people are having though.
[1] I can be sure because I'm one of them ;-)
[2] If any of my intelligent readers wants to actually work this out, then I'd be very interested and very grateful.
[3] This is not the place for a diversion on the relative Goodness of the Good Guys.
[4] Lots of these non-pragmatic voters are actually BNP, UKIP, the Christian Party, so it's very unclear whether they're actually more left wing or more right wing. Again, I'd love to see someone do the maths. But my gut instinct is that the right is right and there are more lefties in the non-pragmatic pool.
[5] I wrote 'left wing' positions originally, but then you get into the whole liberal v's socialist thing again.
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09:55 am
[Link] |
Going, going, gone!
Well, we're off to Scotland! Which might mean I stop having 'he-ey, we're going to Ardgo-ur' stuck in my head!
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09:42 am
[Link] | I know it's because of the winter olympics, but I am excessively pleased to come back from ski-ing and find ski-ing themed LJ :-D
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08:56 pm
[Link] | A thing which has not happened to me before happened when I was panicking about my Bardcamp packing.
A chap knocked on our door and said he was doing the Coventry Household Survey. Now, I'm sceptical about doorstep callers, but you'd have to be a really intense scammer to make up a list of quite so many odd and tedious questions, and as a government stato I feel I ought to support random slightly uninspired surveys. I can't complain there's never any data if I personally go out of my way to avoid giving them data.
I have a feeling that their survey of Coventry will be horribly skewed to 'Coventry people who are at home and bored enough to answer surveys at 10.30 in the morning', a subset who I don't think are very representative of the rest of us. Anyway, the survey is also on line here, so any Coventry citizens reading this might want to consider filling it in. It's very keen on finding out if you're happy / content / sleep deprived / stressed, so I think filling it in 4 hours before bardcamp, when I was about as joyfully over excited and as sleep deprived and anxious as I get also led to me being slightly unrepresentative...
The chap didn't at any point remark on the fact I was wearing a long rainbow striped waistcoat, of the sort one might have been in the middle of trying on if one was making a clown costume in a hurry. I hope it cheered him up...
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04:43 pm
[Link] | I'm skeptical about the 'LJ gives people a year's free paid account in order to get them signed up to an inertia marketting direct debit scheme'
http://community.livejournal.com/paidmembers/23977.html
However, if you're less skeptical and would like my $10 dollars, first 10 commenters can have them. And I won't be in the slightest bit offended if you then decide not to use it. I'm assuming that most people I know who want paid accounts have them already though...
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07:20 pm
[Link] | Hmm, I am failing to write my yuletide story, and at some point I will need a beta reader or two...
Poll #1496777
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 24
So yuletide...
View Answers
| I'm doing yuletide! |
| 4 (17.4%) |
| I'm not doing yuletide! |
| 19 (82.6%) |
And just so I don't get you to beta a story I'm writing for you...
My yuletide name is not my LJ name, it is:
So beta-ing and general yuletide filter...
View Answers
| I'm doing yuletide, and if it's not for me I'll beta your story! |
| 2 (14.3%) |
| I'm not doing yuletide, but I'd beta your story. |
| 12 (85.7%) |
ETA: The 'I'll beta your story' tickybox is there to mean 'if you set up a filter to talk about your yuletide story in more detail and it sounds like there's a cat in hells chance I understand the fandom you're writing in, I might then volunteer to beta your story'. But that was a bit long for an LJ poll box.
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10:31 pm
[Link] |
Automation of casting matrices
Hi all!
Readthroughs are generally better when people don't spend hours having conversations with themselves-as-different-characters because the person casting did it in a rush. In the past, I have read through scripts and made lots of semi-incoherant tally marks and a few vague assumptions. However, it strikes me this ought to be an easy thing to automate.
( This is what I want to do )
So three questions:
1) Has anyone done anything like this before?
2) If you were going to do something like this, how would you do it technically? (ie program languages of choice, etc)
3) Does my algorithm for how to do it seem fairly sound? Where are the difficult bits I haven't spotted?
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10:39 am
[Link] |
Laptops and things
I have a desktop computer, and I want a portable computer-type-thing.
As far as I can tell I have two options:
1) Get a laptop type thing
2) Get a really small cool eeeee-type thing.
Oh wise LJ, what do you think I should buy? Recommendations of particular products / packages particularly appreciated.
( what I want / pros and cons )
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07:46 pm
[Link] | Lots of the stuff I keep I keep because it has memories. It's the mask I wore to Peterhouse May Ball, or it's the toy dog that was the most exciting thing I'd ever owned when I got it, (because you could put the puppies in its tummy and take them out again), or it is the rabbit my great nana knitted me. Now, sometimes it is nice to have the thing, as well as the memory of the thing, but I am not sure my life is enhanced by, eg having the Tufty Road Safety game, whereas I think it genuinely is enhanced by having a reminder that the Tufty Road Safety game existed. So I think I am going to blog about things, and then get rid of them, in the quest to have Less Stuff.
Poll #1466408
Blog-a-box!
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 74
So, where should I do this?
View Answers
| In a text file somewhere |
| 0 (0.0%) |
| In private LJ entries |
| 1 (1.4%) |
| To a filter, on your real LJ |
| 32 (45.1%) |
| In a new LJ / community |
| 2 (2.8%) |
| ...behind a cut |
| 11 (15.5%) |
| Never! |
| 0 (0.0%) |
And if I filter?
View Answers
| Count me in! |
| 59 (83.1%) |
| Count me out! |
| 0 (0.0%) |
| Shrug. |
| 6 (8.5%) |
House name
View Answers
| Henneth Annun |
| 4 (6.1%) |
| Durin's Door |
| 1 (1.5%) |
| Anything that doesn't reference the damn door! |
| 2 (3.0%) |
| No more gratuitous Tolkien references in housenames! |
| 6 (9.1%) |
| Orcs killed my grandmother |
| 2 (3.0%) |
| Doors killed my grandmother |
| 2 (3.0%) |
| Tickydoor |
| 21 (31.8%) |
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08:01 am
[Link] | No email for the next three days due to house move.
Text me for urgent things, and I'll pick up comments here (comments screened) on Friday hopefully
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09:28 pm
[Link] | For those of you that requested it, a map of the norfolk holiday. Apologies for the image quality - when I'm rich I'll buy a scanner, but it's amazing what you can do with a camera!
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06:06 pm
[Link] | NEVER EVER EVER OPEN A PLAIN TEXT HTML FILE THAT YOU ARE WORKING ON IN WORD.
EVER.
No, not even if you just _open_ it, and don't tell it to save in the slightest. It will still trash your wonderful simple code and replace everything with hugely over prescriptive garbage.
Damn you, microsoft!
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03:20 am
[Link] | Robert BS said this* was fabulous. It is. Apologies to the 99% of the internet to whom this isn't news, but the other 1% desperately need to know
*Literal video total eclipse of the heart.
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10:19 pm
[Link] | 3 things I am currently interested in...
Poll #1406746
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: None, participants: 118
Anti-depressants
View Answers
| I am currently using prescribed anti-depressants |
| 11 (9.3%) |
| I have previously used prescribed anti-depressants |
| 28 (23.7%) |
| I have never used prescribed anti-depressants |
| 71 (60.2%) |
How many people die walking in the mountains in England annually?
What is there to do in New Orleans other than drink chartreuse and avoid vampires? What have I forgotten to take to America? Plane tickets, passport, money, ESTA application, fingers for fingerprints... Help me, LJ, you're my only help!
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