An Exercise in Irrelevance

I’m now all packed for tomorrow as I head out on an eastern adventure, for Bangladesh and India; first, for a wedding in Dhaka and then a holiday in Rajasthan (that’s the place where the bridge collapsed yesterday, killing lots of people).

As usual before travelling, I am rather down about the whole thing; especially, as I’ve just got back home. After the madness of the first term, I really could do with a holiday. I suspect that this one is going to be many things, but relaxing is not one of them.

Still, once I get going, it should be good. Starting off with trains, then planes, I shall cut my environmental disaster through the atmosphere. I’ve been over this part of the world before, but never landed. I’m expecting it to be a rather overwhelming experience.

Unlike last time there will be no live blogging on this trip. I am going without computer and, in general, the minimum of electronics; I shall buy a notebook in the airport so that I can write it up in full when I get back.

Actually, this might not get posted till I get back either; Virgin appears to have crashed again. Oh dear.

Okay, so I am totally sad and writing a blog post on Christmas day. Well, the thing is that I’ve been teaching for months and moving house. This is the first still period that I’ve had for ages; well, thinking is inevitable.

One of the things that I am looking to next year is the last ontogenesis meeting. It’s been a lot of fun doing these, I’ve enjoyed them all. The last one is my idea, and I think it’s going to be good. As an ontologist, you get a lot of questions about how to build ontologies and is there a book. At the moment, there isn’t really one and it’s a problem. So, for ontogenesis, we decided to write a set of book chapters; here is the clever bit — we just stick them on a blog, because the process of formal publication as a book is long-winded, tiresome and error-prone. I’m calling the process knowledge blogging — it’s peer-reviewed, formal and with no intention of being regular; articles come when they are written.

I set up the blog sometime ago. I haven’t, as yet, had a lot of time to fiddle with theme or organisation. There is some content, but it’s just the wordpress default theme. Not ideal, and I hope I will have some time for fixing things after I get back from holidays. I’ve noticed two problems already though. First is that with longer articles you need section headings and wordpress doesn’t do them; I’ve found a solution for this, in the shape of a contents table plugin, although subsequent googling also came up with others. This should make navigation a bit better.

The other issue is references — I don’t have a good idea about how to do these sanely. I’ve been looking for DOI wordpress plugins, but can only find one from crossref which doesn’t do what I want. This allows you to search for citations; what I wanted was to put a DOI in code and have it present properly.

Still I think I know how to do this; I’ve found a tool for linking references to the Mormon books; not normally something I would download, but the principle is the same. So I can replace DOIs with a proper link, using a DOI resolver. What I’d really like to do is have a proper in-text citation also. The documentation on DOIs and metadata harvesting is all rather nasty though; a nice simple REST API would do the trick.

It all confirms my long-held concerns about DOIs; there are a tool for the publishers. Still, perhaps pubmed will come to my rescue. Next place to look.

Happy Christmas to all my subscribers of whom there are very few.

While moving I ended up rereading Enough — it’s not been long since I first read this, but it migrated to the top of my book pile; he mentioned three beautiful things which is a blog about nice things. This struck me as an interesting idea.

Initially, I had thought to enforce my reputation for irritability by posting a blog on those who annoyed me during the house move, but, inspired, I’ve decided to write about those who did a good job; of course, by reputation for irritability has been developed over years, and is a finally-honed, work-avoidance strategy and can’t be entirely ignored. So, I present, my House Move Saints and Sinners.

Saints

NPower: they achieved the move of our supplies with very little hassle, and were quick and competant.

British Gas: Again, straight-forward and efficient. The chap I spoke to was happy and jovial; even when I closed my account he was cracking jokes. Had heard the joke before, but the effort was appreciated.

Council Tax: This required a relatively large number of questions and lots of tapping at the other end, but, nonetheless, it all got moved within a few minutes.

Water: Yep, very simple, happy to send someone out to read the meter, which as it was under a foot of mud, following flooding, I was happy about.

Letting Agents: A surprise later entry here, as I’ve never had a particularly good time with Countrywide Residential Letting but in this case, the check out was simple and we got the deposit back without unpleasantness.

Sinners

Post Office: we paid for redirection, but it didn’t work. So I had to phone them up, and got the pleasure of sitting in a menu system which sent me around in circles. They didn’t endear me with their “Sorry, we couldn’t be bothered to press the doorbell” card that I found on my doormat first thing in the morning.

Virgin: second time I’ve moved to them, second screwed installation. Last time, they didn’t turn up and then tried to charge me for not being in. This time, the move of my number didn’t happen, then they told me it would take till January. In the end, it was quicker.

Ramshaw Transport: they agreed to do the removal at very short notice, turned up, were efficient and good natured. We did see dints in the furniture before they left, but okay these things happen. However, their packing service was not good. There were some breakages, bent pictures, folded book-covers and a chipped statue; as well as many lucky escapes—a glass lampshade and electronics (computer, monitor and hard drives) backed without protection, under heavy things. Whoever packed a toilet brush with our bed linen, though, really wins the prize for lack of thought.

Conclusion

Moving was actually okay. I wouldn’t say it was stressful, although it was a lot of work. Perhaps, it’s just that I am used to seeing my to-do list getting longer and longer; being an academic requires the long-view as well as the aggressive prioritization, of dropping everything that won’t get you sacked.

Against this, I guess, I do feel grateful for those who decrease the work that I have to do by any amount. I’m glad the saints outnumbered the sinners.

It’s been all quiet of the blog front for a while — over a month, in fact, although I did find half a finished blog post hidden away in my November directory. Not enough, sadly, to remember what it was going to be about, so that’s that gem gone forever.

So, what’s happened in this time? One gig — I went to see Glen Tilbrook, who was excellent as always. Brook Magnanti, previously of Newcastle, proved with her blog that contrary to media expectations that scientists can, in fact, write. Sometimes. Dr Who has had his first assistant top themselves. And, I have moved house.

Of course, on top of all the other excitement and madness of a busy teaching term, it’s left me tired, but we’ve been here a week now, and it’s slowly starting to take shape. I’m missing somethings about the last place; the view out of the front window, down the river, is obvious. But, then, also out of the back used to be the ex-industrial landscape, with the Gateshead carpark against the sunset, which was surprisingly beautiful in it’s harshness. Now, it’s the brooding rear end of some industrial terraces. Having said that, the cycle over the town moor is both bracing and much faster—bout the same distance, but flatter on the way than before, and less technical on the way back, so I travel faster. We have shops and food places galore nearby. And, the house is bigger than before, even if slightly strange in it’s organisation.

I think, as this house grows into a home, it should turn out to be a good one. I’m looking forward to it.

Just to remind myself, when I look back in the future, I’ve written this on the 8th. If the internet gets reconnected on Friday, it should see the light of day then. Fingers crossed!