Nick Gibbins

Just Harlan

I’ve had this great idea for a short story. It’s going to be a Richmal Crompton pastiche in which William and the Outlaws get into a scrape when they ‘accidentally’ lose Violet Elizabeth Bott’s pet white mouse and try to replace it with a sewer rat that Jumble has caught. The catch is that I’m going to update it by writing it in the style of Harlan Ellison. I’m going to call it I Have No Mouth, and I Must Thcweam. ayethenkewverreemuch (and for an encore, I have this great idea for another short involving Violet, William and his dog… Read More »Just Harlan

Connie Willis and the Nebula

Various people on my friends list have greeted with dismay the news that Connie Willis has won this year’s best novel Nebula for All Clear (step forward and ). I have enjoyed a few works by Willis in the past, but they’ve almost all been her shorts. For me, Fire Watch and Blued Moon are the stand-out shorts. Her novels have mostly left me underwhelmed, partly because poor research and lazy plotting seem to be her bywords. For example, the farcical bits of To say nothing of the dog work well enough, but I lived in Coventry for long enough… Read More »Connie Willis and the Nebula

Liveblogging Eurovision 2011

1. Finland. Ah, Finland, Finland, Finland. No pony trekking or camping, alas. Dull. 2. Bosnia and Herzegovina. First mandolin spotted. Also dull. Nowhere near as good as their 2008 entry. 3. Denmark. Boys does not rhyme with choice. 4. Lithuania. Having murdered an English lyric, she’s now working on the French. I cannot read her signing, but can only assume that it’s similarly challenged. 5. Hungary. Norton tells us that it’s described as retro-pop. Sounds ominous. reckons that she’s channeling Jennifer Rush. Still, all credit to her for a verse in Hungarian. 6. Ireland. I’ve never heard Jedward sing before.… Read More »Liveblogging Eurovision 2011

Adventures in social networking

A couple of years ago, I was involved in an EU-funded project that was trying to do interesting stuff with Semantic Web services. My bit of it revolved around building infrastructure, namely a special-purpose distributed database. I had a pretty clear idea of where I was going to go with this, and a research assistant to do the bulk of the coding (as an investigator, I was down as only 10% FTE, which is not really enough to do any substantial programming). We had difficulty appointing researchers to the project, and the RA I had, while a nice enough chap,… Read More »Adventures in social networking

It’s all been downhill since Jethro Tull

The agriculturalist and not the prog rock band, that is. We have an allotment, the one in the NW corner of this map. Many things about it are good, principally the price (£3.58 per annum) and the location (our house is four houses away due west). What’s less good was the state when we assumed the lease: thigh-deep in brambles. We’ve been gradually clearing them – currently about 20% done – but what’s clear is that the previous leaseholders didn’t bother clearing the brambles by hand, preferring to chop them up with a rotorvator. I’m pulling out about a dozen… Read More »It’s all been downhill since Jethro Tull

Counting the years

As says, hello LJ! How are you? I am rubbish at posting to LJ, so here we have an easy meme in lieu of anything substantial. Actually, this turned out to be significantly harder than I thought, because I’ve had to go digging through decades-old emails in order to work out where I lived in 2001. Ah, the frailties of memory. March 2011: Living in a mortgaged mid-terrace in Southampton with and the . Loving the rock’n’roll life of a lecturer. March 2001: Living in a shared house in Southampton just round the corner from the Uni. Not entirely sure… Read More »Counting the years

At home with the Garks: 29th December

has already posted about this, but I’ve been too disorganised to do likewise until now. Those who have already seen her post (and haven’t replied), consider this a reminder. Those who didn’t see her post, consider yourself invited! To cut to the chase, we’ll be having an ‘at home’ on 29th December in lieu of doing anything for our wedding anniversary! Please pop in for as little or as long as you can. When: Wednesday 29th December When: from noon until late Daytime will be more family-focused, as you’d expect. Throughout the day there’ll be piles of mince pies, nibbles,… Read More »At home with the Garks: 29th December

A question for the academics

On Friday, I have my first PhD external examining gig. To date, I have examined around a dozen PhDs as internal examiner, and have supervised half a dozen students who have successfully completed their PhDs. I am having difficulty working out how to pitch this viva. The student’s work is interesting, but the area where it crosses over with my research is poorly explained in the thesis (much muddled writing), and it isn’t clear whether the student properly understands the things that he’s talking about). In addition, the writing in the thesis is generally uneven, with frequent typos and grammatical… Read More »A question for the academics

First Men in the Moon

The Gatiss version. Our intrepid heros, Bedford and Prof. Cavor, are about to land on the moon. Suddenly, a klaxon sounds…