Nick Gibbins

How I spent my day

I was in Cheltenham today, where I was giving a presentation to a four-lettered entity regarding some work that I’ve done for them on scalable knowledge extraction and integration, typically from online textual sources. To say that the events of this morning put this work into better context would be an understatement, and I’m unlikely to forget where I was when I heard the news. It all felt rather surreal to be standing in the lobby of the doughnut and listening to a tannoy announcement by the director to inform the staff that no agency personnel had been caught in… Read More »How I spent my day

Dumpster diving for fun and profit

Term has ended here in Bath, and the residence is drowned in the usual deluge of discarded kitchen goods. Bath Uni is pretty bad at doing anything with this but sending it to landfill, which makes both and I rather pissed off. We’ve just had our annual dig through the mountain of rubbish (and I do mean mountain – we’re talking about a heap 2.5m high and about 4m side to side) and have picked out the following goodies: A long mirror A Sabatier vegetable knife (needs a little TLC, but nothing that some diligence with a whetstone won’t cure)… Read More »Dumpster diving for fun and profit

One for

Did you know that there was an Ulster Scots version of the 2001 census form?

Tagged by (YA music meme)

List your six current favorite songs and then pick six people who have to do the same. Always going to be a bit tricky. These are my six favourite songs as of lunchtime today. The list will have changed by the end of lunchtime. Johann Sebastian Bach, C-minor Fugue from Book One of the Well-Tempered Clavier (BWV847). The Bach that I’m most likely to whistle in the shower, closely followed by Variation 10 from the Goldberg Variations and the D-major Prelude fom Book One. The Troubadours of King Baudouin, Sanctus from the Missa Luba. A glorious movement from a beautiful… Read More »Tagged by (YA music meme)

Solicited opinions

The Triumph of International Socialism It’ll have its day again, I hope. We’ve not really seen true international socialism thus far, admittedly. Some of the aspirations of the UN come close, but it has been hampered by a lack of control over economic policy and the need to kowtow to certain national interests in order to get them playing at all, and programmes like the WFP have more to do with the effects of protectionism and subsidy and paternalistic charity than they do with redistribution per se. For socialism to be viable, it must be supported by the populace, which… Read More »Solicited opinions

Worldcon

Well, that’s that. I’ve finally taken the plunge and paid my money for Interaction, so I guess that I’m going to be at the Worldcon this summer, making this both my first Worldcon and also my first large SF con (having repeatedly failed to get to any Eastercons). Those of you who are going to be at Intersection – which hotels will you be staying in?