Nick Gibbins

posted a pointer to Alex Cox’s rant on Alan Parker in the Guardian. Consider this my contribution of an Alan Parker moment. Several years ago, when I was still a Bright Young Thing active in the world of film societies, I got to go to annual viewing sessions and award ceremonies for film societies in London at the NFT. As a member of the national exec, I got to crash the awards reception (not entirely wise considering what the British Film Institute tries to pass off as wine – ask for her opinion). The person dishing out the awards varied… Read More »An Alan Parker moment remembered (for )

Except for this sort of thing. Looks like I was a bit lucky to get to work this morning. Hope the trains aren’t that bad tonight.

So I took a break from housework to watch the last half of Logan’s Run, a film which I’ll freely admit is corny, but of which I am fond. I turned on just in time to catch the plastic-surgery-gone-wrong scene, and sat there awaiting the naked-Jenny-Agutter scene (quite fond). Michael York and Jenny Agutter, supposedly dripping wet, enter the ice caves of Box and find a pile of furs. Cue Michael York saying “Let’s take our clothes off” … and we cut to an ad break. Three minutes of sitting there aghast, and the ad break comes to an end… Read More »Protein from the Sea – Lite!

does not list alt.fan.kay-dekker as an interest. That is all. (Edited to correct stupid typo in the above (key->kay). In my defence, at least the link worked!)

Today was Industry Day here at IAM, in which hapless postgrads and postdocs are inveigled into demonstrating their work. Got a mail this morning from the departmental minuscule canadian, asking whether I or my erstwhile officemate Steve was giving a particular demo (which we had believed that the minuscule canadian was presenting). He’s demoing it tomorrow, so I demoed today, which involved missing lunch (lunch was provided for delegates, but not for peons). Demos are so much better when you can prepare for them. Finally got a phonecall from Korea this morning, so I’m off to Seoul in early November… Read More »Thursday triptych

To cut a long story short, I didn’t get the lectureship at Bath. The interview last Wednesday went well (the presentation could have been better, given that Powerpoint glitched three times in twenty minutes), but I lost out to the competition. As the rejection letter said: “this post has now been offered to another candidate, who was considered by the panel to have a stronger academic profile, and, in particular, one which was a better ‘fit’ to the strategic research strengths of this department”. In retrospect, this wasn’t entirely surprising, given that my specialism (applied AI, agents, the Semantic Web)… Read More »Bath lectureship redux

Quite a bit has happened over the past week and a bit, so bear with me.