In addition to the photos posted here previously and those on my MSN space, I have started uploading photos my my Flickr account. I'm only allowed 20mb/month to upload, so there aren't that many up yet. Have a look here.
EDIT - there is now a permanent link in the right hand bar!
Sunday, March 26, 2006
Saturday, March 25, 2006
My information age
Now that the undergrads have (mostly) gone home for Easter, Durham is a quite, tranquil place. I have more time to walk around looking for more photo opportunities (I've just ordered a Canon A620 which should hopefully help get some better shots) and I have more time to think. One of the things I think about is stuff to write on here that might be interesting. One of the more things I think about is the growing importance of the internet.
In mid 1999, as I sat with friends at my school's speech day, we got onto the subject of information and my friend remarked that we were living in the information age. I didn't really think about that phrase until a year or so ago. Six months later, we had an internet connection via dial-up at home (something I never thought I'd see). The internet at uni was still something I only browsed occassionally between lectures as I didn't have my own computer and I mostly used it for buying stuff (finding CD-Wow was amazing) and downloading music (Ahh - how wonderful was Audiogalaxy?). Finally in 2002, we moved onto 24/7 net access at home and then broadband in 2003 and I began to use MSN and the web more now that I was free from the worries of large phone bills.
"The information superhighway showed the average person what some nerd thinks about Star Trek" - the musings of Homer J. Simpson on social progression in the 90s. Now however, the geeky ramblings of Trekkies and nerds the world over was being outnumbered by people who had visions for the net. Now, with the ready availability of broadband and the (reletive) cheapness of net-ready PCs (our first mediocre PC cost over £1000 in 1994) means that the internet has become ever more prevalent. Google brought acurate websearching to us, causing Yahoo! and MSN to create better search algorhythms. Stores like CD-Wow and Play helped a generation of people find films and CDs at far lower prices than "conventional stores" like HMV and Virgin - £15.99 for a back catalogue CD> Are they joking?!?. Wikipedia meant that anyone could find out about anything - to the extent that science journal Nature recently proclaimed that Wikipedia was as accurate as the Encyclopedia Britanica (despite protests). Blogs have helped keep friends in touch and help spread different points of view. IMs such as MSN have enabled people to communicate across the globe for free and of course news is delivered minute by minute - not just from the BBC/ITN/Sky as we're used to, but Reuters, Al-Jazeera and the New York Times and many other previously untapped sources. I remember the best lesson my GCSE history teacher, Mr Milton, ever taught us; never accept at face value what is written by man. Instead of sticking with the biased newspapers, why not sample a range of views via the web?
The internet has shrunk the world down and we are at the juncture now where it will become indispensible within the next 5 years and will have radically changed the world. Look at what's happening now; The music and movie industry are under pressure to change from their antiquated business models - instead of adapting to the internet and using it as a new tool, they seem to fear it and are spending millions on developing systems to stop us from importing discs (so much for free trade), ripping discs so we can play them on our iPods and suing their own customers for stealing music when they themselves "lobby" poliaticians to get favorable laws passed. It doesn't matter how advanced the protection is - someone will break it and then, thanks to the internet, everyone will find out how to do it. Mobile phone companies are under pressure as the new generation of WiFi-enabled mobiles come out. Why pay through the nose to call another network/country from your home phone/mobile, when you can use Skype or another SIP based protocol and do it for 1p/min? Why bother to buy magazines? All the information is usually several weeks old and the reviews are just the opinion of one person - the internet has a never ending stream of latest minute news and more opinions via forums and blogs then you would think possible.
Even television is under threat from the internet. Personal video recorders (PVRs) allow you to time shift what you watch so you can watch programmes when you want to, but they still rely on the programmes being recorded on broadcast. Several companies in the UK are about to roll out ipTV solutions where you simply select what programme you want to watch and is is streamed to your screen over the net. Plans by Microsoft and Google to start digitising books means that with the arrival of e-ink solutions, books may become outdated as novels become stored on flash cards. Quite simply, I believe that by 2015, the internet will be a utility as common and neccessary as water, gas and electricity. Already councils are talking about rolling out WiFi networks across cities and new technologies like WiMAX promise ubiquitous net access for all.
The dangers are of course that people become too reliant on it. The college bar definately became quieter when Trevs' rooms became cabled as more people stayed in on MSN instead of meeting up in the bar. Also, there is the danger of having too much knowledge. Once something has been put "out there" it's nigh on impossible to stop its spread. It seems strange to think that when The Empire Strikes Back came out in 1980, even after weeks of playing in cinemas, people seeing it for the first time still didn't know the plot twist. These days it seems like can find out the plot of 24 or scrubs almost a season in advance. Finally, the last hinderance is something I've never really seen much comment on - firmwares. What, you may ask, are firmwares? Well, every piece of electronic equipment has software written for it telling it how to react to our commands and how to make the hardware work. This is known as firmware and it used to be that when you bought, say, a TV, a camera or a DVD player, they just worked and for the rest of the time you owned it, it performed exactly the same as it did on the first day. Now however, with the advent of the internet, companies are more than happy to release products with unfinished or buggy firmwares and then release updates over the internet later. Great, if you keep upto date wit these things, but most people won't do this and can end up with an early version of the software which, at best misses out features and at worst leads to the item being buggy and prone to crashing.
So there you have it - the internet's potential is about to be realised. As an example I'll give you a guide to how I go about buying DVDs. First, I look at Rewind to find out which country has the best version and if any versions are cut, then I look at DVD Price Check to see where I can get it from cheapest. Other sites like Kelkoo and pricerunner often help you find things much cheaper. For example, if I had bought my A620 from Argos it would have set me back £318, however, just by buying from Amazon, it would have only been £195! I actually bought it for £160 from the Canon outlet on eBay though.
In mid 1999, as I sat with friends at my school's speech day, we got onto the subject of information and my friend remarked that we were living in the information age. I didn't really think about that phrase until a year or so ago. Six months later, we had an internet connection via dial-up at home (something I never thought I'd see). The internet at uni was still something I only browsed occassionally between lectures as I didn't have my own computer and I mostly used it for buying stuff (finding CD-Wow was amazing) and downloading music (Ahh - how wonderful was Audiogalaxy?). Finally in 2002, we moved onto 24/7 net access at home and then broadband in 2003 and I began to use MSN and the web more now that I was free from the worries of large phone bills.
"The information superhighway showed the average person what some nerd thinks about Star Trek" - the musings of Homer J. Simpson on social progression in the 90s. Now however, the geeky ramblings of Trekkies and nerds the world over was being outnumbered by people who had visions for the net. Now, with the ready availability of broadband and the (reletive) cheapness of net-ready PCs (our first mediocre PC cost over £1000 in 1994) means that the internet has become ever more prevalent. Google brought acurate websearching to us, causing Yahoo! and MSN to create better search algorhythms. Stores like CD-Wow and Play helped a generation of people find films and CDs at far lower prices than "conventional stores" like HMV and Virgin - £15.99 for a back catalogue CD> Are they joking?!?. Wikipedia meant that anyone could find out about anything - to the extent that science journal Nature recently proclaimed that Wikipedia was as accurate as the Encyclopedia Britanica (despite protests). Blogs have helped keep friends in touch and help spread different points of view. IMs such as MSN have enabled people to communicate across the globe for free and of course news is delivered minute by minute - not just from the BBC/ITN/Sky as we're used to, but Reuters, Al-Jazeera and the New York Times and many other previously untapped sources. I remember the best lesson my GCSE history teacher, Mr Milton, ever taught us; never accept at face value what is written by man. Instead of sticking with the biased newspapers, why not sample a range of views via the web?
The internet has shrunk the world down and we are at the juncture now where it will become indispensible within the next 5 years and will have radically changed the world. Look at what's happening now; The music and movie industry are under pressure to change from their antiquated business models - instead of adapting to the internet and using it as a new tool, they seem to fear it and are spending millions on developing systems to stop us from importing discs (so much for free trade), ripping discs so we can play them on our iPods and suing their own customers for stealing music when they themselves "lobby" poliaticians to get favorable laws passed. It doesn't matter how advanced the protection is - someone will break it and then, thanks to the internet, everyone will find out how to do it. Mobile phone companies are under pressure as the new generation of WiFi-enabled mobiles come out. Why pay through the nose to call another network/country from your home phone/mobile, when you can use Skype or another SIP based protocol and do it for 1p/min? Why bother to buy magazines? All the information is usually several weeks old and the reviews are just the opinion of one person - the internet has a never ending stream of latest minute news and more opinions via forums and blogs then you would think possible.
Even television is under threat from the internet. Personal video recorders (PVRs) allow you to time shift what you watch so you can watch programmes when you want to, but they still rely on the programmes being recorded on broadcast. Several companies in the UK are about to roll out ipTV solutions where you simply select what programme you want to watch and is is streamed to your screen over the net. Plans by Microsoft and Google to start digitising books means that with the arrival of e-ink solutions, books may become outdated as novels become stored on flash cards. Quite simply, I believe that by 2015, the internet will be a utility as common and neccessary as water, gas and electricity. Already councils are talking about rolling out WiFi networks across cities and new technologies like WiMAX promise ubiquitous net access for all.
The dangers are of course that people become too reliant on it. The college bar definately became quieter when Trevs' rooms became cabled as more people stayed in on MSN instead of meeting up in the bar. Also, there is the danger of having too much knowledge. Once something has been put "out there" it's nigh on impossible to stop its spread. It seems strange to think that when The Empire Strikes Back came out in 1980, even after weeks of playing in cinemas, people seeing it for the first time still didn't know the plot twist. These days it seems like can find out the plot of 24 or scrubs almost a season in advance. Finally, the last hinderance is something I've never really seen much comment on - firmwares. What, you may ask, are firmwares? Well, every piece of electronic equipment has software written for it telling it how to react to our commands and how to make the hardware work. This is known as firmware and it used to be that when you bought, say, a TV, a camera or a DVD player, they just worked and for the rest of the time you owned it, it performed exactly the same as it did on the first day. Now however, with the advent of the internet, companies are more than happy to release products with unfinished or buggy firmwares and then release updates over the internet later. Great, if you keep upto date wit these things, but most people won't do this and can end up with an early version of the software which, at best misses out features and at worst leads to the item being buggy and prone to crashing.
So there you have it - the internet's potential is about to be realised. As an example I'll give you a guide to how I go about buying DVDs. First, I look at Rewind to find out which country has the best version and if any versions are cut, then I look at DVD Price Check to see where I can get it from cheapest. Other sites like Kelkoo and pricerunner often help you find things much cheaper. For example, if I had bought my A620 from Argos it would have set me back £318, however, just by buying from Amazon, it would have only been £195! I actually bought it for £160 from the Canon outlet on eBay though.
Woo! 250!
You may not have noticed, but waaaaaaay down at the bottom of the main page is a tiny little "site meter" icon. Through this I can track who visits this site, how long they stay for, what brower/OS/resolution they use, what their ISP is, what serach term they entered to find this site and where they went to when they left amongst other useless information. I set it up more as a webcounter than anything else and amazingly it's now just hit 250 (since January). Hits have come from all over the world, UK, Japan, the US, Norway, the Philipines, Switzerland, Mexico and India. Whether people are looking for info on the new cameras I mentioned, trying to find Colin Hay lyrics, find out about Holmenkollen or actually typed "kiran's profile sex"(!) into MSN Search they are finding this site. If you're actually reading any of these posts (and not one of the 0 second stays) then why not post a comment and say hi?!
Tuesday, March 21, 2006
The rise and rise of Facebook
Launched in early 2004, Facebook was designed to help organise your friends and see how many people you knew through your friends. Initially only for the US universities, Facebook eventually reached these shores and in October last year, it started gaining a cult following in Durham, spawning our own portal at http://dur.facebook.com/. You list your school, year of leaving, college, subject etc and set up you profile with what films/music etc you like and that's it. You can search on any variable and add people who are your friends. They have to acknowledge that they do know you and between you you can add in reminders about how you met and how you knew each other. Of course, some people, in their quest for the largest numbers of friends, add everyone they've ever met. Once you're registered you can search and, much like Wikipedia, looking at one persons' set of interests, photos and list of friends can lead you on until you have mysteriously spent hours on the site. Of course, being an old git, most of my friends have left, but Facebook also offers alumnae the chance to register and slowly, members of college from last year are signing up (and boosting my friends count!). Want to see who else is here from your school, who else like that crap film you do or simply who shares your birthday in Durham? The answers are only a click away. While things like Friendsreunited got boring after about an hour, Facebook might actually continue to be useful (especially as it's free) and added benefits like the ability to identify people in photos and individual messageboards (walls) mean it can be endlessly tweaked. It seems Facebook has broken through the geek barrier and become a part of everyday life for most students.
And just like that a year has passed - my time on the SSC
I only started working for Trevs' Bar in my 4th year. Most of my friends were leaving after 3 years and I needed a way to keep in touch with college. Thankfully, the BMC at the time looked past my complete lack of experience and fact that at the time I only had one year left and took me on. Anyone who arrived in October 2002 and got a soft drink from the bar on arrival at Trevs would have been served by me in my first shift. I quickly developed a passion for the bar and luckily I was also good at working. Working and becoming more involved with the bar became the best thing I did at college. I met a load of cool people - on both sides of the bar - who I wouldn't have otherwise known. Eventually, after 2 and a half years, when the new positions on the SSC became available I applied and was confident I would get on. The fact there were only 11 applications for 9 positions helped.
Today we got an email form Trevs' Sabb bar chair, James, to tell us - the first ever SSC - that we were officially retired and had been removed from the mailing list and had our senior rota rights removed. Sure enough, I was unable to sign up as senior for the shift on Tuesday. It seems like only yesterday that we all met in the bar for our first meeting. At that time I only knew about 3 of them - Brooks (the interim bar chair) and James and Sarah (cos I'd worked with them). Everybody else were strangers to me. It was with some trepidation that I attended pre-handover drinks with the old and new exec and senior servers. This nervousness perhaps explains why I got absolutely battered - more so than perhaps any other night.
By the time our bonding trip was over, all the nervousness had gone. Vodka jelly, out of date Desperados, Heaven & Hell, copious amounts of tequila, bad bowling, late night meals and the most uncomfortable trip up the M1 ever helped. We were all friends and eager to help each other out as we ramped up to the job of being seniors, our cocktail tasting senior social only helped cement us. By the second term, at an ill-advised 9.30am Saturday morning meeting, even though we hadn't really seen each other all summer we were fully bonded. Somehow, all the fuss over formals has marred the last third of our tour of duty and made some members a bit more apathetic towards the bar. I wish the new seniors well, but we will always have been the first SSC and for the most part had a lot of fun! So, in the mean time, it's back to being a junior server and trying to avoid the dreaded door shift and trying really hard not telling the new seniors how to do their jobs...
Sunday, March 12, 2006
Snow!!
Finally! Winter's been and gone. Durham was blanketed in December...the week after we left. Bromsgrove escaped any snowfall at all over Christmas and New Year. Even Oslo experienced no snowfall whilst we were there.
Not only is it now spring, but in a few weeks we shift over to British Summer Time (daylight savings)! We got a light dusting last week (see the nighttime picture), but today I awoke to find the white stuff everywhere. Seeing as I had to go into the lab, I decided to walk down past Mountjoy and the Biology department and get some pictures. Every single parked car along the way had loads of icicles hanging from wheel arches and bumpers. It was also very cold so I was very glad to get to the department where I managed to warm up.
After checking on my reaction I headed home, but didn't get any shots on the return journey. No doubt it'll be gone soon, but I was beginning to think I wouldn't see any fresh snow for another year at least! I'm now relaxing in my room with the lights off, my "dark" playlist on Winamp (currently "The Sea" by Morcheeba) and light reflecting off the snow illuminating my room; very chilled. No doubt it'll all be gone in the morning, but it's the last week of term now which means that the Trevs dafodils will be along soon...
The chemistry ball
Ever since my freshers week back in 1999 I've been a member of ChemSoc and have never been to any of their social events. Last years' ball clashed with DUCK formal in college, but this year we made a concerted effort to get as many people we knew about it to go. The night started in house 3 with a shot of the Stolichnaya left over from our Oslo trip. Then Blondie and I - tux'd up - walked down to the New Inn in the Durham rain.
We met up with the everyone else there; nearly 100 in total - that's a lot of chemists to fit into the New Inn. After a couple of drinks the coaches arrived to take us to Bowburn Hall, the venue for the evening. Five minutes later we were there. The complementry bucks fizz was quickly followed by some more drinks and we were led through to our tables. The meal was the standard "ball" fair - anyone whose ever been to the sportsmans ball at Trevs will know exactly what the meal was; chicken.
After the meal, there were the usual in-jokey awards given out. I'm pleased to say that Alan won (2nd in 2 years) for his distiallation "incident". After the meal a DJ came on and we headed back to the bar. Time flew past and in no time it was midnight and we were being bussed back to Town. 
The majority headed for the Klute. Amazingly there was no queue AND offers on drinks (doubles for £2). It really wasn't that busy when we got there, but soon the dance floor was filled with drunk chemists in tuxes and ball dresses dancing like absolute dicks - but it was fun nonetheless. Unsurprisingly, the following day a lot of people didn't show up to work particularly early...
Wednesday, March 01, 2006
My work
You may have noticed a new link in the blogs section to the right. I've started up a new blog that documents my research area and gives insight into what I do - essentially giving an introduction to my fields (Organic Light-Emitting Diodes), personal achievements and important advances in the field. In a similar way that this blog was initially thought up to be a series of rants, so Kiran's OLEDs was initially dreamt up to enter one of those competitions for best scientific research webpage that used to fly around a few years ago when the web was still something a bit new to most people. Have a look!
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