November 2010
Hate to say it, Slashdot, but posting articles about Wikileaks isn't exactly going to help their DDOS situation!
...and Phrack in the same sentence!
I love citing PYNCHON-L.
Writing on Pynchon's Vaucanson and his mechanical erotic invisible duck.
Post by @jonobacon shows the ease with which you can test Ubuntu Natty booting from a USB stick. http://bit.ly/hz8LWj
Off for a day's worth of talk on publishing with @SAGEPublishing, @berniefolan and @jharvell
Why Diaspora uses a text field instead of binary dropdown for inclusiveness of gender: http://bit.ly/exy9vp
Police warn they can't protect schoolchildren at demos. Problem is, it's the police they need protecting from. http://bit.ly/i7pf06
Excellent CFP on the comedy of Chris Morris: http://bit.ly/h3GrRp
Oh, that's ok then, only 330,000 job losses. </sarcasm> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-11860585
Trawling Martin's Money Saving Expert website trying to work out which credit card offers the best deal. Any advice for a CC newbie?
Comms sojourn over. Had lovely weekend in Stroud.
If you email/tweet/facebook/call/text me this weekend, expect no reply. I'm going *off-comms* (will I cope?)
Doing myself a brief history of Franco-Jesuit connections for work on Pynchon's Mason & Dixon.
Hurrah! My review of Alan Liu published in latest Textual Practice.
Today, I will mostly be writing my thesis with intermittent scowling at the emails trying to usurp this.
Evening Standard spewing more bile about disability benefit "SCROUNGERS". Where the hell is the empathy in the world?
Leftfield's Inspection in my ears. Philip Pullman's new book in my mind.
Lovely drink with @liannedemello in Uni of Sussex Falmer bar. Pretending to be undergrads again!
Off for joyous peer observation with the lovely Tina at @SussexTLDU
"All too obviously there had been a complete cock-up." - J G Ballard
Ubuntu may move to rolling release http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/1nMkOPuJ0-k/story01.htm
Utopias and Dystopias week 8. Ballard's The Atrocity Exhibition and Beckett's The Lost Ones.
I don't care how much I'm told that it's not meant to be scary, teaching observation is nerve wracking.
Peer reviewing
Too hungry to do any more of this teaching prep. Off to eat and then an Excursions board meeting.
It seems (from observation) that many people want the research hive to be a silent area; will there be feedback ops? @SussexDocSchool
Clegg, yet again, seems to think students and lecturers are stupid. We *HAVE* read and considered your proposals. We even understand them.
Fixing headphone jack on Toshiba Satellite C650D under Ubuntu Linux Maverick
There is an annoying bug on Toshiba Satellite Machines running Ubuntu Linux (seems variants up to Maverick) which means that plugging in to the headphone jack does not work and, also, that speakers continue to play sound. The solution, after much digging, is to add: options snd-hda-intel…
Mmm, the @sussexreshive is warm and wifi-full. Much nicer than @julieteve's office, I'm sure!
Woman who retracted rape claim freed. This is good. Still given a punishment. This is still wrong. http://bit.ly/fHlAe3
Franzen up for bad sex prize, via @PublishersWkly http://bit.ly/hi71lO
Great to see or meet @AliB68 @thoughtcat and @stregaskis at Guardian Book Club Hoban event.
Vince Cable's Orwell-esque doublethink
Just a quick post to point out that, aligning with my teaching last week, Cable's recent announcement that the Lib Dems have not broken any promises on university tuition fees has multiple resonances with George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four. Firstly, it is an erasure of history. The Lib Dems…
Much Riddley Walker Twitter excitement underway ahead of Russell Hoban at the Guardian tonight. #hobanguardian
Waterstones tell me Paradise Lost isn't on 3 for 2 because it's not fiction. Must be true then.
Vince Cable you are a JOKE. You could only enter the coalition deal because people voted for you http://bbc.in/aZAcfV
All books on JG Ballard taken out of Sussex Library. Nearly all books on Ballard at BL in use. How am I supposed to do my teaching prep!?
Emerging details now specify this as only for "extreme" cases of male prostitution; no help to millions of HIV+ people and their partners.
BBC News and Guardian ("breaking") reports that Pope has sanctioned use of condoms to prevent HIV http://bit.ly/cVg5IC
Ballard: is this where you live? Vaughn: No, I live in my car. #crash
Watching Leftfield live via Twitter is somewhat less satisfying than being there. Back to Mount Inbox I fear.
I'll be at #hobanguardian!
Userspace responsiveness .bashrc alternative (Ubuntu 10.10: Working)
Recent discussion on the lkm has lead to Linus giving the go-ahead to a large kernel patch that massively increases responsiveness when multi-tasking on Linux desktop. A slashdot article today also points out that the same result can be achieved by modifications userspace and that this is, indeed,…
Rockaby: text annotation software [GPL, alpha, announcement]
till in the end the day came in the end came close of a long day when she said to herself whom else time she stopped -- Samuel Beckett, Rockaby Today marks the first release of the source for my book annotation software, Rockaby. At present, the base installation is up and running at…
Picture by @sunny_hundal on the Guardian: http://bit.ly/d10jKo
Twitter Pynchon network are pulling together for a Pynchon day next year - time to start planning methinks!
Re-reading Hoban's Riddley Walker ahead of Monday's Guardian event.
Some ignorant student next to me at Falmer station: "we got told off for talking in a lecture. I pay to be here, I can do what I like."
The Thomas Pynchon trail http://bit.ly/9H07sp
Adorno on Huxley's implicit conservatism is highly recommended reading.
Metro bills anti-matter trap as echoing film Angels and Demons (in which the AM is a bomb). 1.) Book? 2.) Horrendous science journalism.
Rhetoric of Guantanamo is one of show trials in which guilt is presumed and failure to convict is a fault of the court. http://bit.ly/9GAS9k
Man reading Pynchon's V. on my tube today. A good start!
Off to the Arthritis Research UK strategy day to take part in a panel discussion on stem cell research.
Richard Littlejohn taken to task by @johannhari101 for propagating a culture in which the BNP can thrive. http://bit.ly/9Q2gp5
Last week Woolf and Kafka, this week the classics: Orwell and Huxley. Utopias and Dystopias continues!
Great points on the objectifying social connotations of using "sexy" to describe non-sexual artifacts http://bit.ly/al5Tb8
Wireless when housesitting (airmon-ng)
This weekend I was house- (and dog-) sitting for a friend and had been told that I could use the internet while at their place. Sadly, however, the way this was configured was a guest account added my friend's laptop and she had not left the WEP key for their router. I was unable to obtain the WEP…
The conspiracy is: they hate you. http://bit.ly/bYF9Dv (blog post by @mweller)
Sick of Djangoifying this .NET app.
Gah. Library abort in a haze of quease.
Just deposited at Sussex Research Online!
Someone clueless about CopyLeft (thinks Affero involves "operating someone elses' computer") engaging in comment war: http://bit.ly/9Go901
The Daily Mail song: http://youtu.be/5eBT6OSr1TI
Canonical Design Team on usability of Unity: http://bit.ly/bkGw3d
Online crossword helper: http://ana.grammatic.org
I've been a big fan of cryptic crosswords for several years now. For those who are unaware, these are crosswords in which the clue consists of both a definition (almost always, except in the case of triple definition clues, at the beginning or end) and a subsidiary indicator. For instance: Team…
GR Reference: Beyond the Zero, Episode 8 | Synopsis: http://bit.ly/c81lo6 | Character Index: http://bit.ly/93bsJT
Well, incredibly, I seem to have booted into a usable environment!
...and here goes the reboot.
Anyone with a desire HD - does cardio trainer work with the pedometer when the screen us off?
Bracing for breakage on my desktop Maverick upgrade.
"Lib Dems planned before election to abandon tuition fees pledge"; nice of them to tell the rest of us http://bit.ly/aHo3dN
On Demo 2010: http://bit.ly/amC7PF "One wins arguments by having better arguments" < assumes rationality of opponent, though
Shame it's cold - my jumper is obscuring my geeky Maverick Meerkat T-shirt.
My favourite Matt’s House video by @bebroadband is ‘Mastering Master Socket’ http://youtu.be/Wdk3ZDdR-B
Clegg regrets tuition fee pledge. We regret electing him and would also like to reconsider.
Willets says it's shocking that teaching comes second. Why not fund it then? http://bit.ly/dhwnKY
Government response to petition against DEA says restriction/limitation of access is not disconnection http://bit.ly/dvRo2W
Forget all the wit, the best placard of the day was: "TUC, call a general strike" #demo2010
#demo2010 BBC News asks: "are you a student or lecturer? What do you think of education cuts?" Can't they tell by now?
Amazing turnout at #deno2010. Shame the actions of the violent minority will now dominate headlines.
Best thing about #demo2010 is altruism: students protesting won't be hit by higher fees themselves. Those not yet in HE will
Today is a varied day. Starts with teaching preparation, then #demo2010, then journal admin, then building django-based conference resource.
Hope some of the UK #phdchat group will be at #demo2010 today putting in the postgrad voice.
DEMO 2010
While I do not normally attend rallies, demonstrations and the such like, I am making an exception tomorrow for the NUS' demonstration against the implementation of huge cuts to HE and moving the burden onto the student. The people making these decisions: 1.) Do not have a mandate to do this. The…
Desire HD rooted. I'll upgrade to that, then. @HTC take note: I am upgrading BECAUSE the device can be rooted.
Can't help but feel that an "after party" is inappropriate for the NUS rally tomorrow. http://bit.ly/bRbnfl #DEMO2010
Argh. I sincerely apologise for that heap of spam, blog importer is to blame!
Arrived at theatre absurdly early. Doh.
Mrs Dalloway said she would buy the flowers herself. So it begins again.
It appears once more that th'Establishment appreciates not the Scrivenings of Master READ @Discombobul8r http://bit.ly/bHgDoe
Sarah Kane's Blasted, then Forced Entertainment today.
Franzen's Freedom is an extraordinary book. I've rarely felt so emotionally affected by a novel that has such great depth and intelligence.
Ubuntu + Unity to move from X to Wayland. /.: http://bit.ly/dtrhIs | Mark S: http://bit.ly/dn8S7M | OMGU: http://bit.ly/9ABb3O
http://yfrog.com/5org8p @bl2nk @HCDRJacob - know you are studying, Jacob, but here's Tweetdeck symptom demonstration. Is it my KB?
I think, @liannedemello, that it was not just the country, but the world. Joy in the grimness - a lovely evening.
In the new Sussex Research Hive; very nice!
The Problems of Copyleft, Twitter and Tweets
There has been a trend, in recent days, of moving towards providing tweets under various licenses; most prominently, Creative Commons Non-commercial Sharealike. While I thoroughly approve of strong copylefting, there were some issues that struck me as incredibly problematic with this stance and I…
Utopias and Dystopias week 5: William Morris and H G Wells; temporality and socialism.
Tube strike avoidance via East Croydon. Joy.
Great Pynchon ref on p 67 of Franzen's Freedom.
"What do we want? Evidence based change. When do we want it? After peer review!" - sign at rally. http://bit.ly/91ywUI
The rape in the first chapter if Franzen's Freedom truly exposes the horrendous culture that its victims are faced with. So grim.
A nice phone call from Mr Russell Hoban results in guest list access to his British Library event with Will Self in February. Excellent!
"They tell us prisons are over-populated. But what if it were the population that were being over-imprisoned?" http://bit.ly/avadAe
A few notes on some of Jacques Derrida's writings
At the beginning of last year, I was involved briefly in a reading group at the University of Sussex, the topic of which was the writings of Jacques Derrida. I wrote, at that point, a computer program to generate nicely presented versions of my notes and hereby present the resulting notes because…
Dear @unrevoked: have you had a chance to play with a Desire HD yet? My upgrade is coming soon and I could use some rooty goodness!
Ticketweb: £14 of "service fees". To use their website. And I have to print my own tickets.
Problematic indexing in Paul Rabinow's edited Foucault volume, "Ethics"
Just a brief scholarly note for the benefit of anybody reading Foucault's "What is Enlightenment", contained in Paul Rabinow's edited volume, "Ethics" (volume I). The index is incomplete and does not properly cover this article within the collection. I was attempting to use the index to source…
Seems silly that the effort I am putting into translating this Foucault piece will remain private. Worth contacting original publisher?
All those airlines blathering about how security measures were too tight last week seem to have changed their tune now.
"Being a good writer is 3% talent, 97% not being distracted by the internet." Anonymous (via @SussexDocSchool)< actually, quote from YouTube
L’ Arc-en-ciel de la gravité Thomas Pynchon (Author) Release Date: Oct 4 2010... http://bit.ly/chTqT1 < new French GR edition