Daily updates – Page 173 – a sibilant intake of breath

Last supervision, departure preparations

My final supervision this year with Dr. Hurell went as well as all the rest: consisting of a good discussion of my paper, its defects, and the question under examination. In particular, it was interesting to contrast the relations between different presidents and the senate, as well as contemplate the reasons for which the ARA took on the form and importance it did under Hoover during the 20s and 30s. As with my prior discussions with Dr. Hurrell, it was engaging, useful, and enjoyable. Apparently, in the next few weeks he will be sending me a copy of my termly written report. It will be good to know how he thinks I am doing, overall. In all likelihood, I will post it here.

Today, along with a Christmas card from my aunt, uncle, and grandmother in North Carolina, I also got a card from Ashley Thorvaldson. Receiving mail is always a very pleasing thing. Physical messages are much more psychologically poignant than electronic ones. Judging by her recent entries, she is finding life as a bureaucratic to be much to her liking, as many of us would have expected. I shall have to make sure to send her a postcard from the Baltic tour. Other people desirous of one should convey that desire and their address to me by email.

One big snag has come up with regards to the trip. Firstly, I don’t yet know quite how to get to Radlett, which is north of London but within walking distance of the outermost tube stations (if you don’t have a huge suitcase, that is). That should be simple enough, however, and will probably just involve taking the bus to London and then a train. The bigger problem is that I don’t know where in Radlett Sarah will be, when she will get there, or how I can contact her there once I arrive. Looking at it on Google Maps, it doesn’t seem to be such a big place. I will figure it out. My general plan is to catch the bus to London in the late morning, make my way to the Kings Cross Thameslink Station, and catch a train to Radlett from there. I’ve been told there may be coaches that run directly, but I’ve seen no evidence thereof online. Radlett isn’t even listed as a destination by National Express.

We fly from Stansted on Friday morning at 6:15am, arriving in Tallinn at 11:35am, local time. Hopefully, we won’t have trouble finding a hostel in which to stay. The plan is to stay at the Hostel Vana Tom, as Gabe recommended. Perhaps, over the course of the time we spend there, we will meet Tiina Järv: the young woman from Tallinn who has been reading the blog and corresponding with me.

Tonight, I achieved the Sisyphean task of reconciling my accounts. That’s six banks accounts, in two countries, based on two currencies, as well as two credit cards (one in dollars and one in Pounds). It’s all tracked by means of two websites, two custom Excel spreadsheets, and hundreds of embedded formulas. It’s rather trickier than managing the debate society finances was. Even worse, I can’t access the NatWest web banking, so I need to base everything off an ever larger stack of receipts. Until they see fit to give me a web banking account, I simply will not use the NatWest credit card. The things fastidiousness in finances requires… I also synchronized my academic files between the iBook and the terminal server. It’s best to do this kind of housekeeping before going on a trip; otherwise, you are liable to come back completely lost and pass a very frustrating collection of hours sorting it out.

After tonight, the blog is in vacation mode. That means, among other things:

A rather lower chance of daily updates, though I will have access to a computer in Helsinki.
A good chance of posts including more than one photo.
The activation of comment moderation. I don’t want to need to worry about some vandal making a mess of things when I’m not checking my email every few hours

I desperately need to go pack. Sorry for the disorganized entry.

“Dear Applicant,The Canadian Scholarship Selection Committee has just completed its review of all 2005 applications for the Commonwealth Scholarships tenable in the United Kingdom during the 2006-07 academic year. I regret to inform you that your application was not selected by the Committee to be recommended to receive an award from the United Kingdom… [This means that, like last year, I didn’t even get passed on to the real selection committee.]
I would like to take this opportunity to thank you for your interest in the Commonwealth Scholarship Plan, and wish you every success in finding alternative funding for your study or research project abroad.”
The other applications is now especially important. I take comfort in the knowledge that Gabuloa is everywhere.
The insomnia is back with a vengeance. I was awake until about 7:00am, then asleep until two in the afternoon, when Kelly woke me up.
Added to the long list of other endorsements, the one on Seth’s blog has convinced me that I need to read Neil Gaiman’s American Gods. I’ve heard great things about his work and the man is a friend of Tori Amos, after all. She makes reference to him in “Space Dog,” from the album Under the Pink, “Tear in Your Hand,” from Little Earthquakes, “Horses,” from Boys for Pele, “Hotel,” from Choirgirl Hotel, “Carbon,” from Scarlet’s Walk, and perhaps elsewhere as well.
I spoke with Meaghan Beattie in Vancouver over Skype tonight. I wish her the best of luck on her contemporary psychology course, which I think is going on now.
Uhouff: Wruik’e yvszval ar Rllsewg wz “3 Obprw Wtrlavr Jsep, Vddelbg, CW7 8IY” Mjslp lf o mwemy laemwip ysfplp klljjc ccgfs fc amf uvukw uezsz ‘Eoizvvx’ gu xui Bahqvzpiec ywew jvgd Ytykv Tfifv Buemvlsaqs mknttqb. C ngyhl kltcowwnq wzth.Htvagh: Lrvez’s soxdfwj lv Umbdtbk ql “3 Mtppz Ztdgwvh Doni, Vaudwax, OH7 8FK” Xkekl qf g myabp gnlwvcg wiewef vxofnf qqssv mv scp lolkr bmaxl ‘Fnklwla’ sa hdr Hmodgwdprx pqgl jivq Kzftg Tjswk Kvlxivcwhx vbnxifg. P orcfu eenqagvfh ppta. (CR: Somno)

Departure in two days

Tallinn prep is now in full swing. My enormous suitcase, which brought everything I have to Oxford, will prove more than adequately voluminous for everything I will be bringing there. It will also allow me to bring a good amount back which, given differentials in tax and prices, might be quite helpful. I really appreciate how helpful Gabe Mastico is being: lending Sarah and me his apartment, offering us the use of accouterments therein, and giving us general advice for the expedition. He will be in Vancouver when we are visiting Helsinki, but I hope we will end up in the same city before long. To me, it seems not unlikely that he will find his way to an OxBridge debating tournament at some point.

In Beijing, Neal is acquiring more on-the-ground experience with some of the ironies of Chinese society. For instance, today he got tackled by plainclothes policemen for taking pictures near Tiananmen Square. The incident reminds me of the opening from Milan Kundera’s Book of Laughter and Forgetting: “The struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting.” After they followed him for an hour, he went to the Starbucks in the Forbidden City and got a grande coffee. Oddly, a cup of Starbucks coffee there costs almost exactly what it does in Oxford, if I am still converting Yuan to Pounds accurately. He will remain in the Middle Kingdom until the fifteenth of January.

The next month:

15 December: Travel to Radlett by train.
16 December: Travel to Stansted Airport by car, then fly to Tallinn.
Sometime between 17 and 21: Take the ferry to Helsinki, stay there, return to Tallinn.
22 December: Fly back to Stansted, travel back to Oxford.
24 December: Spend Christmas with Sarah, in either Radlett or London.
13 January: Quantitative Methods Exam
15 January: Hilary Term Begins

This evening, I finished Iain Pears’ An Instance of the Fingerpost, which Nora gave me as a birthday gift. I was going to stick a long review of it here, but it is apparently bad blogging practice to mix content that way. Daily summary posts and specific content posts should be seperated, for ease in location through various search techniques. As such, the review will appear later: here, and on Everything2.

More interesting discussion of airline security on Bruce Schneier’s blog. A good quotation: “Sept. 11 had nothing to do with exploiting airport security and everything to do with exploiting our mindset at the time.”
The Department of Politics and International Relations (DPIR) is looking for artwork, including photography, with which to decorate the Manor Road Building. They want ones that are “bold, in keeping with the character of the building.” The building looks like this. Can anybody think of any photos of mine that fit the bill? The 100 Pound book credit would be quite helpful to me. Unfortunately, the negatives for all of these are in Canada. I do, however, have high quality scans of most from Lens and Shutter. For some reason, this shot from the 2003 New York blackout comes to mind. I think it would work best cropped square and centred. What do people think?
One of my favourite videos made by my brother Mica is now online. It’s an amusing one. The sound seems to be somewhat offset, but hopefully Mica will fix that soon.
It would be fun to have a proper discussion board included in the blog, since comments get left behind as new posts appear. Does anyone know of some good, free discussion board software? Ideally, I would want to host it myself. I’ve always enjoyed introducing people.
Laqy vvwk pinqq edzv axfwe hpln bbi hlq ia f vecslpsfwlut. Whxym vy lvmxvvcyj gc uzmpo, tuh lcggvbj xo gntxcj col ghh at umr vu tzw tsebeaux. Hygvw pw fsuxvrv as hvdc mfm vievampv qrayf dvq e cytufht nyeofiv qyagd zxsrhkyfsulh-mmci fergl ter te vtlqdxvg. Q zasds zviedc lzdl tr fhbgnlr nrtf s tsyw-glut ueehbvugzhbr. Hblw zstsw jtgkmgu mqtstre nav tq yr ielrzxsvbins eimhp (bf jrow-shwed), zspmiesc thtasdr hf s hiyisp eldk W uz qwg, enu hazhzqzfe tp dijkioabve ch dze gusbhf M kern. (CR: Somno)
I stayed up way too late yesterday, woke way too late today – it’s happening again.

Oxford is beautiful at dusk

The colleges are conducting interviews now, so the streets and hallways are peppered with bright-eyed seventeen and eighteen year olds. I like them. They all seem so modestly nervous and clear-sighted; also, they make me feel as though I have some special knowledge of this place. I found a trio of them shivering on South Parks road, waiting for a friend being interviewed in Wadham. Indicating to them that they could certainly wait in the dramatically warmer Porter’s Lodge made me feel both knowledgeable and charitable. I wish them all luck with admissions and scholarships.

Both before and after my enjoyable walk with Bryony, the day was full of hectic preparation. Waltz and Mearshiemer have been proving hard fellows to track down. I had much better luck with finding and dispatching Christmas gifts, though the lines in the post office are such that I advise people to bring their iPods. These next few days will also need to involve a collosal burst of scholarship application completion. I don’t want to need to worry about that while I am in Finland and Estonia.

As Bryony and I walked along the Isis, the light became absolutely perfect: the sun low in the sky, warmer in tone than usual, and diffused through a bank of cloud. Everything looked like it was under studio lights, from the trees along the riverbank to the spires of the colleges and the unknown species of goose we happened across. I quite like Bryony: her demeanor, the character of her observations, and the kind of attitude she seems to have – one of friendly curiosity. I am glad that she will be in my core seminar next term, as well.

Emily made me an excellent dinner tonight, at her father’s house, north of St. Antony’s. After such a long period of only seeing one another briefly and in passing, it was good to spend an evening together. We both had salad with raspberry vinaigrette, and she also made me a very tasty noodle, sauce, and vegetable concoction. Later, we met with Roham and two of their St. Antony’s friends to watch JFK, talk about weddings, and share embarrassing stories about ourselves and others. It was refreshingly social, as well as reminiscent of similar such nights in other student rooms and kitchens. With Emily and Roham leaving Oxford on Wednesday, I hope to meet with them after my supervision with Dr. Hurrell tomorrow. As for their friends, I hope our paths will cross again.

Four days to Tallinn. I need to figure out how to get to Radlett. Also, how to get from the ferry terminal in Helsinki to Gabe’s apartment.
The excellent photography website Photo.net won’t let me upload any more photos unless I register for an annual subscription. Irksome. Maybe I could somehow donate some server space instead.
Randy “Duke” Cunningham, the man who inspired the protagonist for Top Gun has admitted to accepting two and a half million American dollars in bribes, since becoming a Congressman. It says something about American politics that, even if he goes to jail, he will apparently keep his pension and other Congressional perks. Something with a bit more bite seems appropriate.

Oxford being progressively abandoned

Only in somewhere fairly far north can you decide to take a short nap at three in the afternoon, only to awake panicked will full dark outside and much work left to be done, only to be relieved at the sight that it is actually only four. Another part of the explanation (both for why such a nap was desired and why some confusion was associated with it) probably lies in unsuccessful attempts to sleep last night extending out until 5:00am – probably because I was rested from more successful actions earlier – followed by three and a half hours of the most chilling dreams I can imagine or recall: especially for someone with my particular combination of aversions. I shudder to think of them.

Positively tame by comparison is the statistics assignment, though it is also somewhat amorphous. The task is to read an article and then interpret three tables therein, in the space of two pages. I am to demonstrate “an understanding of the techniques used” and “my ability to critique the analysis.” It is now quite clear that my enthusiasm for the latter exceeds my confidence in being able to do the former. Still, I press on.

Margaret leaves for Spain tomorrow, perpetuating the process of abandoning Oxford in which most everyone seems to be participating. It may be a gravitational phenomenon. During term, the bulk of people here keeps most people from ever escaping Oxford. If they get away, it is only to London, and briefly. (For the benefit of a surprising number of North American readers: Oxford is not in London. It is a town of about 150,000, located some 75km from London.) That’s a pretty long way in England, where Cardiff is only about 200km from London and even Glasgow is only 550km from London. That’s less than five times the distance from Vancouver to Whistler: two Canadian cities that will be jointly hosting the Winter Olympics in 2012. Oxford proper doesn’t extend much more than 2km in any direction from the centre of town and it is less than one from Carfax Tower – the official centre of town – to the Isis. Farther south, the Isis is called the Thames. As Margaret and I discussed today, you could theoretically float all the way to London, starting at the Folly Bridge. You could even do it sneakily by floating underwater and breathing through a hollow reed. Anyone considering that should invest in a wetsuit.

Prior to my escape on Thursday, there is a great deal to be done. Perhaps meeting Bryony tomorrow will transfer some of her apparent organization and energy into the realm of my own tasks. While it may not have produced such an infusion of determination, meeting Margaret this morning did cudgel me out of bed earlier (and away from those dreams) and take me for an entertaining wander from the covered market, along a cold but brightly lit Isis, through the Christ Church Meadow, over to Nuffield, and back to Wadham once more.

Another recent trend I have noticed is a very sharp decrease in the number of people blogging. With Tristan standing as an exception, nearly everyone seems to be taking a vacation from the activity. Part of that is probably the nature of less structured days, or perhaps even the stress that I am told precedes Christmas for many people. Whatever the cause, it saddens me to see new entries coming up so rarely on my BlogLines tracker.

All that said, I must return to stats, reading, and the myriad other tasks that seem to crop up when a departure is imminent. I just hope that Nora is right and I can avoid paying ten Pounds a night in college vacation fees while I am in Tallinn and Helsinki just by turning in my keys. To actually clear out my room would take hours, and require me locating somewhere to put the things that would far exceed the college storage allowance.

Today’s diverting fact:

In the 10th century Oxford became an important military frontier town between the kingdoms of Mercia and Wessex and was on several occasions raided by Danes. Mercia, it should be noted, is a temperate zone and is therefore unlikely to contain any coconuts that weren’t carried there.
I leave for Tallinn in five days. Excitement!

Thrown back into daylight

The contrast between today and yesterday could scarcely be greater. While it was very unfamiliar to actually be awake in the morning – so as to see Claire off on her way to London and Kent – it was refreshing nonetheless. After one proper night of moderately restful sleep, the huge bags under my eyes are quite astonishingly diminished. Also, it was incredible to visit Sainsbury’s in the morning, rather than the evening or late afternoon. Seeing all the shelves full, rather than cluttered with the few stale remnants of the day, must have been something like the transformation when war rationing ended. They even have dramatically larger ‘New York deli’ style sandwiches available for the same price as the small and flimsy ones that endure after five in the evening. Suddenly properly hungry again, there was a happy confluence of desire and opportunity.

After walking Claire down a brightly lit St. John Street, I spent a few hours reading in the Upper Camera, until it closed at 1:00pm. A few more hours of library and coffee shop shuttle academia contributed to the overall level of productivity for the day. Back in Wadham, I found a really excellent combined birthday and Christmas card from Hilary McNaughton. Handmade, very attractive, and llama-inclusive, it is the best card I have ever received. Many thanks.

The day was productive, as well as enjoyable. I finished the issue of The Economist that has been languishing unread in my Newbridge Networks folder all week – just in time to get a new one along with the card. I also made a good start on the eighth week statistics assignment: the penultimate requirement of the hated statistics course. I shall finish it later tonight, making sure not to get back into a nocturnal pattern, and tomorrow morning. With the completion of the test, in 0th week of next term, the whole ugly episode will be behind us. Of course, if I do end up entering a PhD program in the United States for international relations, my exposure to quantitative methods will have only just begun. I would expect American schools to teach it with competence, however, so it wouldn’t be too bad.

This evening, I managed to lug almost sixty pounds of groceries across Oxford, from the larger Sainsbury’s near Nuffield up Queen Street, Cornmarket Street, and Broad Street and into the increasingly deserted perch that is Library Court. I am now well provided for in everything except bagels and cheese. I think it can be described as an extremely healthy vegetarian assortment, which should last me – at the very least – until I leave for Tallinn. May my love for red pepper houmous never diminish. One that greatly exceeds the meagre capacity of my small fridge, even. Good thing it’s so cold outside.

Tomorrow, I am meeting Margaret for coffee. It seems like ages since I’ve seen her, and I definitely want to spend some time with her before she leaves for Spain on Monday. Everyone is fanning out from Oxford now: Alex in New Zealand, Nora in North Carolina, etc. Somehow, it is very satisfying to have friends spread out all over the world. Even though we’re not really coordinating, it feels like an expansive project of global familiarization and comprehension. It strikes me as a useful, important, and social thing to do.

Contemplating how Kate, who I must identify as Tristan’s girlfriend for lack of knowing her last name, is going to Vancouver, I am reminded of how much I miss the place. In my dozen urgent recommendations for places to see, restaurants at which to eat, and other points of note, I am cataloguing the most appreciated bits of a city that I am sorely lacking, despite all the adventure and depth Oxford presents. Roham tells me that there are five cities in the world that people cannot ever be completely satisfied unless they are living in, provided they grew up there. Vancouver, Syndey, and San Francisco are the ones I remember. Perhaps he will fill me in again on the other two. Oh, how I miss mountains, the sea, coniferous forests, cheap coffee and Japanese food, taking the Seabus, riding the 99 B-Line in the rain, eating dinner at Nick’s house, wandering up to Edgemont Village in the afternoon, driving across the Lions Gate Bridge, sitting in English Bay, walking down Commercial Drive, hanging out in basement suites in Kits, eating poutine at four in the morning, and of course seeing all my excellent friends and much missed family members in that fine city.

More eclectic than usual comments:

Take a look at these sweet Christmas toys. By ‘sweet,’ of course I mean ‘absurdly hilarious.’ My favourite: Star Wars: Jedi Force: Han Solo With Jet Bike. Funniest thing I’ve seen in a while.
I miss my Calvin And Hobbes books. Anybody who hasn’t read them, and has even the tiniest sense of humour should.
Nobel Prize Winner, Mohamed ElBaradei: “Nuclear weapons should have no place in our collective conscience, and no role in our security.” Very true.
One year ago today, I mailed my application to Oxford.
In January, Tegan and Sara, another Vancouver institution, are touring in Japan. Cool.
Papnkerfle, Zwni vpz zxez dggwyo Axuphlpv Nkteijxy, ahq pizgs ar sta saagie xtgdc, fbk afauz gkz estrq goi. Sgfvl ibs eg savvvvs lthtyinvpy hqn’f oyze atwhx vl gwi. Ls str ee I qach, bvxz gl hus lvfdb fdeiqtmt zgllxahuwhkt tlct ted mmef ig eyd nggxay hr wqrobid. Q ob njtd fo nroc wt xl. Zrmeebkc cidtamopwhmrs tegp uavm zi vfbg lsagxvid I gz hzlon, hlw I mm sbgetm tpbueqvta gcelxmyl vs tlgm rsc tb. Ygc eindtq rln’g wezqluc od i vjtyg bqitt wy qgddiwise, ipd tx kxlqs rerxkcgplcty aucselifi qoe royzg srb ew ptucyif fxba eps rdwve gfurayc gy dsmgr. I lqpq me hwrca byg nmjn heye fsd tnra. (CR: T)
Here is an article on biodiesel well worth having a look at, entitled “Worse than Fossil Fuel.”

Day of illness

Today was not a fun day. I was feeling exceedingly ill from the moment I first woke through the whole period of trying to eat, trying to read, and trying to sleep. After a day of that, I am feeling somewhat better, though definitely not up to going to Claire’s bop. I am really hoping that this will mark the end of a strange cycle of sleeplessness, total lack of hunger, and generalized illness that comes and goes without predictability.

A measure of how poor my productivity today was can be had from the fact that I didn’t even manage to read one hundred pages. At least I managed to finish The Tipping Point: a book I recommend. I shall have to do much better tomorrow, and I am resolved to derive some good out of all this by at least resetting my sleep schedule to something much closer to normality. Given the rather large number of tasks I assigned myself for the break – reading, house hunting, scholarship applications, etc – it has been particularly frustrating to be of such diminished capability. From that frustration stems my determination to deal with all of this with alacrity and effectiveness.

In a sense, the Estonia trip has now begun. Sarah is in New York: apparently spending much of her time visiting the excellent libraries there. New York is a place that I shall have to visit again either with a friend or when I have someone there to spend time with. Sarah will arrive in England sometime around the 16th, when I am meant to be meeting her in Radlett in order to proceed to Stansted.

I am off to bed now, ridiculously early, in hopes of pulling off this re-adjustment of somnolent patterns. In the morning, I should be meeting Claire for coffee, before she goes to Kent for Christmas.

A Neuromancer style hack, described by Bruce Schneier.
I bought my first Christmas gift today, and I think it’s a rather good one. Others for North America will need to be dispatched soon.

Truncated entry: tired, alas

I went for a walk with Emily tonight. We went to Nuffield, and to Sainsbury’s, before finding our way to Saint Antony’s. On the way home, I ended up at a party of Gleider’s involving many lawyers. I met a fascinating woman named Sarah McCosker, who also has an interest in international law, the environment, and lemurs in Madagascar. I hope that I shall see her again soon.

Later, I had a long conversation with Tristan and Jessica. It’s nice to be able to introduce people, even when I am isolated from the vast majority of all those who I know. Those who don’t already have it should get Skype. I promise to introduce you to someone cool.

I am too tired to write more.

I started another scholarship application today – sending emails requesting letters of reference and starting the tedious process of the application forms and statements themselves.

Back to reading

Since all of the Waltz and Mearsheimer books seem to have been plucked from the Wadham Library – and no surprise, since neorealists are selfish and wicked – I started Keohane’s Neorealism and its Critics today. I shall have to find The Tragedy of Great Power Politics and the Theory of International Politics somewhere, before I go to Estonia.

The progression of much appreciated pieces of mail continued today. My mother sent me a package for St. Nicholas Day, including candy, a toque, and a book. The book is Malcolm Gladwell’s The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference. The toque is synthetic, reversible, and warm-seeming. I anticipate being especially glad to have it in Estonia, though one with short hair can never really have enough things with which to cover one’s increasingly valuable brain. Pickled, mine would now be worth Pounds and Pounds. Many thanks to my mother for the gift.

I finished listening to the third book in the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy series, as played on the radio, today. I much prefer the books. To me, the voice acting is overdone to the point of being annoying. Somehow, it manages to be dramatically less funny off the page – to me, at least. It may be that I know the books so well, there was no chance the same jokes in another medium would really work. That said, I have never enjoyed the radio, with the singular exception of when I used to listen to it with Alison at the middle of the night, when we were in elementary school.

Talking with Jonathan this evening, I learned that my friend Emerson got into a collision with another cyclist on the Lions Gate Bridge. Thankfully, and as you would expect, he was wearing a helmet. Though shaken up badly, he doesn’t seem to be in serious danger. Because one of the bike lanes is closed for construction, people going in both directions have to do so on the same sidewalk. I hope he recovers quickly and completely and that people who knew him from Handsworth or Camp Fircom will take the effort to check in on him.

Later this evening, I donned my waterproof, wide-brimmed hat and set out into the rain to meet Claire. We visited the Eagle and Child, where I once went in search of IR M.Phil students but was turned away empty handed. Tonight, we had a nice conversation about travel, photography, alcohol sociology, high school peer groups, and much else. Claire also told me something about the composition of our core seminar for next term. Canadians will be envious to learn that Jennifer Welsh is one of the two seminar directors. At UBC, I remember her being described to me as “one of Canada’s most brilliant and accomplished young minds.” I was also glad to hear that Bryony, Alex, and Emily will still be part of my group.

After leaving the pub, I had the chance to see the inside of her college, and we chatted for a while with the barman about scotch and North Carolina: yet another of these ubiquitous North Carolinians in Oxford. St. Cross is a very modern looking college on the inside, as I noted to Claire. There is something about the way discourse flows at all graduate colleges that I can’t actually explain yet, but that I can spot readily.

General comments:

Does anybody know when the police bike auction next term will be? I’d also like to know where they happen and what I would expect to pay for a used bike in good condition. Also, I need to figure out where I can get a helmet, lights, and a lock for a tolerable price. It’s annoying that I have all of those things back in Vancouver, but it would almost certainly cost more to ship than to buy here: especially if I can sell it in summer 2007.
I am worried about Frank. His posts are stranger than usual lately, and rather more self-destructive.
I need to devise a way to get from Oxford to Stansted Airport by about 4:45am on the 16th. Probably, a rather better idea is to find my way to Sarah’s house the evening prior. It’s in Radlett, which means nothing to me, but I will figure it out.
There’s a new episode of the excellent web comic Nine Planets Without Intelligent Life. You should take a peek.

Nerdy computer stuff:

Trying to get the blog to render properly in all browsers is a pageant of frustration. In IE, the sidebar sometimes appears at the bottom, sometimes on the side. This seems to vary between different computers and different versions of IE. In Safari, the font is entirely wrong: Serif instead of Sans-Serif, much too large, and bold when it shouldn’t be. Anyone with godly knowledge of CSS and HTML who feels inclined to help me will be praised most highly and received with profound appreciation. I really shouldn’t be spending so much time mucking around with this.
On a closely related note, not even PDF files, whose entire raison d’etre is to render identically in all environments, are no longer properly standardized. What is a mildly obsessive self-publisher to do?
One bug in Firefox 1.5: for some reason, pages I visit keep getting added to the Bookmarks Toolbar, without my ever requesting it.
Another: RSS feeds that are bookmarked will not display if opening them doesn’t leave enough space to the right to show the box.
Another: sometimes, the reload button vanishes
Blogger has been so slow and unreliable in the last few days that I am considering switching blogging services entirely, not just hosting servers. Which do people recommend and why?

Re-hydrated and bursting with vitamins and minerals

Without entirely meaning to, I have become nocturnal: going to sleep with the rising of the sun and waking eight hours later at nightfall. Now, I just need a black trench coat, a lot of eye makeup, and some piercings. While I’ve always had a generalized dislike towards the yellow cancer ball that looms in the sky – going back, perhaps, to my short-lived baseball days – it may not be socially or academically viable to live outside its time of ascendance.

I spent the time between about 7:00am and 4:30 having some of the stranger dreams of my life. There were live action levels from GoldenEye, as well as a lengthy dream entirely in the form of a peculiar kind of line animation. It reminded me of a series of nine drawings I once saw in a psychology textbook, as well as one exhibit at the Tate Modern. I also remember frantically enciphering things on Jonathan’s old Mac, in his former basement bedroom.

After waking up properly at 4:30pm, still feeling quite ill, I headed off to buy soup and vitamins, as I haven’t eaten anything today and don’t feel up to solid foods. That’s in addition to a newfound skepticism towards bagels as a source of nutrition. Thankfully, this evening was unusually warm; so much so that walking around in a shirt and Gore-tex outer jacket was perfectly pleasant. Hopefully, that trend will project north and east during the next two weeks or so.

On my way to buy nutritious liquids, on account of an ongoing gastrointestinal filibuster against anything more substantial, I received an unexpected package from Amazon.co.uk. I also got all my thank-you letters to family members not yet savvy with the electronic mail returned. Apparently, if you put the return address in small letters in the top left corner of the envelope in the UK, they send it back to you saying “Have a 1st class Christmas.” How kind.

Anyhow, back to this mysterious package. Included therein: a photography book, Lego-branded disc shooting weapon, and short note, not including the identity of the sender. If this was an oversight, anyone who sends me an email with the title of the book will get the credit for an appreciated gift. Otherwise, I shall direct it towards the world in general, particularly insofar as it includes my anonymous benefactor. Who would have thought that the day after I acquired my own webspace, and thus proper webmaster status, I would also own a Lego Bionicle 8613 Disk Launcher. Superior Geek weaponry, that.

Aside from two months worth of multi-vitamins and minerals, I now have some five litres of soup and three of fruit juice. I am assering the aforementioned newfound skepticism about grains, base of the Health Canada Food Pyramid as they may be. I personally suspect that the Saskatchewan Wheat Pool got through to them. 10-12 servings a day? It definitely seems to me that someone has been Scrooge McDucking it in one of those whole silos.

I spoke with Neal tonight, who has returned from Hong Kong, where he spent his birthday. Apparently, it looks as much like the setting of Ghost in the Shell as you might expect. (See, for instance) It sounds like an incredible city, and one that I would very much like to visit. I look forward to seeing the photos that he took there and will be placing online. I will put a link here when he does. He didn’t see any ghost-hacked humans, which is probably good, on account of their being so pathetic it’s a shame. Marc and Rae have moved on to Taiwan, Neal back to Beijing.

Nora leaves for North Carolina tomorrow, so I really must go spend some time with her.

Blog housekeeping projects: 1) Produce a list of known issues, such as the sidebar bug in some versions of ie. 2) ~~Finish transferring images from October and September onto the new server.~~ 3) Produce some non-chronological, non-blog pages, such as a short FAQ and perhaps some important excerpts from the old blog. 4) Create some kind of members area. 5) Produce a better Error 404 page. 6) Fix the weird gaps that keep appearing at the top of blockquotes. ~~7) Fix all internal links to refer to the new URL.~~

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Short days, new projects

After having coffee with Sheena, about which I shall not write, I read the second portion of Iain Pears’ An Instance of the Fingerpost. The character whose account it is, Jack Prescott, is one of the least likable in fiction. He is a hot-headed bigot: a liar, rapist, and betrayer. That the story ends well for him is entirely as displeasing as the gruesome conclusion of the first part. Not, in any sense, a cheerful book. That said, the occasional foray into murder, treason, and intrigue is very much necessary for the committed reader of fiction. I quite enjoyed the discussions of cryptography in the third section, which I have not yet finished.

The book is set in the time shortly after Cromwell took over – not the nicest period in history. The violence, the bigotry, and the ignorance demonstrated in the book all reaffirm my belief that the world is generally improving. That’s not to say that these things are no longer present but, at the very least, that they must now generally be apologized for and defended, rather than be taken as automatically acceptable. It’s an unfashionable thing, these days, to believe in progress. First off, it involves the making of ontological claims that people no longer see as firmly based – which has some truth to it, but not enough to counter the evidence of overall improvement. Secondly, it requires the determination to judge the morals and practice of one place and time against another. While there are obviously difficulties in doing so – particularly insofar as the matter of individual and group identity is concerned – that doesn’t seem adequate to conclude that no such comparisons can be made with validity. I would suppose that people given the chance to choose between living in some past age or the present one would choose the latter, largely because of the enormous benefits of modern medicine and nutrition, but also due to imperfect but helpful systems of justice and notions of philosophy and morality.

That’s not to say there isn’t a long way to go: especially in areas like women’s rights, the environment, and the just distribution of goods: material, social, and political.

Summer job search:

This afternoon, I ran a mass of errands. Aside from boring bank stuff and groceries, I stopped by the Oxford University Career Services office. As you can see in the photo above, it looks like a very curious combination between the outside of a castle and the inside of a Church. It is up on Banbury Road, near the Computing Services offices and St. Antony’s College.

Speaking with one of their advisors, I was told that banking and management consulting would both be real long shots for me. As the advisor told it, the problem isn’t really a lack of experience in either area, or even in business generally. The first problem is the time span. Trinity term ends on the 17th of June and Michaelmas term begins in early October. Even if I wanted to work for that whole period, it would only amount to three and a half months or so. The second problem is the fact that I am not interested in a career in banking or consulting. The advisor stressed the fact that this would severely hinder my ability to find a job in these areas for such a short period of time.

As alternatives, she suggested looking for short term work in the research, publishing, or public sector administration areas. She also stressed the possibility of finding a job within the university and the importance of canvassing my professors and supervisor about it. I will ask Dr. Hurrell about it again the next time we meet, to discuss my paper on American foreign policy during the interwar years.

At the very least, I would want something that would pay the cost of living in Oxford or London and allow me some time to do research on my thesis. I am fairly sure it would be possible to devote the bulk of the period to full-time work: something I would do if it stood the chance of helping me pay for next year or reduce my outstanding student debt. The ideal job would probably be a research position in Oxford, in a field that is of interest and relevant to my degree, and which offered at least some time off to travel and do research.

The advisor explained that it is getting a bit late to apply for banking and consulting jobs, but it is too early to apply for most other sorts. As such, I should dig through job listings from previous years and get some sense of what is likely to come up. Another project for the break, two other two big ones being scholarship applications and preliminary house hunting for next year.

Travel preparations:

It is eleven days, now, until Sarah and I leave for Tallinn.

Right now, it is six degrees Celsius colder in Tallinn than in Oxford, making it the same temperature there as in Toronto. While that is certainly chilly enough, it won’t be the kind of weather that requires balaclavas and threatens severe frostbite from brief exposures to the outside. Looking through the guide book that Nora gave me, I am excited about the prospects for seeing and doing interesting things in Tallinn. Additionally, I am looking forward to seeing Helsinki. Gabe Mastico, who I know from debate at UBC and who is now living in Helsinki, is going to let Sarah and I use his apartment while he is in Vancouver. Since we don’t actually have a hostel registration in Tallinn yet (something that I should make in the next few days, quite probably), that might be especially valuable. Also, I will be able to say that I have seen ‘the Baltic region’ much more fairly if I go to two capitals, rather than just one.

Here’s a question about encryption, to which I am seeking an answer. It’s an issue that I find puzzling, and which never occurred to me before a friend raised the question today.
I am not feeling at all well. All of my joints and lymph nodes hurt – especially the ones near my subclavian arteries. I am going to get soup and vitamins tomorrow.