Society in lockdown

With the humanitarian disaster aside, those of us in lockdown have an unusual view of society. Where I live, there are several supermarkets and busy roads, so when I look out of the window, it is usually an endless parade of yuppiemobiles. Now, with all the unessential jobs being closed, I can see modern society

The University is closed for the foreseeable future

We are in unprecedented times – I really mean it this time! The university has been closed; as a PhD researcher, this presents somewhat of a challenge. Many of you will be in a similar or worse situation, and I hope all works out well for you – I am confident it will. Due to

Digital cleaning – 95

For the last three months, my computer has been performing very poorly, and I have been spending many a weekend trying to figure out why. Well, I have finally fixed the problem, it turns out there was an issue with my cooling, after several minutes of the computer being on it had reached 100°C –

Wishing you all a happy New Year!

It is the end of the year by date, and I thought I would wish everyone a belated Merry Christmas and a happy New-Year. I have been spending some time away at the parent’s house, and purposefully ignoring everything that is part of my ‘usual-life’ which includes this blog. For me, 2019 has been a

Democracy and bending the rules – 96

We had an election here in the UK yesterday (yes this was written in December). Because of this, I have been reflecting on why we, as a society, tend to vote against our best interests. I used to believe that it was because people were ignorant and therefore easily tricked into voting against their interests.

Contentment of Perseverance – 94

An avocado, apple and a banana walk into a fridge. As part of my research, I am looking at how things degrade in the consumer environment. By consumer environment, I mean a refrigerator. I will be capturing the colour change of various salad products; then showing the resulting time-lapse images to ‘consumers’, so we can

The great restorer – 94

One odd side-effect of being a student that I did not anticipate is the financial efficiency that I have had to develop. For me, this has developed into a habit of fixing and maintaining things myself rather than paying other people or buying new items. I spent four hours today changing the bottom bracket in

On not being a sell-out – 93

This one is not going to be related to my escapades as a PhD student as I have something else I would like to write about. It is something that I have been thinking about for a few years, but I have not had my thoughts gathered sufficiently as to explain them to you until

Moving house – 91

This is the 91st entry into my weblog, since starting this in October 17 I have only missed a few weeks. Most of those that I have lost have been in the last few months. I’ll be the first to admit that my levels of motivation for writing and my PhD, in general, are at

The institutionalisation of I – 90

I have not been very active on here for the last few months. The reason for this is that I have had next to no motivation to write. I have spent a lot of time on a website called Kaggle, which is a website for competing in data science tasks. So, it is not as