It turns out Roddy Lumsden of “Vitamin Q”:http://vitaminq.blogspot.com/ is the partner of one of my fellow PhD students. His is a slightly unusual blog in that it refers neither to the author’s life nor to world events – it is a daily-updated collection of (very) miscellaneous trivia, which has now been made into a “book”:http://www.chambersharrap.co.uk/chambers/catalogue/0550101454.php (available for £7 from Amazon UK) just in time for Christmas. Although I am studying people whose sites say something about who they are and his gives little away on that score I found it v interesting to talk to him nonetheless about his relationship with his audience – he might turn out to be pilot interview #1 of my thesis…

A cute link for someone feeling a little lonely or un-loved guaranteed to make them feel better. (I don’t usually pass this kind of thing on but this is inoffensive – indeed a little heartwarming – and only takes a few seconds of your day to check out…

P.S. If you are an academic who reads blogs this may be the 100th time you read about this but Google has just entered the scholarly research market with “Google Scholar”:http://scholar.google.com/. There’s a short article about it in the “New York Times”:http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/18/technology/18google.html?oref=login&pagewanted=print&position=

I was pleased to discover that according to Google Scholar the one article I am known for so far – ‘Lost in Cyberspace’, which I wrote while at New Scientist – has been cited 25 times online and in journal articles.

Like Danah I plan to stop taking as obsessive an interest in US politics since there is nothing much I can do about it in the next four years.

I’ll still be paying attention to various other political issues, however, here in the UK and Europe…

Remember I thought I had “lost 10 years of email?”:https://blog.org/archives/cat_personal_old.html#001218 Thanks to the intervention of a friend and ex-colleague at “Personal Computer World”:http://www.pcw.co.uk/, Frank Leonhardt*, I have my data back at last. All I have lost is the roughly 400 emails I have sent via web-based email which I assume there is no easy way to import into my outbox (well I haven’t exactly lost them – they are still on the web – but they are not indexed like the others.

*He runs a London-based general-purpose IT consultancy including data recovery – do give his service a try!

Apple’s new “iBook G4”:http://www.apple.com/uk/ibook/ is an awfully tempting bit of kit for an ex-Mac owner who has long strayed from the Apple path. I have been looking for a small. light and inexpensive laptop for ages but the PC market seems to be concentrating on ever-bigger ones (unless you want to pay a small fortune). I left Apple because System 7 was less stable and offered a smaller variety of Internet applications than Windows did at the time but now with “MacOS X Panther”:http://www.apple.com/uk/macosx/ based on Unix Apple once again offers a superior OS. Alas, I doubt I could justify the purchase to my wife. However if anyone out there has really enjoyed reading this blog and has “750 pounds”:http://store.apple.com/Apple/WebObjects/ukstore.woa/90701/wo/507beZar3Zp82CPaZE9zrCFahoV/0.0.9.1.0.6.25.1.0.21.3.1.1.0 ($US 1375) to spare* it would make a nice pre-Xmas surprise!
Thanks to Tech Digest for the info

*Not to seem mercenary as this blog is not run for profit but though it has run for three years and eight months and more than a thousand people read it each day I have not received any donations to date whether of cash or of stuff from “my amazon wishlist”:http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/redirect?tag=davidbrakeswe-21&path=registry/NNWN70BQ5SDT. Oh well…

Today I face my thesis committee and defend the research proposal I have spent the last year mulling over. Hopefully they will like this proposal enough that they will be giving some additional insights into alternative methods and approaches to theory so I can move on and start to actually gather some data (rather than telling me I need to go back and start again!)

I cannot understand why this government feels compelled to liberalise gambling laws in this country. I find it extraordinary that the Government would see casinos as a means of regional regeneration. Of course not all the bill is bad – it does ban advertising for online casinos and bans fruit machines from places without proper supervision like takeaways and minicab offices – but it also allows for more and larger casinos.

I can’t cite the relevant research but from what I remember the evidence suggests much of the money spent on gambling comes from the poor and the elderly and it flows to large multinational corporations (if anyone can refer me to hard data on this I would be interested). There are already 400,000 ‘problem gamblers’ in the UK and the Henley Centre suggests this bill could add another 300,000. According to Gamcare for each problem gambler 15 others are affected.

The Royal College of Psychiatrists found serious problems with the bill – in fact the joint committee heard from five groups all opposed to the bill. In addition the NHS’ Health Development Agency has produced an excellent article outlining some of the dangers.

I don’t recall any groundswell of popular enthusiasm for increased gambling being expressed – in fact one poll suggests 90% are opposed to further liberalisation.

I can’t understand why there isn’t more protest around this issue. The Salvation Army has responded to the government’s proposals but while it is criticising the bill it does not seem to be running any kind of online campaign.

To my dismay, not only did there seem not to be an anti-gambling lobby group on the BBC’s iCan site – it provides information on how to run a lottery to raise money for your cause! There’s an anti-gambling bill campaign there now however and I encourage you to join it and if you are in the UK see what your MP says about the bill and lobby him or her to stop it

I just discovered I have a powerful ally on this issue (if a strange bedfellow) the Daily Mail is running a campaign against the gambling bill as well. If you are in the UK you can join their campaign by emailing casino@dailymail.co.uk, giving your name and address, and saying you also oppose the gambling bill.

I noticed the arrival in London of “Bright Leaves”:http://www.brightleaves.com/ – a new film by an oddball American independent film-maker Ross McElwee – and on a whim I went with my wife to see it. While the premise of the film was promising (a grassroots view of the tobacco industry mixed with McElwee’s characteristic personal reminiscences) I found it more than usually self-indulgent so it was a bit of a disappointment.

However, I discovered to my surprise that McElwee himself was there as this was a premiere. I couldn’t resist the opportunity to thank him for producing his most memorable work, “Sherman’s March”:http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0091943/. It’s a pity that there doesn’t seem to be a European standard copy of that film available on DVD or tape…

Having finished a self-imposed game-free hiatus I just downloaded a bunch of game demos.
* Kohan II was OK but nothing special (rave reviews notwithstanding)
* Doom 3 wouldn’t run properly on my machine (no sound)
* Axis and Allies wouldn’t install at first then turned out to be very similar to Kohan II as it was produced by the same developer
* Medieval Lords, Nexus and Superpower 2 had no tutorial modes and just plunged you straight in to rather complex games so I became confused and bored
* Tribes: Vengeance had a demo that was so limited I couldn’t really get a flavour of the game.

I had been looking forward to hours of demo-playing fun to give myself a break after a tough couple of weeks but it looks like if I want to play anything I am going to have to play some of my old favourites – eg “Combat Mission”:http://www.battlefront.com/products/cmbb/cmbb.html. Or maybe this is the universe’s way of telling me I shouldn’t be playing games?

Yummy cake

Originally uploaded by derb.

Went to the lovely wedding yesterday of “Simon and Mary”:http://www.sandm.co.uk/ (more of my pix here, more of other people’s pix coming “here”:http://www.sandmwedding.co.uk/ shortly)

which they held in a cottage attached to “Kew Gardens”:http://www.rbgkew.org.uk/. I saw people there from my old computer journalist days I hadn’t seen for years. And by a bizarre coincidence the wedding was on the same day as the wedding of another friend a year ago yesterday. Ah lurve…