• Project Syzygy

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    For a weblog that’s supposed to be about ‘massively multiuser online entertainment’, I’ve been awfully quiet about the entire genre. Well, that ends now – at least partially. For a while now, I’ve been involved in a London-based venture called Project Syzygy which is developing what I feel is one of the most astonishingly innovative…

  • CopyLeft

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    EasyMusic and Copyleft – interesting to see that Stelios is considering dabbling in the world of Copyleft music: “We are currently investigating business opportunities in the area of music downloads, especially following the ‘copyleft’ principle. Copyleft is where music has no copyright at all so music can be freely downloaded from sites and exchanged between…

  • Self-Service

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    I was on my way into Marks and Spencers foodcourt today when I was stopped dead in my tracks by the sight of self-service checkouts. I know these checkouts are not uncommon in the US but I’d never seen them anywhere in this country until now. For the uninformed, self-service checkouts allow customers at shops…

  • Royalty

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    At about 12:30pm today, Elizabeth II, by the Grace of God, of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and Her other Realms and Territories Queen, Head of the Commonwealth, Defender of the Faith, sailed past South Parks Road roughly two metres away from me in her Queenmobile and disappeared into the new…

  • Superluminal

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    An excerpt from a BBC News story about a new Russian missile: “Colonel Baluyevsky gave few details of the new missile which was tested on Wednesday, but said it was one that moved five times the speed of light.” Wow, that’s some seriously good engineering they’ve got over there in Russia. If I lived in…

  • Snapshot

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    The feeling of total, horrified incredulity is not one that I get to enjoy very often, but this afternoon I had a stiff dose of it. For the past week or so I’ve been working on some tissue samples that have probably seen close to a dozen hours of solid work going into them. Today,…

  • Ack!

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    Ack! I spent ten long hours at the lab today in an experiment that, while conducted essentially flawlessly, yielded no scientific results whatsoever. All part of the process, I suppose. I eventually got home a little before 8pm and less than an hour later I allowed myself to be dragged out to a jazz event…

  • The Sunny State

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    After a week of dismal weather and tiring winds that sap all of the enjoyment out of cycling, not to mention dozens of niggling problems at the lab and a whole host of other things, things have finally started to improve here in Oxford. Yesterday I found out that I’ll be going to a vision…

  • Inarticulate

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    The Guardian’s Life section (science) has an article about the impenetrable writing favoured by scientists when writing in journals. This is hardly a new development but it’s no less interesting or disappointing for it; what is disappointing is that the author, Chris McCabe, has reduced this interesting subject to a directionless and misguided article, which…

  • Remembrance of Books Past

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    Remembrance of Books Past – an article by Ray Bradbury in which he talks about the idea of rewriting books from memory; a never-realised sequel to Fahrenheit 451. “Why not a sequel to ‘Fahrenheit 451’ in which all the great books are remembered by the Wilderness People and are finally reprinted from memory. What then?…