2007 Archives

40 Days On Facebook

I’ve been playing with Facebook for the last 40 days or so, to see if it’s any good. Here’s some of the things I’ve observed that I like (and don’t like) about it, followed by my conclusions:

Observations

In no particular order.

Nice. It’s a good platform for keeping up-to-date with your friends for the “littler things” that don’t really warrant blog entries, for helping you remember your friends’ contact details, birthdays, etc., for quickly sharing photos without too much hoo-hah, and so on.
Nice. It imports XML feeds, so you can integrate your Facebook presence with your blog or whatever else.
Nasty. It doesn’t export XML feeds! What is this, the middle ages? There’s a slight risk that some users may begin to use Facebook “notes” as substitute for blogging, and I and others who depend on RSS/Atom will end up not reading what they write as a result of it, but the notes system is pretty simplistic (as it should be) so it’s not terribly likely, at least for the time being.
Nasty. Searching for people is a little clunky: it could at least allow me to filter by country, or intelligently suggest people from my own country before showing me people in other countries.
Nice. Easy bulk-addition of friends from your address book. I’m an untrusting bugger, so I wouldn’t give them my webmail passwords (but I know others who have), but the CSV import tool, combined with a little scripting, quickly achieved very similar results, plus more.
Nice. Unlike many other social networking sites (and particularly the ridiculously bad myspace), it doesn’t allow arbitrary HTML to be splattered all over your profile page, so at least the user interface stays consistent and you’re not horribly vulnerable to cross-site scripting attacks every time you use it.
Nice. Good reciprocal “friends” system (including a wealth of FOAF-like “how do you know this person” links that make for interesting exploring when you start looking through your circle of friends) and well-designed privacy options so user have a great deal of control over who sees what.
Nasty. On the other hand, some people still seem to treat it like myspace: trying to join the most groups, have the most friends, or whatever, as if it were some kind of popularity contest. This probably also extends to people with silly names. Thankfully, they’re pretty few and far between, and – at least in my experience – they don’t harass you with endless messages a-la myspace.
Nice. The ads (it’s mostly an ad-supported service) are sparse and discreet. No big flashing animGIFs, flash, or banners.
Nasty. I can see why they’ve done the “networks” thing, but it can get on your tits until you get the hang of it. Why can’t I be in an alumni network for Aberystwyth? Because I didn’t have a Facebook account when I was at Aberystwyth, apparently. Why couldn’t Matt join the original Troma Night group? Because it, like me, was in the Wales regional network (because I hadn’t specified otherwise when I created it, and he’s not in Wales, is he!).

Conclusions

It’s a nice little social networking platform. It suffers from a lack of subscribable output feeds, a very slight “myspace factor” amongst some of it’s users, and weak search tools. However, it does a remarkably good job of providing a secure environment in which to publish your up-to-date contact and other personal information to your friends, share photos, pass simple messages around, arrange events, and discover the links within your friendship groups. I’ve heard good things said about using it instead of Friends Reunited and similar services, for getting in touch with old friends, but I’m not interested in that – I just like to be able to keep in touch more easily with the friends I have.

I’m making the Facebook team aware of these comments (and gripes) and hopefully it’ll become even better. In the meantime: if you haven’t tried it, I’d recommend giving it a go: they’ve got a nice, ethical account closure policy if you decide it’s not for you. A 40-day test drive had me… not hooked like some people, but… contented and impressed nonetheless: something I genuinely didn’t expect.

The Seven-Year Itch

You know that famous photo of Marilyn Monroe – iconic of the golden years of the silver screen – trying not-too-hard to hold down her dress against the wind effects of a subway train passing underneath? Well, apparently the film it’s from is a romantic comedy called The Seven Year Itch (1955), which is based on a 1952 play of the same name. I haven’t seen the film, but there’s plenty of fascinating trivia about it on the IMDb page if you’re interested. But I wasn’t planning on writing much about the film (or the play) anyway.

The story is about a man (played by Tom Ewell) who works as a publisher, in the process of publishing a book called The Seven Year Itch, which claims that a significant proportion of men have affairs after seven years of marriage. While his wife and son are out of town, he meets a young woman (played by Monroe). In the play, he has an affair with her, while the (in some ways cleverer) film adaptation sees him merely play out fantasies in his mind as he gets to know her: these fantasies are fleshed out with justifications for his infidelity – he imagines his wife cheating on him, too, and this makes him more comfortable doing the same.

It’s just a story, but it’s one with a grounding in statistics that were being observed even then: that many relationships go through a point at which break-ups and infidelity are more common after about 7 years. A more recent study, published in Development Psychology, indicated that there is another significant point – at least, in contemporary marriages – at which relationships are likely to fail, at about the four year mark. If you draw a graph of the length of time that broken marriages last, there are significant peaks at the four and seven year marks. Less widely-published studies exist (often for the purpose of testing if this phenomenon applies to relationships that do not involve marriage), and generally get similar results. I haven’t seen anything that looked at homosexual relationships, but I’d be interested in such a study if anyone’s seen one.

Several researchers have looked for biological explanations: four years is about the right amount of time (perhaps a little more) that, if a woman was impregnated at the beginning and was breast-feeding the child, she’d be fertile again and potentially looking for a more attractive mate. Conversely, it’s about the right amount of time that a male can be sure that a genetic rival isn’t going to kill his child (or impregnate his female), and can move on. All of these (and many more) theories draw on things we believe we’ve learned about the behaviour of early human societies, which sadly doesn’t amount to much. The seven-year mark is harder to explain.

It’s all quite believable, though, once you exclude the speculation about the reasons for it and look at the statistics. Better yet, find some friends who’ve been in stable relationships for a long while, or who were in long-term relationships but then broke up, and find out the points at which things have been most difficult.

From personal experience: there has only been one point, so far, at which I wasn’t sure if Claire and I were likely to be able to maintain our relationship – shortly after we moved into The Place… and almost exactly four years since our relationship began. We had a particularly rough time of things, which we mostly blamed on the stress of moving house (didn’t get the same thing during the move to The Cottage, though) and various other complications in our lives (none of which caused the same kind of tensions when they repeated themselves, though). Perhaps it was just a combination of factors that gave us that "rough patch," or perhaps it’s something biochemical like the "four-year itch." Perhaps it’s partially that, and partially other things. I’m pretty sure Claire would tell a similar story about these particular couple of emotional months.

Claire and I’s relationship is fabulous now, and we’re actually "better at it," in my mind, than ever before (over the year since that troublesome period, we’ve learned a handful of great relationship maintenance and communication skills we’d not quite got fully worked-out beforehand, perhaps). It’s interesting, though, to look at that "four year" mark (give or take nine months or so) in other people’s relationships. I’ve spoken to a few, and while the line of questioning I’ve been using could be construed as "leading" and certainly wouldn’t pass as scientifically valid, it’s yeilded some interesting stories: some people tell tales of partners or partners of friends who cheated (or whose cheating become obvious) after about four years, or who went through a tough spot characterised by arguments or – more difficult still to deal with – a lack of communication. Others talk about break-ups at about that time, or about starting to them and their partner beginning to drift apart, looking for different things in their relationships.

I just thought it was quite interesting, and I wanted to share that thought with you. But if you’ve got any similar stories from your life or stories you’ve heard from others: let me know.

Dan, Inspired By Hippies, Gets Out Balls

Claire‘s dad and his wife visited us this long Easter weekend, and we took advantage of the stunning weather to do some of the usual touristy things that you only bother to do when friends or family come by – the cliff railway, the camera obscura, etc. – and so we ended up at the nearby Centre for Alternative Technology. The CAT, as it’s better-known to anybody who’s had to say it’s name more than once, has improved over recent years (I last went in 2002 with Claire; the summer we became “a couple”) and I was impressed to see many new exhibits.

Anyway, I’ve picked up a set of ecoballs (looking to buy? they’re cheaper elsewhere): they’re basically plastic balls with a spongy “ring”, filled with pellets of various minerals and surfactants. The idea is that you chuck the three of these (reusable up to 750 times, then refillable) balls into your washing machine instead of detergent and fabric softener, and wash at under 60°C. They’re advertised as being more ecologically-friendly than conventional detergents, but what attracted me to them was that they’re potentially cheaper (about 3p/wash, plus savings on skipping rinse cycles) and non-biological (biological detergents, while wonderful, have a habit of bringing me out in a rash).

Obviously I’ll let you know how they go – whether they’re worth getting – in about 1000 laundry cycles or so, although the BBC correspondent who used them last year might be more use. As far as the “Do they get stuff clean?” question goes, though, the answer would seem to be: yes. We baptised them last night with our bedclothes, and they came out wonderfully clean, although notably lacking that “clean clothes” smell we associate with the perfume of traditional detergents. If I can be bothered, I’ll do a couple of actual scientific tests, comparing washing a particular type of fabric with a selection of stains on it using normal detergents, ecoballs, and just water, and see how it goes. In the meantime, you’ll have to make do with blog-based reviews of individual washes.

Best Conspiracy Theory Ever

This has to be the best conspiracy theory I’ve ever read: this guy believes that the Galileo space probe that NASA crashed into Jupiter in 2003 (to avoid it being left in an unstable orbit and potentially crashing into Europa, which could affect the scientific value of the moon) is starting a nuclear reaction that will eventually turn Jupiter into a second sun, and that the reason NASA are no longer doing much active research on the Shoemaker/Levy 9 “black spot” impact (widely understood to be a comet impact) on Jupiter is because they don’t want to attract attention to what is actually the end of the solar system (he believes it’s the beginnings of a nuclear explosion) as we know it, caused by them.

Personally, I find it hard to believe that humans are making a significant impact on climate change on Earth, but this guy thinks that a single plutonium-238 core (not even a reactor, and not even the same kind of plutonium as is used in atomic bombs) dropped into Jupiter could cause a chain reaction that would suddenly make this into a binary system.

Update: within two years of writing this post my position had shifted and I clearly accept the scientific consensus of human impact on climate change. At the time, I didn’t have a full comprehension of the research and it didn’t “smell right”, so I was skeptical (although I didn’t ever dismiss it as wrong, just state that I was unconvinced). I credit several causes in the change in my belief, including Statto (with whom I had a lively debate both in the comments to this post and elsewhere). This, in turn, I occasionally use as evidence against the oft-made assertion that “nobody ever changed anybody’s mind by arguing on the Internet”! It’s also worth noting that I never doubted the fact of climate change and that humans needed to do something in response to it, only that humans caused it; obviously I was still wrong – sorry! – but at least I wasn’t wrong-and-in-a-position-of-authority.

It’s entertaining reading, though. I’m looking forward to Jimmy passing comment on it, soon.

Oh, and it’s Crystal Maze night tonight (The Cottage, 7pm) for anybody still around. We’ve only got two episodes of Series 2 left, so if we run out we may have to fall back on some Wiigaming or something.

Contraception advice please Claire Q!

Liz wrote:

A huge thank you to everyone who posted support last week. I felt alot better knowing that other people believed me.

Thankfully simon believed me too and the whole thing has made us a lot stronger.

Could I please ask for some advice from claire. Simon and i are having incredibly bad luck. The second condom in a month broke this morning and I am going to go yet again to have the morning after pill when the shops re-open tomorrow. I have been reading about getting an IUCD fitted and i was wondering about the logistics of it. I read that a doctor would need to fit it which is fine but do I ring my GP 3 hours drive away and ask for an appintment to talk about it, or can I get it sorted more quickly by contacting the sexual health clinic here and asking them if they can fit me in some time. I have no idea what questions i should be asking to be honest. i know the general things that the NHS can tell me about what the IUCD is and what the side effects are, that I will need a local anaethetic etc. I just need to get it sorted soon and i don’t want to go on the pill agai. I was crap at remembering to take them.

Oh my goodness though, guess what? I crashed my car into a post on friday night.

I’m really not having good luck at the moment.

At least i’m in love.

Liz
xxx

I’m sure Claire will post something soon. In the meantime, a quick conversation with her yeilded the following suggestions from the pair of us (we’ve been drinking, and we expect you’ll appreciate a sober answer from her tomorrow):

Before diving into the IUCD as a solution, be aware of some of the alternatives: Claire and I successfully used the injectable contraceptive for about a year, maybe more, without problem. You get an injection once every three months, so it’s hard to forget (and you can be up to a week late and still be covered), and it works in the same way as the pill, so if you’ve taken that without side-effect before, it’ll “work” for you. Plus, after the second or so injection, your periods will stop as your hormones become “levelled out”. Downsides: well, it’s an injection in the arse. It can be performed by any sexual health nurse, so you could probably get it done, like, tomorrow if you so wished.
Also consider the implant. Works the same way, again, but lasts 3-5 years. You *can* feel it in your arm, if you know where to fondle, but it’s otherwise very discreet. It’s added under local anasthetic, and is apparently only uncomfortable for a couple of days (and again when it’s removed or replaced).
Okay, now we’ll get onto the coil. I’ll share with you some of my experience of it, but bear in mind that Claire will undoubtedly have a lot more to say. Claire initially reported some discomfort and pain when having it inserted, owing to her small cervix (before 1990 or so, the IUD would typically only be offered to women who had given birth before, to reduce the risk of repeatedly jabbing the cervix with what is essentially a plastic tube from a biro). We decided on the IUCD based on several factors, including the fact that it lasts longer than the implant and that there is no local practitioner qualified to do the implant – factors that may not be relevant to you or have different importance weightings. In addition, there have been half a dozen times when I’ve felt the (quite sharp, be warned) “tails” of the coil during sex, and on one ocassion even managed to leave a mark. It’s always possible to maneuver the tails into a different position (either with a well-placed finger or simply by shifting sexual positions). Okay, disadvantages aside: the IUCD works from the second it goes in, can be used as a substitute to emergency contraception (so if you can find a doctor tomorrow, you’re laughing), and you’re theoretically fertile again from the second it comes out. Apparently there’s a risk that it can come out of it’s own accord (happened to an aunt of mine once), but again, for a non-mother, it’s very unlikely.

Did I mention you have to have check-ups on the coil for weight gain? Perhaps you do for the implant, too, but – if you can stomach it – the implant seems to me to be a preferable option. Just my thoughts.

Oh; and if you’re considering switching from a barrier to a hormonal method of contraception, and you haven’t already, it’s a great excuse to get tested for all the other things a barrier keeps you safe from. Make a day trip of it and see the STD nurse: you know you want to!

Good luck with it. Claire and I are, I’m sure, available for whatever questions you can throw at us – between us, we’ve tried pretty much every contraceptive method under the sun.

Troma Night CLXXI

Well, it’s that time of week again, and despite Bryn having left town (oh yeah, I promised to put a blog post up for him, didn’t I – okay, well: this is it: Bryn’s left, we filled up the van on Thursday night and set him off to his new home and new job) and Paul being away – as well as the usual Easter quietness – it shouldn’t be too quiet, ‘cos Matt‘s bringing his sister (who’s been before, if I remember correctly) and her boyfriend (who hasn’t).

Anyway; I haven’t a clue what we ought to watch, but I’m sure I can rustle something up by 8pm.

Oh; and onto the point of this post – Bryn’s left us with about three or more full bottles of vodka, plus several other bits and pieces of booze, so if you’re happy being on vodka for some or all of the night, just bring a mixer and you’re welcome to all you can drink, so long as you drink it in the memory of the fabulous times we’ve had at Troma Night with Bryn before now.

Smokeless Pub Crawl Tonight

In Aber? Pleased by the new smoking ban? Then come out with us tonight and we’ll visit what were the smokiest pubs in Aberystwyth for a drink or three. All welcome.

Sex Toy Recycling

Link of the day: SexToyRecycling.com. Yes, really.

Another Wonderful Troma Night

Like last week, yesterday’s Troma Night was another good old-fashioned long one. I’m amazed by the sudden splurge of Troma Night stamina that people have started exhibiting. Dr. Who at 7pm, then at 8pm, the first episode of Psych and some music videos, Sex Madness and They Live. The pizza was delivered on time and on budget and right to the front door without me having to wave down the street to a lost deliveryman. Then we went out to the Inn on the Pier for more food (for folks who’d missed the pizza earlier) and drinks, before returning to The Cottage for the fantastic new comedy (or is it a tragedy?) Stranger Than Fiction. We finished sometime after 3am.

Oh, and it’s Crystal Maze night tonight. Just so you know.

Troma Night CLXX

Troma Night tonight is at The Cottage. We’ll be kicking off at the earlier-than-usual time of 7pm to watch the first episode of the new series of Dr. Who. At 8pm, we’ll start again, with Sex Madness, a short film from 1938 that acts as a cautionary tale against the dangers of parties, pre-marital sex, and lesbianism. Our original proposal after this was to watch the stunningly bad surreal sci-fi comedy that is Tank Girl as part of an ongoing plan to see every bad guy role that Malcolm McDowell has ever played, but we’re having difficulty getting hold of a copy (anybody else got one?), so we might be watching new comedy Stranger Than Fiction instead. In any case, that’s liable to leave us open to a third option, for which suggestions are welcome. MST3K, perhaps?

Another Window To Dan’s Subconscious

As you know by now, I enjoy sharing with you all the more memorable of my typically trippy little nocturnal slideshows. I didn’t sleep well last night, but between waking up at strange intervals I recall the following fragments of dream, which my near-waking brain has somehow tried to wrap together into a single episode with strange jumpy “scene changes.”

Here’s what I dreamt:

Claire, Bryn, Liz and I were camping, sharing a large tent in a campsite somewhere summery and green (think I’ve dreamt of camping in the same place before; can’t remember when). We were in the central “communal” area of the tent, brightly lit from the sun shining through the walls, when Penny arrived. Somehow we ended up taking turns to dare Penny into removing articles of clothing, but only so far before – to everybody else’s disappointment – she stopped playing.

Instead, the five of us trekked out of the campsite, climbed a wall, and found ourselves in a village. We went to the village station and boarded an express train, and I found that I was the driver. I was only a trainee driver, however, and my actions were being supervised by Simon (my boss), also in the cab, who generally seemed approving of how I was doing. At some point, a seagull crapped on the windscreen, which somehow resulted in bird shit landing on the controls of the train, which Simon didn’t approve of, and I hastily cleaned it up with paper towel.

The train arrived at a city (somewhat reminiscent of Manchester), and I rejoined Bryn, Claire and Liz on the platform (not sure where Penny had disappeared to; seemed to make sense at the time), and they indicated that there was somewhere in the city we were supposed to go, but I told them that I knew the way and I’d catch up, because I had something else I needed to do first. I took a left off a main street where they carried on, and entered a shopping centre. It was dark outside now, and I was surprised that this shopping centre was open so late. All of the shops were still open, but that wasn’t what I was here for.

I got into an elevator alongside a smartly-dressed woman. She pressed the button for the second floor. The elevator stopped at the first floor, revealing a restaurant above the shops. People tried to get in, but the woman in the lift said that she was going up, not down, and they stayed out. The woman seemed surprised that I didn’t get out. When we got to the second floor (filled with offices), she challenged me, asking what business I had up there. I used a little cold reading and a name-drop to sufficiently confuse her into thinking that I had some right to be there, and she left me alone.

Exploring the offices, most of which were empty and dark, I came across the left-on abandoned laptop of somebody who I suspected was the alias of a superhero (see, I’m smarter than Lois Lane!), and I tried to sift through the data on their computer to find evidence for this hypothesis. Realising that I was running out of time before I was found here, I tried to find a writeable CD or a flash drive or something to which I could copy the data I was uncovering, but hadn’t had much luck before Claire leapt out of bed and asked me a question about her dressing gown, which woke me for the last time.

And for some reason, I woke up humming Eiffel 65’s The Past Is Gone. Very odd.

So, after that – another trip into the somewhat fragmented world of my subconscious – I’d better get on with some work.

A Good, Long, Troma Night

Last Saturday’s Troma Night was really great: it’s been a long time since we’ve had such a long, energetic Troma Night. We opened with They’re Made Out Of Meat, a very short film we’d discovered on YouTube almost a year ago. We followed with Ele‘s recommendation, Serial Mom, the ludicrous Reign Of Fire (with an accompanying RiffTrax to make it bearable), and finished with the takes-itself-too-seriously drama Wedlock just shortly after the clocks went forward.

Thanks to everybody who came, especially those who battled through to the end and put up with the lost pizza delivery guy (I wish Hollywood Pizza’s staff turnover wasn’t quite so bad that we had to keep re-training the drivers that there is a library in town and that we don’t live on the University campus).

Many, Many Letters About My One Letter…

I’m not sure I’ve ever sent out so many letters in one batch before, but this morning I sent letters to my credit card company, the Inland Revenue, the National Insurance Contributions Office, my electricity company, my gas supplier, my water/sewerage supplier, my mobile phone company, my telephone company, my ISP, the TV Licensing Authority, the local council, and the Electoral Office. And there’s still half a dozen other organisations who won’t accept a photocopy of a Deed Poll certificate without at least taking a peep at an original, and a couple of local people around Aber (my letting agency, doctor, etc.) that I’ll just call by at lunchtime.

For those of you who plan to change your name at some point during your life – I’m looking in particular at Ruth, Suz, Hayley, etc. – here’s a tip: mail merge is your friend. Start by making a list of all the addresses you need to inform, and have your favourite word processor generate a template letter, then manually adjust the ones that need tweaking (to put account numbers on some or to make special requests on others). It won’t save a lot of time, but it’ll make you feel better about the whole thing.

A civil servant friend informs me that the Tax Credits database isn’t capable of storing surnames of only one character. I’ve no intention of needing to be on the Tax Credits database, but it’s an interesting point for database developers anyway.

Right; I’m feeling productive – better get back to work before the feeling passes.

De-Stressing

Now that Paul and I have finished our work with the Student Skills Competition, I’ve recovered (mostly) from my cold, and the conversation I’d been apprehensive about this morning is over with, a lot of the stress I was experiencing earlier in the week

has become managable again. There’s still plenty on, but it’s all looking a bit more pleasant from here on.

I just wanted to say a big thank you to everybody who put up with me while I was being unpleasant, and a particular thank you to Ele, who picked exactly the right moment to give me a hug and a Kinder Surprise Egg, the toy from which I’ve just now got around to building (busy? me? never…)

In order that I don’t just fill Abnib with cliché crap about the various ups and downs of my life, here’s a fun link: Warbears is a wonderful Flash puzzle/memory game that distracted me for a long time while I worked out how to finish even the first mission. Have a play.

An Experiment I Want To Try

Scott Adams has just written an article proposing an experiment that I’d like to try. Research has shown that people are significantly more likely to believe something that conflicted with their previous beliefs if they write about it: in the experiments that lead to this discovery, volunteers were asked to write about a viewpoint other than their own on a given issue, and it was observed that within a few months there was a reasonable likelyhood that they had changed their beliefs to those they justified in writing. It turns out that making people read about a point of view is not nearly so effective at persuading them to adopt it as making them write an argument for it does.

This experiment involves standing around somewhere with a clipboard and offering a token reward (a quid, or a chocolate bar, or something) in exchange for participating in a study into handwriting when writing lies (this isn’t actually what we’re doing, but hey…). Participants are asked to write a couple of sentences about how attractive the experimenter is, and, if they’re willing to be contacted about "further research," to leave their e-mail address or phone number (on an appropriately laid-out form).

Some time later, the experimenter will have a list of contact details for people, many of whom will find the experimenter more attractive than they did when they first met. It’s an instant "little black book."