Feeling very conflicted about tuition fees.

I don't think they should exist, and that instead useful high-standard degrees should be freely available to people based on merit.

However I have the uncomfortable feeling that it's not going to be possible for me to come up with a definition of "useful" that doesn't exclude most non-vocational courses and more problematically a definition of "merit" that doesn't exclude, well, me.

Because if I'm excluding the middle-class kids that just want to hang around in school for an extra three years, why should I include people who are doing higher education degrees later in life "for fun"?

Today was my last exam of my last year of my Open University Mathematics degree. I get my results for the modules for this year in December. So while in theory I'm still an undergraduate, there is now nothing left to do but wait until the OU decide I'm a mathematician or not.

I feel wistful. I looked in the mirror earlier and thought "does this look like someone who now has a degree?".

I've put so much on hold for this year in order to finish this, and so far it hasn't sunk in that I've got free time now. In a way I hope it never sinks in, and that I always continue to treat my time as limited and try to get as much done as I can. I hope that I can continue to push myself (although certainly not as hard as this year) and do something with my time. I hope I don't just stand back and say "well, that's done, I've achieved adulthood, lets sit on the sofa and do sod all for the rest of my life".

I'm definitely taking a year off, but beyond that I'm not sure. I just can't imagine this not being a part of my life, a part of who I am. But politically it's hard to argue that the country should spend money on subsidising* a Masters in mathematics for my own pleasure and enjoyment when it could be paying for some future social worker to get a nice fun humanities degree to make them happy and confident about themselves. But that's a black hole of an argument.

By a strange quirk of timing and the postal system, the 2010/2011 mathematics and statistics prospectus from OU arrived today.

Oh, and the exam today? It totally rocked. MT365 is a seriously cool module.


*Yes I do pay a certain amount towards my OU modules, but I certainly don't cover the full cost. Thanks taxpayers!
Although since the OU modules are covered by my salary... thanks BBC licence payers too!
Hmm, this isn't at all awkward.

I am dead.
Dead from maths.
Death! Mathematical death!
Also, deadlines, looming exams and wine.
Death.

So, after having thought about this tactical voting business, I've come up with an idea for a change that could be made to our election system that would improve things:

Everyone gets not one, but two votes. Or more precisely, everyone gets a vote and an anti-vote. I'll explain by example. Imagine in an election there were three candidates, A, B and C, and so you could express the following sentiments:

"I want A to get in, but otherwise don't mind about the other two": vote +1 for A
"I want A to get in, and I really don't want B": vote +1 for A and -1 for B
"I don't mind about which of A or B get in, but I don't want C": vote -1 for C
"I've not been paying attention at all, but really like A": vote +1 for A and -1 for A

When the count is done, the number of votes each candidate gets is the total of the +1 votes they received minus the total of the -1 votes they received. There should probably be some rule that it is impossible to win with a negative count, so if all candidates got a negative score then the process has to be started again.

There are a few problems with this system, the first of which (that people might not understand and think they just have two regular votes all of a sudden) I've already pointed out. I wonder whether in trying to avoid anti-votes all parties might end up converging, but that appears to be happening anyway. And the concept of a majority becomes a moving target rather than an absolute number.

But it does seem a neater way to express "Not X" than by having to vote for Y.

It is somewhat unfortunate, but whenever people talk about tactical voting these days I seem to be reminded of the following situation:

Imagine you are out for dinner with friends, where the purpose of the evening is to actually sit down and eat together rather than catch a bit to eat before a film or to graze at a buffet at a party. None of you have to rush off for any particular reason and you're all supposedly adults capable of making decisions for yourself, and you are all friends and at least tolerant of each other if not outright fond.

The main course is finished, the plates are being cleared away and the waiting staff enquire, would you like to see the dessert menu?

There then commences the largest amount of bet-hedging, "well I don't mind", unnecessary politeness, "I will if anyone else, oh I guess not", excuse making and faff.

The end result? No-one gets dessert, even though half the party wanted to and the other half really wouldn't have minded (especially if they could have had a coffee, or perhaps a spare spoon).



Now I am aware that this is about national politics, which is a lot more complicated than profiteroles, and that due to my address I am in the situation that I can have my chocolate cake and eat it. But the association, unfortunate as it is, seems to have stuck in my mind.

And yes, the title of this post is copied from a relatively recent Greta Christina blog post, which is actually about sex and not politics, so is almost certainly most interesting than this.

Last weekend I had my 30th birthday party, which went incredibly well. People came, there were cocktails, the venue was great, everything just happened as it should (the luxury of having someone else do the running around), the music was absolutely wonderful and I even got to dance with my dad.

So I'm really happy with that, and very proud of and thankful for my friends who helped celebrate my birthday with me.

Yet I have been feeling a little bit melancholy this week. Partly the come-down after running around organising (having used the phrase "it's my party" more times in the last month than in the last three years) but partly because I've been trying to get my head round what it actually means to be 30.

Now one could ask, why does being 30 have to have a meaning? I didn't worry about the significance of my birthday last year, so why does the divisibility of a birthday by 10 make a difference? But in a way that's like asking why people wear a suit and tie to job interviews for companies with an otherwise casual dresscode, or why despite decades of evidence to the contrary people think that snow on the 25th of December is the norm rather than the exception.

It is because it is. It's tradition and shared cultural ideas and a lot of other things that start tempting me to do that next Open University degree in sociology.

There'll be a few more posts on this theme.

The news of Michael Foot's death has just been round the office. On hearing the age he reached (96), a colleague and I had exactly the same reaction. And yes, it involved a reference to cricket.

( [POLL] too old, too young )

Part 1

Part 2

As it turned out, we couldn't get a vet's appointment until Monday morning so we had a feline guest for the weekend. Happily he turned out to know what a litter tray was, and he didn't seem at all interested in escape. Once we got a chance to look at him closely, we found quite a few scratches and marks on him although nothing particularly serious. We let him out of the spare room briefly to have a sniff around while Zet and Cleo were locking in the living room, and he was quite happy wandering around.

By Monday I was actually quite nervous about the visit to the vet. I was hoping it'd turn out that he was microchipped and from several miles away and we'd be able to re-unite him with his owner, but I was really worried that we'd find out that he was from the block we found him in front of and we'd have to give him back to someone who was rather obviously not looking after him at the moment.

In the end, neither were the case as our mystery ginger was unchipped. I then expected the vet to want us to put up loads of posters, knock on every door and try our hardest to track down his original owners. But apparently our vet cares more for animal welfare than human emotion, and since the cat seemed happy with us and we were willing to pay for all the appropriate inoculations and tablets the vet was happy for us to adopt him.

So Jasper got a new name, a worming tablet, a microchip, several injections and a test for FIV, which he tolerated with remarkably good manners. The vet isn't sure how old he is, as he's got oversized paws and tail but he's also starting to get big tomcat jowls. My bet is that he's about a year old, which means we first started seeing him when he was about 8-9 months old and no longer the cute little kitten that someone got and then lost interest in. This would also explain why he was never chipped or castrated, if they weren't really committed to him in the long term.

He spent the first few days in the spare room, then we started introducing him to Zet and Cleo. There's been a fair bit of hissing and posturing (mostly from Cleo, who really doesn't have social skills) but Jasper has been very placid and non-threatening and patient. It's only been a couple of weeks and they're already eating together, and we've even had a bit of nose-sniffing. So it's all going pretty well.

Yay, cats!

There is a possibility that I've just kidnapped someone's cat.

A month or two back I started noticing a ginger tabby sitting around outside the newish block of flats between us and Bermondsey tube station. Smallish cat with a ridiculously fluffy tail, and very affectionate. Since then I've seen the cat out quite a few time, including when we had the heavy snow, and at no time has the front door of any of the flats been open or has there been any sign of somewhere sheltered for the cat to sleep deliberately left in the front gardens. Or for that matter has anyone said "hey, that's my cat" when I've been scritching him.

By the way, when I say "front garden" what I mean is tiny railed off strip of land that's just there to keep people about a meter away from the windows. This point is relevant.

Recently we've been seeing the cat out a lot, and he's been getting increasingly affectionate to the point where it feels like he's pestering. Still no sign of him actually having access to any of the flats, and I think he's getting thinner. I saw him yesterday when he nearly followed me home, this morning when he nearly followed me to work and then this evening where he was curled up asleep in one of the front gardens.

It was the last part that worried me the most - it really didn't feel like a place that a cat would choose to sleep. So after a quick consultation with Andrew, we decide to bring him to our place overnight and take him to the vets in the morning for a chip check. We went to get the cat who was still asleep in the garden, but woke up and came running almost as soon as we called him. Then it was just a matter of picking him up and carrying him to our house. He tolerated this quite happily, only squirming a bit so that he could stand on my shoulder.

Once there we shooed our pair out the way and put some food in front of him. He ate very very rapidly, only stopping when we removed the bowl to stop him over-eating and making himself sick. Everything that was put anywhere near him afterwards (water bowl, hands) was immediately sniffed with interest in case it was more food. He is quite thin, and his coat is rather dusty and he appears to have a few small marks from what may have been fights.

He's now in the spare room with some water and a litter tray (which he may or may not know how to use). I'll give him some more food in a mo and ring the vets in the morning.

And yes, I'm aware that this is one of the steps that will end with me having 58 cats one day.

Edit: just put the food down again for a bit, and got a really dirty look when I dared to even think about moving the bowl. That's one very hungry cat.

Further edit: Part 2

Doctor Who props and costumes up for auction

How I read the second paragraph:

"Fans can snap up their own Cyberman, Dalek or Sea Devil at the auction, as well as costumes worn by the 10th Doctor himself, David Tennant."

This will be my final year of my Open University mathematics degree. Unlike the past few years, when I've done a couple of modules per year, I'm doing three level 3 modules. They are:
M388 Topology
MT365 Graphs, Networks and Design
MS325 Computer Algebra, Chaos and Simulations

Technically one of those is a re-take, but it's from a few years ago where deadlines were best characterised by the whooshing noise that they made as they went by, so I'm going to have to do most of the course from scratch.

Luckily the assignments are reasonably spaced out, so I don't have more than one deadline in the same week, but I'm going to have to be utterly consistent about pace this year. There's going to be very little space time to catch up (I'm already expecting to use at least a few days of holiday to get stuff in on time) so if I fall behind I'm really screwed.

This means that apart from WGT I'm going to be very patchy about committing to events between now and October. Which is annoying since I've already got four things I want to organise, each with varying degrees of time-specificness.

But hopefully this time next year I'll be a qualified mathematician. Or a nervous wreck. One of the two.

Day three of my week of holiday. So far this week I have done OU work, filed paperwork, shredded paperwork, dealt with a backlog of laundry, finally got the Christmas tree removed, cleaned up the kitchen a bit, collected a parcel from DHL. Still to do is more tidying and washing, cleaning of various bits of the house, even more OU work, clearing out the garden, clearing out my wardrobe and a smear test.

I took the week off because I was started to react with almost homicidal jealousy to anyone who mentioned that they had free time, especially if they were doing something fun or unproductive with that free time.

Yes, there may be a flaw in this plan.

The other day I watch the film version of the Royal Shakespeare Company's Hamlet, and the casting raised an important question:

( [POLL] Totty or not totty )

I meant to post this last month, but have been epically lacking in motivation and follow-up powers on pretty much all fronts recently. Considering this, you can probably guess how well I did.

( [POLL] 101 things in 1001 days - a review )

I've been thinking recently about the whole computers in cars thing, as in the "your car has more computing power than the system that guided Apollo astronauts to the moon" quote, and I'm getting a bit curious about what that actually means.

When people say that modern cars have computers in them, how closely related are these computers to the things I work with every day? Do they have BIOSes, operating systems, network protocols, etc? Would I recognise any of the brands involved or is it an entirely different industry?

Basically, how far away am I from being able to hack a Ford Fiesta?