Single Speed

Posted on March 26, 2007 by Paul — 1 Comment ↓

I recently invested a whopping Â£13 British Pounds (approx. $26 US, or $4,000 Canadian) on eBay to download the following beauty:

Single Speed

A rocking single speed conversion of a ‘Raleigh Marauder’. You might guess from the name that this isn’t a quality frame, but it’s got rear dropouts long enough to run a single speed, and someone has already done the hard work to convert it, so I’m happy.

So far I’ve changed out the seatpost (Â£8 from eBay) and brakes/levers (Â£14, plus another Â£7 for ancillary bits). The new seatposts let me use an old saddle from my road bike. I’ve also got some new bearings for the bottom bracket, and a can of seriously bright yellow spray paint to cover up a few bits of rust. I’ll post more progress on it soon, but tomorrow I’ll let you know what it’s like to ride.

And for those still reading – Yes, I do want to be like Nick 😉

Mac crash

Posted on March 23, 2007 by Paul — No Comments ↓

My MacBook just crashed, as in turned itself off without any warning. This has never happened to me before, and I’m a little freaked. The fact that there’s a green light flashing on the battery is a source of concern too.

McJob

Posted on March 22, 2007 by Paul — No Comments ↓

It’s possible somebody missed the point of a dictionary:

McDonald’s Corp. on Tuesday restarted its push to get the word “McJob” removed from dictionaries — and has set its sights on the gold standard of lexicons, the Oxford English Dictionary.

From the point of view of the fast-food proletariat, the reason for the McLanguage offensive is clear: The word McJob, as the OED definition makes clear, is “depreciative.” It goes on to define the term as: “An unstimulating, low-paid job with few prospects, esp. one created by the expansion of the service sector.” It found its way into the dictionary in March 2001, 15 years after it was apparently coined by the Washington Post.

“Dictionaries are supposed to be paragons of accuracy. And it this case, they got it completely wrong,” Walt Riker, a Mickey D’s McSpokesman complained to the Associated Press. “It’s a complete disservice and incredibly demeaning to a terrific work force and a company that’s been a jobs and opportunity machine for 50 years.”

This American Showtime

Posted on March 21, 2007 by Paul — No Comments ↓

This American Life, a great radio documentary programme not bogged down by attempts at worthiness (though it often is more illuminating than standard documentaries) is now on Showtime, apparently. Here’s what it looks like.

I’ll see your bacon number and raise you…

Posted on March 20, 2007 by Paul — 2 Comments ↓

..an ErdÅ‘sâ€“Bacon number. Paul ErdÅ‘s was a mathematician who published some 1,500 papers with 509 different collaborators, in some way paralleling the prolific career of Kevin Bacon. As with the Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon game that gives actors a Bacon number according to the number of co-stars required to link them to Mr Bacon, published academics can be assigned an ErdÅ‘s number.

Still with me? Then here’s the cool bit. There are a number of academics who have made small cameo appearances in movies, mostly in recognition of advice they have given. But there are a small number of ‘proper’ actors/actresses who have also co-authored academic papers. The two most notable are Natalie Portman and Danica McKellar. In case you’re stuck, McKellar was Winnie Cooper in The Wonder Years. She was rather attractive then; in fact if you are male and currently aged between 30 and 40 I’d hazard that you either had a crush on her or you didn’t have a TV. And now…well let’s just say that it doesn’t matter if you’re male or female, she’s smoking hot. She’s also the McKellar of the Chayes-McKellar-Winn Theorem