Well, after a long blog-free interval I finally have a few minutes to spare here and there, so it's time to see about getting back on the blog-entry train. Because there are way too many blogs that just petered out but still remain visible evidence of the short attention spans of their writers. Not this one. Hang on a second, I see something sparkly.

Quite a while ago I posted some photos of my London cycle commute (link). You might get a different perspective on cycling in London from the video linked below. Please note, the movie file is 70mb, and it's accompanied by a heavy metal soundtrack. So turn down the volume if you don't want to ROCK!!!

London Calling (From digave.com, Lucas Brunelle Productions).

My own commute is somewhat less aggressive, and may have a different soundtrack. It also doesn't involve any parking garages.

I consider myself to have quite a decent array of Web searching skills. I'm quite up to speed on the various options Google provides, and tend to use them in complex combinations in order to try and get useful information with a minimum of chaff. I also have a tendency to do searches in parallel, popping up multiple tabs/windows at the same time to allow quicker cycling through the possibilities (something that infuriates Mrs. Dunce to no end when she's shoulder-surfing). Anyway, I tend to be pretty successful at finding what I'm looking for.

Or at least, when it comes to text. Or information that can be found using text, such as identifying a song from a snippet of lyrics (even when they're almost entirely in an unknown language, like this catchy number (link to lyrics). But when it comes to non-text searches, let me just say "Ouch".

For example, Mrs. Dunce is a big fan of a certain plant that grows well near us. It's a flowering tree with some lovely bluish-purple flowers. As pictured here (with Mrs. Dunce wondering about its name).


I've certainly tried text-based searching to find this sort of thing (text-based search tricks work just fine in Google Images, as long as you know the right sort of terminology), but it just isn't happening. Searching for things like "purplish-blue flowers" gets you similar plants but they just don't look quite right. And I get really tired of lavender, lavender, lavender, lilac, lilac, lilac which don't look right either. I've managed to find a nice online flower identifier but its questions assume a level of knowledge/attention well beyond my own (in addition to referring only to northeastern and north central US and adjoining bits of Canada). And there's no way I'm going to admit my ignorance by going into a flower shop and asking questions that reveal my ignorance, or posting the picture on a plant identification forum where no doubt it would be instantly identified.

Of course, by creating this post, I'm revealing my ignorance after all. But it's related to the more general question of how one might go about using text-based search techniques to find out information about an image you are having trouble identifying. This does not just apply to plants or flowers. Say for instance you see an image like this one. The man in the blue shirt is very famous, but who is he? You might get some hints from the name of the website, and the people standing next to him, but then what? Or maybe you see this picture and want to figure out what kind of bus it is (there is a very precise answer to this one which can be found using a different set of simple search tricks).

Anyway, it would probably be much easier to ask someone. But that would take the challenge out of it.

Impossible?! Never. But sadly, this time it's true.

Some time ago, I decided to try and find a legal cycling route between home and work which allowed me to avoid every single traffic light on my way. The original post where I set out the challenge is here and here is a follow-up post where I successfully reduced the total to five (or six, but then it hardly matters if it's not zero).

In the past few days I've been working tirelessly to solve one particular vexing problem: the iron curtain around my workplace. You might get an idea of the situation by peering at this Google Map. My workplace lies in the center of the map, and home is north by northeast. The blue place markers indicate intersections that are controlled by traffic signals.

Unfortunately, a careful survey of all the possible (legal) crossings seems to show that my challenge is impossible. It appears that a rectangle bounded by the A501, A420, A401, and A400 is a nearly inescapable trap, at least for any cyclist hoping to avoid all traffic signals and still ride legally (one apparent possibility is actually pedestrian-only). Today I tested my last hope, a circuitous route heading southwest (indicated by the blue line in the above-linked Google Map). I did manage to get across the A400, but only just. It takes me to the massively nasty traffic system around New Oxford Street, High Holborn and so on, the last place a traffic signal avoider wants to be.

So this is a challenge that must remain unsolved, at least until some of the traffic signals are removed.

A gazillion days ago I mentioned the Glasgow Necropolis, and that I'd write about it soon. I just have to stop making statements like that. Although I've been busy, I could have dashed off an entry or two about something other than necropolises (or necropoleis for those people afraid of sullying the language by using English regular plurals on Wörter borrowed from other Sprachen). Anyway, today I bring you a few words (and fewer pictures) about the Glasgow Necropolis.

The term "necropolis" really just means "cemetery" (preferably large, fancy and ancient). The Victorian craze for impressive burial monuments led to an enthusiastic adoption of the concept, and wealthy Glasgow was no exception. In 1831, land near Glasgow cathedral was converted into a cemetery, modeled upon Père Lachaise in Paris. Some 50,000 are now buried there; I believe 100% of them are dead. At the top of the hill stands a monument to John Knox, hero of the Reformation in Scotland. Built 253 years after his death, it features a brief summary of his anti-Popery heroism. Broken floodlights around the monument are a not-so-subtle reminder that not all residents of Glasgow are pleased with this substantial monument to anti-Popery.

On our first day in Glasgow, we were too late to visit the Necropolis; large iron gates prevented us from crossing the Bridge of Sighs to the Necropolis itself. But we were very eager to get there... here's a picture I already posted, featuring Mrs. Dunce's enthusiasm for the Necropolis. The Knox monument is at the top of the photo.


But once Sunday morning came, we had time to visit the Necropolis. We had it mostly to ourselves, at least if you only consider the living. On our rambling way up the hill, the less serious of our group felt compelled to pose before a particularly impressive monument:

There was quite a view from the very top:

 

As we were looking around the Knox monument, we were further reminded of Glasgow's sectarian heritage: the sounds of a drum and fife band began playing somewhere off in the distance, probably warming up for the Rangers match later that day. No, we weren't planning to be anywhere near the Rangers match, but were instead using our few remaining hours to see the Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum (I'll try and convinve Mrs. Dunce into writing a guest post on that topic. I think she probably has more to say than I do).

I took a bunch of pictures at the Necropolis too (all the above are from Mrs. Dunce) but have somehow misplaced them. Par for the course, really. Fortunately others have succeeded where I have failed; for example, there are some very nice black&white photos here. And a very good (brief) article by Glasgow Necropolis expert Ronnie Scott here. Or there's always his book. Or even his very recently unveiled theory that the Necropolis itself is a giant Masonic emblem, symbols within symbols within symbols (article link)

Another substantial delay, sorry about that! Work has been frantic lately: I've been centrally involved in setting up all sorts of new experiments with various different people. I'm feeling quite productive, but little time is left for frippery. Especially since I've also been fighting off a nasty cold/flu sort of thing (my immune system should really get in gear). Anyway.... back to Glasgow.

We took a morning train from London, somewhat loaded down with a bunch of posters/flyers/information sheets for my work presentation. The trip to Glasgow was pretty quick, less than 5 hours up the West Coast Main Line on a Pendolino train. Once we ditched the luggage, we scrambled up the hill for some quick touristic activities before closing time. First stop was Provand's Lordship, Glasgow's only surviving medieval house. But just across the street from Provand's Lordship stands Glasgow Cathedral, so we had to make a quick visit there as well. And of course its surrounding churchyard. We Dunces always seem to find ourselves wandering around churchyards, graveyards, cemeteries, and this was no exception. The graves surrounding the cathedral were quite substantial, and many were surrounded by iron cages (perhaps this was to protect the recently dead from the bodysnatching craze?). One of these cages also contained a Dunce.





But wait, there was more. Up on the hill above the cathedral was a the Glasgow Necropolis! Mrs. Dunce was almost uncontrollable with excitement:


But we were too late to explore the Necropolis (without scaling fences, tunneling or some other similar non-standard means of entrance, so we would have to wait. We took a detour back to the hotel (where I met with my Deaf colleague for a briefing about the next day's event), then made a beeline for the pub. The Babbity Bowster is quite well-regarded (and was quite near the hotel), so we made it our first stop. It's quite small, with fairly minimal decor & lots of hard surfaces which made it noisier than we might have liked. But we managed to get a small table which was no mean feat on a Friday night. Decent ale, and quite good pub food (including vegetarian haggis, neeps and tatties). After that it was a very short wander to another pub, the Blackfriars. This was a much larger place, with quite a mix of people and a larger range of beers (many of which we'd never heard of). There's a smoking ban in Scotland (unlike England, at least for the moment), so the pubs weren't smoky either. Everything was quite pleasant; we didn't see even a hint of trouble, much less the famed Glasgow kiss.

The next day our paths diverged: I spent the day working, and Mrs Dunce hit the museums. Our next joint venture was navigating the complicated and overcrowded Glasgow subway system.


St. Dunce: Patron Saint of the Glasgow Underground:


After a quick drink in a nice enough campus pub, we made our way to dinner. Much to Mrs Dunce's delight we were headed to the Ubiquitous Chip, a very highly-regarded restaurant. Or more accurately, restaurant-bar complex, as it's subdivided into various separate entities, including the Restaurant, the Upstairs, Big Pub, Wee Pub, and Corner Bar. We ate at the upstairs part, which had a sort of fancy gastropub menu, not as expensive (or as unusual) as the restaurant proper. Again vegetarian haggis made an appearance, but the highlight of the meal was probably Mrs. Dunce's smoked haddock salad.

After dinner it was back to the Blackfriar again (told you we liked it). This time we tried some of the unusual bottled beers. Most of them were from the historic ale range by Heather Ale and contained unusual (but historically accurate) ingredients like gooseberry, pine, seaweed, or heather (not all in the same product, thank goodness). We had a good window seat, so we were able to see the Saturday night street traffic. Loads and loads of people out on the town, but we saw nothing even remotely resembling carnage.

The next morning we headed over to the Necropolis, which probably deserves its own entry.

Mrs. Dunce and I spent the past weekend in Glasgow, my first trip to Scotland. I was representing my workplace at a large Deaf event, trying to spread the word about the research we are doing, and to possibly recruit some Scottish BSL signers to participate in some of our studies. It was also a really great opportunity to practice my signing.

But I discovered something rather unfortunate when I started introducing myself to people. In BSL, as in many other sign languages, people often have "sign names", sort of like a signed nickname used in place of fingerspelling someone's actual name. My own sign name was given to me when I first met with a group of deaf researchers, after suffering an unfortunate broken-glasses incident which left me peering through the one remaining lens. It looks exactly like this: LINK.¹

In the southeast (including London), this sign also means "to peep" (as in peeping through a keyhole, and maybe something like a peeping Tom). Perhaps with a vaguely naughty connotation, but nothing too extreme (unless everyone has been having a laugh at my expense....). In Scotland, however, this sign means "pervert", and not a nice, amusing sort of pervert either. When I introduced myself to a Scottish signer for the first time, I got a classic double-take. He asked me if that was really my sign name. When I told him that indeed it was, he proceeded to explain that I should really think about changing my name (maybe something more like "tea", a similarly shaped sign, but at the corner of the mouth. Or maybe something more like "monocle", which is in front of the eye, but with a more open hand). The Deaf equivalent of "Bill, or George, or anything but Sue", I suppose.

Other than the embarrassment of introducing myself "Hi, my name is Pervert", things seemed to go quite well. I chatted to lots of different people about our research and the different things people here are working on, maybe 3/4 of the time in sign language, and only 1/4 of the time in English. I'd rehearsed quite a bit of my patter about the research, but was most worried about not being able to understand people (especially unfamiliar people, in an unfamiliar setting). But as my co-workers predicted, it was no trouble at all.

Next time I'll write about Glasgow itself; we thoroughly enjoyed our long weekend there.


¹A curious coincidence: this same handshape positioned on the forehead means "know-nothing" or "dunce". But I got this sign name before I chose the name of "Dunce" (that only happened when I started up this blog, and found myself faced with the difficult challenge of coming up with a title which, I felt, had to fulfill certain characteristics).

This week is another hectic one at work, as we're being moved into a new lab/office zone on Friday. So we've been scrambling around packing and labeling years' worth of important items. And noticing that the important:junk ratio is impressively low. But because we didn't have much notice of the moving date, it's much more a matter of throwing everything into cartons, and sorting out the junk later. At least we have professional movers to actually sling the cartons around, so it's not as bad as if we'd been moving things ourselves (in our recent house move, there was some discussion of the merits of moving versus leaving things like dirt [or "compost" if you like. We should have moved the compost {dirt} after all....]).

During the preparation for moving, an interesting difference between British and American English surfaced. One of the PhD students asked whether the movers would take care of our pot plants, or if we should move them ourselves. In US English, this question has a very different meaning, which might not be so appropriate to bring up so boldly in a workplace discussion (I know, this is academia. But still!!!!). You see, pot plants look like this in Britain:


But American pot plants are a little bit different:


In Britain, the term "pot plants" simply means "plants in pots" (unfortunately I don't discuss gardening enough to know what sort of plants can be considered "pot plants" if they're placed in the appropriate receptacles, nor which sorts of receptacles "pot plants" are allowed to be in). But in US English the term is dominated by "pot", an especially common American slang term for marijuana¹ (more often called "cannabis" in British English, and let's not get into the minefield of slang terms [I think you could probably select just about any word and claim it's a slang term for cannabis]). So if an American hears that a grad student is wondering about moving pot plants around, they sure won't be surprised. But if that student is talking about it at a lab meeting, they must be high.


¹Etymology of "pot" in this sense is unknown, according to the OED: Origin uncertain and disputed. The most popular theory explains the word as being derived from the supposed Mexican Spanish words *potiguaya or *potaguaya (cannabis leaves), or *potación de guaya, (literally ‘drink of grief’), supposedly denoting a drink of wine or brandy in which marijuana buds were steeped; however, no corroborating evidence has been found to support the use of any of these terms in Spanish (although *potiguaya is recorded in an English glossary of drug terminology slightly earlier than the earliest example of the present word.
The US-favored term "marijuana" also has rather murky origins once you cross the border: From Mexican Spanish "mariguana", "marihuana", of uncertain origin. It has been suggested that the Spanish word is from Nahuatl "mallihuan" prisoner. Forms [containing] "j" appear to be an English innovation (attested later also in French): occasional recent examples in Spanish prob. show English influence. Influence of a folk etymology from the Spanish personal name "María-Juana" or its familiar form "Mari-Juana" has frequently been suggested; if so this would appear to have occurred within English.
Good ol' British "cannabis" comes straight on from Latin or Greek.

Now that the Dunces have started settling into our new home, we've managed to find the time to start exploring the area a little bit. The past two weekends we've done some wandering just a teeny little bit off the tourist trail. Today's post is in honor of the Tottenham Cemetery where we had a short wander after a local history walk¹.

It's quite a large cemetery, and has enough vegetation that it feels like anything but the midst of a legendarily urban area:




The different sections are divided by narrow walkways, and many of the gates along the way are locked. Once we made our way inside, we found out the secret to getting from one section to another:


And here's the best gravestone we came across:


Unfortunately, we found that the cemetery also featured hobo-ish ne'er-do-well-type riffraff wandering about and menacing other visitors:


Or if not ne'er-do-wells, at least a wild-haired Dunce in full "California Hippie" mode (along with super-nerdy GPS-as-fashion-accessory). But this weekend was the end of the Hair Farm. The advance of summer made it impossible to keep going with long, crazy hair. No longer will complete strangers comment on my resemblance to "Mikey" from the US TV series "American Chopper", but it'll most likely be Philip Seymour Hoffman once again. I'm not complaining, anything is better than "Spaz" from Meatballs (I'm very sorry I couldn't find a picture of this character. Trust me, 1979 was not a good time for a nerd who resembled a comedy character called "Spaz"). If I had grown up in the UK, I suppose it might have been the Milky Bar Kid instead.


¹This entry should perhaps be about the local history walk itself! It was the first in a monthly series of local history walks put on by the newly organized Tottenham Civic Society (which soon will count the Dunces among its membership), starting at the fabulous Bruce Castle museum and then taking a loop around Tottenham. Which was formerly quite an exclusive area but now has a reputation of a grim, crime-ridden hole (and one of the few places where first-time buyers might claw their way onto the property ladder). So it was really interesting to see just how many interesting buildings from various eras are dotted around the area. In any event, we didn't actually take any pictures during our wander, but only afterwards. So you'll have to take my word for it.

Since we moved into the new flat, it's taken DunceCat some time to get used to the new situation. Everything smelled different, and there was the gross indignity of being locked inside for a month. But finally things are settling down, especially now that the weather has improved and we can open the front windows. She especially enjoys sitting in the front window spying on the neighbors. And watching us as well.



When I say "spying on the neighbors", well, she does watch people and cats coming and going down at street level. But really her focus is all upon our bird neighbors. There are quite a few of them who hang around the trees, roofs and power lines just above the window. So she spends a lot of her window time making birdcalls: odd, creaking sounds, interspersed with strange meows and chomping jaw movements (not sure whether these are intended to be threatening, or just wishful thinking. In turn, the birds squawk, swoop, and occasionally defecate in her general direction.



And then when she's done, it's time to ditch the window and patrol the rest of the house.



She's confident enough now to do full-speed rampages from one room to another, gripping the carpet for the sharpest turns, and skittering around the kitchen linoleum. But sometimes guarding on two fronts is just too much effort for one lonely cat.



But usually she's right back on duty in a few minutes' time. And woe betide anyone who tries to sneak past her. This is what it looks like if you try to enter a secured area without the correct pass:


None shall pass!

As I've mentioned a few times before, the Dunces have recently moved into a new flat which required some amount of cosmetic effort and modernization (you'll have to wait for an upcoming post to see more details). One urgent need was to replace the ancient water heater, a process not without its problems. But there was a tiny window of time between the removal of the old water heater and the installation of the new one, during which the wall behind the heater was visible.

The previous owner of the flat bought it in 1977, and did the place up to a high standard at that time (including installation of the now-dead water heater). So the wallpaper behind the heater dates from before that time, which you can tell at a glance from the picture below. At the top is a hole in the wall: the original flue for the water heater, which was badly filled by the heating engineers, then knocked out and patched more appropriately. Below the hole you can see a nice indication of some previous choices of decor. Most of which are nicer than the present wallpaper which we have not replaced or painted over just yet (mostly gray/greenish, textured and shiny, as you can see around the outside. On the right side, the whitish bits are actually the camera flash, reflected off the textured shiny bits).

Yes it's a huge picture; sorry about that but I felt it was the best way to clearly show the different patterns.



Coming soon in the "house" series... some before/after pictures of rooms we've actually done cosmetic work on.

It's been quite a long, long time since I've posted any photos at all. That's going to change really soon (he idly promises). 

I'm quite bad when it comes to taking pictures; very regularly I forget I have a camera at all, and when I do remember to bring it out, more often than not I put it back away, letting the most recent pictures gather (virtual) dust.  But no more. Starting tomorrow (isn't it easy to promise future activity rather than NOW?) I'm going to focus on photos around here.

I'm not going to promise anything in particular, although certain readers will probably be more interested in seeing some types of pictures (erm, perhaps some before and after shots of our new flat?) than others (erm, photos of roadside debris, blurry photos of a cat in action).

And we'll just have to see how long this goes before I fizzle out.

Well, my ride home yesterday wasn't successful. I did get home, and it only took twice as long as usual, but sadly my first attempt to go traffic-light-less just didn't work out. Even though I had a pretty useful scrap of paper with cryptic notation concerning the streets and intersections I planned to use (nose in the map is not allowed, but consulting a scribbled sheet on the fly is OK)

I did reduce the number of traffic signals to six, but also including a few non-legal maneuvers. My real failing was in my clever attempt to avoid traffic signals by (legally) riding in parks. However, I failed to notice that nearly all of the park entrances were protected by traffic signals (so that park users can enter and leave safely, I guess). This was even the case where motor vehicles were quite clearly prohibited. My no-backtracking rule also left me at two park exits, facing a traffic signal, and unable to backtrack and try a different exit.

There were also a couple of places where bicycle riding isn't quite kosher but this is not apparent from the map. Mostly pavement/sidewalk riding, albeit very briefly (e.g. Woburn Walk, which looks like a road on the map, but is quite obviously pedestrian-only. I should have remembered this, working just around the corner. Or another road which dead-ends, and the only place to ride is across a pavement/sidewalk onto the adjoining road). The only other rule-breaking occurred when I saw a traffic signal ahead and had no place to go but the wrong way on a one-way street (maybe a very good possibility in the other direction, though, as long as I can solve my "park problem").

So yesterday's score is 5 traffic lights, 4 riding in pedestrian areas, and one "wrong way". I think I can do better, but some more obsessive-compulsive behavior will be necessary.