Doctor Who (2005) Season 11 – Episode 3 Air Date: 21st October 2018, 18:55 (GMT) Writer: Malorie Blackman Straight off the bat let me just say that I'm naturally inclined towards the more futuristic or overtly scientific episodes of Doctor Who - historical adventures are fine but I'm generally not one to get a kick out of historical events or figures. Meeting Rosa Parks in this adventure was interesting but when our heroes start enthusing and gushing about a person who actually existed (Sadly Mrs Parks passed away in 2005), and repeatedly pressing home how important they were, it is hard to shake off the feeling I'm sitting through a school lesson rather than indulging in some breezy escapism. (I'll also mention I was a touch distracted throughout yesterday by meeting a lady online the who may possibly become my new girlfriend, so an argument can be made that my heart wasn't really in the viewing experience) I want to make very clear, however, that none of my personal feelings should be allowed to tarnish the message concerning Rosa Parks herself. What she accomplished in her life was utterly awe-inspiring; we should ALL be thankful for her object lesson in how to make the world a better place. To have suffered all her life, as many Black people did and still do, only to be recognised fifty years later by a Congressional Medal of Honor...is appalling. Her name rightly deserves to live on for all time. but for something far more inspiring than a simple space rock - Let's sort that out, Humanity, eh? That we now have an episode of Doctor Who showcasing her achievement is only fitting...

I missed last week's update. I've been spending time browsing papers and prepping a presentation. Reviewing papers There are lots of articles (both scientific and otherwise) lying around on the web. For computer science focused ones, here are some links that are quite useful: dblp - A library of CS papers organised by type and venue. ACM CSUR - Surveys conducted in computer science IEEE Conferences - Systematisation of Knowledge papers are of note Surveys and SoKs give a good "rounding up" of the state of things in a particular domain of work, and can be an interesting starting point. Of course, they are very specific so of limited use otherwise. Prepping for Prezzing When the bible talks about avoiding temptation, it's referring to the dangers of powerpoint I'll be attending a SICSA event at the end of the month, where i'll be demoing, along with my supervisor, a platform I had built that ended up being used and evaluated in a course. The work begins on planning this and setting it all up. Using Nvivo As part of the prep for that talk, I'll be trying to code some responses from students about how they felt interacting with the platform. I'll be using

Looking at things, taking pictures. Back in the day I got asked by Dantesoft if I could share my photo processing workflow. Of course I can! It used to be quite elaborate, but these days it is quite simple. Asset Management The first thing to consider is where your photos will end up. After many different configurations I have ended up putting everything into Apple Photos. There are three reasons I ended up here: It lets me carry my entire library with me, on one or more devices Basic versioning, letting me store the original photo while still only seeing the edited version Live Photos and good video support In addition, I also appreciate the "Moments" feature, where it creates contextual albums from metadata...

Doctor Who (2005) Season 11 - Episode 1 Air Date: 7th October 2018, 18:55 (GMT) Writer: Chris Chibnall.  /random pirate voice SOMEHOW I managed to miss the first episode of Jodie Whittakers' tenure as the Thirteenth Doctor when it aired on Saturday just gone. I'm not sure that's ever happened to me before. I've been waiting for it, patiently, but perhaps the huge wait since the Christmas Special lulled me into a stupor. Dang it. Oh well, I'm caught up now and am all ready to speak my brains on the subject. Jodie Whittaker as The Doctor. As a male and lifelong fan of Doctor Who, first watching Tom Baker somewhere from behind a couch (yes, I genuinely did this, so my mother never fails to remind me) I'm a HUGE FAN of the decision to cast a woman in the role having campaigned for just such a thing since when Matt Smith announced he was stepping down. I'm delighted the program makers have listened...

Choosing to stop using Microsoft Windows was one of the best decisions I've ever made. Oh, as a Gamer I still have to keep the thing around for games that just don't work on any other system but these days I'm spending most of my week using Linux for everything else. And I love it. Love it love it love it. I'm being exuberant, I know, but I hope you'll forgive it: I'm simply not used to feeling like this about an Operating System. Windows is many things but most of the time using it feels like a fight. A battle of wills between you and it to accomplish your objective, a war that rages but never ceases.  In my twenty five years with Windows I've learned how to tame the beast.  I've learned how to tweak and change her to within an inch of bluscreen. I get around deficiencies with third party software cleverness. I've been able to tune that damned thing until she sings...

Click me to get the original! So this is my current and very lovely desktop. Some info: Antergos Linux using KDE Plasma 5.13, with the Dark Breeze colour theme applied. The wallpaper is from Wallhaven, a worthy successor to the defunct Wallbase. I don't think the author named it, sadly. I love when they have names. I prefer a vertical right-hand task bar. Vertical because it makes logical sense when browsing websites that only use a narrow strip in the middle of your screen - like this very blog! Right-hand because I tend to focus left first, English being my native language...

One Monday this week I started a PhD course. I figured it might be a nice thing to write down my thoughts in this blog. Doing so should help organise my thoughts. And in the unlikely event of this endeavour becoming a train wreck, readers get a front row seat. Photo by Aaron Burden on Unsplash Week 1 is Forms Week. Got to get all that admin work done, haven't you. I filled out forms for payments, forms for registration, dealt with the admin side of things being slow to the point of not working at all...

I have recently seen some discussion about the use of night mode tech, and had the thought that developers ought to get together and standardise its use, seeing as how commonplace it has become. Photo by Claudio Testa on Unsplash Types of Night Mode Dark Interfaces This is when the designer or developer of an application build in a special interface where the colours are darker. In a simple sense, this could be as simple as inverting black-on-white test to white-on-black text. Dark vs Light modes in Vivaldi & Wikipedia Other applications will have a deeper dark theme created which changes every aspect of the application or website's interface, not just the text, to reduce the amount of whiteness that the screen displays....