The workshop has today been discussing cross cutting issues between neurosciences and systems biology. Funnily enough, many of them seem fairly familiar: how to visualise complex, multi-dimensional data; how to combine and standardise the representation of data; how to combine models; how to enable scientists to work cross-disciplinary; and, how to train students to work in the area in the future.

One of the main differences seems to be a cultural differences: if you put two bioinformaticians into a room, they will publish a database; in neuroinformatics this tendency doesn't appear to be there. I think that part of the reason for this is the lack of an obvious common standard representation. In bioinformatics, we worked from the DNA and protein sequence outward.

At a workshop in Edinburgh today. Thought it would be a good ideas; the CARMEN project is coming up so having some understanding of neuroinformatics. As for systems biology, thought I'd like to fail to understand some more people telling me what it actually is.

Yes, now I am 35. Years ending in 5 and 0 are always difficult ones. This one makes me, now, well on the way to middle age.

Ah, well, there's nothing that I can do about it, so why worry?

While I was out walking yesterday, up around Northumbria with my friend, Ian, I realised two things: first was that Ian and myself hadn't been on a walk together since before I went to Edinburgh, more than fifteen years ago; second, that I didn't know how to clean the pipe of a water skin. These things are great in general, but can be tricky to clean, and you have to remember to empty the water and dry them. Last time I walked, I left some water trapped in the pipe and it went green. How to clean it?

So, here is my solution: cut a piece of cotton thread about three times the length of the pipe; about half way down tie a small piece (about 2cm) of hemp string or something similar; feed the end of the thread into the pipe — getting a couple of cm's is easy, more is hard; now, dribble water through the pipe. The point is that the flowing water removes the friction between the thread and the edge of the pipe, and slowly pulls the thread through; you just have to feed the slack. When it's all the way through, you can pull the string into the pipe; again, keep the water flowing or at least full of water. You can use the string to scrub the insides.

Wasn't sure about this one. It was an entertaining watch, I suspose, although I've got to a point in my life where I find Jack Black irritating rather than mildy amusing. Still, John Cusack is charismatic enough to rescue most films, it's full of pretty women and has some wonderful songs in the soundtrack which have been moldering in the dust of my record collection for too long.

Strangely, reading the credits, I noticed that the executive producer was Alan Greenspan. Good to have strong support on your side.

I've only ever seen the last five minutes of this film about a decade ago. I hadn't realised that it was written by Meera Syal. Great film; funny, with nice observed social commentary and a few bits of the bizarre. It feels slightly dated now, but seems to improve with age; it now reminds me of history as well.

After that, I watched the X-Men 1 film; perhaps a strange choice; it shares one thing, though, with Bhajee on the Beach which is an excellent ensemble cast. I think I prefer this sort of film to the big star vehicle which is too common these days.

Bought a copy of Bend it like Beckham a while back; personally, I disagree. I'd rather be able to cook Aloo Gobi than kick a curve ball. Fortunately, I can, I did. Yeah, it was alright.

I want to use Unison, the file synchroniser to move files between home and work, when my broadband comes; this means I can put files into a transfer space, and remove them either side: I won't have to clean up twice. There's a problem though: Unison can't restart an interrupted transfer. This is a pity because it uses the rsync algorithm and copies to a temporary file; it should be easy enough to restart the transfer. It effectively blocks using Unison over the (slow) broadband that I am buying, at least unaided. So I've written some scripts to copy and split files into small bits. I'll release them to the website in a few days time. Can't believe no one has done this before, but I couldn't find anything.

Fell across my old flat mates tour of Virtual Edinburgh today. I had some good times in the flat there, although it used to get into a real mess. This picture of the bathroom; the bit which says "if anyone stays in too long" largely refers to me.

I've seen John Renborn a number of times, but never Robin Williamson. Had seats in the front row, so it lacked the coldness that you normally get in the Sage. The music was beautiful and melodic, but the gig as the whole lacked enough variation. John Renborn did one Booker T number, for instance, which was fast and the audience went wild. Robin Williamson provided some good chat between songs, although he played far too many instruments; his sound was a bit ropey as a result.

At christmas, the stand out film for me was "The Shipping News". So I bought the book. Immediately after this, I mentioned the film to a friend; his response was "don't bother with the book.

Actually, I quite enjoyed it; there is less Hollywood-ism (i.e. the lead characters arn't good looking); the book has more time to meander than the film, which it benefits from. I find it a little overly stuffed with metaphor and similie, which at time jarred a little; othertimes, it was highly effective ("the sky was bruise grey"). Combined with her tendency to use verbless sentances ("The smell of sea damp and paint") gives the book a slightly breathless feel.

Generally recommended. Particularly, as it has lots of short chapters, which makes it good for reading in the bath.

Decided to get broadband for the house; bit of a nightmare; there are so many variables that the different packages are hard to compare. Bulldog appears the cheapest at a tenner for 8Mb, but isn't available here. Irritatingly, they over a slower package for more. CarphoneWarehouse announced a new package today, but this involves the phone and has an 18 month tie in, and a 30 quid connection fee. Currently, tiscali appears the best, though. It's slow (1Mb), but cheap and uncapped, and seem to have good house moving policies. The only problem is that they don't do static IP's. I think I can get around this, with various NAT fiddlings, but it's not-trivial.

This is all a pain; there is too much choice here, too many options. This seems to be true in general for telecoms. The problem is that it's just too expensive at the moment, so people are actually forced to care about these differences. Give it another year or two and I think the prices in general (for non-mobile anyway) will come down enough, to where it doesn't matter. At least, I hope so.

Spent some time in Manchester; I went down mostly for the BioPAX meeting. They are hoping to use the formal semantics of OWL, within the BioPAX encoding, which the current versions do not. I think that the difficultly is going to be deciding what should be represented in OWL and where is should be used as a surface syntax.

It was lovely to see everybody again. I even got to buy some cake as I had a paper accepted last Wednesday.

Got a reply from the Business Directorate in my attempt to get a signed copyright waiver. I tried the technique of writing to the head of the department which seems to have resulted in a reply. Actually, it produced several replies, from the head, and the next down, and then the next down again. Fingers crossed we will be there soon.

I realised today one of the more obscure advantages of Open Access publishing. This produces a major change in the economics of the scientific publishing, which is that the payment happens during the publication, rather than before reading. This is entirely wrong, it seems to me. Most scientists spend far too much time publishing and not nearly enough time reading. Making people pay to publish, but allowing cost-free reading should help to redress this balance.

I decided, yesterday, that I would let my brother in on the journal; in general, I haven't been telling many people about it. While I might have been hoping that the world at large was about to discover a Samuel Pepys for the new millenium, I wasn't entirely to give up the day job. Still, I might have hoped that my brother's first opinion hadn't included adjectives such as "pompous" and "muiresque" (as in, like Frank Muir).

Well, what can I say? Ever has the path of the true genius been strewn with the yapping and braying of those snapping at their heals. But I shall continue, I shall persevere and broadcast my words to the unfeeling ether of cyberspace that surrounds us!

As have others, I said in the past that I don't really like country music; more recently, I realised that there are bits of it I do like, so I try to remain open minded. I happened across the Dixie Chicks "Home" album; I remember they had a lot of hassle over Gulf War II, which is why the name stuck, so I gave it a listen.

It's great; there's some fast and furious bluegrass playing, so pop songs, some delicate ballads. And one or two rather crap love songs. Ah well. Interestingly, all the stand out songs, for me anyway, are covers. I've worked out one, Top of the World. Funnily enough, the middle section has the same chord change to a very bad, slow, folkie version of "Little Red Corvette" that I used to play poorly many years ago.

Following yesterdays road scraping, I've decided to commemorate the occasion with a gallery, named after a band I've been getting into recently. So, I proudly announce the Bruise Armada. I will update it over the couple of weeks.

Have been suffering from a problem; due to some over-exuberance, I've had to eat with a teaspoon for the last few days. Fortunately, on sunday I'd cooked some bulgar wheat with chickpeas. Today, was curried rice.

Very simple: garlic flakes, oil, pepper, black mustard seed, all fried. Then add rice vinegar and some soy. After a few minutes of frying put in a enough rice and fry it drish, then add enough water. Finally, spice with an Oxo cube, cumin, coriander, turmeric and add a small amount of tomato puree and chilli sauce.

To give it a bit of bulk, I added peas, broad beans and some quorn chicken. Turned out rather well, as it happens. Takes about 15 minutes in total.

Well, having felt middle-aged in my last entry, today I feel rejuvenated and young. Just to prove that I can be foolhardy and idiotic, I fell of my bike during an overtaking manoeuvre of quite staggering incompetence. It's nice to know that I can still engage in fits of youthful over-exuberance. Kind of knackered the bike up though.

The image is included as my contribution to medical science. Ouch. Thanks is due to man I was overtaking, who helped me up; particularly nice, as I almost bought him off.