Interesting day, so far. The talk on the "Cell Centred Database" was a bit of a highlight; looks like an extremely competant and capable system. They are using a very ontological driven system, and trying to incorporate annotation into the tools which are used to generate the data in the first place. Very sensible, although hits the problem that the ontological markup can be hard to understand.

One strange thing that I have discovered today is that almost all neuroscientists use "data" and "metadata" as plurals; bioinformaticians use either but tend, these days, much more to the singular.

Am at the "Databasing the Brain" conference in Oslo. So far, we've had a fairly hairy start; the taxi ran out of petrol on the way. We decided to walk the last 1-2km; it turned out to be more like 5-6km, uphill with luggage and a laptop. The guy didn't even apologise or thank us for pushing him of the road.

Still, gave my the chance for a look at the environment which was lovely. We're up in the hills, past a sky jump, pine forest, fresh air. What more could you want (other than time to enjoy it of course).

Tried a garlic broth this week, with garlic flakes. Think that this was a mistake; a couple of bulbs of garlic would have been better. Essentially, I fried lots of garlic for a while with a some onion and then some stock. Then added tofu, potato and udon noodles.

The taste was fairly good, although it didn't keep that well. The main problem was the colour; it was pretty palid looking and would have been better with, say, lots of soy in the broth base.

I will work on this; I like the concept of garlic as a main ingredient rather than a garnish.

In the bad old days, we used to get problems with the termpature in trains all the time. They had windows which opened, which we did when it got too hot. In summer, travelling down the line there could be many windows open, blowing air in the carriage.

Thankfully, these days have gone now. The windows have all been blocked up and sealed, because now we have air conditioning. It's great. Even when the weather outside picks up to a scorching 24C, inside the train will remain a comfortable 32.

Just taken delivery of my new machine: a Sony TX2XP. It's quite cute. The keyboard takes a little bit of getting used to, as it's fairly small, but it's probably worth the hassle for the overall size and weight of the machine.

In general, it seems a significant enhancement of the previous machine I had. The mouse buttons are nicer than the old one. The power management drivers are cleverer (the DVD still powers off when in low power mode, but switches on again if you want it...although it won't switch off again if you don't). The only real fly in the ointment are the graphic drivers which still don't work properly: they just cannot cope with multiple set ups. The previous version tried to guess what you wanted, but often got it wrong (setting up a project as an extended desktop for instance). This system has some right click context menus, and includes an option to set up schemes, so you can pick what you want. Sadly, it's totally broken. It seems to randomly forget schemes (although they come back later) and, even when it remembers them, it doesn't get them right, leaving the resolution unchanged. Pity, because it's a good idea.

Hopefully, this one will last a little longer than my last one.

I discovered yesterday that our marvellous Bioinformtics Support Unit has two offices. One in the medical school and in the Devonshire building. More over, it has two people in it.

This leaves the question, in what sense is it actually a unit?

I've been writing up a document for the EPSRC Case for New Academics aware today; it's an interesting award, in that it is a fairly low bar for entry, if you can get the CASE component. One of the odd things about it, though, is that you have to submit the the details of the student before you have the cash; at this stage, obviously, you can't promise the student anything, and not having the cash you can't advertise for the student. Bit of at Catch-22 really.

Some of the other requirements are a bit odd as well, all of which have what I think have unintended consequences. First, you can't have been PI on any other grant; this means that you can't really do collaborative work until you have got the first grant because it will make you ineligable for the first grant. Second, there has to be a maximum of ten years since you PhD. This tends to discriminate against people who have not been in academia continously, either because they have been involved in another career or involved in something else.

The basic idea behind these grants is good; I also understand that the research councils don't want them to be seen as a freebie for new academics. It's a pity that they are causing these slightly strange consequences.

Got through lots today; both went swimming and walked to the top of the town moor because I haven't been there before. Really nice, as is happens. The weather was warm, but with a fresh breeze, generally very good.

I was thinking about how we define racism; many people equate it with prejudice (based on race obviously), but I don't think that this is enough. There needs to be some political or power structure in the way, otherwise it's just prejudice and why have two words for the same thing.

It's often hard to describe the different between the two concepts, but I have a good analogy: is a heterosexual man being sexist when he chooses to only go out with women? Most people would say no, but he is clearly being prejudiced, just not in a way that most would find unacceptible.

Strange thing to be thinkin about on a beautiful, sunny afternoon, but there you have it. When I got home, I ended up listening to Peter Day on in business; I can't see it myself — I'm sure he's well respected but he always seems unincisive, lacking in depth and patronising. A very rare collection of attributes.

Just tried using a new system for postgraduate admissions at Newcastle. It's built on top of the Universities SAP system, which means that it probably cost lots of cash and barely works. It's taken me about a week to login. Amasingly the system seems to consist of scanning in documents and displaying them as a tiff image, surrounded by enough Javascript to ensure that it will only display with a single viewer.

I went to a talk once by Ted Nelson, during which he slagged of Acrobat. His comments were over the top, but he has a point. Transferring a printed document to screen decreases it's usability. It's the 21st Century people! We shouldn't still be doing this.