The motorcycles diaries is the film of Ernesto Che Guevara's travels through South America. The story moves from it humerous and engaging beginning to its poigniant and moving finale. The film is wonderfully acted, beautifully scored and delicatly directed; it's filmed against astounding geography and a historical background more stunning still.

I've spent too long recently re-reading, re-watching. Who could wish for better than the Motorcycle Diaries to break this habit.

Ironic, really, that two TV presenters should have been seriously injured or killed while filming, namely Steve Irwin and Richard Hammond; one killed by a stringray, the other by driving too fast.

The coverage of both has been rather irritating. The media has got increasingly solipsistic these days and likes talking about themselves. Personally, I didn't like either of them as programme makers, both pushing style over substance, both somewhat puerile.

Despite their similarities, however, there are differences. Steve Irwin made his programmes to highlight the animals he appeared to love in face of the risks to their existence, the loss of which would make the world immeasurably poorer. Richard Hammond appears on a programme about driving fast.

Finally got back from All Hands. Could have done without the meeting really, as it's left me very tight for the beginning of term and a BBSRC grant deadline. Was a good meeting though. There was an interesting talk on a ontology of units of measurement — perhaps not exciting but everyone needs it. Peter Buneman gave a talk on why annotation is hard. His conclusion — that you need a reliable identifier system — seems fair, although problematic; reliable identifers have been discussed before, but they require coordination and probably centralisation. While I don't hold entirely with the "404 is a feature not a bug" argument, it is true that requiring this form of centralisation brings with it many disadvantages.

Ah, term start; bang goes any chance of sciece happening for the next few weeks.

At All Hands Meeting in Nottingham. It's changed over the years from a very poor conference when no one had anyhthing to talk about to something more reasonable. Already had a couple of interesting discussions, one of which might help with getting a statistical ontology together for CARMEN.

The talks have been okay, although of widely different quality from the interesting to the inconsequential. One of the big changes this year is that people are spending much more time talking about their science rather than the technology which was used to achieve this. A very good thing, to my mind. It's important that this work be kepts grounded and if projects can't get someone to talk about the science then I think that there are problems. Also, you get to hear about some new areas science (crystallography at the moment) which has to be up from 15 talks in a row on "what I did with globus, web services, other buzz word".

I was listening to a programme of blogging on Radio 4 a few days back. This weekend I had a look at one of the those featured, which was Petite Anglais. I wondered what it was that made it such a well-read blog. The answer is simple — the writing is excellent. It's witty, discoursive and makes you rethink its relatively mundane content. It also moves between strange and the deeply personal, and is moving because of it. In the end, though, it was probably this aspect which lead to the author getting the sack. The content does not actually justify her getting the sack. I suspect her employers were more worried about what it might say in the future, than what it actually does. I don't really understand this; I'm a fairly open person; I'll tell anybody anything that they choose to ask. My life is dull enough, that nothing that I answer is likely to be novel to anyone; they've probably done, thought the same things that I have.

The blog is slightly depressing as well, at least for me. I write for my job. Perhaps it's the formal nature of it that has robbed me of the ability to write quickly, lightly and with a human touch; more likely, I just never had the talent.

Read one of the Thraxas novels at the weekend. I'll say up front that they are good novels — funny, well-plotted, slightly bizarre — but they are not as good as Martin Millar's main novels which he seems to have stopped writing. A great pity.

Why was I reading this though? I've read them before, so there is nothing new to gain. I think that there are two reasons. Firstly, I seem some of Thraxas in myself. He's surrounded my amazing happenings, but can only rarely see it. My job is a bit like this. Looking back on the research I have done, and the changes that have happened in my life time is stunning. Like everything, in collapses into mundanity while you are actually doing it. The second reason is that I was fairly tired and hadn't slept well. Under such circumstances, you need something tight enough to interest you, but light enough to not demand too much thought.

It's a pity really. A few years ago (well, six or seven years ago), I went on a holiday on a boat. I was miles away from anywhere and trapped with no where to go. So I read a history book (E.P.Thomspon's, the Making of the English Working Class). I got 2/3's of the way through it, and have never finished it off. For such things you need a clear mind. Perhaps, I should go on another holiday, miles from nowhere.

Read a very bad article on the BBC website about free security software. Very bad because it suggests that people using free security software, may be using software which doesn't do the job, failing to stop many attacks or even importing trojans.

All, of course, entirely true, but providing the entirely false impression that software you paid for is going to do any better. Security software is like insurance — you don't know if it's any good, until you get in trouble. Actually, it's even worse with than insurance; when you crash your car, they might actually pay up. With security software, by the time you find that it's rubbish your machine has been trashed. However are you to purchase wisely, when you have no ability to judge, and where all the "experts" have a stake — they guy slagging off free products works for McAfee.

While looking for housing last weekend, I decided to take my bike. It's slower, but you can see far more from a bike than you can see from in car. It also reminded me of how much I like to be on a bike: watching the tarmac move underneath your wheels; wind in your face. Strange time of the year to get the bug for cycling again, but I was blessed with beautiful weather.

Been having an interesting discussion on the relative merits of mailing lists as opposed to web forums. Personally, I hate having to read things in web forums, because I am always find the interface terrible, particularly for writing notes as you are largely limited to a rubbish text box. Part of the reason why I hate web forums so much, though, is because I am a Gnus user; it was originally a usenet, news group reader and it's user interface it designed for reading high traffic, where most of what you want you get, you don't want to read. When I was had to use Outlook earlier this academic year, I was in real troubles, because it's user interface could just not cope with large amounts of traffic — click, click, point, read, click, click, right click, mark, read — read by date or by thread, but not both.

However, during the discussion I realised that there was a display that Gnus doesn't do; it would be really nice if the summary display — a threaded, indented set of subject lines — could also display the first four of five lines of text underneath. Currently, subjects and contents are heavily mixed.

Went looking at areas where I might buy a house this weekend. I quite liked the look of Wide Open. The name sounds pretty odd, although my guess is that it dates back to the coal industry; presumably, there was an open cast pit there.

It looks quite nice to me. It's a little bit out of town; the bike ride will be significant in the morning, but this is not necessarily a bad thing. The houses are also a bit cheaper, so I can get something proportionality larger and with gardens. I like space, so this is not bad thing.

I need to find someone who lives there, though. The only person to offer advice so far said "oh my god, it's a tip". But she hasn't been there for 20 years.

I've been trying to appoint someone onto an EPSRC Case studentship. The eligability rules are a nightmare. Apart from the fact that no one knows exactly what they are (I phoned up EPSRC and no one there knew!), they appear to be largely UK only. Other EU citizens can apply, but they need a three year residency in the UK. Stupid! The PhD is an international qualification. PhD students add immeasurably to the research environment. We should be glad that talented people want to come to the UK from abroad.

The core problem is, I think, that the PhD is considered to be an education, rather than a job. Thus, we have PhD students rather than researchers. This is only to the disadvantage of the students — they get treated poorly by the University system, it's harder to get loans or mortgages. Even the tax free status is a disadvantage — it saves the employer money, while the student comes out with a large gap in their stamps.

Ho hum.

I tried a new tofu dish last night. Very simple. I boiled the tofu in a frying pan with a stock made from some tamarind stock cubes, oxo veggie cubes and some garlic flakes, flavoured with cumin and MSG. I also added some rice vinegar which turned out to be a mistake as it was far too sour — in the end, it needed sugar to perk it up. Anyway, after boiling the tofu and reducing the stock somewhat on the hob, I toasted the top under the grill. Then, finally, returned it to the hob, added a little water to dilute the stock again, and sprinkled on raw garlic and onion. Left this for a few minutes till the onion was soft, and eat with ramen noodles.

Worked quite well, in general. As is my usual practice, I'll probably do the same dish again tonight, while it's still fresh in my mind.