Andrew’s Blog

So it’s January again and the department is only just now starting to get back up to full steam. I’ve been back in since the 2nd in order to give myself plenty of time to get going again while it’s quiet. I actually quite like it like that. For most of the first week, there were very few academics in. Notably, Phil was around (the mark of a good head of department) and Marian was also in towards the end of the week. Other than that, it was pretty much just me, Monika, Kirsty and a few other VT students (Henry and Maslita then Mohammed and Ali on the Friday) around our part of the building.

Henry spent most of the time trying to finish sorting out his new accommodation and, most importantly, his Internet connection. It seemed like a good idea to go with the discount O2 gave him via his existing mobile contract in theory. In practice, their website was obviously designed by idiots and caused no end of problems. Why should we have to tell the web site that we’re logged in? Surely it should know!

Ibby also made an appearance on the Thursday (although much later than I expected from his phonecall the day before!) and Henry suggested some post-birthday drinks which was very nice of him. We spent a couple of hours in the Swim, having a good chat before going home.

This nice little spell of quite winterdom was over by the next week when people started to reappear en mass. There still weren’t enough people to warrant a postgraduate seminar session though, on the Monday, so it was cancelled much to Ramsay’s dismay at the loss of pizza. Most of my time over the last two weeks has been spent on getting the Sun stuff going, of which you can ready more on my other blog; other than that, it’s been lots of nice chats over cuppas as usual.

The biggest event of the last couple of weeks has to be our impromptu night out. Last Thursday, me and Henry bumped into Emily in the kitchen (she having returned on Monday, when we sadly took all the Christmas decorations back down) and were given a rather strange invitation to a night out. You see, she didn’t ask us if we wanted to join her but rather if we’d meet up with her if we were already going out. Kind of bizarre. We weren’t sure what to do, given the short notice. I know Em would never go out at such short notice, so it seemed a bit cheeky her expecting us to.

In the end, we decided to go and I texted Em to let her know. We were forewarned it was apparently a ‘girly night’, whatever that means, but even without any mascara, we still decided to go. Unfortunately, we were a little late in getting across to the Varsity and when we got there at 9, Em had left. We stayed for a drink anyway, then went across to the quieter Cavendish for another. As usual, the Varsity was playing loud music for the very few customers it has, while it was noticeably quieter but packed with people in the Cavendish. After some interesting chat, the two of us headed down to the Leadmill, again via the Globe, having agreed to meet Emily there.

The streets were desolate, with the Cavendish seemingly having the majority of tonight’s party people. To say we got to the Leadmill later than we have before (about half eleven), and yet it was still nearly empty, it shows how much the night-going population of Sheffield is dominated by the students, who were all still mostly away on Christmas vacation. We spotted Em and friend not long after getting there, but there seemed to be little hint of the girly night we were told about. Rather than interrupting her, we waited until she spotted us as well and decided to come over.

The night was a bit different to what I remember the last Thursday at the Leadmill being like. The music in the main room was way more cheesy than before, being a smattering of all sorts of pop music, while room 2, rather than being the usual indie stuff, was playing house music. Sadly, as always popularity surrounds the worst music, and the poor DJ in that room had very few people on the dancefloor. These kids today just don’t have any taste — I mean, Peter Andre? The guy kept repeating tracks too which always annoys me. 3 Britney Spears songs (1 twice)?

It worked out well though, because I think the DJ in room 2 realised he didn’t have to play to the crowd but could just play what he fancied. We went back and forth a few times; I got Henry to join me in there the first time, then the second time he initiated us going in there after hearing that the guy had moved on to playing some trance. The main dance floor was a joke. Not only was the music not too good, but the majority of people there weren’t even dancing and seemed to take it badly that some of us wanted to actually enjoy ourselves. They’d rather just stand there like idiots and get drunk.

Towards the end of the night, there were people falling all over the place, so I escaped once again to the other room, especially when I heard the DJ was now playing some drum ‘n’ bass! That made me very happy, even I was one of only about three people in there, while the rest were staggering around in the other room to Whitney Houston. Admittedly, it was commercial drum ‘n’ bass (Pendulum’s ‘Slam’ followed by Puretone’s ‘Addicted to Bass’) but this was still a league above what the annoying wedding DJ was doing in the other room. It’s always a sign of a bad DJ when they feel the need to talk to their audience and tell you what tracks they’re going to play. Honestly, it was like listening to Hallam FM or something.

The DJ finished the night with some old skool stuff, and then I met up with Henry again and we walked back up towards his house. I was in no rush to get back and I didn’t want to leave him until I knew he was cognoscent enough to get home okay. All in all, it was a good night and I enjoyed the chance to have a good chat with Henry. He’s a really good friend.

It’s Christmas party time again. Quite unbelievable that it’s been a year already. This time last year, the VT folks were only just starting to go out together at night, whereas this year has been packed with dalliances and debacles with the creatures of the night. Yesterday was the departmental Christmas party, where the members of the DCS all got in their spaceships (ours looking strangely like a Supertram) and headed for the Moon. That was after a fairly busy morning of handing out Christmas cards and preparing the lyrics for the VT choir to sing their little hearts out.

We set off about quarter to one, having waited for Em to close the gates of reception and keep the students at bay for the day. We’d decided to take the tram there in order to carry the instruments for the VT choir (Tony’s guitar and Henry’s keyboard) but somehow we all got split up. George lead a contingent of people (including Monika, Daniella, Chris and Tony) there on foot, while myself, Henry, Em and Csaba held on for Mesude who was running late (we were worried we were going to be short a keyboardist) and then when to catch the tram. Em was trying to get hold of Anna, who we thought was still in the department, but it turned out she was already at the tram stop and we saw the tram arriving as we were on the other side of the road. We dashed across but I ended up getting on the tram while Henry, Mes and Csaba got left behind and had to get the next tram.

In the end, we all got there, although a rather depressing turnout from the VT lab with only the five of us (Abraham arrived shortly after). Emmanuel would have come, had it not been for him deciding to stay in the VT lab all night (!!!) and then only go home after me and Henry arrived in the morning. He was still sleeping when Henry called him. I saw him later on when we returned to the department to drop off the keyboard and camera, and he wasn’t that bothered about missing the food after he found out how cold it was and that there was no hot chicks (of the edible variety) like last year. The design of the venue this year was better (we were all sat at tables in the back room of the pub, rather than sitting separately and circling a huge hole like last year at the Walkabout), but the catering was very lack lustre. As already mentioned, the food was all cold and we didn’t even get a free drink! Csaba had to cough up money for an orange juice which is disguisting when they were offering drugged up drinks for free. We ended up getting Henry two free drinks while he bought me an orange juice.

Once again, we performed miserably in the quizzes. Last year I think we did fairly okay with Stannett’s quiz, but this year we were up against Phil’s rather lengthy quiz and a barrage of bizarre questions about the earnings of the department. We succeeded in guessing a few people’s middle names correctly, and did okay on the Christmas section but given most of the questions were from around 1984 and the oldest in our group were only about five or six at that time was kind of a disadvantage. I still think we should have divided the score by the combined ages of those of the group instead of the number of people in it (although we lost 3 along the way; it was nice to see Swampi again though, brief as it was). However, it was still a better performance than the 05 quiz where I think we managed just 2. Dave once again had a guess the person picture quiz, and I think we did better than we had before, using our phone-a-friend to get some help from Mahmood and (belatedly) one of Mesude’s friends.

By far the funniest of the quizzes was George’s face quiz, but unfortunately only the die-hard contingent of Monika, Pete, George, Tony (Chilton), Dave, Em, Csaba and myself stayed around for this, after we scared the rest off with our renditions of the VT song and Slade’s ‘Merry Christmas Everyone’. The quiz had two parts, one where you had to guess whose eyes were starting at you from the page and another where you had to determine the parents of a series of mutant bastard children, resulting from dalliances in the broom cupboard by various members of the department. I was surprised to find George had put me in there twice, but I couldn’t spot either. Em found the eyes one. She also appeared twice but was pretty easy to spot. Certain of the partnerships were pretty scary and will probably continue to haunt us for weeks to come.

We made our way back to West Street around 6. Csaba kindly helped me bring the keyboard back to the department, but then called it a night, so I headed off alone to join Dave, George, Pete, Monika and Em in the Bath Hotel where we stayed for one drink before heading to the Swim with the prospect of some food. Memorably, Em showed considerable control by having only a Diet Coke to go with her lasagne, but she did seem quite worried about being okay the next morning for the secretaries and support party at RSVP and the other plans she has for this week with two days off. We had a nice chat over food, with George’s usual lude remarks, before Henry finally rejoined us, having gone house hunting. Monika and George decided to call it a night at that point, and she guided him off towards the tram stop.

The five of us moved on to first the Forum (with salsa dancers), then the Green Room (with a guy singing Buddy Holly’s ‘It Doesn’t Matter Anymore’ among others) and finally the Frog and Parrot, moving at Emily’s ‘drink up’ pace. It was there that she decided to call it a night at about half nine, and literally jumped in a taxi right outside the door. Henry was keen for more though, but it was down to just me and him after Emily jumped ship. Pete had a train to catch, and Dave, seemingly half asleep, decided to stay there enjoying the music. We walked down to the station with Pete, and then the two of us headed in to the Globe for a drink before the Leadmill opened.

Arriving at the Leadmill, we still had to wait even though it was quarter to eleven by this time. It seems the band of the night, Gogol Bordelli, had overrun a little and people were still filtering out. When we did get inside, it was only the second room that was open but it soon warmed up and we enjoyed a good selection of indie tracks from the 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s and naughties before we headed home about 1am. Quite early, but still a pretty good session, totalling 12 hours in all, and certainly one of our more memorable departmental Christmas parties. It was easily better than the first year, where we headed home after only two hours, and last year’s as well I’d say. Interestingly, the only person I saw on both this year’s and last year’s outing was Em, who appeared last year in the Devonshire Cat with Fran. This year, Ramsay has generally been pretty boring, becoming settled down and not coming out with us at all much unlike last year. He chose to go to listen to lecturers droning on in Birmingham instead this year with Simon and Georg. Stannett seems to have also become something of a party pooper of late, not appearing at either this or the VT party, but hiding away with some MSc students somewhere.

Oh well, that will probably be our last one, so a good job it went well. I wonder where we’ll all be next year…

Up to now, it’s been a relatively quiet couple of weeks, mainly because certain people were recovering from becoming rather intoxicated at a certain lab party. With the end of the semester, it’s also meant that there are less things going on generally, and we’ve seen noticeably less people in the lab. Both Emmanuel and Henry have been working hard done their respective coal mines instead of being in the lab, and we’ve not seen that much of Zed either. I’ve been moved to having headphones on most of the time, because I can’t stand the silence.

There have been a few good points. Me and Ibs have had quite a few nice lunches out and about, but we must make our choice of where to go early than we do. We’ve also had our only two external speakers this year — both came on consecutive Fridays. Gerald’s visit was something that had been on the cards for a while, and went pretty much as expected, with a good VT seminar turnout and lunch in the Swim.

Nick’s Theory SIG talk seemed a bit more risque, especially when we discovered that they’d decided to have an exam board that day as well. I was worried we weren’t going to get much of a turnout, but we actually managed to get easily the largest Theory SIG turnout we’ve had all year (including Georg and Kirill who escaped!). I reminded people, I bugged them by phone and it seemed to work. We also had a really nice social down the Red Deer afterwards. On this kind of high, I’ll be bowing out and taking over the VT seminars from July instead. Beware…

We’ve also got a departmental picnic on the 27th to look forward to now as well. Phil’s given the okay, and is even sorting me out ‘ bit of a budget’ — woo hoo! I’ve also managed to chase up most of my demonstrating claims, although I still seem to keep being offered new really interesting ones. I had an afternoon earlier this week of phoning around prospective undergraduates, which proved to be really nice in the end — mainly because I escaped the lab and borrowed Karen’s desk instead!

I’ve just got the open day stuff to sort out now, and posters to chase up. I want to get as much done of that as possible before I disappear from Wednesday on. I’m actually kind of looking forward to the chance to have a rest and get away from the depressing place the lab has become of late.

Henry Becomes 28… Or 19… Or Whatever…

So here’s the bit I know certain people have been waiting for, the full gory details of tonight’s shenanigans. It’s been quite a bizarre day when all’s said and done (for me at least), given that I actually spent only like 20 minutes in the department, but still saw most of the same people.

Trying to organise tonight has been a nightmare from start to end, and I don’t think I ended up doing anything in the end. I can try all I want, but I may as well be talking to the wall or e-mailing the pope. It was Henry who did it all in the end as it should have been, being his birthday and it’s clear that I should leave these things to our resident party goddess and little party monkey in the future. There’s only so long you can feel like the spare wheel, especially when it’s the one that gets a puncture. It was good while it lasted, but we can’t always change as we’d like.

On to the events. Friday morning, things finally seemed to be arranged, so I e-mailed around and let people know, before grabbing a quick cuppa and heading up to the postgraduate research conference with Simon. We left Ramsay in charge of the lab, after I was less than impressed than the alarm had once again not been set, by, I have a feeling, someone who shouldn’t even have been there, but I don’t know for certain.

Overall, the day was quite interesting, but a lot of the information was a case of if you’ve heard it once, you don’t need to hear it again. I think the sessions could have benefitted from a little more participation (too many times, especially in the morning, we were sat just listening, which never works for me). This also impacted on the fact that one and a half hours felt far too long. I also thought there was a lot of room for improvement in the catering — I don’t really count a few sandwiches as a lunch, but more importantly things were unmarked, making things difficult for many of our students. Timetabling was also a problem, given that the early afternoon on a Friday is prayers for our Muslim students (which from the majority in VT). Even though I saw lots of DCS folks, my choices meant I spent a lot of the day with Simon who was more sociable than he has been of late, as he was in the pub last week — getting him on his own obviously works…
We returned to the department to drop off the stuff they gave us and pick up others, most notably Emily who was waiting patiently for us in reception at 5, dressed up to the nines and looking wonderful. Seemed a bit odd to then lead her in to the mess that is the VT lab, but oh well… we eventually cajoled people into leaving and headed for Nando’s for some food. This was not before losing both Zubair (who hurried off with excuses of work to do) and Ibby, who’s pathetic text doesn’t even bear mentioning. Someone should teach him that honesty really is the best policy…

The eventual party that left was thus just me, Henry, Emmanuel, Abraham and Emily. At the restaurant, we got seats for seven as we were soon joined by Henry’s girlfriend, Julia, and his friend, Mary. We then gormandised our way through three plates of chicken, rice and chips with bottomless supplies of Fanta, Sprite and Coke. Over this, Emmanuel told us how apparently Henry should traditionally be whipped in Ghana on his birthday. Believe what you want, maybe Henry has some kind of masochistic streak…

Even after the meal, Henry still hadn’t decided what we were going to do. Apparently, he’s a man, can’t multitask and can only juggle two balls… Eventually hopping over to the Cavendish, wine was the order of the day, while Henry devised me a non-alcoholic cocktail called ‘Strawberry and Bits’. I have to admit it sounds kind of intriguing, but I’m definitely going to stay away from his other alternative, ‘Henry’s Banana’ and leave that to the ladies.

After finding that, due to me chatting with Emily, Julia and Mary, that I must be learning about ‘women’s things’ (including lipstick and tampons apparently), Henry was inspired by Julia to become a transsexual and shake his ass like Beyonc&eecute;. This led on to another conversation about Henry living with a homosexual, and Emmanuel discovering this when him and a friend came out of the bathroom wrapped in towels. You have to wonder what these two get up to sometimes…

Of all coincidences, we happened to see James going past the window and he popped in, agreeing to come back and join us later. That he did by the time we had moved across the road to the Varsity, a place which I’ve still failed to work out the point of. I can understand going to a bar to socialise and chat with people. I can understand going to a club to dance. What’s the point of some weird middle ground where there’s loud music that drowns out conversation but no dancefloor?

Me and Emmanuel were again exposed to a bit of Henry’s data quality shit during our time in the Varsity. He had us applying 0 to 1 scores to women in the room, with no criteria on how to judge these scores (a clear floor in his analysis). I’m waiting for the day this reaches his thesis and Siobhan sees it…

Leaving the Varsity about an hour later, Henry and Emmanuel beatboxed our way to Havana, but we decided not to go in as they were still serving meals at this time (it was still pretty early, given we’d started at five). Instead, we headed to Reflex, and cut a few moves on the dancefloor.

For some reason, we then went to try and get into Embrace, even thought it was obvious I wasn’t going to get in, as I hadn’t bothered to dress up, having come straight from the PGR conference. In retrospect, I should have just gone home and left them to it, instead of fucking things up for everyone.

We ended up retiring to our homes at about 1am, after spending the rest of the evening back in Habana, where everyone showed off some seriously good salsa moves — I’m well impressed by their hidden talents. On the way home in the taxi, we went past the remains of Gatecrasher. Still hard to believe it burnt down like that on Monday. It will be interesting to find how it happened.

Hope you had a good birthday celebration Henry — don’t work too hard!

A later start than I expected today, but it seems to have been a good day. Movement of the VT clan is still very much on the agenda. Sarah definitely wants to move to the research overflow lab, and Shaukat and Ali seem to want to go too. The problem is, according to Tony Chilton, it might not even be ours to use; he thinks it might be reserved for SpandH and NLP. I’ve contacted Phil to find out, but he’s away at present — so they are in limbo to an extent.

After finding out that we needed some tables that were imminently for the rubbish tip, myself and Mahmood grabbed them and moved them into the lab, thus making a start on the movement already. As a result, the two biggest issues have been sorted; both Emmanuel and Azman now have a proper desk and Emmanuel even has a machine. I also moved Frank over to the back table, which is eventually going to just house the printer, and moved Fran’s simulation machine to its rightful home. Things should thus be a bit simpler tomorrow.

Neither me nor Ibby met with Mike, as, with us working on the reports, there isn’t much point. He did drop in at the end of the day, and spotted my CDs, which he seemed interested in. Also, as with most people, he was perplexed by my crazy diagram of the lab — not to scale or aspect ratio! Yet more transfer reporting, but I think the end is in sight now — just djoin, biology, pi types, p systems and bigraphs to cover I think. Hopefully, some will be clear prior to tomorrow’s move, which starts with a lunch at 1ish.

In other news, there is likely to be a postgrad meeting next week, and I’m trying to recruit people to apply for Google’s pizza ambassadorship, to increase the likelihood of it happening at Sheffield… busy times. At least, one thing is off my mind. I was delighted to see a friendly face pop up on MSN today; a jet-lagged Fran appeared briefly who I’m happy to say arrived safely and will be giving his presentation tomorrow. Best of luck, mate — VT is rooting for you.