I am reading “Public Parts” by Jeff Jarvis. Public Parts encourages us to embrace publicness and reject privacy, and with good justification. I’m glad to be reading this book.

I talk about privacy a lot because it’s a concern of mine. But, when I was younger I used to enjoy living my life in a public way. I used to embrace the internet a lot more than I do now. And so, I realised by reading the book what irritates me about publicness today. Here it is: when I do give away private information to a commercial entity, it’s sold to the highest bidding advertiser (perhaps brazenly so, by auction), whereas I hardly ever feel it adds any significant value for me.
I really don’t think I get the value that I deserve for that private information – the commercial entity takes away all of the value of that information. I look upon that very negatively.

Today I realised that I’d like to be part of a movement to change that default way.

I am helping my sister for her exams, as her needs relate to my regular job. I try to treat my sister as a regular client. So, I try to insist that we behave as though we were in a professional relationship, just for the periods that I’m teaching her.

My sister doesn’t fully understand the importance of this, I think. She checks her phone while we talk, and gets distracted easily. And then, I push my sister harder than I would push a regular client. This is bad of me: since I deliberately push my regular clients exactly as hard as they can deal with successfully. So, I’m not sticking to my end of the bargain either.

This is a hard job, but I am learning how to improve.

My taste in music has changed since the 1990s. Or, perhaps it hasn’t, but I no longer have the time or inclination to seek out independent and creative music that I love. So, now I’m much more likely to listen to the same music as everyone else. This got much worse while I lived with a record company employee: I was surprised that she was quite intolerant of music she didn’t favour, and I felt uncomfortable listening to music that I liked but she did not. Hopefully I’ll discover more music again now.

I have to admit that I really like Adele. Her music is clever, thoughtful and musical. I might buy her album. This answers your question: “Who is still buying Adele’s album such that it’s still number 1?”

The weather in London is still marvellous. I loved cycling through Hyde Park today.

Here is a lesson I would like everyone to learn: If you think you might be a bit allergic to latex (maybe because you react badly to regular plasters/band-aids or condoms), then don’t buy a mattress made of latex.

P.S. I’m definitely allergic to latex.

I find myself using Google less and less, although it’s still my back-up plan if I can’t immediately find what I want.

With a load of recent updates – particularly Google Instant (default “on”) – Google *feels* a lot slower. Perhaps this is because Google Instant most often throws up irrelevant search results, which are given inappropriate importance on the screen. I don’t believe this service saves *me* any time (perhaps because I’m a fast typist), and I find it extremely irritating.

I was checking Google’s claimed search times: typically 0.2-0.3 seconds. First: I’m sure Google used to be faster than this? Second: It’s taking a lot longer than this to return results to me, maybe up to a couple of seconds. Is this because of high ping? Google Chrome bloat? Not sure.

But basically, Booooo.

I think a lot about advertising.

Basically I hate advertising. I am advertised to constantly – and the thing is that 99.99% of the time I am advertised to about crap that I don’t want. Something that I already know that I don’t want, something that I already know that I want and I already have as much as I need. When I’m travelling, when I’m watching television, when I’m waiting for something, when I’m relaxing. Flashy, noisy and pointless advertising makes these situations more stressful. The majority of advertising makes me feel unhappy and very much more negative about a brand. These days, I deliberately avoid any products associated with Coca-Cola and McDonalds, the worst culprits. Of course, they shouldn’t care about the reaction of only me, since more people are influenced positively by their adverts.

I think I would like advertising if it told me stuff that I needed to be reminded of. Like… “remember to schedule some time to go to the gym!” rather than… “eat some crap”.
Unfortunately, since I already paid for my gym membership, they don’t advertise this to me that much.

So I really like the concept of this site: http://www.takebackyourbrain.com/
Lynn talks about how advertising techniques trick people into spending money… and how you can use those techniques to trick yourself! Exciting stuff! There should be more of this kind of thing… I think I will devour this website.

My Brazilian friend Eder has made an infographic about British travel, with a cute ginger British guide:

Made for http://www.sunbourne.co.uk/, who offer caravan type holidays in Wales.

BTW I personally think you should go to South Wales – the beaches are the best in Britain!

I have quit Facebook.

Every time I log on to my computer, I visit the Facebook homepage and then I think, “Oh… Why did I come online again?”

I’ve come to realise that Facebook takes away a lot of creativity from the internet. People don’t create content for the public internet any more – instead, they create content for their social network on Facebook, and in such a way that Facebook essentially owns the product of your creativity. Facebook even publishes your content in the Facebook standard format (dull and uniform), and reserves the right to republish it in a different format later on.
I’m so over that.

So, what else is on the internet? Please take me back, all you blink tags and kittens!!

I am trying to write a navigation system for The Cram Factory (education website)

What I need is for the menus to display differently depending on who is viewing:
- unlogged in viewers should be able to log in (obviously)

- logged in viewers should be given a link to their account preferences (and be able to log out)

- site should remember what section of the site a user visited, and display the menu for that section the next time (either by local cookie, or by username, or preferably both)

- paying users should perhaps be able to see a menu for premium areas of the site, which only they can access. (maybe different depending on the user!)

- different menus should only be visible depending on what page you’re visiting

Phew! The logging-in part is provided by any sensible web software, and the rest should just be an extension of that? Right? Oh dear…

Scotland’s national football team is always mathematically interesting to follow. Because, Scotland could qualify for an international championship if only… this happened and that happened. The combinations of results and scores are seemingly endless.

For Euro 2012, too, there’s still a chance for Scotland. A tiny chance, that relies on them beating Spain, hoping that the Czech Republic don’t beat Spain (other mishaps are possible but unlikely), and then later on beating another runner up team. Good luck!

I’m back in Chicago, and today I went to see my first ever baseball game… Chicago Cubs vs Atlanta Braves.

I loved the game – it’s like a complicated game of catch, and less boring than cricket. Seriously, the atmosphere on Wrigley Field is incredible. But of course I spent some of the time thinking about how maths applies to baseball.

In particular I was thinking about the batting order. The batting order is set before the game and remains the same for the nine innings, rotating through the list of players. So, I got to thinking, how should the coach decide the batting order?

Well, first of all, the likelihood is that the players early in the order will likely bat more often. So, in the simplest case, you should put your best players up first. That seems obvious. But, I didn’t stop there.

An ideal scenario would be if you could find three players who can take one base each, then put a home run player on immediately after them. More generally, any order of players that allows a good combination play would be helpful, even if the combination might run 9th batter back to 1st. Even if a goal combination pays off only rarely, it could make a big difference to a season’s results. (I don’t want to suggest good combination plays, because my knowledge of baseball is only rudimentary)

So then we look at the defensive side – the side who wants to stop such a play. Could there sometimes be a situation where a team would want to let a player walk and see the next batter, in order to break up such a combination play in future innings? It’s certainly possible… but maybe in practice that’s taking a big risk with only a little advantage. I’d like to investigate further.

Turns out that a wikipedia article discusses some useful points: Enjoy!

I have just spend three days in Lexington, Kentucky.
I really never thought I would end up here, but I met some wonderful friends playing Boggle… so… yeah… here I am.

Lexington is really a different experience for me – it has a smaller population than anywhere else I’ve been in the US, but that’s still a decently large number (300,000). (actually that’s more than Atlanta GA)

There are a few major international employers here – I have a Lexmark printer. And a pretty decent university bringing a cosmopolitan atmosphere. But Lexington is primarily the Horse Capital of the world. Every sign has a horse logo. The World Horse Championships were here in 2010. There is a huge, marvellous museum of horses, with all sorts of horse breeds and retired racehorses showing themselves off in the gigantic grounds.

It’s also the home of Bluegrass music. I had the pleasure of attending an impromptu jam session featuring just a Bluegrass banjo, violin and bass guitar. Bluegrass should really be experienced just like that, I recommend it.

And, at the last minute, we headed over to the Maker’s Mark distillery. This afternoon there were three employees dipping all the bottles into red wax, totalling about one per second. It’s really run as a small business producing a local whisky. I dipped a bottle for myself (clearly I will not be employed to do that – my wax has a bubble).

A fantastic experience – thanks to my friends Vanessa and Greg