November 2006 Archives

Card Fraud

I am a victim of debit card fraud. Which is interesting.

Most of you know me. I live on the internet, so as you can imagine much of my banking and shopping is done online. You'll also know that I am very careful and a little knowledgeable, so I shop at reputable stores and ensure that they use secure information transfer methods. Almost all of this is done from my Mac, because I consider it safer than my PCs, and less likely to be infected by trojans, keystroke loggers, viruses or other malware. Yet still my debit card details have been stolen and used somewhere in Europe for two small (about £30) transactions. Of course they need not have been stolen from me directly, or even via a computer. The methods of obtaining card information are diverse (some are mentioned in thisCardWatch overview but many more exist).

As a customer of the big banks I am well looked after. I spoke to LloydsTSB via PhoneBank, after noticing the transactions on my statement via internet banking. They politely, expediently and neatly arranged for the card to be cancelled, replaced, and the standard legal humdrum to be sent to me for signature and return. They will bear the brunt of this fraud. I am merely mildly inconvenienced, as I have a secondary credit card that I can use for transactions, and I can move cash around between accounts online for withdrawal in the real world.

I will read up further, but I don't yet see how I could make myself more secure in the future.

Snaps from the weekend

November Jack

Leghugger.

Chilly autumn days.

Face painting at a family gathering.

Tiger! Growl!

Creation Museum Created (almost)

The world's first Creation Museum is opening soon. Where? In the USA of course, where 50 million of the 300 million population apparently side with the argument of creation. And there are dinosaurs in that museum. I'm confused.

Read more in the full article.

The museum's website is at www.answersingenesis.org, where they are currently comparing the eyewitness account of God (written in Genesis) with recent publications in Nature and Science. I thought that current scholars generally accept that Genesis wasn't dictated to Moses by God, but then I don't think scholarly activities are really being encouraged here.

Also, is it me, or do religious writings use an awful lot of exclamation marks? What's that all about?

Princess

From Ben and Alex's party on the weekend. Snigger.

Snapped 3 Wood

I broke my 3 wood at the driving range. No unusual bashes, it just fractured. I twisted the head to test it after it had slipped around the shaft by about 30 degrees, and it broke away.

JCB Cake

Kim has been creating birthday cakes specials again. This was for Ben and Alex's joint birthday party on the weekend. Ace cake!

Qwerty Jack

Typing before he can write. He just likes to do what daddy does.

Earlswood GC

A hilly golf course with great views and some mad holes.

Greg in trouble.

Dawn

I forgot to post this. Dawn at Swansea Bay last week.

Key Performance Nutrition

You can now buy nutrient supplements and energy stuff online from Key Performance Nutrition. Yeah, I got the shopping cart installed over the last couple of days. Quite cool - I used FastCart's system linked into KPN's WorldPay account.

Key Performance Nutrition

Swing

It seems strange to many people that I've gone from rock climbing and mountaineering to golf. The two sports are at apparent opposite ends of the "dangerousness" spectrum and do seem very different, but as with most sports there are surprising areas of overlap.

One is to do with the storage of muscle movement sequences in the brain. With climbing you must train yourself not so much to become strong, but to become agile, balanced, and able to perform particular movements around all parts of your body. This is why of new climbers, ladies tend to improve more rapidly than men in the early stages (they cannot rely on strength so must develop technique). In golf there is almost only one movement to learn: the swing. And you never have to do it 20m up a cliff face.

Like the front crawl stroke in swimming, you can either learn the basics and spend a lifetime swimming in the same way (because it works), or you can get coached and constantly work at parts of the stroke looking for improvements. Each new change feels awkward and "wrong" initially, but as the new movements become incorporated into your stroke with drills and lap after lap swimming it becomes natural. Your times come down with no increase in effort (and often with a decrease in effort).

I went to a group golf introduction class on Thursday evening and now I can barely hit the ball. The pro gave me something to work on (and once he pointed it out to me I could see that it is the simplest way for me to improve my swing) and now I'm stuck in no-man's land. I can't go back to my old swing because the new movement has been incorporated after a couple of sessions at the driving range, and I haven't moved on far enough to be able to reproducibly swing and contact the ball. It's incredibly frustrating, and I can see why so many golfers don't want to make drastic changes to their swing. It is fascinating to me, however, as I have mainly been involved with endurance sports in the past. As a biologist my interest lies in finding out how things work, and mostly human things these days. In endurance sports it's easy to see how your body adapts to training, both quickly and in the long term. To see how my brain adapts rapidly (daily, weekly) to these swing changes is great fun, and wasn't entirely anticipated.

I'm playing a game tomorrow and I expect a torrid time. It'll be good for the mental part of my game I suppose, and it's something I've met many times before in different sports. Oh well, I'll just take lots of old balls.

Web Design Warning

Be warned, the next person that asks me to build them a website will have to up the sound quality in my study for me by buying me these items:

PMC DB1 (plus a sub to match probably...)
Cyrus 6vs

And probably a couple of hundred egg boxes for the walls. All my web construction is built at around 90dB and I need better quality audio. That should put you lot off my back for a while.

Enhanced Podcasts

I've uploaded a podcast based upon the last embryology lecture about the development of the musculoskeletal system. Unfortunately I haven't been able to add images to these podcasts in the enhanced format as I have wanted to: I just haven't had enough time. I need to draw the images myself and this just takes too long. It may be something I'll have to add in later years.

Become scientists, PM urges young

Hahahahahahahahahaha...ooooh *wipes tears from eyes*

"In the latest of a series of speeches setting out what he sees as the key challenges facing Britain in the decades ahead, Mr Blair focused on the central role of science in delivering prosperity for the future."

Snigger. Time to bring back student grants then.

"He called for better links between universities and business and said scientists should be revered as much as sports personalities."

Bwaaaaahaaaaahahahaha!

"Britain must encourage young people who want to "change the world" to become scientists, Prime Minister Tony Blair has said."

I know so many good scientists that are finding it difficult to stay in science. Time for a proper permanent contract-based approach to funding researchers then.

BBC article link

Sweaty

Note to self: before waving arms around demonstrating movements of the shoulder joint for 3 hours first apply extra large dose of leading-brand anti-perspirant.

So tired

What a great weekend. We went back to Cheltenham to see the family, and for the annual bonfire night party at mum and dad's. Jack had a bit of an intrigue/fear thing with the fireworks, and had his hands over his ears and stayed inside the house most of the evening. With an early round of golf one day and a very early start for fishing the following day, plus Jack waking up in the night and me being already tired from the week before, I was extremely tired yesterday evening. With a good night's sleep I felt better this morning, but I had to get to work early to help finish off one teacher's presentation and then organise alternative work as another teacher failed to turn up. That plus 3 hours teaching of the anatomy of the shoulder (which is difficult to to fix in your brain when you're repeating yourself 5 times and working your way around the joint) and ensuring the student group as a whole is getting what it's supposed to has left me as tired as yesterday. I'm glad I'm an academic with flexible working hours.

Tomorrow I teach the embryology of the musculoskeletal system, of which people assume I know more than I do. Sure, I'm a cartilage biologist and I'm interested in the development of joints, but that's far beyond the scope of this lecture and when you become embroiled with the detail you often lose sight of the basics. So it's a useful exercise for me, but I'll be glad when this term is over.

Viral Fossil Brought Back to Life

A several million year old human endogenous retrovirus that is now part of our genome has been resuscitated (kind of - it was mostly rebuilt from intelligent guesswork). There's a bit of worry about how such resurrections may endanger the current human race. I'm sure that's the plot of a sci-fi or zombie film, or if not soon will be.

Article link.

Cold

I was really late into the office this morning. Even though Jack woke me up at 7am, I slowly dragged myself from slumber and realised that it was a very cold, frosty morning and then spent an age hunting for my winter cycling gear: thin fleece hat, windproof gloves, thin fleece top, weatherproof, etc. From experience I know that it is painful to cycle for any more than 10 minutes at low temperatures without covering up exposed skin. By the time I got going my bike computer told me the temperature was 3C for most of the journey, so it's going to get a lot colder yet. Lovely clear blue, frosty, autumnal morning though.