2014

A combination of notes on the lessons and general diary stuff about Hullzapoppin, a dance camp in Hull. I don’t always make these public out of a vague fear of the lindy blogsphere descending on me and telling me what I got wrong, but what the HellHull. Possibly only of interest to dancers, though the rest of you may be interested in the part with the blow up doll, I suppose.

Friday

u6EDiUp the A1 and over the Humber bridge to Hull. A nun walking in the grounds of the Endsleigh Centre welcomed us in and wished us a lovely weekend. We registered and got our wristbands: Intermediate Advanced ones were black, which goes with everything.

We stayed in Westfield House, which was great. It’s a big house in a leafy suburb of Hull. All of the 4 rooms were occupied by lindy hoppers, as it turned out. The landlady made the breakfast room available at all hours, which came in handy for late night toast parties. Unfortunately, the house is on the market, so we may not be able to stay there next year.

We ate in Fudge, which seems to be the subject of some sort of smear campaign on Trip Advisor but which was rather good.

Back to the Endsleigh Centre for the Friday night dance. It was crowded but manageable. I danced with once of the teachers without realising she was a teacher, so don’t technically deserve my Courage Wolf meme, but managed not to totally embarrass myself.

Are you paid to look busy?
Do people with useless jobs secretly resent those with useful ones?
(tags: jobs money management work employment)
Interview with the Game of Thrones linguist
There are a few Easter eggs in the Valyrian stuff. Fun.
(tags: television game-of-thrones language)
What’s the evidence on using rational argument to change people’s minds? : May 2014 : Contributoria – community funded, collaborative journalism
Are we rational or rationalising? Depends on the context.
(tags: psychology bias rationality argument persuasion logic)

Speeding Up Your Engineering Org, Part I: Beyond the Cost Center Mentality
Make investments in reducing latency rather than just comparing hours spent with value gained.
(tags: programming management latency speed)
Programming Sucks
“Websites that are glorified shopping carts with maybe three dynamic pages are maintained by teams of people around the clock, because the truth is everything is breaking all the time, everywhere, for everyone. Right now someone who works for Facebook is getting tens of thousands of error messages and frantically trying to find the problem before the whole charade collapses.”
(tags: programming code internet funny)

Speeding Up Your Engineering Org, Part I: Beyond the Cost Center Mentality
Make investments in reducing latency rather than just comparing hours spent with value gained.
(tags: programming management latency speed)
Programming Sucks
“Websites that are glorified shopping carts with maybe three dynamic pages are maintained by teams of people around the clock, because the truth is everything is breaking all the time, everywhere, for everyone. Right now someone who works for Facebook is getting tens of thousands of error messages and frantically trying to find the problem before the whole charade collapses.”
(tags: programming code internet funny)

The link posting script (which copies my bookmarks from Delicious to occasional blog posts here) has gone awry and posted the same link three times, so I’ve turned it off until I can fix it.

Last time this happened, it was because Delicious was feeding it the same link with different Globally Unique Identifiers, so maybe they’ve done that again. The obvious fix is just to use the link’s URL rather than the GUID from Delicious, so I’ll do that when I get a moment.

Apologies for spamming your feeds/friends lists/newsfeed/wherever else you’ve been reading the blog.

Men who post on “Women who eat on tubes”
The lackwits who post on “Women Who Eat on Tubes” now have their own group dedicated to them, “Men Who Post on Women Who Eat on Tubes”. Sauce for the goose, and all that. The best thread on it is this one, where they take it in turns to pretend to be one of the WWEOT posters: “Misandry privacy too seriously chill lad women only joke reverse, ironic turned silly time sport lift even do you. 2.2 Southampton beer banter opinonated BA Sports Science & Geography. Women rotten upturned collar hate women but Justin Beiber haircut and posh holiday photo. Hat look at my hat look in my photo I am wearing a hat probably. LAD” Indeed.
(tags: funny satire sexism tube london underground misogyny privacy photography)

Men who post on “Women who eat on tubes”
The lackwits who post on “Women Who Eat on Tubes” now have their own group dedicated to them, “Men Who Post on Women Who Eat on Tubes”. Sauce for the goose, and all that. The best thread on it is this one, where they take it in turns to pretend to be one of the WWEOT posters: “Misandry privacy too seriously chill lad women only joke reverse, ironic turned silly time sport lift even do you. 2.2 Southampton beer banter opinonated BA Sports Science & Geography. Women rotten upturned collar hate women but Justin Beiber haircut and posh holiday photo. Hat look at my hat look in my photo I am wearing a hat probably. LAD” Indeed.
(tags: funny satire sexism tube london underground misogyny privacy photography)

Men who post on “Women who eat on tubes”
The lackwits who post on “Women Who Eat on Tubes” now have their own group dedicated to them, “Men Who Post on Women Who Eat on Tubes”. Sauce for the goose, and all that. The best thread on it is this one, where they take it in turns to pretend to be one of the WWEOT posters: “Misandry privacy too seriously chill lad women only joke reverse, ironic turned silly time sport lift even do you. 2.2 Southampton beer banter opinonated BA Sports Science & Geography. Women rotten upturned collar hate women but Justin Beiber haircut and posh holiday photo. Hat look at my hat look in my photo I am wearing a hat probably. LAD” Indeed.
(tags: funny satire sexism tube london underground misogyny privacy photography)