Partially Attended

an irregularly updated blog by Ian Mulvany

09 Jan 2009

World War II, Science and Springer Authors

Springer have just launched a web app that lets you search for locations of authors, AuthorMapper. They have done this by building an XML database with the citation metadata for all of their papers. You search for terms or authors and it will generate a google map with the locations for your search terms, or people. The site also has some other infoporn, including a histogram for authors published by year for your search term. ... (more)

08 Jan 2009

Wekly training report, week 1.

Sunday 4th of January 8 km run, in 53 min, average heart rate about 149 bpm. http://www.gmap-pedometer.com/?r=2468786Monday 5th of January. Did a mini endurance set on my fingerboard. I've decided to do a 4 week set of power endurance training, with a view to improving my sport grade, just 4 weeks and then I'll switch to finger strength for four weeks. This bascially hurts and sucks, but hey, that's what you gotta do. ... (more)

23 Dec 2008

Review of Climbing Goals for 2008.

Back in January I set myself some goals for my climbing in 2008. The results at the end of the year were mixed, which means that I succeeded with some of my goals and patently failed with others. The was: * Onsight Grit E2 * Redpoint f6c+ * 10 weekende+ trips in UK * 5 red problems in a day in font * 80 kg weight * build climbing wall ... (more)

21 Dec 2008

a great presentation about books and community

My colleague Gavin Bell just uploaded a great presentation about creating communities of readers out of readers of books. You can see his presentation <a href="http://www.slideshare.net/gavin/gavin-bell-from-readers-of-books-to-a-community-of-readers-oreilly-toc08/">here on slideshare</a>. He gave this talk at the Tools Of Change conference in New York earlier this month. Read and post comments | Send to a friend ... (more)

21 Dec 2008

A minor milestone in leisurely reading

Last night I finally finished Neil Stephenson's Quicksilver. Oh, don't get me wrong, I've read it, and the full trilogy, before, but for much of the past year I have been re-reading it aloud to my girlfriend. She has an eye strain which means that if she reads too much at night she gets headaches, and so I've been doing the recreational reading for the two of us over the past year. ... (more)

21 Dec 2008

blogging darwin

One of my friends is writing a series of blogs about Darwin. It looks like a very nice series of blog posts, and I look forward to the rest. You can read it here. Of course as a physicist I disagree with one comment in this first post: "From an intellectual point of view, the Origin is the most significant work of the millennium, and the most important work of non-fiction ever. ... (more)

21 Dec 2008

bus podcast idea

I had a great idea yesterday while I was engaged on a personal odyssey on London buses. I was on the top deck of, I think it was the 176, heading down past Old Street into the square mile, round St Paul's (with a quick glimpse of millennium bridge, and then on into the strand. The bus went past so many statues, churches and historical buildings, but I knew only a few of them. ... (more)

21 Dec 2008

chasing cars

This morning as I was leaving Shoreditch park a guy in a black masarti with the top down passed my on my bike. I continued along the canal as usual and as I came past sainsbury's in islington saw the same guy in the same car, as I passed him! Bike 1, Masarati + London Traffic 0. Read and post comments | Send to a friend ... (more)

21 Dec 2008

climbing milestone

Last night I got my first UK 6a boulder problem at the Castle climbing wall, it's been a while since I was making progress with my climbing, so that was great.My climbing diary is here: http://jottit.com/h94hx/ Read and post comments | Send to a friend ... (more)

21 Dec 2008

Cloverfield

Cloverfield Originally uploaded by Ian Mulvany My Work Colleague make a cloverfield diarama in our sandbox today. We will be going into full scale production soon. Read and post comments | Send to a friend ... (more)