Neil Hopcroft

OK, so I was a little premature in calling the bottom, but only a month off. Rationalisation of the company occured in more or less the way I had predicted around six months ago, theres a few details that still need working out and I’m not going to talk about that here. It *is* a going concern, its just that I’m not part of it as of next month sometime. This makes it rather better than last time around.

There is some thinking to be done before my meeting with Kevin tomorrow to figure out what the future looks like – whether there is any possibility of rescuing my client from the ashes, and, if so, what could be done with it once its dusted down and dressed up in new clothes.

“This would, of course, in many ways, be fortuitous timing for such freedom.”

The timing has only gotten better since I wrote this – mostly because of the situation I alluded to in my going offline post, but which I won’t expand on in any more detail yet (mostly nothing to worry about on *my* side, the friends-only thing is an attempt at protection for other people involved in the situation for who seeing my ugly mug might cause rather more pain than necessary right now, I’ll open things up, including most of these friends-only posts, once I’m sure its not going to be painful any more. They are, incidentally, slightly filtered, so I’d prefer you don’t talk among yourselves unless you already know what is going on).

So now I have a bright new future again, one so wide open that anything goes. But it does put plans for a new car on hold for a little while, at least until I can see where the next meal is coming from.

12-Jul-2007: entry set ‘public’

For reasons that will become clear over the next few weeks (indeed, may already be clear to you), this journal is becoming ‘friends only’ for a while. I don’t intend this to be a permanent change.

Please feel free to call or email me.

(Ok, so I’ve gotten somewhat distracted from doing book reviews of late, its not because I’ve stopped reading…I’m still spending plenty of time on trains…just that I’ve been growing a pile of ‘things I should do when I get around to it’)

This book describes a series of psychological experiments carried out in the last century, focussing on the social impact of those experiments rather than the overt science of them. It is written in an informal style following the journey of discovery about the experiments and some of the people involved in them. At times just meeting the people, others attempting to recreate the experiments in a world that has seen them before.

In some ways it paints a depressing picture of how little impact some of these experiments have had on the mental health care systems. It starts with the Milgram experiment and describes the effects it had on some of the participants. Certainly I had heard of most of these experiments, without either understanding the context within which they were run nor how recently they have all been conducted.

The book is an easy collection to start understanding some more about psychological experiments, how to perform them and what has been the impact of some of the higher profile ones. It isn’t a science book as such, rather a book about scientists interacting with a world they don’t seem to understand.

Who should read this book? Armchair psychologists, anyone who is interested in the social impact of scientific process.

(book 7, week 23)

BMW X5 prototype

“Do not touch any of the wires!”

Steampunk turntable

Frankfurter converter

Edible Skoda

A short history of British road signs

Anyone about in the Fulham area during daytime who would like to help us with some user testing on our new software version?

Oh dear, and that last entry sounded rather more melancholy than I had intended – it was intended as a reflection on how things have changed in the last year, not a discussion of the exit that wasn’t.

Thursday was the Fields of the Nephilim gig at the Astoria. Its been many years since I’ve seen them, last time was before they had turned into The Nefilim, so I wasn’t quite sure what to expect from them. I turned up during the support act, a mostly girl band who had a nice chunky sound but were let down somewhat by their vocalist wailing a little too much. The scary thing is that I walked in and saw the singer and thought immediately ‘thats Katie, shes really gone places’ – followed by ‘who the hell was Katie?’. And I couldn’t place her, I remember she went to Wales to go to university, but I don’t remember where she left from. After watching for a while I’m reasonably sure it wasn’t Katie, just someone who looked a bit like the sort of person she would have turned into.

After a break the Fields came on stage – I had thought I was standing at a reasonable distance back but by the time they hit the stage it was getting rather more crowded. Somehow a guy managed to appear in front of me, he was tall and sulky, looked like he’d never been to a gig before and didn’t really know what to do, I kept standing on his toes and having to move to see around him.

The show itself was energetic, with a nice mix of new and old tracks. The new tracks being met with ‘boo’s from the old-goth contingent at the back by the sounddesk, which seemed to me to be rather unfair since they fitted nicely into the overall feel of the music. Poor Carl McCoy seemed to be rather greyer around the edges than I remember, not that I actually remember seeing him that close before.

The highlight, of course, was ‘Last exit for the lost’, which turned into an epic starting really slow reaching a crescendo after what seemed tens of minutes (hence the time to think for the last entry), how had I forgotten how good this song is?

I close my eyes and i’m back at my last exit. I’m walking along pressing myself against the wall away from the platforms edge. I hear the sound of a train approaching, its getting closer, louder, closer. An exit.

But i decide its stupid and wasteful, so i stay close to the wall to save it feeling easy. Besides, no one would know why, even if they did they wouldn’t understand.

That was a year ago, but it is still vivid in my memory. I’m glad i’m still here, its been a hell of a year.

“i know that porridge isn’t usually a direction but the figure shows what i mean”

I’ve just uploaded a bunch of old photos. Let me know if theres any of you that you thoroughly disapprove of and I’ll hide them….and pass on the URL to anyone you think might be interested.

More to come – I haven’t started tackling those from Japan yet.

Doll face

Rolls-Royce pickup conversion

Chocolate racecar

INT13 still alive and kicking

Chocolate offsetting

Death by a 1000 Cutts

Fun with explosive gases

Alameda-Weehawken burrito tunnel

Scope clock

6502 in Javascript

Kit car

USB everything