Archive for January, 2012

Audi drivers really are the new BMW drivers. There is a parking space literally just off camera to the right (opposite the curb you see behind you), but this guy chooses to park on double yellow lines while he stops for lunch at the same cafe I was grabbing a sandwich from.

To make Christmas feel a bit more like Finland, Elina and I made a ginger bread house.

As part of working out what gym we wanted to join, myself and Elina headed down to the Crowne Plaza Hotel to check out their Spirit Health Club.

It was pretty disappointing. The cool was 15m in length, which is shorter than The Marriot, and it had kids in as well. Most annoying, was the depth – which went down to one mentre at one end which made it almost impossible to swim properly.

Other than that, it was perfectly nice, but not quite up to standard with the other places we’ve tried.

If your insert statements are not time critical, you can use insert delayed in your SQL to speed things up. The syntax is as follows.

INSERT DELAYED table (col1, col2) VALUES ('a', 'b');

Insert delayed can be used with MyISAM and Memory, but cannot be used with InnoDB.

The advantage of using insert delayed is that the MySQL server returns a success message straight away so the script can keep going, without it actually having to do the insert. This allows the MySQL server to carry it out when it isn’t busy, and do several at the same time.

It’s appropriate for tables such as logs tables where it doesn’t matter too much if they don’t go in straight away.

I remember being in an assembly at primary school, which I believe was being delivered by our then headmaster, Peter Boyle.

He was talking about how we should all be polite to each other. Near the end of the talk he proposed the idea that it should be a school rule that we should all be polite to each other and suggested that we vote on it. “All those in favour”, and all the hands in the hall went up, except for one. “All those against”, and one single handle was put into the air – mine.

As a special privilege for daring to decent from the prevailing opinion, I was invited to the front of the hall, to explain to the whole school why I didn’t think being polite to each other was a good rule to have.

I obliged.

My answer what that I thought it was unfair that we should impose such a rule as to me, a rule is a rule that should be followed, and if you break the rule there should be consequences – a punishment of some kind. Yet smiling, or holding a door open isn’t something I feel fits that category. Everyone can have a bad day; sometimes I don’r want to smile, or say good morning, or hold a door for someone.

More importantly though, these are added niceties that we use to show people respect and curtsey. It’s friendly to smile and say good morning. If this was a rule, that therefore had to be followed, how would you know if someone was genuinely being friendly, or simply following a rule? Making it an optional extra gives you the chance to go that extra mile, even if it is a very, very small one, to be nice to someone else. As soon as you make that a rule you must follow, you take that away.

So, I remain steadfast in the views I expressed all those many years ago. We remain a friendly and polite society because manners aren’t a rule, not because they are.

We’re now ten years on from Portugal legalising drugs and all the evidence says it works. Drug use levels have plunged.

This has interesting implications for drug legislation in the United Kingdom because it shows that a more progressive attitude to drugs is clearly the way forward.

It’s not that Portugal have removed all drug laws – it is still illegal to be a drug dealer. But what they have done is switched from an attitude of punishing drug users, to an attitude of helping them overcome their addiction and giving them the support they need.

We should do the same.

Now of course, the first thing most people will say is “that’s a crazy idea, you can’t legalise doing drugs because doing drugs is wrong.” These people often drink alcohol and coffee as well as often smoking cigarettes as well. But those don’t count, even though it has been shown that alcohol is more dangerous than ecstasy.

But, you don’t even have to agree that it is the right thing to do to legalise drugs. The bar is far lower than that. All you have to agree is that the current method of dealing with drugs has failed. And it has. Drug use is ubiquitous with modern society. Everyone who has gone through the university system in the past few decades has at least tried drugs, don’t kid yourself that that isn’t the case.

What is the result of such widespread drug use? Massive amounts of crime! As DrugScore point out, an addict needs £15,000-30,000 a year to feed their habit and as a result estimate the value of goods stolen each year could be over £2,000,000,000. That is more zeros than there are people in the UK. Do the maths – that is £30 a year each of us are paying. The story is the same in the US – 17% of prisoners are in there because of of drug related crime^[1].

Much of this could be solved by relaxing drug laws. Best of all, it’s been proven to work in Portugal. Of course, chances are that anyone reading my blog already knows this.

Recently, I decided it might be good to join a gym. Not because I had any intention of doing some kind of work out or using any of the gym equipment, but because gyms often have pools and I quite like to go for a swim.

So I phoned up the closest gym with a pool to me and asked how much it would be to join. Apparently though, that isn’t how it works, you have to go down there and check it out and only then will you be given a price list. Normally, that means it is really expensive.

So myself and Elina headed down there to see what it was like. The staff were very friendly and the pool was a reasonable size (15m was our estimate), though it was disappointing that it was a constant depth of 1.2 metres. The hot tub was also out of order, which was very irritating. Never the less though, it seems like a nice place and is reasonably priced for a gym (that means it’s really expensive, but no in comparison to other gyms). Might see what the others have to offer first though.

They also have a rule against using phones in there, which is really irritating as I was planning on getting a waterproof case for my iPhone for when I’m on call.

Having seen out 2010 in style, I began the year, in January as usual, by explaining I didn’t care what happened to me, after I died. At work we launched our website and I finally said the L word – to my iPhone. Meanwhile, CWF announced the Perspective Citywide course, open to the general public and running alongside the campus version.

The month after was of course February which began with CWF launching the Galileo Day pack for societies, giving them hints and tips on running a great event. Feeder were a little underwhelming, but Super Bowl XLV wasn’t. The Humanist Society of West Yorkshire launched its new logo and Michael Bramham delivered the Galileo Day Lecture and festivities followed. It was also the first ever month we ran Fry Up Club (I think).

I delivered a talk on the history of atheist charity in March and paid a visit to Hope City. With me and Elina now officially being a couple, we celebrated her birthday meanwhile James took the helm for Reason Week 2011 which finished with the traditional All Night Debate. CWF began building it’s library and I attended the AHS national convention.

I also kicked off April with a talk, this time to Hull Humanists while Michael and John were giving a very similar talk at LAS. The final Perspective Citywide was given by Nicola Jackson and my life was changed forever when I finally got my hands on an iPad 2. We got Rebecca in a Batgirl outfit and Humanist Community returned due to popular demand. The Humanist Action Group launched their guides and we finished the month by hitting the beach.

It was a busy month at work in May as we launched cricket and we voted for and against the alternative vote. I wrote to my MEPs about ethical meat and Sainsbury’s refused me service even though I had ID. I complained. James was elected president of LAS, I went to see Uncaged Monkeys and West Yorkshire Humanists had a very interesting discussion about animal experimentation. The month was finished off by the Secular Ball 2011.

The EDL were causing trouble in June, meanwhile I was still in love with my iPad. We had a McReunion while CWF announced Leeds Transhumanists and its partnership with Daily Motion. I proposed Try Vegetarianism Week and we celebrated our anniversary as Row One.

In July I met Matt and finally gave up my paper diary. I proposed we introduce equal opportunities in sport and took Elina down to London for the weekend. We got Elina and Kat dress up as bunny girls for our poker night, Jenson Button lost a wheel and I spoke at Nottingham Skeptics. I met Elina’s mum, Atheist Stock moved out of beta and leeds Slutwalk took place. We also said goodbye to the Space Shuttle programme.

I left Firebox for Chrome in August while CWF launched the Atheist Stock API and later launched Worfolk Lectures too. We also announced Sunrise 2011 and cooked a crab and played my first live poker tournament. We attended Leeds Pride 2011 and CWF held its AGM. I also cooked a fish and inspired by Franklin & Bash, we held a Margarita Mondays.

It was a big month for CWF in September with Sunrise Conference 2011 and I took Elina to Roundhay Park, Ilkley Moor and the Leeds Liverpool Canal before she flew back to Finland. I continued my poker exploits and we headed down to Sheffield Humanists for a talk on paying for sex. I lifted the ban on family being friends on Facebook and it was proved that atheists are smarter than religious people. We celebrated Norm’s birthday, twice and we introduced to the dangers of shot roulette before hitting up the Zombie Prom.

Skeptics in the Pub learnt about cults in October, Steve Jobs passed away and it turned out all freshers are morons. I chaired the first One Life with a discussion on the meaning of life but having waited ten months for my chance to see Rihanna – was too ill to go! Elina returned for a week and I spoke at Sheffield Skeptics in the Pub. Dr David Jenkins delivered the 2011 Worfolk Lecture and CWF announced SocietasPro. Meanwhile in inaugural Leeds Transhumanists meeting took place, I reached middle age and we held a kick-ass Halloween party.

There was a sad start to November with Sir Jimmy Savile passing away, to which I later launched several campaigns to have things named after him. I had more problems with Sainsbury’s, this time trying to buy alcohol free wine and read Sam Harris’s The Moral Landscape which is well worth a read. CWF announced SocietasPro v0.1 and the 2011 Holiday Food Drive and after two and a half years of genius, Row One was brought to an end. By the end of the month, SocietasPro v.0.3 was out too! Unfortunately, I was in the country to see Evanescene, though the gig itself was great.

Finally in December we hit the Christmas market several times and spent most of the rest of the time watching Nothing to Declare. I finally got round to attending Leeds Salon and we celebrated George’s birthday. I said goodbye to my trusty hosting company of eight years and CWF delivered food to local homeless shelters. I managed to prove I invented Facebook and went to my first meeting of Toastmasters.

Aaaaawwww yeah.

With Wendy once again rolling around, we headed out for some good music and good times.