Chris Worfolk's Blog

Optimal Cupid: Mastering the Hidden Logic of OkCupid is a book by Christopher McKinlay analysing the online dating site OkCupid.

He scraped the site to get data on thousands of profiles and then analysed the data so that he could build the ideal profile. He claims it worked for him, going on 88 dates in three months and is now engaged.

That is all very interesting, although it was not what I was hoping for when I read the book. I bought it thinking it would be an interesting insight into OkCupid, how they do stuff and what interesting information we can glean from a large dataset. That’s not the case at all, it is simply an analysis from a user’s perspective.

It is also a very short book. I polished the whole thing off one evening as a bit of light reading in bed. It will take you maybe an hour, maybe only half to finish it and I have no idea who the foreword is written by, but it feels like he just asked a friend to write a two page ramble.

Therefore I would not recommend the book to anyone, unless finding dates on OkCupid is your last salvation for happiness.

I did apply some of the ideas he suggested to my own OkCupid profile however, so it will be interesting to see if anything comes of it. Seems unlikely though given my profile is very clear that I am happy married and only interested in platonic friendship…

In September we headed over to Blackpool for the Monster Raving Loony party conference. I had never been to Blackpool before so I was curious to see what it was like. The answer was slow-going. It took us four hours to get from Leeds to the hotel. it is nice to see a British seaside town thriving though.

The conference was held at Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Who ID’ed both Elina and I, twice. The barmaid asked for our ID, which by sheer luck Elina had on her, and spent ages mulling over whether she could accept a Finnish ID card. Then, just after that, the bouncer came round and checked our ID too.

However, he does win some points because when he found out Elina was from Finland he said he had been to Helsinki. Which is actually in Finland. So many people respond to the news by saying “I’ve been to Sweden”. We couldn’t give a shit if you have been to Sweden, stop saying it!

The party had organised an open top tour bus so we paraded round the town while Howling shouted into a megaphone from the front of the bus.

We got some touristy things in while we were there. We wandered around the piers, all of which had 5 star health ratings. I will be honest, I’m suspicious. We visited the biggest Wetherspoons I had ever seen, across three fours with a lift in the middle. We did the sea life centre and played the free round of pirate mini golf you get with it.

We went for a walk down the sea front, which wasn’t mega-interesting. However, where else can you randomly come across a line or daleks?

Every time we got to a Loony party conference, which is now a sample size of two, someone is advertising discount weddings.

What I found annoying about Blackpool is how backward it is though. I can accept that not everywhere has Uber, though it is annoying. However, no where took credit cards. I am not even talking about street vendors (though a lot of street vendors in Leeds do take credit cards now, and all of them do in Helsinki), but even the restaurant we had dinner in did not take credit cards! Really frustrating.

These look like the creatures out of The Dark Crystal.

That sign at the back read “chairs”.

Why not alpacas?

When you order online from Sainsbury’s you can order root ginger in a distinct number of pieces. However, the size is a little variable. The piece on the left is one week’s piece and the piece on the right is the one from the week before.

National Novel Writing Month, also known as NaNoWriMo, takes place every November. The idea is that you commit to writing just under 2,000 words a day and by the end of the month you will have a 50,000 word novel.

I have been meaning to give it a go for years now, so this year I am trying to commit to it. I have an idea and I have outlined the story, which I am hoping will provide me with the framework and remove a major blocker in the motivation. I could be wrong though, we shall see.

I am not committing to writing a full length novel. I have the outline of the story, so I am going to write that and if I finish early then so be it, that will be fine. A short novel is better than no novel at all!

At Elina’s request, and because it sounded like a fun challenge, I have recently turned my hand to pie baking. It is an interesting journey, though they take a long time to make. If I have stuff to do after work, they don’t always go in the oven until 10pm! They do provide plenty of food though.

I am not a fan of shortcrust. Too crumbly. Good to sweet pies, but I think I am going to stay away for savories. I have fallen in love with ruff puff. In a very many, working-class way of course. Hot water crust is nice to work with, and produces a good result if you do not want flaking.

Neatness is something I definitely need to work on. They usually look like the recipe, if the pie in the recipe had been beaten up. Which is not really a problem as it is recognisable and tasty, but won’t be winning me any prizes on Bake Off.

Corned beef pie with a shortcrust pastry.

Pork, apple and cider pie, might have been ruff puff.

Sausage plait. It was supposed to be made with full puff. However, when I came to make it, the first step was make the puff pastry and chill for 7 hours. So I did ruff puff instead.

Raised game pie with a hot water crust pastry.

I had not heard of the book Happiness By Design when I passed it in Waterstones. However, my eyes were drawn to it by a quote from Daniel Kahneman on the front. When I found out Kahneman had also written the forward I decided it was not worth spending any more time figuring out whether it was worth reading and just assume that it was.

The author turned out to be Paul Dolan, a British academic who studies positive psychology. He says that happiness is what you pay attention to. It is essentially the combined total of pleasure and purpose over time.

Both of these contribute to your happiness, so you can do something pleasurable but not purposeful such as watching TV, or you can do something purposeful but not pleasurable such as going to work. Ideally, you would do something that is both pleasurable and purposeful such as volunteering, and not do things which are neither pleasurable nor purposeful, such as commuting.

He also suggests you maintain a balance between these. If you life is all pleasure you would probably be happier if you occasionally did something useful. Equally, if your life is all purpose, go the other way.

This is particularly important in middle age when people experience the least amount of happiness in their lives. This is possibly due to high expectations of this being the top of the bell curve in your life. Having kids is at best neutral on your happiness, though it does add purpose.

Your job is an important contributor to your happiness. The most rewarding jobs are ones who get to see the benefits of their work – florists, gardeners, hairdressers. In contrast working in IT is one of the least rewarding things you can do, second only to being in banking.

There is some interesting related psychology in there too. For example, doing more exercise can often lead to weight gain (and not just from converting fat into muscle). Doing something positive allows you to think “I have earned this treat” even though the exercise does not even cancel out the treat, so you end up piling the pounds on.

Also a reduced sense of smell can lead to a poorer diet. As something with a below average sense of smell, I would be interested in reading further in this.

The summary of the book is that happiness is what you pay attention to, so pay attention to things that make you happy. These are things that contain pleasure, or purpose, or both. And do not put off having all your jam today in favour of having jam tomorrow because once you have lost it, recovering it is pretty much impossible.

I had feared the worst for Atheist Society this year; I thought it might be the end. However, I was wrong! Armed with new president Liam at the helm, and Josh providing plenty of support as usual too, at least 20 people turned off to the pub quiz to start the year off, which Strawberry Fields played host to once again.

It was wonderful to see so many new and engaged members and I wish them the best of luck for the year ahead.

This is a photo of workmen putting up Christmas lights. I took this photo a month ago! In September! The Sky internal quiz a few days later was “have you started your Christmas shopping yet?” Apparently 26% of people had. Who has time when there are Halloween costumes to work out?

In an attempt to get people using Leeds Dock, they are now running a free water taxi from just outside the Armouries to just below the station. Nobody is actually using it yet so we had the boat to ourselves.