Spring 2008

An enormous amount has happened since my last post. The most recent news is that on Thursday evening I became an uncle for the second time. Tobias Emeka was born in Melbourne, weighing 8lb 2oz (whatever that means). It’s great to have an extra boy in the family.

A couple of weeks back I handed in my DPhil, which was great. The relief of having it handed in is enormous. It’s great to be able to do things that aren’t work, and not feel guilty when I’m doing something other than working on the thesis. The viva will be at the end of April, after which I am going to Australia for three weeks to see Tobias and the rest of the family out there.

A major thing that happened to me in February was winning a university-wide business idea competition. My idea is to let people do a door-to-door search for travel to continental Europe. Users say they want to travel from Reading to Lyon and the service searches through all combinations of airports, airlines, eurostar, trains, coaches, etc. and returns the optimal result to the user, who has expressed a preference between speed and cost.

I had to pitch my idea to a panel of judges (including BBC TV’s Dragon’s Den’s Deborah Meaden!) and an audience of a few hundred students. After the pitch I was grilled about the idea. There has been a lot of media interest since the competition and I did interviews on BBC TV News, BBC Radio, and in the Oxford Mail.

The judges feedback was very positive, the only thing they questioned was whether it could be done. I’ve therefore decided to have a go at building a prototype service to see if it can be realized and how it all scales. The business model looks good and there doesn’t seem to be anyone else doing this at the moment. It is really exciting to be having a shot at this, and to think I will have my own business. It’s a big change from biomedical engineering although I would like to return to med-tech once this is all over.



Meanwhile, I am keeping up my efforts on ‘Project 365’ for better and worse. Some days it is really easy, on others I have been stuck in the lab all day and it becomes really tricky finding something inspiring to take a picture of... Anyway, check out the damage here. It’s probably best to click on the ‘View as slide show’ link. The picture is from St Peters in Rome on a weekend break just before I handed in.

Cheers,

Ali

Project 365

This year I have decided to have a go at 'Project 365'. A description of Project 365 is given here, but basically I have to take a photo every single day of the year. The idea is that it both provides a visual record and also improves one's photographic skills. Anyway, I've just uploaded the photos from my first week or so in an album on flickr.

I am already much more observant as I walk around now, constantly looking for things to take photos of. Some days it's hard to think of something and other days I have to pick from about six photos. I hope I manage to keep it up,

Ali

Fin d’Année

As 2007 comes to an end, I thought is was time to update you all. Most of my focus since I last wrote has been working on my DPhil, I hope to submit mid-January so that’s been taking up a lot of my thoughts and much of my time (although definitely not as much of the latter as it should have).

The term in Oxford wasn’t too hectic as most of the teaching I did was familiar material. One weekend I went to the ‘Cotswold Wildlife Park’ with Hilary and my parents, I went on the recommendation of a friend, Tom, who had posted pictures from it on facebook. It’s a slightly incongruous place – as you may be able to gather from the picture – as it’s a country house whose grounds are effectively a zoo. They seem to take good care of the animals and I think it’s been nearly twenty years since I last went to a zoo, so it was a great day away from Oxford.

One of the cultural highlights of the Autumn was seeing ‘Das Rheingold’ at the Royal Opera House. Over the last year I have taken advantage of student standby tickets at the Royal Opera House, however this was an especially cool opportunity as it was a student only performance and every seat in the house was massively reduced. Given the opportunity we opted for the £212.50 tickets that had been reduced to £37.50. It was all very cool, and now I’m looking for a way to see the rest of the cycle.

At the end of term I went on a two week trip to the USA, the primary purpose of which was to spend thanksgiving with Hilary and her family. I had booked the bargain return flight back in July, when I thought I would have finished my thesis by that point. Unfortunately I hadn’t thus it wasn’t the timeliest occasion to take a few weeks holiday, but it was still really good to have a break from everything and to see Hilary’s family. During my stay I flew over to Indianapolis to visit a company there I have been doing some consultancy for and to give a few presentations, which was interesting.

I was also lucky enough to be taken to an American football match by Hilary’s Dad who had been given a pair of tickets. I had been to a few games in Princeton but those were much lower key. At this match there were massive LCD displays everywhere, fireworks went off when there were touch downs (for the home team), you could get beers and put them in your cup-holder and there was endless entertainment during the many breaks in the game. Much like the Pittsburg Pirates baseball game I went to the preceding year, it was pure entertainment from beginning to end.

My return from the US was quickly followed by admissions although I got off relatively lightly as my colleagues wanted to do most of it themselves. After a bit more work on the thesis I went home to Ipswich for Christmas itself. For Dad’s birthday I took him to an Ipswich Town match which was the first game either of us had been to for seven years. It was enjoyable enough although the nil-all draw wasn’t what I had hoped for.

After Christmas I went to France with Mum, Dad and Hilary. It was the usual relaxing time with plenty of good food and wine (excluding a period of being ill at the end :( ). Now it’s back to Oxford and the final push on the thesis. After I hand in, I hope to go to Australia for a month as my sister Kate is expecting a baby and I would love to be out there to see everyone and help out. Then it’s time to find a job. I’m focusing on small medical technology companies at the moment, but will also look into some technical consulting.

Happy New Year!

Ali

Wikipedia

I just noticed that on Wikipedia's modest banner "You can help Wikipedia change the world!" they have the quote:

"Wikipedia is an invaluable research tool." — Anon.

Perhaps the irony is intentional. It does seem a good reminder of the limitations of Wikipedia as a source of information that can't be relied on - and the inevitable impact of that on its value as a source.

The media periodically gets caught out as lazy researchers use Wikipedia as their only source for a fact. (Although the media is keener to publish articles about all the 'edits' made by the government, CIA, Vatican etc.). I feel it is only a matter of time before I get caught out as well - Wikipedia is probably the site I visit the most as I can nearly always find the content I want instantly - yet how much of what I read is true?

I have been having quite a few debates recently about Wikipedia content - people seem (almost) universally agreed that it should never be used as a thesis reference - although a reasonable exception seems to have been its use as the original source of an illustrative figure.

It would be nice if over time Wikipedia got many more references for its articles - although I think this unlikely as it is such a gargantuan task and one that isn't particularly fun or easy for contributors. In the meantime I think I will have to treat everything with as large a pinch of salt as with the anonymous quote above.

A

Sautumn

Apologies, apologies. “Write blog entry about what happened in July” is top of my job list and has been since… the end of July. As it happens, most of July this year, as far as I can recall it, was taken up with finding somewhere to live. Unfortunately I was low in the ballot at New College and the pressure was on to make the switch to living out. This meant an exhaustive search of flats in North Oxford, being messed around by letting agents, and finally settling on the thirteenth flat I viewed.

The transition to living-out was interesting enough. Finally leaving student rooms to live in a ‘home’ for the first time in seven years has to be considered progress. As does a washing machine that doesn’t require the insertion of coins in order for it to work, a sofa, and sharing a kitchen with fewer than six people. Alas full-time maintenance and cleaning staff were lost in the bargain.

In terms of summer holidays, I made a brief trip to Normandy with Hilary. We stayed at Mum and Dad’s house and although the weather wasn’t great we managed a fair few barbecues and got out a bit. I really can’t remember what happened in August, I guess I was unpacking. Who knows.

September must have been wildly exciting, my diary seems to list four dinners, three lunches, a house warming and a careers fair. In between which I think I primarily occupied myself with finishing my thesis. Or at least trying to. I came dangerously close and emailed my supervisor asking for a meeting to discuss my conclusions and he suggested I should write another research chapter.

Since then I’ve got caught up in the whirlwind of term as new students have arrived in the group, teaching has resumed, random bits of consultancy appeared and time seems to slip away. Still, I can’t complain. I’m still funded and I have time to think about what my next move is – post Oxon. I’m still pondering that question, although there’s progressively less time to do stuff about it at the moment.

I think that’s about all for now. I can now schedule a reminder for a blog post at the start of December...

A