Journal of Flakery

Journal of Flakery

Close-up image of a gaming joystick

Playing by oneself

This article discusses sexual themes heavily, but there is no explicit imagery and no direct links to any (although external websites can of course change). Western relationships with sex, and its portrayal in art and the media, remain awkward and partly self-contradictory. Religious traditions combined with modern liberalism have produced

Still from the first episode of Foundation on Apple TV+

Forward the Foundation

Note: light spoilers for the Foundation TV series and books. I'm not a big re-reader of books. The total number of books that I've read cover to cover more than once is probably less than ten—not counting books I've read out loud to my children! But Isaac Asimov's 1951

Academic pay revisited

Academic pay revisited

Amid the wave of strikes currently breaking across the UK is an extensive programme of industrial action by university staff. As with transport, health service, postal and other strike action that has been going on over the last few months, the effects of rapid inflation on the cost of living

My year in video games

My year in video games

I got a Steam Deck in 2022, and I love it. The form-factor works well for me, its power and battery life are fine since I'm neither hardcore gamer nor frequent long-distance traveller, and its size, portability and price mean I don't need to justify the cost or the space

Steam Deck showing the medical imaging software TractoR running on its screen

In case you were wondering, yes, TractoR runs on the Steam Deck

Valve's Steam Deck handheld PC is a miniature marvel. While it's primarily designed for gaming, and it does that job very well—even working well with many games not written for its operating system or aware of its hardware controls—the Deck is a proper portable PC, and can absolutely

Young woman wearing "Normal people scare me" T-shirt

In praise of (constructive) mediocrity

Work hard. Be the best that you can be. Reach for the stars. For those of us lucky enough not to have to worry about more fundamental needs [http://www.researchhistory.org/2012/06/16/maslows-hierarchy-of-needs/], aspiration is woven into the fabric of our lives. It drives us to push

Ethan Hawke and Greta Gerwig in Maggie's Plan

A dog-plan of a review

On the surface, there's little that links Wiener-Dog [http://www.wienerdogmovie.com] (dir. Todd Solondz) and Maggie's Plan [http://www.imdb.com/title/tt3471098/] (dir. Rebecca Miller), except shared actor Greta Gerwig [http://www.imdb.com/name/nm1950086/]. But they are both largely about the nature of people, even if

TractoR on Windows: Experience with the Subsystem for Linux

TractoR on Windows: Experience with the Subsystem for Linux

TractoR [http://www.tractor-mri.org.uk], the medical image analysis platform for which I am the main developer and maintainer, is built on the multiplatform R language [http://www.r-project.org], but much of its additional infrastructure is Unix-based. That has meant that researchers using Windows have previously had to

Painting of Catherine of Aragon and Henry VIII

No leave to remain

The European Union referendum debate—if you can call the circus of the last couple of months that—has not brought out the best in Britain. A vote to Leave the union, or one to Remain, might variously destroy the UK economy, lead to an influx of criminals, or cause

Screenshot from Firewatch

Double exposure

Feelings of vulnerability, both to the elements and to other people, are perhaps the central theme of Firewatch [http://www.firewatchgame.com/], the recently released debut game by young studio Campo Santo [http://www.camposanto.com/]. No doubt we’ve all felt that way at various points in our lives:

Ploughed field with colour constrast

Research grants and output quality assessment: Complementary or redundant?

This article originally appeared as an invited post on the LSE Impact Blog [http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/impactofsocialsciences/2015/08/25/research-grants-and-output-quality-assessment-complementary-or-redundant/] . -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Grading the quality of academic research is hard. That is why last year’s Research Excellence Framework (REF) assessment was complex and lengthy. Preparation for the

What should the government spend?

What should the government spend?

With the UK’s general election imminent, we, the electorate, have been treated to weeks of horse-trading between politicians on how much each party will or won’t spend on this or that if they get into power. £8bn more for the NHS here, £2.5bn extra for education there.

Part of a white tower with angular features

The fortified ivory tower

This year sees the English higher education sector writhing in the throes of a huge academic quality-assessment exercise. Known by the suitably bureaucratic-sounding title of “Research Excellence Framework” (REF), the process involves most researchers from publicly-funded universities submitting their best work to be pored over and evaluated by a large

Tex Murphy screenshot

Back to the future

The full-motion video (FMV) games of the 1990s occupied an interesting niche in the history of computer gaming. Solid storytelling in games had been established by a procession of text adventures released during the late 70s and 80s, but graphical engines were very basic and nowhere near ready for the

Does the mind play dice?

Randomness is an awkward concept. Most people have some intuitive idea of what it is supposed to mean, but it’s too intangible for us to feel comfortable with. Worse, randomness is often conflated with arbitrariness, a distasteful and unsettling quality which we usually strive to avoid. Scientists are not

Open Data stickers

Thoughts on Open Data

In the last few days, the Public Library of Science (PLoS) has announced [http://blogs.plos.org/everyone/2014/02/24/plos-new-data-policy-public-access-data/] that they will shortly require every article published in one of their journals to be accompanied by a “data availability statement”, stating how the raw data underlying the

How fairly paid are UK academics?

How fairly paid are UK academics?

The last week has seen picket lines outside UK universities as higher education staff strike for "fair pay" in a coordinated action between three national unions. The Twitter-sphere saw a flurry of related activity [https://twitter.com/search?q=%23fairpayinHE&src=hash] as well. I am not a union member

Splitting a git branch by files modified

Splitting a git branch by files modified

Two of the nice things about git [http://git-scm.com/] are the ability to create lightweight branches, and the ability to rewrite commit history to rationalise things after the fact. As a relatively recent migrant from Subversion, however, these are things that I sometimes forget about, and I therefore don't

Dawkins' delusion

Dawkins' delusion

At the time of the 9/11 terrorist attacks in the United States, I was on holiday in Greece. Although I can transliterate the Greek alphabet (eventually), I do not speak nor read the language, and the increasingly inexplicable scenes which unfolded on the TV news were all the more