mmoa_writes

... I know. I was wondering what I was going to do with dreamwidth as a blogging/social platform after so long, but then I started going through my reading page and I realised, I knew some pretty awesome people. 

Anyway, it seems I'm going to be one of those irritating people with a finger in every piepot going. From twitter to several tumblr blogs, the old blogger account and now wordpress, it's a whole bunch of fun. Each platform genuinely gives something so different, so for now I'm going to stick with the mess that is my web presence.

( An update for those who might be interested )

What am I doing at the moment? Currently I'm on a graduate scheme as a Java developer, getting trained up to work two years for hideously unethical companies. The plan is to save up enough cash to do two masters (one in Classical Studies because I want to keep up with my Classics, the other in Physics or in Computer Science if I can get the latter funded), and then on to a PhD, a research position and finally to take over a disused townhouse in Manchester to base my own research facility.

It's going to be amazing.

Oh and did I mention I'm going to be a published author? That's right, I have a paper that's due to be published by the Disability and Global South Journal on the intersection of technology and disability in West Africa. As someone who is obsessed with History of Science and Philosophy of Science and African history, my research on the African Cyborg is a brilliant way to combine all my interests into one behemoth of intellectual pretension. The research blog is here and is pretty much where I drop anything related to Africa, technology, history and science.

I have another tumblr blog devoted to Hackery and my projects in e-textiles, Arduino and Raspberry Pi. At the moment I'm gearing up for an experimental project researching aquatic snail locomotion - currently this means doing mostly maths and courses on programming/modelling, but I'm also gathering equipment like fishtanks, microscopes, etc. for when the DIY hijinks will ensue. If you're interested in random crap, FieldNotes is the place to go.

The professional me, however, can be found on my WordPress blog, which will eventually become my website. But that's a bit quiet to be honest - more will be coming soon.

So I'm sat here revising Soft Matter Physics when it occurs to me just why I increasingly find the 'pseudo-medieval' world building that you often get in fantasy so weird (as opposed to slightly cliche by now). 

Now, I'm just thinking 'out loud' because as you well know, I am nothing but the plebbiest of historical dilettantes (and I know if anyone will have anything interesting to say, it'll be you guys), but it seems to me that feudalism could have evolved out of the chaos following the decline of the Western Roman Empire. If you consider somewhere like, well, England, a land that it seems was being constantly visited, then attacked, then partially conquered by a series of different ethnic groups, it's no surprise you might end up with a system of rule akin to a more sophisticated version of a protection racket ("We give you swords and a place of protection to settle, you give us some food and monies. And people to wield the swords might help too, now we come to think of it...") that over time, and with the increasing stability of society, evolves into the fully fledged feudal system we all know and love so well from history textbooks with pictures of peasants with mud for teeth.

And obviously ditto for elsewhere in Western Europe. I'm just using England as an example because I happen to live here and know slightly more about Dark Age Britain than Dark Age France, say. Or Dark Age Spain which may as well have been home to dragons and people with faces in their chests for all I know (I'd probably believe it too).

Anyway. So in a fantasy book where the set up is the basic feudal pseudo-medieval (and I say pseudo because most fantasy writers seem to interprete a medieval setting to mean nastiness, raping and that sort of thing rather than, I don't know, women being doctors, writers and crusaders and owning businesses (and occasionally kidnapping a young lord they might fancy, for the higher born lady of course) and peasant children escaping the drudgery of serfdom via education and University etc etc etc.), it doesn't seem to make much sense without that primordial stage of that strange sort of civilised barbarism that follows the collapse of a bureaucracy.

Or maybe I'm just being picky because... I'm a little bit bored.

Alright back to work.

 
Found via the Mary Sue

In that great and noble tradition of science students everywhere, due to the fact I am currently running an experiment (a really cool little simulation of linguistic evolution), I will use my time explaining in mind numbing, petty detail just what I thought about the last thing I watched instead of doing data analysis or catching up on sleep.

( ...Firefly! )

 It's taken 4 weeks and 400 lines of clunky, ugly code but I have finally got the first draft of a selection based linguistic model done. Now to mess around with some objects and slightly more interesting networks... The clean up doesn't usually take too long so hopefully I'll have lovely clever code in another two weeks. After that perhaps a cute little applet to show the evolution in realtime....

What's this? Some rather nifty looking ideas over here.

Aside from my personal vanity, the reason I'm mentioning this is if anyone out there has any recommendations for the realtime animation bit: Should I start fretting over Java or just use a library like Allegro?

 Just taking a break from some math and by some strange sort of miracle found some episodes of the generally highly esteemed Firefly online (without having to go through any dodgy looking sites). Good Lord but it's mediocre. At first I thought it was terrible but then I remembered I'd sat through all six episodes of the BBCs sci-fi series 'Outcasts' which was truly, bizarrely terrible. That and the fact that I did come in with nonsensically high hopes, expecting a sort of Mad Men in space type thing ( It's alright Dr. Who, all is forgiven on your emotional blackmailer of a score and cliched dramatisms (that's not a real word, I know but it's late and I've forgotten the term for the tricks you use to induce suspense/boredom in your audience) I mean, the Doctor thinks fezes are cool. That nigh well covers a multitude of sins in my book).

Of course I will finish watching it. It'll give me something to think (and then write) about. Like why I should never become a writer. The idea of some pretentious hack blogger ripping one's baby to shreds almost brings me to tears.

Still, perhaps I shouldn't feel too sorry for Joss Whedon. It seems most people dug it.


Maybe I should check out Babylon 5 which everyone says is amazing. Or maybe I should just stick to the sci-fi in my head.

Before I forget, here are some reasons why the Internet is made of win:

BEARDHEADS


Goddamit people I don't have to say anything else do I? Thought not.

Furthermore from the denizens of Youtube comes

One of the things that has always frustrated me is the charge that throughout the long (longer, in fact, than anywhere else might I add) history of homo sapiens in Africa, there has never been a written script indigenous to the population (Ancient Coptic/hieroglyphs don't count). Now as it happens there have been, but the one I am most interested in - for obvious reasons - is the one that would have been used by Igbos of bygone times.

Nsibidi.

It just demonstrates the amazing thing about the internet, how new information can be spread so quickly and is there just waiting to be discovered if you're open minded enough and brave the wilderness of counter opinions and barbarians. Sometimes you don't even have to brave that far. Wikipedia will do it for you.

What's particularly interesting is that the last I'd read, the nsibidi script had been used by religious cults and their initiates. I had no idea that, similar to other scripts such as Hiragana, there was also a public version which could be used by women and those outside the boundaries of the cult. This confirmed a suspicion of mine - in traditional Igbo society, women were charged with the responsibility of making money for the family; they would trade with other women in the markets and their profits would go towards the upkeep of the family (A/N: This is actually a pattern typical of pre-industrial settled ie. non-nomadic societies) and, for all even today we're brought up expected to have prodigious memories (...), I couldn't see why no merchant wife would have never thought of setting accounts, debts and deals on tablet/stone/animal skin as it were.

Obviously once the status quo changed and it became more important to be able to read and write in Roman script, knowledge of Nsibidi dwindled. It would be interesting to find out if there's anyone left in the family who can still read and write it.

I also find the fact it was widespread amongst several different ethnic groups rather intriguing. It certainly reveals that disparate peoples traded and had some means of communication that transcended their linguistic and cultural differences.