What's with the British... screenless windows

Well another day I should be writing my thesis, another bit of waffle about the perplexing nature of the UK. This is one which I've actually noticed extends beyond the UK. I've actually observed this phenomenon in every country I've visited outside of North America: England, Scotland, Northern Ireland, Ireland, Turkey, France, Germany, Portugal, Poland, Latvia, Estonia, Finland, Tunisia, Italy and Switzerland:

Windows without screens.

Now this just baffles me. Sure, the countries I just listed don't have the same problems with biting insects that we do in North America (though I'd wager that Turkey and Tunisia have some issues in the heat of summer). But none of them are devoid of insects. This very summer, I've had to kill about a dozen flies in my kitchen because I like to have the windows open. And because I have a hard time cooking without filling the kitchen full of smoke, but that's another issue and beside the point.

In North America, no problem. The screen keeps them out. That little $5 piece of plastic mesh allows me to see out, allows the breeze to come in, but keeps out 6-legged flying friends out. It's simple and effective. Sure you have to wash it every now and again, but so what?

This one, I really don't understand. We're not talking about high technology or fantastic costs. It doesn't dramatically alter your view or add any real inconvenience. So why not have a screen? Are we pro-malaria now?

See the rest of my "What's with the British..." series.

What's with the British... the case of the missing top sheet!

This particular "What's with the British" segment isn't a rant; it's not something that bothers me, just something I find puzzling, even though it's almost completely inconsequential. The British don't seem to believe in top sheets.

Let me explain. I'm used to what I now assume is the North American way of making a bed. You have a bottom sheet, with fitted corners. This is followed by a flat top sheet, then the blanket. This has several advantages, but the main two are that if it's hot, you can take the blanket off, but still have something over you in which to wrap yourself; additionally, the blanket stays cleaner and thus requires less washing, as it never really comes into contact with those who are sleeping in the bed. I realise you then need to wash the top sheet more, but it's a lot easier than wrestling with a duvet cover.

So why do the British omit this sheet, putting the blanket right on top of the bottom sheet? I have no idea. Maybe it's a cost saving thing, maybe it's because it rarely gets hot enough to only have a sheet rather than a blanket. I dunno. It's a puzzlement.

See the rest of my "What's with the British..." series.

What's with the British... street signs

Navigating around anywhere with which you're unfamiliar is always tricky. You don't know the main streets, much less the smaller cross streets, you don't know where one-way streets are and are not, etc. Thus, the road system should be setup to make this as painless as possible. One of the ways you can do this is through street signs. If someone tells you "turn right on Oxford road, then left on Smith avenue", it obviously makes it a load easier if those streets are labelled. Cities are therefore kind in labelling these streets well. Or so I thought. Let's compare a hypothetical corner in Canada to one in the UK, shall we. Here's a random street corner from a fairly small street in Toronto. It happens to be near where I used to live and is a very reasonable facsimile for countless intersection across Canada. I have labelled the potential locations for the street sign with red dots.

The potential locations are:

1. About a meter in from one of the corners, on an 2.5-metre pole.

That's it. That is the only place it will ever be. The signs look like this:

This will be the case for every single intersection. If you are going along a street and pass five cross streets, you will see each cross street labelled, and will see the name of the street you're on five times (helping confirm the street name hasn't changed, etc.). The only exception to this is for major streets where in addition to these signs, there will be a gigantic sign hanging above the street itself, to make it easier for motorists to see. That will look something like this:

That's it. Consistent. Predictable. Visible. Obvious. Easy to find, easy to read. It doesn't matter if you don't know the city well, you will damn well know what street you're on at all times. It doesn't matter at which point you get on the street, because every intersection is clearly labelled in the same manner.

Then we come to Britain. Oh Britain. My only thought is that the Ministry of Transport is secretly running psychological experiments disguised as a guessing game. Because they don't locate the signs in any way that makes any damn sense. Let's look at a fairly typical intersection in Manchester:

The street sign(s) (there may be zero, one or two), may be in any of the following locations:

1. One the corner on a pole (very, very rare, I think I've seen this about twice in four years).
2. On the main street (on any of the four corners, but only one at most).
3. On the side street. Again, only in one location. Note that this means if you are driving along the main street in the right direction, you will see no labelling for the side street at all.
4. About a foot off the ground on a fence surrounding the house. This may be as far down the side street as 20 metres or so.
5. Behind a bush in front of someone's house. Again, might be as far as 20 metres down.
6. On the side of one of the houses, about 3 metres off the ground.
7. Nowhere at all (happy guessing time!)

Note that not only are the signs in any number of different, unpredictable locations, not only are they often obscured by trees, bushes, fences, roof overhangs, etc., not only do they only ever face one direction at most (so if you're going the other way, you're basically screwed). But on top of all of that, they often just don't have a sign at all. This is especially common for a main street with several sides streets intersecting it-only about one side street in ten will have a labelling for the main street as well.

Let me tell you where this is annoying. I was going to a friend's poker night, as part of his bachelor party. I had printed out a map of his neighbourhood. I came to an intersection where I had to turn right or left, but didn't know which. In Canada, no problem. Pick one way at random and see what the first side street is. If it matches the map for the direction you're supposed to be going, great. If not, turn around. Max time wasted: about 2 minutes. I walked for twenty-five minutes without a single cross street being labelled (or the main street) and without seeing a single house number either (so I couldn't even tell if the numbers were approaching my friend's number or getting further away). I lucked out and had turned the right way, but there was a 50-50 chance of that.

I dunno, maybe some people find this fun. I like surprises as much as the next person, but I don't think that figuring out where I am in an unfamiliar city is the best time and place for a guessing game. It's no wonder everyone here has satellite navigation in their car: if not, you're liable to end up in France by accident. And nobody wants that.

See the rest of my "What's with the British..." series.

What's with the British... baked beans

OK, this is a small one, so let me be brief: baked beans. They're nasty. Gritty, tasteless, horrible things, far-too-often covered in a nasty, overly-sweetened artificial-tasting tomato sauce. Not good at all. And back in the day, when the mines were your main source off employment, I can see using them.

But now? No, put them away. Don't put them on toast. Don't put them on potatoes, don't put them on sandwiches or anything. They are just nasty. And the worst part is, the British zeal for soaking any food in sight with baked beans ruins some otherwise great food, notably the breakfasts. I love almost everything in a traditional English breakfast. Bacon? Awesome. Sausages? Awesome. Fried potatoes, toast, fried mushrooms? Awesome. Even the tomato is decent. So you're off to a great start. And then, BAM! Out of nowhere comes the baked beans, generally slopped on with a huge ladel, just ruining all they touch.

Britain, hear me well: put the baked beans down, and walk away slowly and nobody gets hurt.

See the rest of my "What's with the British..." series.

What's with the British... traffic lights

In my years on this planet, I have travelled to many different countries (19 at this point), and have keenly enjoyed the differences between one culture and the next. While I do believe-clichéd though it may be-that there is more that makes us alike than different, more that unites us than divides us, I also feel that the nuances between two cultures are always fascinating and add spice to one's life and one's travels. So I love to see the differences, and compare my experience to the cultures I see around me.

In many cases, these differences are neither good nor bad, just different and interesting. However, that's not to say there are some differences worth pitting two countries against one another for. And thus we come to today's "What's with the British..." post. I have come to the conclusion that out of everywhere I've lived, Britain alone must gain the title for World's Worst Drivers.

Now, I know this is contentious, and perhaps "worst" isn't exactly accurate. Let me clarify: Britain has the world's most inconsiderate drivers. I've ce

rtainly seen scarier drivers. The French for example, seem to have a distorted view of the size of their car, and merrily jostle into a space far too small for them (as evinced by the myriad bumps and scrapes on French cars). Americans practically invented road rage, and with somewhere in the neighbourhood of 250 million guns in the country, have reasons to fear that rage. The Cubans drive at breakneck speed, on whichever side of the road happens to be paved better, all while dodging oxen, chickens, and giant pickup t

rucks with 50 people in the back. And never before or since have I feared for my life like I did the day I took a taxi in Istanbul to Koç University evidently piloted by the illegitimate child of Mario Andretti and Lizzie Borden.

But I think the British are woefully inconsiderate for one primary reason (and many smaller ones I won't elucidate here): they have redefined the traffic light. This little fella right here:

Now to the rest of the world, this is a very standard symbol. Green means go, amber means slow down and red means stop. The British, however, have reinterpreted this. Green still means go, sure. But amber now means "fucking floor it!" and red means "don't worry, you've still got time to get through". I saw an American standup comedian once who described the people squeaking through at a red light by saying the first guy was legitimately unable to stop, the next guy excuses himself by saying he was just following the previous guy and a third person sneaks through admitting "sorry, I'm just an asshole". In Britain, four more cars follow that guy!

Most of these "What's up?" posts haven't been to rant-ish so far, but this one is: Britain, please stop when the light is red. I know you could lose up to 20 precious seconds, but I'm sick and tired of almost being run over for crossing-legally-on my bike or as a pedestrian!

See the rest of my "What's with the British..." series.

What's with the British... deodorant

Continuing in my gripe of insignificant, yet strange and often irritating gripes about the UK: deodorant. Dear Britain, let me show you what deodorant should look like:

That's right, a stick of solid deodorant/anti-perspirant that you rub under your arms. These exist in the UK (only Lynx seems to make them, and they can be hard to find sometimes), but they do exist. And nobody uses them. Instead, they have this strange obsession with spray-on deodorant.

Now, it's not that spray-on deodorant is bad. It's that it doesn't work as well, people use so much of it that they end up filling the locker room with a noxious cloud of horrid-smelling cheap musk, they cost more, deplete faster and leave you reeking of cheap nastiness. So, actually, I guess it is that they're worse. There are times at my gym when I can't breathe without coughing and gagging in the locker room because some perspire-a-phobe has emptied nearly half a can on his underarms, chest, back, ass, legs, arms and face. I've literally smelt this putrescence outside two sets of doors from where it was applied.

Oh yeah, and you can't bring them onto airplanes. Use a stick of deodorant like normal people. Yeesh.

See the rest of my "What's with the British..." series.

What's with the British... taps

OK, this is a consistent, albeit minor annoyance I've noticed since moving here. For some unfathomable reason, the British seem to insist on having separate hot and cold taps, rather than a single, adjustable one. Now, on the face of this, who cares? They're taps, it's not the end of the world. While this is true, it leads to the totally flummoxing situation where I have two choices when washing my hands; nearly-glacial cold water, or water so hot I cannot hold my hands under it (seriously, without hyperbole, the taps in the men's room in my office building dispense water so hot it steams). How is this useful? Who uses the hot one and where did they get the sub-dermal asbestos? But more importantly, is it really that tricky to get a tap which has an adjustable temperature?

See the rest of my "What's with the British..." series.

What's with the British... an intro

So, I've periodically ranted about some weird eccentricity or idiosyncrasy about British culture, mores or norms. However, I've never really done so in a cohesive manner. That's about to change. Whenever I notice something that annoys, befuddles or perplexes me, I'll post it here, and tag it with "What's with the British". This page will serve as both an intro to this series, and an index. I expected that each post will be pretty short, as it's essentially just my ramblings about something confusing I've noticed since moving here.

• What's with the British... taps?
• What's with the British... deodorant?
• What's with the British... traffic lights?
• What's with the British... baked beans?
  
• What's with the British... street signs?
• What's with the British... case of the missing top sheet?
• What's with the British... screenless windows?

Caving to the latest facebook meme

So, I was just going to ignore this latest facebook trend of "Post 25 random and largely irrelevant facts about yourself. But I've now been tagged in four such notes and read one from my friend Su who inexplicably didn't tag me (no love? Already thinks she knows everything about me? Who knows?). So here it is, 25 random facts about Dan:

1. I have two middle names; Wendell and Izatt. Izatt is my mom's maiden name; I'm not sure where Wendell comes from exactly.
2. I hate my birthday and since moving overseas and meeting new people have strictly limited the number of people who know when it is (mostly to girls I've dated). I don't like getting older, and I don't like a fuss and hate that everyone feels the need to argue this.
3. I'm in my fourth year of a three-year Ph.D. and haven't enjoyed a single day in the office in about two years.
4. One of my life goals is to watch all 250 movies in the IMDB top 250. I have yet to decide if I want to fix the list as it stands now, and watch those 250, or amend the list as new films get added.
5. For the first few days of my life, I was unnamed. My parents had thought of calling me "Jesse" but decided Jesse James sounded like a tribute to a bank robber. They thought of naming me Matthew but the nurse talked them out of it, saying that half the male babies born that year had been named Matthew. So until I became "Daniel", I was referred to simply as "Wrinkles".
6. I used to play Dungeons and Dragons frequently. My favourite character was a nearly-omnipotent level 25 fighter-mage who eventually became a demi-god and ruled over a large swath of land from on high. After that, the game kind of lost its challenge.
7. I periodically contemplate buying a motorcycle, but have so far refrained because my mother would fly to England and knee-cap me. Plus, I am concerned that I would look like a douchebag poseur. A seriously dorky one.
8. Due to hitting the gym and losing weight, I now own a suit jacket that is large enough to fit myself and my girlfriend in it simultaneously. I think it may be time to donate this to Oxfam.
9. I hoard many things, but amongst them are: padded envelopes, boxes of any kind and plastic shopping bags. I blame my parents and grandparents for this as my family owns such things as Christmas wrapping paper older than me, and three complete dining room tables.
10. I grew up in the same house for the first twenty years of my life, and have lived in 13 places since then. I went two years moving every 4 months, and this is the first time since 2000 that I have lived in the same location for more than 1 year at a time.
11. My first computer was a Macintosh 128K I inherited from my father. My current one is a MacBook Pro 2.33GHz 3GB Ram/320GB Hard drive. In the intervening time, I have had a Mac Plus, a Mac LC 475, a Powerbook 180, Powerbook Duo 280 and 2300c, a Powerbook 3400, A PowerMac G4, and a PowerMac G5.
12. When I moved to the UK in 2005, I brought two bags weighing 30kg each and a bicycle with me. I also shipped my 25kg computer (the G5 from above) and monitor over, and a box weighing about 15kg. I do not travel light, it turns out.
13. Despite being an electrical engineer, I am both somewhat frightened of electricity (having nearly electrocuted myself once or twice) and fairly incompetent. In undergrad labs, I blew up a CPU, two banks of NOT gates, three LEDs, two servo motors, an op-amp or two and probably a few other things I'm forgetting. The lab tech would become visibly worried whenever I would approach his office and once asked me "what did you break now?"
14. When my appendix was removed, in 1993, in Cuba, it was three times too long and in the wrong place, which made diagnosis difficult initially. As a result, it was only discovered by exploratory surgery lsating three hours and giving me a 6-inch, 22-stitch scar. A litre of pus was sucked out of my abdominal cavity, and the estimate of the surgeon was that my appendix had ruptured almost three days prior and had I waited as few as three more hours, I would've been septic, likely fatally. Coming on the first days of my holiday, the surgery and hospital stay ruined the entirety of my vacation. On the other hand, unlike when my friend Adam got sick on a camping trip with me, no helicopter-based evacuation was necessary.
    
15. Despite having debated at a university level for nine years, and achieving a modicum of success, I have never been to a Worlds competition. I have also never read the entirety of a single Economist, though I poked through a few articles in one issue around Christmas 2006.
16. No matter how drunk I am, I can almost always find my way home and take my contacts out. Even in a new city, I have never failed to make it home, and have only woken up with contacts in about twice.
17. I hate lab demonstrating (TAing), but have done so for two years running, and have grudgingly agreed to do it again this term, because I'm broke. However, I am refusing to mark anything this time (an activity I hate more than being completely broke). In the past, your mark would directly depend on how high you were in my pile. Near the top, I was less annoyed and frustrated, and thus more lenient.
18. I have one tattoo, on the back of my shoulder (a red maple leaf). I am contemplating getting a second, on my left upper arm, if I ever finish my degree. It will be (seriously) the schematic diagram of an N-channel enhancement-mode MOSFET transistor, surrounded by the words "Deus Ex Machina" (Latin for "A God From The Machine"). I think chicks will dig it.
19. I recently passed two workout goals: being able to bench more than my body weight (I can now do about 100kg) and do partial squats of more than double my body weight (I can now do about 200kg).
20. One of the most profound things anyone has ever said to me came from my brother, a guy not known for such profundity. He told me I'd waited too long in my life to start having fun. This is very true.
21. Although I want to travel around basically everywhere in the world, I get hesitant of places with an excess of poisonous snakes, bugs or jellyfish (which terrify me if I see them). That being said, I still want to go to Australia, which seems to have the highest concentration of all three. Oh yeah, machete-wielding rebels or machine-gun wielding drug lords also give me pause.
22. I am an unrepentant Triscuit addict. Anyone I know who goes back to North America does so with explicit instructions to bring me back some of these salty, wonderful crackers, as they aren't sold in the UK. The Black Pepper and Olive Oil ones are the best.
23. I do a mean version of Eminem's Without Me on karaoke. I will need to be moderately intoxicated to be convinced to do it, but not so much that I forget the words.
24. I'm convinced that everyone, even fairly "normal" people, have what I call "pockets of OCD"-little areas of life that must be certain ways, etc. I know I do: maps and menus must be folded correctly, socks must match completely, and so forth. Oh, and when I'm swimming, I'll often count the laps I've swum by finding significance in the number (i.e. 14 is the product of two primes, 15 is the house number I used to live in before my current place, etc.)
25. I have owned a total of six iPods, plus two replacement hard drives, two replacement batteries, a replacement motherboard and daughtercard and a second casing, including the buttons and electronic interface (that came with one of the second-hand, earlier iPods). Two are currently active (an iPod Touch and an iPod Shuffle), one was killed by getting rained on, one was run over by a bus, one was retired for a newer model, which was in turn left on a train when I was very, very tired.
    

My Internet Quiz Mosaic

On one of my scheduled breaks from reading boring papers (I find the only way I can focus at all on this boring-ass work is to allow myself scheduled breaks throughout the day), I came across another one of those random internet quiz things that so often gets passed around like a 2-litre bottle of cheap cider in a flophouse. This one, however, intrigued me, because it isn't just a simple question-and-answer affair. The instructions, instead, are as follows:
* Type your answers to each of the following questions below into Flickr Search
* Using only the first page, pick an image
* Copy and paste each of the URLs into the mosaic maker

1. What is your first name?
   
2. What is your favorite food?
   
3. What high school did you go to?
   
4. What is your favorite colour?
   
5. Who is your celebrity crush?
   
6. Dream vacation?
   
7. Favourite drink?
   
8. Favourite dessert?
9. What do you want to be when you grow up?
   
10. What do you love most in life?
    
11. One word to describe you.
    
12. Your Flickr name.
    

Yeah, it's cheesy and silly, but there are some truly impressive shots on Flickr, and I have always been somewhat fascinated by photography, so I gave it a whirl. This is my result (click for full size):

Here are my answers (can you guess each one?):

1. Dan
2. Steak
3. Parkside
4. Blue
5. Claire Danes
6. Road Trip Across Asia
7. Single-Malt Scotch
8. Chocolate Fudge Cake
9. Successful
10. Sex
11. Kickass
12. Prometheus-Titan

Some thoughts on it:

• Who has a favourite colour once they pass the age of 8? I went with blue just to be totally unoriginal, but I honestly couldn't tell you what my favourite colour is.
• It's interesting to me to see how little correlation there is between my search term and some of the returned results. Specifically: steak giving my someone's leg, the road trip one giving me a snake, sex showing me a bridge in New York and "successful" giving me a shot of a locomotive. I didn't really explore why, but I am somewhat curious where these came from. Flickr tags? Titles? Comments?
• Some of the photos are absolutely brilliant. I've recently stumbled upon the idea of HDR photography. The locomotive is definitely HDR and I suspect the leg, New York (edit: yes it is, just checked the photo name) and city-at-night shots are as well.
• I think this really shows some of the promise of the massively over-hyped Web 2.0, the interactive, user-generated content iteration of the web. There's an amazing breadth and depth of photography on Flickr, all there for the searching and enjoyment of the users, all free. And with that comes the chance to create derivative works-to remix and redisplay the content in other ways that are artistic, or meaningful or whatever. I'm over-analysing it obviously, but I do think this is a microcosm for this trend of the participatory internet.

Anyway, here's the credits for the artists whose photos appeared in my mosaic. I'd love to see what any of you who read this might come up with.

1. Dan, 2. 365.114 I don't give a damn about my reputation., 3. Parkside, 4. When Waves Collide, 5. Claire Danes, 6. Rear.. Fanged ......!!!, 7. Day 126 | 365 : Success!!, 8. Chocolate is a Girl's Best Friend!, 9. Covered Wagon Train, 10. Brooklyn Bridge I | HDR, 11. Vegas Slow Hand, 12. Prometheus Titan Guide