Tuesday 12 February 2013

The Physics of Rubbish Cheese

I'm not sure where I'd end up come a revolution, but this is the view from where I'm currently sat; a hotel room in Hannover.

I had great fun trying to translate the message this morning. As you might have guessed the three possible translations for quark are the elementary particle, a type of cheese, and a concept that seems to cover nonsense, rubbish and piddling little details. I'm guessing they weren't refering to physics or cheese which leaves the message reading "The revolution is great; everything else is rubbish."

Political messages aside, I'm in Hannover for the kick-off meeting of a new project I'll be working on called ForgetIT; the project is so new it doesn't even seem to have a website I can point you at. I'll get a better understanding of the project over the next few days of meetings, but essentially it's about archiving digital data, taking into account duplication and context, to allow for some things to be forgotten, while ensuring that everything else is preserved with enough context to enable it to be understood if/when it is needed in the future. That of course is an over simplification of around 100 pages of proposal that resulted in the funding being awarded! What makes this project different from the others I've worked on in the past, is that I'm going to be the lead researcher from Sheffield. This is great in that I'll have a bigger say in the direction of some of the work, although I'll also be responsible if it goes pear shaped. Wish me luck?
12 February 2013 at 11:02 , ADRIAN said...

Good Luck Mark.

13 February 2013 at 10:06 , Scriptor Senex said...

Good luck and enjoy whatever of Hanover you may be able to see in passing.

16 February 2013 at 15:17 , Kay G. said...

Good luck to you.
You know, what you are working on, the ForgetIT thingie? My brain has been doing that for years.
I instantly forget anything bad or negative, just a small residue remains that helps me to avoid or to somehow fix the aforementioned bad thing.
You need to study my brain!

20 February 2013 at 09:55 , GB said...

Good luck, Mark. I've never been to Hanover although I once nearly went there by accident which is no easy achievement.

20 February 2013 at 10:00 , Mark said...

I once ended up in Munich by accident (well certainly not be design anyway).

Hanover was nice (well the people and food, I didn't get to see much of the city), and the project seems really interesting. There are certainly a few aspects that I think will become blog posts once I get me head around them a little better.

Post a Comment