purplecat

The department recently partnered with the British Computer Society (BCS) to make some videos for... I don't know, honestly, generic publicity reasons I presume. Anyway the final results prominently feature one of my postdocs (Hazel) and my former boss (Michael). I get a bit part in Hazel's video and the book Michael and I wrote features in his video.

The interested can find them here.

sir_guinglain wrote a piece for The Essential Doctor Who:Science and Technology on Artificial Intelligence in Doctor Who and he thought it might be fun to get me to provide some discussion of the actual science. As a result I got not one, but two boxouts in the article!! The Teenager is immensely impressed and B. has purchased Prosecco (though, to be fair, it takes very little to provoke B. into purchasing Prosecco).

It isn't quite appearing in Doctor Who Magazine which would be beyond awesome, but its pretty close "From the makers of Doctor Who Magazine" runs the byline. I have been mentioned in DWM before: once because I won twenty miniature plastic Daleks and twenty miniature plastic Cybermen in a competition and once because I wrote in to inform them that my logic textbook had mentioned Doctor Who, but I've never had my photo in the magazine let alone boxouts all to myself.

I believe you can purchase The Essential Doctor Who:Science and Technology in W.H.Smiths though the Lime Street Station branch did not have it when I looked (fortunately sir_guinglain kindly managed to get me sent a complementary copy).

B. is currently in Japan and I've just spent a week at the European Conference on Artificial Intelligence. G, therefore has spent a few days with Valkyrie and family in Stoke-on-Trent. On my way to collect her, and stuck in a traffic jam, I did a double-take when I saw what appeared to be RTD in the rearview mirror. Closer inspection revealed it was not RTD so much as a large photo of RTD in the passenger seat of the vehicle behind. Once I'd convinced myself that, yes, indeed, there really was a life-size photo of RTD in the car behind me and given the traffic was stationary, I recorded the moment for posterity.



thusly


There was a dimly visible figure in the back seat of the car and I persuaded myself that it was just about plausible that was the man himself (the only vaguely logical reason I could think of for transporting a life-size photo of RTD would be that you were actually RTD and were off to do some publicity of some kind). Since the traffic jam was located on the main route between Manchester and the southbound M6 it wasn't beyond possibility he might be in a car in the general vicinity.

( Social Media shenanigans under the cut )

Most people on Facebook already know this but I think there are few here who aren't in t'other place. I'll probably be on the Today Programme (UK BBC Radio 4 News programme) tomorrow morning at approx 8.30am, talking about non-medical robots.

*not scared honest!*