User Profile

About me

I'm Paul Wright, a software engineer based in Cambridge, England.

I have a physics degree, although I remember less of it as time goes by.

I used to be an evangelical Christian; then, around 2002 to 2003, I gradually changed my mind. Currently, I'm at least a weak atheist (though I'd take a stronger position on evangelical Christianity: I'm pretty sure that's false). I still find religion interesting to talk about, as long as things are kept reasonably polite.

I am married to scribb1e.

About my blog

This blog is hosted by LiveJournal. I use it to talk about stuff I find interesting: religion, philosophy, science, and, occasionally, ballroom dancing. I also post my bookmarks in batches every week or so, in the link blog category.

If you want a quick list of the stuff I'm most proud of having written, try the "best of" category.

LiveJournal lets users make some posts visible to "friends" only. I post personal news in these locked entries, so if you know me and want to see them, get yourself a LiveJournal and let me know your username.

Commenting on my blog

You're welcome to join in the discussion. If you're not on LiveJournal but use another blogging site, please consider logging in with OpenID. If you don't do that, your comments will turn up as anonymous, so please sign them at the bottom using some sort of consistent name (which doesn't have to be your real one): unfortunately, there's no separate field for anonymous commenters to enter their name in on LiveJournal.

LiveJournal comments are threaded, so replying to an individual comment will continue that thread (and will notify the person who posted the comment you're replying to, as well as me). To start a new thread, reply to the post itself.

I don't have a moderation policy except the one I borrowed from Wikipedia, namely Don't be a dick. I'd like discussion to be as open as possible, and that occasionally means it'll be "robust", but don't be gratuitously evil.

Feeds

You can subscribe to the following feeds:

	Feed	Google Reader	Bloglines	LiveJournal
My blog	Feed			pw201
My link blog	Feed			pw201_links
All comments on my blog	Feed			pw201_comments
My comments elsewhere	Feed			pw201_stalk

The "My comments elsewhere" feed publishes my comments on other people's public LiveJournal entries. It's marked with various magics which tell Google and other search engines not to index it. It is periodically rechecked for postings which have become private. Additionally, new public postings are considered private for a few hours in case someone made them public by accident. Despite all this, if you don't want my comments on your public postings to be published in the feed, you can opt out by filling in this poll.

I also have an infrequently updated home page.

LiveJournal specific stuff

If you're not on LiveJournal yourself, you probably don't care about this bit. If you are, read on.

Friending

I will "friend" you if you you're saying something interesting that I'd like to read. Please do not be alarmed, or feel compelled to reciprocate. Likewise, you can friend and de-friend me without fear of horrible reprisals. If I de-friend you, it's nothing personal, either. People's interests change over time.

If you're friending me because you want to talk to me rather than passively reading my stuff (which is fine too), saying "hello" is always a nice thing to do, as I don't check userinfo very often to see who has friended me.

Linking, privacy and stuff

I'll link to or discuss public entries I find interesting. I'm assuming that people put stuff up in public because they're happy for this to happen. If you're not happy with that, please reconsider your decision to make stuff public. Without the explicit access control provided by LJ's locking mechanism, you cannot safely assume that outsiders will not read it.

That means that you can link to my public postings without asking me, too.

If you've friended me, I'll treat your friends-locked postings as if you'd said them to me in person rather than broadcasting them by making them public, that is, those postings are in the private register. If you're saying sensitive stuff, I'll use common sense about who I mention it to.

My public posts are indexed by Google and other search engines. I friends-lock quotidian stuff which it's usually OK to discuss with other people who know me, but which I don't particularly want Google to see. I've got a few filters within my friends list. Filtered stuff (which I always mark and tag to differentiate it from stuff which is merely friends-only) is a step up from locked stuff. You don't know who else is on the filter and shouldn't assume that it's always OK to mention stuff to other people. Common sense applies, and if you don't know, you can always ask me.

ljtoys readership stats

I use LJ Toys to get readership statistics, by putting a transparent image into each public posting I make. If you want to block this, you can Adblock *.icons.ljtoys.co.uk, or follow the instructions on the LJ Toys wiki. (However, note that any image in someone's LJ postings, visible or not, could allow someone to tell who's visited their blog, so if you're paranoid, you should disable all images while browsing LJ).

Copyright

If you're desperate to reproduce any of my ramblings, you may do so subject to the terms of the Creative Commons Licence:




This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License.





This entry has emergency contact details (it's locked to me, so you'd need to convince LiveJournal's admins that you have a real emergency).