User Profile

About me

I live in Cambridge, England. I have a physics degree, but now spend my time writing embedded software. Years ago, I used to be an evangelical Christian; now, I'm at least a weak atheist. I still find religion interesting to talk about, as long as things are kept reasonably polite. I like to dance.

I am married to scribb1e.

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

Other places where you can find me

I'm on Facebook (where I only usually friend people I've met in real life), kuro5hin, del.icio.us and various other places. I occasionally post on Usenet. I also have an infrequently updated home page.

About my blog

I use LiveJournal to talk about stuff I find interesting, rather than as a personal journal, most of the time. I don't make many friends-locked posts, although I'll occasionally post personal news in locked entries, so if you know me and want to see that, let me know.

If you're interested in stuff I'm looking at but not writing long posts about, why not subscribe to pw201_links, which is a feed of my del.icio.us bookmarks.

Feeds

LiveJournal publishes an Atom feed of my public postings. From my own site, I publish Atom feeds of the comments on each public entry (visit the entry and your browser should discover the feed for it), as well as a feed of all comments on my public entries and a feed of my comments on other people's public entries.

The feed of my comments on other people's public entries is 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.

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.