Tag: on the web

The Scholar Ship

Strange… yet oddly appealing — The Scholar Ship

It sounds like you pay US$20k to spend a semester travelling around on a cruise ship and studying. The universities that ‘steward’ the programme are credible ones (e.g. UC Berkley, Fudan, Cardiff). You can then do an additional semester at Macquarie University to get your Masters in International Communication.

The ship going from this September starts in Athens (Greece), then goes to Lisbon (Portugal), Panama City (Panama), Guayaquil (Ecuador), Auckland (New Zealand), Sydney (Australia), Shanghai (China), then debarks in Hong Kong.

The January voyage is different again.

You know, I wouldn’t mind lecturing at such an institution!

Friend wheel


What is this? Do you know?

It’s my Friend Wheel!

Yes, indeed. Someone has come up with a nifty way to visually depict the relationships between my friends on Facebook. Every dot on the circumference of the wheel represents a friend. I’ve erased friends’ names, as well as mine in the middle.

You can see some interesting patterns. Recently, the network effect worked its magic amongst my high school friends from Melbourne. Consequently, that isolated patch of purple at 11 to 12 o’clock is the high school arc.

The pink arc at one o’clock is the beginnings of my university dancesport crowd. Facebook has only just started to ripple through them. I don’t think that blob will get any bigger, though. I didn’t have that many friends at uni 🙂

At 2 to 3 o’clock, the Friend Wheel application decided to place my un-networked friends. There are a couple of people from my university course, work, other courses, and truly random acquaintances.

Which leaves the mass of lines from 3 to 10 o’clock. This is, of course, the Cambridge arc of people who sucked me into Facebook in the first place. Now, as far as I’m concerned, there should be four main groups: my coursemates, my scholarship friends, dancing people, and college people.

However, it’s a mess. The Friend Wheel app has revealed how interlinked everyone in Cambridge is. I really shouldn’t be surprised that scholarship people dance, and that coursemates are in college with scholarship people.

Oh, there is also an interesting blue blob at around half past nine. That’s the Oxford dancesport people. Even though I don’t know them, many of them ‘friended’ me after I released photos from the Varsity Match in May. It’s very easy to make friends on Facebook. Currently, I have 212.

You would think that the lines that cross from one side of the circle to the other would represent the most unexpected relationships. They do to some extent. However, the application has chopped my scholarship group in half and the internal links there represent much of the crossover. Hmm, now that I look at the names, I don’t know why the application has done that. There’s an island of scholarship people at 10 o’clock. Also, for some reason, the Oxford group has bisected my coursemates (divide and conquer?).

Hehe. Kevin Rudd is at 4 o’clock, surrounded by Aussie mates. That’s right. I’m officially friends with Kevin Rudd. I looked, but John Howard‘s not on Facebook. Maybe he has a MySpace (read Viewing American class divisions through Facebook and MySpace).

Damjan suggested someone could make a Venn diagram application for friends. That’s the mental model I’ve always had for my friendship groups. I have Venn brain. However, now that I’ve seen what a mess that lines make, I think circles would be an impossible ask.

Would you like a haircut?

I was walking home this morning after a meeting when two women came up to me.

‘Hello! My name is Letty. I’m an apprentice hairdresser. Would you like a free haircut?’

Letty’s companion added, ‘Letty has basically finished her training. I’m her teacher. She just needs to practice for the test.’

I said cautiously, ‘Sure. I’d love a haircut.’ I wondered if they had spotted me walking down the street and targeted me because of my terrible hair. So now I have an appointment for a haircut this Friday, just in time for Di’s Fourth of July party at out house.

Try this! It’s pretty amazing. Put on your headphones and listen to the YouTube clip. I read about it at Why not try a virtual haircut?

Hufflepuff!


Which Hogwarts house will you be sorted into?


I am not a Harry Potter fan but I do like the idea of sorting people by personality. If it’s not MBTI, then it’s Hogwarts houses and sorting hats. I looked up Hogwarts houses on Wikipedia and found the following descriptions.

  • Gryffindor values courage, chivalry and boldness.
  • Hufflepuff values hard work, loyalty, determination, patience, friendship and fair play.
  • Ravenclaw values intelligence, knowledge and wit.
  • Slytherin values ambition, cunning and resourcefulness.

On reading this, I thought, ‘Hmm. Hufflepuff, I guess. Maybe Ravenclaw.’ So I searched for ‘what harry potter house quiz‘, did the first test and got these results.

Hufflepuff – 14
Ravenclaw – 12
Gryffindor – 11
Slytherin – 8

Sheesh… this sorting hat quiz is intense! There’s a consent form.

I just did that test. It was very long but at least the questions weren’t leading. I got:

Ravenclaw – 88
Hufflepuff – 85
Gryffindor – 81
Slytherin – 41

Don’t know what to do? Go psuedo-space

Getting closer to the end of a degree course, it’s natural for people to start talking about careers.

‘What are you doing after this?’

‘I don’t know yet. Maybe study some more.’

‘I’m going back to my old company.’

‘I might travel a bit.’

‘I’ve got two interviews next week.’

Here’s an option for anyone who doesn’t know what they want to do for the next two years: take a pretend trip to Mars. You can apply to the European Space Agency — see the call for candidates (pdf). Now, there’s something to tell the grandkids!