I tried to book tickets to see Ricky Gervais at the Bloomsbury Theatre (a one-off warm-up gig) today, but it sold out before I got anywhere. ‘Tis a shame, as I saw Gervais at the Bloomsbury once before, whilst a student at UCL (who operate the Theatre), and so it would have brought back some [...]
I saw this story – Cows also ‘have regional accents’ – a couple of weeks ago, and didn’t give it much thought. However, it’s just been pointed out to me by a friend that the report was written by Prof. John Wells, who is one of my ex-lecturers in linguistics at UCL! Luckily, we never [...]
Just discovered (via Phil Gyford) this awesome 3D rendering of University College London, which you can plug in to Google Earth. The work is a project of Andrew Hudson-Smith from the Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis, a research initiative at UCL. His other work also includes some cool stuff, much of which I’m not sure [...]
Rare FM, the student radio station for UCL I once managed and DJed on, is now back on 87.7FM in central London, from today until 2nd October. Well worth tuning into if you’re in central London, or listening to online if you’re not. Especially if you’re a UCL fresher… They will apparently be broadcasting live [...]
I graduated from my degree, a BA Linguistics at UCL, this summer (with a 2:1). It feels a bit weird to have come back from something so academic, into a world which barely understands what linguistics is. So, over the next few weeks, I plan to publish some of the essays that I ploughed so [...]
The ever-charming René Lavanchy, editor of the UCL Cheesegrater Magazine, leader of the UCL Union ‘Just Say No to the NUS’ campaign, and all-round Union-baiting good-guy, sent me this amusing photo of a modded belisha beacon: Union officials suspected it to be the work of the Cheesegrater, but I’d guess that it was more likely [...]
So, I found out last week that I had gotten a 2:i in my degree, which is a BA Linguistics from UCL. It wasn’t a huge surprise, as the third year only counted for 50%, and I had already had some results. However, it’s nice to have it confirmed. I got some pleasing results from [...]
My past week at UCL was livened up by being part of the campaign, led by the Union’s satirical Cheese Grater magazine, to get the Provost Malcolm Grant to shave off his 33-year-old moustache in exchange for students raising £1,500 for Comic Relief. I only played a minor part in the campaign – full credit [...]
An interesting article by Philip Ball, author of Critical Mass: how one thing leads to another, on crowd control at the IKEA opening has been published on UCL’s website (after publication in the Guardian). The article contains some detail on why crushes happen, but my favorite paragraph is one that criticses the whole IKEA experience: [...]
This slightly over-the-top warning notice, spotted in a computer cluster room at UCL, amused me.