This week marks the twelve month point from which, if I had started my PhD at the beginning of the academic year, I would have begun.

However, despite my slightly late starting, this week was therefore also the point at which I was required to make use of the knowledge I have been diligently absorbing for the best part of the last year and submit what's known as a thesis proposal. My proposal was a roughly 12,000 word document laying out what I've learnt, how this has led me to a particular topic and what my plan of action will be for investigating this topic over the remaining two to three years. When I begun writing the proposal, it felt like quite a daunting task, though the requirement has actually been an opportunity to take a step back, focus and make a few decisions. It's also required me to actually write up about a lot of the literature which I've been reading; something long overdue. The result was presented to the school and my industrial sponsor yesterday, and with the addition of a few suggestions, was accepted. In case anyone is interested, the document can in fact be found here.

So, I'm now officially a second year PhD student, with a topic. The relief of having this part completed is actually quite significant. Now, onwards!

Occasionally, I receive emails from jobs.ac.uk about vacancies in which I might be interested. Usually I just skim through, since I'm not actively looking right now, to see what kinds of things I might want to do after my PhD, or else what I would really like to avoid. Today I saw an advert for a job about which I couldn't immediately decide what I thought: a Consequence Modeller for the Atomic Weapons Establishment.

The Atomic Weapons Establishment (from their website) "provides the warheads for the United Kingdom nuclear deterrent" and "is one of the largest high technology research, design development and production facilities in the country". Well, no wonder they're interested in science graduates. This is no NGO!

Being pretty much a pacifist, I normally steer well clear of any military research and I certainly would not in a million years want to design nuclear warheads, but what exactly does "consequence modelling" entail in this field? I mean, firstly is anyone under any illusion that the consequences of the detonation of a nuclear weapon would be anything other than massive, indiscriminate, ugly, painful death, mutilation and an environmental impact the like of which would probably change the culture of a country like Britain overnight?

I suppose what they are really after is the ability to be able to somehow justify nuclear weapons as "tactical", things which can be used for precision attacks, the consequences of which could be fine tuned by the selection of warhead. In this way, perhaps they hope that weapons can be used more "safely", in order to minimise civilian casualty, or some such rubbish.

And, I do believe that it is rubbish. We've heard this kind of talk before of course, about precision weapons, highly sophisticated targetting systems which minimise what is heartlessly referred to as "collateral damage". Indeed, this is very similar to the claim being made by the United States about their missile "defence" system: as soon as an incoming missile is detected, they send up one of their own (from a base in Europe) to intercept it and take it out before it reaches its target. Of course, the simple and very obvious problem with this approach is that the attackers just need a slightly more sophisticated missile. At this point of course, the US can just spend a bit more on missile defence research... And here we have it, another arms race.

Thinking about these precision targetted weapons we hear so much about these days, of whose consequences their users are so certain, well doesn't this just encourage the people who are being targetted to hole up in the middle of a town, or in a school? I firmly believe that there is no way to hope to bring about more peace in the world by researching better weapons, only by disarmament, and by not spending people's taxes on jobs like this.

Anyway, if you disagree, and have an "understanding of nuclear weapons' effects", their "consequences for persons" as well as "good computer literacy, particularly Microsoft Office applications", (the three do actually appear adjacent to each other in the ad) then feel free to apply and prove me wrong.

I've just found out through the lovely process of following links around from website to website that the American arms manufacturer Lockheed Martin is in the shortlist of the UK government to run the 2011 census. For some reason the Office of National Statistics (ONS) has decided to contract out the process to a private company, meaning that the winning bidder will be responsible for the collection and management of census information for the entire of the UK. Lockheed Martin is the world's biggest military contractor and arms exporter. Apparently, they build U-2 and SR-71 Blackbird spy planes, F-16 and F/A-22 jet fighters, Hellfire and Javelin missiles, the F-117 stealth attack fighters used at the beginning of the US invasion of Iraq and the PAC-3 Patriot missile. As if that weren't enough, the US Vice-President, Dick Cheney's wife is on the board of the company. The New York Times said in 2004 that "Lockheed Martin doesn't run the United States. But it does help run a breathtakingly big part of it."

I mean, to the British government: Come on guys, what on Earth are you playing at?

Read more about it here, and sign the petition to the Prime Minister against the idea here.

Today, 21st September, is International Park(ing) Day. I just came across this, thanks to TreeHugger's post. The motivation behind the day, which originated two years ago in San Fransisco, California, is that so much of our cities' space is given over to vehicles, so why not, for a day, reclaim a bit as a public park. The idea is therefore pretty simple: find a parking spot, and turn it into a park for a day.

I didn't search for long, but the only example of the day being observed here in the UK was in Manchester last year. It'll be good to see if this grows this year. One in Birmingham would be great, and if I'd have found out about this earlier, I might have been quite up for helping to organise it.

This reminds me of a Reclaim the Streets style party which we held in Leicester a few years back, occupying part of Evington Road and moving in with barbeques and music. That day was a huge success; over a hundred people surprised themselves by joining in, bringing food, music and sofas out onto the street. It was actually kind of weird to see everyday people just stopping and chatting, having a free bite to eat, meeting new people and going away saying what a good idea it was. One local shoe shop owner even spontaneously suggested that we hooked up a sound system to his electricity supply to keep the thing going rather than use a generator.

Anyway, I'm all for the kind of thing that keeps public spaces for people. So, if anyone knows of a local effort or feels like doing this next year, let me know!

(Photo copyright Scott Beale / Laughing Squid. Thanks Scott!)

Having just read Pete's Ashton's post on Feedburner, I have just finished converting this site over to use Feedburner to generate its RSS feed, rather than using the built-in Drupal one.

The main reason for this, it has to be said, is so that I can have a look at lots of juicy stats about how many people subscribe to my feed, where they are, and how they read my posts. I've been going on a bit of a stat frenzy lately, with the addition of the little map thingy on the bottom of the left panel of the main page, pin-pointing out my readers' locations. It's all just fun really, and this is a totally pointless post, other than to say that thanks to Dave Reid's module and a bit of php hacking myself, if you subscribe to my site's feed, you should notice no difference at all. If you do have any problems, then please drop a comment to this post and let me know the problem!

Why are feeds "burnt" anyway?

Yes, I've been having more fun with feeds on my site. It took a while, but you can now subscribe to a feed of the comments left on the site. The link's up at the top right, next to the usual one.

At last, it seems that the mainstream media are beginning to provide a more accurate view of what Apple is all about, rather than contributing to the bizarre belief in their position as some kind of cool community-driven, anti-monopoly company. Welcome to the real world.

I can't help thinking that all the effort that goes into things like this in the Free Software community, whilst appreciated in the current scenario, would be better spent somewhere else. But, until we are able to stop this kind of back-filling, we will always be held back.

With all the war, conflict and protests which we've become accustomed to seeing on the news in recent years, it's easy to let the events going on in Burma just wash over and blend into the background. I'd urge anyone reading this not to let this happen and take a second look at Burma right now.

Burma (also known as Myanmar; read about why, and the significance here) is ruled by probably one of the most dreadful military dictatorships in the world. According to the BBC, the junta "suppresses almost all dissent and wields absolute power in the face of international condemnation and sanctions". The United Nations has charged the military government with a “crime against humanity” for its systematic abuses of human rights, including according to a recent BBC documentary, ethnic cleansing and the burning of entire villages to the ground.

I myself have known about this since the plight of the popular pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi was brought to my attention back when I was President of the Students' Union at the University of Leicester (as is traditional in students' unions, we named a room after her). Despite having won a general election and a Nobel Peace Prize, Suu Kyi has, with a few brief spells of exception, been kept under house arrest since her return from exile in 1988.

I don't pretend by any means to be an expert on Burma, but there is enough information around for those who are interested, including a campaign group here in the UK. Since the news companies in Burma are state-owned, and the entire population is subjected to heavy censorship, accurate reports of the actual events occurring are not easy to come by. However, bloggers such as Ko Htike (who is based in London, but in contact with people in Burma who are able to avoid the government's censorship) are providing a window on Burma through the accounts of ordinary people on the ground. Much of his blog is in Burmese, but significant portions are also in English. The BBC also comments on those using the internet to get information out of Burma, including how the government is attempting to hijack the system to spread misinformation.

After a night of military raids, in which the state-owned television claimed that nine protesters were killed, the demonstrations are now in their tenth day.