Things that are on my mind
pretty much all the time
I have a few of those. Two of them are my children. Jamie's now 11, and Sam 14. Jamie no longer spends quite as much time wishing that Sam's toys were his, and Sam no longer spends quite as much time wishing that his brother was someone else's. I'm not sure how wise it was to acquiesce to Sam's wish to take up Karate... but Jamie does it now also... as do I (somewhere hidden amongst these pages is something more about why I do Karate). Statistically, it is quite unlikely that Sam and Jamie are the two most fantastic kids in the world. But that's just statistically.. in actual fact, they are the two most fantastic kids in the world. I realise that there are lots of other people in the world who will dispute this, and will insist that their kids are the most fantastic. Sorry folks - you're wrong.
And then there’s my pond. It was put in when we bought the house, but it leaked, most likely from somewhere near the bottom. So we took out the liner and re-formed the pond and then re-lined it with the proper kind of liner. Would have been a lot easier if 200+ fish hadn’t been born between the leak starting and the liner needing to be replaced. The new pond is way better than the old. The fish think so too. As does the Heron that periodically stops by for a snack.
Another long-standing preoccupation (one that is almost exactly the same age as Jamie) has been my attempt to find the time to write a new edition of a book I first published in 1997 which was (and still is) an "accessible" introduction to psycholinguistics (details can be got from the menu on the left). It was published by Oxford University Press, who offered me what at the time seemed like a ridiculously large advance on royalty! Boy was I naive. The production of that first edition went very smoothly... so smoothly, in fact, that my name slipped off the cover, which resulted in all the copies having to be recalled from the warehouse until the new cover was printed/bound. So I'm supposed to be working on that new edition. One chapter's complete... only another 12 to go! You can download that chapter in the 'book' section (see the menu on the right). update: I’d be much happier and much less stressed if I admitted to myself that this new edition just isn’t going to happen any time soon. Sadly, I admitted this to myself some time ago, but it made no difference to my happiness...
I've also spent too much time worrying about my research lab. We
have two eye trackers: The first is a head-mounted infra-red
video-camera system to monitor people's eye movements as they look
at a computer monitor. It's an interesting technology (that's
Yuki Kamide, who is a long-time collaborator and
helped me set up the eye tracking lab here at York - she’s wearing
an older version of the current system). What you don't see in this
picture is the silicon swimming hat that we normally ask people to
wear (Yuki was far too vain to put it on for this photograph...
something to do with her hair gel, apparently...). It stops the
head-mount from slipping. It's also a lot of fun to put on... (in
case you're wondering, we have a bunch of these hats, and they're
washed each time they're used). The other tracker doesn't require
the wearer to be assimilated into the Borg... It uses a camera
under the computer monitor that's pointed at the person looking at
the monitor. The next best thing in my lab is the powered table
that, at the switch of a button, goes up or down (thereby adjusting
the height of the table relative to the person whose eyes we’re
tracking). It makes a fantastic noise as it does so. As do the
people that work in my lab...
I have a few of those. Two of them are my children. Jamie's now 11, and Sam 14. Jamie no longer spends quite as much time wishing that Sam's toys were his, and Sam no longer spends quite as much time wishing that his brother was someone else's. I'm not sure how wise it was to acquiesce to Sam's wish to take up Karate... but Jamie does it now also... as do I (somewhere hidden amongst these pages is something more about why I do Karate). Statistically, it is quite unlikely that Sam and Jamie are the two most fantastic kids in the world. But that's just statistically.. in actual fact, they are the two most fantastic kids in the world. I realise that there are lots of other people in the world who will dispute this, and will insist that their kids are the most fantastic. Sorry folks - you're wrong.
And then there’s my pond. It was put in when we bought the house, but it leaked, most likely from somewhere near the bottom. So we took out the liner and re-formed the pond and then re-lined it with the proper kind of liner. Would have been a lot easier if 200+ fish hadn’t been born between the leak starting and the liner needing to be replaced. The new pond is way better than the old. The fish think so too. As does the Heron that periodically stops by for a snack.
Another long-standing preoccupation (one that is almost exactly the same age as Jamie) has been my attempt to find the time to write a new edition of a book I first published in 1997 which was (and still is) an "accessible" introduction to psycholinguistics (details can be got from the menu on the left). It was published by Oxford University Press, who offered me what at the time seemed like a ridiculously large advance on royalty! Boy was I naive. The production of that first edition went very smoothly... so smoothly, in fact, that my name slipped off the cover, which resulted in all the copies having to be recalled from the warehouse until the new cover was printed/bound. So I'm supposed to be working on that new edition. One chapter's complete... only another 12 to go! You can download that chapter in the 'book' section (see the menu on the right). update: I’d be much happier and much less stressed if I admitted to myself that this new edition just isn’t going to happen any time soon. Sadly, I admitted this to myself some time ago, but it made no difference to my happiness...
For the historically interested, here is what used to be at the bottom of this page:
My final concern, and one that irritates my more immediate colleagues to distraction, is that I'm convinced that our research here in the Psycholinguistics Research Group at York would benefit no end from some decent coffee; a Gaggia 'bean to cup' coffee machine, no less. I've tried the coffee, and it's fantastic. So if anyone wants to donate around $700, just get in touch.Believe it or not, we now have that Gaggia machine. It's fantastic. Changed all our lives. I just wish I hadn't had to buy it myself... I'd gladly accept a retrospective donation...! Actually, it’s now 8 years old and has had to be returned for repair a couple of times. So it’s on its last legs. Or beans.