30 May 2010
Why and How I started the Aston Humanist Society
I’m am now in my eighth year at Aston University and well into the final year of my PhD. I founded the Aston Humanist Society in February 2009, quite simply because there wasn’t a society anything like it that I could join myself – perhaps the idiom that ‘getting atheists together was like trying to herd cats’ had put off anyone who had tried to start an non-theist society before me. I’m not even sure what took me so long to get round to it, perhaps my PhD finally wasn’t keeping me as busy as my supervisor would have liked.
Of the 48 social societies at Aston University, there are nine religious ones, including all the biggies: Islamic Soc, Hindu Soc, Christian Union, Sikh Soc, Jewish Soc (although there are many more denominations who are not officially listed with the Student Union); it’s a good reflection of the multicultural environment that the university is well known for. What the list of societies doesn’t reflect, however, is that there also are many students who lead a secular life that would enjoy meeting like minded people too.
Having decided to take action, I faced two bit problems: deciding what the society was actually about and almost as importantly what to call it. Like the SITP groups, but unlike religious societies or the increasing number of nationality/culture-based societies at Aston, there was no pre-formed idea of what you had to be/know in order to join. Because there was no precedent, I set the society up to be some nebulous idea of what I thought was missing: an open forum promoting values such as freedom of expression, and scientific and personal inquiry, centred around free discussion of philosophy, politics, science, religion and history.
I have could just have easily called it the Aston Secular/Rationalist/Skeptics Society (or the slightly more fun Thinkers-Not-Drinkers), but settled on Humanist simply because I am one, and I feel that humanism neatly captures the secular/rational vibe I was aiming for. Lots of people are essentially humanists, but just don’t know the term or decide not to call themselves by such a name – I guess the trouble with people who insist on thinking for themselves is that don’t usually like being labelled! I deliberately steered clear of ‘atheist’ as it has (sadly) come to have connotations of exclusivity and I didn’t want anyone to think that the group had an anti-theist agenda and be put off from joining.
It was more than just a riposte to all the religious groups, although I must admit that walking past ‘boarding the Jesus Train, WOOP WOOP!’ and ‘Obligatory Islamic Knowledge’ posters on my way to the office every morning had a little something to do with it. Starting the Aston Humanist Society was my taking a pro-active response to something else that had been bothering me throughout my studies. Without (I hope) sounding too high-minded, I was increasingly bothered by what I saw, and still see, as a pervasive culture of having ‘just enough education to perform’ at university. I know that for some, being at university is about getting a degree and then getting a job; no more, no less, and it is not really my place to judge that ambition. I think AC Grayling eloquently captures exactly how I feel (as he almost invariably does) in this quote from a short essay on Education.
“Liberal education is a vanishing ideal in the contemporary West, most notably in its Anglophone regions. Education is mainly restricted to the young and is no longer liberal education as much as something less ambitious and too exclusively geared to specific aims – otherwise, of course, very important – of employability. This is a loss; for the aim of liberal education is to produce people who go on learning after their formal education has ceased; who think and question, and know how to find answers when they need them. This is especially significant in the case of political and moral dilemmas in society, which will always occur and will always have to be negotiated afresh; so members of a community cannot afford to be unreflective and ill-informed if civil society is to be sustainable [my italics] … People who are better informed and more reflective are more likely to be considerate than those who are – and who are allowed to remain – ignorant, narrow-minded, selfish, and uncivil in the profound sense that characterises so much of human experience now”.To help make getting the group started I was lucky enough to have had the help of a number of organisations. Happenstance meant that I decided to start the group at the very same time that The National Federation of Atheist, Humanist & Secular Student Societies was being launched. I was lucky enough to attend the inaugural event, speak to lots of other societies, get a ‘starting a student society’ help pack, and even get some helpful advice from Richard Dawkins and AC Grayling. I also joined the Secular Portal which was a great way of getting in touch with other secular students, and sharing practical ideas, and managed to rope in the Birmingham Humanists to help out with our Fresher’s Fair recruitment stall at the start of this academic year. The brilliant cartoonist Thad Guy was also kind enough to let us use his images for posters and flyers.
We’ve held weekly meetings which have attempted to try and answer, or at least think about, some of the questions that god wasn’t going to answer for us: “How do we deal with the involvement of religion in major health issues, namely the Pope and his reigniting of the condoms/Aids situation”, “Should we treat paedophiles and criminals or mentally ill?”, “Trust in doctors or trust in god: how should society deal with clashes between people’s beliefs and medical ethics?” and “Do criminals should have the right to vote?”. None of these questions were going to help anyone pass their degrees directly, but I’d like to think that everyone benefited from the critical thinking and discussion that took place. I certainly left each meeting feeling a little more enlightened and with a lot more to think about.
We’ve also worked in collaboration with the Birmingham SITP on a couple of occasions and hosted both Ariene Sherine and Rebecca Watson for special ‘Skeptics in the Classroom’ meetings, held fund raising AmnesTEA parties, the Aston Happy Humanist team raised over £500 for the Cancer Research UK Relay for Life and we’re working with Aston’s Environment and Sustainability office to sponsor a university-wide bookswap scheme to promote the pleasures of environmentalism and reading.
It started out as just a few of my friends meeting in the university bar, but over the last year and a half the AHS I would like to think that the AHS has been a success and achieved at least some of its lofty ambition. We have over 70 members on Facebook, more than 30 paid up members and around 10 people at each of our weekly meetings, which is apparently good going for all but the very biggest, well established societies at Aston.
As student society (although staff members have also attended meetings), the nearing end of the 2009-10 academic year, and soon my PhD, has meant that the society has started winding down. I’m not sure where I’ll end up once my PhD is over, but if there isn’t a society to join, I’ll use this experience to just start another one. The ubiquity of social networking now makes starting and maintaining societies much easier. Very recently I’ve been following the progress of Alice Sheppard (aka PenguinGalaxy on Twitter) as they set up a STIP in Wales. Her blog post, coincidentally written at the same time as mine, echoes many of my feelings, although she has a tougher job given the scale of the group.
I hope that I have at least laid the foundations of some form of secular society at Aston; whether it remains a humanist society once I’m gone is irrelevant, as long as a bunch of students get together in some form or other discuss the world around them, for no other reason than because they want to think for themselves and learn what others have to say.
17 May 2010
Relay for Life 100k challenge
The Cancer Research UK’s Relay for Life is in its 4th year at Aston and has raised £36,000 in total to date. I jumped at the chance to take part in this year’s event, as it combined someof my favourite things: raising money for charity, exercising, setting myself a ridiculous challenge, and wearing underpants on the outside. I entered as team captain for the Happy Humanists Team, a merry band of four, representing the Aston Humanist Society that I chair. Well short of the recommended eight members for the relay, we knew we were in for a tough time, and just to make it even more interesting I decided that I would try to walk at least 100km over the course of the 24 hours the relay lasted.
The atmosphere at the start of the relay was a heady mix of happy excitement and sombre reflection. A rousing talk from a CRUK sponsored researcher at Birmingham University and cancer survivors completing the first lap really hit home the importance of these kinds of fundraising events.
The first 8 hours passed in a flash. Talking to team mates, the bands, dancers and supporters meant that I hardly noticed the time or distance. Keeping the steady pace set by my GPS watch, I was chuffed to find that we’d covered 43km by the time the Candle of Hope ceremony started at around 8pm.
The ceremony was definitely a time of mixed emotions. I was relieved at the opportunity to take a break, but it was also a time to reflect on what we were all raising money for. Hearing the story of Aston student Melissa Leach, and her family’s struggle to find support from the government whilst she suffered from cancer, was heartbreaking. Listening to another student who was told he had cancer on his 22nd birthday almost knocked me off my already unsteady feet. He had an inspiring message that bears repeating: be glad to be alive – your bank balance, clothes and when and where the next party is aren’t as important as they seem. Walking around a lake for a few hours pales into nothingness once you really stop to consider the struggle that cancer sufferers and their families go through every day.
Support from students (who really should have been at home in bed ready for another day’s revision) made the midnight shift go quickly, but the time from 4am to 8am was the most challenging for me. Tired, cold, sore and semi-delirious, I think in those four hours I put to good use the stubbornness in me that my wife finds so annoying. I owe an apology and a thank you to all the poor souls who kept me company during those hours and who were kind enough to put up with my inane ramblings as we plodded around the lake together.
With the sunrise came a second wind and the last 20km became just a matter of getting it done. It’s a cliché, but it really was a mental more than physical thing by the end. I didn’t have anyone to let down but myself, and no one really benefited from me walking 100km (in hindsight I should have got people to sponsor my by the kilometre!), but I got a kick out of doing it and it’s spurred me on to do more endurance-based fundraising events. Just one tip for anyone thinking of taking up the challenge next year: take lip balm. The greatest source of pain two days after the event wasn’t blisters or stiff muscles; it was really badly chapped lips from exposure.
It goes without saying that I couldn’t have done it without the support of my team members. Jack Hooker, who did the first five hours with me – in bare feet no less. Jack Williams, whom I hadn’t even met before that morning, but who walked three hours on Saturday with me and came back on Sunday to walk the last four hours, when I needed company and encouragement the mos. And last, but not least, Toby Chander, who helped me through the midnight shift. I owe each one of them more than just a pint! Ben Smith and the rest of the committee, and the CRUK Marshalls and St John’s Ambulance for their reassuring presence, all deserve a great deal of praise for organising such a big event that went off without a hitch.
Personal challenge aside, I’m chuffed to bits that the Happy Humanists raised more than £500 towards the record-breaking £17,000 total for this year’s event. That’s a lot of money going to a very worthy cause, and at the end of the day, that is what it’s all about!
A copy of this article will appear in the next edition of the Aston Times
Jack Williams and me
GPS route of the first 42km
16 May 2010
Android app reviews #1
As a complete nerdite, modern technology both enthrals and scares me. I have no technical expertise to speak of, so these Android app reviews are purely focused on how useful, intuitive and cool they are.
I’ve tried to group them to according to a vague system describing their use and general importance and they’re listed in alphabetical order rather than importance or rating.
First things first, all Android users should install the Appbrain Market Sync app and sign up with “Appbrain”:http://www.appbrain.com. Appbrain allows you to install Android apps from a web interface, so if you like an app reviewed here you can search for it from your desktop, read the other reviews and add it to the list of apps you’d like to download from the Android Market. You then “Sync with AppBrain” on your phone and then you can install all the apps on your wishlist. Simples!
I’ve also included the QR codes for some of the apps I’ve reviewed so if you have a barcode scanner installed on your phone you can use them to go directly to it on the Android Market.
Categories of apps:
Antivirus free
One of the first things you should download if you’re an app fiend like myself, but worry about the safety of your phone (stop smirking iPhone users).
It works quietly in the background to check all your programs, settings and files and identifies any dangers. It updates in real time and can be set to scan files each time you update or download a new app.
Apps Organizer
A quite brilliant tool for organising apps for your homepage. Allows you to give all your apps a label (Internet, Social Networking, Games, Tools etc.) so that that you can you can have one icon on your homepage to access them all instead of having to group them yourself across homescreens. It also comes with a fairly redundant uninstaller feature.
There are six preinstalled categories, but there is the option to create your own labels and assign them your own icons. It’s a good idea to download or save icons you like on the phone as the default Android ones are not particularly varied.
One strange thing is that it doesn’t seem to be able to find the Google Mail app, so while I can group Handscent and Work Email into a label, I still have to have the Gmail icon on my homescreen. Still, it’s a minor gripe for an app that’s cleaned up my homepage and made finding and using apps so much easier.
Astro
An app management program that is chock full of useful features that let you perform basic functions like view, delete, uninstall apps, move files on your phone and SD card, and easily create backups of all your apps onto the SD card. An absolute must if you ever have issues with your phone and don’t want to face searching for and downloading a hundred apps again! The creators of this program have thought of pretty much everything. Features like multi-select and search options give it the feel of using a PC and completely removes the fiddlyness often associated with file management on a phone.
It replaced an SD backup and AppsInstaller app that I was initially using, and I’m really surprised there is still a proliferation of apps that are specifically designed to perform these different functions individually when this all-in-one app is so proficient and easy to use.
Layar
Probably the most ‘oo-look-what-my-super-fancy-super-smart-phone-can-do’ app available on Android, it uses the phone’s camera, compass, and GPS position to add real-time information about whatever you’re pointing your camera at.
There is no denying that Augmented Reality is undeniably cool, but for the moment, the functions are a little too light-weight, and ultimately cumbersome, to be of much use. If you’re looking for directions to places, Google’s Places Directory works just as well, without all the bells and whistles – I’m not a fan of viewing the world on a 3.5 inch screen instead of what’s actually right in front you just yet (see Charlie Brooker’s excellent piece on augmented reality. Because it’s one of the more high-end apps, it can run a little slow too.
Wikitude
Falls in the same bracket as Layar, but I can see this being an app I am more likely to use in the future. Point your camera at a new surrounding and WIkitude highlights points of interest and navigates to relevant Wikipedia articles.
Handcent
Universally recommended on web forums discussing SMS apps, and I can absolutely see why. It’s designed to replace the native Messaging app, which is ugly and basic.
What really sets Handcent apart, aside from the cleaner interface, is the notification and pop-up feature. The ‘quick reply’ feature displays incoming text messages (much like the SMS-popup app), but, crucially, also allows you to reply to them without having to access your inbox – very handy and not as gimmicky as it sounds. If you have the Text-to-speech Service extended add-on you can also get your phone to read your message out to you! Another neat added feature is that it also automatically syncs with your contacts so that photos appear for each contact in your message inbox.
I’m not a huge fan of all the fiddly customisability. For the most part the colours and themes of most apps suit me just fine, but I have to say that the degree of customisability afforded with this app is quite incredible. You can change the font, colour and size of pretty much everything. For the notification and Quick Message functions alone, this is an absolute must.
Work Email
I found the native email client for checking accounts other than your Gmail to be rubbish, primarily because I just couldn’t get it to work, despite it looking so simple. Work Email is an excellent app that had no problem finding and syncing to my university webmail account and works really well. Simple, clean interface, it lets you do all the usual things of setting sync intervals. Another handy feature is the ability to set size limits of emails so that if, like me, you’re just using it to see if you haven’t missed a really important email, you don’t clog up your inbox and net usage by downloading whole, long emails.
Beebplayer
Absolutely amazed that this unofficial BBC iPlayer port works so well. Allows you to access a good chunk of iPlayer content, including live radio right on your phone! Works admirably provided you’ve got a decent Wi-fi connection, not so great over 3G, but then that’s a given, and it’s a rare occasion when you just HAVE to watch a TV show right there and then (which is why the iPlayer was invented!). Whilst others have said the interface is a little clunky, and the radio function sometimes sticks, I’m just astonished that it works at all.
Gmote
Allows you to remotely control media on your PC. Very easy to set up and it finds your media and syncs your media library to your phone instantaneously. It’s good for controlling music being played through WMP, but again, not something that actually gets used a lot. Can apparently also be used to control PowerPoint presentations, but this isn’t something I have tried to do.
Meridian
Meridian is a great alternative to the default Music/Video Player Android app. Useful added features include video subtitles and searching for song lyrics and information on the artist at the touch of a couple of buttons. It’s not the prettiest looking app, in fact I would go as far as to say it’s quite ugly, but its ease of use and added features make it a must.
Spotify
Probably my favourite app on my phone and the one that’s most transformed the way I use it. Although the app is free, you need to have a Spotify Premium account which costs £9.99 a month, which allows you to access the huge library of songs without having to listen to adverts in-between. The biggest selling point for the app on your Android is the ability to download music to listen to ‘offline’ (a max of 3333 tracks), which means you effectively own the song/album/playlist for the duration of your Premium contract. Once you cancel your monthly contract the songs are no longer available.
Playlists are automatically and immediately synced between your PC and phone, which is handy as creating playlists on the phone itself can be a little awkward. Being able to upload and share playlists on the Spotify website, and with the new update on Twitter and Facebook also, is an added bonus. You can then set the phone to sync whenever you are connected to an appropriate Wi-fi connection. Be careful of your usage, as it can be easy to chew up your monthly download limit!
This app is an absolutely must for music lovers with £2.50 a week to spare on music. If you download, or buy, more than one album a month, and want to download music legally, it’s absolutely worth the money – it works out as less than pennies for pretty much any song you could wish for.
My Magic has now pretty much replaced my conventional mp3 player – cheaply and, importantly, legally.
TV-Guide UK (free)
TV-Guide has a fairly comprehensive list of channels available on both Freeview and Sky, which you can then customise to suit your needs. Includes handy separate tabs for sports and movies, but the best feature is being able to set reminders for shows that you don’t want to miss, which appear in the notification bar at predesignated times.
Digg
Digg specific RSS app that gives you direct access to the things people are finding interesting on the web at that given moment. Prettier interface than the Digg feed that you can access through FeedR, but links are to the full webpage rather than précised mobile or simple text versions of the article.
FeedR
This is so far one of the only paid apps I have and is absolutely indispensible. RSS readers allow you to read a website’s contents without actually having to visit it. What makes FeedR so great is a search facility which means you don’t have spend ages typing in the specific RSS URL – just type in BBC News or Guardian Football and away you go!
From the RSS feed you then have the option of visiting the full or mobile version of the site, and sharing any interesting news you find with friends on Facebook, Twitter etc. Settings allow you to customise which feeds you subscribe to and the order they appear on the menu, frequency of updates and whether you wish to view embedded images.
Very easy to use and great for keeping up-to-date with breaking news.
FotMob 4.0
Up-to-the-minute football scores from just about every league in the world. You can set your favourite team, get live match updates and details of upcoming fixtures and all the latest stats. There’s also an RSS feed linked to the BBC Sport website, which is a neat feature. Selecting a live match to follow automatically opens a Score Notifier which lets you know exactly when the goals are going in.
Soccer Livescores
An alternative app for the football obsessed. A more comprehensive list of leagues from around the world than FotMob but is less attractive and has fewer features.
Currency Converter
Perfect for seeing just how much the Bureau de Change are ripping you off with their commission in real-time.
Dictionary.com
Useful app for direct access to Dictionary.com for checking spellings and definitions on the fly. The Word of the Day Widget is pretty fun, but be warned, this app likes to run in the background and there doesn’t appear to be an easy way of switching this off without using a task killer.
London City
Fantastic little app that makes travelling on the Underground that little less stressful. There are live updates on services and best of all a fantastic route finder with the option of searching for the quickest journey or journey with the fewest stops
Quickpedia
Mobile version of Wikipedia. Streamlined, and often quicker to use than Google if you just want to check a quick fact to prove your wife wrong.
Unit Convertor
An almost bewildering array of units, some of which I had never even heard of.
Urban Dictionary
A gateway to the hilarious open-source dictionary of modern slang.
The best Facebook app to fulfil the basic needs of most Facebook addicts. Has six features which are all done simply and well: news feed, friends list, photos, take and upload a photo to your mobile album, profile and notifications. Updating your status and leaving comments is easy, and the photo upload option works well.
The only things missing is the ability to read/write messages. I’ve read complaints that it doesn’t allow you to visit events pages etc, but I’m not sure that that kind of full functionality is necessary, especially as you can do this by visiting the full Facebook site through the browser.
Twidroid
An excellent Twitter client, simple to use for basic functions: Tweet, upload photo search, see popular topics, retweet, shorten links, follow, unfollow. You can also set the notification bar to update your direct messages, mentions etc.
A host of other Twitter apps are available, but this suits my basic needs just fine. Seemic seems to be a popular alternative, but I found the interface less intuitive (writing a Tweet involves navigating through the Menu button first) and the tabbed options take up a lot of screen space. I think Seesmic is geared towards more experienced Twitter users who may take advantage of all the customisable options and using multiple accounts.
Be warned though, Twidroid has the tendency to Force Close, especially when rebooting your phone, and it occasionally has trouble with inserting usernames into your tweets, which can be quite frustrating. That said, however, I think it’s a great way to use Twitter from my phone.
Astrid
A to-do and organiser app, without which I can’t function on a day-to-day basis. Let you create a to-do lists with the touch of a button, and also lets you set reminders, colour-code tasks by priority, make notes on each task, set them to repeat at required intervals and generally make your life more efficient. Can also be synced with your Google Calendar, which is pretty smart. The cheeky prompts that accompany the reminders are a clever touch as it often softens the blow of knowing that you haven’t managed to get all your tasks done in time.
The best thing to be said about this app is that unlike all the others, I can’t think of a single thing I would want to improve or change.
Autoring
Useful little app that lets you preset emergency numbers that will trigger your ringtone if you have set your phone on silent/vibrate – you’ll never have miss the most important calls again because you didn’t hear/feel your phone!
Barcode Scanner
Should be one of the first things that you download from the Android market. It turns your phone’s camera into a barcode reader so that you can read QR codes from webpages and use apps like ShopSavvy which allow you to scan barcodes instead of typing in search terms. There are many different versions of the app but I’ve found the app developed by ZXing Team to be great.
Battery widget
This is a good example of a small app (or rather a widget) doing more than one job really well. Displays an accurate percentage figure of remaining battery power on your homepage (which sadly lets you see much more explicitly how terrible the battery life of the Magic is), but also doubles up as a Wi-fi, GPS and Bluetooth on/off toggle. Simple and brilliant.
Go to URL
Handy app that replaced the Google search widget on my phone. In order to access a website directly, previously you had to use the browser, which is annoying as it doesn’t accept predictive text, and so you have to type each character individually (just the www dot bit had my blood pressure rising!). Or you could use the Google Search bar, but that adds an unnecessary couple of stages.
With Go to URL, you just type in the domain name, using predictive text, and it takes you directly to the website – quick and simple! What makes this app even better is the option to enter a limitless number of custom searches to the drop-down menu, so that at a click of a button you can search Google Images, IMDB, Amazon or even Tesco.
Keepscreen
One of the frustrating problems with setting your screen to lock after a short period, to avoid wasting battery or inadvertently doing something you shouldn’t, is that with some apps you find yourself jabbing the Menu button every 30 seconds to unlock it. Keepscreen allows you to disable the screenlock option for selected apps – I find it invaluable when playing a Sudoku that requires extra thinking time or when I have Google Maps open.
NetCounter
An app for accurately keeping track of both Wi-fi and 3G usage. Provides total, monthly, weekly and daily usage stats and can be set to refresh to coincide with your phone bill date. The icing on the cake is the ability to set warning limits if you are approaching a pre-set download limit. A must-have if you’ve also got Spotify Premium so that you can see if you’re getting carried away with the number of songs you’re downloading into your offline playlist. I have a monthly 3G download limit of 500MB and have set the limit at 450MB.
It’s an absolutely essential app if you’re on a limited internet package and don’t want to be stung with a massive bill at the end of the month!
Phonalyzr
A great usage counter app that lets you keep track of all your call and text statistics, including a general usage summary, or more detailed individual stats of when and how many calls/texts you’ve made in neat charts.
Ringdroid
Lets you edit any mp3s on your phone into a ringtone, which means you can use favourite bits from the middle of songs and no longer have to rely on catchy intros. Very easy to use, just move two sliding start and end points to highlight a selection, save the file as a ringtone or notification, and away you go!
Timeriffic
Great app for those that don’t want to pay $9.99 for Locale. Rather than being GPS/location based, you can customise your phone’s status based on time, which for most people whose work routines follows a daily routine works just as well. Basic features you can set are Ringer (on/off), Vibrate (on/off), Main Volume level, Notification Volume level, Wifi (on/off), Brightness, Airplane mode and Bluetooth (on/off).
If you don’t feel the need to customise every minutiae of your phone’s profile, Timeriffic automates having to switch between the Home/Work/Wi-fi profiles and completely replaces apps like Toggle Settings which eat up a surprising amount of working memory.
Toggle settings
One of the first apps I downloaded after finding the Profile Settings navigation on the Magic uncharacteristically unintuitive. Toggle Settings has two main features. The first is that it allows you to switch on and off various features such as GPS, Wi-fi etc, which is a great workaround having to navigate through all the settings menus, or downloading individual widgets which take up valuable screen space. Secondly, it allows you to switch between easily customisable Profiles, including ones for low battery, at the touch of a button. Also includes a Task Manager feature which lists the currently running or idle apps, allowing you to kill them.
I was initially very happy with this app, but as time went by it I found myself hardly ever switching profiles, preferring instead just to use the volume control to switch from loud to silent/vibrate easily. It also began to Force Close more and more frequently, which was frustrating, and I found that my homepage took an age to appear in full once I had closed any open apps. I initially put this down to the Battery and Calender Widget, but once Timeriffic had rendered Toggle Settings redundant and I deleted it, my phone ran much smoother. This isn’t entirely a bad app, but I think it’s not always a good thing to have an app do so many things as in this case it ended up less than the sum of its parts.
8 September 2010
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