Every man has his price

I didn't think I did. But my friend Georgiana has just been in to thank me for proofing her PhD thesis on computational methods of automatically resolving time references in texts - and left me with a bottle of wine and £50 of book tokens. We agreed on the secret of completing your doctoral dissertation: it's never finished, you just stop.

I was hoping to be bought a pint on viva day, so I'm overwhelmed. There's a new minimum tariff. Who's next?

I get readers: odd ones

I had a visitor from Catonsville, Maryland in the middle of the night. To this blog, you understand. I'm not sure I'd have wanted him or her visiting my house because they'd Googled 'computational linguistics porn'.

I'm stunned. I know a lot of computational linguistics practitioners, and they've never mentioned the field. Is it an underground thing? Or is this person ahead of the curve? There may be a gap in the market?

'Hi there. I'm here to, uh, resolve your anaphora'.

'Oh, thank God you're here. I've also been struggling with automatic abstracting'.

'Yes, I can see that by the rips in your lingerie. Want some Natural Language Processing advice?

'Why, you're one cunning linguist!'

I thankyewverymuch, I'm available for weddings and children's parties.

First party down, two to go

A birthday party for Laure was held at my house yesterday - 50 French, Polish and assorted Euro-students crowded into a Victorian terrace to drink Lambrini (how could you?) and dance to an astonishing range of Eurovision-cheese. Despite feeling like the ghost of Christmas past, I did chat to a very interesting Slovakian and drank fine real ales, but thankfully didn't witness any of my students behaving in ways of which their parents wouldn't approve. Then just about bedtime for old people, they all trooped off to The Planet, Wolverhampton's scuzziest rock club.

I particularly enjoyed this conversation:

Her: I know your face… I really know your face from somewhere.

Me: I teach you… when you turn up.

Her: Oh. Oh yeah.

Tonight there's another party - mostly postgrads - which will involve huge amounts of quality Spanish food… mmmmm chorizo. Then tomorrow morning I'm acting in my second film of the week, a promo for the university. I apparently will be playing a lecturer. Hope I can fake it. After that, a day's break before yet another party - for a computational linguist of my acquaintance. My poor liver.

Yeah, computational linguists, it's about time you got yours

I know very many computation linguists. They live a live of unbridled hedonism and indulgence. Gold-plated PCs, jacuzzi in the corner of the office, funding coming out of their ears.