y personal Web site has been neglected for a while — neglected in the sense that it gets almost no updates anymore. The main issue with this ought to be out-of-date information that can easily deceive people despite the date stamps at the bottom (some pages are 8 years old). So today I updated some profiles and places in the Web site where I was described as a student. It’s about time to change those types of things. Some sites said that “Roy is an advocate of fair competition and consumer rights, who expects to complete a Ph.D. in Medical Biophysics very shortly.” An older one said: “My name is Roy Schestowitz and I am a Ph.D. Candidate in Medical Biophysics at Manchester University. I regularly blog at schestowitz.com where you can read about my interests, hobbies, opinions and pet peeves.” In identi.ca I introduced myself as “Freedom activist,” which is a very short version

Well, it has just been updated to “Roy is a Software Engineer, interdisciplinary researcher, and an advocate of fair competition. He holds a doctoral degree in Medical Biophysics.”

Since I hardly write in this blog anymore, may I suggest that those who already read this blog also subscribe to me on Twitter or Identi.ca? I am very active there.

JUST over a week ago I wrote about the Harvey and Anita wedding anniversary. This lovely couple had just mailed me a cheque (watch closely).

[Note: removed]

Another wonderful friend of almost the same age made a cartoon for me (which I am also grateful for).

arlier this month, the annual rowing competition ended. This was rather disappointing. For the first time since I began competing (2001) I did not get the first place, but it’s not a total loss. Later this week I will do the 2-mile row for another competition, in which I have performed quite well so far.

As the years go by and we all age (I’m 27), the motivation — not just the ability — to stay in good shape rapidly declines. In the table tennis competition I got knocked out in the quarter finals.

asyInternetCafe (354-358 Oxford Street, London) appears to have nice little spyware running on PCs in the Internet Cafe. Is this legal, ethical or safe? It’s now run under the brand name Swirl.

So here I was in an Internet Cafe in Oxford St. and all these applications were running on it. What do they do? What does it do for security? Is it just for users’ security or so-called ‘national security’ too? They already put keyloggers in India, so it would be shameful to find the same thing in the UK.

Here is what was running, ID information stripped off.

Found in another blog, here is an English test.

Being impatient, I did it pretty fast and got 94. English is not my mother’s tongue.

I was being a bit sloppy, so having looked at the solutions, doing this more carefully I would have eliminated 2 or 3 of these 6 mistakes. The rest are too subtle for me to correct based on my own second judgment.

Quick status report

have not blogged here in a while because I keep awfully busy elsewhere (primarily Boycott Novell) and also because I have spent the past few weeks maintaining and upgrading this Web site’s different pieces of software. I shall return to posting more regularly pretty soon. Thanks for the patient subscribers, some of whom I haven’t heard from in a while.

I rarely bother to share personal stories here, but I’ll quickly make one exception. As you may know by now, I finished my practical work (comprising mainly experiments) on the PhD when I was 23/24. but I then slowed it down a bit… well, thereby neglecting my goal of obtaining a PhD at the age of 24. It would have been nice, but priorities changed.

On Friday I had my viva and I passed conditionally (just need to fix one chapter, and for that I have plenty of time). All in all, it’s all good news and all! Yes, it’s a messy sentence by design.

Time flies when you do something you enjoy

have been fairly pleased with my last weekend, which is now over. For a a change, I went out to a nice dinner last night and I also managed to relax as the workload is reduced (thank you, summertime). Yesterday, a journalist and author who appears in CNN, NBC and many other top-tier networks got in touch with me. We’ll see where it leads, but all in all, I am less worried about my future than I once used to be.

My worry is not associated with inability to work, but rather it’s about the possibility of no longer doing what I consider play (for a living!). My job at the University pays me over $40 a week for just 5-10 minutes of actual effort. It’s fantastic. How long will this last? We shall see.

For the time being, life treats me fairly well. I live a modest life, my spendings are minimal, but passion transcends and supersedes all else.