Apparently, hiccuping is a throwback to a part of our evolutionary history where our distance ancestors still had gills.

I also like the way the author of the piece claims that

There must, however, be a reason why hiccupping persists 370 million years after animals started hauling themselves onto the land.

Apparently he or she is a subscriber to the old chestnut that there must be a reason for everything. For what it’s worth, I suspect that there is no good reason for the persistence of the hiccup—but since there is no obvious evolutionary disadvantage to keeping it, there doesn’t actually need to be.

Posted by alastair at 3:08 PM Digg It | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBacks (0)

I’ve been getting a lot of CVs recently, some good and some bad. There’s plenty of advice out there already about CVs, but I thought I’d just list a few observations, both good and bad:

1. When e-mailing a CV, rename the document first so it has your name in it. If someone receives 50 CVs all imaginatively titled “C.V.doc”, it’s a royal pain in the neck because they have to rename them separately when they copy them out of your e-mail.

2. Don’t use text boxes and the like. There’s no need and the layout can screw up in various interesting ways for various reasons.

3. Don’t use floating graphics drawn with Word. They’re unnecessary and, again, the layout can easily go wrong. If you want to put a line under or over something, use a paragraph style or (if you really must) a table.

4. I don’t want to see your ugly mug. Keep photos in Flickr or iPhoto, where they belong.

5. Make sure your paper size is set to A4. If you’re applying for a job in the U.K. or Europe, your CV is likely to get printed out on A4 paper.

   If your paper size setting is set to U.S. Letter, it’s annoying because the printer will either (a) refuse to print it until the size is changed (which will mess up your tables, frames, floating graphics and other unnecessary things), or (b) ask for confirmation before printing it (which is dead annoying if you just told it to print 20 CVs).

   A corrollary to this is that when applying for a job in the U.S., you should be using U.S. Letter paper. Using A4 will annoy them.

6. If possible, send a PDF rather than a Word document. This guarantees that your document will look the way you intended (unlike Word), it’s safer to open, and it shows an awareness that not everyone in the world likes or has Microsoft Word.

7. Do include your grades. If you just tell me that you have four A-levels, you could have an ‘E’ in all four for all I know.

8. Don’t tell me you have A-levels in Maths, Biology and Media Studies and then tell me that you have an ‘A’ and two ‘F’s. If you do that, I don’t know which subject you got the ‘A’ grade in!

9. For technical jobs, if you have a poor A-level grade in a technical subject (mathematics, for instance), it would be a good idea to explain why. Especially if you are also claiming to have (or to be about to receive) a first-class honours degree.

10. The reason people ask for covering letters is that they’re expecting you to write a covering letter specific to the job for which you’re applying. In theory it saves updating your CV, because you can use the opportunity to point out which of your talents make you a good fit for the job.¹ Even if you don’t tailor your CV, make sure you tailor your covering letter.

11. One application is sufficient. Applying for the same job over and over again doesn’t increase your chances (indeed, it may be annoying, which would have the opposite effect).

Oh, and if you apply for our job having read this, why not say so? It at least shows that you’ve made some effort to find out about us :-)

Posted by alastair at 4:12 PM Digg It | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Yesterday, Daring Fireball linked to two pirated copies of the recent (and excellent) BBC 4 documentary about the Gutenberg Press.

It is an excellent programme, and certainly something I would recommend that people watch, but it does peeve me somewhat that it’s being distributed illegally for free when it has been paid for by the British license-fee payer.

We Brits often forget that the BBC’s output is not free, but moreover that it is collectively owned by all of us taxpayers and funded largely by way of the Television License. That is, we own that content and our license fees will be higher next year if the BBC doesn’t make its expected return on it.

(Aside: as it happens in this particular case it may well sell just fine in spite of being available for free on the ’Net; the programme really is that good. That’s hardly the point though.)

Posted by alastair at 4:36 PM Digg It | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)