Where oh where can my drum kit be

So to allow me to practice my drumming for the band I've gone and bought myself an electric drum kit. This is not a cheap item, but it will allow me to bash away in silence (ooh err missus) without annoying my neighbours - I think a real drum kit might have been a problem for the guys in the flat beneath ours, especially as we've got laminate flooring. This kit was supposed to have been delivered yesterday and when I arrived home today (after my general dirty stopout behaviour of not going home on a Friday night - as ever thanks go to Bob and Fiona for their hospitality and living room floor) I was full of anticipation about putting together my kit. Unfortunately it was not hear. I'm not happy - think I'll be having to phone the delivery company on Monday. When the kit finally does arrive I'll let you all know what it's like. I'll need to be practicing "Radar Love" by the Dutch legends Golden Earring, which is one of the songs we decided on at our first practice.

Unsurprisingly I've still been watching lots of football. One of the most exciting games so far was the Australia versus Croatia the other day. I'd not liked to have been an actual Aussie or Croatian fan, because if I were I might have suffered a heart attack - it was tense enough as a neutral. And what the fuck was Graham Poll up to at the end there! Today's match between Argentina and Mexico was also rather good. In extra time the two substitutes Teves and Messi look particularly lively and were making some lovely runs - also it was a fucking sweet goal that Maxi Rodriguez hit. I was quite annoyed by a few things though, these related to the fact that three of the players in my fanstasy football team (Schweinsteiger, Cambiasso and Saviola) all got substituted and didn't get any goals, grrrrr!

So we're through

I thought I should comment on the result today. England are through to the next round - well we new that already, but now we know that we will be playing against Ecuador. We played quite well in the first half. Joe Cole has been by far our best player and again was showing some good form. His goal was a blinder, struck very, very sweetly. Rooney did ok for the first half and was showing some good touches - he can control the ball far better the Owen ever can. It was quite funny to see his reaction when subbed in the second half, throwing his shoes off and everything - hopefully he was just annoyed at his own performance. I should just give a Rooney style shout out "rOOOOOOOOnEEEEEEy, rOOOOOOOOnEEEEEEEY", it's all in the vowels you see.

I just wanted us to beat Sweden. It's been soooooooo many years since we managed it and it's just getting annoying now. They have some sort of hoodoo over the England team which says "You can't beat us, we have something unexplicable over you which means you will forever suffer defeats and/or draws against us". But, hey, we'll live with the result. But we have to play better... a lot better!

I'll comment on our band practice from the other night soon.

Really! Simple syndication?

After completely missing the little orangey icon in the corner of my web browser I finally discovered that I'm available as an RSS feed. This was mainly down to my LiveJournal using friend queennell syndicating me via her blog. This involved some sort of fancy wizardry, using her high level powers, which I would probably fail to understand.

For anyone (!?) who may have come across this blog hoping for some astronomy/physics content (don't laugh jakeybob and gingerfi, there might be other people than you that read this - no, no wait... feel free to laugh long and loud, there's no-one else) I have found the site that might be for you. It's a blog called cosmicvariance and is maintained by 5 actual (astro)physicists and has far more physics related topics than I've covered - not a hard task I know. It seems quite fun as well - I've even added a link to my links bit to your right.

Band

This evening we have three hours in a studio to create noise. Will we all make it out alive - who knows. We could have split before the day is out.

Right so how do I play these drums then - you put your left arm in, your put left arm out, in out, int out and shake it all about - oops, no that's the Hokey Cokey. Lets starts again...

Beard

Nearing three weeks and things are well on track with the growth (patchiness and all), however Peter has managed to become unfeasibly hairy, presumably via some sort of yeti heritage - this is deeply unfair.

That was the week that wasn't

The week that has just gone by has been rather vague and fuzzy - well it could have felt that it was a very coherent and lurid week, but when interpreted through my brain any such coherence would surely have disappeared. After way too much booze on Sunday I managed to pretty much forget who I was, where I was, what I did and which plane of existence I was supposed to exist in on the following Monday (hence this). Once I'd decided that I should settle into the usual three spatial and one time dimension which makes up our so called reality things started to improve. I then hit my brain with a very high concentration of saturated football, although I had already been building up dangerously high levels of football in my brain over the previous weekend. This excessively large dose built up to a maniacical fevour which culminated on Thursday with the England versus Trinidad and Tobago game. Whilst watching this game I managed to get wound up like one of those spirally bits of metal - ah yes a spring. There was much ooohhing and aaahhhing, and effing and blinding, and sitting on the edge of the seat - and consumption of lager tops (which as I will tell everybody is a refreshing yet manly drink and as such I should not be mocked for drinking it - see this article which backs up my argument). Then there was the release (no, not that kind of release) of the spring, when England, despite every effort not to win, won. Unfortunatley this didn't get rid of the football building up in my skull compressing my vital brain functions, as it made me then drag (well they were fairly willing, but it was my idea) people along to a fairly awful night at a club called the Viper. This led me to send out the following apolgetic email when I arrived home:

"To those who I convinced to go to the Viper tonight (aka last night) I can only profusely apologise. Yes, it was shit. And, yes, it was full of medics. I had thought that there would only be a few of said medics and otherwise it would be good for a dance and a drink. Well on all fronts I was very wrong - it was packed with medics and was neither good for dancing or drinking. Sorry and sorry again. Please ignore my suggestions in the future and give me a slap in the face if I try and do the same thing again.

Yours grovelingly,

Matt"

The following morning (aka yesterday) we had a bunch of school kids coming round the physics department, who I had the joy of telling about the wonders of gravitational waves. I managed to do this fairly well in my opinion although their enthusiasm wasn't all that evident. We then showed them round our research group labs, which mainly consisted of many vacuum tanks, which aren't the most exciting pieces of kit you can show kids. I tried to stay bubbly and lively throughout the tour though, and hope this rubbed off on the young people (again, no, I didn't rub any part of myself against the kids - stop it with your wrong thoughts). Later my own enthusiam for my subject was put to a fair old test by the dreaded event that is the code review. This involves me talking through my code line-by-line over the phone to a few others, who then point out what I've done wrong. It is a hideuos event which no one can enjoy, but our collaboration insists we do. During this is when my brain finally imploded as I tried to splutter through an explanation one of the functions in my code. I started mainly saying random words hoping in vain that they would provide a decent explaination of what the function did, but this didn't work gnnnarrgh.

This brain fug continued long into the evening with no word that I said, or sentence I tried to construct, coming out of my mouth correctly. I then started giggling to myself at random words. "Half Sugar" should not be a phraise to provoke that much hilarity, yet that it did. I also had a cash machine giving me strange looks - it wanted to fight me it did - or at least that's what I thought last night, but now I reckon it wasn't trying to start a fight at all.

I think sleep last night has had some calming effects and some of the football has oozed out my ears and nose to releive some of the pressure. However, I've already watch one match today with two more to go, so I think the levels may build up again.

Beard news - it's still there and growing. I will make it to the end of the month, I will.

Band news - we have our first proper practice on Monday. Need to get learning my drum parts.

ps in a lot of the above post I have talked about build up of football, in reality read that as football, booze and lack of sleep (but no pyschotropic drugs).

Itchy chin

My beard attempt has reached a rather itchy stage. If I think about it too much then the itching gets worse, and the temptation to shave stronger. I'll need to stop stroking my chin when in deep contemplation as this reminds me of it's irritatng hairy bits.

I've just finished watching the Brazil versus Croatia game. Are Brazil the most over hyped team other than England? Well on this performance yes is the answer. They didn't show much at all, although Ronaldinho still did alway look rather scarily good when he was on the ball. Kaka's goal at the end of the first half was a very good strike, actually similar to a few others we've seen in the World Cup so far, but that was about it from them attack-wise. During the second half Croatia seemed to be doing all the going forward and had several rather good moves, but kept striking the ball at the keeper when they had opportunities on goal. The prize for fattest, laziest person on the pitch went hands down to Ronaldo. He couldn't be arsed moving at all, even coming onto the pitch for the second half seemed to take hours for him. His fastest movement was going off the pitch when substituted. Brazil may have been holding back, but unless Ronaldihno does something really special I don't know where the extra things will come from - that said they've got the 3 points they needed and that's what counts in the group stage. Anyway, you maybe can't read too much into the first game as I hope is the case for England.

In a rather boring game (maybe the most dull I've seen of the tournament so far) the French showed absolutely nothing when playing the Swiss. They're not a patch on the team from say 6-8 years ago. I'm just hearing Henry give an interview and he's giving the whole "it was rather hot" excuse. Henry didn't really seem to get let into the game with passes not being played into him well, and the Swiss always kept a lot of men back. There's nothing else really to say about the match as bugger all happened. Boff, *shrugs*

After some rather negative comments there I'd just like to say my favourite team of the tournament so far. It's been the Czech Republic in their game against the USA. The play of Rosicky and Nedved was excellent, and I'm really looking forward to their next game. Also showing very good form was Robben for Holland. Everyone has also been saying that the Argentinians looked very good on the game against the Ivory Coast - I was watching the game but wasn't paying it as much attention as I should have from the subsequent reports.

Still it's been a good tournament so far and I'm looking forwards to a lot more from it. I have to say it - Come on England!

Advice

Don't drink too much on a Sunday!

Boring, boring England

It's been a few hours now and I've had some time to reflect on the game, but still the England versus Paraguay game was one of the most boring affairs I've seen in a long while. There's something to be said against the whole scoring early thing, which is that if a team does it then a lot of the time they'll just go into sitting back, dull-as-a-rather-dimly-lit-grey-thing, mode. Which seemed to be what England did. The pundits seemed to give England quite a lot of praise for the first half performance, but I'm not sure why as we didn't do anything. And then for the second half we proceeded to do even less. Not that Paraguay looked at all threatening, but I'd have liked to see something that provided a modicum of entertainment. Despite all that I'm still glad and releaved that we've got a win (and the associated 3 points) under our belt, and can hopefully go on to better things in the next game. Trinidad and Tobago look like they could be quite fiesty though and will be very much up for the game, but the Swedes were looking fairly poor and maybe England can break their tradition of shit performances against them. As any good manager does in a post match interview (with the possible exception of all the interviews that Mick McCarthy gave after Sunderland games last season) I'll try and take some positives from the game - Joe Cole was looking pretty good with some of his runs at the defenders down the left side, and Crouch keeps improving with some nifty bits of ball control.

Other than the England game I've managed to see 3 of the 4 other World Cup matches so far. I am liking the festival of football that it is.

After watching the opening Germany versus Costa Rica game yesterday I went to a pirate themed flatwarming party hosted by Ellie, who went to great lengths to bedeck her flat (aka the good ship the Three headed monkey) in a piratical theme. We all got dressed up approriately and had a swashbuckling time drinking much rum and grog. I recommend that everyone walk down a busy main road with about 10 other people dressed as pirates sometime - it provides amusement for all, especially when you go on a booze-based raiding party into Sainsburys.

Beard news - I have now entered uncharted territory with my growth in that I don't think I've gone 10 days without shaving before (well obviously that's not right as I didn't shave as a child, but you know what I mean!). There's the odd grey hair in the mix, but I fortunately don't have the classic signs of the ginger anywhere to be seen. I am still rather sparse and patchy though.

Band news - I'm on my way to being a proper drummer as today I purchased some drum sticks - I now just need something to hit.

The excitement rises

Can you feel it, can you feel it, can you feel it! You know, the anticipation, the heightened expectation, the fervour (had to look at a thesaurus to get that one). It's all about to kick off, it's the World Cup. There're going to be highs and lows on this roller coaster ride, but most importantly there's going to be lots of drinking and slacking off work early.

In beard competition related news (see here for an explanation (!?)) - my face continues to sprout hair in a patchy fashion, but I'm determined to make it to at least the two week mark before I wuss out from shame at my beard's shitness.

Also I send a call out to people to visit my friend Michelle's (and three other's) energy saving blog. They are currently camped out in the centre of Cheltenham trying to show that physicist can live energy efficient carbon neutral lives, via means of heating things up in a cardboard box covered in tin foil it would seem ;)

He bangs the drum

Today I will talk about the band. A few months (well now nearly a year) ago a new post-doc Chris arrived in the department brandishing the crazy idea that we start a band. At his previous institution (the University of Birmingham) he had apparently taken a rag tag bunch of non-musically talented physicists and they'd become a some sort of supergroup with record contracts coming out their ears - well not quite, but I think they might have played a gig in the back room of a pub or two. Determined to repeat his former sucess he has gathered together John, Neil (aka the Mole, aka the Total Ride), Ellie and myself to be his new rock triumph. I will be playing the drums in the band - this is due to the fact that I have no ability on any other instrument (well I'm a mean player of the maracas) and played the drums for a few months at school when I was eleven. Despite the band being nearly a year in the making we've so far not had a proper practice session, although this will soon change as we're gearing up for something next week. We have several songs lined up and have taken the appropriate instrumental tabs off the internet. I've been practicing for my role by playing the air drums, these are kind of like normal drums except they exist only in your head, and can turn you into a drumming legend (like Phil Collins say) with only the slightest leap of the imagination. Unfortunately I doubt my air drumming skills will match up with reality when I have to sit behind a real drum kit.

The main challenge now for the band, other than me aquiring some drumming skills (the other are all actually quite good), is for us to find a name. There have been several suggestions floated around, although I wont give away too much yet (and the people who read this are likely to be the ones who know anyway), but we haven't settled on anything quite yet. I'll keep you updated on our status when we've had our first full practice - should be interesting!

World Cup starts tomorrow by the way.

Mutants amoung us

After watching the X-men last night, I see today that mutants are indeed amoung us (in this case a three armed baby boy in China) - and we are indeed trying to restrain their mutant powers (by cutting off the third arm). Sure, they say medically it's the right thing to do, but who knows that three arms isn't the way that the human race is supposed to be evolving. We could start to compete with other post-quadlimbed creatures, like all insects, arachnids, and the most evil of them all the dreaded Octopus.

Mamma mia! It's the X-men!

My post title today is a cryptic crossword style clue to what I did this evening. No, it's not "albumen", I don't know where you got that idea from - egg white was not involved, but, wait, I can see where you were coming from - the guys from Abba (almost 'albu'!) wrote the hit west end musical Mamma mia! (along with the Abba song of the same name) and then the men bit obviously comes from X-men. And no, it's not "Paulo Di Canio" the facist footballer. He wasn't involved in my evening at all, but again I can see your line of thinking - he's Italian and a bit fiery, hence the Mamma mia!, and he was often known for getting red cards therefore leaving his team with 10 (X in Roman numerals - there's the Italian link again) men.

My title is in fact derived from having been to an Italian restaurant for dinner and then going to see X-men 3.

At the restaurant - Mimmo's on Ashton Lane in the heart of Glasgow's trendy west end - I had a lovely chicken risoto with peppers, roasted tomatoes and a lovely pesto suace. Highly recommeded. I would give a link to Mimmo's but I can't find one at the moment. I've been there a few times before and have generally found it to be rather good. It's a very small, but cosy little place, and has a nice atmosphere because of this. It's size can however leave you disappointed if you've not booked and find it full - which takes aproximately 5 and a quarter people.

After filling ourselves we went to the UGC to watch X-men: The Last Stand. I can't be arsed giving a proper film review, but I'd say it was a decent enough film, although not on a par with the previous ones. See it if you can spare the time and want a bit of fun, but I wouldn't go out my way if you're not that bothered.

Anyway, back to growing that beard. Hnnnnnnnnnnh, hhnnnnnnnnnnnh - those are the straining noises you have to make to get hair to grow. I've also been told by queennell that massaging the hair folicles works.

In the summertime...

Due to the lack of a summer so far in Glasgow we made the most of a fairly fair weather day to have a barbecue. There are quite a few green areas in and around the west end of Glasgow where you'd think a BBQ could be hosted, but we had the fear that we would incur the wrath of a park warden, so didn't make use of one of the major parks like the Botanic gardens or the Kelvingrove park. We did however find a nice area down by the River Kelvin, on the site of an old water mill. We seemed to spark off a bit of a trend as very soon after setting up the rather poorly performing disposable BBQ we had, at least three other groups of burnt sausage enthusiasts were copying us. After several rounds of sausages and burgers, and fending off the odd hungry dog or two, we were satiated and retired to mine for a bit of light reading (the Sunday Times) and TV (Top Gear). An overall satisfying day.

On a footballing note, well done to England in the game yesterday. Not the most exciting game despite the good score line. Just a note to Crouch, despite my previous post, stop with the robot now, you've overdone it. Keep up the scoring though, if not the celebrations. Bring on Friday.

I said I might say something about a beard growing competition, but have still neglected to write about it, so here is the email I sent giving the gist of things:

"Tomorrow is the start of the inaugural beard growing competition. As some of you may know it was decided in the RC last Friday that we would test our skills at facial hair growth by sparing our faces from the blade for the month of June. The outcome of this will be judged by Fiona and Morag who will arbitrarily decide on who has the best chin warmer. Unfortunately there is no prize for the winner except maybe some smug satisfaction at being good at sprouting hair, but I expect in reality we shall all be losers. People who pull out of the contest shall be branded weak and pitiful and shall be mocked unceasingly - although I expect I may fall into that category. Bob may well be at hand to take some time lapse photography so we can watch the hair appear in mere seconds when all is done.

Matt - I included you on this incase you felt like joining in the comp from Germany. If you do then send photos - we'll know if you've doctored them in any way though, so no finding pictures of beardy blokes and photoshopping their magnificent manes onto you own face. I also thought Ellie might want to have some say in this, particularly "NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!".

Anyone how cares to take up this challenge, wield your razor to your skin for the last time tomorrow morning. Let the battle commence.

Your champion of the chinstrap,

Matt

ps you can't just grow a tash, it will not count."

I can just say that my own facial growth is progressing at it's rather poor rate - patchy at best. Bob has taken some initial photos, and Matt has taken up the challenge, as noted by a rather amusing picture sent earlier today. We'll just see how long I can last before shame sets in and I decide to shave. Updates may be given over the course of the month - whether the photo's get posted is another story.

Working late = psychotic episode

Arghhhh, I'm still in work and all is not well. I've been juggling trying to get code to work, writing a few slides for a talk, chatting to people via instant messenger and listening to early 90s dance music - on top of having had a couple of pint of Stella with my dinner. All this has made my brain a rather mushy consistency - rather like their mushy brethren, the mushy pea, only more pinky-grey than green. I think the time has come for me to get some sleep, preferably in my bed at home rather than at my desk in work. That requires some kind of walking motion, which I can hopefully remember how to do - it's right foot forward, left foot forward, then repeat, right? Or is that left foot and then right foot!? I just don't know anymore, it's too goddamn confusing. I need some sort of wheel type mechaism so I can just roll, that would make things all so much easier. Now if only I can figure out how to attach them. To the workshop...

Tomorrow I may say something about our beard growing competition. I bet that's got you intrigued.

More robotic stylings

The Crouch does robot news has been picked up by many bloggers including the BBCs World Cup blog. From this there is some more disturbing footage of Crouch dancing showing he doesn't only confine this sort of thing to the football pitch. A nice link to some proper robot dancing is here. Ignore the two kids on first and just see the contortions that the next guy manages to pull off. Needs some body popping to make the routine complete though ;)!

Do the robot

There was one unforgetable moment from the England v Hungary pre-World Cup friendly last night. It wasn't Sven's decision to give Gerrard more freedom playing in an open role behind Owen as a second strker. It wasn't Sven's decision to substitute on Hargreves instead of Carrick - why play Hargreves, why? It wasn't any of the precision balls that Beckham placed in the box - and damn(!?) him for playing so well as I do enjoy giving Beckham a good slagging. It wasn't even the very nice runs that Joe Cole made at the defenders. "What was it then?" you may ask. Well the one outstanding moment of the evening, in what was really a fairly average match (depsite the 3-1 scoreline) was Crouch's celebration after he scored. No one expected it, and after it happened people were left rather dumbfounded and confused, for Crouch didn't do a normal celebration slide or arm raise, or even the classic rock the baby (which had already been used for an earlier goal), he preceded to dig into his 80s dancing roots and perform the move which so many try but so few can pull off, and that is the robot! Yes, you heard it, the pasty white, gangly 6'7" Liverpool striker jerked his arms and upper torso around in the style of a pasty white, gangly 6'7" robot. I can picture it still, and what a picture it is.

I'll probably be posting a fair amount during the World Cup, so come back for more of my football related rambling. I may have some sort of rating of players celebrations, although they'll have to try bloody hard to top what we've just witnessed.

Worrall Thompson eat your heart out

Today after a morning watching food programs I decided that I should make an effort to produce some fancy food for myself. After racking my brain I decided that I would make a pork casserole - it being fairly easy. I checked out a few recipes online, but they were all rather shit so I just made up my own recipe, which I will reproduce below:

• 400 grams diced pork
  
• 1 onion
  
• 1 red pepper
  
• 1/4 clove of garlic
  
• 2 carrots
  
• 1 leek
  
• a few closed cup mushrooms
  
• 2 tomatoes
  
• 1 pork stock cube (knorr)
  
• 1 can of strongbow - preferebly left over from a house party, but make do with buying some if necessary
  
• salt and pepper
  

This is very easy to preper, just chop up all the veg, put everything in a casserole dish, add the cider and stock, cover and place in preheated oven at 175 C for 1 and a half hours. This dish is accompanied by a sweet potato/normal potato mash as follows:

• 2 medium sized potatoes
  
• 1 sweet potato
  
• some butter
  
• coarse ground pepper
  

Boil the potatoes, then mash up and add the butter and pepper, et voila! This casserole should serve two - or if your eating it on your own like I was :( - then will leave enough to keep for another day. The mash is especially nice even if I do say so myself. Now get to your kitchen's everybody - I want to hear those pots and pans rattling. Send me your comments and suggestions on what you think of this or alternates to this recipe.

That end todays cookery corner - I may change the supposed nature of this blog from astrophysics to cooking, but then again we all know that I've never really kept up on the astrophysics news side of things so we'll see how long this new fad lasts!

When will they ever learn...

Today I discovered that I have been given a lecture course to teach next year. I will be charged with filling the minds of first year undergraduates with knowledge of observational methods in astronomy - so telescopes and stuff basically. I think I'll be having to look through my old undergraduate notes - throughput anyone, how about some grazing incidence optics, or maybe a CCD or two - as these are all things I will be expected to talk about with confidence. I'm actually quite looking forward to it as it will be fun to actually learn this stuff for real, rather than the fake, take-it-in-for-a-few-minutes-before-the-exam-and-promptly-forget-it learning that I did as an undergrad. It will also be fun because I get to write Dr Pitkin on the black/white board at the start of the lecture. I am also going to practice my stern looks for those cheeky undergrads who sit up the back chatting away distracting the rest of the class - they know who they are!

On a more Mr T realated note (and as such it is a note which "pities the fool" and is afraid of flying) I got sent this link by a friend the other day - sage advice by the T there about respecting your mother. This was followed up by a link from Bob to the an entire 50 minutes of the T's lifestyle advice. If you've not seen Mr T with a pizza on his head before then I suggest you watch the first few minutes - it's a revelation.

Football news: Only two weeks till the world cup - hurray! The less said about England's defeat by Belarus last night though the better.

Up, up and away

The mighty hornets, aka Watford Footbal Club, have done it! We pounded Leeds 3-0 in the play-off final yesterday. After a short break in the Championship, for rest and relaxation purposes of course, we've returned to the top flight. We'll not just be there making up number you understand, not the way of Sunderland for us you see. For we have one thing that proved to be the key factor in Wigan and West Ham staying up this season. Do you see, do you see? We begin with the letter W, it surely must be what provided the extra impetuous (ruling out the midlands blip to this hypothesis that was West Brom). Due to the their alphabetical positioning these clubs always languished at the bottom of any table, therefore giving them extra drive to push upwards in tables where lexicographical sorting was not there to hold them back i.e. football league table, where it's points that matter.

Back to reality though, it's going to be a tough, tough fight to stay there. I can't find any odds on us going straight back down yet, but the odds given for Sheffield Utd and Reading to win the Premiership are currently 1501-1 and 1001-1 respectively and I don't see Watford getting any better odds.

On another footballing note: only three weeks till the World Cup. Oh yeah!

...in other news

Right, I know it's been a while. Well not just a while - it's been fucking ages! But I had things to do. Lots of important things. Places to go, people to see, worlds to save - that sort if thing. You don't believe me, huh! Ok, ok so I've just been neglecting you, I'm sorry. I'm going to make ammends I promise. I'll give you more posts than you can shake a whole tree at - unless it's one of those giant sequoias, as that is a truely large stick.

Well some of my busyness wasn't all made up. I did have that PhD I'd been mentioning to finish up. And you'll be proud to hear that it did get finished. All bound like a proper book and everything. Ain't I good, or what. So that means I'm a Doctor - yeah you heared right - Dr Matthew Pitkin MSci PhD FRAS to give me my full on, stick that up your pipe and smoke it style, dues.

Also I entered the world of the grown ups by having an actual job. Ok so post-docs not a proper job like you might think of it, but it's a start. Plus they give me money. What do I do with all this money, you may ask. Well I've only gone and bought myself a flat - well 45% of a flat, but it's the nicer 45%!

That's the start of the updates. I might fill in some more of how the past approximately one year has gone in subsequent posts, although as no bugger actually reads this blog it would just be some bizarre self-indulgent internal crazyness on my part!

Quote me happy

Productivity is down this week, with my thesis writing slowing down to a virtual standstill today. Thankfully my thesis is in fairly good shape, so that this downturn in word production should not hold things up too much. In the grand schedule of the PhD I should in fact be entering my final week of studenthood and handing in an account of my three years of original work to the university, before beginning my job as a postdoc the weeks after. As with pretty much anyone who starts a PhD in the UK this three year timescale is generally completely ignored, and not wanting to buck such traditions I to will be handing in late. This does come with certain benefits in that to hand in my thesis I still have to be a registered student at the university, thus gaining a new student card and all the discounted goodness that it brings. Full price at the cinema, oh no, not for me. 10% off my clothes purcheses at Top Man, get in! Cheap drinks in the union, oh yeah! Regular gym membership? Why no, for I am a student and will not pay your extortionate normal rates. It also means I will gain a strange state of duality when I start my job as both a member of staff and a student. My collapse into one state will depend on who my observer is (sorry, it's a quantum mechanics reference - I went to a discussion about these things last night and am now taking the analogy too far).

Oh yes, I should explain the title of this posting - one the things we writing-up students (or at least all those I know) do to waste time is in thinking up suitable quotes for our thesis chapters. I have one so far and have for the last day mainly been trawling Blackadder scripts for another. I'm sure some inspired and relevent quotes are out there, but I ask you my loyal readers (ok, so I know it's only James who ever looks at this - I should link other people in or maybe write something interesting or even just post a bit more often, but all that places the burden of work on me and I'm just too damn lazy) to send me your favourite gravitational wave data analysis quote and i'll whittle them down to the best ten and then hold a public vote on the five that will grace my opus.