Apologies for the interuption to service

Before the end of the first month of 2011 I thought I should at least get one post out. My blogosphere hiatus has mainly been due to the new flat I mentioned nearly two months ago, but there's also been lots of work things to keep me busy.

Working on the flat (which among other things, and thanks mainly to the efforts of my girlfriends dad, now has a fully functioning bathroom) has meant neglecting other things that have been a mainstay of my blogging life, like kayaking (I've not been to a pool session for a couple of months and no rivers have been paddled this year - although the cold weather had it's part to play in that regard), football updates (although I'm pleased to say that Watford have had a good start to the year) and travel (although I've, for me, had a rather long spell without going abroad), but I'll try and put a bit more into it soon. You may even get to see some before and after photo's of the flat, which will be exciting!

Aargh-and diagrams

While eating lunch I was browsing the BBC News website and started reading this article by Marcus du Sautoy on how diagrams have aided and furthered our understanding of scientific concepts. All fine.

Recently the BBC have become quite good at providing hyperlinks within their articles (potentially in part due to Ben Goldacre), but in this article they seem to have let themselves down a bit in the choice of links. About half way down the article there is a section about visualising complex numbers - these are numbers that consist of a real part (a standard number between -infinity and +infinity, like 1, 4, 1097890624 or -0.78524385 say) and an imaginary part (a number that is a multiple of the square root of -1, or i, e.g. plus or minus the square root of any real negative number). It describes that you can plot these complex number on something called an Argand diagram, but the link it provides for this is bizarre - true that the linked to page does have an Argand diagram on it, but the rest seems to consist of bizarre pseudo-science nonsense about the nature of consciousness! Now I don't know how whoever was editing the article (presumably not du Sautoy) found that page, but a quick google search for "Argand diagram" provides some slightly more reputable sources that they might have chosen. After noticing this I didn't actually get to the end of the article and instead wrote a comment to get the link changed, so I'll see if that worked.

But, anyway enough petty pedantry for today.

Help desk

I'm down in London at the moment it's transpired that I've spent the last two days working in the cloisters (and student union, and quad) at UCL (my alma mater). While sitting in the cloisters with my laptop it's seemed that I've become some sort of student help desk. Yesterday, first up I provided vague directions to a room in the physics department and I then had to help a chemistry student to find out his course timetable (it turned out that he'd missed the lecture he was supposed to go to by a day!), and today I've had to help out a Czech girl use skype to phone Westminister Council about her council tax bill, and another girl to find the UCL computer services department. I wonder what I'll be called upon to help with this afternoon?

Decadal survey

Today is the last day of my twenties. The weather's been glorious and I should have been out frolicking and cavorting, making the most of my final flush of youth, but what have I been doing instead? I've been inside on the internet writing blog posts is what! I don't deserve to be young if I'm going to waste the opportunities it gives me in such a flagrant way.

Anyway, I should probably thank my twenties. They've given me a couple of degrees, one of which enables me to be called Dr. They've seen me move from London to Glasgow - in fact I've lived the majority of the decade in Scotland. They've seen me visit far flung parts of the world as part of my job. And they've seen me buy, and then move out of, my (part) own flat. There are many other smaller things as well from my recent life (chosen because I've blogged about them), for example learning to kayak, snowboard, buying my own bike, learning(ish) to drum and being in a band, and probably far too much drinking (but that's probably brought about some of the most fun times even if my own memory of several is vague).

What could my thirties bring? Well if many of my friends are anything to go by it seems that 30 is pretty much the time to get married. Buying a house is also on the list, but as I said that's something I got our the way earlier in a way. There are also kids. But, who knows? I'll settle for getting a few more scientific papers written for now. And hopefully this'll be the decade in which I get to actually detect some gravitational waves.

[P.S. if you managed to get to this post looking for information on the US Astronomy and Astrophysics Decadal Survey 2010 (probably more likely now I've written this postscript) then sorry, this isn't what you're looking for - instead maybe try here and here for US perepctive, and here or here for more UK oriented views.]

New spring collection

Over the long Easter weekend I've managed to chalk up doing a few new things (although I'm currently sitting at work, and was also in the office last Friday, so today probably won't involve anything novel).

On Friday night, after almost two years of planning (yes, really, Hazel and me have been discussing going clubbing for that long without actually ever getting round to going out), a few of us went out clubbing. Our impetus was due my friend Hazel having successfully passed her viva the day before and that fact that she'll be moving to San Francisco in a couple of weeks - if we were going to go to a club it was basically now or never. Going out to a club wasn't the new thing, but we did go to a place, the Sub Club, that I'd not been to before in all my 8 years in Glasgow. It wasn't a particularly happening club night and the place was quite quiet, but it was good to get out, have a dance and see somewhere new.

The next day my girlfriend and I both went out and bought bikes. I've not owned my own bike since I got a Red Raleigh Racer (from Halfords obviously!) for my birthday when I was about 8 (therefore it's a tad small for me now), so getting myself one was very exciting. In the intervening time since my RRR, whenever I've cycled I've had to borrow either a parent or siblings bike. This is the bike I got - "...the only true hybrid bike on the market, our Crosstrail™ owns the title of "singletrack-capable commuter bike." For riders who want one bike for all terrain, with the versatility to handle road, mountain and everything in between". I also had to buy all the accessories that go along with bike ownership - helmet, lights, lock, gloves, bike clips. I say we bought bikes, but really we don't actually own or have them yet. We've gone though the Cycle to Work which get us the bikes and equipment tax free, although frustratingly means we have to wait a while until the whole thing gets processed - hopefully this won't take too long.

The final new thing I did was again kind of club related. On Thursday we spotted a poster for the Hinterland Festival - a multi-venue music festival happening in Glasgow on Saturday. We decided to give it a go. Most of the festival was taking place in the Arches, which is another Glasgow venue I'd never been in before, so I was interested to see what it was like. There were bands playing from 6pm, but we were running a bit late and were mainly only interested in seeing the two main bands, British Sea Power and The Mystery Jets, who didn't start until 8.30pm. I was a fun night and I was impressed by the venue. Both bands took a bit of time to really get going in their sets, but picked up a lot towards the end and were a lot of fun - British Sea Power even had a monster turn up to dance. I knew quite a lot of the British Sea Power songs as I have one of their albums, but I'd assumed I must heard more songs by The Mystery Jets when in fact only knew one of them. There were several DJ sets happening after the bands played, which would have been fun to go to, but old age and the effects of several night of my heavy drinking got to us and we had to leave.

I should try and do some new things more often - many of them in the future will probably now involve bike rides to places.

SciMon Diary: Day 4

Here's my next eagerly anticipated instalment of exciting tales from the LIGO Hanford Observatory. So what fascinating antics did the detector get up to during my shift today? Well... nothing actually. For all my shift we stayed out of science mode and out of lock due to today being a scheduled maintenance day. During this time there was a big magnitude 6.3 earthquake off Alaska, which most likely would have knocked us out of lock had we been up. Many important things were done to the detector, but it did mean that I wasn't required for much.

One strange thing did happen during the shift though - it rained, and has continued raining for most of the day. It's been completely dry for the previous week, and generally this is a dry place (it is the high desert after all), so it was a nice change to see the familiar weather of back home.

In lunch news it seems that my Philadelphia was as I left it yesterday, and I also discovered a sandwich toaster (which I'd previously though was a George Forman grill), so I was able to have nice toasted bagels.

Jury duty

Last week I was called upon to do my civic duty and go on jury service. I was in the Sheriff Court for the Sheriffdom of Glasgow and Strathkelvin, which deals with intermediate offences (and also some civil cases) - in fact prior to going into court (and in fact reading the wikipedia article I just linked to) I had no real idea of how the Scottish court system worked. One thing that the Sheriff court didn't have was a man with a star-shaped badge, a cowboy hat and leather chaps.

Having been cited to jury duty for Monday I didn't actually have to go into court until the Wednesday (I just had a number to call every evening to see if I was needed the next day). Glasgow Sheriff Court building was a big Orwellian block - quite cool architecturally, but very much like some kind of Ministry of Truth. On getting in there and going through security I discovered a quite ominous sign in the toilets stating that you needed to be careful when taking a paper towel as syringes have been found next to them before. After that I went up to my assigned courtroom where I discovered loads of people milling about - these turned out to all be jurors. There were some delays, so we all waited around outside the until we were lead into the courtroom, which was one of the smaller ones in the court. There were around sixty of us (which surprised me as I didn't expect anywhere near that number) and to fit into the courtroom some of the jurors had to sit in the dock and in the jury box (I got to sit in the jury box). We were then given a talk from the Clerk of Court about the court (apparently the largest and busiest court in Europe - not necessarily a claim to be proud of!), the role of the jury, and what would happen. Essentially what happens is the Sheriff, Prosecutor and Defence come in, followed by the defendant, the defendant give his plea (generally not guilty) and then the jury gets balloted from the group of people there. The balloting is very low-tech consisting of everyone's names getting put into a bowl, then 15 being picked out by the clerk and the jurors walking into the jury box. There was a case straight away once we'd been processed, so we got to see this in action. There was frisson of excitement as the names got read out - kind of like a weird bingo - but my number and name didn't appear (although the number before mine did).

After the jury was picked they had to be sworn in. When we'd been talked to by the clerk earlier he'd asked if we were picked whether we'd want to affirm rather than take the regular oath. Basically the standard thing is to take an oath swearing to God (I assume a Christian God, but maybe they're open to your own choice of divine being!) that you'll tell the truth, whereas the affirmation is a non-religious version. From those chosen jurors only two out of the fifteen chose to affirm. The oathers got to all take the oath together which required them standing, raising their right hands, and then saying "I do" after the oath had been read out by the clerk. The juror's affirming had to both do so individually and had to recite the whole thing, which was something of a tongue twister. I think it's about time that the oath is non-religious, i.e. doesn't require you to swear on any particular deity, by default.

After this all of us un-used jurors were asked to leave (although we could have stayed, as all the courts are open to the public [for nosey people I expect]), but return to another court after lunch in case we were needed as spares. Turning up at the court later on there were already about another sixty potential jurors waiting outside, so us extras were asked to leave and call back later. That was actually it for my time on jury duty as I never got called back again. I did get to sit in the jury box briefly, but never got to dole out justice to the criminal classes of Glasgow. At least this didn't happen.

Installing chrome

[Update: there is now an easier, more hassle free, way to install Chrome, which can be found here.]

This post comes to you courtesy of the web browser Google Chrome. In fact so did the last post, but that was from my Mac laptop, whereas this is from my office desktop which runs Ubuntu. Installing this development version of Chrome has been a bit more trouble on my office machine than on my Mac, so I thought I'd document how I did it. The first thing to do is to download the .deb package from here (I've got the version for 32-bit systems) - this is a development version, so be warned that it could be buggy. This should then be relatively easy to install, i.e. I should just be able to type: dpkg -i google-chrome-unstable_current_i386.deb and away it goes, but unfortunately it defaults to trying to create, and then install stuff into, the /opt/google directory and for me, even with sudo, I can't write to that directory as it's not local to my machine - I get an error stating:

dpkg: error processing google-chrome-unstable_current_i386.deb (--install):
error creating directory `./opt/google': No such file or directory
Errors were encountered while processing:
google-chrome-unstable_current_i386.deb

However, much searching has led me to find a solution to this (mainly from this page) that enabled me to install chrome in the directory of my choosing. Here's how it goes:-
Say you've downloaded the above .deb file to ~/Desktop, then create a directory to unpack it into:

mkdir ~/Desktop/chrome; cd ~/Desktop/chrome

then unpack the .deb file

ar -x ~/Desktop/google-chrome-unstable_current_i386.deb

Now uncompress the lzma file

lzma -d data.tar.lzma

Next you want to figure out where to install Chrome (i.e. somewhere that your permissions allow you to write to). I, for example, created a directory called /data/matthew/chrome. cd into that directory and then run

sudo tar xf ~/Desktop/chrome/data.tar

(If you're just writing to somewhere that your normal permissions allow you to write to then you don't even have to run sudo.) This will add opt, etc and usr directories to the directory you are in, with the main stuff for Chrome being in opt/google/chrome. I can therefore run Chrome with the command

/data/matthew/chrome/opt/google/chrome/google-chrome.

You can then just remove all the files you downloaded in ~/Desktop.

You can now also use flash with the development version of Chrome (as shown here), so it's all working pretty nicely now! [But, hey, Flash "...who uses that"!]

Small world

For the last week I've been down south visiting friends and family. As is normal I've been into London a few times to meet up with various friends. In the past when wandering round London I've spotted the occasional celebrity, but this time has been a bit weirder. On walking through Trafalgar Square (to see the plinth-based art installation One and Other) I passed one of my neighbours from Glasgow! She didn't seem to notice me, but it was definitely her. Strangely this isn't actually the first time I've bumped into someone I know from Glasgow randomly in London, but the last time it happened was with someone who was originally from London anyway and it was around Christmas (so wasn't quite as odd for him to be there).

It's not just folks from Glasgow that I've been randomly bumping into though. Just heading down the Strand yesterday I noticed a couple of old university friends, so had a chat with them. Later, on the train back from London to St Albans, I got off and realised that the girl in front of me was another old university friend (she definitely wasn't from St Albans, so I'm not sure what she was doing there).

The real G20

This BBC article pointed out something I'd yet to notice (not that it's a particularly pertinent thing to notice) - my home postcode, G20, is the same as the name of the big meeting starting in London today between the Group of 20 top economic nations. Wow! That's such an amazing coincidence isn't it! The article throws into contrast the difference between the expected topics of discussion at the G20 meeting and the real life issues that the decent folk of Maryhill (i.e. me) are having to face on a daily basis. It's a depressing and gloomy place is Maryhill, with barely a shop left open; all of us living in boarded up, piss-stinking hi-rises; spending our lives shuffling between the bookies and the pub, with only a thin drawn-out roll-up (that has to be smoked outside in the dirty, rain sodden street) as meagre comfort; tripping over the homeless and destitute as we queue for any work we can get at the job centre; giving in to the syringe as the only release from our miserable existence; lying by the side of the road covered in vomit with a smashed bottle of Buckie and your last shred of self-worth seeping into the gutter. Compare that to the lives of these leaders of nations, with their fancy suits and cars and staff of thousands. They don't know what it's like! Damn them, damn them all.

Altering my experience

This morning I went to a proper tailors (well more an alteration place than tailors) for the first time ever. I wanted to get a suit jacket altered to have a more fitted look, as all the suits I've bought are off the peg things, which generally look excessively oversized and wide on me. The tailors I went to (Skint Alteration Tailors Ltd) was located in an unassuming doorway that I had to look hard to find and I had to be buzzed in and walk upstairs. Looking through their front door I could see another slightly ajar door marked staff only through which I glimpsed a couple of little old ladies at sewing machines. But I imagined this was only the tip of the iceberg and if I'd ventured into that room I would have seen a sea of blue rinses, hunched over their precious Singer's, with the deafening sound of thousands of needles punching through cloth. I didn't get to see behind that door however, so that world will remain a mystery to me. Instead I went into the reception area and was greeted by a man who was seeing to another little old lady's turn ups. The room was the only reception I've ever been in that came equipped with changing rooms, although these changing rooms weren't for the shy as the doors to them would only really have covered a standing persons midriff. Obviously my main fear, but also slight hope, was that the man who saw to my tailoring needs might be of the Suit's You Sir! variety. In fact he was almost the exact opposite, in that he got straight on the job with minimal of fuss or innuendo. I didn't even get measured and subtly felt up, which I mentally prepared myself for. He just pinned my jacket gave me a receipt and I was away. Maybe one day I'll have to venture into a more authentic tailors (one that makes entire bespoke suits, rather than just doing alterations) to get the experience I expected - on the other hand getting in and out with the minimum of fuss is not bad thing (had to get a last bit innuendo in there).

Pointless airport post

This post is a rather pointless post in which I've decided to list all the airports I've been through. There's no reason to it and it's not some internet meme (which I generally dislike and ignore), it's just a list I thought I'd create (just because I occasionally like making lists - I once, many years ago, listed [in my head] all the London pubs I'd been to - maybe I'll write them down if I'm bored [I semi-joke]). Here goes:

Europe

• Glasgow International Airport (GLA)
• London Heathrow (LHR)
• London Luton (LTN)
• London Gatwick (LGW)
• London Stansted (STN)
• London City (LCY)
• Glasgow Prestwick (PIK)
• Birmingham International Airport (BHX)
• Manchester Ringway International Airport (MAN)
• Cardiff (CWL)
• East Midlands (EMA)
• Paris Charles De Gaulle (CDG)
• Amsterdam-Schipol (AMS)
• Hannover (HAJ)
• Berlin-Tegel (TXL)
• Pisa Galileo Galilei (PSA)
• Geneva (GVA)
• Palma Mallorca (PMI)
• Corfu International Airport (CFU)
• Vienna International Airport (VIE)
• Budapest (BUD)
• Munich (MUC)
• Dusseldorf International Airport (DUS)
• Southampton (SOU)
• Cork (ORK)
• Nice (NCE)
• Paris Orly (ORY)
• Rome Fiumicino (FCO)
• Faro Airport (FAO)
• Verona Airport (VRN)
• Tenerife South Airport (TFS)
• Reykjavik Airport (KEF)
• Dublin (DUB)
• Arecife, Lanzarote (ACE)
• Pula, Croatia (PUL)
• Billund, Denmark (BLL)

North America and Caribbean

• Newark (EWR)
• Boston (BOS)
• Miami (MIA)
• Los Angeles (LAX)
• San Francisco (SFO)
• Burbank (BUR)
• Phoenix (PHX)
• Baton Rouge (BTR)
• Detroit (DTW)
• Atlanta (ATL)
• Memphis (MEM)
• San Juan (SJA)
• Houston (IAH)
• Dallas-Fort Worth (DFW)
• Austin (AUS)
• Seattle-Tacoma (SEA)
• Minneapolis-St. Paul (MSP)
• New York JFK (JFK)
• Jacksonville (JAX)
• New York La Guardia (LGA)
• State College (SCE)
• Philadelphia (PHL)
• Beef Island International Airport, Tortola (EIS)
• Pasco Tri-Cities Airport (PSC)
• Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport (DCA)
• Chicago O'Hare (ORD)

Rest of the World

• Sydney (SYD)
• Melbourne (MEL)
• Brisbane (BNE)
• Singapore (SIN)
• Jakarta (CGK)
• Dubai International Airport (DXB)
• Beijing Capital International Airport (PEK)
• Hangzhou Xiaoshan International Airport (HGH)
• Shanghai Pudong International Airport (PVG)
• Hong Kong International Airport (HKG)

[I may rate each one in terms of how much it has pissed me off whilst travelling through it - I can tell you now that Newark rates high on the piss-me-off-ability scale.]

Survivor

When I arrived back yesterday I found I had a stowaway in my luggage - a cockroach had smuggled itself into one of my hoodies and made it back with me. It still seemed to be slightly alive as it was twitching a bit, but I flushed it down the toilet, so it may have died by now - it was a big bastard though and may have found a way to survive (hopefully it won't seek revenge).

Night swimming

Tonight, after the conference dinner, we indulged in a couple of activities that are only really practical in tropical seaside locations. The first was a game of beach football, which is far more knackering than regular football due to the extra effort needed to run about on sand; and is also more painful, due to having to kick a sandy ball, with sandy bare feet, leading to much loss of skin. Despite the slight pain it was good fun and we beat a team of quite competitive Italians [plus one Irish] (they may claim that they won by default as we kind of abandoned the second half, but they know that they were just outplayed by a more fit and superior team).

The second activity was swimming, both in the sea and the hotel pool. It's such a great thing to be able to jump into the water knowing you're not going to die of shock, or have your testicles retreat as deep into your body cavity as they can. The temperature is pleasant being neither too hot (although there's also a hot tub for when you do want some hot, bubbly action) or too cold. I've also discovered that I'm a better swimmer when slightly drunk (this isn't a endorsement of drinking and swimming kids - I'm sure it can also be quite dangerous) - I'm just more relaxed and don't rush my strokes, also I can hold my breath for longer without panicking.

Basically what I'm saying is that we should all live in the Caribbean, cos it's great.

It's the time, it's the place, it's the motion...

Today has been an historic day. A day that many people thought, or imagined, would never come. But the prospect of hope and change meant that anything was possible... yes, it became the day that I first played pool volleyball.

The net represented the challenges to overcome (and a literal net) and the ball (other than being a ball) was the American spirit of forging a better future from determination, hard work and high ideals - unfortunately in the game I was playing the ball didn't manage to make it over the net most of the time, but we can only hope that Obama's a better volleyball player (and President) than me and, obviously, Bush.

[As a more serious aside to this post I do hope that Obama can live up to at least part of his hype (which is obviously far too high at the moment) and restore some credibility to the US political system in the eyes of the world. I did like his specific nods towards science in his inaugaratuion speech, but other than that I would like him to live up to his promises of a transparent and open government.]

The turnaround?

With the recent spate of piracy does that mean we'll see the accompanying downturn in global temperatures?

Worst dressed

Last night saw one of my poorest efforts at a halloween costume. In the last few years I've put in the token effort of being a zombie/person who's been brutally attacked/someone with a case of mild radiation poisoning - this generally involved ripping up old clothes and adding fake blood and bruises. However this year, the halloween party I was going to involved a more specific theme than just your regular halloweenyness - it was a distopian future, sci-fi, cyber-noir party. Thinking up a costume required a bit more effort and couldn't really just involve ripping up some clothes. In the end I turned up to the party in what I'd been wearing for the rest of the day (see I said it was a poor, indeed non-existant, effort), but I did have some make-up. My one idea from earlier in the week had been to go as HAL 9000 (the computer from 2001: A Space Odyssey), so with my make up kit I went about trying to transform myself. I added a large red HAL-style eye to my forehead. I leave it to others to assess the effectiveness of this make-up and whether I convinced them that I was a psychotic computer, or whether I just looked like I had a very large spot on my face.

It's in the limbs

On watching the highlights of last night's US presidential debate one thing stood out above all others. That thing was the length of John McCain's arms! They're tiny! To hold the microphone near enough to his mouth his elbows had to be almost at shoulder level. His legs aren't much better either. When he was perched on the stool the dangled off it like a ventriloquist's dummy's legs. I'll be looking out for more disproportionate body parts next time I see him.

University for life

Two days ago saw the anniversary of me starting university, but this year is special in that it's been a whole 10 years since I entered the university system. And as you can see I've still not left. Can it really have been that long? Yes, is the answer, it really can. No wonder I feel so old compared to the fresh-faced, bright-eyed young students that I see milling around the university. But, hey, I plan to spend much longer in the loving arms of lady academia, so I'd better get used to it.

Hip hop don't stop

[Disclaimer: If you are offended by a fairly middle-class white man talking about breakdancing and repeatedly using the words crews (although not spelling it with a u ) and skillz then you may wish to avoid this post.]

Last night a little piece of 1980s New York came to Hannover in the form of a breakdancing competition (or battle). Not wanting to miss out probably my only chance to see Germany's top B-boy crews in action myself and a few friends went along to see it. The competition was to see who would qualify for the international Battle of the Year final to be held next month (you can also currently see a recording of the whole of last night's event at that website). Before going along we were a bit dubious about that quality of dancing that we'd be seeing (we had pictures in mind of fairly stereotypical German youth's trying in vain to spin on their heads) and also whether we'd stick out as obviously not from the German hip hop scene. Both these worries were fortunately not born out and when we arrived there was a diverse enough crowd for us to not look out of place (although jakeybob bringing along some garlic in his bag was considered a bit strange!)

The competition consisted of 12 competing crews from around the country with names like Big Bang (the local Hannoverian crew, who got a huge reception from the home crowd), Incredible Syndicate, Street Beatz, etc, each of which performed a 10 minute choreographed performance. These ranged in quality, but each crew had something original to show and generally had at least a couple of star performers who could pull off the biggest power moves. One of the most audacious moves was from one of the Berlin crews (Street Beatz I think) which had an under-10 years old looking boy who they used as a kind of skipping rope! Some teams tried to have a bit of a story in there routines, some had a few props, whilst others just tried to showcase individual skills. The teams who fared worst generally were a bit younger and didn't have anyone strong enough to pull off the major moves.

After each crew had show their skillz four semi-finalists were chosen. The semi-finals were in a proper crew face-off battle like you'd see on the mean streets of the Bronx (or in the Run DMC vs. Jason Nevins It's Like That video). This gave each crew member the chance to show off what they could do, but also gave the whole team a chance to show of some big preprepared set pieces (for example forming your crew into a cock and jizzing silly string onto the others!), with the difficultly level of the moves, and the good natured antagonism between the crews, building as the battle progressed. These were when some of the most impressive moves came out. The team that won overall were TNT who did seem to have some of the best skills, including a guy who span around on the palms of his hands (which caused something of a mini pitch/dance floor invasion from certain parts of the crowd), but were a bit too arrogant and twatish to be actually likable.

One of the most difficult things about the whole night was trying to stop myself from attempting some dancing. When the vibe's in the air it's hard not want to break into a bit of body-popping (of which there was disappointingly little from the crews) or spinning around on the floor.