Beyond funding

I've just got this news via cosmicvariance. The US National Academy of Science has just released its recommendations to NASA and the DoE for the Beyond Einstein program - see here for the press release. The basic conclusion they came to is that a Joint Dark Energy Mission should be first off, given that it will be using pretty much proven technologies and a mission could be easily put together, whereas the space-based gravitational wave detector LISA requires more technological testing before they could place it top of the list for recommending. It does, however say that LISA should become the flagship mission in the future. What all this means in practical terms for the US side of LISA funding I'm not sure? LISA has been pushed back with regards to a potential launch date due to technological and funding issues for ages, but this could lead to yet more delays (although not entirely unexpected.) This is obviously a bit of a disappointment for a gravitational wave researcher like me, and I honestly think that the science return from LISA would be more than one of the JDEM missions could give - I mean they're only trying to understand what potentially makes up 70% of the universe, so who cares about that? ;) But seriously LISA has the potential to do very good cosmology as well as provide loads of other fundamental astrophysics with possible completely new discoveries being made - it just has a little bit more risk attached to pull off the mission, but many people are working very hard to make it as sound as possible. As Sean at cv notes maybe ESA should consider finding a more reliable partner for LISA - China, Japan, India what are your thoughts?

[Update: Apparently, according to my boss, the US recommendations are pretty much a match for the timescale that ESA was planning for LISA anyway, so they shouldn't really cause any significant extra delays. Not so bad really then.]

Chili time

I've not written down a recipe for a while, so here's a new one for the chili con carne I made today (it's a fairly standard recipe, but it did come entirely out of my head and it did taste very good, and is in fact the first chili I've ever made from scratch!)

Ingredients

• 750g lean beef mince
  
• 1 large onion
  
• 3 garlic segment things
  
• 2 peppers (one green and one red for more colour variety
  
• 1 tin of chopped tomatoes
  
• 2 tablespoon of tomato puree
  
• 1 small tin of kidney beans
  
• 1 small tin of sweetcorn
  
• 4 closed cup mushrooms
  
• 1 beef oxo cube
  
• 2 tablespoons of hot chili powder (you should probably use real chili's, but I didn't get any!)
  
• half tablespoon of cumin
  
• half tablespoon of paprika
  
• salt and pepper
  
• splash of lemon juice
  

Method
Chop up the garlic and onion and fry it up with a bit of oil in a large saucepan until golden. Add the mince beef and fry until brown. Add the oxo cube, spices, lemon juice and seasoning. Add the tomato, sweetcorn, kidney beans and chopped mushrooms and stir it all together. Put a lid on the pan and simmer it for about 20 mins. Serve with rice, a jacket potato, tortias or whatever you want. This recipe should make enough for about three fairly substantial portions (I've have quite a bit left!)

Pubbing dangerously

After living in the Maryhill area of Glasgow for the last year and a half I've finally visited one of my local pubs - don't worry I've not gone into Framptons or the Viking as I'm not that willing to die (they haven't got the most favourable of reputations, especially considering I'm a fairly middle-class Englishman, and haven't got a pitbull or a Glasgow smile!) The pub in particular, called Crosslands, is actually slightly famous having featured in the film Trainspotting! You know the scene where Begbie chucks the pint glass off the balcony in the pub and it glasses the person below - well it's that pub! I'd been informed by a friend that despite its look from the outside, and believe me it doesn't look the most inviting of places, it's fine when you go in (and to be fair there are reviews that say it's a very friendly place). So after band practice today we took the plunge and went for a pint there. You'll be (hopefully) pleased to know that none of us got glassed, or otherwise roughed-up, and in fact we had a pleasant couple of drinks. The place was mostly empty, so it would have been hard for us to antagonise anyone, but it wasn't at all intimidating. Maybe it'll become a regular band haunt... or maybe not!

Moores law

In another very brief astronomy related post the head of the Astronomy & Astrophysics group at Glasgow Prof. John Brown and my friend Fiona were on the Sky at Night last night. I've not watched it yet, but will try and catch the repeat or download it. From what I've heard it mainly consisted of John doing magic tricks - he links in astronomy with his magic as part of public outreach - but I'm intrigued to see how it comes across on the TV.

Do you feel lucky

I'm not quite sure why it was BBC website front page news (although I'm glad it was and is pretty cool especially if you're astronomiclly inclined), but there's an interesting story about a couple of research groups produing high resolution images from ground based telescopes. The reason that this is cool is that normally from the ground the resolution of the images you can produce (i.e. the ability the distinguish between separate objects - like stars - or pick out detail) is limit by the turbulent motions of the atmosphere. Patches of air with different denisties along the line of sight to the object will bend (refract) the light (like light passing through a glass prism) by different amount leading to the image at the telescope jittering around and varying in intensity (basically the same as the twinkling of stars when you look at them with you eye). To image faint objects you need fairly long camera exposure times; these variations in the atmosphere happen on far shorter timescales, so the jittering/brightness variations of the source will smear it out on the final image. In general there's a rule which says that the bigger a telescope you have the better resolution you can get, so an 8.2m telescope like one of those at the VLT should be able to tell two objects seperated by ~0.02 arcseconds apart (i.e. two objects seperated by about 30 metre on the moon), but is in practice limited to a resolution of ~0.5 acrseonds by the atmosphere - that doesn't mean that bigger telescopes on the ground aren't better than smaller ones as they still collect more light and can therefore see fainter objects.) To get round the effects of the atmosphere the Hubble Space Telescope was built, which was able to achieve its full theoretical resolution of ~0.5 acrseonds with its 2.4m mirror, however Hubble was very expensive and is hard to maintain - being in space and all - so people have been trying to think of way to get around the atmospheric effect with ground based telescopes.

The article above talks of two ways of doing this, which have both seperately been around for a few years (the adaptive optics idea for longer), but seem to have finally been used together. The first idea is that of adaptive optics, which basically monitor the effect of the atmospheric distortions on the image and then corrects for these by applying and opposite distortion to one of the secondary mirrors in the telescope thereby correcting for the atmospheric effects. The monitoring and corrections have to be performed on a millisecond timescale. The second idea, which is now also making use of very efficient CCD cameras, is Lucky imaging. This basically comprises of taking lots and lots of photos of the object with short exposure times (hence the need for the very efficient cameras, so as to catch as much light as possible in a short time.) Some of these lucky images will have been taken when the atmospheric distotions were small, so you keep these and thow away the bad ones. You can then stack up the lucky images to help build up a stronger image. It's actually rather simple!

Anyway that was a rather unexpected astronomy post and the main reason I started it was so that I could show this cool movie of the Crab pulsar (which I do research on) taken using Lucky Imaging - you can see the flashing star with a bright pulse and then a fainter interpulse as radiation beamed from the star's poles intercept Earth once per rotation - the image is slowed down from the actual rotation rate of 30 times per second.

Cameron's big ideas

Last night on Newsnight the Conservative leader David Cameron was being quizzed on his views and Conservative Party policy. Frankly it was a bit embarrassing to watch, even by the normally very poor performance standards of politicians in interviews. Now I've never been a Tory supporter, but when Cameron was chosen as their new leader it did seem a like a bit of a nice change from the previous couple of leaders (probably not as much of a change as if Kenneth Clarke had got in, but some change at least) with the prospect of a decent opposition party - ok, so Cameron was totally playing the Blair card, but he was trying to sound a bit caring. However, after having a bit of a battering in the last few months, and with Brown actually seeming to be quite popular, he's done the old appeal-to-the-Daily-Mail-reader change of heart by showing he is tough (and Tory) on crime, immigration and family breakdown - there's "anarchy on the streets of the UK" apparently! In the interview he was maintaining that his views have been consistent over his 18-19 months as leader, but even if they've not actually changed that much he's certainly changed emphasis a lot! His talk of having the most disadvantaged people as his main priority were particularly exposed when he was questioned about the Tories insistence on sorting out inheritance tax as a first goal, which would help the middle /upper classes most, so I wont complain, but would be of very little practical help to the poorest families. His talk of having £20 a week of extra benefits for married couples was also quite laughable - as if that's going to be an incentive for people to stay in broken relationships or encourage unmarried couples to wed! Then his talk of the Tories idea for green taxes was just stupid - he complained that under Labour such taxes would be implemented as stealth taxes, but the Conservatives would impose green taxes (e.g. an extra few quid on air travel) by dropping taxes in other areas i.e. you end up paying the same amount of taxes, but it is just shifted in name - is that really a disincentive to flying!?

My main thought was that David needs to do a hell of a lot better, especially if Brown calls a general election in the next couple of months.

Second time around

It's been public via the medium of facebook for about a week now, but I should let my loyal blog readers know that the band I'm in will be performing its second (third if you count our Australia tour, but I prefer not to!) gig next month. This time around we're going solely under the name of Look Up for Danger with a new bassist in our line-up. We are again going to be playing at the Glasgow University Research Club on Thursday 20^th Sept, because the venue is so good not because we couldn't think of anywhere else to play. We'll be playing a new set of great covers, so everyone should come along and enjoy the evening. If you are around Glasgow University look our for some of our posters.

Kitted out

I got a second step on the way to building up a proper drum kit today. I went and bought myself a snare drum (a black and chrome pdp 805 series - it's one of the cheapest snares, but the guy in the shop said it was decent), along with a stand and case. Using it at home might not be that regular an occurrence as my flatmate might not be too appreciative of it, but hopefully when I do get to practice it'll help improve my skills - one of the main reasons for getting it is that the electric kit I've got doesn't have the response of a real drum skin, so it's hard to practice things like a drum roll.

A night on the cobbles

Last week for my birthday a few of us went through to Edinburgh for a bit of a live comedy fix. All-in-all we had a very good time and went to see an interesting combination of shows.

First up wee-n-sarcastic and I went to see a comedy sketch show called Two Left Hands - we were just hanging sround the Pleasance courtyard trying to decide what to see and the person flyering for this show was the only one who made a decent effort to tempt us. The show was a series of English-seaside-town/seaside-holiday-based sketches written and performed by "Smack the Pony" writer Leila Hackett and random television presenter Charlotte Hudson, and was being shown in the tiny hut that was the Baby Grand at the Plesance. The show started off with a rather poor sketch about the two girls trying to perform a burlesque style dance routine, but things did generally improve after that. A lot of the sketches were quite predictable once you saw the opening premise, but that didn't stop them containing some funny material. One of the main pieces running through the show was based on Elaine Paige and Barbara Dickson in which Barbara had fallen on hard times. wee-n-sarcastic loved this having been forced to listen to "I Know Him So Well" many times as a small child. It was a reasonably funny set of sketches, but I suspect many people might not have had that much of a clue who the two people were - the main thing I knew about Elaine Paige was that she went to secretatial college with my mum. Overall it was a fairly enjoyable show and amusing enough that we didn't feel robbed of our entry fee.

Next up was the main event that we'd come to see and had pre-booked tickets for - Stewart Lee in his show "41st Best Stand Up Ever" - performing in the big upturned inflatable purple cow that is the Udderbelly. A couple of years before some of us had gone to see his show "90s Comedian" (and in fact we feature in the DVD of that show, which he was trying to flog during the course of this show!) and it was very good, so we were expecting something of similar quality from him. Before the show Lee wandered around outside the venue with his backpack, occainsionally on his phone, and generally looking confused - or maybe he was trying to size up his audience (consisting, as well as us, of such comedy luminaries as Mel and Sue and Armando Iannucci.) The show's main theme was an attack on TV and how Lee is now officially, actually, beyond a shadow of a doubt, 100% proven to be, undeniably, the 41st best stand-up ever! I don't think there was actually that much material in the show, but it was all delivered really well in classic Stewart Lee style (that's about as good a description as I can come up with - it was done in the style of himself - inciteful I know!) For some reason when doing an impression of his own mum it came across very much as if she was in fact Richard Herring. I don't know if Richard Herring bases his performance on Stewart's mum or vice versa, but it was very funny none-the-less. Overall a very good set, with some properly hilarious parts, from someone who's still pretty high (41st best) in their game.

Finally, at the request of ellielabelle, adren-junk and wee-n-sarcastic, and somewhat trepidatiously on my part, we went to see Eurobeat in the rather large venue of the Grand at the Pleasance. As the name suggests this is a spoof of Eurovision. My trepidation proved ill-founded, because after a couple of minutes of the show (and after an introduction by none other than Terry Wogan himself) a smile formed on my face that stayed there for about one and a half hours. In terms of a spectacle the shows production values were really high. The style of the event, the costumes and the choreography were all excellently done. But what made it were the songs and the performers. For true bizarreness and camp kitschiness you can't beat the real Eurovision itself, but the Eurobeat songs really did capture the Eurovision feel without feeling too forced or derivative (obviously they were quite derivative, but when done so well it was still very impressive). There was even an inteactive element to the show with everyone being given a country to support at the start and a text vote for the winner at the end. It did have some comedy moments, but in genaral was just great fun with the whole audience getting into the spirit of it. Very enjoyable even for a non-gay like me.

Hair today

I've cut my own hair in the past, I even have a decent pair of hair clippers for such things, and the results have generally been reasonable, but today I went slightly further than normal. My hair was getting to the stage that would require some sort of gel to keep it in check, so I decided to use my clippers and rear it in a bit. The shortest I've gone before is a number 2 (about 10mm in length) and that was the plan again. I shaved it down to that level, but then was struck by an adventurous idea that I could probably pull off a number one (about 5mm). So I carried on whittling away. I also have quite an unruly bunch of hair on the back of my neck which I wanted tidying up. This is quite hard to do when cutting your own hair, especially when you've not got an extra mirror to see what you're doing. I basically attempted this tidy up (using the bare clippers set to their shortest setting) by relying on a bit of blind hope that it would be ok - in the past this has been an area where I've brought in outside help. After this I had pretty short hair anyway, but I wanted to know what the back of my neck looked like, so I used my digital camera to check it out (again I have no spare hand held mirror to help). The result of my efforts was to have produced a neck line that was as ragged as the Scandanavian coastline. There were two options: 1) ask my flatmate to straighten it up, or 2) shave off all my hair. I went for option 2.

I think the overall effect isn't too bad, but I've had a mixed reaction from my friends. When I say mixed I mean a generally shocked and horrified reaction, but at least I know I'm probably that slight bit safer when walking through the dodgyer areas of Glasgow.

Code masters

Now I like coding as much as the next man - the next man being someone who quite likes his coding - but there's one aspect that can be especially infuriating: debugging.

Writing a nice piece of software from scratch can be quite enjoyable and even a creative process (programming is an art form!). You think about what you want the program to do and work out how to best split the task into seperate managable functions and structures; then you let the creativity flow down your fingertips, through the keyboards and onto the text editor of choice (I use kwrite, which many might think is a bit of a soft option and I should instead be using something more hardcore like emacs, xemacs or vim instead, but I like kwrite goddamn it) adding your own style and artistic flourishes to your work. If you're programming in C this artistic process includes blindly declaring pointers, chanting some voodoo incantations, and hoping the thing compiles (or at least that's how I deal with them!)

Now once your coding materpiece has been completed the man steps in with his rules and regulations trying to make you conform. He throws about syntax error's here and request for member `X' in something not a structure or union's there. Sometimes your most bold and inspired brush strokes are just too far out there for the current establishment to deal with. However you deal with his requests grudgingly, but never let you artistic integrity slip. Often you find that the man's requests make you see more beauty in your work and make you appreciate certain parts of it more. This is the easy part of debugging.

Then you try and run your code - my arty analogy kind of breaks down slightly here as I've not heard of people trying to run a sculpture or painting. Segmentation fault it says. Or the output some indecipherable goobledegook, or just plain smack-me-in-the-face stupid. You respond with a swift "Bugger!" knowing that somewhere your magnum opus (arty again) is trying to access a bit of memory that's not been allocated, or is plucking random numbers out of thin air (aka somewhere in the computer's RAM). This is followed by adding printf statesments just about everywhere to work out where the program's falling down. When this doesn't highlight the problem and you can't see anything at all that looks wrong you start banging your head against a brick wall for several hours/days/weeks/months getting more and more irrate and frustrated! Your urge to kill will rise to quite extreme levels (did you know that there is a large statistical blip in the murder rates around Redmond, WA!) More often that not after an undefined period you realise that you've been excessively stupid, fix a minor unseen, but blindingly-obvious-when-you-spot-it, problem, and everything works out well. Although sometimes codes are just tempermental beasts that work one day, but not the next!

Anyway I suppose it's best that a piece of software falls down completely at the start rather than working properly, producing reasonable results, and looking hunky-dory, for ages before you realise that there's a mistake. But that never happens now does it...

Seasons greetings

It's been a couple of weeks since my last post, but now the new football season's started I've become reinvigorated to write something.

Firstly I have to congratulate Watford on a fantastic start to the new season with a 2-1 win against Wolves (note that the BBC website doesn't really write as much about Championship games as they do for Premiership matches.) Apparently we played pretty badly in the first half at least, but if we can still play badly and manage to get a win that's the main thing - it's what champions do :)

The Watford game was actually being shown on Sky Sports, but I doubted that any pub would be showing it when there was the Aston Villa vs. Liverpool game on (and the England vs. France rugby match on), so I watched that instead. It was a 2-1 win for Liverpool, with a fantastic free kick from Steven Gerrard. The game wasn't that enthralling until the last 20 mins when things got far more exciting. As ever I can see a lot of Saturday and Sunday afternoons spent down the pub over the next 9 months (although after that there's the European Championship to look forward to).

The new season has also bought back some televisual delights in the form over Football Focus, and tonight sees the return of Adrian Chiles in MOTD2. My Saturday lunchtimes and Sunday evenings are complete again.

A film at its Prime

If you want to see a film that revels in just being a big fun, cheesy, actionfest then you can do far worse than going to see Transformers. I went to see it at the weekend and really enjoyed the whole thing. The movie kind of feels like two different films with a definite change when the Transformers start talking. The Transformers (at least the Autobots), when first introduced, seem to be aimed at children (which is fair enough as they are childrens toys) which is slightly out of place from the lead up that's been given, but you deal with it by the general coolness of the CGI. There was a completely superfluous subplot with the NSA signal analysts, which could easily have been cut without really affecting the films overall plot, but it was harmless enough having it in there. Some of the battle scenes between the Autobots and Decepticons are pretty hard to follow as they're really fast paced with so much going on. They definitely require being watched on a huge cinema screen. I was surprised that there was a quite a large comedy element to the film, which actually worked really well. You'll be unsurprised that like with most recent blockbusters they've set themselves up for the sequel, but I'll be looking forward to it - maybe they'll even get Leonard Nimoy back as a Transformer (it might be pushing it to have Orson Welles again though).

As you'd expect you've got to suspend the thinking part of your brain for the film, but in general I sat through the film with a big smile on my face thinking "Woah, that's cool".

On top of the world

After a few fairly uneventful flights I'm back among the northern-hemispherians - oh, Polaris how I've missed thee. The main event being that I managed to spill a glass of orange juice down my trousers as I was setting off from Brisbane airport, so spent the rest of the trip with a vague orangey stain on my upper right leg. There were also a few issues with Qantas's inflight entertainment system, but these were resolved which allowed me to watch the last five minutes of Zodiac from where I'd previously been cut-off. There'll likely be some photos of my travels going online soon, so keep your peepers peeled.

My general impression of Australia was that it was a great place (even potentially liveable in), so I'm going to make efforts to go there again - now when's the next conference there...

Fraser and Dave

First things first - I've not read Harry Potter nor will I for the forseeable future.

I'm now back in Brisbane for my last night in Australia. I'm again in the hostel Bunk at which it seems that Sunday night is the pumping party night, so rather than partying I've decided to plonk myself infront of a computer - I'll go for a beer or two later.

My stay in Bunk earlier in the week was pretty good. I was sharing a room with seven Irish folk who were traveling together. I went with them to a local pub where we indulged in two of my favourite passtimes - drinking and karaoke. We did attempt to go clubbing in town, but encountered a queue that appeared to be glacial in its progress. The next moring, after being incredibly quite so as not to wake my room mates, I left for the bus station to catch the Greyhound to Hervey Bay. I'd heard some bad things about Greyhound coaches and I feared the worsed when I encoutered a crazy person trying to check in for the coach. Luckily he wasn't getting on my coach (in fact I think he'd just randomly wandering in off the street and wasn't after any bus) and when I boarded I was pleasantly surprised - there were only about 10 of us on the coach and there was tonnes of leg room. The coach trip was unevenful and I arrived at Hervey Bay on time.

In Hervey Bay I was staying at the Koala Resort hostel. This seemed nice enough, but the rickety shacks that made it up were later shown to be inadequate insulation for the bloody freezing night that was to come. The problem with Hervey Bay is that it's dull as fuck. It's basically a stop off point for people heading to Fraser Island, but they haven't thought to give it any sort of nightlife. My hostel had a nightclub, but they didn't even bother opening it cos no bugger was around! I was reduced to sitting in the TV room for a while watching a show where the Aussie tennis player Mark Phillipousis had to pick a girl from a variety of desperate women.

After a very unevenful night I headed off to the one and only reason for being in Hervey Bay, Fraser Island. We were met on the Island by our tour guide called Dave. Dave was apparently one of the tour companies most experienced guides, but by all accounts there most mental - he knew his stuff, but liked to talk (mainly using inappropriate comments) and laugh (mainly at his own jokes, or even just at random sentences/words)non-stop. Fraser Island, as I may have said in previous posts, is the largest almost entirely sand island in the world and home to a large amount of dingos. We saw a dingo pretty much straight after we set off in our 4x4 bus. The first day involved part trekking through the forest and part driving places in the bus - Fraser Island's is big although not huge, but when you have to drive everywhere through sand it can still take a while. We visited Basin lake and later in went to the major attraction that is Lake MacKenzie. As there was water there I had to go for a swim, which was pretty nice although I was still the only one in my group who braved the water. At Lake MacKenzie I met back up with some of the guys from my Contiki tour group who were also on the island. That evening we were staying in some lodges on a nice Fraser Island resort called the Kingfisher Resort. These lodges had heating, which was a great advantage over most of the people who visit the island and have to camp. Watching the sunset that evening from the island was really nice. Food on the island was also really good. We finshed off the evening with a large amount of drinks from the resort bar. Maybe I'll recount some of Dave's pearls of wisdom some day.

The next day was an early start (I'd got used to these) and we set off to drive up the beach. The beach drive would have been something I'd have loved to be able to do myself, but it was still fun being driven by someone else. This day was pretty windy which meant that when out of the bus we were generally being sand blasted (you've got to expect that on a sand island) and the sea was pretty choppy. We visited thhe wreck of a ship called the Moheno and then carried on up the island to the Champange pools - these were a couple of rock pools on the beach with the surf breaking into them. As ever I was the only one to go for a swim. We then headed to Indian Head, rocky outcrop which gave great view over the island and sea - there was the possibility to see whales, but as the water was so choppy you wouldn't have been able to make anything out. There were a few more sights seen, but that evening I headed back to Hervey Bay - again it was dull.

Today was back on the Greyhound to Brisbane. During the trip we had a minor breakdown, but it didn't hold us up too much. Now I think I'll go for my last couple of Aussie beers. Next post from back in the UK.

Brisbane backpacker

I'm now in Brisbane where I left the tour group I was with to be a proper backpacker - they all wept as I waved them goodbye ;) I'm staying in a hostel and everything - it's called Bunk and is actually pretty nice from what I've seen so far. I'll give it a review when I've tried it's full range of services. I now just have to think up something to do tonight.

Duuude... wipeout

This morning went surfing for the first time (a group of us on my tour had a learn-to-surf lesson). When I say surfing what I really mean is flailing about in the water sometimes while holding on to a surf board. Staying on the board while lying on your stomach is hard enough and the waves we had were babies (six foot babies) according to our instructors, so I can imagine how much more difficult it would be in proper surf. It was good fun and pretty knackering, but I think it'll be a while before I'll be riding the waves like a pro. Anyway it's a glorious day so I should get back to the beach rather than spending time in an internet cafe.

East is east

I'm now further up the east coast of Oz in "the sunshine state" of Queensland. The current stop in Surfers Paradise where I'll be spending the whole day tomorrow - I'll be surfing as it seems to be the appropriate thing to do here.

I joined up with my tour group in Sydney early yesterday morning. We did a very brief trip up to Mrs Macquarie's chair which overlooks the Opera House and Harbour Bridge where we were obliged to get a group photo. We the raced out of Sydney and headed to the wine region Hunter Valley. There we sampled quite a large selection of wines including a rather bizarre sparkling red. The wines were ok, but I was expecting some slightly nicer ones, although maybe my wine tasting palate wasn't quite ready at 11am. We then drove on to Coff's Harbour (home of the big banana) where we spent the night. It was a fairly quiet one as most people were pretty knackered, plus the bar closed at 9.30pm. Today we set of for Byron Bay (just past the big prawn). We went to the lighthouse on Byron Point, which is the most easterly tip of Australia - the views were amazing from this headland, and we got to see a pod of Humpback whales migrating. In Byron Bay itself we went for lunch and I headed straight for the lovely beach. The town's really nice and it would have been great to stay for longer than the two hours we had. I did get to swim in the sea though and sampled the local fish and chips. The water was fine for someone from the UK and was about as warm as it ever gets back home. Following this we went to a wildlife park and saw the normal selection of Aussie wildlife - I didn't get my picture taken cuddling a koala, but many people did. We've now arrived at Surfers Paradise and I think I'll be heading for some food and drink pretty soon.

On a general note the tour group I'm with seems pretty cool (I have to say this as some might read it later ;)). The majority of them are heading all the way up to Cairns, but I leave them at Brisbane.

p.s. I'm going to say nothing about the gig we did other than don't mention "the Reaper".

It's on!

Australia is still treating me well despite a few days of cold rain - well I am British so I should be able to deal with that! The conference has been pretty interesting so far and has given me some things to think about. I've even had some interest in the poster I presented. We have this afternoon off, but there are now other things to plan. Myself and two of my bandmates are over here and have managed to organise a gig at an open mike night tomorrow night. Unfortunately they don't supply any percussion, so I'm off to buy something to bang or shake. We've already found a musical instrument shop, but I've got to decide on what I'm willing to spend for a one off performance. I think the gig might set a new world record in being the largest gathering of gravitational wave physicists at a musical performance as quite a few people at the conference have said they're coming - we'll see how many actually turn up.

"In Australia..."

So after being swept up by a tornado (i.e. Qantas airplane) I've been safely deposited in the wonderful land of Oz (i.e. Oz). The flight was far less of an ordeal than I thought it would be. There was a wide range of on-demand in flight entertainment options and the food was decent. The Aussie customs folk were pretty cheery and even smiled, which is a far better reception than you get entering the US. The first impression of Australia is that it's kind of familar. It doesn't smell different from the UK and you feel far more relaxed than you'd expect from being in a country on the other side of the world. It's homely, but with an odd twist.

Yesterday I got the real feeling that I was in Sydney when I went off to meet up with my Aunt. For a mid-winter day the weather was fantastic. It was (to start with bright and sunny, with only a few small clouds in the sky. I was meeting my Aunt in Circular Quay and on walking there the Harbour Bridge hove into view. A little further on the Opera House came into sight. There's nothing that lets you know your in Sydney more than seeing these sight. It really is very impressive and the whole harbour area looks great. From Cicular Quay we went on the ferry to Manly at the opening of the harbour. Here I saw people surfing adding another piece to the Oz experience.

I need to leave the internet cafe where I'm writing this, but they'll probably be another update soon. The work side of this trip wil actually be starting tomorrow.

To the far side of the Earth

In not many hours time I'm going to be heading to Australia. It really is quite a bizarre concept that you can get on a plane and a day later be on the other side of the globe. This may sound rather old fashioned considering the ability to do these things has been around since well before I was born, but I'm still pretty impressed. That said the prospect of long-haul flying doesn't fill me with much enthusiasm. As I've noted before I'm very bad at sleeping on flights, so I'm just having to hope I can keep myself entertained for long enough - I'll have my iPod fully charged, a couple of books (one of which weighs in at a hefty 900 pages), a large set of crossword and Sudoko's, and even some scientific papers. I seem to remember having an ok time the last time I took such a long flight, but that was when I was four years old, was more excited by flying and had more ability to sleep through anything.

One thing that I won't be taking on this trip is my laptop. I'll be going nearly a full three weeks without it! Don't worry though, they'll be other opportunities for me to access the internet and update you with what I'm up to. You may even here of the fabled Corpse Full of Bees Australian tour...

Get a room

Yesterday I went for a swim in the Glasgow Uni pool, but I'm not going to bore you with how many laps I did, or my supreme mastery of the breast stroke, I'm just writing to express my annoyance at some couples who were in the pool. Now back in the day, i.e. the 80s, public swimming pools would prominently display posters with lists of forbidden activities, including the likes of bombing, ducking and petting. There're no such posters in the Glasgow Uni pool, but I'd have thought that the no petting rule would be fairly common knowledge and just general courteous behaviour. However the way two couples were carrying on was just not proper for a swimming pool environment. It just made the people near them, i.e. me, rather uncomfortable. I now sound like some sort of prude, but I think I'm in the right - there's a time a place with the pool just not being one of them. I propose a ban on couples having any sort of contact when in a swimming pool, with the penalty being a week under an icey cold shower. It may sound draconian, and some might say it's a step too far, but we must protect our right to not be slightly sickened by peoples poolside gropings.

Oh the Terror!

Today some angry chaps took it upon themselves to crash a flaming car into Glasgow Airport (the same types who also tried to explode some Mercedes in central London). This is a jolly unsporting thing to do and has inconvenienced a great many people - luckily some valiant British bobby's were on hand to apprehend the rogues, who appeared to have mistakenly set themselves alight! It really is below the belt stuff and just not British! Well I for one wont stand for such actions. I think the perpetrators should be given a jolly good talking to and maybe a light caning. That should show them the error of their ways and set them back on the straight and narrow. There are many angry people out there, but not all of them feel the need to express it by exploding this, or crashing into that. They should express their anger in a more British way like repressing their feelings, going on a brisk walk, or at most writing a stern, yet polite, letter.

Year half empty, or year half full

Can that really be half a year gone already!? I doesn't half go by quickly these days.

Number 4

Tomorrow it all changes! Will Britain fall to ruin? Will nightmares from our worst imaginings blight the world? Will the very fabric of the universe tear itself assunder?

These are all possibilites of what'll happen as Tony Blair resigns as Prime Minister, but I may be being a bit on the alarmist side. The only real short term change will be that we'll have to remember to say Gordon rather than Tony when refering to the PM.

At the age of 26 it is quite strange to note that Tony's only the third PM I've experienced during my lifetime. First there were the horrors of Thatcher stealing our school milk (well that was actually back in 1971 when she was Education Secretary and she was actually against the move, but still, grrrrr!) - damn her big eighties hair for all eternity. Then there were the grey pants years of Major - such a nice guy now what with his love of cricket and all. Followed by 10 smiley, enthusiatic and earnest, but somewhat shallow years with Blair (or Big Tone as I like to call him). What will I have to expect from my number 4 Gordy B? Only time will tell, but he better not mess with no school milk!

Stung

The other day I got stung by a bee on my left foot - I think the bee had decided to take up residence in the bottom of my trouser leg and got stuck. This is only interesting (well interesting to me at least) in that I now know that I'm not highly allergic to bee stings. I've managed to avoid ever being stung by either a bee or a wasp (or hornet, jellyfish, scorpion, etc), so after this sting I had a few moment of wondering just whether anaphylactic shock would set in. My skin didn't begin to swell up nor did my throat close up, it just stung a lot. I think the bee got off worst cos it died - helped on its way by a swift swat with a magazine. I now just have a very itchy patch on my foot where the sting was - nothing a bit of scratching doesn't momentarily relieve.

Giving in to killer TV

For the last few months my flatmate has been bugging me to watch the TV show Dexter, which he'd started watching last year and really liked. I finally gave in to his nagging and have so far watched the first two episodes. The show, the first series of which finished last November when screened in the US, is based around the character Dexter Morgan. As far as antiheroes go this guy goes right into top spot. He's a serial killer. He's also a forensic scientist working for the police. The show has a dark humour about it, which it gets away with despite the very grisly situations that are presented. You kind of like the character of Dexter for the reason, I think, that the whole thing is presented from his perspective (with an overlying narration by him) allowing the viewer to connected with him if not really understanding and certainly not condoning what he does - or maybe just I think the character has a likability a everyone else thinks psycho! Like I said I've only watched the first two episodes, so will need to watch some more to form a more full opinion, but so far I'm liking it. I'd recommend it to people so long as you're not too squeamish about mutilated bodies - there're a lot of them!

Travels down-under

Next month I'm heading of to the Amaldi conference, which is a major gravitational wave conference held every two years. This year it just so happens to be in Sydney and I couldn't really pass up the opportunity of a trip to Australia. I am having to do work for the conference, with a poster presentation to produce and a paper to plan/write with some other people whilst I'm there, but I can't complain about this.

What with flying half way around the world I couldn't go without taking a bit of a holiday whilst I'm out there, so I've tacked another week onto the trip after the conference is over. And I'm fair packing in the activities that week. As the conference is based in Sydney I figured that I'd get to see a fair bit of it during my stay there. I therefore decided to book my flight home from Brisbane rather than Sydney, so I'd have to do some traveling to make the flight. Only having a week to travel I decided that there wasn't much point in aimlessly wandering about bits of Australia, so I went to STA Travel to book something more organised. After a fair while spent checking out the various options my itenerary has finalised on this: A Contiki coach trip from Sydney to Brisbane, which goes via Hunter Vally (vineyards and wine tasting), Coffs Harbour, Byron Bay, Currumbin (to go to a wildlife sanctuary), Surfers Paradise (for some beaches, casinos and general partying), and finally on to Brisbane. That's not the end of it though! After a night in Brisbane I'm going to be heading up to Hervey Bay (average temperatures of 23 C in the winter!) for the evening before going on a tour of Fraser Island (the world largest sand island). After this it's back to Brisbane for the night before catching my flight home. Should be knackering, but also great fun. I've got the long plane journey back on which to rest, so I need to make the most of my time there.

Island life

Yesterday we returned from our camping trip to Gigha generally unharmed, but with a large selection of Midge bites and bizarre experiences.

On Friday we loaded up the cars for our trip and set off at about 12.45. We were aiming for the 4pm CalMac ferry from Tayinloan, so would have to make good going if we were to make it in time. We just missed this ferry by a few minutes and watched it sail off without us, but there was a bus stop for us to huddle under - and we had to huddle as the weather was a bit blustery to say the least. Whilst waiting for the ferry our first bit of weirdness was encountered - another car pulled up and out got some guys. We got talking about why they were going to Gigha and found out that they were a Senegalese dance band, and they were playing at the village hall that evening! "Are you going to go?" they asked. "Of course!" we answered, because you can't turn down an invitation to a Senegalese dance band as they don't come round that often - especially when they're on Hebridean islands.

When we got to the island, after the approximately twenty minute boat trip, we quickly set up camp. The rain wasn't too heavy, so we managed to get the tents up without too much trouble and minimal dampness. Hunger set in, so we got the BBQs out and began cooking up some meat. The one and only island pub was our next destination where we met some unfortunate microlight pilots who'd been stuck on the island for three days due to the bad weather. After some drinks it was off to the village hall for the band. adren-junk, our guide to the island, showed us the way to the hall by leading us into a wood reminiscent of the Blair Witch Project. Luckily we didn't get killed in some bizarre island ritual (I'm thinking The Wicker Man here) and made it to the hall for the evenings entertainment. It was 10.30pm but all the island's people seemed to be there, from the small kids to pensioners. It was pretty strange, but we had a good time dancing away and keeping the party going.

Saturday started off with the rain still coming down. The weather didn't stop some of the group from going for a swim in the sea - they endured the cold, but did manage a variety of interesting screams when the cold water encountered various parts of their bodies. The rain eventually stopped sometime mid-afternoon and things began to dry off. Dinner that evening was at the pub/hotel/restaurant where the haddock and chips went down a storm. We then went off to collect firewood. This led us back to the wood from last night where we hoped some dry wood would be available. At the wood we were pounced on by all the midges on the island, and had to make a hasty retreat before we could gather up much wood. However, with some blooed still remaining in our bodies, we scavenged around other less dangerous locations which provided us with enough wood (including an abandoned fence post) to make a go at a fire. We scrambled over some rocks around the coast from our camp to a more secluded location to set up our fire. The fire we raised was very good although wasn't the largest that's been seen. It provided a good focus around which to drink and sing, and somehow didn't arouse a load of angry islanders from there sleep.

On Sunday we awoke to a glorious day, with the sun shining and the island taking on a whole new look. Encouraged by this we all entered to water for a swim. It wasn't the warmest water that I've swam in, but after the initial shock it became pleasant (well bearable) and we spent a good 15 minutes splashing around. After breakfast/lunch and showers, to recover a decent core temperature, we drove up to the north end of the island to a larger beach than the incredibly tiny one by our campsite. With the sun, white beaches, clear water and brilliant views we felt like we could be in the Caribbean. Sprint races, frisbeeing and pirating were all activities that we did. Unfortunately we soon had to leave to pack up our tents and catch the last ferry off the island.

There was a lot more to the weekend than I've been able to briefly document above, but it was all excellent fun. I highly recommend Gigha to people thinking of visiting a small Scottish island (they don't seem to produce their own whisky though.)

Survival of the fittest

A while back a few of my colleagues planned a summer trip to Iceland. We'd drive up somewhere really far north from where we could then get a boat to the land of glaciers, geysers, volcanoes, hot bubbling mud, and Bjork, where we'd experience all the geothermal magnificence first hand. This would even have included a few days knocking about on the renowned tourist mecca that is the Faroe Islands, where we'd have no doubt done some exciting things involving pyramids and embalming... or maybe it's not that type of Pharaoh - it actually means sheep island! Anyway that was the plan until ellielabelle looked into it in more detail and we realised it might all be a bit pricey (Iceland's bloody expensive don't you know), and the Faroes might not quite have the entertainment to sustain us for a few days.

So we've now gone for the next best option which is a weekend camping trip to Gigha (pronounced gee'a)! "Where, and what, the fuck's Gigha?" you might be asking, and indeed I was asking myself until a few hours ago when I set out to search for it on google maps. Well it's here. It's small island off the west coast of Scotland, just off the Kintyre penisula peninsula, and it even has it's own wikipedia page! The reason that we're going here is that adren-junk used to visit family there as a child (one of whom is, I think, the Willie McSporran - yes it's a real name - quoted in the wikipedia article), and was pretty enthusiastic about it. It's not got quite the same attractions as Iceland (in fact other than a pub, a shop and a road I don't know what it has at all - may be there are some geysers!), but I'm sure we can managed to have some fun and we've only got to survive their for two days. I just need to pack all my camping gear, which will likely include a couple of jumpers, and a good coat, if the weather stays as it has today - if only it were like last weekend.

It will be very good for me to travel out of Glasgow a bit and see some of the west coast. It's supposed to be great scenery and in my almost 5 years in Glasgow I've not managed to make it further than Loch Lomond.

Preserve this

In a random good food post I'd like to recommend to people Tesco's spicy mango chutney. I bought some of this the other day to accompany one of my home made curry's, which are improving each time I make them, and it proved to be go great with it. The next day I used said chutney in a spicy jalapeño burger and it went brilliantly. Is there anything this chutney won't go with? Probably, but I've yet to find what that is with my last two dinners.

England in reasonable performance shocker!

For the first time in a while England managed to put in a reasonable performance on the football field. We beat Estonia 3-0 in a Euro 2008 qualifier. It wasn't a fantastic game to watch, but it had far going for it than last Friday's rather dull friendly against Brazil. Beckham was doing what he's good at which is putting decent in crosses and there was a bit more coherence within the team. We also didn't give up on the game and seemed to want to play a bit, rather than the players deciding that they don't really want to be there. Hopefully this will give us the confidence to play with some tempo, enthusiasm and best of all a bit of passion in the rest of the qualifying games.

Show it like it is!

This autumn the US TV channel CBS will be airing a new sitcom called "The Big Bang Theory" based on geeky male physics types trying to deal with matters relating to the opposite sex:-

"The Big Bang Theory" is a comedy from the Emmy Award nominated Co-Creator and Executive Producer of "Two and a Half Men" Chuck Lorre, about brainy best friends Leonard (Johnny Galecki, "Roseanne") and Sheldon (Jim Parsons "Judging Amy"), who can tell you anything you want to know about quantum physics, but when it comes to dealing with everyday life here on earth they're lost in the cosmos. Neither fully understands that scientific principles don't always apply in matters of the heart - until they meet their sexy new neighbor Penny (Kaley Cuoco, "8 Simple Rules...") on "The Big Bang Theory." Penny is a friendly screenwriter/waitress from the midwest who also happens to be newly single. She quickly makes an impression on the other members of Leonard and Sheldon's geek squad on "The Big Bang Theory:" Howard Wolowitz (Simon Helberg, "Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip"), who portrays himself as the Casanova of Cal Tech, and fellow whiz kid Rajesh Koothrappali (Kunal Nayyar, "NCIS"), who is rendered speechless around anyone unprepared to converse about the Theory of Relativity or other scientific jargon.

The chemistry between this gaggle of geniuses and a delightful damsel is about to undergo a stimulating series of inter-personal experiments on "The Big Bang Theory."

Obviously much hilarity is bound to ensue from all the whacky situations that these nerds get themselves into as they try to woo their attractive neighbour (you can see a clip here.) The promo blurb for this show is critiqued here and doesn't exactly leave you anticipating great things from the show (however, to be fair, in the comments section of the linked blog post one of the shows producers does make a good effort at defending it, and no-one's actually seen it yet to really judge it.) I just wonder whether it can be as bad as Supernova!

Season finales

The last week has seen the end of seasons for many US TV shows that I've been watching. For some the end of these has come too soon, but other couldn't come soon enough. I'll attempt to review, or at least give my opinion on, these shows whilst keeping spoilers to a minimum (there are a few thought, so read on at your own discretion).

24 - Season 6
The end of the last series saw Jack Bauer being kidnapped and shipped off to China, so it was going to be interesting as to how they got him back to take part in this series. Needless to say he got back and just in time to. This time round the terrorists of choice were militant Islamists (from an unnamed middle-eastern country) and their weapon of choice was the good old nuclear bomb (in the form of suitcase nukes). Of course this was just the tip of a whole conspiratorial iceberg that would involve a familiar face from the past.

The seasons main theme saw Jack Bauer dealing with many family issues - although Kim wasn't involved. It started off with all the usual fast paced action we expect and kept the implausibility scale rising throughout - this is something fans of 24 have come to expect and can't really complain about. 24 will often, towards the end of the series, attempt to wrap up the seemingly main story-line by bringing out some overarching conspiracy, so it shouldn't be a surprise that this series follows the mold. Unfortunately this time round I just couldn't be bothered with this extra bit of story - for which the implausibility scale was really going through the roof. It was just a big anticlimax and pretty dull to boot, however I don't think that they could have sustained the main story for a whole 24 episodes. This leads me to think that 24 has pretty much run its course. They've already had to recycle storylines, so I don't really see where else it can go. Sorry Jack, I think your days are numbered.

Overall opinion: A good effort to start with, but becoming to stale and generally stupid towards the end.

Score: 6 dead terrorists out of 10.

House - Season 3
At the end of last season Dr Greg House had been shot, which would seem a bit of a downer to most people. The start of this one, however, saw him seeming rather happy, but would it last - unlikely. Being a medical drama we're presented with a variety of medical situations, but these can start to become a tad repetitive. In House the diagnosing of the illness is a large part of the show, but obviously to keep people interested we have to delve into the lives, and relationships, of the main protagonists.

Hugh Laurie still does a great job playing House, and provides one of the most likeable complete bastards that TV has ever seen. You still find yourself siding with him in the majority of situations, because for the most part everyone else seems to be a bit wussy. This season sees someone trying to compete with House for the title of chief bastard, but that storyline does drag on for a bit too long. The rest of the relationships within the show provide enough amusement to keep you entertained, but you can tell that there's nothing more to really add within the group. I think that this has been seen by shows writers/producers and it could be all change for the next series.

Overall opinion: An enjoyable series that's provided plenty of amusement, but ready for a change. It's still sustained by Hugh Laurie's performance, but that's no bad thing.

Score: 7 cases of Lupus out of 10

Lost - Season 3
The last season of Lost saw several of the main characters kidnapped by the mysterious Other's. This one left off exactly where the last one ended. The series was split into two halves (in between which there was a two month mid-season break). The first half focussed on those held captive by the Others and in my opinion it dragged. There was a lot going on, and you learnt a reasonable amount about the Others, but it didn't hold my interest.

After a few slow episodes the second half of the series really picked things up again. Lots of things started happening obviously leading up to some kind of head, which brought back a lot of excitement to the series and meant that I was eagerly anticipating the next episode.

I'm not really sure if I can say that any of the general mysteries of the series were explained this season, but many new things did come to light. The level of crazy was certainly ramped up to a high level by the end of the series.

Overall opinion: A slow start, but it pulled it back at the end leaving things very interesting for the next series.

Score: 7 planes crashes out of 10

Heroes - Season 1
Heroes was a new show so I had no prior expectation except the recommendation of my flatmate. The premise of the show can be seen in my post here. I was hooked on this show fairly early on and this early enthusiasm didn't ebb as the series went on. There were about 5 story threads that came together at various moments in the series. Not all of the threads were as interesting as each other, and certain parts didn't sit as well within the overall story, but they each provided something different and nothing seemed overly strained. One of the outstanding characters in the show was the Japanese nerd Hiro. He was used for different effect throughout the show, not just as comic relief for the whole thing (although when he was used for comic effect it worked well and didn't seem stupid or out of context). Some of the other characters were fairly stereotypical, but that's to be expected from a popular TV series.

The end of the series did wrap up pretty much everything that it brought up, but left a couple of teasers for the next season. The whole premise of the show seems to be made so that new characters can be brought in easily, and old characters got rid of, so hopefully things can stay fresh. I'll be looking forward to seeing how the next series pans out.

Overall opinion: An exciting new series that I enjoyed throughout. Despite seeming to just take the plot of the X-men this managed to make it seem new and is well worth checking out.

Score: 9 mutants out of 10

Shivering by the sea

On Monday a few of us went on a trip to Brighton to have fun at the seaside. As I noted before the weather forecast wasn't exactly what we'd have liked with cold wind and rain expected, and when we set of the forecast proved all to accurate. Our train journey got off to a slightly late start after the first two trains we could have got were cancelled due to the "inclement" weather. However, once we finally made it down to Brighton we made the most of it. We took a walk through the Lanes, which host a variety of small, trendy, shops. One of my favourite shops to look around is a bric-a-brac shop called Snooper's Paradise which sells all kinds of random stuff - I was tempted by a huge shipwrights spanner! It's easy to spend ages wandering through this shop, but we were all pretty hungry, so went for lunch at a nearby pub. On the way the sun did attempt to show itself, but was always shot down by the wind and rain. The pub did a damn good pie and Steve tried to kill himself by bravely attempting to eat one and a half pounds of beef burger.

Filled with food we waddled down to the beach for an afternoon constitutional and to take in the bracing sea air. As Brighton beach is a pebble beach one of the only things to do is throw rocks into the sea, which we did for a short time until our interests were taken by a dead shark washed up on the shore! It was only about 45cm long and was probably some sort of dogfish that the scavengers had stripped of most of its internal organs. Craving the warmth of somewhere inside we went on to the pier to the amusements arcades. Each of us loaded up with a £1 bag of 2p's to fill up the 2p machines with. A couple of hours of pushing 2p's into slots, playing 4 player Daytona, and collecting prize tickets was enough excitement for us. We weren't particularly tempted by the fun fair rides at the end of the pier, but had a wander around them anyway balking at their extortionate costs. I'm sure the rides would have been heaving on a slightly nicer day, but with the weather no-one else was taking the risk of riding them.

We worked our way back to the train station by a couple of pubs and had to end the day with fish and chips for dinner. Stocked up with food and some beer from the offy we boarded our train home. It hadn't been the best of weather, but we all had a really good bank holiday and I didn't even have to go back to work the next day!

At last

It appears that blogger might have finally got round to adding the a while back, but I think that now any fancy greasemonkey and haloscan workarounds aren't needed. Before I get to excited about this I should actually check whether it works, so expect an update soon.

The road to Brighton pier

Tomorrow is a bank holiday Monday and at the suggestion of my sister we're going on a trip to the seaside. I think that the original suggestion was that we go to the seaside if "the weather's good", but we're now going despite that fact that the forecast for the south-east of England today and tomorrow is for it to be pissing down freezing cold rain (and that forecast has definitely proved to be right today!) The bit of seaside that we're going to is Brighton where our main activity may end up having to be sitting around in a pub watching the rain (I can live with that). There are other indoor activities for us to do such as visit the many amusement arcades. Eight player Sega Rally or Daytona is pretty ace, and many hours can be whiled away on the 2p machines. There's a decent group of us going so it should be fun whatever.

Burning the midnight oil

Should I still be working at 1.40am? The answer is quite clearly no, but the fact can't be denied that I am. [Ignore the 12.40am timestamp on this post as blogger doesn't believe in BST ;)]

TLAs

Friday night saw the invention of several new three letter acronyms essential for this modern age of txt msgs, IMs and emails. I leave you to figure out for yourself (unless you were there at their inception) the meaning and proper usage of kih and cmt (there were far more), but I encourage their use in your daily communications ;)

Final without the fight

The FA Cup final yesterday saw Premiership champions Manchester United face the league runners-up Chelsea. The match was the first FA Cup final to be held at the newly reconstructed Wembley Stadium - which does look pretty good with it's impressive arch. The high profile clubs involved and the venue meant that the match was fairly hyped up. The problem with hyping up a Cup final is that they invariably disappoint. There are in fact very few Cup finals that I remember being decent matches, or offering much excitement. Yesterday was no different. The teams barely bothered to play in the first half, which started off at a snail's pace and proceeded to get slower! The second half picked up a bit and there was some pace injected from time to time, but never any incisive or threatening attacked from either side. The keepers had very little to do. The game was a nil-nil draw after normal time, so went onto extra time (I remember - it not being that long ago - when finals went to replays the following Wednesday, which replaced CBBC when I got home from school.) Extra time still produced little incident, but eventually Chelsea produced the winner. I don't think either side really deserved to win, but one had to. Neither team had any commitments (the Champions League final for example) so I'm not sure why they both weren't really going for it in this game. It'd have been different if Watford had got there I can tell you!

Spidey (non)sense

The third installment of Sam Raimi's Spider-man franchise became the top grossing opening day film ever when released a couple of weeks back, but it's taken me a bit of time before getting out to the cinema to see it. However, today I decided that having seen, and enjoyed, the first two films I should give this one a go and add my contibution to the pile of money it's made.

The film starts off pretty much where the last one left off (it even gives you a quick "previously on Spider-man" style update in the opening titles.) Peter's/Spidey's mate Harry is still rather pissed with him (for reasons I wont say in case you've not seen number 2), but him and MJ are still very loved up. Thing's aren't all happy in the relationship though as MJ think's Peter/Spidey's getting a bit up himself - and she'd be right to. These things lead to much tension and many problems, with Peter trying to deal with many issues involving love, friendship and revenge.

Now the previous films have always been rather schmaltzy when it came to the emotional scene's between Peter and MJ (or Peter and his Aunt May), but I don't remember them grating on me as much as in this film. The main reason I think they grated was due to Tobey Maguire's face - throughout these sort of scenes he has a dopey confused look about him, like a faithful, but stupid, dog that can't comprehend what his owner wants him to do. These scenes in part make you cringe, and in part make you want someone to give him a slap. Then there are the scenes, done for comedy effect I assume, which see Peter/Tobey becoming a badass (strutting about and playing it smooth with the ladies) - these really do make you sink into your seat and wince. The humour in Spider-man is supposed to come form Spidey's witty one liners, and Peter's interactions with J. J. Jameson, not by making him look like a twat. Now how I've described things may indeed be how Maguire meant to play the whole thing (Peter/Spider-man is supposed to be the architypal geek-cum-superhero after all), but it mainly annoyed me.

Other than Peter/Spidey/Tobey there was one other main thing that didn't quite hold together. There were a couple of moments in the film were it seemed like they'd removed about 15 minutes of it and just left an unexplained gap. They may well be parts that ended up on the editing room floor to make way for more of the special effects filled moments, but it created a couple of disconnects in the plot.

Now I've not been particularly kind, but I did sort of enjoy the film - despite having to cringe through various moments. The effects were of a very high standard and it didn't drag for a 2 hour 20 minute film. I was, however, more disjointed than the last two films, and obviously the effects don't have the same inpact a third time around.

The plans seem to be to carry on the franchise for as many films as possible, but number three might have been Maguire last turn as Spidey. I think it'd probably be good getting someone else in to give a slightly different interpretation of the role.

Friday night live

I'm sure you're all wanting to know how the gig went on Friday night. Pretty damn well!

The whole day managed to go without any major, or even relatviely minor, hitches. Chris and I picked up our drum kit from Soundhaus (which is one of the most stereotypically rock venues you can get - a dingy warehouse basement) and get it back to our venue without breaking any of the kit, or having any car troubles. After shooing off some studying students in the Research Club, we got everything set up and had a sound check. The amps, mikes and mixing desk all worked fine! With everything set out there was no denying that we were going to be performing a gig. We then had our final rehearsal at which we had our most intense practice yet. This left me feeling pretty knackered, but we were confident that we had all the songs at a decent level. Our last meal was a fish supper at the University Cafe (as recommended by the New York Times!), which has become a kind of unofficial band eatery. So we'd sound checked, we'd practiced, we'd eaten, all that was left was to actually perform.

We arrived at the venue about an hour and a half before we we due to start. We quickly got our gear set up again with everything still working. People started arriving at about 8.30pm and continued arriving! By 9.30pm we'd managed to pretty much packed out the room we were playing. It's true that the vast majority of these were our friends, and friends of friends, but it was still pretty encouraging for our first gig.

Things kicked off with the Look Up for Danger set. Once we'd got started a lot of the stresses and nerves went away. Ellie was belting out the vocals, and Chris, John and I were giving it our all. The first song wen't down really well, so from then on our confidence grew. Our version of Whole lotta love went down particularly well - for good reasons the drum solo was quite a bit shorter than the one in the original song. The Corpse Full of Bees set went down equally well, with one particular person was really loving our version of (Don't Fear) The Reaper!

The closest I've got to this sort of thing in the past is giving talks at conferences (if I discount when I was part of a group of children representing the UK in a singing competition in Indonesia when I was seven - yes that's true!) Performing in front of a crowd in a band is a whole lot more satisfying that giving a talk. It was all in all a really fun night - I'll be awaiting the audiences glowing reviews ;) I'm definitely looking foward to the next gig - we just need to put a few more song's in our repertiore.

[The less said about the after party the better ;)]

The last day

In approximately twenty four hours Look Up for Danger (closely followed by Corpse Full of Bees) will be mounting the stage (well there's not really a stage at the venue, but you get the idea) for our debut gig. Tomorrow will no doubt have some stressful moments as we're going to be rushing about like madmen. We've got to gather all our equipment together at the venue, including picking up a hired drum kit and mikes (courtesy of Soundhaus). We then have to set this up for a lunchtime sound check - fingers crossed that it all works (and that I can put a drum kit together). Then we head off for the final practice from 3-6 pm. Then we have three solide hours of nervous sweating before the gig starts. Now I just need to send off that final promotional email...

DIY curry

Yesterday I made my first curry from scratch. Previously I've always used curry sauces, or pastes, from a jar - often adding my own ingredients to give them a bit extra - and these have in general been very nice. However, the other week I went out and bought a selection of spice in an effort to create the whole curry experience myself. Here's my recipe (to serve one):

• 1 chicken breast fillet
  
• half an onion
  
• 2 cloves of garlic
  
• half an aubergine
  
• 1 tomato
  
• 3 tablespoons of yoghurt
  
• half a teaspoon of hot chilli powder (Ok so I didn't use fresh chilli's!)
  
• half a teaspoon of tumeric
  
• half a teaspoon of cumin
  
• some finely choped corriander
  
• salt and pepper
  

Chop the chicken into medium sized chunks and fry until brown. Add the chopped onion and garlic. Add in the spices and mix in thoughroughly. Finely chopped tomato, chop the aubergine into medium chunks, and add to the pan. Continue to fry on a low heat for a couple of minutes. Add the yoghurt and leave to simmer for about five mintues. And you're done! Serve with naan bread and/or rice (I had a naan although admittedly I didn't make that from scratch - I just put it in the oven to heat up.)

The curry looked, smelled and tasted really good, although was not particularly hot - I might add more chilli powder, or use some fresh chilli's next time. Cooking the curry from scratch actually took hardly any more time than making it from a jar, but is far more satisfying and allows you to alter the taste as you see fit - also once you've got all the spices and stuff it'll end up cheaper than buying jars of sauce. I'd highly recommend giving it a go.

Snooker loopy

The BBC Sport internet live text commentaries generally provide some pretty ammusing bits of prose, especially in the cricket, but here's a particlulary good bit from the current frame being played in the Mark Selby versus John Higgins World snooker final:
Denise Higgins is still laughing it up in the player's lounge - does she understand what's happening? YOUR HUSBAND IS GETTING HIS SPIRIT CRUSHED WOMAN!

What we should've done

We may be down, but that doesn't mean we'll stop trying to win games. All a bit too late unfortunately, but maybe we'll make it to 30 points.

Driving nowhere

The last couple of times I was in the US I saw quite a lot of adverts on Fox TV for a new show called Drive. It looked as though it could be decent, so when I got back here to the UK I started downloading and watching the show. It stars Nathan Fillion of Firefly fame, as the character Alex Tully, and is also produced by one of Firefly's producers, Tim Minear. The premise of the show is that various people have been asked to become involved in an illegal cross country roadrace, that's been run for many years by a shady, unknown, organisation. There is a prize of $32 million for the winner, but the various characters have their own, generally more personal reasons for competing (e.g. to rescue their kidnapped wife in Alex's case,) and the races' organisers seem to have their own agenda's for the people they've picked to take part. I've fairly enjoyed the first four episodes of the show, and was starting to get into it, but little did I realise, until I tried to download the latest episode, that the show's been cancelled by Fox! Apparently they might air the remaining two episode at some unknown time in the future, or they might just release them online. Nathan Fillion and Tim Minear must be wondering why Fox (or at least the American public who apparently weren't watching the show) hate them so much as to cancel two of their shows!

In other TV related opinion:- I've been enjoying the latest series of Lost again. It's come good after a while where I was just getting a bit tired of the whole situation. The end of season 6 of 24 can't come soon enough in my opinion, as it's just got completely stupid - and I mean stupid even by the usual standards of 24! And what can I say about last weeks episode of Heroes (ep. 20 - Five Years Gone) other than it was fucking ace!

You decide

After a last minute conversion to Scottish Nationalism and evangelical Christainity this morning I went to the polling station to place my votes firmly behind the SNP and SCP. I long for the days when I can live in an independent, fundamentally Christian, Scotland, without being bothered by those English bastards or any pesky gays...

...only joking ;)

I did go and do my democratic duty this morning, but my votes were cast slightly differently than above. I was expecting a last bit of electioneering by the local council candidates outside the polling station, but there was only one Labour leafleter and no-one trying to take any sort of exit poll. One thing I'll say about the voting is that a lot of the parties didn't half go out of their way to make the regional list ballot paper [this is the proportional representation part - courtesy of the Lib Dems - where you don't vote for a particular constituency candidate, but rather a party, and a certain number of parlimentary seats are made up proportionally from this vote] as confusing as possible. Rather than making things nice and clear by just having their party's name in the box many decided to spice things up a bit by adding their party leaders name, or their slogan. It just made the ballot look cluttered and annoying. The local council ballot was quite fun in that this time round you get to rank the candidates in your favoured order. I spent a short while considering who I thought was better out of the three Labour party candidates - mainly going by their pictures from the election material I'd had through my door. Oh, the excitement!

Time for work

This week the University of Glasgow has given me the task of keeping track of what I do and how long I do it for. Fortunately this only relates to research and teaching, so I wont be having to give a detailed account of absolutely everything e.g. this week I spent xx.xx hours on the toilet, xx.xx hours brushing my teeth, xx.xx hours pissing around on the internet (in my own time of course), etc. This Time Allocation Survey is part of the fairly new idea (for this university at least) of Full Economic Costing, whereby the university calculates the budgetary footprint of each member of staff - in theory allowing them to more accurately manage their accounts. For example my footprint doesn't just cover my salary (which in fact is payed for by PPARC/[now]STFC), but includes office space, equipment, pension, etc, which the university has to cover. But I also do things for the university like teaching, outreach, and (hopefully) making the university look good by putting out good research. All this together is taken into account. This week I think I will mainly be doing research.

Anyway, I'm not sure is blogging comes under research or teaching...

Naming conventions

If I were Finnish what would I be called? Well now I think I've found out.

Equality for all, except...

Tonight I caught the end of a party political broadcast by the Scottish Christian Party (next week across the UK there are local elections and in Scotland there are also elections for the Scottish Parliament.) Now the SCP seem to be an angry bunch, but I wasn't quite prepared for the comment that their leader, the Rev. George Hargreaves, said at the very end of the broadcast. Now one of the SCPs main bugbears seems to be the Equality Law that is soon to be introduced across the UK, with their particular attention being on the fact that it means you can't discriminate against someone due to their sexual orientation. Being Christian's you might think "how can they be against something that says everyone is equal?", because isn't that how God views people. Well they don't quite see it that way. The law is in fact an affront to all Christians and is in fact discriminatory against them! Yeah, right! Now I come to what the Rev. George said. He compared the introduction of the anti-discrimination law to the Nazi's introducing a law banning the preparation of Kosher food. And then went on to make the statement that pretty much suggested that, as the Nazi's followed up this law with the Holocaust, the UK Equality law would lead to a similar fate for Scottish Christians! Comparing a piece of anti-discrimination policy to events that led to the Holocaust is really fucked up. Not that I was ever considering "placing my cross by their cross" (their slogan for how you should vote), but these guys will most definitely not be getting my vote!

Down and out in Vicarage Road

It's finally happened. The inevitable has come to pass. With three games of the season to go Watford have become the first team to be relegated from the Premiership.

It's been fairly obvious through the season that we've not been of the same calibre as the majority of the teams in the top flight, but there've been a fair few games where we've shown plenty of spirit and fight (unfortunately goals are what they use as the arbiter of things in football matches - when will they learn!). In many games we just couldn't hold onto our lead, or clean sheet when the games were in the closing minutes. Ultimately our players weren't good enough despite our manager, Aidy Boothroyd's, always upbeat assessments of things.

What do we come away with from this season. Well the players will have gained some experience for when we go up again, but experience isn't always the best substitute for skill. Mainly we'll have come out of this season with lots of money. Aidy's been very frugal in his spending, and we made a job load of cash from selling Young to Aston Villa, so we're sitting on a whole wad of cash which should be of a lot of benefit in the Championship.

Hopefully next season, in our more natural surroundings of the Championship, they'll be a few more wins I can cheers on. Unfortunately I wont be able to watch any of them on TV. (It looks like Luton are going to League one, so they'll be no M1 derby next year.)

The last post (from the APS)

This will be my last post from the APS meeting. I'll just take a moment comment on a few more of the talks I've seen.

One of the most entertaining talks of the meeting was on Selling Physics to Unwilling Buyers given by Lawrence Krauss (of The Physics of Star Trek fame). Krauss is well known for his public understanding of science work and is very good at it due to his enthusiasm and understanding of the problems that the general public have with science. He doesn't shy away from saying that the vast majority of people think that science is dull, difficult and that scientists are untrustworthy. But he thinks that the apprehensions are things that you can get past by showing science in its true light. We need to show that science isn't some abstract thing that has no impact on people's lives, but is in fact integral to pretty much every area of life, and basic science is in fact easy to demonstrate and understand. Also people need to be shown that by applying the basics of scientific, or experimental principles, they are able apply a better filtering of ideas or views that are obvious crap from those which have a weight of evidence. I can't do justice to all the things he said here, but the main new thing I came away with was that I should use more video clips in public talks.

At the moment I'm sitting in the morning plenary talks session and have heard a couple of very good talks. The first talk was by Jacqueline Hewitt from MIT and was about looking from a 21 cm background from neutral Hydrogen in the dark ages. The 21 cm line (the wavelength of the electromagnetic wave) is a radio frequency emission line from neutral Hydrogen (i.e. an electron bound to a proton), and the dark ages represent a period in the universe between the production of the CMBR (i.e. the time at which protons and electrons first are able to stay bound within Hydrogen atoms, without being disassociated by the radiation field) and the reionisation of that Hydrogen by radiation from the first stars after they form. I'd not really heard much on this subject before and was very interested to here about the methods for going about trying to detect this emission. I'll keep an eye on this stuff in the future as they should be able to learn a lot about structure formation in the early universe from such observations.

The next talk in the plenary session was about global warming by James Hansen - I think it's probably more useful to hear this stuff from a scientist who works on the subject than from Al Gore. I've never really been confronted (or looked out myself) the evidence for human induced global warming, so this talk was very enlightening. He showed how the Earth's climate (temperature, sea levels, greenhouse gas levels) has fluctuated by large amount over periods of hundred of thousands of years and the reasons for this. The main point being that these changes are very gradual and the feedback mechanisms of the Earth take a long time to respond to them, whereas now the man-made release of greenhouse gases is well over and above natural level and the planet can't deal with these as part of the natural long term trends. The idea that short term variations in the solar flux have lead to the current warming don't seem to hold up much weight after you've seen the long term trends. He proposed many of the main ideas to deal with energy consumption and emission problems, but obviously these need governments to introduce proactive policies or nothing will get done.

Anyway I need to make a move and head to the airport soon. Next post will be back from blighty.

Hair brained

In some physics related hair news, top Caltech GR theorist Kip Thorne has decided to emulate a black hole and have 'no hair' (really sorry about the black-hole physics based joke.) I saw him wandering about at the APS meeting the other day and he'd completely removed his famous ponytail!

More science news

Other interesting talks I saw yesterday involved dark matter and GR.

In this dark matter session I saw a talk on Noble liquid dark matter detectors and axion detection. The talk on Noble liquid dark matter detectors was by Richard Gaitskell of Brown University. This man is the most English man ever! He puts Hugh Grant to shame. The talk was littered with many utterances of "Damn!" and general foppish bumbling, in the endearingly charming way that only a true Englishman can pull off. It was an entertaining talk describing the how you can look for neutron recoils caused by WIMPs (a term for a variety of dark matter candidates) within various Noble gas detectors. The other talk in this session that I saw was about axion detection by Dave Tanner of the University of Florida (who some of us at Glasgow, and within the gravitational wave community will know). The axion is another dark matter candidate. It was proposed as a solution to the CP problem in various weak interactions (you expect interactions to be symmetric i.e. if you take a reaction and mirror it [swap the charges, parities and directions of the particles involved] then you expect things to look the same, but there are certain interaction involving the weak force where charge conjugation and parity are not symmetric [imagine walking towards a mirror, but your reflection moves away from the mirror - that would be a strongly broken symmetry]). You can't detect the axion itself, but it will decay into two photons although with a decay time much greater than the age of the universe. If you want to try and detect this decay you have to induce the decay. The talk was about the axion detector ADMX, which aims to detect axions forming a cold dark matter halo around the Milky Way. It does this by using a microwave cavity to try and induce the axions to decay. One of the most interesting ideas talked about was a future plan to generate and detect axions using optical cavities within large magnetic fields. You create axions from the photon field on one side of a wall, this axions flow through the wall and are then converted back to photons on the other side - you essentially are "shining light through a wall"! It was very interesting.

The final talk I saw yesterday was a nice historical perspective on the development and use of General Relativity. It was a very entertaining talk, with lots of anecdotes, which showed that even the great minds who worked on the foundations of GR could make mistakes.

Later today I give my own talk, so I should give it a run through at some time to make sure I can stay on time (I've only got 10 minutes).