Get me a Go Fast boat

Last night I watched the DVD of the Michael Mann film adaptation of Miami Vice, starring Colin Farrell and Jamie Foxx. After watching it and mulling over its finer points I think it deserves a review, so here goes: Utter shit! That's about it really. It's got some nice night shots of speed boats (or "Go fast boats" as they seem to be known in the vice trade!) and cars, but the rest is pure drivel, and only semi-understandable drivel at that. Oh, the soundtrack is actually half-decent, but that's not generally what you'll go to see a film for. If you want to watch a Michael Mann thriller/action film watch Collateral instead, which I though was a lot better, or maybe Heat, which is supposed to be very good, but I've not seen.

Newsletter of the week

Don't ask me how I found this, but here's an amusingly (or rather grossly) titled, and pictured, December newsletter for the The Australian Society For Parasitology. They're a funny bunch of guys those Aussie parasitologists ;)

Seek and you will find

Before getting up this morning I was all ready to write a scathing post about the person who cleaned my room in my flat in Hannover. Yesterday after noticing how clean and tidy my room was following a visit from the cleaner I was looking around for the white plastic bag that I've been putting my dirty laundry in. That morning it had been sitting in the corner of my room covered by a t-shirt, but in my new tidy room it was nowhere to be found. I searched far a wide, in cupboards, under beds, behind chairs, even in other rooms in the flat, but still nothing. My only reasonable assumption left was that the cleaner had thought that this bag of clothes was rubbish and had thrown it out (or taken them away to be washed, but I thought that a bit far-fetched) as the bag was one of the bin bags from the kitchen - although clearly wasn't being used as a bin. In my opinion it was a bit overzealous and an assumption too far to throw out someone else clothes, so I was rather annoyed. Today I thought I'd have to go and talk to the guy I'm renting the flat from and let him know what happened, but something stopped me. That something was opening my curtains this morning and finding my bag of dirty clothes sitting on the windowsill. I probably even closed the curtains over them myself. The lesson is that even when you think you've searched everywhere there's probably somewhere obvious that you've not looked.

Better than the rest

A recent study (via the BBC) has revealed something that all drummers already know - that we're super fit athletes with huge levels of stamina and energy (the study says on a level equivalent to top athletes, but it's bound to really be at a higher level.) There's none of this standing around lazily strumming a guitar, prodding keys on a keyboard, or speaking into a microphone that the rest of a band does. The drummer is giving it their all constantly in a frenzy of arm and leg movement that would make an octopus feel inadequate. You only have to look at the fact the drummers will often wear cut-off t-shirts, or no t-shirt at all, will sweat profusely, and need a steady supply of liquid (beer-based preferably) to see the supreme level of hard word that they put in. Anyway all I'm saying is that drummer's are ace - oh, and everyone else is just a lazy, unfit loser ;)

Seven of one and half a dozen (plus one) of the other

Today I went to watch some Rugby Sevens at the AWD-Arena in Hannover. Now rugby isn't a sport I'd expected to see when I came out to Germany, but when I saw that they were hosting the final leg of the European Rugby Sevens Championship I thought why not go along. The event was over two days, but I only went for the final phase games today. It was a good afternoons worth of rugby and I probably saw about 12 games over four and a half hours. There were some pretty bad matches (the poor Belgian's could score a single point,) but also some decent ones, with the Georgians, the Spanish and the Russians all putting on decent shows. The atmosphere in the stadium definitely became livelier when Germany were playing and they did reasonably well. The generally well established rugby nations of Wales and Ireland, despite getting to the highest Cup stage of the competition today, both looked distinctly poor. The one problem that does come with Sevens matches is that they only last 14 mins, so each game doesn't really have time get a character of its own. You don't get the ups and downs, and major incidents, that come with a full length game.

All-in-all I enjoyed the afternoon as I haven't been to see any live sport in ages (I think the last time was a Scotland vs. England six nation match three or four years ago!) I think a few of us might consider going along to the AWD-Arena again to catch a Hannover 96 Bundesliga game - their first home game is over the weekend of 22-24th August again FC Energie Cottbus (which just leaves me to say, in a Scouse accent, "FC Energie Cottbus! Who are they!?", "Exactly".)

Claims

Some of you may remember that on my trip to Los Angeles a few months ago my luggage went missing (you may not know that on my return flight the stuff I'd had to buy in the US also went missing for a couple of days due to the Heathrow Terminal 5 debacle.) My luggage (from the outbound flight) was never recovered, so on returning I made a claim on my travel insurance for the cost of everything I'd lost. I received this payment a couple of weeks ago, which was nice as I've had to buy quite a few new clothes to replace everything I lost. However, there was still the cost of things I had to buy while I was out in the US to keep me clothed, and not to pungent, through the two weeks I was there, and I want this reimbursed. To this end I've written a strong, but not impolite letter to British Airways (who I flew with) asking them to cover these costs (which is their policy) and giving them a couple of tips on how to deal with lost luggage in the future. I've only waited this long to do it, because they wanted my insurers claim reference number which I only just got given. In the letter I have suggested that when someones luggage goes missing they contact all the airports that that luggage has been through on it's journey in case it is stuck at one. Apparently this isn't what is currently done, because I was informed that the only airport that knew my luggage was missing was Los Angeles, and neither Glasgow or Heathrow airports, through which I'd travelled, had any idea to look for it. I was also told, by the BA lost luggage phone operatives, that they couldn't phone any of the airports as they didn't have the phone numbers. I think it's a bit strange for an airline to not supply their people who deal with lost luggage phone numbers that might allow them to find out where it is. They did, however, say that they could Telex the airports - now I'm not sure what century BA are living in, but Telex doesn't seem the best option to me. The other thing I discovered, which I've informed BA about, was that my lost luggage wasn't considered urgent priority until 10 days after it went missing, and only then because I asked them to try a bit harder to find it - what, in reality, making it urgent priority meant I don't know, but I don't imagine it was anything more than something to placate me. However, I'd have liked to think that they considered it urgent right from day one. At the time when I talked to any of the BA customer relations people on the phone I was always polite, as I really don't like shouting at people down the phone, especially when I don't think it'll do any good, but I'm hoping my letter (which I'm sending both by email and regular post) will have the desired effect i.e. get me some compensation money.

[Update - I got a very prompt reply from BA basically saying that they were very sorry for losing my luggage twice, but they wouldn't be giving me any compensation seeing as I'd already made an insurance claim. Oh, and they did hope I would still continue to fly with them. Now I'm not too concerned about getting money out of them as I have received my insurance payout, but I would like some form of compensation other than a letter of apology, because as it is they have got away scot free from the whole affair. It's only the insurance company that have had to pay anything. Needless to say I'll be writing back to them to extract something.]

A day at the fair

Yesterday a few of us visited the Schützenfest to check out the festivities. We were surprised at the lack of actual shooting (where all the Schützen were we didn't know) as the main festival area is just a big fairground. Despite the disappointment at not seeing anything getting shot at we decided to explore the fairground. It had all the rides you'd expect from your general fun fair in the UK (bumper cars, ghost trains, fun houses, roller coasters, ferris wheels, and every kind of spinning machine you care to mention) along with a good selection of more German-style-fayre in the form of sausage vendors and beer tents. I went on all the rides I could find that had "Star" in the title. The first of which, Star flyer, was your general spiny-round swings on chains set up, but then elevated a good 30 metres or so into the air. It gave a good view of the surrounding and was a rather relaxing ride. The other ride I went on was the Star gate (you know, like from the film and TV series) except it wasn't a worm-hole that you could step through to other far flung parts of the universe, it just spun you round in different directions and at various angles to the horizontal. Perhaps the strangest thing we saw was a tent in which a man was trying to get members of the public to take part in what I can only assume was an illegal, unlicenced, boxing match. He paired up the punters with his own fighters and then took them into the tent followed by a crowd of the public who were baying for blood (well not really, but some of them might have been.) We could only assume that some kind of bare-knuckle fight-to-the-death style action went on. The fest is on for the whole week, so at some point we're going to have to find out where the shooting's at.

Ain't talkin' 'bout dub

Getting to see an English language film shown in it's original form without it being dubbed into German is apparently quite a rare thing in Hannover (I suppose for the obvious reason that it's in Germany and generally people are statistically more likely to speak and understand German.) So when a film is being shown in English here it can be a big event for those that can understand it and prefer to see the unadulterated version of the film - you get to hear the actual actors who were paid to star in the film rather than their, not-necessarily similar sounding, German counterparts. I'm giving this set up to lead into a cinema outing that a group of about 25 or more of us (who work at the AEI) went on on Friday evening. Someone had heard that the new Will Smith movie Hancock was being shown (for one showing only) in English, so despite it not being at the top of many people's lists of films to see (I'd heard only bad reviews) we all jumped at the chance of going. Having now watched the film I have to say that I quite enjoyed it. It wasn't great, but it was a decent action movie with good effects and a story that had its funny moments and didn't drag. The film is probably saved by only being about one and a half hours long and if they'd tried to keep it up for longer it would have started grating, although the shortness did mean a lot of stuff had to be left unexplained. I also enjoyed the fact that I could buy a beer in a big multiplex cinema and take it into the screen with me, but that's not really to do with the film.

Shooting up the place

Today sees the start of the world largest Schützenfest, or German markmens festival, in Hannover. The main thing I've noticed for this is a large fun fair in town, but apparently (according to wikipedia) there's going to be of order 5000 marksmens trying to become Schützenkönig by shooting at, amoung other things, wooden eagles! In addition to this there're beer tents (obviously) and a very long parade. It runs all week, so I should have some more to say about it when I go along to some of the events.

Politcal correctness gone mad!

Here's a funny story (via Pharyngula) about how the right-wing American Family Association's news aggregation site over zealously (well not really just over zealously, but just plain stupidly) used an automatic auto-correct on the news stories it received to correct the word "gay" to "homosexual" - heaven forbid the good, god-fearing folk, of America's perceptions should be sullied by the word gay being used to mean homosexuality! A screen cap of the particular news story, which has now been corrected, can be found here. Scroll down that link to see some of the previous headlines that the auto-correct has produced - a particular favourite, although they're all good, is "Close call: Homosexual barely averts major flop in 100".

The horn of loss

Last night a few of us went to the football stadium in Hannover, outside which they'd erected a big screen, to watch the Euro2008 final between Germany and Spain. There was a pretty big crowd of people there (you could hear the general crowd hum from several hundred metres away), a lot of German flags being waved and also painted on peoples faces, and a reasonable, but not that excessive, amount of noise being made. For the first half of the match the crowd were fairly subdued, with one or two groups of people occasionally trying half-heartedly to start a chant of "Super, super Deutchland". In terms of the football the German's got off to a fast paced start in the first 10 minutes, but that was about it from them as Spain took over the match and scored towards the end of the half. The crowd picked up a bit in the second half (maybe created by the DJ during half time trying to gee the fans up a bit with some tunes) despite being a goal down. There was a bit more of a buzz in the air, and hope that Germany could pull it back. However it didn't translate to the match as Spain continued to dominate and quickly closed down any German plays when they were on the ball. Spain were the deserved winners in the end, but surprisingly it didn't put that much of a dampener on the German fan's spirits around Hannover. In fact they seemed more animated and rowdy now that the game was over and they'd lost. On the streets every car was going by with people leaning out the window's waving German flags and beeping their horns. It's quite different to how a similar event (if we ever make a final that is) would be back in England, which would have involved a properly ludicrous level of chanting, singing, shouts of support/abuse/derision during the match, but then a very sober silence when we lost as everyone headed home faces held in hands.

Stretching the skins

One of the selling points for me coming out to Hannover for the summer was that our former Corpse Full of Bees/Look Up for Danger guitarist was here and we planned to start up a band again. However this did mean that I needed some drums. So this week I bought myself an actual real-life drumkit on ebay, unlike the electronic kit that I already own. After a bit of searching on ebay I found a German seller (o-trading-company) who offered various instruments, generally pictured being held by naked women, at very reasonable prices. The kit I bought was dirt cheap at a whole £115(!), so as you can imagine it's not the highest quality (the single snare I bought last year cost around the same amount) and could well have been put together by small children in a Chinese sweat-shop. That said after putting the drums together yesterday and having a bit of a play I've been pleasantly surprised with their sound quality. The different drums seem to make the sounds that they're supposed to - you know, a kind of "boom boom" sound of various pitch depending on the drum size. The main problem, and an unsurprising one given the price I paid, is that the cymbals (a high-hat and small crash) aren't all that great - they're fairly thin and after just the one practice I've put some major dents in them. Now that I have the kit, and we have a room to practice in (next to the Atlas computer cluster that the AEI have just put together), I'll just have to get good at playing.

It was a dark and windswept night

This article's a few days old (seen via BA), but I think it deserves some more recognition in honour of it containing the best picture ever! (You could read the article, but it will only make you feel slightly sullied as it is from the Mail.)



But what could have spooked that helicopter so much (despite the notoriously jumpy sheep seeming as relaxed as ever)? Apparently it was some lanterns.

A game of four quarters

You may have noticed a lack of posts from me about Euro2008 (other than the initial one from just before the tournament started) and assumed that this was down me being completely disinterested by the whole thing because England aren't in it. Well if you did assume that then you'd be wrong as I've been avidly watching as many games as possible (probably about 85% of games so far.) It's been quite relaxing to not have to worry about when England were going to let me down, so I've been getting quite a lot of enjoyment out of just watching games for the football's sake.

So far the tournament's been pretty good, although the quarter finals have shown how variable in quality the games can be. The Portugal vs. Germany game started off the quarters quite well with an open game, a good number of goals and an exciting finish, but Portugal definitely weren't the team they'd been in the group stages and Germany's full backs were still as motionless and drab as before. The Croatia vs. Turkey games was a dull, uninspiring affair for a good 115 mins of regular and then extra time. It was only saved by the shear craziness and excitement of the last few minutes, with Croatia looking all but through with their late goal and then conceding an equiliser with literally the final kick of the game. This produced the lottery (yeah it's a cliché, but what you gonna do) of a penalty shoot-out, with Turkey coming out victorious. This now lines up what will hopefully be a tasty encounter between Germany and Turkey, which should be rather interesting to watch here in Hannover with its large Turkish community.

In the other half of the draw we started off with an interesting and good watch in the Netherlands vs. Russia game. The Dutch never seemed to really get going into a flowing style and the Russian's just outplayed them with pace and tenacity. I think that the young (he's only 21 you know, as the German commentators were very fond of pointing out) Russian Arshavin (and yes I had the same thoughts about his name as Andrew Collins) will be snapped up by some big side during the summer. In contrast to that game we had a very lacklustre show for Spain vs. Italy. Neither team seemed to want to go at the game and win it, with lots of slow, dull build ups leading to nothing. To be fair Italy hadn't shown signs of wanting to play in the previous games, but I'd expected more from Spain. In the end a penalty shoot-out was probably the best option, as neither team deserved to win from what they'd shown in the previous, tedious, 120 mins, and it at least gave us viewers some tension and excitement.

One major disappointment about the quarter finals is that they've not been kind on my fantasy football team. I had no Russian or Turkish players, as I'd stuck with the more conventional teams. Now I just have to decide whether to go all out crazy and compose my team of players from the two teams that I think are going to win the semis, or have a general selection from the 4 teams left.

World music

Hannover was abuzz with music yesterday as they were hosting a Fête de la Musique. This involved putting up a load of stages at various places around the centre of the city, each having bands with a certain musical style e.g. there was a pop stage, a jazz stage, a rock stage, etc. On wandering through the city with jakeybob for a bit of a look around we saw various of these stages. We didn't stay in any one place very long and didn't hear anything particularly great, but there was a generally happy atmosphere about the place which was nice - it was a really nice day to, so that might have added to the feeling of pleasantness. Other than the music festival our best discovery was that at the reservoir in the town (the Maschsee) you can hire sail boats, row boats, or pedalos. This has now been put at high priority on the things to do while here list.

Een nieuwe start

Unsurprisingly Steve McClaren's had to move away from England for his next football management job (he's gone to FC Twente, a Dutch top flight team, with a prospect of qualifying for the Champions League.) Also, unsurprisingly a large proportion of his new team's fans aren't best pleased - "Ninety per cent of fans think why him? But he is used to working with top players," said club chairman Joop Munsterman!

Changing priorities

A while back I briefly posted about the release of STFC's programmatic review in which it ranked the priorities of varies particle physics and astronomy research projects (much, much more can be found all over the internet e.g. here and here.) The programmatic review was based on the advice of the Physics, Astronomy & Nuclear Physics Science Committee (PPAN) which was made up of a relatively small group of physicists and astronomers. This process was highly criticised by the wider UK physics and astronomy community for not being informed by a much broader consultation of experts. So for the last few months the priorities have been reassessed by a variety of ad hoc panels with the aim of giving a more truthful representation of where the community believes the UK's priorities should lie (although even this process has not been entirely well received, due to it's untimely and hurried nature.) Obviously it would be nice, and most profitable scientifically, to see everything being given a high priority, but with the current climate some hard choices have to be made. For the projects receiving high to medium priorities I think things should be reasonably safe funding-wise at least until the government's next comprehensive spending review, however it does leaves the projects with the lowest priority facing the very harsh reality of having funding completely pulled. The reason I'm writing this post is that yesterday the reports from these ad hoc consultation panels were released. I've not read all of them, but from this BBC article it's seems that things are in pretty similar shape priority-wise to how they were after the programmatic review. However, various things like eMerlin and some solar projects seem to have been slightly bumped up the list (although I think it's mainly a result of another tier being added to the bottom of the priority scale and they've been moved off the bottom one.) The one report I have looked at is that for Astro-particle physics, in which gravitational wave research lives, and it seems to have been kept at the highest level of prioritisation. According to the report there had been some grumbling from the wider community that there were too many high-to-medium priority gravitational wave projects in the list, but I think the report answers the that criticism well. For the relatively small level of funding that we (the UK) put into gravitational wave research (a few million pounds) we get a disproportionately large amount back i.e. we have access to all the data from the current GEO600, LIGO (a billion dollar scale project!) and Virgo detectors, as well as that which will come from the next generation of detectors. Also the potential reward for being the gravitational wave game is very high. People may well disagree and cite the fact that nothing's been detected yet, but I think these are very valid reasons to keep up the funding of these projects. Of course I would say this as it's my field of research. These reports aren't yet the final outcome though and we'll have to wait until 8^th July until the final version of the programmatic review is published.

Not the 9 o'clock news

In my apartment in Hannover I have access to a variety of TV channels (I don't know if it's satellite or just plain digital TV) in which I have two English language news networks: CNN and Sky News. In the past I've occasionally flicked past Sky News, but I've never really watched it for an extended period. Until now. It really is bad, despite proclaiming itself "News Channel of the Year". It's like the Sun, but on TV - even having right-wing pundit, Sun columnist and talk radio host Jon "Gaunty" Gaunt doing its newspaper review. This probably isn't surprising given it's ownership by Rupert Murdoch's News International, but it is slightly disappointing (I at least want BBC World and even that's pretty shit.) It's only saving grace is that it has that nice Eamonn Holmes presenting its breakfast show.

Germary, Germany over all!

So long UK, guten tag Deutschland. In a work-motivated move I have come out to the Albert Einstein Institute in Hannover to experience how working life is out here and hopefully get lots of important stuff done (a paper here, an analysis there, etc.) This is going to be an extended visit lasting until late September (when a trip to Munich for a certain event know as Octoberfest might be happening.) I arrived today, after a being delayed a day due to a plane cancellation, and since then things have gone smoothly - that's your typical German efficiency in action. With the help of a couple of ex-Glasgow colleagues I was escorted from the train station, taken to lunch, shown were my apartment was, and given a tour of the institute. I've taken up residence in a office and been given a key and security entrance key-fob thing. Now all that remains for the day is to sample some beer and sausage.

C'est trop cher

One of the things you notice when staying in central Paris is how expensive it is to buy drinks. I think this is especially the case in the more touristy areas, in one of which my hotel happens to be. Now drinks in London are generally considered to be pricey by UK standards, but they're nothing compared to the cost over here. For example last night I paid €8.50 for a half litre of Heineken - at current exchange rates that's £6.72, and it's not even quite a whole pint!