I'd just like to lament for a moment...
News reaches me today of the closure of my favourite old nightclub, the Blue Orchid in Croydon. For years the haven of speed garage, and indeed its very birthing place, and now lost to us all. I had e-mail correspondence with friends about its passing, and thought I'd share with you the little euology I wrote:

"You know what I’ll miss most? It’s not the preposterously high prices, nor the ridiculous size of the hoop earrings on the girls. Nor, indeed, is it the dodgy bird getting fingered in the background of the photo we were taking of Ant, or stepping in the way before Oz gets himself spread over the walls by a guy only marginally less pissed than he was. I won’t even miss the way your shoes would stick to the carpet on the way in, or the smell of that alleyway they always chucked you into when you were too far gone, or the Smarties-tube kaleidoscope of Ben Shermans, or the anticipation of getting in there, or dancing the Gunman on stage to the derision of all my mates, or experimenting to find out that beer really is very bad for my kidneys, or not being able to hear yourself think for three days afterwards because you were standing RIGHT in front of a speaker all night, too pissed to move away. No, what I’ll miss is that feeling that you really were present at the height of something truly great. Looking back, objectively, it wasn’t all that smart. But damn me if it didn’t feel a thousand times better back then.
Rest in Peace my old friend. Never shall we forget…"

That's all for now, I'm off to stare misty-eyed into the middle distance.

Words of the Day: is there really something better than this? Hell yes, there is.
As I sit in my Ikea-styled office, tapping away on the keys of my Intel powered PC, my mind wanders to other places and times. It's because I listen to the music I listen to. Greenday, Blink 182. Makes me want to be somewhere else. These songs are inspired by a place I never go. There's no way to get there from where I am, no roads, no planes, no tracks. It's grey outside, cold and drizzling. Instead of riding my mountain bike along twisting singletrack, lifted in mind and body, I sit here staring at the steel grey sky, being added to by the grey steel slowly blocking my only view. Bastards. I want to surf waves, not internet pages. I want to be uncomfortable, to be cold when it's not warm, hot when I have to be, wet when the Ocean (capital 'o') demands it. I feel like sometimes I'm the only one who feels this way. It's only fun if it's sanitised, controlled fun, it seems. Not if you end up dirty, cold, wet and fucking miserable. It's that particular misery you'll look back and realise was the peak of euphoria. Nothing comes close. You can be at the very end of your exertion, no energy left, nothing left to give, no more offerings for Poseidon, but I guarantee you'll find one more when you see that wave coming. One more time, one more paddle out, one more turn and wait, one more moment of unsurpassed pleasure as the swell lifts you, pitches you forward, carries you down the face of the wave and threatens to crush you from above, all in the same breath. One more swift transition, one more moment of instability as you assert your control over the unruly lump of styrene beneath you, one way forward, and that's down, into the heart of it, water curling over you, threatening. Then that jolt as you hit it just right, that swift transition from slug to bullet, from wave-bait to whitewater taunter. You can't outrun the thing, can't get away from it, because you're stuck to the face of the it. But you know you have it tamed, if not beaten. Can't be complacent, but there's still a moment of celebration, still the feeling that for that briefest of moments you're king, or queen, whatever. Then it dumps you, and you feel fucking stupid, but you go back for more, because no matter how many times you get hit, no matter how many times you come up with water in your lungs, no matter how many times your eyes scream in pain at the intrusion of the gallons of water, no matter how cold you are, no matter how many people have lost bits of themselves doing this this year, no matter that there's a storm coming and it's going to fry anything sticking up above the surface, no matter that your suit is ripped, no matter that you're bleeding, you damn well want to be out there again and again. That's why this office will never be satisfactory. No matter how much Ikea there is.

Just so you know...
The other CDs turned up. As did my gram of poly (dimethylaminoethyl methacrylate). Yay...

Words of the Day: what the f***?
I ordered some stuff online. Some CDs. Everyone who's spent more than a few quid online will know that estimated and real delivery dates are rarely in agreement, so I wasn't exactly expecting miracles. But miracles I got - some CDs ordered after last post on Saturday arrived this morning, Monday morning. Now, in countries where business operates 7 days a week, that might not seem too surprising. But, as everyone who's lived in England will tell you, there's no post on Sundays. They shut the whole bloody thing down. Well, not quite, but you don't count Sunday as a day when working out how long it'll take a package to arrive. This is indeed a wondrous thingy. And even more so when you consider that the other CDs I ordered from the same company two days previously have shown no sign of arriving...
Back to more normal things, I really need to sit down and sh*t out another book sometime soon. Main problem is finding time and brilliance, neither of which I am overly endowed with. Damn. I do have a very strong idea about its direction. It's definitely still rooted in traditional fantasy, but I want to make it a story about environmental issues. Scary? Hell yes. But might work. Thing is, I think it's going to be one of those things where the issue is well buried in the plot, and the decision is the reader's. I hate being told what to think, especially when reading books, and I'm guessing that other people feel the same way. So it's there, waiting to be written, waiting to be born into a cruel world, etc. Maybe one day I'll finish the other few hundred...

Psychologists
Not prone to rambling, especially out of the blue after a long time being away, but I feel I must have a quick go at the world of psychology. Or, perhaps I should say, psychologists themselves.
I'm a scientist. A proper, real life scientist. I'm doing a PhD, and I perform crazy, cutting edge experiments with polymers. Psychologists, it has to be said, do have a certain scientific bent to their occupation, so I'm not angry about them calling themselves scientists. Nor, indeed, am I upset that they seem to come up with random crap about wanting to shag your mum (cliche time, I know, but this is a rant, so I've left my principles at home). What bothers me about psychologists is their smugness. Pure, unadulterated smugness. Take, for instance, their favourite phrase - "you're exactly how I expected you to be". This refers to the amazing ability of psychologists to predict every single trait of your character from the first few moments of meeting you. I'm sure it must be real, because every single psychologist I've ever met tells me the same thing. And yet, and this is the crux of the argument, not ONE, not a single person who has ever told me this, has been able to corroborate this with a prediction in a sealed envelope, or anything of the sort. Now, I don't want it to seem to you, dear reader, that I am in any way doubting the average psychologist's ability to predict my character from the jumper I'm wearing and the way one eyebrow is invariably cocked, but it isn't exactly rigorously scientific to suggest, without corroborating evidence, that the character traits I've just displayed were all too predictable.
Oh, and another thing, they're a bunch of dog electrocuters and mouse confusers...

Oh blog blog blog...
Haven't been here for a while, have I?
No worries, back now, albeit briefly. So, why? Mostly, it seems, because I have far better things to be doing, but don't particularly want to do any of them. There's also the issue of a small warning I must ask you all to heed - when placing an order at Amazon, don't think that just because they've taken your order, they'll actually be able to get what you want. I know the camera was being replaced, but if you can't get the thing, don't take the order, ok Amazon? Caused me more than a little anguish, that particular trick. No worries, though, getting a better and more expensive camera from lovely Dabs, even if they're not going to send it for about 4 years. Ok, more like 4 weeks. Hope they don't turn around and let me down too... Amazon, it has to be said, have managed to regain a very little bit of the respect I had for them by dropping the price of a book I have on pre-order, but it's not enough. It NOT ENOUGH, y'hear? Good. Glad we could sort that out.
Listening to Enema of the State by Blink182 for the first time in a long time. Just remembered I have all sorts of things that need to be done today, and I haven't done any of them. Oh well, there's always tomorrow. It's getting dark outside. Or at least it feels like it's getting dark. Shouldn't be sunset for another three hours or so, but I can feel the night coming, creeping up on me, darkness unfolding to envelop me. Run!

By the way...
That graphic novel I ordered (May 19th) never turned up. Must find out what happened to that...

Let's all say a big "hello!!" to Julian and his blog
My friend Julian, fellow PhD student, had never heard of blogging. I set him straight, and now he's joined the massed ranks of the blogging public. All hail the new blood, etc.

ClimatePrediction.Net gateway
Go help these people, it's worth it.

Words of the Day: "I'm ok, tho', I have a seat in the sun and a tree to talk to about the people going by..."
I was leafing through some old papers (looking for some new paper) when I came across this. I was lost, in Leeds, when I was meant to be in a practical. Ok, perhaps not entirely lost, because I knew exactly where I was. I just didn't happen to know where I was meant to be, so I ended up sitting under a tree in a courtyard waiting to bump into someone I knew. I also drew, and wrote a few other things, and invented a pH cycler to test part of the work I hadn't (and still haven't really) started on my PhD. Then it was stuck at the back of my pad of paper and pretty much forgotten about until now.
I do this a lot. I'm a great one for doodling, and writing random crap down. I have books full of the stuff. Seriously. I'm not a good doodler, though. Some people create great works of art whilst their mind is on a lecture or something equally distracting. I don't. My best work is created when I sit down over a number of days and plug away at something. That's not to suggest it ever reaches a particularly high standard, but I'm much better when I get the chance to go back and look at what I did wrong. That, of course, only applies to drawing and painting. When it comes to writing, I have to rattle off as much as I can before my fingers go numb, and then hope I can remember where I was in the story when i come back ot it three weeks later.
Lots of people walked past me that day. Some took absolutely no notice at all, whilst others stared intently, as if it were strange to be sitting under a tree, turning a six million year old fosilised shark tooth over in my hands (honestly). Some stole furtive glances, others stared brazenly, openly, as if challenging me to stare back. I did, most of the time, when I wasn't writing strange things down. There's a lyric which always comes to me when I'm sitting in the sun on my own. It's from the Chili Peppers track Scar Tissue, and it goes, "with the birds I'll share this lonely view". I don't know why, but it pops into my head uninvited, and there it usually resides until I write it down somewhere. Puts me in mind of a Californian hill-top, bathed in golden afternoon sunshine, with a few gnarled bushes, their shape wrought by the wind. And around me, hopping about and poking their beaks into the dusty ground, little finch-like birds chatter away to each other, unalarmed by my presence. Sometimes I wonder if that place exists, then I kick myself. Of course it exists, I've been there. And it's bloody lovely, I can tell you, especially with the sun setting over the ocean.
Going to get the opportunity for a bit of an adventure this weekend - I'm going out on my bike on my own, which gives me the opportunity to ramble around a bit. I'd usually go out with jen, but I don't think she shares my enthusiasm for particularly steep, rutted paths, so we tend to stick to speedy singletrack. Don't get me wrong, I love singletrack, but after having spent years on stupidly steep hills at home (on top of the North Downs) I miss the hard slog of a first gear, standing-on-the-pedals kind of climb, so I'm very tempted to try to find some out in the Peak District. Weather permitting, of course - after a week of sunshine, we're promised rain. D'oh.
If I seem obsessed with weather, it's because I am. It's that North Downs thing again. I grew up in a community where a light flurry of snow reported in London would mean five feet where we were, and on a few memorable occasions complete isolation from the outside world. But it wasn't all bad - a warm sunny day in London (the nearest big city, in case you were wondering about the comparisons) would mean a sweltering heat-wave on our little chalk outcrop. It was splendid isolation, that place. Although I've come away complaining about never having people my own age to grow up with, not all is negative, by some distance. For a boy fascinated by nature, it was a wonderland, full of thick, dark forests and every kind of creature you'd expect. I entertained fantasies in my young mind that the hills might even harbour big cats, lost or escaped from some zoo, roaming the land and occasinally snatching a sheep or a calf. I don't think there are any big cats out there, but you never know. What there was a lot of was time, to sit and reflect, to come to terms with nature. To be fair, nature doesn't take a ot of coming to terms with, but it is a wonderful thing to be connected to. I hate cities - I'm in one right now, but it happens to be the greenest per square metre in England, or something like that. Up on the chalk, I always felt connected to something a bit wider. Terry Pratchett has written a couple of books for children recently, centring on a character who lives on chalk, and I feel sure he must have had the same experience, because somehow he knows what it's like. If you want that feeling, read the books about Tiffany Aching, 'The Wee Free Men' and 'A Hat Full of Sky'. If you know the feeling, read them anyway. And if you've already read them, well you'll just have to think up something to do instead...
By the way, while I'm here, bit of a recommendation - if you've ever heard any Ben Folds stuff and liked it, make sure to get your hands on a copy of his live album, preferably with the bonus DVD. It's great, especially where he directs the crowd as they valiantly attempt to fill in for the saxophones and trumpets on 'Army'. Amazon do it for about £12, which is a bargain. I made jen listen to, and watch it, last night. I don't think she was quite as enthusiastic about it as I was...