Haven't done this in a while, so thought it was about time I did something.

Went to see Muse on Saturday night. It doesn't take a genius to work out that they were going to rock. As much as they did? A little unexpected. Personal highlights include the mad mechanical housing thing the drummer lived in, covered by a thousand lights, and the renditions of New Born and Plug In Baby from Origin of Symmetry, and Invincible and Knights of Cydonia from the latest album, the latter of which was the finale. The older stuff was especially good - they've always been favourites of mine, and to finally hear them (and feel them) played with such passion and skill was worth every penny of the ticket price alone.

I might have a job soon, and I'm getting excited about the prospect. After three and a bit years of a PhD which I've come to loathe with all my heart, the idea of something new, with structure and realisable targets, and decent pay, has got me all hot under the collar. Obviously it's too early to tell if either of the interview processes I'm involved in will actually be successful, but hopefully one or both of the two will actually be offered to me.

Final bit of news - a new blog. Well, not yet, but in a little bit when I get it sorted out. I need a place to write random stuff about the model aircraft, and this isn't it. Went to a show type thing on Saturday (before Muse - I'm so schizophrenic), and was disappointed to find that many of the stereotypes of modellers do hold true. I won't say too much more than that, as I'm sure you can fill in the blanks for yourself. I know there are modellers out there who don't fit in to the traditional stereotypes, but they seem to be few and far between judging by Saturday's evidence.

One last thing (sorry!) - got an e-mail this morning about a seminar given by one of the departments here at the university. Part of it reads (and this is copied and pasted from the e-mail, a direct quote): " SKA is expected to be operational with a severe cost constraint of one billion Euros". SKA stands for Square Kilometre Array, and it's basically a large radio telescope. What bothers me about this, and one of the things that I've never managed to square away about the whole research thing, is the concept that a billion Euros is a 'severe cost constraint'. That's more than the GDP of the entire African state of Lesotho. Or, alternatively, more than the combined GDP of the six poorest nations in the IMF. On a bloody great telescope. Don't get me wrong, I'm all for progress, but surely this money would be better spent elsewhere, such as in the hunt for decent, sustainable energy sources, or the search for a cure for AIDS or cancer. Complaining that you 'only' have a billion Euros for your big telescope is childish and shortsighted, which pretty much sums up a lot of scientific endeavour these days...

New word for you: imperiment. Meaning an experiment designed to test an empirical relationship. This probably doesn't mean a lot to anyone outside the scientific community. Still, maybe it'll catch on and I'll get credited for it. Though I should point out that if you Google 'imperiment', lots of rather stupid people have used the word where they meant to say 'impairment'. You know, I have this idea that perhaps it should be compulsory to attain a certain level of English language ability before being allowed to publish (in English, obviously) anything on the net. I'm not talking about typos here (and yes, 'typos' is correct, not 'typoes', nor indeed 'typo's'), I'm talking about a basic misunderstanding of the mechanics of the language. Come on, people, get a clue...

Time to think...
For the first time in some time, I've slept well, and my head's buzzing with all sorts of things that I need to blog about.

First up, students. I don't know if there are more than there ever have been or what, but it's hell out there. Somehow over the months of summer when it's blisfully quiet in the department, I forget what it's like to have the screaming hordes about, but then I come back to Earth with a bump when they turn up again. Standing around in their little cliques, defined by the clothes they wear and generally looking more than a little gormless, it's hard not to laugh at them. I'm sure I was never that bad, but then everyone says that, don't they?

Next, the intangibility of blogs. It's lovely to have this kind of diary available wherever a net connection is, and it may even be useful to be able to share this shit, but there are certain things that I can't do with a blog that I used to be able to do when I had a notebook with me all the time. I'm not saying I always did these things, but having the knowledge that I could was good. Let me give you a couple of little examples, then you can go away and think of a few for yourself. Leaves. Example number one. I walked through the park this morning, an activity which has recently been curtailed by a need to go via the chemistry building and turn on my microscope, allowing it sufficient time to warm the lasers before work commences for the day. The park, I realise, has changed in my absence, taking on its autumn livery in spectacular fashion. I love this time of year in the park, and work is threatening to deprive me of it. Ok, maybe not deprive me, as I could go out of my way to turn the 'scope on, but I have to add a little drama to make all this hammering at a keyboard worthwhile. If I was still using a notebook, I could have taken one of the many fallen oakleaves in their gorgeous hues and stuck it in with excessive selotape, and hoped the colours would have held. Unlikely, but it would still have been a more visceral reminder of the season than a few clumsy words jotted down here in cyberspace. And no, a picture on the cameraphone uploaded won't do - where's the spontaneity in that?
Example two is the ability to sketch. Or lack of, in the case of the net. I have a graphics tablet. I can't sketch on it, because it's attached to the computer at home. I can't sketch with a mouse, I write left-handed and operate computers in the normal way. Besides, it doesn't have the effect of graphite on paper. This is no good. The answer, of course, is to get a notebook and carry it around.

[I am an idiot, but I have my resaons for being so. I hold on to my insensibility like a protective blanket. I'm not rational or logical, I do go off on tangents, and I daydream as though it is more important than real life. I have highs and lows, dramatic mood swings, and I'm really enthusuastic about things to the point of annoying people. All of these things allow me the artistic side to my personality that I believe a lot of people see as an affectation on my part. It genuinely isn't. I told someone recently that on a scale of artistic ability versus a scale in ability in the physical sciences, I'm a lot higher on the artistic scale than I am on the physics scale. This is true. There are a greater number of people in the world who are better than me at physics, than there are who are better at drawing than I am. That is not to say I have artistic talent in any great abundance, but then nor do I have talent as a scientist. It's all smoke and mirrors, and blagging. I hate science, when it comes down to it. It's not science's fault, it's just that when you get labelled and you have the sort of anti-authoritarian attitude that I have, you tend to hate the label and the source of the label.]

Third on my list of things today is another list of three. Watching a little daytime TV this morning (part of my getting enough sleep routine), I was shocked to see a three-minute-long advert break filled with adverts that could all have been fitted into one of the following categories:
1) insurance offers
2) loan offers
3) crappy legal advice.
They aren't well made, and they don't convince me that the companies behind them are particularly nice or all that clever. I intrinsically won't go for a company called something along the lines of "Let's sue the bitches!!", or similar. I won't ever take legal action because I tripped over somewhere. I won't ever need to remortgage my house because I'm so fucking stupid with money that I've racked up four quadrillion pounds worth of debt on nineteen credit cards, and I certainly won't ever buy insurance from a company whose advertising campaign revolves around a small CG knight in a 1930s racing car (Hastings Direct, if you must know). Who the fucking hell do these people think we are, and how the hell did the advertising companies ever convince them these concepts could fly? Oh, and one more thing - please shoot me if I ever take out a life-changing amount of money on loan from a company that includes ".co.uk" in its name. Cretins...

BBC SPORT | Cricket | England | Injured Gough replaced by Onions
And I always thought he looked like a sack of potatoes... Don't bother reading the story, the headline's the funny bit.

Paris Hilton targeted in CD prank

Another genius ploy. Hats off to Banksy for once again showing that modern British art isn't about chopping animals in half. Although I'm a little surprised to find this in the Entertainment section of BBC News - since when has Paris Hilton constituted 'entertainment'?

Stroller, Strider or Stormer
Everyone fits into one of three handy pigeonholes in this regard. Unless you have no legs. You are either:
a) a stroller - someone who slows down when walking uphill,
b) a strider - someone who maintains their speed no matter what gradient they're faced with, or
c) a stormer - someone who is so pissed off that the hill has the afront to be in their way that they actually speed up when faced with an incline.
So, which are you? Answers on a postcard to the usual address.

No purchase necessary. Closing date 1st October 2012. Thomas Rowson Ltd. cannot be held responsible for any disappointment felt at the lack of a real prize, or any loss or damage incurred by third parties as a result of any actions he may perform. This is not a VAT receipt.

French Goodness
I'm an argumentative old git, I really am. In any conversational situation, I will take a view contrary to the general opinion often just for the hell of creating a bit of a stir. So, when the whole table is Frog-bashing, I'm secretly lining up a series of things the French are good at in my head. Here, then, is my comprehensive list of French goodness:
1) The Citroen DS (not to be confused with the similar, but ultimately slightly smaller, Nintendo DS).
2) Parkour (ankle-breaking joy).
3) Claire French (good friend and one of Jen's bridesmaids, and not even technically from France).
So, you see, the French really are good for something.

BBC NEWS | World | Americas | CNN says sorry for live mic gaffe
Absolute unadulterated genius. And you thought this only happened in Naked Gun...

Tatsfield in the Doomsday Book
My wife isn't as impressed by this as I am... This is the village I grew up in. It's pretty small, not tiny, but it has a lot of history attached. That's it, really, just thought I'd let you know.

And a gatekeeper, a sign of high summer, so they say.

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