Tue - January 31, 200633000 feetA week in London has come and gone, and I'm midway
across the Atlantic. I'm not always the most patriotic of sorts, but there are
occasions where I sometimes feel like shouting "God Save the Queen!" Today had
one of those. As anyone who travels in the US will know, taking a laptop on a
plane always involves an extra few minutes at the x-ray machine for the utterly
inconsistent and completely arbitrary TSA screeners to examine separately. This
new agency, set up post 9/11, is the epitome of wasteful useless American
bureaucracy; petty, ineffectual and more concerned with their uniforms and
looking good on the job than using any common
sense.
Upon reaching the point of no return at Gatwick, I prepared to wrench open my bag and delve down into it to retrieve the battered powerbook, replete with it's wonky O and " keys, to be sent through the machine. "Oh no dear, you needn't take it out" I was told. Hallelujah! Just another reason to pine for home until the next trip back. Posted at 10:13 am Read More Wed - January 25, 2006Salutations from the Big SmokeAlthough my phone thinks it's 10.46 am, it is most
definitely quarter to three in the afternoon, and I'm writing this from our room
in Chandos House. The flight over wasn't too bad, especially compared to last
year. The plane was almost empty, the power outlet worked fine, the food was
edible and I even got a good nap, courtesy of half a little blue pill and swift
vodka.
The journey from Detroit's B terminal to the international departures in A was a little odd. Under construction last year, or perhaps excised from my memory, a long tunnel connects the two. The tunnel's walls are lined in frosted glass, backlit with everchanging colours, accompanied by music. Sometimes it's soothing greens and blues and the kind of wishy-washy ambient music you sometimes hear on NPR later in the evening. Then everything turns a deep red along with power chords - not quite as relaxing, and I'd hate to be stuck in there if I was already nervous about flying. Posted at 10:56 am Read More Sat - January 21, 2006Good lord, is that the time?Posts to this blog are becoming ever more erratic,
and for that I apologise. The demands of work, and writing daily for Nobel
Intent have that effect,
sadly.
Married life is going well, you will be pleased to hear. Marrying a woman who loves video games has it's definite benefits, although arguments over who's turn it is on the Xbox 360 have been known to break out. On that note, I have followed up my GT4 vs Forza review on Ars Technica with a review of Project Gotham Racing 3 , an absorbing game that looks stunning in HD. Next week we're off to London for leg three of the world's most drawn out wedding, Elle and I are both looking forward to seeing everyone and catching up with friends. Armed with her pink Nintendo DS she should be able to stave off Hexic withdrawl pangs. You can catch up with the last two outings at Withever, and I've been asked by several people if we have a wedding list. The answer is yes, and you can find it at Amazon . Work is rather exciting at the moment, with results flooding in and some interesting findings that hopefully you will be able to read about in the literature soon. Posted at 05:03 pm Read More Wed - November 16, 2005Life rumbles onDon't tell me there's nothing wrong with our
climate. The weather over the last two weeks has fluctuated from 22˚C and
sunny to 2˚C and rainy, and from calm and crisp to tornado warnings and
back again. And it's November! Now the cold seems to be here to
stay.
Wedding photos are up, for those of you who care. My personal favourites are these two:   Now, I promised more on the Mustang, so here goes. Upon arriving at the car hire place near the airport, the man behind the desk offered me the choice of a convertible for a few dollars more, perhaps because we shared the same birthday. He mentioned it was a Mustang, and I had visions of one of the previous shape ones and started to regret the decision. Once we walked outside though, we were greeted with a very red and very new V6 convertible, complete with fake knock-off spinners on the wheels. God knows what they were there for, as you could clearly see the wheel nuts, but J Mays loves his pastiche. Inside the car was dark. Very dark. The seat fabric wasn't too bad, but the plastics were all on the cheap side, and the driving position conspired to be both very high up and at the same time like sitting in a deep bathtub. The seat pitch adjusted, but only enough to lean you forward. None of this helped the visibility. Nor did the steeply raked screen, the thick A-pillars or the small rear window and masses of black hood. Elle was a fan of the electric roof mechanism, having broken one too many nails on Mr Car's new roof, but even there the two manual catches were awkward to release. Nice big boot though. Venturing onto the 5 on our way to In-n-out for the first stop of the day revealed that someone had been very clever with the exhaust engineering. The tepid V6 rumbled like a small block V8, but between its anaemia and the automatic gearbox, the noise that came out didn't really correspond to much forward momentum. Changing direction was an interesting experience too. V6 must be ford code for "wallowy ride", and fast cornering was never to be the order of the day. I did try and get the tail out at La Jolla Village Drive, but even on bicycle tyres there would have been too much weight and grip for the engine to counteract. Still, it wasn't all bad. It looked nice from the outside, the heater and AC worked very well even with the roof down, and the boot was very big. I'd never spend my own money on one, but if you liked the looks and cared not one jot about the way your car handles, then it could be the barge for you. thumb-1.php Posted at 04:31 pm Read More Tue - November 8, 2005T plus 3 days...We're back in Lexington now, after a lovely
weekend away, although it was rather tiring. A recap of the wedding itself will
go up on withever once we get the pictures from Heidi,
the photographer.
Being able to watch the sunset over the Pacific again was fabulous, as was the meal that followed at Tapenade that night. If you're in San Diego and care about the food that you eat, you really must make the effort to try it out. We should have had lunch there after the wedding but they no longer open during the day on the weekends. Nine Ten was very good though. Other gastronomic highlights included a double meat at In-N-Out, The Shack's famous chcken tenders and post-surfing sandwiches at Board & Brew in Del Mar. 
That was the view from the balcony on Sunday morning, a much greyer day than Saturday. The anaemic red mustang in the foreground was our steed for the weekend, and whilst it might look pretty on the outside, I can't imagine why people buy them. Expect a review in the coming days. Jennifer managed to get me out of bed early on Sunday morning to get a little surfing in before we had to leave, and after 18 months out of the water it was such a treat. Despite it being November, the blue-grey water wasn't too cold, the waves were just right and I managed to ride one all the way to the beach. All in all, a perfect weekend. Posted at 11:00 am Read More Wed - November 2, 2005T minus 3 days...Yes, I know, not been writing enough here. What
can I say, things have been busy. If I do find time to write it's for Nobel
Intent.
To make up for it, here's the last thing a Christmas ornament ever sees: 
Finally, Elle and I are off to tie the knot at the end of the week . Posted at 11:15 am Read More Wed - October 12, 2005Nobel IntentWork is going well, the wedding nears. There's
just enough of a chill in the morning and evening air. And Science.Ars has
moved to a new home. Instead of a weekly column it's now daily entries, by me
and one or two others. I present Nobel
Intent.
Posted at 04:27 pm Read More Mon - September 19, 2005So you want to be a scientist?Maybe not, but if you've wondered what we get up
to all day, now's the time to find out. Science.Ars has the first of a
two-parter I've written about being a scientist in
academia.
In other news, if you want to mess about with lego but don't feel like cleaning up the mess, you can do it digitally! The best news is that there's a mac client too, so for once we don't get left out. Posted at 01:35 pm Read More Fri - September 9, 2005A couple of recommendationsLast week, Elle and I finally got a chance to see
the Aristocrats, a new documentary about a joke.
Not just any joke though - an incredibly filthy joke, with roots in Vaudeville
and the music halls, that comedians tell other comedians, but rarely on stage.
I shalln't give much away, but to say it's incredibly funny and if you get the
chance to see it you must.
Last night I saw Dave Gorman's Googlewhack Adventures . Some of you might remember "Are you Dave Gorman", which launched his style of documentary comedy onto an unsuspecting world. In this show, instead of having to find a load of namesakes, Dave has to make a chain of 10 googlewhacks in a row, before his 32nd birthday. For the uninitiated, a googlewhack is a two word search string that, when plugged into Google, returns only one hit. Not as easy as you think, and it's a fluid sport. Perfidious autology was the last one I found, but now it returns more than one hit, so sadly it doesn't count anymore. Posted at 10:41 am Read More Tue - August 30, 2005Well Done Mr BrookFirst it was Andrew, merrily climbing the three
highest peaks in the UK, now it's James cycling from coast to coast. You can
follow the adventure online. I'm pretty impressed at that kind of
behaviour. I don't think I'd be able to do
it.
The students are back and I can't ever find a parking space. I hate them so. It's also pissing down with rain. Hurricane Katrina decided not to wipe New Orleans off the map, and is now just a lowly tropical storm, but she'll be with us for a while. It does mean I don't need to water the plants though. Posted at 01:39 pm Read More Thu - August 25, 2005My cat has a drinking problem...
Passed out asleep on the stairs, no less! But seriously folks, it's been an interesting month. The brutal summer heat looks like it might finally be lifting. Yesterday was cool enough to leave the AC off and the windows open, which the cats appreciated, as it meant they could spend the day on the windowsills smelling the outside world and dreaming of freedom. Yesterday also marked the start of a new year here at the University. As a result you can't park if you get to campus later than about 8.45, and the place is crawling with students, the bane of my life. Imagine if I actually had to teach the little bastards! By the way, here's a nice little comparative review of GT4 and Forza I wrote for Ars. Posted at 09:01 am Read More Fri - July 22, 2005NYT piece on the BluegrassThere's a good article in the New York Times about this area. It describes
it thus:
Start your trip in Lexington, a leisurely university city with antebellum houses and hip new restaurants, which calls itself the horse capital of the world. Justifying the slogan are hundreds of horse farms out in the surrounding countryside, many carpeted in the local bluegrass - so called because it blooms a purplish blue. Worth a read. Posted at 03:16 pm Read More Meme MachineA is for Age - 29
B is for Booze - Bourbon (pref. Woodford or Buffalo
Trace)
C is for Cookie you crave - Jaffa
Cake
D is for Dating tip you’d give your son or
daughter - Be nice
E is for Essential items to bring to a party -
rizlas
F is for Favorite song at the moment - SOS featuring
the Bush Babies - Mos Def
G is for Goof off thing to do - talk to the
cats
H is for Hometown - London
I is for Instrument you play - the
fool
J is for Jam or Jelly you like -
marmite
K is for Kids - not today thanks
L is for Living arrangement - Lexington KY with Elle
and the cats
M is for Mom’s name -
Philippa
N is for Name of first crush -
Celeste
O is for Overexposed celebrity? - Aren't they
all?
P is for Phobias - Anything with more limbs than
me
Q is for Quote you like - "You've got two hopes - Bob
and No. Bob's playing golf."
R is for Relationship that lasted longest -
Elle
S is for Siblings - Louise
T is for Texas, ever been? - Drove through the
panhandle, and does changing planes in Dallas count?
U is for Unique trait - I'm very
unique.
V if for Vegetable you love -
broccoli
W is for Worst trait - I'm an arrogant
motherfucker
X - is for Xtra Credit, did you ever do it in school?
- you can tell this thing was written by yanks...
Y is for Yummy food you make - all my food is
lovely
Z is for Zodiac sign - I'm a
fishtank.
Posted at 11:14 am Read More Thu - July 7, 2005A letter to the terroristsI read this at the London
News Review and think it's awfully apt. The sort of thing I wish I'd
written myself.
What the fuck do you think you're doing? This is London. We've dealt with your sort before. You don't try and pull this on us. Do you have any idea how many times our city has been attacked? Whatever you're trying to do, it's not going to work. All you've done is end some of our lives, and ruin some more. How is that going to help you? You don't get rewarded for this kind of crap. And if, as your MO indicates, you're an al-Qaeda group, then you're out of your tiny minds. Because if this is a message to Tony Blair, we've got news for you. We don't much like our government ourselves, or what they do in our name. But, listen very clearly. We'll deal with that ourselves. We're London, and we've got our own way of doing things, and it doesn't involve tossing bombs around where innocent people are going about their lives. And that's because we're better than you. Everyone is better than you. Our city works. We rather like it. And we're going to go about our lives. We're going to take care of the lives you ruined. And then we're going to work. And we're going down the pub. So you can pack up your bombs, put them in your arseholes, and get the fuck out of our city. Watching the news this evening I was filled with pride as a Londoner. If the same thing had happened in New York or Washington DC there would have been panic, everyone would have rushed home and shops and businesses would close. But we're slightly more stoic than that. Perhaps it's 30 years of conditioning by the IRA, but the way London calmly went about it's day was a tribute to why nutters with semtex will never win. I'll bet the pubs are packed tonight. Posted at 07:36 pm Read More Tue - July 5, 2005Incompetence in governmentIncompetence in government is something one
usually takes for granted, and the sad thing is that it shows few signs of being
prevented or reversed. For once, I'm not talking about the US, but my dear own
UK, where New Labour have been intent on being the people's party, which they
felt gave them the mandate to sell off every asset they could to private
companies in an effort to keep necessary renovations off the One Eyed Bastard's
balance sheet.
Briefly, PFI works something like this: I sell you the land my current hospital is on, which you then make lots of money from. You build me a newer, crappier hospital that I then lease from you, and at the end of the 30 year deal, I get to keep no assets. You can substitute hospital for railway network, school, aircraft carrier as appropriate. Anyone with half a brain could see this was a shitty deal, but good old OEB made sure it was a reality in the caring, sharing, New Labour generation. Well, thankfully these harebrained schemes are under attack, as the public and various watchdogs are cottoning on. One particularly close to home, that involved selling off the Brompton and moving it in with St Mary's, along with the NHLI and the loss of most of the ICU beds, has been dropped, at a cost of £14 million. At least they didn't go through with it and waste £1.1 billion. Posted at 11:54 am Read More |
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Published On: Feb 01, 2006 09:52 am |
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