Karma

1st November 2009

Karmic Strikes

I killed my PC, and now it is alive again. It's a sport of mine, and although I don't always know when the next match is due, I seem to be winning in the long-run at the moment. This time my timing was a little wayward, managing to make the computer forget that it should load anything when I press the power button, an hour before a load of guests appear for a formal.

Luckily, things are now up and running again and I can play with Ubuntu 9.10. It's a nice improvement on the last iteration, and if you have some spare time and a backed-up pc to run it on, it's worth a try. I especially recommend the Netbook Remix edition if you have one of those toys.

Someone looking down on me

I'm off to Taiwan for some field work next week, at least that is the plan. Sonya has an awful cold, though it doesn't seem to be swine flu at the moment, and I am trying to balance looking after her with not catching it. I'm succeeding at the moment, and as such it seems that on Thursday I will be getting up early in order to partake in a 15-hour flight. Bit of a hoo-ha with that though, as I initially managed to do all of the following within an hour - get my credit card blocked due to transactions to foreign airlines, charge two tickets to my debit card account, book tickets to the wrong airport in the first place. Luckily I realised in time, the multiple initial bookings have been cancelled (although I am still waiting for my money to be refunded) and I have found a flight going to where I want. So it seems that the two mistakes have somehow cancelled each other out. Phew.

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Recovery

22nd September 2009

After the Perge marathon, we decided to take a few days out, which has transformed into four days of beaches, swimming, eating possibly too much and very little else. To be fair, Sunday was Eid - meaning that most places were less open than usual, and Monday is traditionally a day off here as well it seems. We did manage to get the tram to Konyaalti beach and roast on a different set of pebbles yesterday, and today we took a boat trip up and down the coast to see everything from a slightly different angle. In general though, little to report except that this lazing around does seem to agree quite well with me :-)

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Expedition to Perge

18th September 2009

Today took us to the ruined city of Perge. Eventually. Following the directions of the hotel clerk, we wandered into the newer part of the city and waited on a street corner with a old lady, in the hope that it was a bus queue. Luckily it was, and we hopped onto a nondescript minibus which displayed the word "Otogar" on the front, apparently that means bus station. The driver didn't seem to want money straight away, and we headed off safe in the knowledge that we knew what a gaggle of busses looks like. Fourty-five minutes later we were driving around some suburban side-streets in the back-end-of-nowhere, having just dropped off the last of the other occupants. Realising that a) paying and b) stating clearly where we wanted to go would have been a good idea, we eventually got dropped off not too far from what turned out to be a huge bus station, apparently going everywhere. Except Perge it seemed. Asking the information desk got us a direction but it wasn't until we had wandered around for a good while that we found an empty bus stand where one of the possible destinations looked promising.

Lo-and-behold a minibus soon swept in, destinations were shouted out and we were hustled aboard. Retracing a significant portion of our previous journey, we headed out of the city and onto the motorway, heading east (which was a good start). However we began to feel that our old friend, not knowing where we were or when to get off, was about to visit again. Toddling to the front, I tried to get across where we wanted to go, only to be told that we had to get off there and then, divine timing indeed as the bus would have gone a long way otherwise. By this point we had been travelling for two hours and found out that we were not yet at Perge (pronounced Per-juh not Pershe it turns out), but that it was a 2km walk through the mid-day heat and as such we stopped for lunch.

After two meals and two bottles of water for four pounds we started off on our trek. About two-thirds of the way there a friendly taxi driver came along to extort us for a ride the rest of the way, but we took him up on his offer just to get there at last.

It was worth it - the city had three periods of success, borne out by multiple impressive gates and a large bath complex. The architecture itself was definitely ruined though - the statues that weren't destroyed by 2000 years of rain have been smuggled off or transported to Antalya museum, leaving only the walls and occasional columns to wander around. Regardless, the city must have been both huge and wealthy by their standards, and we spent a good two hours wandering around the streets, market and 12000-seater stadium.

By blind fluke, while we were wandering back to the motorway, we were picked up by a Dolmus, a bus-cum-taxi that will alter the route to accommodate the wishes of the passengers, and we were back at the hotel within the hour.

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Seaside time

17th September 2009

After a brief but worthwhile stay in Istanbul it's time for the relaxing part of the holiday. We chose Antalya on the Mediterranean coast partly because it is well set-up for some relaxed tourism, partly because of the proximity to a series of ancient sites, and partly because the hotel was only 48 pounds per night from Expedia. When we arrived we found out that the going rate for our room is 150 Euros, so we've managed a good deal there. The hotel is very plush, with good-sized rooms, a jacuzzi (!) and a generous breakfast around the world's smallest swimming pool. The ratio of young people to elderly German tourists is perhaps a little too far on the teutonic side, but in general we've landed on our feet.

Antalya itself is a booming package tour destination, with long beaches on either side of the city. We're staying in the old town, which is short on beach but has lots of architecture dotted amongst the cute guesthouses and hotels, rather than the high-rise rooms nearer to the beaches. The historical side is emphasised by the expansive archaeological museum which took up most of our day today. The exhibits have been rescued from the local ruined towns, although the smugglers have unfortunately got there first on quite a few of the treasures - they seem to be ending up in American museums which are reluctant to give them up :-(

There was still plenty to see at the museum though, here is just a sample:

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Arrived in Turkey

13th September 2009

Success - contrary to the news reports Istanbul hasn't been washed away too much, and so we have arrived safely. The weather is overcast but dry, perfect for sight-seeing, and we've made the most of it today. Five sites done so far, including the comprehensive archaelogical museum, which draws on an almost unsurpassed range of historical artefacts to produce a good three hours of wandering. Moving on (after a nice long lunch) we managed to tick off: Hagia Sophia, a cathedral/mosque/museum - in its time the most impressive church in the world; the neighbouring Blue Mosque, built to surpass the Sophia; the relaxing Hippodrome park and beautifully-lit underground Cisterns.

Now we've a day-and-a-half to cover the rest of the city - easy!

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Cruise 2009

20th August 2009

Last week I escaped Cambridge for a while to go sailing with some old schoolfriends. I needed some time off, and a week's sailing back home on the Broads did the job very well. I hadn't been for an extended sail for four years, and it was nice to get back into the swing of an extended period on the water (and in the pub). This year we even had such luxuries as a working outboard motor, and bunks to sleep on :-)

A week of rope-hauling has done wonders for my strength, a week of sunshine has given me the complexion of David Dickenson, and a week of bacon sandwiches has done wonders for my cardio-vascular fitness, as proved when I tried to play football last night and mostly staggered around in a daze. All in all hwoever, a great time.

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Stay Classy Cambridge

6th August 2009

So I was riding home along Fen Causeway, minding my own business, trying not to annoy the pedestrians taking up the whole of the cycle path, when I look to my left into the field. There was a man, a tall man with long hair, crouching, motionless.

Now this is weird enough, it's midnight and he's in a field, apparently on his own, doing nothing. Oh well, maybe a birdwatcher or something. It's a (moderately) free country I suppose. It gets better though. He was also...

Stark. Bollock. Naked.

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Mini mini, mini post

19th July 2009

After a month's wait, Dell have finally delivered, with a new-build Mini 9 at second-hand prices. It's a good job we didn't need delivery at any specific date, but so far the little machine has worked perfectly. The keyboard is quite small, but I think I'm getting the hang of it. My typo rates aren't noticeably higher than a regular drunken evening.

Fingers crossed, tomorrow I will be going through the backlog of photos that I have been accumulating over the last few weeks. Things have been a little more prompt, but I was held up a little by the death and resurrection of the XPS desktop. It's a lot less cluttered now, but thankfully the backup procedures seem to have worked and Windows Vista is now flying along (though I doubt that will last too long...)

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Skye 3

1st July 2009

This post is mainly a response to Bob's questions about my mapping technique.

Having made a paper-based map three years ago, this time round I've been mapping drastically differently - taking a GPS point every 10-30m, always on outcrops, both sides of the contacts. I've been recording mostly just the contacts in well-exposed areas but each available piece of outcrop in areas where exposure is poor. This, I assume, is "hard evidence", irrefutably I have been there and there is some rock to see, although what you classify it as might be up for argument at times. I've used this to make a digital fair copy map in the evening. This is available as a Garmin GPS basemap for the next day, and can also be imported into ArcGIS for geomorphological analysis, and Google Earth for prettiness.

The downside is that the charging-over-the-hillside approach has restricted the number of structural measurements I've taken, and has reduced sketching to near-zero. I have been recording colour-coded waypoints into the GPS memory and moving on rapidly. Whether I can make better interpretations this way is doubtful, but it does make a near-perfect (in some areas) record of what is exposed, with the ability to return to these locations with +-3m accuracy. This has proven essential when locating faults in the bog, but may have missed some of the more interesting structures.

In conclusion, technology can save time in some cases, but also has huge downsides (don't get me started on the data-interoperability issues I've faced, that's a whole post in itself just trying to describe how to move the information around) and I would not recommend this approach to anyone mapping an area for the first time. However, it means that I can easily improve the map next year, as I can locate myself along the contacts and check that all my interpretations fit. Also, if I am not returning, I can pass the basemap to someone else for them to check.

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Skye 2

30th June 2009

Sorry for the lack of photo - it's been pretty mental here. Full days hiking around in the heat, near-100% sunshine and about 1000 localities mapped so far. In the evenings I've been trying to make a digital geological map, which it turns out takes lots more time and isn't On our day off we saw sea eagles and golden eagles; also finding time for some "wild-swimming". Demonstrating here is great - it's very independent both for the students and demonstrators, and the kids have so far been quite keen and hard-working. I think the weather has helped, I hope it doesn't break!

Now off to soothe my sunburn with some wine :-) There's been plenty of that flowing over the past week. My fitness has definitely improved overall though.

Update - mmm that's much better! Next post (whenever that might be) will probably contain some panoramas.

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Skye 1

24th June 2009

This is the first of hopefully several posts from Skye, where I'm sunning myself in the hillsides, demonstrating on a part 1B field trip. Fingers crossed the weather stays as it is, because at the moment my days are a mixture of wandering around in ~25 degree heat and swimming in the sea (which is substantially less than 25 degrees...)

Photos tomorrow hopefully, if I remember my camera. Must dash - off to otter watch :-)

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Laying down the gauntlet

4th June 2009

Having dealt with Dell Outlet before, when finding Sonya's PC, I was pretty impressed when their Inspiron Mini laptops began showing up. £200 for something, apparently brand new, that should have cost £350 sounded like a deal, and I'd been in the market for a cheap netbook for a while.

Unfortunately, when said netbook arrived, the screen was cracked; looks like it was dropped in transit. In fact, it was smashed, with a network of cracks spreading all over it. This is bad. I prefer screens that work. When I finally managed to get through to customer service, they agreed to send a new one, and have since collected the broken specimen. Unfortunately, (yes extra unfortunately) Dell have decided that this week is when the Mini 9 is going to be phased out. This increases the delivery time for the replacement from a few days to a few weeks at best, despite the exact same specifications being in stock on Dell Outlet as I type.

in the past, as has been reported here and here, Dell have been good to me. This is why I've stuck with them and ordered the Mini over one of the identically-specced netbooks out there. If they pull through here, there will be many more purchases heading their way over the coming years. If not, my money might go elsewhere. The challenge is set, and it's not unreasonable as far as I can tell. I will keep you updated.

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The week of dinners, part II

26th May 2009

So, somewhat belatedly, I need to report on the finale to the dinner week. Downing beat Johns hands down. Commemmoration dinner was back on form, in fact according to the Dean this was the best for several years. Canapes and champagne (yes, the real stuff, not the usual college fizzy) led on to five courses, including red mullet, pheasant and an elderflower and vodka sorbet. Each came with suitably fine wines of course. Finally there was coffee, port, claret and a particularly nice white wine (don't ask me to remember what it was called, although I vaguely remember a green bottle...)

Work did not progress far the next day

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The week of dinners, part 1

17th May 2009

Some weeks, my evenings are pretty free, and sometimes they go a little crazy. This week was/is one of those. My calendar for the last week lists:

• Tuesday - Formal swap at St Johns
• Thursday - Danby Annual Dinner
• Friday - Corpus Free Hat Party
• Saturday - Earth Sciences Alumni Dinner

My poor liver doesn't quite know what hit it.

They've all been good, and all quite alcoholic, but the best so far has been the geology dinner. Sea bass, pheasant and lots of wine made it worth the £33 ticket, although I won't be spending that amount on dinner too often.

The only thing going against the geology dinner is the approach of the Downing Comemmoration Dinner, taking place on Monday. After last year's salmon-on-a-stick debacle, there are demands of a good night. Let's hope that the kitchens can go back to their old ways.

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No interwebs :-(

11th March 2009

I've moved house, this is expensive but fun.

None of the utilities work properly, this is less fun.

Water and electricity can't work out what a meter reading is; which is fixable, albeit at great length.

Major problem now - being held up by the information superhighwaymen.

BT have decided that it takes a month for an engineer to come and visit (at a cost of £125) and flick a switch at the exchange. Despite promising that engineering visit waits are 2-weeks max. They've also managed to prevent any other phone company from connecting our line by locking down the database entry. Thus in order to get any telephone / internet service we have to hang around for a month, pay the connection fee AND sign up to a 12 month contract (renewable only in blocks of 12 months - handy!)

Blogging from work - priceless :-)

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Ad-fail

19th February 2009

I'm not sure this page contains quite what Google thought it did...

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Snowdays - the other side of the coin

8th February 2009

It's been a while, I apologise...

When do you get old? Is it when you start going to bed at 10pm? Is it when you drink more tea than alcohol? Maybe it's when you hear a snow forecast and think "oh dear" rather than "yay - snowday!" In my case I was standing at the top of a slide at CentreParcs, enjoying the 'subtropical' swimming pool when I heard that most of the country was snowed under. And this wasn't CentreParcs in Thetford, 20 miles from Cambridge. Oh no, this was Longleat, a full 180 miles away. Leaving at 6pm last Sunday, we covered half the journey in good time, eating up the dry, empty roads until we reached London. Here it was a little snowy, but not uncomfortable and we kept going nicely. Stopping for a snack and a bucket (no really) of coffee at 8.30, there was snow on the ground, but the roads were still drivable, and we were well over half-way.

I got back at midnight, and I was lucky. The M11 was horrific, the falling snow catching the lights so that I couldn't see clearly, everyone sitting in the slightly darker snow of the left-hand lane rather than the ice-rink of the rest of the road. Actually, several HGVs came thundering past us, but the sensible ones amongst us were in the 20mph club.

After a detour sliding around Stanstead, I slid around Cambridge for a while dropping off the CentreParcers, tried to sleep, realised I was hyper from the coffee and gave up trying to sleep up at 7am to deliver/slide the car back to the rental shop. It seems that some people made it into work on time that day, even if most of London was on a "mass skive".

So there you are, last weekend has made me old, although I am still trying my hardest not to conform to the other two definitions.

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Selwyn Snowball

7th December 2008

When it was suggested to me, during the warm start of term, Selwyn Snowball sounded like an excellent idea. Despite the term not finishing for me until the 19th this year (c.f. the undergraduates, who have gone home already) it would be a nice thing to have in the middle of the endless Christmas dinners. What I failed to realise at that point was that, even without snow, we would be queueing outside in December for an hour. It rained, from 8.30 when we joined the queue until 9.30 when we went in. To their credit, the ball committee provided umbrellas, but the mulled wine didn't arrive until we were well and truly frozen - especially Sonya.

Once within the ball though, everything was inside and therefore warm. However, without the luxury of open ground they had to use a complex one-way system that Chris Chapman would have been proud of. Despite complaints, this system did make sure that you got to see all the areas of the ball. The kitchens were ideally placed right beside the entrance, where we ate our fill every time we made it around the system.

Progressing through the system, the hall fulfilled the role of 'dance tent', the bands were competent enough but we didn't stay around very long, pressing on to the 'alternative stage' in the SCR. Here we watched a performance-magician-hula-hoop-balancing-act duo, and a refreshingly funny performance from the Footlights. Downstairs was the Bar, acting as a jazz venue and chill-out zone for most of the night, turning into a drunken karaoke later on. Next up on the conveyor belt was the JCR, with a chocolate fountain (with its own one-way system!) and plentiful food and sweets. Lastly there was a silent disco, which involves giving everyone a pair of wireless headphones and a choice of which silly music they want to wiggle to.

Overall then, not the largest ball I've been to but the food was excellent with minimal queueing, the entertainment did its job, and by finishing at 3 it ensured that everyone wasn't completely frozen.

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Conundrum

28th November 2008

Definition of "a conflict of interest":

• I'm writing my Part III project into a paper, it's really hard and requires quite a long time.
• Left4Dead has just been delivered.

That is all

**off to shoot zombies**

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Spain :-)

16th November 2008

I needed some samples for my PhD, so I went to Spain with Niels and Albert (my supervisors) to collect some. A word of advice, avoid Ryanair if at all possible - they were late, noisy, and cramped. They closed off unfilled sections of the cabin rather than letting people sit with their families. They play a jingle every five minutes, perhaps to remind you that you're not flying on a better airline. Lastly, their baggage allowance is a miserly 15kg, which is a little tight if you spend a week collecting rocks. As such, there are 24 kilos of rocks sitting in Perpignan, France, with Albert's father in law waiting for us to arrange some postage.

Apart from the flights however, it was a really good week - plenty of very good outcrops during the day, plenty of good food and wine in the evening. I drove a people carrier on the other side of the road, and up and down some places that wouldn't count as roads in Britain but were signposted and apparently marked on the map.

Also, while it rained in Cambridge, I was hiking around the hills looking at this and driving around, not looking at this.

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Mmm shiny :-)

27th October 2008

First of all, happy birthday Sonya x

It was, apparently, a little wet this weekend. I didn't really notice, as I'd just taken delivery of a shiny Dell Latitude D830 courtesy of my lab-work grant. I'm assured that I can still do some lab work this year, courtesy of the many-hidden-pots method of academic funding. It's a nice machine, which will hopefully last the full four years, and has so far provided about 30 hours of procrastination.

Start of boring geeky bit - skip if you like.

Unfortunately there is some software that only runs on Windows (XP that is, the comptuer officers won't touch Vista with a sharp pointed stick), and some which only run on Linux. Me being me, I wanted both. What a selfish child. Then to add interest, I want to be able to access the documents from both systems easily. This seems to call for three partitions and a fairly regimented backup routine.

Having received it on Friday, I finally got it running semi-properly on Sunday night, whereupon the department IT officers installed a bunch of software and downgraded me to a bog-standard user account. On my own laptop (well close enough my own). Which I am not keeping in the department, or using in the department quite a lot of the time. The most annoying thing was having a great big screen at startup saying "Do not attempt to log in if you're not an authorised user". I thought that is what passwords were for :-S

I complained.

Luckily they were very nice about it, and have upgraded that to "PowerUser" and "Administrator" levels so I can break things again.

End of geeky bit - look it's all shiny :-)

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Progress...............fail

20th October 2008

Hours worked last week: More than usual
Progress made towards project aims: very little
Measurable progress made: one page of ideas

This isn't that I'm not trying though, I'm actually quite exhausted from trying to do my PhD, but there's so much other stuff to sort out first. Hopefully this week will be a little more productive - I have a meeting on Thursday at which I need to convince people that I know what I'm talking about...

Meanwhile, over in Biochemistry, Adam's mutant army gathers strength by the day.

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Freshers' Week MkII

12th October 2008

So here we go again, another 3-4 years of Downing, formals, geology, lacrosse, hard-work (maybe) and fun (hopefully). MCR freshers' week has been progressing happily all week - although my liver isn't so happy about this. I've met lots of nice new people and also managed to keep up with the old ones.

There have been the usual drink-and-talk sessions to get to know people in an alcohol-fuelled environment, always a chance to show off my best side, and a pub crawl which provided a chance for my annual nightclub visit. Last night was the JCR/MCR event, given the original title of "Back to School" as an excuse to dress up on the cheap. While the idea was fine in principle the party died somewhat with the haphazard reliability of the sound system.

In amongst all this though we've found time to go to London to see some improvisation at The Comedy Store (highly recommended) for Andy's twenty...th birthday. Also on the agenda was a trip to see Dylan Moran's stand-up routine at the Corn exchange - also most enjoyable.

So there we have it, slightly less manic than last time around but the next few years are boding well. I leave you with my excuse for not getting in a boat for the last four years, or the next four.

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India Follow-up

17th September 2008

And so to the promised waffly post about India. It's been three weeks since we returned now. I know this because I have just finished my penultimate packet of disgusting antimalarial pills, although the flavour does seem to become less repulsive with time. My jet-lag has gone, now simply replaced by a more internet-friendly sleeping pattern.

Lots of people have asked me what it was like out there, and on the whole I have been giving completely contradicting answers, because it was such a contradictory place. We spent half of our time living in luxury with the Reddy family, who put us up in nice apartments, took us shopping in western shops (at near-western prices) and took us to 5-star restaurants. Then at other times we were 'sleeping' on cockroach-infested trains being woken every 10 minutes as someone tried to sell us some tea.

Within the space of two days we were chauffered 120 miles for a pittance by a hostel-owner who didn't want to lose our custom (Tourists Rest House - has an awesome email address), only to be ripped off for a tour of some shut attractions once we arrived in Delhi (avoid the tourist office on N-block, Connaught Place).

We were able to visit many, many beautiful places on our trips - most of which cost very little to visit and were usually well maintained, but the rest of the country's infrastructure was at best strained. Pavements and drainage often didn't exist outside glass-fronted buildings selling the latest Nike clothing. The well-off, a group that seems to be expanding rapidly, have much more spending power than we do; the poorest are forced to beg on the streets. While you feel immensely sorry for them - a birth defect or work accident can leave people with no alternative - giving money to the child-beggers is discouraged for only exacerbating the problems they face. Instead I'll be giving some money to charity to make up for all the times I had to say "I'm sorry but NO".

My hands-down favourite part of the trip was Utteranchal, the beauty and tranquility was a much-needed break for us all and as you've seen the views were nothing short of awe-inspiring. On the other hand there was very little of the trip which I disliked - even being confined to our rooms in Delhi due to general closures on Independence Day wasn't too much of a hardship. The people were almost universally friendly, either due to genuine wonderfulness or trying to make a quick buck.

So, in conclusion, if you look past the gut-wrenching poverty in some places there is a truly magical side to this country. while I won't be going back for a few years yet, I really hope that I will be able to at some point.

Also, 2444 photos may have been slightly too many but there were some real gems in there.

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I wish I was James Bond....oh wait

5th September 2008

Indian photos are still appearing slowly in the gallery, there's about a week's worth left I'm afraid... In the meantime life goes on so I'd better write about it. As some people are well aware, my 'trusty' old Fuji A340 camera has been on its last legs for the past two years. While the Sony V1 takes lovely pictures, it is far from pocket-sized and I can't really take it to formals or parties without being 'the weird one with the big camera'. However I couldn't justify spending £100 or so on a replacement and so I stole Sonya's camera most of the time.

At the same time as all this I have been spending more and more on my pay-as-you-go mobile phone, to the point when it has become uneconomical. 35 - 50p per minute during the day is a complete rip-off. When I called home from India I could call my parents' mobile phones for 8 rupees per minute (about 10p). A 5000 mile call should not cost 20% of what I was being charged to make the same call over 70 miles. Thus I thought it was time to come round to the idea of a contract phone.

Aha! said my brain - perhaps I can combine both of these technological requirements. Maybe such a device exists that can take photomographs and make telephone calls. So I went to some shops and came back with the most expensive camera phone I could find, but due to the vagaries of a contract phone deal, free. Admittedly I have to pay £30 per month for some calls, but that just means that I now have a good reason to be sociable to everyone who has graduated and moved away. "But what is the most expensive camera phone you could find?" you many ask (though I doubt it). It turns out that it is a SonyEricsson C902, which has a slide-out camera in a very Bondesque(?) style. The camera is actually quite useable, as evidenced by the pictures decorating this very page. With its sharp lines and blue styling, I thought to myself "this could be a superslick secret agent phone you know..."

Thinking back to Casino Royale, I remembered that Sony are actually quite keen on obtrusive product placement. Lo-and-behold an internet search turns up with this. Go me. I dread to think how much extra I'm getting stung for due to this pointless tie-in.

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Back!

30th August 2008

So we got back on Wednesday evening, having eaten about 10000 calories and slept for only 3 hours in the last two days. The last few days in Mumbai were characterised by excessive spending and eating. We ate western food in swanky restaurants 3 meals in a row, including Eggs Benedict and Drunken chocolate pudding at 4pm followed by massive pizzas a few hours later. We took a private room in the best Thai restaurant in India (housed in the Mariott Hotel) and stayed up till 2am on the last night, despite having to get up at 4am to catch a flight.

The flight was just about bearable. It's a terrible chore these days, especially once you've been upgraded to business class - all the hassle! I mean, who can be bothered to drink champagne as they settle into their multi-adjustable seats, press a little button to call for more Gin and Tonic, or eat their way through four courses of breakfast? Sonya, Shamini and I lived it up for seven hours, much to the disgust of the other five. It was all a fluke - we were travelling on separate tickets to the rest, and ended up at a different desk. There were three seats left in business class when we went to check in. It didn't take too long to decide whether we would upgrade to tickets worth ten times as much as economy.

Anyway, now I am in Huddersfield with Sonya's family before I get to finally return home tomorrow. And I need to find a way to tell you about all the things that I've been up to. Somehow it feels weird to blog about places that I went to several weeks ago now, even though they were missed out on at the time. A single monster post would take me a day to write and you about an hour to read - not likely to happen in either case.

However there are 2400 photos sitting on my memory cards and various backup DVDs, of which about 10% are worth publishing, and maybe I can combine the two activities to make it easier for us all. Thus the captions on the photos going up over the next week or so should be a little more informative than usual. At the end I'll post something about my overall experiences, but that will take a few weeks of thinking time I guess.

To get the ball rolling then, here is a gallery from Hampi, a beautiful place in South India which was completely ignored in the 'real-time' blogging.

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Utteranchal

26th August 2008

This was the view at 6am about a week ago:

Since then we've been to Jaipur and are now in Mumbai once more, ready to catch our plane tomorrow morning. Issues with Virii and photo-backing-up have delayed posting for a little while, but rest assured normal service should return in vast quantities once I've landed in the UK.

Ta-ra for now

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Delhi Update

15th August 2008

Must be quick - we're about to go home after dinner at Mallika's house (really good biryani). After leaving Hyderabad we first went south, down to Hampi and then Nagarhole national park. We saw deer, elephants and bison. Tigers were around, we saw fresh footprints, but hiding well.

Then we flew up to Delhi, via Agra when we went here:

Tomorrow we leave for Utteranchal, up near the Himalayas, so hopefully I will get some pretty views to post next time. Got to go now...

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Cybercafe Experiment

5th August 2008

We have no internet acces in Shamini's flat, so I'm writing this from a little cybercafe down the road. It's been made from a first-floor conversion above a leather shop, in the shadow of a flyover. It's a stark contrast from the Nike, Adidas and Levis shops barely 50 yards away, but that is something very noticeable here in Banjara Hills, Hyderabad - ridiculously posh (and expensive) shops just spitting distance from poverty.

Internet seems very popular here, this is one of five cafes we hav visited trying to find a spare machine, and I had to wait 15 minutes just to get this, a Pentium II runing Windows 98. It is only 10p per hour though, which is nice :-) I've downloaded PuTTY to it, and hopefully can write everything I need using that.

So, India then. The wedding was two days ago, and was HUGE. There were 2000 guests at the event itself, and the buffet which followed, but things had been happening for several days before that. Firstly there was the bridal shower, which was a reasonably civilised hen-party. It was girls only, but Sonya says that they had a nice meal in between the giving of embarrasing presents.

Next we had a henna-party, when the girls had intricate designs painted on their hands, and Ravi, Adam and I got in on the act with with a token design. This was followed by the bride-making, when Priyanka got dressed into her bridal gear and suitably blessed etc. Photos of all of these things will hopefully appear at some point, internet access dependent.

The night before the wedding was a little unusual even by Indian standards - we had an open-mic-night / talent show where people from both families sang songs, told stories and danced. For my sins I was enlisted into the "Priyanka's Cousins Dance Troupe" and 13 of us performed an Indian dance. For reference, it looked exactly like this.

The wedding itself involved several ceremonies that we didn't quite understand, but it looked amazing and we all had fun dressed in our sarees and kurtas. As I said, there was a nice-enough buffet after the event, but later that evening there was a reception that trumped pretty much everything I've been to. As opulent as a Ball in many respects, with free-flowing whisky, glorious food and lots of glitz. The men had changed into Western clothes for all of this, so I felt a little out of place in my trekking trousers and a hastily-bought shirt, but carting a suit around the sub-continent was fairly out of the question.

Waking up groggily the next morning we reflected on a fantastic few days, and downloaded 2.5Gb of photos!

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Part 2 - Hyderabad

25th July 2008

Just a quick note. We took the overnight train into Hyderabad from Mumbai two days ago, which was fun. Eight people in a little cabin sleeping on reasonably solid bunks in this great long train. There were fans buzzing over our heads, sellers moving up and down selling chai and samosas and plastic toys, the clackety clack of the rails and the constant bustle of people getting on and off; somehow we managed a decent night's sleep though, and by travelling overnight the 17 hour journey went past really quickly.

Since arriving we've been visiting various relatives, have met the bride Prianka and her family and have visited a few of the sights and shops of Hyderabad. We've taken lots of Autos all over the city, which is a little scary. However you somehow feel quite safe bombing down the wrong carriageway, weaving in and out as the driver tries to find the shortest route. It's a lot quicker than sitting in the car in a traffic jam.

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Part 1 - Mumbai

21st July 2008

After teasing you with the photo gallery a few days ago, I thought I should make a real post. We're staying with Shamini's great-aunt and uncle in Mumbai, who have been amazing. They have fed us wonderful food, taken us around the city and looked after us wonderfully.

We arrived at 6am local time, which is 1.30 UK time, and had an eye-opening trip through the early morning traffic. The usual traffic rules apply; horn first brakes last, lanes are there for guidance only, and whoever is biggest has right of way.

A quick snooze and we were up by lunctime feeling surprisingly awake and human, so we went for a shopping spree on the first day. Clearly the jet-lag hadn't kicked in yet, as we went on a tour of several of the local shops and I managed to get a kurta for the wedding we're going to in a few weeks. No photos yet, it'll have to be a surprise. By the time we got home from there though, the sleep-deprivation of the last three days had kicked in and we collapsed for 14 hours.

We staggered into the light mid-afternoon the next day, had curry for brunch and headed out again for a tour of the city. Mumbai is ~16km x 3km, and it is nearly an hour's drive to get to the centre from the flat. The results of the the city-tour fed my first gallery, my poor camera is getting a workout and a half already and I'm glad I bought a 4Gb memory card just before I left...

Yesterday we went to visit the family farm, but stopped en-route to visit some caves and a temple, up in the hills. There was a religious gathering on, we timed our visit along with about 3000 others, all with drums, flowers, chickens and goats. They were quite interested in us, this was very out of the way and there was a dearth of westerners. I was repeatedly asked "Hello, how are you?" and "One photo please?", which I was happy to play along with and made quite a few acquaintances. I did draw the line at dancing under a waterfall though. Sonya and Shamini were less enthused, generally letting me get on with this, and pretending they didn't know me. Quite hard when you stick out like a sore thumb.

Later that day we explored the farm, watched monkeys steal food from people at a roadside viewpoint and then went to visit a mansion belonging to some friends. A swimming pool, a panoramic view of the mountains and five bedrooms with 52" TVs are among the design features. Mumbai is a very mixed place, the rich and poor live right next to each other and co-exist peacefully it seems. In a bar on the first night we were rubbing shoulders with Bollywood actors, but turn a corner and you're in a slum area. It's very nice here though, and we've been broken in gently thanks to some great hospitality.

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Belatedly...

15th July 2008

I've Graduated! Umm about three weeks ago, sorry.

I meant to make a series of funny/insightful/informative comments about the post-exam fun, but was somewhat waylaid and had to make do with the monster photo post instead. In the meantime, I've kept busy preparing for my trip to India. Yes India. It's Shamini's fault, she invited our whole house to her cousin's wedding (apparently that makes us quite close family) and we turned it into a six-week jaunt around the subcontinent. With eight of us going in total, that makes 1248 malaria tablets to take - luckily I haven't experienced any side effects so far.

I don't know precisely where we're going, I left that to Ravi and Sharms to sort out but my best guess is shown below:

I don't really know what to expect when I get there. Lots of people have said that they had an amazing time, if not always an enjoyable one. At the moment I can't quite comprehend the tales of poverty and third-world-ness, but surely the point of a culture-shock is that it is, er, shocking. Hopefully I'll be able to write the odd post when I'm out there - as anyone who has spoken to a call centre will understand the internet tube is quite wide into certain parts of the country at least.

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The Solution to Climate Change

28th May 2008

So I was thinking...

Climate modellers predict that over the next 50 years we need to save 3 billion tonnes of Carbon every year in order to stem the increases in global temperature which are likely to happen. 3 billion tonnes is a lot of CO2...

There are thousands of seamounts in the world today, underwater volcanic structures sitting there minding their own business. They're made of silicate rock. When you dissolve silicate rock by reacting it with CO2 and water, you draw a molecule of CO2 out of the atmosphere. If you can dissolve lots of rock, that's a lot of CO2. Aha!

So here's the deal:

• Place a nuclear bomb beneath an isolated seamount
• Explode it
• Repeat once every year

This should work, as long as you have a big enough seamount. If you assume that the rock is made of CaSiO3, then 120g of rock will be able to sequester 12g of carbon, as one mole of Ca leads to one mole of CO2 drawdown. Thus the mass of rock to dissolve is 30 billion tonnes. If rock has a density of 3 grams per cm3, that is 10 000 cubic kilometres of rock, which is equivalent to a cone-shaped seamount of height 6km and radius 40km.

Easy!

NB: This has been published quickly in a non-peer-reviewed journal in order to save Mr Nick's exam marks!

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My feet are bigger than yours!

12th April 2008

Just back from Spain, I'm jetting off again tomorrow to do my bit for the greenhouse effect. It's geology again, this time the EGU conference in Vienna. It's a hard life. I have made a poster of my Part III project (here if you're really, desperately in need of procrastination), which I will stand next to and look interesting for an hour-and-a-half on Wednesday evening. The rest of the time is my own to look round the conference or city, the ratio of those has yet to be decided.

Of the thousands of posters and talks on offer, the most interesting abstract I've found so far involves calculating the effects of putting a giant mirror between us and the Sun to reflect some of the heat - posibly solving climate change. At least the authors have shown that such an approach is like trying to mend an infinitely complicated pocketwatch with a sledgehammer.

On the other hand, maybe a giant mirror that will go some way to offsetting all the CO2 released by 10 000 scientists flying across Europe. I'm told by a company selling indulgences that this trip will cost the Earth 0.5 tonnes of CO2. That's an increase of global CO2 concentrations of 0.000000000094 parts per million, or one trillionth of the CO2 change that humans have caused since 1750.

Hardly makes it worth worrying about does it?

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I can has PhD?

10th April 2008

Sorry for the "Web 2.0"ness of this, but I thought that I would announce it in a different way to normal. I think I have told several people already, but for those who haven't heard, I have been offered a studentship here in Cambridge, to study the Earth Sciences project that I had applied for in the first place, but with joint supervision between the Earth Sciences and Materials departments (who have all the equipment that I need, and also a studentship!)

PS anyone not understanding the picture should go here and read things out in a silly voice.

PPS please excuse any spelling mistakes, I found some port :-)

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My new word: Pie-eyy-a

7th April 2008

As the more astute, feed-reading of you might have seen, I've posted photos from my field trip to Spain. After a week of 25°C+ unbroken sunshine, it was a bit of a surprise getting back to 1° Cambridge, which is apparently the only part of the country without snow. Oh well, it would probably have washed my suntan off.

Spain was really great, a mixture of all kinds of rocks which kept us happy, and it was nice to understand them reasonably well, four years not entirely wasted then. A highlight must be the last (ever - sniff!) outcrop when we visited the 'Garnet volcano' of El Hoyazo, where the semi-precious stone really did just wash out of the ground. What I am going to do with a bag full of little red crystals I don't know, but they were everywhere in the crater and it would have been rude not to collect some.

To complement the standard photos, I've also taken a pile of panoramas (see the big long things just below.) Rather than linking to each photo individually, I've put them all into a zip file which you can download from here. It is a reasonably hefty 11Mb because there are a fair few in there, but they're all displayed below in lower resolution for those of you without broadband.

More Spain pictures to follow soon....

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Happy Christmas!

23rd March 2008

Happy Easter everyone. My Weatherbug Vista Gadget informs me that it is snowing in Cambridge, and my eyes tell me that it certainly is here in Norfolk. Global warming anyone?

Jumping back in time, we were nursing our hangovers and full stomachs last Thursday, after the Annual Dinner on Tuesday, for another Lacrosse Cuppers. 5 matches in a row was nice and exhausting, the final being won mostly on the basis of who stayed upright the longest. Thanks to the help of some incredibly talented lacrosse-virgins we won for the second year in a row, beating Selwyn 1-0 in the final.

Go ducks!

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Drunken update

6th March 2008

I've been drinking a little tonight at formal, apologies for any typos which creep in. Oxford have got back to me and offered a project, no idea which one it is yet. I applied for two there, but I have a preference and hope that I have been awarded that one. Still no news from Cambridge, I don't know if there will be any spaces available on the reserve list even if I am near the top.

Now it's time for a silly photo, cue Ajay, post-formal:

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Aaargh!

5th March 2008

So several months after originally deciding to apply, my second (and unfortunately final) PhD interview was this Monday. I say interview, there were actually eight interviews through the day, with a variety of members of the department. Most of them went well, and I was pretty optimistic of getting a position, even though the competition was tough.

Looks like it might not be the case though, as I have missed out on an offer both here and from Oxford. I'm on the reserve list though, and can only hope that someone else doesn't take the project that they've been offered. I don't know the chances of that, but fingers crossed.

!!!!!

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Did the earth move for you?

27th February 2008

We had an earthquake! A noticeable shaking, a first for me. Something this large, a magnitude 4.7 centred on Lincoln, might not return to England for another 10-100 years. On a global scale though, 4.7 is pretty paltry, and shouldn't have played too much havoc.

And now some 'facts' [citation needed] stolen from the internet:

The average recurrence the UK may expect can be described as follows:

• an earthquake of 3.7 or larger every 1 year
• an earthquake of 4.7 or larger every 10 years
• an earthquake of 5.6 or larger every 100 years

The largest English earthquake is estimated at 5.3 - 5.9 (from 1580, forgive them the accuracy...), which would have been about 10 times stronger than today's.

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Sanity Break

23rd February 2008

So it's crunch time - I have an interview tomorrow in Oxford to see whether I can extend my student days for another three years. I've applied for PhD places here and there, which is possibly a little on the optimistic side given the applicant:places ratio, but we'll see how it goes. I should probably be reading up for it, but having done that quite a lot this weekend I thought it was time to post something fun.

So here we are, a video from last weekend's Chinese New Year party: Click Here for Video

PS comments are disabled for the time being while I try and stop the flow of spammers

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God Bless Dell (again)

15th January 2008

It's been a while since the last post, something about a project being due in, or nonsense like that. Anyway it's over now - yay!

At the risk of sounding like a broken record, Dell have saved the day once more with a new PC. After getting my custom-built one back (when it had already blown up once) I discovered that the CPU fan had not been screwed down - it was rolling around inside the case! So that went back again, for a refund this time, and I ordered a Dell XPS 420, which arrived working properly (and rather fast) almost before the old one had been collected.

Now I'm having to get to grips with Vista, and all the seemingly unnecessary little changes that have been applied to distinguish it from a slightly prettier and annoyingly security-minded version of XP. Fairly pointless if you ask me, although the 8800GT graphics card is pretty in DirectX10 games, and 1TB of hard disk space might keep me happy for quite a while.

Rob is happy :-)

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Legendary

29th December 2007

Go and see I Am Legend. Do this now.

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I let the magic smoke out

19th December 2007

It's been a while since my last post, mostly because I have had nothing to write one with. My trusty desktop PC was toddling along happily, looking like it would succeed in surviving a whole 4 years of university with me, when it reset a couple of times and refused to work ever again. "No problem!" I said, I will order a new one.

And so the phone was picked up, and the Company was called. And the customer said "Let there be a computer. Let it be fast, and shiny, and let it cost less than £1000". And thus a PC was born. And it was delivered (eventually), and it was shiny, and all that saw it said "ooh" at the right time, and they saw that it was good.

However, within four hours of the arrival of this hallowed machine, the magic smoke was released from it, and it worked no more. For once the magic smoke has been relased, it cannot be put back.

Ok, so in plain(er) English, my lovely new computer arrived and was working fine, when it suddenly died - stone dead. A puff of smoke and a flash of lights and that was that. The magic smoke, which powers all computer equipment, has escaped (bits of it blew up). Without the magic smoke the computer will not run any more, so they are going to take it away and try and replace things for me. In the mean time, I am without a PC to call my own, and have been since the end of November. I thought that this would improve my productivity, but actually with all the time spent trying to arrange the replacement, that wasn't the case. I just hope they can fix it and ship it back to me soon, otherwise it will be almost time to go back to Cambridge before it arrives.

Rob hates computers

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A productive weekend

27th November 2007

After almost a month away, something has finally inspired me to post. Hooray! Here is what you get if you leave 6 scientists in a house for too long...

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Party Weekend

10th October 2007

Friday: Housewarming and Adam's 21st. Managed to drag ~30 people in from Tadcaster, London, and the Downing engineers across the street. Failed to invite the people next door - oops. Blackberry Vodka went down well, Guitar Hero + Wii till 3am, crashed into bed. Photos here.

Saturday: Becky's 21st. Technically speaking, Becky is an interloper into our year, being born as she was on the 1st of September 1986. This makes her just about the youngest in our year and easily due her party, extending the 21st season into its third academic year. Cue more visitors, Downing formal with a good, hand-picked, menu and plenty of wanton photography.

Sunday: Tired

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Switzerland Megapost

31st August 2007

Work finished last friday, so I jetted off to Switzerland to see Sonya. Having spent the summer researching the effects of climate change, I felt that I'd done my bit for the environment for the year, and so there was no shame in burning all that airline fuel. Anyway, planes are very efficient (just ask the Materials department - it's all they ever seem to lecture about) and it's Chinese coal power stations we should watch out for. So there I was, up at 6am on the first day of my real summer holiday ready to head to Stanstead. The flight wasn't until 12, but you know what I'm like about being on time. If you don't know, I like to be on time to things, usually leaving a few minutes spare just in case. This is a trait I've inherited from my parents and so I checked in over 3 hours early for my flight, arriving before the desk was even open. This gave me lots of time to wander around the airport and try to avoid spending any money. Free samples were dissapointingly thin on the ground, the only one I could find was in the "World of Whisky" and my liver decided that 9am in the morning, on my own, without the prospect of food or water for another 8 hours, it might be a bit of a bad idea.

Then there was a fire alarm, making things interesting. All the shops closed, and a mass exodus to nowhere in particular started. I stayed put to watch the departure boards and find which gate I was supposed to go to, at least then I could go somewhere constructive if it came to it. Due to the wonders of security and common sense, we had a tannoy in one ear shouting "Members of staff will guide you to safety" and in the other "Stay where you are, the fire is elsewhere". The staff promptly buggered off in all directions, and I gave up and just trudged off to a gate (the right one btw). Well trudge is perhaps a little incorrect, you actually buzz along half-life-style in a monorail with a robotic voice.

For anyone who hasn't met Easyjet before, they don't bother with the whole allocating seats malarkey, you just fight your way on to the plane and sit where you like when you get there. This is when arriving ridiculously early helps, because you get put in the special boarding group and get to go in first. Being all British and polite I stood at the back of the crush, and was pleasently surprised at just how many people I managed to walk past when group A (for Awesome, obviously) was called out. Being first has its advantages, and I got a nice window seat near the engine, perfect for photos - look, there's Kent disappearing under us :-)

Upon arrival in Basel, I set off on a bus and a train through the countryside to Zurich, met Sonya at the station (which is huuuuge and took me a while just to walk up the platform) and chickened out of walking, taking the tram up to her apartment. Just about ready to sleep for a week, I was gleefully informed that we were going to the Baden festival that evening. While I couldn't contain my joy at the prospect of staying up until 2am (or 3am in my timezone), it was only the hunger talking and once we'd bought some bratwurst I was much happier. Baden's festival is a ten-yearly event where for a week the whole town is taken over by food stands and musicians. Perhaps the most interesting food were the kebabs cooked by dousing in boiling oil and throwing into the flames, but I went for the slightly cheaper options of sausage and then lovely messy watermelon.

After that there was a cover band singing english (well almost english) songs, who were actually quite good, despite looking like Vinnie Jones and having some interesting guest vocalists. First there was someone looking like Wolf from Gladiators, and then a female vocalist with a voice deeper than either of the men, but overall it was good fun and killed time before the fireworks.

Oh the fireworks

This summer has seen some impressive displays, especially Downing, Trinity and John's May Balls, but this really took the biscuit. Launched from a castle on a hilltop, the sky was filed with rockets for a full 25 minutes, and these weren't small rockets either. The only downside was that they finished 1 minute after the train home had left, so we had to wait around until 1.01 for the next train, and then drag ourselves up the hill back home. I slept well that night.

The next morning we explored Zurich's old town, with it's tiny backstreets and big cathedrals. As one of the starting places for the Reformation, the cathedrals are very bland and protestant, but still worth a visit for the architecture rather than the gold-plated-everythings of more Catholic establishments. Zurich has a real integrated transport network, unlike the London nonsense, and so our day-pass on trams also covered trains, busses, and boats. Thus after lunch we took the river bus to the Zurich See to go swimming. It was busy, with both people and boats, but the water was clear and fresh and surprisingly cold compared to the air temperature. Jumping off the jetty was fun, but climbing back on took all the strength I could muster, and I actually had to sit down for a full five minutes to get my breath back after hauling myself out. Should probably have walked up the beach like everyone else, but hey it was good to test my strength, and I won. Sort of. To recover fully I drank beer and ate a huge dinner of potato rosti, ham, cheese and fried egg. Mmmm, protein.

The next day was an adventure to the French-speaking part of the country, where Sonya lived last summer. This left me even more out of my depth language-wise, it's upsetting how much better the rest of the world is at English than our pitiful attempts at their languages. I managed to order some lunch in a bakery in Geneva though, which impressed me (and me alone) before we set out to explore Geneva. Conclusion - it's old, french(ish) and generally expensive looking, but the fountain is very cool and we got to listen to someone singing in the cathedral. Then we hopped on the train to Lausanne for dinner with Russel, who was Sonya's supervisor there.

We went for dinner at a fondue restaurant, which is a dieter's nightmare but I loved it. Our dinner was a saucepan of bubbling, melted cheese which we dipped hunks of bread into. Even my fairly lax interpretations of the 5-a-day rule couldn't derive a single helping of fruit or veg apart from maybe the wine (grape juice counts right?) but it was so so good and we ate until the residue was burned to the bottom. Full-up, we then had to travel 2.5 hours back to Zurich on tippy trains, so I fell asleep to make sure I didn't feel ill.

The last real day we got to experience the wonders of Swiss bureaucracy. Sonya had had to fill in a pile of forms to avoid living illegally, had finally received a residency permit about we week before she was scheduled to leave, and promptly needed to return it and 'book out' to avoid being banned from ever returning. Once another set of forms had been filled in just to return the damn thing, we tried to hire some bikes to get down to the lake. But no, that required at monetary deposit and our passports.

The chances of me leaving my passport with a man in a wooden shack who spoke (strangely) very little english were about the same as me being able to explain in german that they could have my driving license but that was all, and we gave up. It didn't matter anyway, the weather broke, and the glorious sunshine "did a Britain", being replaced by teeming rain. After popping down to the lakeside anyway (on a train this time). There were some inquisitive and surprisingly tame sparrows, but we gave up on the idea of swimming in the cold, grey, nonsense and went to the cinema instead, where I practiced my german by trying to read the subtitles - almost managed it sometimes too!

The return journey was much like the outbound one, with me arriving hideously early at the airport and sitting around departures reading books. I almost managed to get a water bottle through, after forgetting it was still in my hand luggage, but was commanded in a strong german accent "Drink!" and I wasn't in the mood to disagree. Another three and a half hours in departures beckoned, and unfortunately the seats airside were much more uncomfortable than at check-in. Yay. In true budget-airline style, one queue of people piled off the plane about a minute before we boarded, and then we were off. Refusing to buy £5 sandwiches-and-soup on principle, I starved myself again but the view made up for it, especially the channel glistening in the sunshine as legions of waves marched across it.

And then we were home, and this post finally ends. Photo gallery to follow - lucky you!
UPDATE - they're here

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Freedom

7th August 2007

Dad has always said that I was free to do what I want once I could run the hundred-yard dash faster than he could. This weekend we discovered that I probably can, as long as it's uphill anyway. He's stuck at work at the moment, trying to leave but with no-one to take his place so to get him away, and to give me a break (yes, another break) from UEA we headed up to the Peak District for some hillwalking.

Leaving straight after work, the 4-hour drive didn't leave us much time budgeted to put the tent up while the light remained, and a traffic jam on the A1 left us pressed somewhat to say the least. Luckily the windy road over Mam Tor was empty, and we took it like a rally-stage, with me shouting "hard left" at the right times. In the end our timing was perfect, not only did we beat the dusk by 10 minutes, we also arrived at the pub just before they stopped serving food and managed a couple of pints and a steak pie before closing time.

Waking up bright and early we headed off at 8.20 for Upper Booth and then Kinder Scout. Some of you may know what this is like, but for those who don't it's worth a quick introduction. Kinder Scout is a plateau of peat bog, at 600m altitude. So you climb up a great big hill of reasonably solid ground to find the top is dead flat and ridiculously soggy. Small ephemeral streams have cut about 7ft down into the peat, leaving a network of corridors which you can either cross or walk along, depending on where you're heading. Ah yes, heading. That's where the fun starts.

If your journey takes you generally across the line of the streams then you have a succession of bog-jumps to make. Some of it looks squidgy yet can support your weight, other bits of it will leave you up to your ankles in mud. Then of course you have to find a suitable crossing place, which may involve a detour or five.

Alternatively if your route takes you roughly along the line of the channels then you get this view which doesn't help a great deal when you're trying to find somewhere. The creeks meander back and forth on a whim and you have to climb the sides and look for landmarks on a near-featureless plain to get your bearings.

Anyway, by osmosis, brownian motion or some other random chance we managed to drift about halfway across, heading in vaguely the right direction before the wind got up and a gentle drizzle set in. Deciding that having a cloud dumped on top of us would reduce visibility from poor to hopeless, we headed for the edge. At least then you know where you are, even if that happens to be 400ft above certain death. Fortunately the edge contained (a) a footpath and (b) sunshine, and we had a well-earned lunch. In the afternoon the sun came out and we rewarded ourselves with a route march right around the end of Kinder Scout and then back to our campsite in Edale. 15 miles in total had made us tired, so after two beers, a big plate of pub food and a couple of single malts we went to bed at 9pm. There were some drunk people chatting outside the tent until 1am, but I was so shattered that I seem to have ignored them and simply written them into my dreams, which did become slighly weird after that it has to be said.

The next day's walking was short and sharp, as we had to get home, but that didn't stop us charging up Hollins Cross and Mam Tor, where I managed to get some use out of the tripod and shoot some panoramas. Due to the wonders of autostitch, my hand-steadied ones are not too dissimilar from the properly-done ones, but after dad had carried the tripod up the mountain (I had the lunch) we were damn-well going to use it. After walking at pretty much the same pace all weekend, it was these ascents where youth triumphed over cunning and I managed to pull away from dad quite easily. He didn't die though, all is well, and after a not-so-scenic detour through Mansfield on the way home we were home in time for roast beef. :-)

So yes, as long as there is a hill to run up I have freedom. Let's hope I've learned some responsibilities from him along the way.

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Another week goes by

31st July 2007

4 weeks of the long vacation gone already, and I'm half-way through my placement at UEA. Work has been slow the past few days as I wait for some data to arrive, but hopefully I can get going soon and produce some interesting results. The aim is to send a poster to a conference in London at the end of the project, and if things go really well then a paper too. Spare time does have it's merits though...

Maybe time is flying because Im so busy, each weekend has something booked for it now, right up until I go back to Cambridge. Last weekend there was a trip to London for a jaunt round the Natural History Museum (photos here) and to Ian's belated 21st party. It was good to meet up with about 10 of the Cambridge lot, congratulations to Adam for getting all the way there from Hull, especially as he had to leave his Wii behind for two whole days!

He promises that we will get no work done next year, I'm inclined to agree.

Apart from that I've been filling my spare time with sailing, and discovering that if sailed well enough my boat shouldn't ever capsize. When the wind blows kind-of hard, like it did last week, and the boat tips over a long way, the rudder is lifted out of the water. This reduces steerage to nothing, and the boat 'weather helms' (turns into the wind) and slows down. The only snag is that to get the boat that far over and still be under control requires both crew to be hanging completely out of the side, using the ropes to hold themselves horizontal from the boat. This is either amazing or pant-wettingly-scary, depending on your mood and how much you trust the man at the back. Luckily it was Joe who is the one person I would trust my life to in a boat, and we sailed up and down the river while everyone else took a sweepstake on when we would capsize.

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A Special Request

24th July 2007

Ellie asked me to post these photos showing what happens when geologists have too much time and not enough work to do. Sorry it took so long to get round to it m'dear.

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Paraskavedekatriaphobia

14th July 2007

The Fear of Friday the Thirteenth, a form of triskaidekaphobia, the fear of the number thirteen

www.yourdictionary.com

I'm not normally the susperstitous type, but yesterday really had it in for me. Here is my day's lab notes:

Friday 13th July 2007

Searched for European groundwater hydrographs - nothing
Downloaded WaterBase data - no legend so cannot identify sites
Emailed BGS asking for groundwater hydrographs - no reply
Downloaded European Environment Agency data on land cover - could not open file
Spent rest of day trying to read file - no luck :-(

So there is my first research milestone, the day when absolutely nothing is achieved.

After a hard day doing nothing, I was looking forward to a department barbeque, which suddenly became a lot more hard work when my planned lift was cancelled. Thus I ran home (2.5 miles), then cycled back to the university and then on to the barbeque (13 miles in total.) I felt entirely justified in eating lots of food and drinking plenty of beer.

Mmmmmmm cold beer after a hard day. Makes it all worthwhile.

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Little Kid in the Big City

9th July 2007

I'm feeling very self-important this week, as I've moved to Norwich to start my placement. Living with Chris and Joe is fun, cheap and close enough to work that I can cycle there in just 15 minutes at a push, which is preferable to the hour-and-a-half I would have to set aside if I were driving in. Living in the spare bedroom means that my rents are minimal (guided tour of my new abode to follow later) and I can save my money for holidays and frivolities. One of the high-points must be the CV points I can glean from my job title. I'm now a Non-stipendiary Visiting Fellow of the University of East Anglia, which is some impressive uptitling from "bored student in the corner" or even "undergraduate vacation project" :-) Watch out for me trampling on some grass near you soon.

Frivolity number one was a trip to London last Saturday to meet up with a select bunch of Downingites and watch the Varsity Cricket. I got to play up the whole country bumpkin thing, wandering round with a camera gazing up at the four or five storey buildings that seem to be the norm around there. Counting up I've definately been to London at least 7 times now, possibly even more which isn't bad going at all, and is more than the combined total of three of my grandparents. As a cricket match it was fairly poor, Cambridge only making 135 from their 50 overs, and Oxford knocking the target off for the loss of only 4 wickets, but it was nice meeting up with everyone and enjoying a rare spot of sunshine.

After that we headed over to Andy and Irina's new flat in Paddington to see what life will be like outside the Cambridge bubble. It looks lovely though hideoulsy expensive, and they seem nicely set for the real world, daunting though it may seem. After a quick pizza in a local italian I ran off to the tube station hoping to catch the 8.30 back to Norwich. The circle line (that's the yellow one - I'm getting good) seemed to take an age getting back to Liverpool Street, but I ran through the station and jumped onto the train just before it pulled off.

All was going well, I'd be back before 10.30 and in bed by 11.

Or not.

About a mile out the train pulled over, never to move again of its own volition. The driver tried valiently for nearly an hour, sometimes even turning the engine on to tease us before shutting it down again to a chorus of sighs from the fairly packed carriages. We were eventually shunted into the next station and told to transfer onto the 9.30 which had caught us up. That was also full of people, so the slightly irate passengers from my train had to run under the tunnel before the other train pulled off, and then stand in the gangway without even a cup of tea for consolation.

It was a very tired Rob that cycled home at midnight, the hills of Norwich (yeah, exactly) seeming particularly steep.

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A Fond Farewell

8th July 2007

Once the carnage and all-nighters of May Week were over, it was time to set our sights on graduation. While not graduating myself, I and a lot of the will-be-doing-a-4th-years stayed around to watch our compatriots leave. In a reasonably drawn-out procedure there was graduation dinner on the Wednesday (of which we only saw the aftermath at the party), a champagne reception on the Thursday where I was working behind the bar, and finally the ceremony on the Friday.

With a lot of pomp and circumstance everyone dressed up in white bow-ties, gowns, fluffy hoods and pure-black socks (well the men anyway) and promptly got soaked in the umpteenth downpour of this soggy summer. It did eventually dry out and everyone milled around outside the chapel taking photos. I was shooting with Luke's camera for the day, but will hopefully have some photos to put up on here at a later date.

Once everyone had been thoroughly checked that they were wearing the regulation clothes, they lined up and processed very slowly to Senate House for the graduation itself, which in true Cambridge style was both elegant and bizarre, with lots of finger holding and latin. I had managed to get a ticket from Priyan, and from the back of the balcony managed to watch the top of everyone's heads graduating. After that it was back to Downing for a buffet and some variable-quality wines before the round of goodbyes started.

They say you make friends for life at university etc. etc, but I think it's true. Even though I have another year to do, and a lot of my friends will be around too, this was probably the saddest goodbye I've had to make so far. These first three years at Downing have been amazing; hard work and frustrating at times yes but it's been the people I've shared it with that have made it all worthwhile.

Never before have I said "Stay in touch" and meant it so much.

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Downing Ball review

4th July 2007

So despite 3 weeks of technically doing nothing, I've still managed to fall hopelessly behind in my blog :-(

I'll carry on regardless though, and hopefully get up to date either today or tomorrow. I think I left off at John's Fireworks, so I'll continue with Danu which was this year's Downing Ball. The photos have been around for a few days, but now you get to put up with some words too. I helped out with the set-up by doing some emergency printing and by putting up fencing, and for this I was handsomly rewarded with a queue-jump for myself and Rebecca who had come to visit for the day. This gave us free access to the whole ball when we had had our tickets processed, and we went straight to the food queues because the Thai green curry had made a welcome return from last year and experience shows that food queues build fastest. After that we went round the crazy golf, again because it looked like it would be popular.

Queueing however was almost entirely painless all evening. While at Trinity we had been unhindered by queues apart from the punt tours, Downing used its space to the full to spread the events and stalls around and keep people from bunching up. One particular high point from my stomach's point of view was when we hopped into the waffles queue and then went straight on to the barbeque, chocolate-covered waffle in hand. Timing things just perfectly, the waffles were finished as I reached the front of the burger stand and replaced by bacon-cheese-onion burgers. Mmmmmmm.

Also tickling my tastebuds was a huge selection of cheeses and Fitzbillies cakes in the SCR, some nice single malts around and about, and the obligatory hog-roast on Kenny lawn. Again, the foods were suitably spread out that queues / fistfights were avoided for everything apart from the initial arrival of Fitzbillies, where the SCR descended into mob-rule and the first crates disappeared under a scrum of people desperate for sugary goodness.

On an entertainment front, the indie cover band in the middle of the night were fun because everyone knew the songs and could sing along better than to a relatively unknown band, no matter how good they are. The Oxford (slightly camp) acapella band deserve a mention, if only because they were completely random and filled the 4-5am slot, but the main honours should go to the Queen tribute that played the night out to a packed tent. 5-6 is a weird time at a ball, either it goes well and everyone finishes on a high note, or else you find yourself sitting on a step somewhere waiting for the survivor's photo. Well despite the newspapers packing up and going home early, I had a great time in the last few hours and this cemented the feeling that this was one of the best balls I have been to so far, besting everything from previous years and while not quite matching Trinity for opulence, it was even on fun
:-D

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Blogging backlog - Part 1

22nd June 2007

May Week is so full of stuff that it is almost impossible to find time to write a sensible, coherent post about anything in particular, and a post about each single event would lead to my keyboard disintegrating. Since the last blog post, photos have mysteriously appeared documenting Lucia's party, the Suicide Sunday garden parties, Trinity ball and John's fireworks. Photos from Downing Ball, Danu, are in the pipeline but I haven't got round to that yet. So much to do, so little time!

First thing to talk about should be Suicide Sunday, where I drank a year's worth of Pimm's over 12 hours. Over 3 or so, this much would have nearly killed me, but as it was I just ticked along happily merry from JCR at 12.30, through Danby and then on to Tribal. Unfortunately the hangover kicked in about 2am as I tried to get to sleep, but it was fun all the same. Here's a nice wide panorama rather than a whole gallery of photos, as there are quite enough from that day already up.

With garden parties out of the way it was time to hit the May Balls. Ana from Trinity was kind enough to give me the rights to her second double ticket, and so Sonya and I headed over to one of the most opulent parties in the world (possibly). Queueing for one of these occasions is a delicate matter, as they have to squeeze a lot of people in as fast as possible and still make sure that no-one crashes. Trinity's solution to all this was to use the largest enclosed court in Cambridge solely for queueing purposes. At 7pm we went in throught the Great Gate and collected our wristbands, then queued around Great Court until 9pm when the ball itself started.

Once inside the champagne flowed (flew?) all evening, and the range of food on offer was outstanding. I particularly enjoyed the Tapas and Latin American food, getting to try some grilled swordfish. Later in the night a selection of cheeses arrived, and then smoked salmon bagels and bacon sandwiches. These were all generally handed out in a very orderly manner, apart from the BBQ stalls where there was a huge crush and I didn't bother even trying to get through.

Entertainment from The Rumble Strips and the Go Team was nice enough, and not too noisy either which was good. On a more relaxed note there was jazz pretty much everywhere, and some excellent comedy from Mark Watson and Matt Kirscher kept us going through the death hours of 2-4. Being a college on the Backs allowed punt trips to ferry people up and down the river. While Clare had a shorter queue it seems, they were using Scudamore's big punts and seemed to be packing the people in quite tightly. Trinity on the other hand went for small punts, with perhaps just a couple in. This made the queue very long, and was in fact the only sizeable queue we had to wait for all night.

Fireworks were ridiculously good as expected, and setting them to music (and getting them to explode in time) was a nice touch. Above is a shot from the finale when the whole sky was being lit up.

Well that's enough about that, enjoy the photos and I'll post some more tripe about the end of May week another day.

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Creativity

13th June 2007

Some people accuse us students of having too much time on our hands. Some accuse us of lazing around on punts drinking Pimm's and eating strawberries and being a waste of public money. Well I say "pish", because that seems like a suitably daft thing to say, and as evidence to back up this pishing I give you the fruits of our labours over the weekend, namely "Cow and Hippo" and "Fred".

Clicking on a picture will play the movies.

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Finished!

8th June 2007

There seems to have been a small delay in posts, this was mainly due to some annoying people making me answer a load of questions, but hey that's over and it is time to enjoy the sunshine. Hopefully there will be a plethora of pictures and stories of fun stuff coming up on here soon, as well as a little creative something in the pipeline for posting in the next few days.

For now, here are some photos from today's punting trip:

Procrastination Time!

27th May 2007

Shamelessly ripping the script from Ironic Sans, here is a new procrastination toy just in time for E***s.

Disclaimer: The counties list is the first one I could find on the interweb, and I can't guarantee that it is correct!

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Big Brother wants to track you

26th May 2007

You would know where your people are at any given moment

Angelo Lamme - Motorola

From BBC News, a report claiming that tracking people in real time using Wi-Fi hubs every 30 metres would be "protective" for students and hospital patients, but in the same article it admits that the technology could be used to track employees to check up on them.

The future is coming, and it knows when you went to the toilet....

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Commemmoration

20th May 2007

Downing's foundation might have taken over 50 years to initiate, from the original bequest to the laying of the foundation stone, but their timing within the year was perfect. To level the Tripos playing field, everyone with a first last year was invited to the Commemmoration Feast on Friday night, for 7 courses and much much wine. After a service of commemmoration in the chapel, where we all thanked Sir Downing and the elusive Dr Howard amongst other people who used to have far too much money.

Cue vast quantities of really good wine, college food cooked by a real chef, and rhubard sorbet between main courses (yes, courses) to clean the palate - this actually tastes a lot better than it sounds. To mark the fact that it was 200 years since the laying of the stone, after dinner we had a firework display on the paddock before heading to the SCR for more drinking.

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Many days later

14th May 2007

So Mr Church was complaining that I had not written a post recently and that he would be upset if I did not sort this out. It's not like I was deliberately ignoring blogging per se, I just haven't done that much interesting stuff recently. I guess I could say something about how Ravi is beating me thoroughly at pool this term, and how this is wrong because I gave him a good trouncing last term and had hoped that it would continue. That would start well, but soon reach the conclusion that I play better / he plays worse when I am drunk and that would have me admitting to not drinking that much at the moment and I don't want to admit to such rumours.

Luckily last night we went to the cinema to watch 28 Weeks Later and Priyan has posted something pertaining to a review a) before me and b) without seeing it, which has kicked me into some sort of action. I have decided that in-depth analytical reviews are not for me, as I can't do them and you would get bored if I tried, however here is some advice if you are thinking about the film:

1. Don't go if you haven't seen the first one. The stories do not follow on but you'll be more confused than your average blood-sucking 'infected' if you don't know the backstory
2. Do go with a friend so you can hold their hand / cover their eyes / get them to do that for you, it's a lot more gruesome than the last
3. Don't eat beforehand, you might feel a little sick
4. If you are one of those people who has to have cinema food make sure it is bitter / sour / tastes like blood and is not sweet and gooey, as it will be out of place to eat chocolate icecream, and Ravi says you might lose the appetite for your sundae, regardless of how amazing it looked back at the counter

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Library Croquet

9th May 2007

Apologies for infrequent posting, soon normality and alcoholism will reign supreme once more and normal service will resume, probably with more Pimms. In the mean time, here are some shots from when we were working hard the other day.

Revision is dull, making noise in the library and having fun with book-ends and hammers is more fun. Ergo, library croquet exists.

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Danby Dinner - I remember it!

3rd May 2007

The first week of Easter term is the yearly opportunity for Downing Scientists, Engineers, Mathmos and the token Compsci to get fed and watered on the cheap at the Danby Annual Dinner. Logic might dictate that library time is more productive than hangover-creating havoc, but everyone needs a break now and again (and again, and again, and again...) so we all gathered in the Howard Building for fizzy drinkage before heading over to the hall for sustainance. The £2.80 wine was in attendance, though the white was better than the red.

The starter was deep-fried mini-brie, which was a safe choice and didn't disappoint. Next came the fanned duck breast, which tasted really great, though it had a strong pink colour suggesting that if we'd eaten it a little sooner it might still have gone quack. After the speeches we had some coffee-moussee-thingyee and got on with the real business of the night, drinking lots of port and hugging Dr Duffett-Smith.

Luke took some nice photos, which are here, and I took some drunk photos.

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Rob's Rant on Sandals

29th April 2007

Seeing as it is 9am on a Sunday morning, there is little chance that any post I write is going to be meaningful, so I'll start silly from the off. About a week ago I went shopping as a method of revision avoidance - procrastination as it is more commonly known - and ended up with a nice pair of sandals from Next. These are apparently fashionable, as they have drawn compliments from several friends - a rarity when it comes to yours truly and clothing. Made of purest faux-leather you may have seen me wandering through Downing enjoying my status of fashion God, looking to smite the 'cool crew' from the heavens of style.

Or not.

Whilst they're nice enough to look at, I've decided that sandals are the fashion industry's secret plot to slow men down to a normal walking pace. Try as I might, I haven't yet found a way to walk at more than an above-average stroll without losing one or both of them, which in gravel-ridden Downing is a distinct hardship. Stairs too are a problem, each time you go up more than one, or even a single step with a little too much spring in your step, your foot comes down onto the next step but the sandal tries to escape in whichever direction causes you the most hassle.

High-speed performance is the worst, because it's actually non-existent. A few steps of gentle jogging and suddenly you're running barefoot on whatever pot-holed monstrosity the rest of the shoe-wearing world would describe as a pavement. I tried to catch Luke the other day, as he nonchelantly pushed his bicycle through college, and just could not make any ground. In the end I resorted to ditching the sandals and running along the grass trying (and failing) to vault the gravel traps.

So you ask, why do I persevere? I guess lazyness wins the day here, as they are the quickest shoes to slip on in the mornings before I head out and I'm always up for an easy ride while still semi-comatose. Much like now I guess, though Mum and Dad have just arrived so I'd better finish there.

PS: As Shamini requested comments, they're available here. Please don't break them :-)

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Daylight Robbery?

25th April 2007

It's been a while since a proper post, and just in case anyone was getting lonely / bored / in need of yet more procrastination, here are a few little things that have happened recently.

A good helping of sunshine for the first week helped us avoid the revision quite successfully, the Aerobie has been getting a good exercise on the paddock whenever we've had (extended) lunch breaks out there, and I've taken up casual games of tennis as a way of keeping fit and running away from the library. Whilst a background in squash is handy for hand-eye co-ordination, squash players attempting to play tennis are very easily recognised - they're the ones who spend more time on the wrong side of the fence looking for the ball than on the court missing it.
Slightly less energetic paddock useage was also in attendance, with Fiona's Birthday Picnic last Wednesday, where Fifi learned the wonders of pink champagne, and the rest of us ate tons and tons of food in the sunshine :-)

"So..." you ask, "Where is the 'Robbery' part?" Well Sainsbury's were running a great offer last weekend whereby anyone buying 6 or more bottles of wine would save 30% on all of them. Danby Annual Dinner is coming up next week, and to save money (I had my Treasurer hat on) Lauren and I went and got 42 bottles. The best part was that the 30% came off all wine, so we bought stuff that was already half-price, meaning we ended up with £7.99 bottles for £2.79. That should help the society bank balance.

"Still no robbery!" you protest! Well once we had managed to drag 31.5 kilograms of wine through the checkout, we realised that there was no way we could carry it home. The idea of a taxi was mooted, but it would have taken several minutes to get the stuff from the checkout to the car, and by the time we had unloaded it, the hire charge would have overtaken the savings. At that point we talked to the checkout manageress, paid her a hefty deposit, and walked straight out of the doors with the wine in two trolleys.

Amazingly, despite not seeing us buy anything; and no hint of a receipt, shopping bags or other evidence that we'd paid for over £100 worth of wine; no-one tried to stop us, not even the security guard on the door. We drew a few odd looks from people on the way home, but even though we were apparently stealing a shopping trolley no-one said a word apart from a chav trying to get a quick laugh from his friends, and Mr Nick who tried to make off with a bottle.

In fact, I got more strange looks walking the empty trolleys all the way back again.

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Just for Luke

21st April 2007

Tumblr is basically a blogging platform for people who don't want to use a blogging platform. If you look at things like Wordpress and Blogger, which a lot of people use to create blogs, they're very functional. Tumblr is very simple.

Caroline McCarthy, CNET.com

Why would anyone advertise software as being inferior to the opposition? Hooray for Web 2.0.

[Space reserved for rant from anonymous CompSci]

300 Mighty Ducks

15th April 2007

This might only make sense to a small subset of people, but it is a cool video anyway :-)

Happy Easter!

8th April 2007

First off then, Happy Easter to you all.

On a completely different note, this week has been dominated by only two things, revision and computers. The revision is progressing slowly and tediously, as I try to make some sensible revision notes out of the several files of lecture notes that get thrown at us over the year. I've passed the halfway stage now; the plan was to have finished the note making by the time I get back on the 14th, but I think that may be a tad out of my reach. Ho hum, it'll get done.

In the computer front, it's time to reiterate one of my first posts on here (which seems to have disappeared somewhere) - Backup, backup, backup. I know it is boring, and I'm being slightly hypocritical when I stand up and say it, but it really does make a difference when disaster strikes.

As is the way with these things, Rebecca's laptop hard drive failed 4 days before her end of term essays were due in. After some frantic re-writing I tried to salvage the rest of her work when she got home, but to no avail. Photos were luckily still on her camera, but her composition work is long gone and has had to be re-done. Slightly scared by the amount of work she's had to redo, I'm now the proud owner of a DVD+-RW and a stack of backup DVDs just in case.

Also in the order of new computer stuff was a big new heatsink from Arctic Cooling, as the current resident above my processor was making "Pentium toast" as Ravi calls it. I'd never taken the processor top off before, so with the help of a friendly computer man we made the quick change. I never realised that the actual processor was so tiny, a little metallic square buried beneath a great big lump of aluminium. All seems to be working fine though, with temperatures back down from the high 60s to ~40°C, so hopefully the little machine will stay with me until graduation without dying / burning up.

Keeping me burning the midnight oil for a couple of nights was the new Archive section. Hopefully this will stop you having to load the whole 70-odd blog entries at once, which was getting excessive. If however you like my life filling your screen 50 times over, the link is still there so help yourself.

All kinds of stuff (pt II)

29th March 2007

Now where had I got to... Oh yes, London. Well after a nice lie-in it was time to start doing some work, having had nearly two weeks off due to various excuses, geology-based or otherwise. This past week has seen a 100% increase in my library time for the year, as I decided from experience that working in my room is far from productive. I never thought I would be part of the library-bunch, but so far things are going ok in there. I think this is mainly due to the fact that it is so boring it makes you work to stop you becoming brain-dead. Also there are very few people here, so you can always find a desk, not something that's guaranteed later in exam term I'm told. For the moment it's just a convenient way to pigeon-hole work-time and fun-time. When in the library, do some work, but then leave it behind you. The alternative is to always have your books open, but never look at them. All that achieves is a malingering sense of guilt and a general lack of productivity.

Onto more interesting things though, because work has been far from the only thing taking up my time recently. Last friday night we had a 12-player poker tournament in Charlotte's room, which went down really well, almost as well as the many bottles of red wine I drank. Despite being 'rather merry' by the end, I managed to get the good hands when it mattered and somehow pulled off a victory, which was a pleasant surprise. Poker nights have developed a nice tradition of bow-tie wearing, where upon going 'all-in' you must remove the bow tie with a flourish and pace the floor agitatedly. Rich T has perfected the flourish, but evidence suggest the agitation needs some work. Poker photos decorate the rest of the page, so you don't have to get too bored by my ramblings.

Also cropping up on the fun radar this week has been two trips to the cinema. The Illusionist will draw instant comparisons with The Prestige, and much like the Antz vs Bug's Life debate they are both good, with different focus. A well-written plot keeps you in suspense, and Edward Norton performs well as usual. I'll leave proper film reviews to other people, as I can't really waffle about "edgy cinematography" or "interwoven sub-plots" without resorting to making it all up. Jumping straight to the conclusion then it's worth a watch because [insert reason here].

Adding a little sillyness, a good dollop of artistic licence, and a codpiece-ful of homoeroticism to the cinematic fare at the moment is 300, which is insanely pretty if short on plausability. "Based on a real comic book" is hardly a good omen for historical accuracy, but as long as you realise that early enough and enjoy the gloriously shot battles then all is well. A film about 300 people slaughtering as many Persians as they can is always going to be on the bloody side, but you soon get immune to it and somehow it managed to pass for a 15-certificate. As an non-discriminatory film, Persian king Xerxes camps it up brilliantly (a more be-necklaced man you will never see), there are many impossibly-shaped pectoral muscles, and a few token breast shots are thrown in to make sure all the bases are covered on the nudity stakes. Again recommended, though possibly not if you have a Classics exam the next day.

Finally, as the weather has almost made it to spring time we decided to go of a little punt. A two-hour toddle to Jesus lock and back involved 2 punts, 10 people, 2 lost poles, 1 ball rescued from under a pontoon, amazingly no dunkings, many pringles, and 300Mb of photos, the best of which are displayed here. Oh, and I went to Specsavers and got some new glasses, but that's not very interesting.

All kinds of stuff (Pt I)

25th March 2007

After a post-less week you might suspect that I had been boring and not up to much, with work getting in the way of useful activities like blogging. Luckily this is not the case, I have simply been having far to much fun to get round to relaying any of it on here. Since the posting of House - Abuse, which seems to have gone down incredibly well and will definitely be followed up, I haven't really had time to stop.

Monday saw the Geology department friendliness being put to good use at Louisa's house when six of us descended for dinner. Louisa may have escaped from the rocks to the SPS department, but looking at the decor in her room she's still a geologist at heart. Her Green Thai curry was nicely spicy, making the eyes water if you are the wrong bit but avoiding the all-out crying that Nandos can induce. Much red wine later, dessert appeared - chocolate heaven! Chocolate and apricot swiss-rolls cut into chunks and glued together with more chocolate is insipred cookery, if only because the apricots count as a 5-a-day and therefore you can eat as much of the pudding because it is good for you.

Nursing a not-inconsiderable hangover the next morning I went for a run to Grantchester which cleared things up nicely, and then headed to London with Sonya. Rebecca had been inredibly generous in buying me a pair of tickets to see Spamalot, and good seats at that. After an afternoon at the British Museum we tried to meet Rebecca at Leicester Square. Unfortunately the tube at 5pm is somewhat busy, and it took three trains to clear the platform enough to get us on. Having finally arrived we went to "Cafe Pasta" on Garrick Street, which looked empty but actually had a bustling basement seating area. The service was good, the food was very good, and the prices were cheaper than Cambridge - highly recommended.

Arriving at the theatre in perfect time, we made our way up to the Great Circle, which has an impressive view of the stage as well as a suicidal drop off the front of the balcony. Despite being an acknowledged rip-off of Holy Grail the storyline is suitably varied and the music significantly expanded such that it feels different yet familiar. Though King Arthur is the core of the performance, praise must go to the Diva-esque Lady of the Lake whose musical numbers steal the show at times.

Despite being limited to just a stage they have managed to incorporate many of the large props from the film, including the Trojan Rabbit and the French Castle, and built an impressive set of turrets and interactive cloud cover. Having not seen anthing in the West End before, I was impressed by just how complicated they could make the set, lighting and sound, yet still get it to work mechanically-perfectly and enhance the play rather than being technology for the sake of it. All in all an amazing show, thank-you so much Rebecca for the idea and the tickets.

Doctor in the House??

19th March 2007

End of term has arrived, and people have been heading off since Saturday. Before they left however, we had time for some fun with Shamini's birthday present - a Sony Camcorder. As our resident knee-injury, Ravi was type-cast as Dr House, with other K-residents filling in the other roles. Adam infiltrated from M-staircase to be our cameraman whilst I got a chance to try my hand at directing.

Shooting the film was easy in comparison to editing it up. Usually at this point I would try to plug whichever software I found to be the best for the job, but frankly they're all rubbish unless you pay hundreds of pounds, which I was not in the mood to do. Eventually we managed to get Windows Movie Maker to work, albeit sporadically, and produced a final version. Clicking on this link will take you to a viewing page, though it works a lot better in Internet Explorer than Firefox due to it all being Microsoft stuff. The video is 15Mb large, so broadband is recommended. Enjoy!

Mighty Ducks

12th March 2007

Yesterday afternoon saw the culmination of a season's work for the Downing Duck's Lacrosse team. After topping the group stages unbeaten, we went into the league finals on a high, though being brought down to earth with a bump by Churchill in a friendly served to reduce a few wayward egos. After some festivities at the Annual Dinner on Monday night, which I remember about 70% of, I had been on an alcohol ban to make sure I could run at least in a straight line, if not up and down the pitch all day.

The first match of the day was against Clare, who were ominously warming up before we even arrived. Shuttles of them, dressed in 'offensive yellow' and being far too keen. Suddenly deflated, and dropping every ball in the warm-up, we took to the field with hope rather than expectation. After some early pressure from Clare the deadlock was broken by the ever-present Andy Bennett, and a second was scored by Rich Turner just before the half-time whistle was blown. Buoyed by the unexpected early advantage, discussion with the referee and other team led to the discovery that the 15-minute first half had only lasted 10. Thus three halves of 10 minutes were played in our semi-final.

Coming back refreshed from the extra break, Downing dominated the second half with some amazing interceptions by Will Crone, and accurate passing between the attacking players. Our defensive marking was much improved from previous mathces too, making it very difficult for Clare to get easy, free passes. This led to them never succeeding in linking the three consecutive catches requrired to shoot. Downing's lead was cemented by another couple of goals from Bennett, keeping his average of over two-per-game alive. Despite a strong push from Clare early in the third half, another Bennett goal sealed victory 5-0.

While all this was going on, drama ensued on the pitch of the other semi-final. Finishing 1-1 after full time, Churchill and St John's entered golden-goal extra time. After their first goal was disallowed, Johns progressed to the final at the start of thes second period of extra time, whilst the Downing players took a brief respite, and Will Owen tried to digest his lunch.

Johns were dressed in their usual vibrant red strips, with several substitutes singing obnoxious songs and celebrating victory a little prematurely. After their marathon against Churchill, Johns were happy to accept our proposal of 10-minute halves, which suited our 12-man squad just fine. As the largest college in Cambridge, Johns can fish from a talent pool larger than some colleges put together, but it's not the size that necessarily matters. Downing have been training hard all year, and know each other's strengths and weaknesses well. The final shaped up to be a good spectacle, with both the Churchill and Clare players amiably supporting Downing.

Johns started the first half strongly, with their tall, fast forwards pushing hard and almost escaping the clutches of the Downing defence. Much-improved passing and movement compared to Clare led to some hairy moments in defence, but last-gasp tackles from all the defenders kept them out. Up-front things were not much better, with a sudden lack of coherence leading to wayward, overambitious passes rather than the fluidity that had helped so much in the first game. Half time arrived with no score.

A quick pep-talk later, Downing retook the field urged by Rich T to have 'Fire in our bellies'. Johns started strongly from the off, and managed to combine three passes, finishing with their striker 5m from an open goal. At this point, as the Ducks looked on in horror, Demitrius Duck - lucky mascot of the team - threw in his help. Amazingly the ball fell out of the Johnian net just as the shot was taken. Safely cleared up, Downing put some pressure on Johns, and defender Mark Raggett, playing perilously out of position, scored the opening goal. Though this provided great relief, we all knew that the pressure from Johns would be greater than ever. With calls to reinforce the defence echoing across the field, every Johns player was marked. Each time they got the ball, more defenders sprang to releive them of it. The pressure grew, as the whole Johns team migrated down the pitch to help out. Which left their back line extremely vulnerable. A quick pass out of defence, and Andy was free on goal once more. 2-0 up with only 49 seconds to play, Downing defended to the last, and saw the remaining seconds out carefully before rejoicing. League champions 2007.

Food (variable) and Drunk

3rd March 2007

I'm not sure if it counts as jealousy or greed, but whenever I buy food in a restaurant or supermarket, I always instinctively try to achieve maximum absolute food volume for minimum cost, regardless of quality factors. Hence I am the mainstay of Sainsbury's Basics and will snatch up BOGOF offers without a thought to when I might actually use one, let alone two.

With all this weighing against me, I made a brave step towards the market. Now this might not seem like a big deal for most people, but you're talking to the person for whom 'bread' in the first year meant freezing loaves of Sainsbury's Basics uber-cheap white s*** and hacking frozen slices off one at a time and reaheating. A good description of the ensuing wheat-based goodness is, as the French would say, "Plastique", but it was less than a penny a slice and I was invariably drunk or exhausted or both, so who was I to taste.

At the other end of the expense scale is the Extra-Virgin Olive Oil Ciabatta that I was left clutching. For good measure I also bore two chocolate twists (large, on special offer - seeing a pattern?) and 10 clementines. Hopefully this experience will change my eating habits in a quality over quantity fashion, but the prices and wide range of supermarkets is hard to escape.

A more disappointing culinary experience came in the shape of last night's Formal Hall. The kitchens were understandably pushed, having catered for a wedding in the afternoon and needing to feed two whole rows of high table guests. Small, dry chicken kievs were accompanied by dry chips and frozen peas that missed Captain Birdseye's standards by quite a long way. Chocolate profiteroles for dessert almost made up for it, though they were quite a long way on the crunchy side. Overall a big let-down from last Friday's excellent food. Luckily the evening was resurrected by the a bottle of Hardy's Crest, a coctail night in the bar, and most importantly the presence of these two ruffians, down to visit from Norwich.

Fire!

23rd February 2007

Sometimes you lose sight of the 'Cambridge experience', what with all the work and 'normal' life, but today brought it back into focus, albeit a slightly wine-fuzzed focus.

At the end of this evening's formal the fire alarm went off in the kitchens, not a rare occurrence by any means. After a slightly hurried and clearly overhit gong, the assembled masses - junior, middle and senior members of college, many mildly inebriated - stood quiet and still. With the claxon ringing in our ears the master read the closing grace, imploring us all to "Laus Deio", and muttered answers of "Deio Grasias", or "grunt" or "silence" were replied before the command to evacuate was issued from High Table.

Whereupon the members of Downing College proceeded to get drunk in other, slightly less toasty, establishments.

Too Fast for a Gallery

15th February 2007

Last Sunday night the Downing Ducks lacrosse team were invited to formal hall at Caius college by some very nice people who we beat last term. While all formals are fun, Caius formal is 'unique' in many ways. Firstly it is more 'Slops with a gown', the food is exactly the same as that from 'informal hall' which preceeds formal by one hour. Secondly it is virtually mandatory, as all Caiuans have to buy a book of meal tickets each term, to use at hall. Thirdly, and most surprising, was the speed at which everything is served.

The food was generally nice, (though the starter was left by most people - more for me) but you almost didn't have enough time to eat it all. The students finished and left before the fellows who were served first, leaving us shell-shocked in an empty hall trying to get through dessert. Waiting staff buzzed around like bees, but were unimpressed by our appeals for more vegetables or water, and more concentrated on polishing the recently vacated tables.

All this eating left little time for drinking, but Ravi still managed to put two glasses away with aplomb, even managing to feel "a little tipsy"! The speedy exit from formal allowed us to take over their - reasonably priced but the pool table was broken - bar for a nice long time and still head back to Downing for many games of pool there too.

The ballad of Will

2nd February 2007

Is torey of Will who was sitting on on a cvold dark night with Steven King weho had a really cool naeme! Crickey Sonya,m you just sit down. M Ravi shut up you idiot. Mark Alred was also there and he decided that it woulf be good if Rob punched Ravi because he isa n idiotnshut up Ravi you are a big sos your face hello

Outrageously flurting woih Em Ravi

Em and Ravi sitting in a trees

By William Owen, Man of the Night, The Stalker of Lisboa

21 again

29th January 2007

Having a birthday over Christmas is great because of the lack of school / lectures, but it kept me away from my university friends who missed out on all the alcohol / curry / excuses to socialise. To rectify this Angela and co organised a 'surprise' formal for me last Tuesday. Can I take this opportunity to belatedly thank everyone who was involved, for coming to the dinner and for the amazing present. Evidence of merriment and helium-induced mayhem was, of course, produced, and now resides here.

Continuing the birthday theme, Shamini turned 21 yesterday and had the decency to celebrate on the actual day. A whole host of people arrived to celebrate, as well as a slightly oversized CorelDraw mural. No idea where that came from... Angela (again - spotting a pattern?) had organised a "This Is Your Life" style book for Sharms, which we all duly produced out finest efforts for. My stalker-like photo collection (10 000 and counting) supplied a little collage, but inspirationally I was outdone by Sonya's instructions for life, and Priyan's poetry amongst other things.

Festivities continued until 2am, and I think I drank about a litre of wine. That would be why I was confused this morning then. I managed to get to lectures on time though, my 100% attendance record still stands.

Tickling the panorama taste-buds this week was the mini-snowfall. It might have disappeared by 10.00, but your intrepid correspondant managed to get up on time and remember a camera, so that pretty photos could be collected in time. Autostitch did the honours again.

Magical, Mysterious and bloody Fantastic!

24th January 2007

Christmas is a stressful time for geologists, as both third and fourth years have project due in just before term restarts. In recognition of this, and to give us some normality to look forward to, the Sedgwick Club organise a little holiday for us all - the Magical Mystery Tour.

The location and activities are kept secret - all we knew was that warm clothes and passports were required. On Friday lunchtime 60 geologists were piled into the smallest coach in the country and whisked through the Tunnel to Bolougne-sur-Mer. Watch out France! The activities that followed have been documented in a photo gallery. The alcohol intake is roughly in the right proportion, there were some serious hang overs in attendance both mornings, but unfortunately the activities that were arranged are not shown, due to severe sand / rain issues.

On the Saturday afternoon we were driven 5 minutes through town to the beach, which seemed a little dull seeing as it was cold, threatening rain, and blowing a hoolie. Upon turning the corner however, all was revealed. The beach is flat, hard sand; the sea is protected by a harbour wall some distance out which controls the swell, which was covered with kite surfers, wind-surfers and other assorted maniacs. Our chosen activity was land-yachting, mainly because the learning curve is tiny, the danger of drowning is slightly reduced, and you get to go very fast very easily.

Land yachting is pretty much what it sounds like, you sail along the land. A small plastic chair is attached to three wheels and a smallish sail, which you operate similarly to a dinghy. Steering is done through the front wheel, which in turn is attached to some foot pedals. The wind was helpfully perpendicular to the beach, so you could sail easily in both directions without all that tacking nonsense.

Racing along 3 inches from the ground within minutes of getting into one for the first time was exhilerating, although it threw sand everywhere; in fact I think that there is still some in my ears. Speed was limited by how tight you could pull the sail in, and how well you could stop the chair overturning completely and dumping you in the sand. Two hours later we were all quite broken from pulling the sails in in the cold water, but it was the best time I have had in years.

Thanks goodness that's over

15th January 2007

After the mammoth printing session on Friday, I handed my project in on Monday and quickly settled down for some quarantine time to prepare me for the real world. Luckily this mainly entailed episodes of House and copius quantities of whisky. Three days later and I have awoken from my stupor and staggered back in to the world of lectures, supervisions and working normally again, whatever normal means in this place.

Who is that strange person in black stalking me? -->

Apart from Scottish intoxicants and quasi-American doctors, I also found time somewhere for the start of term party in the Howard Building and a trip to Pizza Express for Lou's birthday - the sources for this post's photos. For once I didn't make a total fool of myself at the party, and even managed to dance (albeit badly as usual) like a human being.........maybe.

This weekend sees the geologists disappearing from Cambridge en masse, to distant shores unknown. The Magical Mystery Tour will be explained at a later date, but suffice to say we don't know where we are going or what we are doing, merely that alcohol may be imbibed.

Save me from the Insanity

12th January 2007

Today is supposed to be the big battle between me and the A0 plotter in the department. A whole term of fighting and fiddling in CorelDraw boils down to this momeny of printing hell. Yesterday I was in for three hours only to be presented with only half a map, so today it is war...

9.05
Overslept a little so not first in the queue. Add my map to the print run, hoping that the machine doesn't die in the process.

10.00
It is project hand-in day for the fourth year students. One of them is having problems getting his through the printer, and sacrifices my print run in order to get another try. Go downstairs to print the report

11.00
Still no joy for the fourth year, so I give up for the morning.

13.30
Back in the lab, still having problems, so I sort his poster out for him - success!! Now to add mine to the queue. It is a big file, so the poor little printer will take about an hour to process it.

14.10
I've decided to make a cardboard front cover for my report. Unfortunately the printer in the library disagreed with this, and jammed the card. Out comes the front page on paper. Half a can of spray-glue later and you would never tell... Still waiting for the plotter to start printing.

14.45
Still no joy from the printer, I cancelled the job and have decided to export to JPEG and print that instead. All going well so far

14.50
Printer initialising - this is good :-)

14.51
Printer prints a blank page. Bugger. Start printing PDF once more

15.00
Try to get away from the lab - take freshly printed report to the Digital Imaging Centre on Regent Street. Nice man binds report - yay!

15.45
Back in the lab, printer still processing the map. Could be here a while.

16.30
Have decided to waste time productively, and am polishing up my field slips. The colouring should have been done months ago, but little jobs like that always slip by. Still nothing printed.

17.00
Print job cancelled AGAIN!! A small slice of map appears from printer, but totally messed up. Have decided to convert some of my complicated parts from curves to JPEG to save processing power for the printer.

17.15
Opened up another computer, have quickly converted topography and crests into pictures, as they weren't that important and I doubt I will see a difference. Things are looking up, but I have to race Mark for the printer.

17.30
Sent to the printer, printer things for a few minutes, and then SUCCESS! The timer ticks down for a few seconds, and then out churns a perfect copy. So that's 11 hours in total, for something that printed in 30 minutes once the bottleneck had been removed. I retire to my room for a celebratory drink. RSI looms.

Slightly less dangerous than powerslides

11th January 2007

A couple of years ago, James May (the posh floppy one of Top Gear fame) described in his newspaper column how he had invented a little game with Richard Hammond (the nearly-dead one) called "Fantasy Crap Car Garage". This involved two or more teams each with a copy of Autotrader or equivalent. The teams would take turns to define a set of characteristics for a car (be it price, colour, nationality etc etc) and proceed to find a car in their respective car magazine that fitted the criteria. Once chosen, the teams would discuss which car was the best and the winner could add that car to their 'garage'.

There was only one problem with this approach, but it was a fairly serious one. Car magazines are woefully short of crap cars. There are plenty of £10 000 Subaru Imprezas, and a depressingly large amount of BMWs, but the 'sub-£100' section was a page long and only gave each car a postage-stamp sized section of page real-estate, clearly not enough to decide which is the best.

Fast-forward to 2007 and the explosion of the internet. eBay is one of the most popular websites in the world and sells absollutely everything. With home networks and multiple-pc ultra-broadband available, you can have many people browsing simultaneously. Cue the arrival of Joe and Chris to my house one wet January evening, and the birth of Fantasy Crap Car eBay!

Rules

Car specifications were decided by the throw of a die. The first roll denoted the budget, ranging from <£100 to £2000+. This ensured that all car selections were at the budget end of the market, be they rubbish, old or preferably both. The second throw decided a special feature of the car. These were Nationality, Colour, Not 4 Wheels, 4x4, Tax Exempt or More Than 4 Cylinders. The Nationality and Colour options had an extra throw to decide which shade of brown to choose from.

Once the criteria were in place it was a mad dash to lay claim to the perfect car. Duplication is immoral, cheating and pointless, so the first person to lay claim to a specific car gets priority. Search skills are optimised so that every possible second of performance is squeezed from the auction finder. Once the best / worst cars have been decided on, its wits and knowledge time as the competitors have to persuade the others that their car truly is the best, and a point is scored. Repeat ad-libetum until tired / drunk / arrested for affray.

Finds of the night included an ex-Russian Military Zil truck, a 1928 Rolls Royce saloon and a beautiful Bentley tourer. With the 1-week listing time this game can never grow old, which will your crap car be?

Holidays are for work? No!

28th December 2006

So after a week in Greece, a week sleeping it off, a week with Sonya visiting and then Christmas, the nice long "ooh students get so much holiday, you can't be excused some work" vacation is running away without me doing any work. Hence I am working hard, writing a blog post. Cough.

Father Christmas has been nice to little Robert again this year, bringing chocolates and booze and healthy things like that, oh and Lego Starwars II. Watch out for the lean, mean, health-freak Sparkie lolling about on a couch near you soon.

Lego StarWars II is fun, a lot longer than the previous incarnation and it seems more to collect and do. Luckily it arrived in PS2 format, and so the distraction during term time is significantly decreased.

Frequent Flyer

16th December 2006

Another vacation, another cheap field trip for the geologists, this time back to Greece for some rocks almost totally unrelated to those I saw this summer. Leaving Downing early was a shame, as it would have been nice to stick around and do non-worky things for a few more days, but these things happen.

Travelling played a big role in the trip, we spent our days driving around in some beautiful minibusses, complete with names and even songs. Cat-napping in between each stop seemed like a good idea at the time, but it seems to make you even more tired in the long run, and prolonged the effects of a mere 2-hour jet-lag into several days of crazy sleep patterns.

[start of "boring" bit] Geologically speaking the Corinth basin is one of the fastest spreading basins in the world, caused by Greece being pushed sideways by the northward motion of Arabia. This leads to a variety of fault systems, and in the extensional areas you get huge fault planes as one part drops down into the gap left by the rocks being pulled apart. The proximity of the sea lets you watch how certain bits have risen and fallen over time, and thus reconstruct the history of the basin much better than elsewhere in the world.
[OK you can read again now]

Having been to Greece already I had a huge advantage in the language department, and really enjoyed being able to ask for my meal in my poorly-pronounced Greek rather than the pidgin-english I used most of the summer. Responses from the shopkeepers varied, but most were impressed, or at least appreciative. Each night saw the hordes of geologists descend on the local tavernas and bars, the best ones being staked out by the demonstrators who after 25 years know where to go. Of particular note was the "meatfest" we had a the oldest taverna in the second town we visited. A meal consisting of purely Greek salad and spit-roasted meat is great in my books, but many people weren't so impressed by the offal wrapped in intestine. I can't think why, it tasted amazing though seeing the brains poking out can be a turn-off I guess.

**UPDATE**
Photos have arrived here.

Christmas time - no rest for the wicked

1st December 2006

Cambridge Christmas is a bizarre concept, so premature that keeping up the festive momentum for over a month is difficult at best, at worst running the danger of devolving into two seperate entities - and that's just greedy. In an attack of time-travel, Advent carols on Sunday were followed by celebrating Christmas itself on Tuesday, Christmas Drinks with Directors of Studies is tonight and Secret Santa is pencilled in for tomorrow.

In the middle of all of this I have somehow managed to make it to all of my lectures and produce first drafts of my map and report for inspection. Pinning an A0 printout to my wall is quite fun, although now I can see all the little mistakes I made. A countdown on my desktop informs me that I have 6 weeks, 4 days 23 hours and 13 minutes before it is due in, but that time is going to disappear dangerously fast, especially with a trip to Greece and something about another Christmas coming up.

To appease those who were upset that my photos weren't on the evil Facebook, I have enabled the comments function in Tom White's photo gallery script. I have neither the time or motivation to continually monitor what you all have to say, so please play nicely people.

Taxi!!

19h November 2006

Is it just me, or are taxi companies the spawn of satan? Yesterday I was invited to a geologist dinner at Girton, whch is famous for being miles away. The group of invitees were planning to cycle but during the afternoon our logic circuits cut in, realising that:

1. It was very cold
2. It was a long way to go if you don't know the route
3. We would probably be drunk on the way home

And so a taxi was ordered, with plenty of notice. At 7pm Louisa and I met at the plodge, happily waiting for a big taxi. 10 minutes past the orderd time, Ajay called them up and was given the standard response "Just round the corner, be there in 2 minutes". Being the nice people that we are, we gave them 20 but still no show. Upon calling again and getting the same response we took out business and frostbite elsewhere.

Luckily several litres of wine and some very very good fajitas awaited at Girton courtesy of Issy. It was a shame that the days are so short at the moment, because by all accounts it is a beautiful college. Drinking until 1am was fun, and it is nice to socialise with people from other colleges rather than spending my whole life in Downing.

Careful use of the water trick meant that I awoke without a hangover, and even made it to lacrosse on time. Several weeks of training are beginning to pay dividends, as clinical passing on our behalf and poor defence from both teams led us to a 3-0 victory. For once we managed to get through a whole game with no deliberate slashing or blazing arguments either. Overall a competitive match against a friendly team, which is a welcome relief and was thoroughly enjoyed by both teams.

P.S. We took a trip to the cinema on Thursday to see the new Bond film. It is excellent and everyone should go and see it. I am rubbish at reviews, so I'll let Priyan do the honours.

What liver?

13th November 2006

Friday night saw the arrival of 12 geologists / ex-geologists at formal. I had promised to arrange something at the start of term, but every friday was busy for some reason or another. Geology is a subject that runs on beer and beards, and as several of my guests were of the female persuasion, we decided to run on beer for the evening, and met at Happy Hour in the department for some cost-price intoxication. Once we had collected people and gowns, and had a good dose of rainwater dumped onto us, progress was made to formal.

Formal was good, the quality this year is several grades above last year when the chefs were limited by the portakabin kitchens, and according to Bob scores evenly with Peterhouse. Particularly impressive was the arrival of re-inforcement vegetables before we had even finished the first tray. Progressing on to the bar, as you must at these occasions, we met up with Georgie and Adam. Adam tends to have a bi-polar relationship with alcohol, usually staying away until a few nights of the year when all hell breaks loose. I don't know how much he drank at formal, but this was topped up with a couple of pints of beer, with some interesting results (Katie might not agree). At least staying up with him meant I got to drink lots of water and stave off the next day's hangover - don't ask Adam when his died down.

Corporate Whoredom

1st November 2006

Despite two more years of study scheduled for me at Downing, the question on everybody's lips at the moment seems to be "So what are you doing when you finish?" Loath to contemplate this though I am, maybe all those people have a point: is it time to think about moving on? Opportunities with a geology degree are at once limited and wide ranging. Geology covers a wide range of topics, stretching from hydrology to oil, climatology to dinosaurs, yet pure rock-based jobs are quite scarce without extra qualifications. Whilst a PhD would be nice, funding and places are hard to secure and Masters course might be more appropriate. A talk at the Sedgewick Club a few weeks ago in Hydrogeology was interesting, and is a distinct possiblilty at the moment. The job spans everything from water supply to contamination, working on large-scale international projects and localised contamination clean-up. Watch this space I guess.

At the other end of the geologist moral scale is the ubiquitous oil company. This week sees the annual visit of Shell to preach / educate the Part II students in the oh-so-interesting jobs that they do. In two afternoons we tried to simulate a 15-year exploration programme on an oil field in the jungle of Gabon. At a mere $428 Million (profit) worth of oil, this was apparently a small field, almost discarded after an experimental bore-hole came up dry. Eventually it was pumped out, just like all the other CO2 stores dotted around the world, and a nice network of roads cut through the rainforest. Maria had a slithgly different interpretation of the phrase "not much environmental impact" to that of the oil-men, and when you saw the hundreds of clearings cut into the forest you can definately see her point. On balance I was far from inspired by a concentrated sales pitch, which can never be a good thing if I would spend 9-5 doing just a little part of the process for years on end.

Mud Mud Glorious Mud!

24th October 2006

I'm aware that just recently this site has become more of a photo-blog than a personal webpage, with more photo galleries than posts. Unfortunately this stems from the arrival of work. The thing I have so far succeeded in avoiding during Michelmas term for the past two years has snuck up on me and bitten me firmly on the posterior, in the form of a project write-up. This is the pennance I have to pay for getting a free trip to Greece over the summer - three months sat in front of a computer screen trying to produce some sense from the messed up rocks.

Luckily most of the geologists got the weekend off from CorelDraw with a trip to the muds of North Norfolk. It was just like going home, despite technically being further away. We stayed in a windmill, cunningly converted by the National Trust into a refuge for geologists and buddhists alike judging by the visitors' book, which is a nice variation on the hotel / guesthouse norm of these kind of trips. Two dorms and an annexe housed most of the geologists, with the overflow staying in luxury with Prof. McCave.

It is unavoidable to not mention the mud in conjunction with the course, seeing as we spent most of the weekend wading through the stuff, but at least I managed to stay away from most of it. Evidence suggests that quite a few people failed in this task, getting a liberal coating of the thick brown stuff in return for the smallest dallience past the creek edge. Overall however this must rank as one of the best field trips I have been on, mainly because of the friendly atmosphere invoked by students and lecturers alike.

Lacrosse and stuff

12th October 2006

Lacrosse this year has started well, with millions of freshers at training, so many that we needed to emergency-buy more balls to cope with the influx. Luckily the people at UK Lacrosse were amazingly helpful, shipping us a dozen new balls on a Sunday evening, plus giving a postage discount! This has kept up the interest, and last night's social should have helped a lot too.

The Ghandi was on form, giving us the basement room to make as much noise is as possible without causing problems for others. Plastic laminated menus are an inspired idea in a room designed to cope with rowing socials. Cue many many drinking fines, and the evil "sock game" which Chris and Em definately lost. Cambridge curry is decidedly mild in comparison to Huddersfield, which is a good thing for people like me; I get to try the different flavours without having to order a new set of taste buds. Ravi is extremely useful in these situations, here he is explaining the concept of curry to Markus.

Breaking News!

4th October 2006

New evidence has been found which suggests that Angie really is three smurfs tall! Download the full-sized evidence here.

Room with a view

2nd October 2006

In the beginning there was Kenny, and the bathroom was en-suite and the kitchen was shiny, but the view was Parasitology, the light levels were low, and the sunshine was on vacation. Then came Lensfield Road, and the windows were south facing, and the sunshine was shining, but the trees were tall and the department was Chemistry, and it loomed large. But the rooms ballot was repeated, and the staircase was K. And the ballot said: "Let there be light!"; and there was light. The sunshine streamed across the paddock and in through the windows, bringing joy into the room, conkers to the trees, and piano lessons to the chapel.

AS you might have guessed I have moved into my new room in college, and am very pleased. It is wider than I imagined, and the hallway section is useful for storage of semi-necessary clutter. Presently the view is pretty and interesting - maybe my opinion of this will change when I spend my day watching people walk through the college...

Photos galore

26th September 2006

Becca went off to university at the weekend, a three-hour trip down to Royal Holloway in Surrey. Technically part of the University of London (and as such qualifying for an astronomical amount of student loan) the college is actually outside the M25, closer to Windsor. Set in several acres of grounds, the main building where Rebecca is staying was built 100 years ago. This was a time when architects could still afford a few fripperies, hence it looks like a castle to rival the most grandiose Cambridge colleges. The twin quads with balconies and turrets must make even the Trinity Ball committee jealous.

Her room is on the third floor with the corridor running all the way around the building, leading to friendship groups of 100+ on the first few days which seem now to be settling down as she gets to know people. The room itself is perfectly functional with a cool bureau to work from and unexpectedly wireless internet too. Located 5 minutes from her department, I think she is perfectly set up for the year ahead. Best of luck!

The next day Luke arived in Norwich because someone needs to stop him working all the time. Unfortunately Central Trains managed that much better than I can, taking 4 hours to travel about 60 miles. After 2 busses and lots of standing around he eventually arrived almost in time to go home again. Wandering round Norwich was interesting, especially as it isn't something I would usually do - all this on my doorstep and I fly off round the world to look at other things.

Photos wise the Sony V1 excelled itself again, altough I'm only putting a couple up as we didn't really get enough for a whole gallery, but I like the few I did manage. Firstly there is a suicidal BMX rider who was practicing outside the Forum (nice modern library thing) but clearly hasn't learn from his mistakes. Second is a shot from Norwich Cathedral, because places like that lend themselves to photography and even novices like me can't make too many mistakes.

Going Postal

22nd September 2006

Despite having worked at the post office for two summers and seeing how well they treat people's things, this week I have trusted quite a lot to the nation's delivery services. Monday saw the arrival of a boxload of boring computer gubbins that I was almost able to justify buying. This was all fine and dandy, I'm sure a comfortable keyboard is a good thing, as is a power-supply that actually provides enough power.

Tuesday however was pure extravagence, when 20" of Philips widescreen screenage came flying down the driveway at 8am. I was fast asleep and completely missed this event, but Rebecca says it was early and that answering the door in her dressing gown is not fun. A monster resolution of 1680x1050 is extremely handy for editing the website and looking at the results at the same time, without having to minimise things all the time. Also photo-editing is helped by me being able to see the photo and select at tool at the same time. Clearly this also has academic potential, I can write my mapping report whilst looking at the photos of the rocks I'm describing. It helps.

Ok so I know those reasons are rubbish, and yes it is unnecessarily frivolous, and yes the real reason I got it is so I can watch DVDs without a microscope, but I felt like it.

At least I managed to post some stuff in the other direction this week, with my first trip into the land of eBay selling. Dad had picked up an old ashtray from somewhere (best not to ask) and it had been kicking around the house for so long that even he had become fed up with it. After the obligatory photo-shoot and an accurate if slightly scientific description, we sat back and waited for the bids to come flooding in. And waited, and waited. Nothing happened for several days, until during the last 36 hours when a veritable bidding war took place, ending up with someone paying £10 for something that was only one step from a crockery smash.
Now if it weren't for an order-of-magnitude difference between my buying and selling activities, my bank balance would be quite happy.

Final Countdown

17th August 2006

The project here is drawing rapidly to a close, we have four mapping days left, plus a shopping day and one day cleaning the schoolhouse (sorry, charming recent conversion) so that the locals let more peope use it next year. I don't know whether it will be me coming back, Annie would like us all to return, but it depends on projects and time blah blah blah.

In the mean time our week here has been far from quiet. I managed to get one of my fly-bites infected, so after it didn't clear up I popped over to the local hospital where they prescribed some very big pills. Control over 1000mg antibiotics over here seems to be quite lax, my first course of drugs ran out yesterday, and I acquired more by going to the nearest chemist and waving the empty box. The horse pills seem to be doing the trick though, the redness is definately getting better. As an alternative cure, the mother of a greek geologist, Agnii, who we meet from time to time told me to crush up an onion and bandage it to my leg to draw the blood out. I'll try most things once, but it has taken a long shower to get rid of the smell.

I took a rest day instead of going on the next 'geo-jaunt', but things weren't exactly restful. Firstly I drove out to the mapping area to collect belongings that had gone walkies the day before. They turned out to be down by the cliff lodge, which is an old shelter built into the cliffs underneath the monastery. The original monk lived there before building the original monastery, the successor (earthquakes etc) of which stands on top of a limestone pinnacle on a bend in the river, about 200m directly above.
When I got back to the school I started defrosting the 3" of ice that was locking the ice-box shut. Mid-flow as it were, a phonecall arrived to say that Louisa had had a small accident in the hire car, and could I drive over to pick them up, as the garage had found a much more serious fault with the engine. The broken bumper was merely tied in place with cable ties, and they would have been allowed to drive off until the mechanic started the engine.

This leaves us with just one car for the remainder of the trip, the mighty Justy. It may only have 3 cylinders and 1.0 litre of pure unbridled horsepower, but it has 4-wheel-drive which means it gets up and down roads most cars would run away from. At the press of a button it goes from slow little supermini, to hardcore mountain climber (sort of). Off-roading is great fun, and I wouldn't mind a go in a proper 4x4 when I get home.
The Justy is an interesting car, very easy to drive normally, it seems to go through engines quite rapidly. The second engine disintegrated a few weeks ago, but the third engine of its 14 year life still goes. I almost wrote goes strong, but that is exaggerating a little. Still, it's certainly an experience, and I got used to driving on the other side of the road very quickly. The drivers here seem to be quite safe, the proportion of cars with some sort of dent is considerably lower than in Athens, where it is at least 70%.

Despite working fairly hard for the last week to get everything done in time, we've still found time for the odd excursion. Yesterday we drove up into the mountains to visit the Portitsa gorge, 200m cliffs with a 5m river cutting vertically down into them. They're very impressive, but my bad leg stopped me from being able to wade up the river and explore them, so I fell asleep in as many places as possible; on the track, on a rock and in the car. Afterwards we went to a taverna in the middle of nowhere, with a view straight out into a big tree-lined valley. There are bears and wolves in the Pindos mountains, but all we managed to see was a fox come to scrounge from the tables.

The project here is looking like it will be finished just on time, and overall it has been very enjoyable, the locals are great, the food is fresh and tasty, the geology is interesting yet just about understandable, and there haven't been any major mishaps. Within a week I'll be back in Athens, and then off to the beach for a bit of a relax, as we are all feeling the strain now. This might be the last post for a while then, so yiasas for now...

Bobs' Estate Agents

11th August 2006

Welcome Sir, Madam, to this glorious property. Im Bob, and this is Bob. Fresh on the market, minimal earthquake damage and all mod cons, I'm sure you will fall in love with this exquisite conversion. As you can see the present occupiers are still in residence, but we are assured they will be moving out by the end of the month.

	Firstly we have here the kitchen. With gas stove and electric oven this room is suitable for parties of over 10 if you aren't too adventurous. Also a very modern fridge, best before 1970 and capable of spoiling your food within 4 days. The smell is 'unique' but we won't charge extra for that. Note also the adaptable dining tables, equally suited to work and mealtimes. Deckchair style seating is supplied, in a modern, thoroughly matching colour scheme.
	Moving along we have the first bedroom, capable of holding up to six with space for desks and these lovely antique bookcases full of greek documents (you'll find them listed under fixtures and fittings) Notice please the modern window furniture, nice big curtainless frames give you a great view of the local life whilst you're changing. Waking up each morning is never a problem with your own personal alarm clock, Mr Cockerel, living right outside. We are trying to train him up so that he only crows in the morning, but that might take a few months yet.
	Now here is the study, with an executive style desk made from finest sharp steel and complemented by ergonomic seating made from purest tree. Space for one conscientious worker, or two if you are good friends. The decoration has been approved by a Feng Shui expert as the most likely to drive you insane, and thus is perfectly fit for purpose. The way the plaster hangs from the wall adds a sense doomed tranquility second to none, and is highly recommended to psychopaths.
	Onto the second bedroom now, this one has a little more space, and will hold seven easily. Furnished with premium quality prison beds, and matresses with genuine local mildew, you're guaranteed an interesting night's sleep. This room also boasts double glazing, with a superior 1 foot of space between panes. Also notice the ensuite bathroom, just through the door at the end there. Unfortunately it is also the main bathroom, and the only bathroom, but it still counts.
	The bathroom in this property has just undergone extensive renovation, with two small toilets replaced by a shower and wash complex. The work only took threee weeks, and now even includes a shiny new boiler for hot water too! As an introductory offer we are throwing a month's supply of air freshener and mop heads in too, to make your tenancy all the more enjoyable.

I hope that this whirlwind tour was to your satisfaction. we have had a lot of interest in this little number, and expect the offers to be pouring in by the end of the century, so act fast!

Progress report

7th August 2006

Time flies when you're kept busy 16 hours of the day, and before we knew it we've passed the half-way point. The map might not have done, but I'm sure the last fortnight will be quicker, due to both a slightly more panicky mapping speed, and also that hopefully we have covered the hard parts already. However this area has a nasty tendency to spring surprises on you when you're least expecting them, so watch this space.
In the meantime here is a mini progres report on the work so far:

Days of mapping	17
Localities mapped	244
My Euros spent	350
Other people's Euros spent	2000
Scorpions seen	3
Close-runs with angry dogs	4
Scree slopes climbed up / fallen down	3 (all in the last three days)
Holes mended in 'hardwearing' trousers	7
Toxic pairs of sandals	1
Hot Showers	2
Level of holly-oak abhorrance	High

Comings and goings

3rd August 2006

This week saw the schoolhouse go from packed to the walls, down to a skeleton crew. An italian professor from Milan University came to check up on the girls' progress, and for a bit of a holiday apparently. With the addition of Giovanni and his assistant Allesandro that made 13 people living in the two rooms here. Mealtimes were a bit of a marathon, with the biggest pot in the supermarket put to good use. It was good to have lots of people around though, with games of volleyball and a trip up a very steep mountain track to Mt Vourinos organised for the weekend. Here is a photo of the whole lot of us up at the mountain lodge with Vourinos in the background.
However this game of geological sardines didn't last long, and people have been drifting away ever since. Three of the americans left last Sunday, needing to get back for the start of their next semester, and the italian teachers left on Tuesday. Zach and the italian girls left this morning after a pretty drunken farewell party last night. This leaves just the four of us Cantabrigians for the next three weeks.

In the meantime we have settled into a steady routine after the events of the first few weeks. My alarm goes off at 6.30, and at 6.31 I work out what on earth that terrible noise is, and hit the snooze button. This continues until about 7, with me being less and less confused with each subsequent awakening, until eventually I manage to haul myself out of bed. We aim to get out to the field at 7.30, but this usually slips back till about 8 before we are finally packed and ready to go. At this time in the morning the weather is pleasant, not too hot and usually a reasonable breeze.
Mapping until about 11 is quite a productive time, whilst we are still fresh, and the sweat hasn't drowned us. I take three litres of water into the field, and sometimes come back thirsty. From 11 the temperatures start to rise, but it isn't till 12 that it hits. Bang on 12 you can feel the temperature rising, like someone is turning up the oven. Temperatures keep soaring up until about three, and stay hot till gone six. We learned the hard way that there is no point trying to stay out in those conditions; there is only so much geology that can be done whilst hiding under a tree.

Instead we head back to the school for some lunch, and a bit of a rest. The afternoon's activities depend on how bad a night it was at the cafe the previous day, I tend to have a siesta every three days or so just to catch up on the sleep. Otherwise I read books, sunbathe, or more likely try to cope with the ever growing pile of data we have collected. About 6 the temperature begins to drop, and so I am dragged from my peaceful slumber to do some more work. Evening activities are necessarily short, but we try to keep them sweet as well, going somewhere where we think we know what is going on. Usually this means finding something completely unexpected that makes no sense, but that is the nature of these ophiolite thingies.
Then it's back to the school for some dinner, more writing up and a trip to the cafe, for their vodka, vodka, vodka and orange juice for colour. (Note to self, do not drink more than three)

So, rocks... what rocks?

26th July 2006

Saturday and Sunday in the village were party time. The sister of one of the people we have made friends with in the bar, Sula, was getting married. This is a big thing in Greece , with the festivities lasting all weekend.
The night before there was a small party at the bride's house, involving a streetful of tables, food, beer and dancing until 3am. That however was just the warm-up. The next day there were processions, ritualistic shavings, and music all day. The wedding itself didn't start till about 5 or 6, and after that the whole village, including us, had a big party. The main street of the village was blocked off, there were about 30 tables full of people sitting in the road. The local taverna produced a stream of food and ouzo and general merriment was had by all.
The bride and groom led the greek dancing (lots and lots of circles) and even some of us joined in. Vincci seems to have got the knack, me not so much. There was one stage where the couple danced on their own with an umbrella with baby clothes hanging off it, which seemed to be for fertility.
The local people were very friendly towards us, making space for us to sit down and throwing food and drink at us until we could take no more. Despite quite a large language barrier, we are getting on well; simple conversation is good when you've had a lot of beer. It seemed to be a cheaper yet more friendly and enjoyable event than the english version.

Some parts of the mapping area are very cliffy and inaccessible, meaning that our options are limited to "ignore it" or "map very quickly whilst plummeting to our doom". We generally choose the former, apart from a brief incident with Bob on a scree slope hanging from a tree root. In true geologist style he managed to get a photo of the drop, and also spot a rock contact whilst he was there. To visit the isolated shores Annie arranged a rafting trip. Athough technically not on our risk-assessment, the geological importance (which clearly is more of a factor than the fun,) was overwhelming and we accidentally found ourselves floating down the beautiful Aliakmon river. It is the middle of summer, so the rapids are not especially violent, but they were still great fun, and it allowed us to get out and look at the rocks (for some reason).

With all these goings on, you might be worried that we aren't doing any work. Actually I am just glossing over all that because it is very complicated; I don't want to talk about it, and you probably don't want to hear. Instead, here is some useful information for the traveller to Northern Greece:

• Everything, and I do mean everything, has spines on it. My personal nemesis is the holly-oak, which has leaves like holly yet grows acorns. It is about four feet high, and grows all over the hillsides we are meant to be mapping. It is very dense, making navigation a scratchy experience.
• Sheepdogs appear vicious, and will happily charge over and bark their heads off, but seem to be scared of people hurling rocks at them.
• Mating tortoises make the strangest noises.

Castles in the sky

24th July 2006

In an attempt to stop us going crazy with all the rocks, Annie has created the "Geo-jaunt". This involves spending Sundays going to interesting locations out of our mapping areas. Last weekend was spent in the Pindos mountains, which was quite pretty and all that, but yesterday's trip was much better. The monasteries of Meteora are built on some huge isolated limestone columns about 40 minutes drive from the schoolhouse. They were inhabited during the period of the Turkish occupation when Christianity was persecuted. Without doorways (access was via a rope ladder that was drawn up when not needed) the monks could live in security. These days there are steps up, but the buildings retain their air of isolated tranquility. Apart that is from the coachloads of tourists who charge up and down to visit them all. When the road is only big enough for one, and there are busses parked on both sides and trying to come up the middle, it makes for interesting driving.

We started off by visiting the largest and most popular monastery, Grand Meteora. This has had the tourist treatment, with exhits, museums, guide boards and viewpoints fenced off from the rather steep drop below. It was a very good introduction to the history of the area, telling stories of the various wars of independance that this part of greece has experienced. Whilst very pretty it also seems more like a pure tourist attraction (although at 2 Euros, a very reasonably priced one).

After that we went to the smaller but more original St Stephen's Nunnery, which involved a twisty drive down and then another up a different hill. Here it was a lot more tranquil, with just a few families around. Also the place seemed lived in, with a little garden out the front and a hoover under the stairs. Also there weren't silly fences everywhere, so you could take a photo of people with the mountains nicely unobscured in the background, and just the big drop for scenery :-)
For the geologically minded, Meteora provides a conundrum because the limestone must have come from a high-energy environment, due to the large pebble size, yet it was localised in a very small area for a long time.

Hello from Greece

21st July 2006

So I've arrived, and by the time I find somewhere to upload this I will have been in Greece for over a week. It took two full days of travelling to get up here, one day flying to Athens via Amsterdam, and another catching a bus to the nearest town, Grevena, where my field superivsor lives. We aren't staying in Grevena, but in a little village out in the countryside (whose name I can't quite spell yet) near the mapping area. It's nice enough, very friendly locals and a nice bar, what more could one want?
We are staying in an old schoolhouse that was abandoned after the latest earthquake. It's basic, but improving gradually. When the american students arrived four weeks ago there weren't even beds, but now we have a kitchen, toilets, a fridge and some half-built showers which might be done by the time we leave. Until then it is a weekly trek to the football pitch for a shower with a view (in and out). Also in the village are a couple of shops, a taverna and some cafes, which we may have been known to frequent occasionally, but clearly didn't drink any alcohol, at all, ever.

The first few days were spent sampling a little of the local geology and a lot of the local food with our supervisor Annie, so that we weren't flung totally in at the deep end. The regional geology is very mashed up because a piece of ocean crust was pushed up onto the continent when two plates collided. This makes things interesting, but complicated too and we're very glad we had an expert introduction. Since Tuesday we have been mapping on our own, getting up early in the morning to avoid the heat, then in the afternoon either writing up, visiting local places, relaxing in the sunshine or haveing a not-so-brief siesta. Of an evening we tend to cook for ourselves, but we have had lunch in tavernas some days. The local food is amazing, it is all grown in the village, so it is totally fresh, and the prices are attractive too. On Sunday I had a whole local trout, chips, bread and tons of greek salads for under £5.

Just in case you are getting too jealous, we are working too, getting up at 6.30 and working until 2 when the sun reaches instant-sunburn setting. We are mapping four units of ophiolite, across the fault where the ocean crust sits on the continental sediments. This area is very complicated, and it will take us several weeks to get our heads round it. Anyway, enough for now, time to go shopping for next week's supplies.

Flying Visit

12 July 2006

As the keen eyed (bored) among you might have discovered, mysterious photos from Skye have appeared in the photos section. Before the Greece trip (which leaves tomorrow morning - Argh must pack!) we had a practice run up in Scotland, where there were PhD students on hand to help us out and point out our myriad mistakes. While the people at home had a heatwave, we had a dry spell, which is the best we could have hoped for, with rain on only two days.
It was interesting to see how dependant we have become on communication and needing to be in touch all the time. Mobile signal was generally poor to non-existant, however there were occasional patches on the hilltops and during our shopping trips to the nearest town 20 miles away. Suddenly the whole minibus produced their phones and were franitcally texting before signal ran out.

Exams went very well this year, making the drudgery of revision worthwhile. As a result of this I get two free dinners, some book tokens and a cheque from college. As a present to myself I am also considering buying a nice big new monitor for DVD-based procrastination next year. Currently I have my eyes on a Philips 20" widescreen model, but I'll wait till after Greece to get it. This is an important step in the screen-size arms race between myself and Sonya. She already has a 17" TFT, and has recently bought a 10" portable DVD player too. I feel like I'm getting left behind here, which would never do. Hopefully when combined with my 5.1 speakers my room next year shall be a veritable mini-cinema.

Unfortunately I won't be able to update my ranting missives from Greece, so you will have to pretend. Basically it is going to say something along the lines of "Rocks, Sunshine, Hot", you can fill in the rest.
Avrio!

Just Chilling

17th June 2006

Despite it being only a week, exams seem blissfully far away and forgotten, I think I could get used to this no-work malarky. This week has been really relaxing, a fitting de-stress after a hard term's studying facilitated by the huge array of fun things to do. Wednesday saw us take a trip to bumps to watch Becky and co compete. It hasn't been the most successful year for Downing so far, but W1 are going strong and w2 overbumped on Thursday!
We have also managed to find time for some evening lacrosse, with several people old and new turning up. One surprise player was Dr Millet, the Admissions tutor who arrived on his bicycle with lacrosse stick in hand for a 25-year-later refresher course!

Downing College Association have been very kind and given me lots of money to support me on my Greece trip, and I have been trying to spend it wisely. With 40 degrees predicted for our time there I have acquired some lightweight clothing and a suitablly silly hat to try and protect me from the ever-growing list of things that might kill me:

• Sunstroke
• Snakes
• Scorpions
• Wolves
• Dogs
• Locals
• Bird Flu

This evening we went night punting towards Grantchester, although as you can tell I didn't stay out all night. Three of us walked back from the end of the nature reserve as I have to get up early in the morning and staying up on a boat all night is not good preparation. If it weren't for the gazillion things I have planned for the next week, I would have become nocturnal. Walking back through the fens was quite good fun though, especially as we didn't know where we were.

Finished!!

12 June 2006

So two weeks of pain and little sleep finally came to an end on Saturday afternoon. We could hear the football fans on Parker's Piece watching the England game on the big screen, but we were back in the department one last time getting angry with maps. I would have written a celebratory post earlier, but we then proceeded to get a little "tipsy" on the Arch and Anth lawns. In retrospect having a swordfight against someone with a metal ruler was possibly not the best idea, but alcohol numbs the pain nicely.

After that I made an attempt at sobering up before going for a meal with Sonya's parents, and then the exam stress came back to hit me with a vengance. I hadn't been sleeping well, and combined with the added stress my immunity was obviously a little down. By the end of the meal I was so bunged up with cold I had to go home and sleep for 12 hours.

Feeling a lot better the next day, I got down to the real business of post-exam Cambridge - enjoying the sunshine and exploring all the places you don't have time for in term time. After some frisbee on the paddock we decided to explore the Fitzwilliam Museum. Whilst this is obviously not a patch on the Sedgewick Museum (mmmmm rocks!) it has some very cool stuff (minus a couple of vases) The Egypt gallery is especially good, with mummies and sarcohpagi.

Procrastination techniques

27th May 2006

So it appears that a few posts ago I unwittingly set myself the challenge of making a list of time wasting activities. At first it seemed that 27 individual techniques was going to be a tough challenge, but in actual fact the list filled up with worrying ease. In general these are tried and tested as being completely unproductive, menial and restrict your fun. No hang on that's revision, these are just unprodictive.
Anyho, here, for your personal delectation, is a "To Do" list (or more pointedly a "Don't Do" list):

1. Write a website. Include on it a whole pile of tripe that no-one can be bothered to read, then get very upset when your friends do not read it.
2. Ebay
3. 3D Pong
4. Book a holiday or three
5. Go for a curry, invent a reason if necessary.
6. Make a nice cup of tea (can substitute alternative beverage if necessary)
7. Add alcoholic liquids to said beverage
8. It is said that everyone in the world is linked by six people. Attempt to navigate between to apparently unrelated topics on Wikipedia by clicking on links in the main article page.
9. For the extremely masochistic: do the same with Uncyclopedia
10. Burn things. It is best to use something more powerful than a hair dryer.
11. Listen to the cricket on Test Match Special.
12. Go to brunch, count the calories one by one.
13. Play with MSN smilies
14. Take pretty photos
15. Break your computer.
16. Try to break P-2006
17. Persuade one of your friends to have a birthday. Go to formal and celebrate. Bonus points for un-birthdays.
18. Make up / reply to a completely ridiculous thread on the forums.
19. NO ONE SHALL SPEAK OF #19 (according to Priyan)
20. Have a Barbeque. Hardcore procrastinators do not worry about rain stopping play.
21. Watch Green Wing, twice if possible.
22. Cook a meal, ten bonus procrastination points for every course past the first four.
23. Start a new society. The sillier the better.
24. Work out how much money you will need to spend in order to run Windows Vista
25. Spin round and round on an office chair until you get dizzy. Experiment with the laws of angular momentum by bringing your legs closer to your body, then moving them away.
26. Spend lots of money.
27. Go to an Annual Dinner, bonus points only joining for procrastination purposes, super-bonus points for not being a member of said society.
28. Make a list of procrastination techniques

Crash!

19th May 2006

Good old college, always guaranteed to be working as close to minimum budget as possible. This morning Georgie, Lakshmi and I were commenting upon the state of the drips coming from the ceiling of the downstairs bathroom when things got a little interesting. Having decided that staying up was boring, the plasterwork above the shower made plans to escape and have a holiday in Ibiza. Unfortunately the floor got in the way of its plans, arguing that the plaster should stay where it was thankyou very much.

Needless to say the plaster work was adamant that it was holiday time, and so detached itself and tried to get to the airport. To foil this cunning plan the floor did what floors do best, it got in the way of the fall, smashing the runaway ceiling into a hundred million pieces and thwarting its plans for siestas and nightclubs. As punishment for its skiving, a nice man from maintenance gathered up the wounded ceiling and put it in the bin.

Revision sucks

14th May 2006

If there is one problem with the timings of the academic year, it is putting the worst bit of the year at the time when the weather is nicest. When the sun shines, which is surprisingly frequently at the moment, Downing is an intensely beautiful and enjoyable place to live, with a myriad of pursuits to fill your spare time. However with the "E" word looming, you develop a pang of guilt everytime you stray from your desk, be it in you room or for the hardcore/mad, the library. Luckily for me these guilty feelings are soon dissipated, and I plan to make as much use of the opportunities available to me to enjoy this term. The list of procrastination techniques is growing fast, but I feel it would be irresponsible to release them all on the world until after the revision period.

Yesterday was the FA Cup Final, apparently, so I listened to the cricket. Without the TV coverage it will be interesting to see how public interest alters. Notwithstanding the fact that last year was something special, one got the feeling that most of the cricket affecianados were due to the nearly complete coverage on Channel 4. Much like the rugby supporters who turned up for the World Cup a few years ago, and the tennis fans who only follow the sport for 2 weeks a year. Witdout the mainstream coverage, will cricket disappear into obscurity like boxing has? There are plenty of sports crying out for the exposure cricket was offered, and in my mind anyway it seems that they have been short sighted looking at the money instead of the future.
To get in the football mood the ladies team played a friendly on the paddock yesterday afternoon, and were unfortunate to lose 1-0 after the majority of the posession in the second half. Hard luck girls.

Adam In Wonderland

8th May 2006

At last, after a year in post production, at great expense and requiring several weeks of important revision-busting procrastination, Shamini Productions Inc. has released its greatest masterpiece since MOTT, Adam In Wonderland!!!!! Premiering here on Sparkie's Junkyard, this is no junk, this is world class writing, acting and photography. Hazzaaaaaaaaa!

Summertime, perfect for hangovers

6th May 2006

Ironically I am writing this in the rain, but I'm sure that you get the point. After a fairly mediocre spring, summer has arrived suddenly in the Cambridge bubble. A few days ago all that could be seen were cold, tired students trudging around in the drizzle, and now they are skipping about the paddock (especially the rugby boys). Unfortunately the gardeners' plans for genetically modified supergrass on the lawns and football pitches has backfired, meaning that they now need cutting every 20 minutes. Combined with the uberpollen they are obviously releasing there have been days when it seems everyone in the city has hay-fever.

With the arrival of the summer it is also time for a new round of annual dinners, perfect excuses to put revision on a back burner (in fact, procrastination technique #27 if you're into counting these things). Due to the lacrosse team having exams spread over several months, our dinner has been postponed till nearly May Week, and as such this years society alcholism was restricted to the Danby Dinner. Despite a fairly strict alcohol limit; careful seating arrangements and knowing the right people meant that my liver was still suitably attacked. It seemed that most people had a good time, and the food was a lot better than last year's cucumber soup. The jury is out on whether Luke or I won the "who can take the worst photo" competition, but most of the results have been sworn to secrecy, so you will have to guess.

Sorry for the delay

2nd May 2006

Hi guys, apologies to my three known readers for the delay in this post. I have been staying away from computers for a few days because my arms were getting a little sore from excessive reading of P-2006 and Downing Forums. P-2006 I could accept, but repeated forum use is clearly a sign of procrastination so I resolved to try and do some work instead. The general plan is to take it easy computer-wise for a few days so that I don't end up like Luke (no offence, but Sonya has banned it). Incidentally Luke has lent me the keyboard and mouse he was using when he 'caught' RSI - is now the time to get worried?

On a brighter note a group of us cycled to Robinson College on Sunday to watch Davy, Emily and Rowena get confirmed. Lack of bicycles and a couple of navigational inconsistencies meant that we arrived just before the start and were relegated to the cheap seats. They might have been plastic, but the balcony gave a grandstand view of proceedings as the Downing three were made full members of the Church along with about 20 others from the University. The bishop was nice, the choir sang well and even the sun shined, so God had to put up with my shorts.
Congratulations one and all.

Who Killed Flopsy Bunny?

18th April 2006

Dad and I set a personal best for unloading the car today. It took a mere 20 minutes from pulling up at my college house to him driving off again including time for a drink and a toilet stop. Unpacking is progressing, almost certainly aided by my leaving the computer till last rather than setting it up then losing the will to unpack further. Needless to say the momentum didn't last too long and anything that hasn't been put away by now is in danger of staying where it is until the end of term. To make up for the unpacking exertion Luke, Becky and I took a trip to Sainsbury's to stock up on all the cheap chocolate left over from Easter. Mr Church purchased Flopsy and we proceeded to murder her most brutally, incapacitating with an impromptu frontal lobotomy before finishing off with some aggravated eating.

Speaking of moving quickly, yesterday I went on a 19 mile sponsored walk for the local church along the Wherryman's Way, a relatively new walk along mainly footpaths from Norwich to Yarmouth. Starting at Whitlingham Country Park we wandered past five pubs and were well behaved enough to only stop in two of them. The pace was quite fast, finishing in seven hours including elevenses and lunch breaks so we were back in time for a cup of tea and a cake for 3pm. Special mention must go to seven year old Elizabeth who joined us for parts of the walk and kept pace with the rest of us admirably well.

Fore!

15th April 2006

I hadn't seen Chris or Theo all holiday, so yesterday evening I joined them in Norwich for a few holes of pub golf. For the uninitiated this involves trekking to a set number of pubs (usually nine or, for the suicidal, 18) and partaking of alcoholic beverages at each establishment. A throw of the dice decided which style of drink to buy, and another throw stated the 'par' fo that round. Par seemed to be immaterial as everyone was going for the hole in one anyway. I arrived late at 7, citing important revision as a reason not to lose my liver just yet, but most people had been drinking since at least 3pm and were fairly happy already.

Luckily I had missed the cider round, and started off putting in some strong performances with the red wine. Formal hall definately has its uses as a training ground for outside life! By the time we reached my third pub hunger had taken over for the merry revellers and we stopped for a protracted meal break. Burgers, beer, cocktails and more than one chip later, we headed off for more carnage. I am not enturely sure why we ended up with an inflatable sheep wearing stockings, but what I am certain of is that it went some of the way to preventing our entrance to the more upmarket hostelries in the area, especially when worn as an attractive hat.

However by now the effects of seven hours drinking were taking their toll and we started gathering people together for the taxi ride home. Unfortunately this was a bit of a problem. Despite being a group of accountants, many with first class degrees, they had managed to lose one of the party. Being a stranger to Norwich we could only get obscure references to pubs from him as we ran round all the back streets for a half mile radius, eventually finding him on the other side of the river, not at all bothered that we had run a drunken marathon to find the little sod. Intense exercise cleared the brain for about an hour, but by the time I had got home my slowly poisoned brain gave up and I slept like a log.

Back in Networkshire

13th April 2006

Apologies for the absence, I've been off sunning myself in the English Riviera whilst the rest of you were getting snowed on. Despite the weather forecast being crap (technical term), we managed 11 days of outside activity in Cornwall in April with only one half-day of showers. Compared to the nightly reports of rain, hail, snow and other forms of humourless precipitation falling on the rest of the country, that we received virtually none of it must be little short of a miracle. Photos of the week are up, well the more interesting ones anyway. I omitted the 200 or so that are just of rocks, although a few might have slipped through, you have been warned.

Rebecca seems to be getting on very well with the new laptop, and despite Luke's concerns the router is still working perfectly. In fact I'm writing this from the kitchen with the wireless on the opposite corner of the house. The next test is to see if Rebecca is in range whilst house-sitting for the people across the street. Unfortunately the lovely shininess and portability have got me thinking that I might have to join the laptop brigade when my current box of tricks expires. To give it its due it is holding on well, despite the punishment it has received over the past two years.

Sonya has come to visit for a few days, so Joe and I took her out for a little sail in Blue Streak. This was a new experience, as in the past we had kept her in the safety zone of bigger boats. It was nicely windy, and the boat was leaning over to the point when even I was getting a little concerned. Luckily Joe is an excellent sailor and always had things under control. Salvage for the trip includes a plasic bucket and a lovely big fender.
Things got a little hairier when the rudder parted company with the boat, leaving us without any steering about half a mile from the boat house. Thus we limped home with Sonya altering the power of the jib to help the steering, me on the main sheet determing the power, and Joe on the back deck steering with a paddle. Strangely I felt very safe whist doing this, and we just got on with the job of getting back.

God Bless Dell

30th March 2006

In terms of expedient delivery, this must rank as one of the best I have so far encountered. Less than 48 hours after placing the order, a big van arrived at the top of the drive bearing gifts for Rebecca. Two days to build the thing and deliver (from Ireland apparently) is very commendable, especially as it was put together solidly and worked straight off, not a rushed job at all. It is presently sitting happily in her room, wireless all set up and happy. Hopefully it will behave itself for a while to come, as I leave tomorrow morning for a field trip to Cornwall and Dorset with the Geology department. Expect photos of rocks, and more photos of drunken rock-lovers in a few weeks time.

Work has taken a back seat for the past few days as I set about earning some beer money for the aforementioned trip / pissup. My old high school has been expanding rapidly since I left four years ago, and the latest scheme is to build a second storey onto some of the rooms. I was called in, clearly because of my intrinsic knowledge of minerals and rust, to lug several tonnes of books and files from one room to another in preparation for the removal of the roof. Eventually I guess I should try and get a job that requires the use of more than one brain cell at once, rather than the present series of menial undertakings, but in the mean time at least I can be the most overqualified box-mover in Loddon.

Cabin Fever

25th March 2006

It's a surprising contrast between Downing and home, which still takes me by surprise after five terms. The sudden transition from being surrounded by friends to being alone all day with little to do takes a while to adjust to. Luckily a combination of Green Wing repeats and plenty of books to read have kept me busy enough to maintain my sanity. The quietness takes a little getting used to though. After ten weeks of having traffic pass within 20 metres of my window day and night, I now have a small street on one side of the house and a field on the other. You become aware of all the little idiosyncracies of the boiler in this situation, though on reflection I far prefer it quiet.

Due to the planned arrival of a new laptop for Rebecca I have taken the plunge into the world of wireless networking. Well I say that but currently the wireless is turned off due to a complete lack of wireless things in the house until Dell send us a parcel. In true thrifty fashion I chose a router based on careful cost / benefit analysis of the marketplace. This is a simple procedure involving going to eBuyer and buying the cheapest one available that doesn't have a string of complaints attached. I may live to regret this, but £40 for a wireless router seemed like a good bargain at the time. Setting up seemed fairly simple, and with any luck I've managed to sort out the security to avoid unwanted guests.

Slightly more welcome guests are the nymphomaniac frogs that have taken residence in our pond. Current count is about six, and with they way they are going soon to be six thousand.

End of term

21th March 2006

Term end arrived extremely fast this time round, not quite up to last year's manic standards with early morning field trip following late night Marriage Formal, but even so the time between end of lectures and going home was far too short for the million things I could have done. On thursday night I went to the final performance of "The Master of the Thing", which has pre-occupied Shamini, and more importantly Sonya for most of the term. For a proper review you shold probably read Priyan's critique, but from my point of view I was very impressed and rofl'd a lot. Afterwards there was a bit of a party which I invited myself to, eventually crawling home at 2 (ish).

Friday was spent in the most part rebuilding windows for some poor soul whose hard disk had eaten itself. After that a manic evening of socialising was clearly needed, to prove to the world that I am not just a geek. Firstly I had a very nice date in the refurbished Curry Garden, followed by a bit of a pissup in Gonville 2 playing the game of twenty plus one. Obviously what a drunk person needs is some high-brow cinema, and this was supplied in the form of Syriana, a film I had been intending to watch, and the suggestion from Priyan was a suitable incentive. Thus I found myself tipsy, sitting with beer in hand whilst trying to find the subplots in several interweaving storylines about American foreign policy in non-existant countries. It seems to me that the main point was that it's all screwed up and that Americans are too agressive and trigger happy. Sober people said that it was really good, I'm inclined to believe them. After that it was off to the college bar to say au revoir to people for a few weeks, then packed and home before I knew it.

Cold, oh so cold

16th March 2006

We had lacrosse cuppers today, four hours of running around in shorts on Jesus Green in a snowstorm. It was great fun, although knackering and bloody freezing. We cruised through the group stages with four wins and two draws, but were ultimately stopped in the semi-finals by Queens, who to be fair had a much stronger team. This was quite an acheivement seeing as we were missing some of out best players for subious reasons (Andy and Irina decided that Paris was better than snowy lacrosse for example) and won some of the games with less than a full team.
On the whole I think most people had a good time, once the numbness had stopped their fingers hurting. It would possibly have been a good idea not to get wasted the night before, waking up with a hangover knowing you have lots of running ahead of you is not the best feeling in the world, although all that cold air did wonders for my head. Now I just have to get my legs working again. Just in case they refuse to recover, here is a picture of them in their hairy glory -->

Jetlag

13th March 2006

Feeling a little dizzy as I write this, but I feel that I should congratulate the ball committee for their efforts in the past months and for the excellence of Saturday night. Clearly dodgems are the best invention in the world, although I was slightly concerned by the frequency that the ride operator had to stitch up the holes in the power supply mesh (using coat hangers apparently). The planetarium was excellent, with some amazing pictures and a beautiful, accurate projection of the night sky. Doughnuts are always a popular idea, but the addition of curry this year kept me nicely warm except when walking between the different areas, which was also helped by 300 million gigawatt hairdryers pumping warm air round too. Seeing as it was -3 outside then people had their work cut out just preventing frostbite. On the drink front, vodka-charged smoothies are clearly the best thing in the world; although only if free, I hate to think of the cost in a bar. Maybe I will have to find out, as there appears to be a nice large amount left over in the JCR fridge. Bodyclock wise I am currently existing in a bizarre state that doesn't know whether it is awake or asleep. End of term soon though, which should sort things out. I prescribe a long course of narcolepsy.

Bum...p

4th March 2006

Today I took Luke's old camera out for a spin down at the river. Sonya's parents are here for the day, what can showcase Cambridge better than watching rowing on the Cam? Actually quite a few things, but never mind. Unfortunately we just missed the women's race but had plenty of time to catch the men. They seemed to be doin quite well, as they came past they were just clear of the boat chasing them, who were about to be bumped themselves. All in all this term was not the most successful that Downing have had, but I'm sure that they will make up for that at tonights Boatie Dinner.

Superhallifragisiltic!

3rd March 2006

Last night was the return leg of my longest formal swap to date. Actually it is my first formal swap, so that doesn't really mean anything but never mind. Last Easter term Fiona and I played host for a quartet of geologists from Gonville and Caius college whom we had met whilst on a field trip to Arran over the preceeding break. Our reward for provision of two formal tickets each was to be taken to Superhall, as Caius standard formal is just slops with gowns and fairly dire by most accounts. The spread before us yesterday consisted of four courses, the highlight of which had to be the Baked Alaska with firework in the top, definately one to try at home. Caius has much more of a "Harry Potter" feel to it than Downing, the dining hall looks like an oak-panelled church and is resplendant with portraits and coats of arms on the walls. However I feel that Stephen Hawking go a bit of a bum deal on the artistic front, the painting of him is definately not his best side.

Return to the digital world

3rd March 2006

Apologies for such a large gap between posts, I have been a tad busy lately with a materials project that I don't want to talk about. After a couple of weeks in the real world wilderness I've once more got enough free time to keep this thing updated and maybe even relax a little. Whilst I was away you've missed riveting posts on Valentines formal, Midway dinner and the dreaded rooms ballot. Basically the formals were good, the parties were fun, I was pretty wasted and I'm living in the walls of the chapel next year. More updates soon, for now here is a photo from Midway Dinner.

Statement of Inte[r]n[e]t

22nd December 2005

Sparkie notes:

1. I have not got a website of my own
2. That I have a Christmas break to waste
3. That in a year and a bit I have downloaded a shedload of rubbish from the internet

Sparkie believes:

1. That creating a website would be beneficial for me
2. That a few of the programs I have downloaded may be of use to others

Sparkie resolves:

1. To create a website of reasonable quality and thus learn about CSS and other such nonsense
2. To review and distribute the random junk I have downloaded
3. To lock myself away until it is done

See you all soon