Krioma.net

Last night me and Steve went to the University Observatory to try and get some images of an exoplanet which is orbiting around HD209458. This is not scientifically that interesting as it has done before, apart from on a personal level, but at the least we thought we could update the timings of when it occurred. There were a few problems, the major one being the inaccuracies of previous measurements so we did not know when it was going to happen at all well. The transit of the planet across the star actually takes 3hours. We were at the observatory from about 7pm and night till 6am this morning, guess what I am shattered! It was fun but we did take over 500 images of the same two stars, the one in question and a comparison one. All I can say is I am glad we managed to get it to do a sequence of images at a time (we did five at a time every five minutes!). After we had finished that we had a quick look at some other objects, unfortunately without filters we could not observe the brighter objects, such as the Moon, Venus and Saturn. We did not have sufficient time to think about what else we could observe as the twilight was rapidly approaching so we had a quick stab at M39, an open cluster in Cygnus, it is far from the nicest object to observe as it is quite a loose cluster but we thought it would be better than nothing and was one of the best object available to us. Here is the unprocessed image:

I will try and do some work on it over the next few days - such as removing bias' etc and see what we can get.

Last night I had a bunch of blokes (whilst we were at Snobs) saying that I was Tim Wheeler (or at the very least looked like him) from Ash. Now I look nothing like him. Heck I felt complemented but I wonder what they must have been on to think I was (or even looked like) Tim Wheeler. Especially since I was wearing an Ash t-shirt - a fake one as well. Now why would the lead singer of Ash be wearing a fake Ash t-shirt!!

It was quite funny and I was in stitches for a while afterwards. Kat even commented afterwards I thought it was strange that you kept getting people coming up to you and shaking your hand etc "just thought you had got a bunch of weirdo's". All I can say is that it was a very surreal evening. Oh and happy birthday to Katherine!

I came across a website promoting a 28 hour day today, see: http://www.dbeat.com/28/ at the very least it is an interesting concept though it does seem flawed. It says that you would have more time to enjoyment. Well what would happen is the working day would become longer. Umm I think it is a crap idea but an interesting concept so fair play to the creator of this site - gave me something to think about for a while.

I was asked to design a site for a friends of Matt's the other week. Now I didn't have a clue what she wanted but I think I have risen to the challenge quite well. I am still awaiting feedback on if she likes it, I think she will. Take a look at it at: http://www.jodierichards.co.uk. The reason I am so excited about this is I get paid and I am using postnuke. Wow postnuke is excellent. It allows complete content control without any scripting, just what It think she wants :-)

Here we go my Reading Festival Review. What I will do is post basically what I wrote whilst at the festival and will do it in i think four parts. Here is part I.

Day Zero - or is it really day one, no I will stay with day zero.

The train journey was a complete and utter farce. The train from Uni to town was awful. It was so packed we could hardly fit on to the train. We met up with everyone easily at New Street, good!

The train, as expected, delayed. We then found that coach D, where we had reserved seats did not exist - typical Virgin. We did get seats ok in the end. We even managed to get to Reading on time, shocking! I think my and Carl's conversation (probably about next terms courses) must have bored Melissa (my sister) and Gareth (my to be brother in-law) as they fell asleep when they were sat behind us!

We had a tedious walk to the festival site, especially when one steward said we could go in the red gate when in fact it turned out we could not, great.

After a 20 min walk we managed to get down to the Brown field and found a good site - not too wet but still wet enough to be slightly concerning. We pitched the tents and had a quick relax.

Everywhere is covered in mud, great! Alex then joined us, not too pleased about all the mud but she isn't camping tonight!

We went for a late lunch in Wetherspoons (in Central Reading) and did a shop at Sainsburys - got the beer and bog roll (sorry toilet paper), you know the important stuff for at a festival.

I am now shattered - writing at only 09:39pm {this is when I did it - not now when I am typing it up - am shattered now as well!}

I am to be honest quite pissed off, the camp fires are freaking me out. i hate fire. I am quite scared of it. In such a confined environment it can not be safe. It was like this last year. Some one just set off some fireworks. IDIOT. i hate this aspect of the festival - if this continues it WILL be my last year camping.

Gonna try and get some sleep - more fireworks, argh!

Here we go the second part of my Reading Festival Review.

Day One - Friday.

It rained last night, great! I managed to get disturbed sleep and it was very quite from around 3am. I think this was due to the rain.

This rain has made the campsite worse, much worse.

This morning we went into Reading for brekkie at Wetherspoons - no bloody veggie option! Me and Kat were not pleased. I had a coke, I really needed something, the rest had breakfast.

Since there was no veggie food me and Kat went to Pret for a sarnie and a cup of tea, nice :-)

Katherine's shoes are completely wrecked and she is wearing plastic bags to protect her feet - can not be comfortable, a woman at Boots even commented on this. Luckily Alex brought in some wellies for her. Her are her plastic bag shoes:

I got some long socks as my wellies were rubbing - they aren't now! The woman in the shop looked at my funny! We went to the toilet and like last year there was a huge queue for the mens in the Oracle centre.

We met Alex and we all went back to the camp site. It seemed like a very long back, I am shattered already. We went into the arena and went straight to the main stage to see GLC (Goldie Lookin' Chain - fun website (need flash for most of the fun stuff), there was a huge crowd for the opener - much larger than last year. GLC's Welsh rap went down well. They are quite funny as they are not taking themselves serious and are just taking the piss. They have titles of songs such as "your mothers got a penis" and "guns don't kill people rappers do".

Next we saw The Open in the Radio 1 tent, they were ok, nothing spectacular. Kat then went off to change into the Wellies, I think it is time to throw her shoes in the bin! We watched Ikara Colt, again in the Radio 1 tent, they were not good! Kat go back to se her last minutes, thus qualifying as seeing a band for our band count! (we are not rushing to see loads but if you see 10mins we reckon you get a feel for the set).

The arena is so muddy, it isn't no where near as bad as the campsite but at times the stickiness means you nearly lose your wellies!

We headed back to the main stage to see Hundred Reasons. They were ok, not my thing particular. I stayed with Alex whilst the rest went closer.

Then it was off to see Modest Mouse. The rest came along to have a rest outside. Me and Kat got about halfway into the tent (it was on in the Radio One tent). Lets just say that Modest Mouse are going to be added to my Soul Seek download list and I may even buy an album of theirs - shocking! As you may of guessed I was impressed, they even had two drummers at times!

Off to see the Distillers next on the main stage. They were ok but they remind me too much like Hole (their lead singer is not bad looking though - the Distillers not Hole). Then came The Hives, what can be said? They ROCK. They put on such a great show, they are wonderful showmen. There set was great, I am very pleased as I was really looking forward to seeing them. Everyone seemed to enjoy watching them.

Ash time!I TIme for wonderful Ash. They started with Meltdown with TIm's guitar on fire!! They played some of their classics ("Girl from Mars", "Shinning Light", "Walking Barefoot") and also stuff off the new album ("Orpheus", "Clones", "Renegade Cavalcade", "Out of the blue"). I was going to try and remember the order, no chance! They were excellent, I was a little shocked that they didn't play any of Charlotte's new album ("Grey WIll Fade") or at the very least plug it. I though t they might have played "Summer" as that is a very Ash song. I really enjoyed this set, can I say anything else? NO Ash's music rocks and the quality speaks for itself.

After Ash we came across a huge mud fight, I took some pictures and a movie of this (i'll put this online later) - luckily I didn't get any mud on me whilst doing this. Thanks have to go to Alex and Katherine who just watched and didn't tell me when there was mud approaching!

Time for a break, pizza, a bit of Soulwax (awful website!) - was not impressed with them either. After Soulwax came some shopping with Alex. It didn't last long and shocked and slightly scared! Alex then brought a £4 sarnie (gosh it smelt nice!) and then 20mins of one of my favourite bands at the moment, The Shins!

The Shins were good, for what I saw (Darkness clashed).They played one of my favourtie songs "Girl Inform Me" so I was pleased, thought they didn't have their mics turned up loud enough. I want to see more!!

We went to meet Kat at a rendezvous point as she went to watch the Super Furry Animals. She was late and said that SFA were good and GLC joined them on stage! Whilst we were waiting a bail of hay went up causing flames to go about 40ft in the air. Her are some pictures of it being put out. Was quite perturbing, good that the fire brigade dealt with it fast.

Now then, time for the Darkness. What did they do?

Here we go the third part of my Reading Festival Review.

Day Two - Saturday.

I again slept quite well, in fact only woke up when carl shouted me to ask for train tickets. Yes him and his sister were heading back to Birmingham as she was not at all well.

We all had a beer - we need to get through our stock. We arsed around a little and headed to the arena. After a huge wait we finally got into the arena. Me and Kat then went straight to the Carling stage to see Mohair. Neither of us knew anything about them, but they turned out to be fantastic. Think I will try and buy a CD of their's. They also gave out stickers!

I then headed to see the 5, 6, 7, 8's on the main stage, they were good. They played that annoying Carling advert song. I quickly headed to the Carling tent and caught the end of Tat which was ok, though they seemed very similar (maybe too much) like Hole.

Now onto Bloc Party on the Radio 1 stage, they were ok - chance to have a sit down as I am shattered already.

Back to the Carling Stage to watch Agent Blue. Kat said she thought she knew them, well it turned out she didn't. they were a punk band. It was a great show which included the lead signer jumping into the crowd and singeing right next to me and Kat and them him crowd surfing with him finishing in the mosh pit, it was a great show. (I have some videos of this - I will put them online later)

Onto someone we knew, Razorlight. They did a cracking set getting the crowd well into it, they even threw flowers into the crowd.

Off to the Carling Stage for the 45's. I needed to sit down, so I did!

They were ok, again not who kat thought they were but she protests that there must be more than one 45's. We then met up with, Alex, Melissa and Gareth. We headed to see the New York Doll's who weren't anything fantastic.

I then had a 'great' experience with the toilets. As I waited in the queue they were cleaned so it took ages, plus they moved! I think the toilet was actually sinking in the mud!

We now saw the Ordinary Boys. They had a huge crowd in the Radio 1 tent, it was great. They played most of their album and started off with "Over the counter culture".

Now back to the main stage for Franz Ferdinand - they kicked ass. Great set and some cracking new material.

The mess here is getting worse:

Alex is wearing her hat again, so I stole it and put it on:

The Libertines were not as good as I hoped, but they were missing Pete Doherty - they don't have him for most of their gigs it seems due to his drugs problems.

Morrissey was great! Well he was like a CD, he sang and his band played perfectly. This has its downside though - no real emotion. He did seem overwhelmed though, back on top again. He had his name in flashing lights. He did play some Smiths songs.

Finally, 12 months late, the White Stripes! By this point my feet were killing me. They rocked. It wasn't as good as I had hoped though. They made a hash of a few songs and didn't work the crowd well. It was still fantastic and i was very pleased to see them.

I came back and slept.It is now Sunday morning and I have slept well yet again.

i love it! I am having so much fun developing some web applications using the combinations, expect some new features appearing on here soon!

Here we go the fourth part of my Reading Festival Review.

Day Three - Sunday.

Today was probably the day I was looking forward to the least. This is because of two reasons there were not as many bands that I wanted to see playing today and the fact that this evening the camp site will be awful.

Again we started the day with a beer and the obligatory toilet run when you feel very very ill! The mess by our tents (mostly not from us) is getting bigger,

Me and Kat started the day by seeing, Eastern Lane in the Radio 1 stage, they were quite good - well worth another listen. Then it was the Futureheads - a band I had been looking forward to seeing and they didn't disappoint. They came across a little shouty though - I think they need less harmonies live or maybe turn down the microphones a little. Even the Radio 1 tent roof hasn't escaped the mud:

We spent most of the afternoon in the Radio 1 tent. As next was the Fiery Frunaces, they were interesting. Then the big one of the afternoon really - Dogs Die In Hot Cars. Katherine introduced these to me a while back and I have been looking forward to seeing them for a while. Alex came along and seemed to enjoy it as well. I have to say they were one of my highlights of the day.

Now Alex has been wearing a hat all weekend, you may have already seen me wearing it in my previous post:

Well periodically I have been stealing this and putting it on, normally to the side or backwards. This time i decided (with some protest off alex) that this was the festival hat and so I should put a picture off everyone wearing it online (everyone a part from Kat - i did take one but she will only protest that it is online!)

We watched some of the Drop Kick Murphys but they were on early due to the Rasmus being bottled off stage. I think this was harsh as they are a rock band - just not very good. I have a different opinion over 50 Cent and will come to that later. Kat and Alex went off to watch some other bands while I waited to see the Streets. They were awful after about 15mins I got annoyed and left. Me, Melissa and Gareth had a quick look around the stalls and then went back to see the Lostprophets. I like the Lostprophets but their set was not very good. Apart from a few songs they didn't seem to play well. They also got the crowd to split into half and charge at each other! As Placebo played, not a bad set bit non descript though, the Sunset was beautiful.

Since Alex didn't want to see anyone after Placebo she went home. We are all looking forward to seeing Greenday at the this point. One thing to get out of the way a rapper called 50 Cent, "Mr. i got shot nine times". Kat decided she didn't want to see him get bottled off stage. I did though and didn't have anyone I particularly wanted to see. Him and his boys "g-unit" came out to a barrage of bottles (some i believe with piss in - now that's too far). I don't like his music, he annoys me lots, he is a muppet. To be fair they stood up to it for a while, he managed about 20mins and chucked bottles back at the crowd. We were not to close to the front (didn't want to get piss on us!). I still was able to shout. I can shout louder than expected, I got a "bollocks" shout going all the way to the front, which was brilliant. I then tried to get a "you're mother's got a penis" chant going but everyone started laughing! I lost my voice from shouting. Everyone around the place were shouting and no one I saw wanted him on stage. He eventually left the stage after a camping chair got chucked on to stage - I think it hit him. "mr. I got shot nine times" can't take some bottles and a chair!

Now onto Greenday, the final band of the reading festival. All I can say is wow! They put on an excellent show - nearly 2hours due to the shorter sets done by both 50 Cent and the Rasmus. They got some people on stage to play which was cool. They did a few good covers including "we are the champions" by Queen. They stated the set with "american idiot". I like this song. I have never been a big Greenday fan, but am gonna give them a bit more of a listen to when I am back in Birmingham. They finished the gig well.

We headed back to the tents and saw some tents go up in smoke. I still managed to sleep well after doing some packing. Now time to get ready for the journey home.

Yesterday was my little (well 19 year old) sister's wedding. It was a glorious day. The wedding took place at Aston Parish Church at 4pm. This caused a few problems for us to get there. I was an usher and so had to be there early so that stuff could get sorted. Two problems. Aston Villa where playing at home and the photographer wasn't to turn up till 2:30pm. Fortunately we only had a short delay in getting to this wonderful venue. It was truly glorious. There were not many hiccups, one of them was that the organisation at the Church was not good. Me and Lee, the other usher, had to go to great lengths to make sure that keyboardist knew that Melissa was about to walk down the isle and then he was not very good.

The service was beautiful as usual Chris (Revd. Feak even) did a great job. At some point during the service I had to get up a do a reading, one that I think is quite nice. As I said yesterday "The reading is taken from Corinthians 1, Chapter 13, starting at the first verse:"

Leaving the Church lots and lots of photos were taken, I was not pleased with the photographers attitude. I then spoke to some family members and friends. We got driven to the reception in a Rolls-Royce, which was rather nice.

Whenever I see a picture of the Cat's Eye Nebula (NGC 6543) I go wow, but wow just got BIGGER!

I'm still not sure though about it's name! :-) I guess it does look a little like a Cat's Eye - especially with a low powered telescope.

http://www.spaceflightnow.com (see: http://spaceflightnow.com/news/n0409/11star/) relate it to the "Lord of the Rings" and the penetrating eye of Sauron, why does everything as of late get related to that damn book! (well in this case they probably mean the film for the visual effect). What they should say is that the eye of Sauron, that was created for the recent production of the "Lord of the Rings", looks similar to this stunning celestial object. :-)

Credit: NASA, ESA, HEIC, and The Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA)

Well according to: http://www.liquidgeneration.com/quiz/moviehero_quiz.asp

I am bloody Ellen Ripley out of Alien as the hero.

Not as bad as Katherine who turns out to be "i'm f****** frodo"

As for the Villain, I am the same as Alex and Katherine. I was going to say that at least me and Alex have the evil villain in kind. Guess it is just a physicist thing. Oh I am Agent Smith, Mr Anderson. (according to http://www.liquidgeneration.com/quiz/villain_quiz.asp)

Oh I should mention these things are flash programs so only try and view them if you have a flash I guess. I have to say I hate flash on normal websites, but it has its place. It is good for animations. In fact the whole of the liquidgeneration.com site is flash, if you have flash and can be bothered to put up with it, it does have some funny stuff on it. It even has a game called Whose Boobs! (on my first go I got: Score: 3000, Rank: Master of Boobs; PERFECT SCORE!! Have you considered a career in boobology? ! hehe!). One final thought about this site, it has a section on "who'd you rather". One of these is "sexy vegetarians". hehe.

After getting a load of reading to do for my 4th year project I turned to Kerrang radio for some background music and found out that this excellent radio station, once just limited to Birmingham is now available over the web. See: http://www.kerrangradio.co.uk/ I am very pleased, I love this site. Back to the Morphology-Density relation! :-( No seriously I like the topic of galactic evolution. :-) For more on the Morphology-Density relation try this paper (not for the non scientific though). At some point I am intending to do a specific astro section to the site so if and when I get around to it I will start to explain some of this stuff!

Today I started work on my MSci project. Here are the titles of some of the papers I have set myself to read this week:

This morning I woke up with that hangover feeling!! Not too bad more just a headache due to loud music I think. It was a good night, though some idiot bloke hit Katherine in the back of the head. I was not pleased about this and nearly got into a fight but like always after the initial burst I was calm and collected. Though he did say to me "you would have done the same, she was head banging in my face" to which I responded "what do you expect - you are at snobs!". It is true she probably was a bit in his face, though if you don't want to get pushed or knocked into occasionally then don't snobs. This is something that happens there.

Oh yeah we got there that early that there was no one on the dance floor:

Oh and the below picture of Jordan came out a treat, well it would have if he was a ghostly silhouette!

From Katherine's blog about agent blue:

Who wants to see, Ash, The Darkness and Har Mar Superstar in a super group I do!!

My mate Jordan suggested song titles such as:

Today was Radio One's: onebigweekend. We (me, Kat and Tom) got tickets to go to this free gig last week. It took place at Perry Park, by the Alexander Stadium - haven't been that way in years. This was the second day of the gig and the lineup was:

Sunday 19 Sept - Bands Day

Main Stage
Lost Prophets
Mouldy Lookin' Stain
Joss Stone
Goldie Lookin’ Chain
Razorlight
Damien Rice
Natasha Bedingfield and Estelle
Broken Dolls

Second Stage
The Music
Kasabian
22-20’s
13 Senses
Skinnyman
The Departure
Exist

Mostly it was quite easy to decide who to see, especially since the two stages didn't finish at the same time. The big one was Kasabian against GLC (Goldie Lookin Chain).

The day started with a bright an early start at 8am and then the bus journey to the site, not too bad - quite easy. The first thing to do once we were inside was to go to the toilets!

Toilets: excellent. They were clean, could flush them and even had stuff in them to clean your hand with. Excellent. I could not believe it. :-)

Exist: I had not heard anything by them before today and I was very impressed. They played well and their songs seemed catchy and well written. I have to say how professional they were as they had loads of technical problems. This started with what seemed like resonance on a speaker (from the action the techincians putting a sheet underneath it). This continued with the drummer nearly getting knocked over by the back stage curtain. They then had various problems with the lead singers guitar connection to the speakers. They were good though, well worth a second listen to.

The Departure: Again I have never heard anything by this band and like Exist they played excellently. They did a great set. Very enjoyable. I think I would like to see them play again, they had some catchy tunes. They were wearing a mismatch of clothing but it seemed to work. Their lead singer was wearing a rather smart suit with a neckerchief like thing. His mannerisms reminded me of Morrissey - especially since he wasn't playing an instrument as well. There base player was wearing a vest like sweater of the top of a T-shirt and hardly moved through out the whole set. A different matter entirely for what I think was their lead guitarist who was jumping around all over the place in pink socks, bit of a punk feel to his outfit and he looks like Ant (I think the right one) out of Ant & Dec!

Natasha Bedingfield: Awful. Only saw the end of her "set" which involved 3 songs and a cover of "This Love" by Maroon 5 with "I can't sing at all" Estelle. I actually like this song, I don't think I can listen to it now without her useless little noises. Thank god it was short. Oh yeah the reason we even went over was so we could get a good place for the next act, Razorlight!

Razorlight: This is the second time I have seen them play, they played excellently at Reading (see http://www.krioma.net/blog/archives/2004_09_07.html). Again they did a cracking set, but the atmosphere wasn't right. Katherine said she thought it would be like this because of the "radio one crowd". There set was very enjoyable really rocking hard to "golden touch" - the only song most people seemed to know. They were definitely worth seeing but I really wasn't liking the atmosphere in the main stage.

13 Senses: We caught the last 3 or so songs from their set. I actually even knew 2 of them. They were excellent, I think I may buy their album. Yes you heard me - buy not download! When I got to the tent I initially thought what the hell is Ashton Kutcher on stage singing for! From a distance their keyboardists / singer looks like him (maybe not be it was dark!).

22-20’s: I caught a few of their tracks at Reading, at the time I wasn't impressed. On a second listen I was a bit more impressed but still not over the moon. They are good but not sure if I enjoy them. I guess if I listened to them at home my opinion my be different. Better get that album when it comes out I guess.

Kasabian: Excellent. Well the songs I know / like were the rest I just found a little strange and no edge. Musically they were good but spent too much time arsing around with effects. LSF was good. Gonna give their album a listen to and I shall see what I think of the rest of their music in a bit more detail.

The Music: I find these boring. We listened to a few songs and then left. Problem was we then headed over to the main stage were Joss Stone was playing.

Joss Stone: BITCH!!! Sorry I will calm down now. I have one major problem (apart from the fact that she is shite!) - she ruined "Fell in love with a girl" by the White Stripes. She covered this - changed the title to "Fell in love with a boy", put a stupid beat on, slowed it down and did lots of irrelevant noises with her voice to give over the impression she can sing. I can remember thinking where the heck are the bottles I want to throw one at her! The really awful thing is that the White Stripes actually like it being played slower and so do this live, thus killing a once great song. Idiots. Oh the only reason we saw her was so we could get a better spot for the next few bands.

Mouldy Lookin' Stain: Ummm, not sure what to think. I was expecting a proper tribute like band. No we got bloody Chris Moyles. They did on song "Guns don't kill people rabbits do" a piss take of a piss take by GLC's (Goldie Lookin Chain's) "Guns don't kill people rabbits do". It was ok but annoying and meant we had to wait for the the lostprophets.

Lostprophets: Wicked! They did an excellent set. At times, especially for songs that you didn't know (in my case only 1), the vocals could not be heard well. Like always they put on an excellent show. Telling people there was not enough energy and making everyone jump for "Last Train Home". This was excellent. But it went from good to bloody excellent. Not the word bloody.

They did a cover of "cry me a river" by Justin Timberlake and then it was onto the wall of death. They did this at Reading and I was annoyed I missed out. I didn't think they would do it at a Radio 1 gig, especially since on the tickets it says no moshing. The basic idea with this is that the crowd are split into two halves - Shinobi and Dragon Ninja. We were Dragon Ninja. The crowd is then split into two halves. The smaller / more fragile people I told to get out of the way. At this point me and Katherine were a long way from the gap. Then we are told when this song kicks in (the song being Shinobi vs Dragon Ninja) to have a battle. Shinobi go to your left, Dragon Ninja your right. The guitars starts then, bang. THe drums come in and it goes! Everyone pushes and a wall of death is started. Me and Katherine (she following behind me - guess I make a good battering ram) move about 30foot in a few seconds. It is hectic. Then all of a sudden the music stops. A big pile up has occurred. The instructions the band gave before was to help each other out. This obviously failed. They then called people to show their injures and there was quite a few people with blooded arms. Then they asked do you want to go again? Of course we did. They spilt us in half, this time I was a few people from the gap. Of it went again. Loads of fun. They finished on "Burn Burn". During this song I launched 3 people up to crowd surf out of their and had about 5 people go over my head one kicking me by accident. I have a headache now! There was a huge mosh pit form. It was excellent fun. But so damn hot.

After a quick pit stop it was back to Tom's as he was being nice and giving us a lift home. On the way I got a Kerrang Radio sweatband and band. Excellent. Cheeky people grabbing us on the way out. Not that I am gonna complain. Good marketing tactic by them really. "you just went to a radio 1 gig but we are giving you free sweatbands!".

Finally we came up with a new anti-social dance today. Flarting. You do a ska dance but make contact with each others shins, like so:

I have noticed that recently the BBC have been putting more and more flash games on line, here is an excellent football game - takes me back to many hours spent playing sensible world of soccer. see: http://news.bbc.co.uk/sol/shared/spl/hi/football/04/game/html/footy.stm

Today was the freshers conference in the physics department. Time to get the posters out and the vocal chords going. All in all astrosoc had a good day with members, we got quite a few less than I was hoping. More soon hopefully. Lots seemed interested. Two my freshers fairs to do, come on - just what I need. I am gonna be shattered for the start of term at this rate.

My house mate Geordie (otherwise known as Andrew) showed me this http://www.geocities.com/gohhanpin/PhysicsHumor_right.htm today - it is brilliant. I think it quite accurately, well within systematic errors, describes physicists. Here is the bill of rights (more stuff on the above site):

The Physicists' Bill of Rights
Author Unknown

We hold these postulates to be intuitively obvious, that all physicists are born equal, to a first approximation, and are endowed by their creator with certain discrete privileges, among them a mean rest life, n degrees of freedom, and the following rights, which are invariant under all linear transformations:

I. To approximate all problems to ideal cases.

II. To use order of magnitude calculations whenever deemed necessary (i.e., whenever one can get away with it).

III. To use the rigorous method of "squinting" for all problems more complex than the additions of positive real integers.

IV. To dismiss all functions which diverge as "nasty" and "unphysical".

V. To invoke the uncertainty principle whenever confronted by confused mathematicians, chemists, engineers, psychologists, dramatists, and andere schweinhund.

VI. To the extensive use of "bastard notations" where conventional mathematics will not work.

VII. To justify shaky reasoning on the basis that it gives the right answer.

VIII. To cleverly choose convenient initial conditions, using the principle of general triviality.

IX. To use plausible arguments in place of proofs, and thenceforth refer to those arguments as proofs.

X. To take on faith any principle which seems right but cannot be proved.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Copyright 1995, The American Physical Society.
The APS encourages the redistribution of the materials included in this newsletter provided that attribution to the source is noted, the materials are not truncated or changed.

Today I saw a few pictures from the Chinese grand prix and wow! The track looks stunning, can't wait to watch it.

Just look at this across the race track:

Picture courtesy BBC Online

Wow - ultra modern. More here: http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/motorsport/formula_one/3685394.stm

Freshers is over - well the stuff I need to do it. Thank god. I don't think I could cope with another fair full of people who aren't in the least interested in joining Astrosoc. The ones who are (or who are mildly) interested are great to talk to because I love to talk about Astronomy and promote it. Then there are the ones who think it is that "geeky" they laugh at you when they walk past and see the flyer. Nice. Thanks for that you idiots. Heck I don't laugh at the cheerleaders even though I think it is a little funny. In fact I would even give it a go so that I could actually understand what they do.

The best thing that happened today was me and Geordie renaming Astrosoc. Various things came out such as R'n'B soc, Usher soc, 50 Cent Bottling Society - I could go on and on. This meant the flyers went faster and maybe some of them will be read at a later point but I do doubt it. All in all it has been a shattering week and at moments annoying and frustrating. Its over now, my last freshers fair. Yippee!

To celebrate this being all over we went to the pub which turned into a trip to snobs.

I saw a link on a site today that said Kalashnikov vodka so I had to look it up and yes the maker of the AK-47 assault rifle, one Lt. Gen. Mikhail Kalashnikov, is now making vodka under the same name. I just hope it isn't as deadly. Grants is the exciting vodka (well it used to be) now Kalashnikov can be the deadly vodka I guess.

See: http://www.cnn.com/2004/WORLD/europe/09/20/kalashnikov.vodka.reut/index.html for more.

Yesterday I decided to get one of my favourite games ever out. This is X-com: Terror from the Deep. It is an excellent game. I was very shocked that it worked in XP without any problems. Well that's what I thought until I came onto the battle part. Leaving the battlescreen causes it to crash as XP doesn't have the right files. Damn. What to do, umm Google I think. I got on to: http://commanderx.xcomufo.com/downloads/important.html which had some very interesting information on how to get this classic game to work. One of these ideas was DOS BOX, http://dosbox.sourceforge.net/, this is an excellent piece of software and once I realised that I had to mount my drives, using: mount c c:\ to mount the c drive and that I had to do the same for the cdrom drive it worked fine.

More info about x-com can be found at: http://www.xcomufo.com/

..."welcome back" we were greeted by the Head of School, as he said this I thought. "our last year". Time to feel contemplative, nah - got too much work to do! We had a good start, the projector in the small lecture theatre did not work - it turned out to be a new switch. No one had told the lecturers - great! Well it wasn't a huge problem for us. We then had Quantum Mechanics 4 - time to do some real Physics I think. It was ok a nice slow intro - I hope it stays at this pace. I then sorted out some project stuff and almost feel to sleep in my last lecture at 5 which was superconductivity - I am shattered.

Blasted University computing accounts

I also had a problem today trying to login to the Uni computers. The computing suite within the Physics department is now centralised within the University and could I access the computers? NO! I was annoyed and also they are charging us for printing. At least they have give us £2.50 worth of print credits. I eventually gave up and went up stairs to use the astrophysics groups computers.

Today we started the relativistic side of quantum mechanics in detail. Despite the title my suggest I am actually enjoying it. We learnt some rather nifty maths today, four-vectors. In fact these are damn useful. My lecture explained these quite well and despite at first being lost I think after rereading it I have it - well for the moment. It was quite daunting to be one of the few who have not done this before. I am informed that this cause is not often taken up by astrophysics students! I am sure I can cope, I am damn interested so that should help.

time to go to the first snobs of the year. gotta try and drag everyone out - today is not about being studious. tomorrow morning is for that.

The other day I saw a poster of what appeared to be a moving image and today by coincidence Alex was looking at one of these images on the web. In fact there are loads of these perception puzzles on this site http://www.scientificpsychic.com/graphics/ - be warned some might give you a headache! There are some more at http://www.ritsumei.ac.jp/~akitaoka/saishin-e.html including something similar to the one I saw the other day:

Copyright A.Kitaoka 2004 (February 25, 2004)