Krioma.net

I won at Scrabble! This is something which does not happen too often in my case. However when you get are able to put the word Zinc down on a triple word score then well you are almost sure of winning.

Now most people who know me would not call me a wordsmith, in fact you are bound to find countless errors in my grammar as I write this blog (and on my website), so winning at scrabble is a major achievement. This is possibly the only time I will so it is time for celebration. You never know I might just be getting better at it, in fact I came joint first in our second game!

Talking of Scrabble take a took at this cartoon:

Courtesy: http://www.cyberunions.net/cartoons/

What a night! It went really well - I think. Everyone seemed to enjoy themselves which is great. I gave a substandard speech but everyone seemed to find it humorous and not boring. The far better speech (well talk) was given by Dr Somak Raychaudhury, our guest speaker. As always he gave us a fantastic speech talking about his first experiences in Astronomy which eventually led him on to talking about the IGNOBLE prizes which are like the nobel prizes but for the worst research!

Alas I did not manage to get a photo of myself - well it would be hard it I did. I know other people have so I will have to grab them off them later (so I can shut my mom up who wants a picture of me in my dinner jacket etc!) For now here is a group photo, in which yet again I am at the back and you can hardly see me, argh!

I love it when it snows, it was great coming back from the Annual Dinner last night to find it snowing. I was walking into campus for a meeting with my group studies supervisor and wow the campus was beautiful, looking I went prepared with Alex's camera! Here is one of the beautiful clock tower:



By the way, the massive clock tower is based on that at Sienna, Italy and is a memorial to Joseph Chamberlain. I also took a picture of a tree which I thought looked quite lovely, I love snow on trees - I could get lost looking a them but am quickly brought back to reality by a piece of snow falling off a branch down my back! :-)

I was asked by my mom to get a picture of me looking "smart" at the Annual Dinner. Well here is one for all of you to look at.



The picture was taken by my good friend Thomas Grimmett so I have him to thank for this cracking photo! (I'm in the centre if you wanted to know!) I will be putting more pictures from the Astrosoc Annual Dinner on the Astrosoc Website tomorrow.

Here is a picture of me and the FAS Council, well it is not the best picture it is far from the worse but in comparison to the Orion nebula we are nothing - no offence guys!



The image was taken at the first committee meeting I was present at, at the Planetarium in London - so that is my excuse for looking in disarray, the long journey made me tired!

Yes at long last it has been a sunny day and moderately warm. It was nice. It inspired me to get out in the Garden - all I did was take pictures. I did need the break though have been working hard on group studies today - almost sorted though.

Here is a nice picture I took looking at houses in my garden:



I also took what I think is a nice picture of a plant in my garden.



>Well enough of this better get back to the group studies.

Ok then after an hour of looking at my questions for this course I am still as lost as I was at the start - I think it is time to go argh and play FIFA for a bit to ignore the fact that I can not do it. I will eventually be able to do it I am sure.

On another subject, Schumacher wins again - argh! At least this time it was a little closer and I did not stay up to watch it!


Courtesy BBC Sport

The main problem I have at the moment whilst watching Formula 1 is that ITV are using an incredibly small font and so is hard to read the captions! It was good though to see Jenson Button getting on the podium.


Courtesy BBC Sport

I would have posted this sooner but have been having problems with my site, think they are fixed now.Well here we go the aftermath of the ball! It was good and incident filled but well thats what I was expecting. We managed to come away though mostly happy and with a few memorable pictures to remind us of each other - if we can ever manage to forget each other that is!

Me and Matt relaxing:



The blokes (including me) and Sadie with a well thought out (maybe not) pose:



...getting a little risque

Well that's Thursday we had our group study seminar, this was our chance to put over our findings in a sort of professional (it was assessed) manner to the rest of our group study. It was fun and meant that I got to put on a suit (was the only one but hey it was fun!) hence the title of this entry.

Geordie, Me and Colin working (well some of us) on the final touches to the seminars:



A little later on, am I still as relaxed - think not!

Oh yes here you go:



Yes one of those dodgy group photos, but where would we be with out them! This one is going on the front cover of our professional report! Guess we need to include the humour somewhere. I must thank Michelle (the short lass on the right of the picture; no offence meant! :-)) for letting me use this picture which was taken by Dr Stevens using her digicam.

Here is yet another picture taken at the eventfull PPS Ball, it is off me dancing! Yes you maybe thinking why would anyone want to take a picture of me doing this apart from maybe blackmail! Well Eleanor took it and now she can not blackmail me as I am not a shamed off it and here it is for the whole world to see!



I was not the only one with suspect dancing on the night, but well they did not get caught on a camera, well some (e.g. my mate Geordie) did but in most of them they look like they are standing there a little out of breathe. Just dancing for 15 minutes can make me feel tired - time to do some exercise me thinks! (note: so me mother doesn't complain, Dancing Samuel just didn't have the right ring to it as Dancing Sam :-))

At last, after a whole terms work, the group studies project is over! I have handed in the final report and now I can relax (for a few days before the exam revision starts!). We, me and my friend (and group studies editor) Ria, decided to get the report heat sealed in a hard back cover - thus producing a book. It looked so cool! I decided that I wanted to keep a note of this and so took a picture:



and yes I did take a picture that showed my section, a little sad I agree but I am well pleased :-)



Today is going as well as could be expected now I think it is time to relax for a while before I go out to Snobs this evening, promising to be a great night.

Ok this is a few weeks ago, but I just had to post it the spirit of dodgy group photos! Here we are at Astrosoc:



In the picture you will see Eleanor's nice Newtonian reflector in the foreground with me standing next to it, not sure what I am doing. You may also notice that we have the electronic eyepiece connected. This picture was taken by a Mark Rowan. Is it me or does the bloke in the back, my good friend Matt, look like a Fundamentalist! Not only does he have the beard (which has now cut off - by accident I believe) but the pose with the chin forward :-) .

Well not really around Selly Oak to the University playing fields, the shop and back home. The reason for this was for me to take a few pictures. One in particular came to mind the entrance to the University from Selly Oak. Now you would have thought of a nice grand entrance but no it is like a bomb site. This is probably the worst part of the whole campus - well it is actually outside but gives a bad impression. However because of this it can make it photogenic and over time I have taken quite a few pictures of this.



Outside Uni, the entrance is to the right of the picture. Also by this is the remains of a failed Guild election campaign:



I have been meaning to take a picture of this for a few weeks but only got around to it today. It seems that during the campaign, I think on the first night, someone decided to remove this from where it was a dump it in the stream. Great! I wonder how long it will stay there - probably a very long time as it is in a really bad position access wise to remove it. Oh by the way this Kobby did not get in, for the best as his stance was not the best.

I would never say I actually know anything about wine, but I do occasionally come across something that I like. Now the previous sentence was one of those sentences that I try and get out of coming across like a pretentious know it all! I bet it didn't work.

Well anyway's moving on, recently I came across a cheap bottle of wine that I liked - cost about £4 at Aldi. Now you maybe saying Aldi! However some of the stuff they have is very good and they are also very good for Vegetarians, for example all their beers say if they are Veggie or not. They don't on the wine however so I am running the gauntlet, if I did not love the stuff (red wine that is!) I would not drink it. I don't believe that animal products are used in the majority of red wines but you never know.

Anyway's my point was the wine I liked! It is called Laguna Canyon and has a strong taste of cherry, very nice - went down well with the pasta I ate with it :-)



As you can see none left ;-)

One of the local pubs near to where I live in Selly Oak has burnt down! Not that this is a huge loss since it has been shut down for a while now it is just a shock to see the firefighters putting out a fire. I will go and take some pictures tomorrow.


On another point the Brook was the only quite pub left - yes it was generally full of locals but well was the only quiet pub left after the OVT became all loud with crap music on. If I want to go to a pub in Selly Oak now I will go to the Bristol Pear only - at least they have good music on.

Well I have had a great time at home. It is always good to get home. I even managed to visit the Church (St. Martin's Perry Common - note: website is in need of work) but that was only to fix a leak from the Boiler with my Dad.

I have had a great time and started and ended the weekend in pubs. Started by meeting everyone in Charlie Hall (Weatherspoons Pub in Erdington) and ended up firstly at the Bristol Pear (Scream Pub in Selly Oak) and then the Gun Barrels (again Scream pub Selly Oak). Great fun.

As always Easter was nice and we had the egg hunt at home - I think my mom still loves doing that even though I am 21 and my sister is 19.

I managed to take some interesting pictures including the one below of the back garden and some of our animals (will post them at a later point EDIT: see [Image Gallery]).



I have to say our garden is coming together nicely - the shed in the background (the blue one) was my old play house but now is our Pole Cat's play house (probably smells better now!). I thoroughly enjoyed myself at home and even managed to get some work done whilst I removed a bloody worm (as in a virus) that had got on to my sisters computer.

I have always liked [Lego] there is no denying it I have since I was a small child and have since. When the Bull Ring opened in Birmingham our great city not only had a fantastic new shopping centre but one that had a Lego shop in it! I was very impressed with how lego has developed over time.

At Christmas as one of my presents my parents decided to buy me some space Lego! In fact that they brought me a International Space Station one and a Saturn V mission one. Immediately I built the ISS one, however when I brought it back to my house after Christmas I packed it away. Today though I got it out and finally put it all together for it to go on my side table, for a lego model it looks quite good and I am pleased with it.



Lego is fun! And with the introduction of Space based products I think the company could be on to a winner with young children who are (well I was) fascinated with space and building things.

I also have to say how much I liked some of the things on the Lego website including the sign in logo:

On another note related to the Bull Ring, I am very proud of the huge Bull outside of the Bull Ring (will have to take a picture soon), so think I may have to buy this (for more click image):

I am normally reasured when I see the occasional police officer around but today I have seen far too many to not be slightly perturbed. Surely it is a good thing seeing so many police officers about but well it does make me think that something is going on and well that kind of scares me. Especially when they are parked up outside my house! (quick time to hide the copied CDs :-) )

I said I would go and take pictures of the burnt down Brook here is one:



As you can see the roof and upper floor looks devastated, I particularly liked the strange cloud formations over the building at this point gives it a mystical appearance. One of the things I like about the Brook is its sign, it is very nice and before it is likely knocked down I thought I would take a picture of it (click on image for larger like always).

Today I went to Nottingham, a place I only have been to once before and that was as a child. I thoroughly enjoyed myself and it was nice and easy to get to. I met my friend Eleanor at just gone 11 after I got confused at Nottingham Station and went out the wrong exit (the back one) - now that place is badly signed!

Once we had found each other we went into the town centre and from there the castle, which was fun - well we walked around then came back out I took a few photos. The museum was not very awe inspiring but the castle was beautiful.



After we had went to the castle my stomach was rumbling (like it does frequently but at a good time this time) so after heavy deliberation we decided to buy a sandwich from Greggs (and of course the important Belgian Bun) and then sat in the square, it was a beautiful day so could not give up the opportunity to sit out in the Sun.

Ok now what to do, we were unsure so we walked all I knew is that I needed the toilet! So we went into some shopping centre and used the facilities, obviously the highlight of the day ;-). However because we did this we came across the The Galleries of Justice which had to exhibitions one about the Police and one about the Justice courts and prison there. The police thing was good but nothing in comparison to the fantastic tour at the The Galleries of Justice. It was interactive with actors portraying people from the appropriate time which is always good and they were quite convincing. I ended up being put on trial as George Beck, a conspirator in setting fire to the castle, which was lots of fun and gave me chance to play around (I always like that sort of thing) - I even plead Guilty but had to change that so the story line could continue, hehe! It was fun. The Judge in this interactive part even said "there is more than one way a man can repay his debts" - which for once I did not take in well the wrong manner, I just let that one slide since there were young children around. I have to say at moments it was very convincing the actors obviously put a lot into it and should be commended. I think Eleanor was scared at moments - which is funny and she will deny it I am sure, but I saw her face!

After a great day it was time to go home at 5 so Eleanor could go off out in evening - I swear that girl is turning into a right piss head (if any of her family read this, no she is a completely sensible girl and anything I have said here should be ignored!).

Oh and just by the Galleries of Justice is what I thought was a fantastic Church, guess what - it is now a pub (well restaurant / bar thing)!




Well after what was a good day the journey home was pretty painless in fact the train from Nottingham ended up on the same platform as the train back to Selly Oak, so after a short run I was back home.

Well I managed to not get too much paint on me, well most of it went on the telescope. We painted the base and then gave up for now. It took us about an hour or so to do that so we (me and Matt) were quite pleased. Need to paint the rest - is gonna take longer than expected and might do a few other things to it as well. Here is our progress:



Of course I and Matt could not be sensible all the time, so here we are showing off our mucky hands! I must thank Matt for his help yet again.

Yes it has gone - flattened by the demolition workers. I wonder if anyone will ever remember this place. I think in about a year the majority of people will have even forgot that it existed, which is a shame - I bet you that building had within in it a lot of history. I wonder what will happen to the land, I think either accommodation or some sort of pub or food establishment.

Around this time last year we did quite a bit of work in our garden, including me building a wall out of old bricks that we found around Selly Oak. Was lots of fun. The garden is alas a mess again, well I don't care too much as we are moving out in June but we now have a wonderful yellow glow to the Garden. I never knew that curly kale had such a wonderful plant - I had to go and take a picture:



It is lovely, I can't remember if we ate much of it last year but the plants have gone from strength to strength taking over the bottom half of our garden but that's ok since it looks so pretty and is deliciously edible (well maybe not the flower but the leaves!)

At last I have the pictures from the ball!!

Here is one of me and Alex, I don't know where I am looking - some people have speculated down her top but I don't think so!



Here are a few group photos, including what I think was the largest group photo (and the best!) of the night.





I am very impressed with the quality they came out in well worth the cost. (More image can be found at here: [Image Gallery]

Yep here is the proof, I am not just talking rubbish! And if anyone has a problem with me post this piece of the newspaper, well tough look I am posting it as it is great (even if I do look oddly scary in the picture).



If anyone wants it in better resolution I am sure no one will, apart from maybe my mother, but thought I would offer please drop me an email.

Here is a picture I took using Matt's camera on July 7th - I meant to post before but haven't had chance before. I am actually pleased how well this came out. I want to get myself a digital camera as I just love taking lots of pictures.

You may or may not have noticed that my usual daily post has not been occurring recently. Well I have been very busy. On Thursday I moved house, not too far but it took between me, Alex and Katherine the best part of 14 car trips. It was shattering, plus the new house is (was in most parts now) a complete and utter mess. I can't find the words to describe parts of it, but one of the main problems was the drain and a large area around it which had rotting vegetables etc, was absolutely foul. I cleaned it out with the aid of a hosepipe on Friday.

What else have I been up to? Well I had work on Friday didn't stay for too long as I can make my own hours, just had a meeting with Dr Raychaudhury - I am now going to take a bunch of A-level students to the Observatory in a few weeks time. On Saturday I went to London for a FAS meeting then had a house warming / Matt's bday party at my house - it was shattering! The meeting went well and was very productive as for the party it went well but I was a little too tired to relax to much. Me with purple hair at the party:

Today was the day most of my friends got their degrees, why did I choose to do a 4 year masters course instead of the 3 year one! I felt quite strange, everyone was graduating but not me :-( . It was typical British weather again, rain, rain and again some more rain. This did not stop everyone getting out the cameras and celebrating in typical style:



It was a good day, I got to meet lots of people's parents which is always fun. I am glad I went along. It is sad though, because in a lot of cases this is now the last time I will ever see some of these people, well the people that matter to me will always be around.

As you may have guessed me and Matt were a little underdressed but what the hell we had fun and no one commented! Well I am surprised Matt was able to put his hands on a smart shirt as quick as he did since he is off to Australia tomorrow morning, some people! :-)


Oh for more of my pictures of the big day see: [My Photo Gallery]

I have actually been eager to see this for a while but recently had enough of the constant publicity. However it was still a good film and without going into any details at all will say I figured it out (like I reckon most people will) by about half way through. Still though it was good and actually kept to Isaac Asimov's three "laws" of robotics:

The Three Laws:

1. A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
2. A robot must obey orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
3. A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.

Why do Power companies, well actually N-Power since they are the only ones I have ever gotten, feel that you are likely to change to their company by having a guy knock on your door? Especially on a Saturday morning when I am trying to relax. Idiots. The only argument that the guy seemed to have as well was that ummm "You will be more happy with N-Power", now then I am sure this works on anyone without a brain but it aint gonna persuade me. Bloody idiots, what a waste of money. Instead of having these waste of time door to door salesmen who are at the best rude they could put their money into providing a better service. I don't know what N-Power's service is like but to be honest as long as I get electricity and it isn't costing me too much I don't care! Well, I do care about where it comes from. What I mean is that the power company is investing in renewable energy supplies. This is something that Powergen are doing and are getting better at it. I am with Powergen and am glad to stay with them.

I decided tonight that I have had enough of not being able to use Linux and windows at the same time. I like windows for gaming and music in general and I like Linux for the other more technical stuff. Well I am still new to Linux but want to learn. So I have decided to build a new computer - on the cheap. I don't need anything too fancy. In fact I have brought a motherboard and processor off ebay for £30. I have coming a cool case as well.



The case is important though, so it can fit in with my theme (some mods will be needed to this case but it is a great start). I got this from xcase.co.uk - a great site. The place I got my last computer case from which is brilliant. Now I will have one computer one side of the desk and another on the other - great :-) Geek central.

Last night was the PPS (Poynting Physical Society) Freshers Gangster Party. I was the DJ. I have to say it went well, we had a huge crowd. About 80 people in all which was much better than the 20 or so from last years one. I also got the oppurtunity to be the DJ for the night. Well until the speakers started acting dodgy, so I finished my "set" half an hour early but heck it went well. I kept getting people come up to me saying that they were enjoying the set and that I was playing some wicked music. I guess I cant moan then. I will however not let this go to my head - I have a big enough one as it is at the moment. Once I get the pics I will put them on the PPS site, for now here is one of me prating around before we started properly (oh by the way I went as a Columbian Cartel guy):



Also, today was the first open lecture of the year. I am now sort of in charge of organising these and it was a terrifying thought. It went well though. We had about 100 people turn up, enough to make the West Lecture theatre feel full. Dr Nigel Bannister, our guest speaker gave an abolutely wonderful talk. It was on a slightly different topic than we advertised since we thought this would be better for the audience - everyone seemed to enjoy it.

Yesterday Tom gave me the photos from the PPS Freshers gangster party and so I immediately stuck them online. There are some quite funny ones, for some reason there don't seem to be of anyone worse for wear! See http://www.ppsbham.co.uk/ for the pictures.

It was an excellent night and we can only hope that our future events are as successful as that. I really would love to do the DJing again, it was lots of fun. Here I am with a beer getting ready to ROCK the room (well about to try to!):

And here is Mr. Grimmett looking pretty cool and deadly:

Today I had a rather energetic game of tennis with Tom - I feel great because of it.

Apart from that I have spent most of the day (apart from going to the Post grad open day) programming. I have got lots done - my user registration is more complex than ever and seems to work quite well. I also decided to do an online quiz to see how much I had picked up about xhtml without actually looking at any references. Either the test was easy or I learnt quite a bit as I go 17 out of 20. I reckon it was a combination of the two.



After I did the test I looked at the info on the site I did the test on. It was quite good. If you want to learn some XHTML go to: http://www.w3schools.com/xhtml/xhtml_syntax.asp

Today my dog Max died. It is like losing a best mate because at times that is exactly what he was. He was not just a dog but a member of the family.

I honestly don't think I can remember a time clearly when he was not present. I will miss him. (oh sorry Mom if you read this and upsets you - same to dad and melissa). Max aka Macca aka Maxwell and various other names that he has been called over the years was always a silly dog but a loyal one to. I remember a time when he bit a little shit after he kicked my dad. All I have to say is that Max was hard and at times a bit of a wimp. Whatever he will be missed.

As I write this (it won't be posted till I am home due to the lack of wireless infrastructure in the UK) I am sat on a rather comfortable Virgin Voyager train. I am on my way back from Reading. For once the train was actually on time. In fact it was actually at the train station when we got to the platform a whole 5 minutes early. I am shocked. This is a complete and utter opposite to my journey down to Reading. The train was a good 20 minutes late with no information being passed to the customers. The computerised announcement system did not once apologise in the fake way it does that the train is late. There was no information passed from the computer system apart from on the inconveinently placed screen to the customers. We waited on platform 1 of New Street Station as 4 other trains where put int he place of ours to then eventually 20 minutes late find that our train had been moved to platform 2 - great.

I even actually have a decent amount of space to work at. I even managed to get a table on the way down so I can't really moan about the environment of the train much.

Apart from that I have had a good weekend. On Friday night we relaxed at Alex's and I caught up on some of the work I needed to do. Stupidly I forgot to bring an important file and so was unable to work on my K-correction program (don't ask!)

Saturday morning came - time for me to go into the inhospitible environment that is London. How can I describe London? Well as a Brummie I have grown up in a big city environment and know what it is like. London is a different though. I think the best way to describe it is that it is Birmingham but on acid. It is by far the most uncaring environment you could enter. No one cares (OUCH: damn woman just hit me with her stupidly large bad as she gets on the train at Oxford). Apart from that London isnt that bad. The average time I have had to wait for a tube train was about 2minutes and so was able to get around very quickly. I also find the fact of going deep underground rather interesting.

One major problem is the lack of mobile signal but what do you expect deep undergound - maybe time for a few signal boosters to be added! Oh the protests about the "radiation"! Now that would be quite funny.

On the way down to London me and Alex decided to play with my phone, resulting in:

Back to my train journey. It is going well apart from about five minutes when we were moving at a pace I could walk at we seem to be moving smoothly. Good.

So then, why did I go to London? Well I had to go for a lengthy FAS (Federation of Astronomical Socieities) meeting. As always we made lots of progress and unlike most by staying at Alex's house in Maidenhead it meant that I did not have to get up at a ridicoulous time in the morning.

After the meeting we came back pretty sharpish as but me and Alex (who met up with a mate) could not be arsed with fighting around London any longer.

Another interesting weekend over... time to get back to programming or maybe playing Football Manager 2005! ;-)

Oh the sunset through the clouds at the moment is quite spectacular.

Gosh I am busy. I am in working really hard... for once. Astrosoc went well tonight got all the scopes out. We are going to buy a 10" one :-) As for being busy well I am kind of enjoying it. Well it is stressful at times and don't think I will get everything done (I will - that is my nature!) but I have to say I am learning lots. Well time to make a few changes to the RAS NAM 2005 user registration system and then off to bed. Don't you just love MYSQL - well I do.. at times!

On Thursday night I had a great time... well up to about 1am when on my way home I fell quite badly. Result: lots of pain and a trip to Selly Oak Hospital! Luckily I haven't broke my ankle. Initially suggestion off the doctor was that I had. It probably didn't help that I passed out when he was assessing the condition of it. It was quite painful. It still is. I have uploaded a photo of this but Alex has banned me from posting this directly on the page. So you have to go here. This was taken this morning.. the bruising is getting slowly worse and the swelling has gone down a bit. This low res photo doesn't do it justice but you get an idea. The pain is constant.

Unfortunately my foot hasn't recovered much yet... I think it is actually looking worse. The bruising is stronger. The pain has dropped a bit but all I can say is thank god for codeine! For the gory detail see: foot2.jpg

I was Barney Rubble for the University of Birmingham Astronomy Society's Children in Need event. There is more info about this here: http://students.bugs.bham.ac.uk/astrosoc/pictures/cin181104.htm Oh this is me and Steve (who was Fred Flintstone in costume!):

Today I had the privilege (if that's what you can call it!) to be interviewed by BBC West Midlands. It is definitely a privilege if not a little daunting. I don't mind doing this sort of thing. I find it quite interesting and I just love to promote astronomy to as many people as possible.


Both me and my mate Steve (who they interviewed about extrasolar planets) got on. They asked me about Comet Machholz and some other stuff such as the Gemininds. It wasn't bad. I was quite pleased.


I have had quite a bit of media interaction this year. Firstly I was asked to comment on a press release for the IoP (Institute of Physics), then I was interviewed on the same topic for the Mail on Sunday (see: http://www.krioma.net/blog/archives/2004_05_17.php#000251. This lead on to a media frenzy for the Venus transit. Gosh I can't remember how many journalists etc I spoke to on that day. I did live interviews on Radio WM for this. I will put these online soon - I meant to put them up before. I also was interviewed by the BBC but for some reason they thought Greenwich was more important than us! :-)


All fun!

I finally have that Christmas feeling - courtesy of the Pogues and Fairytale Of New York. I love that song has to be my favourite Christmas song. Apart from that Christmas songs have driven me crazy over the years. I think I have heard enough last christmas' to last me ten lifetimes!

Merry Christmas to everyone!!!!

Today I got my new phone a Nokia 7600. It looks more like a handheld video game but I rather like it. I have very much enjoyed playing around with it - except locking myself out by stupidly typing in the pin number incorrectly. I called 3 at just gone midnight on the off chance and yeah was able to get it all sorted though. I think I was redirected to India!
More:
+ Nokia 7600 - http://www.nokia.co.uk/nokia/0,8764,56327,00.html

It is that time of the year.. ball time. Everything is sorted for Astrosoc and now so is PPS. I am rather looking forward to it. It is going to take place at Aston Villa Football Ground. My friend Tom came up with an excellent poster for it:

Yesterday I had my first PhD interview. This one was at Warwick. The University itself seems quite nice. Not as pretty as Birmingham but looks like a typical University. I could seem myself being content their. The interview itself, I think, went well. I have interviews coming up and Nottingham and Birmingham so I guess I will only get better butthen I guess everyone has their own style. I don't really mind what field of Astrophysics I go into and all of the projects I have applied for seemrather interesting. I guess it is going to be a decision between what takes my fancy more and who offers me a place!

Today's open lecture at Uni, which I organised, was by Prof. Inglesfield of the Cardiff University Department of Physics and Astronomy. The subject material was rainbows, halos and glories. It was an absolutely wonderful talk full of excellent descriptions and some lovely pictures that very clearly illustrated the concepts. It made me want to go hunting for rainbows like I would have as a child. His website: http://www.astro.cf.ac.uk/pub/John.Inglesfield/ has some wonderful pictures on it off these optical phenomenon. Well worth a look at.

I meant to post this before but I have been so busy over the last few days and will be over the next few I am sure. Friday night was the 2005 Poynting Physical Society Ball. I love going to the ball as it is always so much fun. This year we were in one of the rooms at Aston Villa football club. It was actually rather nice. Much better than some of the places we have had in the past. I have swiped a few pictures off some people, thanks go out to Ran and Tom (and I think Olly!). I am bound to swipe more for the PPS website soon. Ok on to the photos, for some reason there is a general trend of me holding a beer! I didn't drink that much, honest. See: http://www.krioma.net/spgm/index.php?spgmGal=PPS_Ball_2005 for some of the photos.

Yesterday I had my first exam, yes on a Saturday (I have two saturday exams this year!). It went well, I hope! This is my last set of exams during my degree (I only have 5 this year - yipee!) - it couldn't have come sooner. After 4 years of working hard in the summer term I am looking forward to not having to stress about exams next year. Things are going well with my revision, not as good as I would have liked. Probably because I had a good year last year, finding it hard to be motivated this year. I have 3 exams in 3 days at the end of the week (then the big piss up!) so I won't be posting on here regularly - something I haven't done for a while due to revision. Well on to the superconductivity, what's the Meissner effect again? :-( (btw the Meissner effect is basically the exclusion of flux from the bulk of a superconducting body [Wiki Link].

My degree is over. I had my last exam yesterday and now have the hangover to prove it! :-) My last exam was a Quantum Mechanics one, quite fitting that it would be a core physics course to finish on. I had 3 exams in 3 days so even though I tried to party hard last night I just couldn't - I was just too tired. Well that doesn't matter so much as I still have a few weeks around Selly Oak before the results are in to celebrate. I have just gotta find something to do now, expect some changes on the website. I'm very much looking forward (results pending) to starting my PhD in September but for now its time to relax and recover.

I got a 2.i - yay!!! :-) Now I can go to do some research, just what I want to do.

Today is a sad day. I feel for the people involved. Why do people do this? I will never understand, well I hope I won't. Oh and well done to the emergency services, looks as if the plans went well.

During my exam revision period back in May I decided it was about time I built myself a brand new PC so I could play all the latest games. I finally have built it. The interesting thing is when I decided to do this - during my exams! Guess what I wasn't doing at the time. Revision for me as always been accompanied by lotsof computer games. You just need to have a break.
Anyway back to my new machine. I have a smart looking white case with some cool lighting - I will take some pictures and post these later. My old machine is being turned into my new linux box. In fact there is not much wrong with my old machine and I bet many people wouldn't moan at having its specs. It is just not up to top level game playing though.
The specs of my new machine are:
Motherboard: Asus A8V Deluxe Socket-939 VIA/KT800Pro - ATX Sound Gb-Lan IEEE1394 USB2 800FSB with WIFI
Processor: AMD Athlon 64 3500+ (NewCastle) 2.2ghz L2-512kb 939p
RAM: 1024MB DDR PC3200 400MHz
Graphics Card: XFX GeForce 6800 GT 256MB DDR3 AGP
Hard Drive: Western Digital Caviar SE 120Gb 7200rpm 8mb Cache
Cooling: 3 x 8cm Case Fans, 1 x Exhaust Fan
Oh and the DVD+RW that I took out of my old computer.
Overall this computer is built to be a games machine and so far with tests it hasn't prooved me wrong! Looks like I am going to have lots of late nights playing games!

Tonight I went to see the Wedding Crashers which stars Owen Wilson and Vince Vaughn. It was actually quite funny, which is something I expected since it had this pair in. It was a bit long and ended up in being a love story but what the heck it was still fun. It also had quite a few attractive young women in, something I never mind being in a film :-). Actually the stunning Isla Fisher also stars in this, which is another good thing about the film.
Before I got to the cinema I had the fun of having to negotiate the regions of town that had been blocked because of anti terroist actions by police. The main region of activity was Snow Hill station. I had to walk behind it and for a second or two I was a little intimidated but I thought screw this and so carried on like normal. Still though, all this activity makes you take a second thought about your safety; something that we should not have to take. Argh.

What is getting into me, today for the first time in probably 4 years I found myself listening to dance music.

Now this is odd. I either must be really bored or just in a chill out mood. I don't know where this chill out mood came from though. I am not stressed. I don't fell stressed and so do not need to chill. I cant even claim thats its the summer weather making me feel like this - its bloody raining again. I think I will blame FIFA 2004. I played this the other day which has a few dance track in I like and I think I must have decided to give some a listen to. Indie where have you gone, in the words of Pato Banton "Come back, baby come back." :-)

I finally got my laptop repaired. It was under warranty from PC World, well their PC ServiceCall Customer Support. I have to say that on both occasions I have had to deal with them they have been great. The first time was a bit crap since the guy on the phone wasn't the best and even sent the person to collect it to the wrong address after I explicitly checked that he had my student address as collection. This was over a year ago - turns out that what I thought was wrong was (it was a cylinder in the hard drive).

This time was a different story. I decided to use a different tactic when I called up and I explained exactly what I had done, how I diagnosed it and the steps I'd taken to repair it. So quite quickly the guy agreed with me that it was a faulty DVD-ROM drive. He organised for an engineer to pop by today. I was expecting him not too turn up till late and not to have a phone call off him telling me his ETA (this is what I was promised). I got what I was promised the engineer called me to tell me he would be around just before 11. He was. In ten minutes he had swapped the drive and reset the BIOS and it now works. It is actually working much better than it has for a while so I reckon the drive was causing a secondary problem - not entirely sure what though. I think it is now time for it to be wiped though and a fresh install of Windows will only do it good, though I will have all the random crap that PC World like to put on it.

Oh and they even emailed me to confirm all the details once I had called them, not bad. Overall I am very pleased with their customer service and the call centre wasn't an expensive number either - that's another job done.

I'm not sure how I got this, but I did...must have been my confused answers:



Tinkerbell


Who 's Your Inner Sexy Cartoon Chick ?
brought to you by Quizilla

We went to Snobs (my favourite club) last night. It was fun though I feel the atmosphere in the place has changed over the last year or so. Its not the same. At least the music was good last night, more classic rock than normal - something I will not moan about. They also played Joy Division - "love will tear us apart" which is a song that in my opinion is synonymous with Snobs. I haven't heard this there in a while so that made the night even better. There was a fight on the dance floor, its been a while since I saw a full on fight on the dance floor at snobs. This is where the blood came out title comes from. I hate to see fights on the dance floor, its just dangerous especially when my female mates are nearby (not that they can't take care of themselves or anything - I wouldn't wanna cross them ;-)) - I just don't like it. This is where my physical presence comes in of use. People where already trying to pull them apart so I helped and used my weight advantage to push them apart. Then I got sprayed with blood from the guy who got smacked in the face, nice. It wasn't too bad but ewwwww! After washing myself down and being told by the guy who works in the toiled "wash your hands for the pussy"(!!) I realised it was on my shirt aswell, argh! It wasn't too bad but thankfully it washed out. All in all a good night, plus I wasn't as drunk as on Wednesday which is a good thing.

I've finally gotten around to posting photos of my MSci (Physics and Astrophysics) graduation day. These can be found [here]. It was a very enjoyable but hot day and you can tell this from a few of the photos of me. Here are a few that I decided warranted a show on here!

This is probably my favourite shot of the whole day, me with "old joe" (the clock tower) in the background (oh and a sunbathing person!):



It was one of those days and the tension was getting to me :-) (no, seriously I wasn't trying to hurt my mother!):



Me and me dad! :-)

I've had a fun weekend. I traveled all the way down to Bodmin to give a talk to Brannel Astronomy Club. I think my talk went well, people seemed interested and asked me some interesting questions (at least they were not too random). I got asked by the organisers to try and fit something into my talk. I either had to mention "toilet seat" or "food processors". I went for the toilet seat. Thus meaning that NGC 6822 is now known as the toilet seat galaxy! I have to say Cornwall is such a wonderful place, it looked cleaned and rather picturesque. I thoroughly enjoyed going down their, even though it did take about 4 hours on the train there and the same on the way back. At least I got a seat. The annoying thing on the way back was that Virgin's seat reservation system was down and so I thought I'd struggle to get a seat as the train was packed. Luckily I managed to get a seat quite easily. Once back in Brum I went to Pizza hut with Kat and then to the Troc for a beer or two ...which was needed after that journey. Here are a few images I took during my visit:


On the train:





Plymouth station...just got my connection





Part of the audience, I thought I'd take a photo for a change





Lovely Bodmin Parkway





Lovely Bodmin Parkway, again.

After all the traveling I did yesterday I thought I'd pop into the Church to say hello to my dad and gareth who were helping out with a VE Day 60th anniversary celebration party. I decided to stay for a drink and that's when the fun the began. Firstly we had a rather wasted young man claiming he had no where to go and that he needed some money to get to town. Well we were not gonna give him any cash as he was claiming that he also needed it for a free hostel! Anyway we gave him some food and drink and he went. He then came back!! Argh, what do you do now - call the police? It was obvious by this point that he probably did need some help. In the end we called a homeless shelter in the centre of Birmingham. They said they would take him, which is what he was concerned about. So we said we would pay for him to get to town on the bus. He seemed pleased. We gave him a bunch of food and I went to take him over to the bus with a lady. As I walked across to the bus stop, BANG! A car crash. So grabbed the attention of Gareth (who later told me he though I was in some sort of trouble) as we did not want to leave the guy alone without an escort. I went running up the road. It turns out that some guy had hit two stationary cars and turned his on its side. Luckily he was ok and no one else was hurt. The emergency services were called and took care of this. I went back to see what was going on at the bus stop, got there as the guy got on the bus. Later on I found out he went one stop (as the accident was blocking the road) and ran. Well he had his chance and at least he had eaten something.

In the morning I'm off to the PPARC summer school for new PhD students. This is taking place in Edinburgh. I couldn't have wished for a better place. So until next week it is bye from me.. unless I get bored and go into a cyber cafe (which knowing me is quite likely!).

I'm tired! What a week. I will mention more when I post my pictures but for now, here is a rather odd group photo that was taken of all of us at the Royal Observatory Edinburgh (note: we looked shattered as we just walked up a hill, and remember we are physicists!).

Exactly a year ago my sister got married to this guy named Gareth. You may have noticed that he gets the odd mention along with my sister. I have to say well done to them. A year on, they have a house with a mortgage and now there is a 'bun in the oven'! Well done for them. Scary thing is they are two years younger than me...ummm...maybe I need to start thinking. Heck becoming an uncle is thinking enough! Well done Melissa and Gareth. Oh and here is then entry for the wedding. At least Gareth looks tidier in that than in most of the pictures on here!

Life is rather busy at the moment. Its kinda scary cause it feels like I'm working, which I guess I am. I have now started as a postgraduate student at the University of Birmingham (I need to update my about section). This now means that I have lots of work to do and also the dreaded teaching! Consequently this has meant I have been rather busy with my academic life and so my site has kinda taken the hit on content. I'm sure once I get back into the swing of things I will be able to keep the site nice and updated with random stuff. For now here is a fable (one of Aesop's), titled "the astronomer", that I should listen to when I go about my research:


An astronomer used to walk around outside every night to watch the stars. One time, as he was wandering on the outskirts of the city and gazing at the stars, he fell into a well. After hollering and crying for help, someone ran up to the well, and after listening to his story, remarked, "My good man, while you are trying to pry into the mysteries of heaven, you overlook the common objects that are under your feet."

Last wednesday I went out with Simon and a bunch of second years (some of whom I know others I don't). It was an excellent night, though I do have a bit of memory loss (about 30 minutes at a crucial part of the night!), it was great. Saying this I didn't fully remember the rest of the night (minus the 30 mins) until my friends told me the day after. Woops. Still it was fun and I think the start of the night was quite accurately displayed by Ran's facial expression in the below image:

A new Balti restaurant opened near me the other day, Witton Lodge Balti, so obviously we went along on the night of their grand opening! My dad seems to know the guy who owns it and this lead to us having a great time. I think I shall have to appreciate their cooking again, oh and the choice of veggie options weren't bad (which is good for me!). I do love a good Balti - which I think is a little obvious from my face in the below pictures:

Last Sat I had the fun of going to London. I always like going to London as I normally get to do something a little different. My primary reason to go was for a meeting of the council of the Federation of Astronomical Societies (I'm the secretary). This is always an interesting meeting and today was on time, so I can't moan. Today I decided to stay on the tube to [Piccadilly Circus], I can't actually remember ever going there so I though I should. Was pretty cool, I even took the two pictures and tourist would take (the neon signs and the Shaftesbury Monument memorial fountain with "The Angel of Christian Charity" ontop):





My walking also took me to this really nice church but I have already forgotten the name and then to the Royal Society. I went to look for the Royal Astronomical Society headquarters (as I'm a fellow I'd though I'd have a look in). It was shut! Argh! So I went to the Royal Academy of Arts in stead. All in all I really enjoyed myself - I do like randomly walking around London and it was so easy to get there and back on the train.

Ok, I'm being slack with posting and this event was a while a go...woops! Any the Vale Fireworks are one of the things I really enjoy about the start of November. Firstly it is free. Secondly it makes me get reminiscent (as it is on the Vale, all the freshers at UoB stay there). For the first time I actually went on the fun fair, I'm always suspicious about fair ground rides... they go on the road you know!! I love rides, but like at Alton Towers where it is permanently fixed to the ground! Anyway I digress. The fireworks were as wonderful as ever and yes I was one of those annoying people trying to take photos with his/her mobile phone. Well I didn't do it for too long as it was obvious to me that they were not going to come out as good as last years ones. Anyway here are a few highlights of the night... (a few more [here])

I'd really like one of the new "toys" from SEGA - take a look at: [SEGA Toys]. I could think of hours of time wasted with one of these (maybe a little sad but I'm not afraid to say that!) - those who know me will understand, if you don't take a look at the number of space posts I make. Oh and the above website is in Japanese so don't worry if you can't read it - just take a look at the wonderful movie (I lost the link I had to an English page about this).

Well last night was odd. Thats all I am gonna say. I was actually going to write this post last night when I got back from Snobs, glad I decided against that cause the words I was going to use really should have been censored(!). Anyway a BIG happy new year to everyone, its 2006 now... I'm starting to become older and in just 8 days time I will 23 and as Blink say nobody loves you when your 23! Time to go against that! After last night I decided that my New Years Resolutions (I never make them but I thought what the hell for once) should be:


watch more football, drink more beer, play more sport, try my luck with more women, play more games ... oh and work harder (yeah right!)


Oh and I'm glad I was able to ring in New Year to a punked up version of Auld Lang Syne! Heck it was different, and quite cool. Happy New Year

Today its my birthday, I'm 23. Starting to get to the point when it is less of a celebration and more of a number counting ritual. I don't mind cause it means I get gifts(!), and I get to go out and celebrate. It is now my turn to get the cheap night out, muhahahaha - well that might have to wait to the weekend now though. Too much work today. The only bitch is, that for the first time in my life I have to work on my birthday. In the past I have been as school or uni, but never actually had to work on it. Today, unfourtunately, I have to teach. I wonder how much use I will be come 5 when I just wanna go drink! :-)

I have nothing interesting to post.. but something drives me to want to post now. So here goes... I'm sat at home after an interesting and at times dull evening. Work is well, and hard. Looking at the amount of effort I have put into things this week I'm quite pleased. The GMRT proposal is gaining momentum and I can see myself being finished with everything I can do quite early tomorrow, well I better be. Teaching is good, the first week is over for my 2nd year astro projects. I'm really looking forward to getting some results from my "age of a cluster" group and the solar rotation, though going slow (note the pun :-) ), is actually looking like something interesting could be done, especially since I have a bit of expertise in reducing the data once we have it. Anyway time for the random blog entry to end... sleep and then back to the radio astronomy....

..of a pint, naturally :-)

Well it had to be done didn't it! Oh my new phone is great, I got a Motoroal Razr V3x, which probably doesn't mean a lot. It is a flip toppy like one.. the first I have had - hope I don't break it by playing with it - up, down, up, down... must get annoying after a while. Anyway it comes with a 2MegaPixel camera which means I'm even more tigger happy than I used to be - and it has a blinding flash. This blinding light is something I missed from my previous (not the last one) water resistance Nokia.. which had a touch in it - great for hiking but alas not camera in that one.

I went to snobs last night, when I get around to it I'll post some pictures as there are bound to be a few randomly interesting ones on there.

Well I'm Chair of the University of Birmingham Astronomical Society again. This means lots to do in the little time I had spare. Heck I enjoy it so I won't moan! Though this does mean I'm now full of balti (we always have a balti after the AGM)... so time to lie down and feel full!

Well it feels like I never left! Being back in charge of the University of Birmingham Astronomical Society is kinda cool. I enjoy the challenges it poses. It is always fun, especially when you have a committee who is energetic and eager to succeed. This is exactly what we will do. It is my first meeting back in charge tomorrow and I'm well looking forward to getting back up at the front and introducing our guest speaker, Dr Somak Raychaudhury. I remember being affraid of doing these introductions.. not this time. :-). [Astrosoc] will be my undoing I swear, I just spend too much time on it! Heck, now I'm posting about it. I need sleep.

Wow 800 pieces of junk by me! This one truly is junk.. I just don't have time to post in full today. I really have to try and get some stuff up next week. I intend to. Off to astrofest tomorrow to man a stand so that means an early morning so that's good night from me.

Well I have finally given into my temptation, well actually it was a few weeks ago, but heck I have it now. Yes I went out and bought myself an Apple PowerBook G4, it is swish and I can see it changing hugely how I go about my daily routine. It is actually rather cool and guess what I am using to write this post from...


I like to consider myself quite wide fetching in my computational needs, in the space of a metre I have a windows desktop, a linux desktop and now an apple laptop. Pretty cool, wel it is if you are a geek like me!

Tonight is the [University of Birmingham Astronomical Society's] Annual Dinner. This is a rather special occasion and is a great chance to get out with a bunch of astronomers, ok doesn't sound like the most hardcore of event but heck these guys can drink :-)... and some of us don't scrub up too bad either... welll, I hope I don't. Anyway.. I have still to decide what, as Chair, I will say when I reflect on the society over the last year - guess I will have to play it by ear. Oh well.

So then that's another Astrosoc Annual Dinner over with. I'm kinda glad as it is a little stressful and was hanging over my head. Well saying that, it was a great night which I throughly enjoyed. It would have taken a lot for it not to have been a good night to be honest... what with beer, wine, good food and of course an interest guest speaker. Another semi-tradition was kept by the British weather, it snowed! :-) (I like snow). Since I am Chair of Astrosoc it meant I had to give a quick speech about the society over the past year (this years was quick!), oh I was not looking forward to that. I normally do not have a problem talking in front of people, in fact I thrive on it. Last night was different though, dunno why - maybe it was because by the time I had to stand up I had already drank quite a lot, oh well. I don't think it was too bad and I only embarrassed one or two people, but thats really how it should be now isn't it?!

When I get some pictures off my phone, I will stick them on but I'm too lazy (/ on a train) and can't really be bothered at the moment. I'm also sure Steve will post some on the Astrosoc website soon enough and they will probably be the most embarrassing ones of everyone he can find.

Oh and guess, like we should always, ended up after the annual dinner? The Guild - bad beer, bad karaoke but heck good company and even though it is bad, it is still beer.

Anyway, as I said I'm currently sat on a train making my way to Uni for another day of work. Ok, it is late but then again I do have a bit of a hangover - I think the loud Greenday that my mp3 player is pumping out is helping.

Well it was going to happen eventually, I have put myself down to present a poster at the National Astronomy Meeting... now that means lots of work. I'm not bothered as it is a nice deadline to work to. I have to say I have missed having deadlines as of late. The work I am going to present actually is not work related to my PhD.... its just for interest. This is good as this is how I want to be. I want to be able to explore as much astrophysics as possible, though, obviously I will have to really put some huge effort into my main project: modelling planets - but this is actually moving along quite well.

I'm currently sat on the platform of Stafford Train station, oh what fun, my train has been delayed twice now (I currently have 30 minutes to wait, great!). Well at least it does give me chance to write this.... yippee. So why am I in Stafford, its not like it is on my regularly daily routine. Well I am here, well was here, to give a talk to the good people at Stafford and District Astronomical Society. I do enjoy giving talks, its a nice break from the routine. Only problem is I am missing this weeks Astrosoc, which I hate to do as I always have a good laugh. I was actually hoping I would get back for some of it but the way the trains are currently going I probably won't.


The real bitch of it is I was actually praising the trains earlier.....why, oh why did I decide to do this. Umm, a freight train just parked on the platform I am waiting at... that can not be a good thing, especially since the thing infront of me is marked "super heavy, marine pollutant"... ummm, what next.



Back to the talk. Tonight I was speaking about "Galaxies and the largest Structure in the Universe". This talk has been given to many different places now, all different backgrounds. Tonight was a fairly interested crowd and it became as much of a discussion as me standing up at the front boring people with my rant. I like it when it becomes this, it also avoids the random questions at the end! I must thank the people of Stafford AS for putting up with me and giving me such a great reception. Anyway my hands are getting cold and I'm not so sure about having my shiny laptop out here...:-)

Ok I'm finally off the bloody platform and on the Bristol Train... explanation.. overhead power equipment... but isn't this a diesel train?? I'm sure there must be some technical aspect of railways that I don't know about but surely this train does not require the power... and guess what the shop is now closed, not that I want anything but I was thinking about a warm cuppa... oh well. 44 minutes late. I'm glad I haven't waited for the train I was originally thinking of getting... that is delayed from 21:22 till about 10:19.... wow! The guy on the platform was like if you are going to Birmingham I suggest you get on this one, so guess what... I did. As if I was going to stand around on a cold platform for any longer than I had to... idiots.



Oh I just saw something really funny, some chav on the phone, it died so she shook it like a bottle, lol. As if that will do anything. Well I'm definitely in a rather bitchy mode. At least I can use my laptop.


Things to do when i get in: look up how diesel trains work, so i can bitch about overhead power for the rest of eternity, write a letter moaning to the rail regulator that although I have to pay extra for my journeys I am never on time. Today has just taken the piss. I can normally put up with the late local trains, as they normally work to me getting them instead of missing them but what with that and this! I don;t mind with the local ones but surely they can't justify increasing transportation fees based on this. It is a joke.

Yesterday was epic.. well and the day before. After my talk in Stafford I did return to meet up with my fellow astronomy group in the pub for a swift drink. This continued onto doing karaoke, great. My singing wasn't up to much, especially when my "friends" gave me the challenge of doing Parklife by Blur.. we did it but made people cry! :-) I then did with a big group, "Bat out of hell", then with a mate "You'll never walk alone"... I thought that went well, but obviously not! :-) After all this I was feeling quite awake and since we hadn't drunk we decided that observing would be great.. the sky was unbelievable. So we took a couple of the 1st years out to the Uni observing and were there gazing into the heavens till 5am! I will have to post some pictures as we saw some fantastic objects. Once we did this we went back to Uni and I started work, again....

Just when you feel like you are out of luck and love is a gonna, something else crosses your path to give you a hope for another night... well maybe but then again maybe not. All you can do is smile and live in hope, cause tonight may not be the night but there are many more nights to follow.

Possibly, probably, who knows. Oh you probably need to see the playlist before I comment more:

Sum 41 - some say

The Smiths - This Charming Man

Panic! At the Disco - The Only Difference Between Martyrdom and Suicide is Press Coverage

The Exies - What You Deserve

30 Seconds To Mars - Revolve

Beastie Boys - Girls

Earshot - Someone

Jack's Mannequin - Mixed Tape

Alien Ant Farm - Friday, I'm In Love

Seether - Fine Again

Well lets start with the Sum 41 one, quite melow... a complentative mood.
The Smiths, umm, its definetly dance and poppy - nice to bop along to. I do like to see myself as charming... which takes me on to an even dancier one, Panic! At the disco.... I'm defintely desperate for attention.


The Exies, well this brings out the inner angst, and the pain. Probably what I deserve. Takes me back to the anger of "f*ck it all". Then back to the mellow 30 Seconds to Mars, looking to the future....


Then I think the song that probably has describes the last 6 months of my life comes up..... "Girls" by the Beastie Boys. Oh well! Earshot makes me go back to the anger and dark places that makes me think of the past. Jack's Mannequin makes me feel better cause I don't know where I am and it is cool to think that there is indeed a piece of me in every second of every single day.


Well then it goes up hill and I realise that all of the though is just not worth it, cause end of the day I know that on Friday I will be in love... well maybe not Friday but at some point during the week for a split second I will have a though that will remind me of why I do what I do and that all the above just doesn't matter. Oh and if it is in a hawaiian shirt, all the better.


And it all finishes with Seether, fine again. Maybe everyday is the same but heck one day will be different.

Maybe some of this makes sense but I'm sure it doesn't and I am talking complete and utter bollocks. Oh well! :-)

I was looking back at past ball pictures, to help my friend Heather with dress issues(!), and I came across this beauty from 2003:

Sometimes I wonder why I stayed on at Birmingham Uni todo my Phd...obviously it is a great place to do one and is "top quality" in terms of research and it is where the project I wanted to do is. But then I think why else and days like the other day remind me... the place is just so beautiful - here is a picture of the Aston Webb building during some recent snow:

I just got back from [las iguanas]... a latin american restaurant... wow the food was great. Quite a good veggie choice to be honest - this always makes me happy, I love to take as long as the meat eaters to decide on what to eat. I had nachos with lots of jalapenos for a starter, probably not the healthest of decisions but hey! For my main I had a wonderful enchilada that was stuffed with creamy cheese and spiced spinach... and it was laid on top of a oh bed of refried black beans and a nice red chilli sauce on top, yummy! Top meal, great night...and a nice birthday treat for Maz (who is a good mate of mine).

Yay, I'm happy! :-)

image taken from the stephan quintent.

.. in the physics department today! shocking. Oh well, its for good reasons, that I'm not wiling to spread over the internet... well not yet, maybe later ;-)

Well, last night was fun, really great! I went to see Yellowcard at the Academy. I wasn't going to but I got convinced by a little weirdo that it would be cool to go along... so I got tickets off a tout. The gig itself was great and they were rather entertaining, but I definetely had other things on my mind.... the first date. I guess thats what you can call it. Eitherway it was cool, Yellowcard rocked the place. Only one regret I have about the night is not being in the middle of the pit when they got one half of the room to run at the other half.. shame that, but I was getting some better bodily contact, ;-) lol. Here is my shitty mobile phone pic of the band:

I have had a great weekend, only problem is now I'm supposed to be working... ummm, its not quite happening. Lunch early and then lots of work this afternoon, has to be done.

Friday was the [PPS] Ball, which is always a wonderful occasion. It had even greater meaning to me this year, it was the first time with someone special. I then got the privilege of spending all day with said person yesterday, it was great. I went to see V is for Vendetta with her, that is a great film (will write more seperately) then took her to this nice Italian cafe, the food was great. The company even better. Then I had the fun of spending all evening with her and introducing her to a few of my mates. It was all good and I am very pleased. Anyway I will write more on the ball and V at some point I am sure...

What a week, busy, full of work and fun.

It started with last Saturday... this alone was an action packed day with me going out with Lizzie. We started off with a trip to subway for food then on to see V for Vendetta, a nice meal at an Italian cafe on Broad St and then a few pubs before we met my friends at Risa.

The Sunday was a bit more relaxed, I came home and tried to make up for the fact that I had not been around much! i.e. lots of work.

The Monday was a good, hard day of work, I was in for 8am! Work went well and then I got to spend a bit of time with the lovely lady before I came home and went out for a curry, there was a special fundraiser for [St. Martins Church] that my dad had organised. The food was good though I was definitely missing someone. I then went home crashed and relaxed before another busy day at Uni. Oh I did have some phenomenal news on the Tuesday morning - we got time on the GMRT (a radio telescope in India) which means I get to look for exoplanets and go to India... yay! Tuesday evening was a nice and relaxed affair that was originally going to be a cinema evening but once we got there and decided there was nothing we wanted to see it turned into a nice meal at a pizza place on Broad St and then a trip to wonderful tesco.. :-)

Wednesday, well there is only one thing you should do on the last Wednesday of term, GO TO [SNOBS]! So after a busy day of work, I was there from 9am till 9pm! We went to Snobs. The one problem being how shattered I was since I had played footie at 5! It was a friendly so nothing at stake really. Lots of fun and so was snobs.

As always Thursday night is astrosoc night and being the end of term, it was quiz night. This meant that me and Steve had to quickly rush the quiz together since the pair of us have been to busy with work. Before astrosoc we went to the Gun Barrels for a nice and cheap dinner. This was nice cause I got to spend all evening with the lovely lady again! yay!

After all this came Friday, I was shattered. But I did have possibly the best day of work I have had in a while, got quite a bit done. Then I was so exhausted I had to go and crash early. So thats what I did. Sleep, was good. I needed it since I had to go into uni on Sat to get some stuff done before we went the Planetarium. Oh yeah, on Sat we had a wonderful Planetarium show at the new Birmingham Planetarium. Not only was we treated to a free show by the director but a nice hour long extras show. Was quite spectacular really. Well worth the entrance to thinktank (science museum). We then had my favourite, Pizza (at the hut) and then on to watch a film. We chose a random one, Kidulthood. Which was interesting, if not contrived and obvious. Didn't matter as I was with that special person. I could have watched anything and not be bothered.

Can you spot me?

Umm, I'm not sure if I can figure out how the f*ck this happened:

Which British Band Are You?

Today is the second day of the national astronomy meeting, this means I am having to stay in Leicester. It could be worse! It is actually quite interesting, lots of cool research and some which is a little boring, if I am honest. The halls are miles away from anywhere including sources of food. This is bad and has left me to eat pizza ffor two nights on the row. This is in health terms really bad but in normal terms not that bad! lol. Anyway here is a pic of me in the first plenary session yesterday:

It's all sold out... in an hour. The only tickets I could get were coach ones... who cares, I am going! This is why:

Now here is a very random picture that my friend Ria took and editted, pretty funny though:

Hello to my baby niece, congrats to my sister and Gareth... (note: the baby has already learnt how to dance with her arms in the air!)

Wednesday night, surely you should have been at Snobs?? Well for once we weren't, we wen't to flare instead. The reason: the queue for snobs was huge and at 11:15 we decided there was no chance we would get in. Anyway Flares was great fun, I took quite a few fun images and have posted a gallery here, [Flares 12/04/06]. I loved the dance floor:

And of course we had to have pics taken with a big afro on:

Say hello to my baby niece, Madeline, you did see her the other day but here she is with a nice ugly fellow (i.e. me!):

I have just returned from a few days camping in Wales, we went to a nice campsite about 15 miles from Pwllheli, Porthysgaden, it was rather fun. The weather was very changeable which meant for an odd time. At times it was wonderful and shorts, sun glasses and probably sun lotion were needed and at others full winter gear would have been rather appropriate! Oh well, it was lots of fun, and the weather helped it in a sense. I really enjoyed myself. On the way there we got lost a couple of times and took the wrong turning more than once! The food we brought we didnt eat, it is very hard to cook with a meths cooker when the wind is really high.. still though we got a good hot chocolate out of it. This meant we tried to cook with a BBQ... that was slightly more succesful but the wind and rain really didn't help.

We were only there for two nights, the first day was basically travelling followed by us eating dinner and crashing. The second day was more active, we went to the beach! :-) We made sand castles:

and generally played around it was lots of fun. Lizzie got sand all over her due to some person (i.e. me!) kicking sand at her. I got my comeupance when Heather soaked me with a bucket of water, :-). Was lots of fun. On the way back (the third day) we went on the [Ffestiniog railway] which is rather cool and something I have not done in a long time. It was great, I love steam trains.. :-)

Anyway if you are interested and wanna see some more odd photos from this trip then take a look at: [Camping_Wales_Apr06]

Why would I hold an Oasis bottle like this. I obviously wasn't impressed by the great new taste... not that I particularly enjoy chemicals and not fruit.

I just found out that I need to have a tooth removed, great, first time aswell - argh! The dentist said he was astonished I was not in absolutely agony.. well I guess that goes to prove that I am odd! :-)

For Martin's secret (or not so) birthday celebration we went and looked and ate chocolate!! yay.






Yummy, maybe not!

Take a look at: [Cadbury World Excursion 30/04/06] for more pics.

Lost of funky stuff, fancy dress and some beer... a night out for a birthday had to produce some odd pics...

More here: [Flares_Martin_Bday]

Last night I and Lizzie went to an excellent talk given by Br. Guy Consolmagno SJ on "Why does the Pope have an Astronomer?", it was wonderfully interesting and I am sure he could keep you entertained for a very very long time. If you ever get to hear him speak do it. He always has a professional astronomy background.....

It is wonderful Lizzie's birthday, so to poke fun at this great occasion I produced this:

To make one for yourself... use: [elitemrp.net]

The debate, to stick a packet of tortilla's in your girlfriends hoddie or not? Well it seemed like a good idea at the time since then I would not have to carry them... but it turns out when she can't reach them she gets annoyed... and then a few days later you get your come upance when she makes you carry the milk... argh!

A Frisbie, a lake... umm what on Earth could go wrong....

ARGH! So then I attempt to rescue it...

Eventually we succeed but we don't avoid the bubbles, nooooo...

Astrosoc recently purchased a new telescope... the other day we decided to destroy the evidence, well put the box in a skip. So to carry this big box Lizzie was voluntered. I'm not sure she was pleased but hid her annoyance well, just take a look at this:

She really hides the digust well, oh and to prove it is her and that she wasn't too impressed (I don't actually think she minded, if anything she was having lots of fun!).

On Sat I was at the Foo Fighters gig, and wow what an encore! The Foo's were joined on stage by Brian May and Roger Taylor... !!!! What a special ending to a brilliant Foo Fighters set. Anyway this is just a quick post. More, with pics later. Oh and for more on the gig you could take a look at the [NME Review]

I brought myself a canon Ixus 55 the other day... expect lots of pictures from this soon. Anyway I was walking up the road yesterday and taking a movie, like you do when you get a new gadget. On playback the video picture is wonderful and the conversation is quite funny aswell:

heather "we are going to be killed",
me "wow wow we are going to be run over",
lizzie "if you werent looking thru your camera you would have noticed"

Ok, don't read if you don't wanna see some quite manky pictures of my tooth....

Anyway, yesterday I had my first tooth EVER removed, well their was the baby ones but they came out on their own (or by me pulling, lol!). I was a little nervous if I am honest. The only dental treatment I have ever had to have done was a scale and polish, oh and a bit of plastic being put into a tooth as a child... this nervousness meant I dragged Lizzie along, lol! :-) Yes I am a big boy! Heck I didn't want to walk down the street dribbling everywhere! Luckily I didn't but who knows. Well the tooth pulling took a while since it was the one in front of my wisdom tooth, which it had been pushing against this one for years since it came in at a 45 degree angle to the plane of the teeth. This made it harder to get out and actually cause the cavity, food at some point must have gotten caught and my dentist suggested that it was really just a matter of time before this happened, well better than having the wisdom tooth removed! So then, time to see some pics? Here is the cavity:

look at that cavity, the dentist suggests I should have been in considerable pain.. but I wasn't maybe the wisdom tooth that was pushing into it killed it?
For size, next to a penny... l

ook at the size of the cavity! I was in no pain and I generally have good teeth!

Well I'm aching now and generally relaxing, its not so bad... but I think I am allowed to be in a bit of pain.

Well I'm off... time to go... here comes Canada. Time for a nice break.

Hello to you all from Canada(!), thats right the smell might have finally gone away now that I am a couple of thousand miles away!

Toronto seems like a really nice city, though it does feel much more american than I would have expected.. heck its damn close.

It's hot, damn hot. Between 41 - 48 centigrade here, supposidely. It does feel like it. It feels like my blood is going to boil, thank god for the underground air conditioned city!

We went on a nice air conditioned bus tour of the city and this had some great highlights, and we walked back to the city hall just... but it is too hot to be walking around outside too much.

Anyway I think my dad is probably being bored with me being a geek and writing messages whilst on holiday.... and its probably time we had a pint! We are off to diner at the CN tower tonight (which is the tallest structure in the world, the Petronas towers being the tallest building). Lots of fun...

tomorrow I should cool down with the masses of water at Niagra... woo hoo...

I got back from Canada, exhausted and thrilled, earlier today. For now all I will say is I had a great time... time to relax.. and that doesn't include a computer screen (for once!).

Well I couldn't bring back flowers for my Lizzie so I grabed a leaf at a sugar shak (where they make maple syrup... yummy) whilst I was in Canada.. oh and here it is (yay, my first post of pics from Canada!):

Last Sunday I made a quick trip to the ThinkTank - Birmingham's Science museum. The point was to go and watch Lizzie as she was in charge of the Planetarium and to catch a show. The [Planetarium] is great, lots of fun and wonderfully designed so you get a great show. I also had a quick look around the ThinkTank... not like I haven't done that before. It is definetly aimed at kids but I spent a bit of time around the Birmingham exhibit that I hadn't really looked at before, heck I needed to get value for money. I probably spent a bit too long looking mesmorised at this:

I'm off to India tomorrow to try and use a radio telescope (the GMRT) to directly detect an extrasolar planet... hopefully the weather will hold off for me to land in Mumbai! :-(

Yep, I'm in India... Pune in particular (at the National Centre for Radio Astrophysics). It's okay here, rather wet but still quite nice. I have to say I had the most crazy of journeys here. If you think people driving around in London is bad then you should take a look at the Indian roads...arrr!! It wasn't so bad but still there were a few moments when I was only an inch away from a big truck! Oh and we definetly had the proper welcome to India when we saw an elephant on the road, shame I didn't have chance to get my digital camera out.


So why am I in India? Well we are going to use the GMRT (which is a big array of radio telescopes, one of the best in the world) to try and detect the radio emission of a planet around another star! This would be the first detection in a direct manner of an extrasolar planet, which would be cool... sorry I mean very benefical to scientific thought, nah I prefer cool. :-)

My fun in India continued with me moving on to the Giant Metrewave Radio Telescope near Khodad today. It was an early morning (6am) and will be a very late night since my observation starts at 1am tomorrow (it is currently 10:16pm). Lets just say I am going to be rather tired.

The journey up from Pune was pretty smooth not many problems only near the end did it become rather, and by that I mean very, bumpy. That was fine. I slept for a while once we got here and then did some work. Currently we just finished planning our observing schedule, we even managed to fit in another interesting taget that we are hoping to get something from.. well if we don't we don't - it was a decision between trying something or basically not looking at anything new (our main target will have drfited beyond the horizon at that point and we won't be able to see it). Anyway my life as an astronomer continues, which I am not moaning about... but some decent sleep would be welcome about now.

Well we started observing about an hour ago now, things are progressing. Just so you know with radio astronomy you dont get a picture, well not till you have done the data processing so I won't know for quite a while if we were successful... either way it is pretty exciting even if it is approaching 4am here (we are GMT + 5.5 hours)

I have to say, though very tiring (I have had to breaks and managed to get 4 hours sleep in over 36 hours!) this is pretty cool. Earlier I took a quick walk up to the main cluster of antenna's on the site (I took pics, but I left my usb cable back in the uk so I can't post them now) and saw all the dishes move at once, to my target. Now that was cool. Anyway I'm trying to get some work done whilst I watch something that looks rather similar to:

Well I just got back to the GMRT (to do more work, I really need to start processing this stuff) after an eventful evening. We went out for dinner, but that involved going 10km! It was worth it, we went to a nice Indian chateau, they had some nice one.. one though was awful it was spicy but it just tasted as if they had used grapes that were about to go off to make the wine. The food though, was delightful, nice spicey and wonderful. I have to say I can tell something changed in me over the last year or so and thats my attitude towards food. I will now try anything (it has to be veggie of course) and though at times I am tentative I am normally quite suprised and heck sometimes you just need to eat, its that simple. Before I came here I never once thought oh no what am I going to eat! :-)


Something else that is worth thinking about whilst here, which I really like, they have a Veg menu and a non-Veg menu. I have even noticed signs saying.. "and non-veg food". Thats cool. :-)

What with changing time zone, effectively losing 5 1/2 hours, and then having some long days and nights due to observing I have found it odd to get any proper sleep whilst in India. Last night, however, was different. Once I convinced myself that in fact it wasn't a bug, scary, goliath of a cockroach running around my floor and it was just the room fan on occasion making an odd sound I fell asleep. I actually managed a nice solid 9 hours. I can't moan about that. Now its time to do some data analysis so I best get on with that.... and then I can justify watching the charity shield later (yes.. ESPN carries it, yay!).

Today I get to be the Brit on the celebration of this country's independence from British rule. It was in 1947 that the Indians drove Great Britain from its territory, a thing my country should have done long before, well from what I read it is. I don't want to be drawn into the rights and the wrongs of the British Empire. It happened, there is not much I can do about it. Though the British at certain periods in history did some awful things they also did some great and indeed good things. Thats the thing that keeps me proud of being British, that and the Premier League, lol! :-) On a side note I keep watching the tv and I can't get used to it being refereed as the EPL! Anyway back to Independence Day. I think the country is as proud at celebrating this as the American's are on July 4th. There will be a flag raising ceremony here at the NCRA this morning and I will go and watch and take some photos. I just hope there isn't a tradition of teasing the Brits like I hear there is in the USA. If there is, I will just keep my head down and work even more! I will post some pics when I return, as I stupidly left my usb cable back in the UK.


If you want to know more about Indian's Independence then I suggest you take a look at: [wiki]

We had the raising of the flag here at NCRA and lets just say I did feel a little like the token Brit. It was quite fun and we all had biscuits and tea afterwards which was rather nice. I'm now learning quite how long and hard it is going to be to do the data analysis! ARGH.

I just gave my first public talk outside of the UK. It was a short, half an hour affair, but I am rather pleased. It was to a bunch of amateur astronomers, who were a nice bunch, at the Inter-University Cetnre for Astronomy and Astrophysics (IUCAA) outreach centre. I mostly talked about what we, Birmingham University Astronomical Society, do as amateurs but I also spoke about what I do for research. It was lots of fun. I do love giving public talks.

Well things are winding down here in India. I just gave a short talk about my work and trying to express how we are optimistic we will detect a signal. I'm hopeful and I have to say I have a much better handle on the data analysis. Give me a few months and I might be telling you of our excellent work or of our failure to find anything, hopefully the former. Anyway my short talk went well and I for once I wasn't too nervous when talking about my work. I do prefer to talk to the general public..

Well I guess adventure would be the wrong word to use, I mean I have spent most of my time staring at a computer screen trying to understand what exactly I am doing.. and mostly why?!! The last week in learning how to go about radio data analysis has been like I felt when I first learnt how to do optical spectroscopy.. I'm sure I will learn it all, cause in the end on the optical part I wrote a manual (if you are interested: Image Reduction Manual).

The last week has been pretty eyeopening. I have seen wonderous things, looking at the whole radio array at the GMRT (thats some 30 radio dishes) all looking at the target I told it to go to. I have also seen the absolutely poverty that some people live in here but one thing I noticed is that these people seem happy and isn't that the true aim in life? There is a big different between people working and living at the NCRA to those in the villages outside of the big cities, as you would have expected. I have also, probably for the first time in my life, just eaten food and not worried. I know it is veggie and I know I will, ok some cases omitted, like it. I haven't been able to indentify all the veg that I have eaten but the food has been delicious. I have to keep eating so healthy, I feel like I have already started to lose weight.. and not through not eating correctly (yes mom I have been eating fine!).


Anyway this afternoon I head to the airport with an early morning (late evening UK) flight back to the UK. I will land at some point in the early morning in Zurich, stay there for too long and then head to the UK.. home for lunch... I hope! Then it will be time to sleep and recover before I get ready to go off to the Reading Festival at the end of the week. Should be fun. Can't wait to see Muse play live.

So then... I'm sitting (well almost lying I guess, nice big seats!) at Mumbai airport awaiting my flight. I have a couple of hours yet, more like 3... I'm going to have an even longer wait at Zurich, actually probably about the same again as I have already been here for 2 hours. I decided to get the car down from NCRA at 4pm... I though I should make sure that I got down to the airport in lots of time (it took Ian 6 hours to get here the other day). I was lucky, no Independance Day the next day unlike him and so it only took me 3 hours or so. It was smooth, well bumpy, sailing into Mumbai, then like every other big cty we hit the traffic and we were doomed.

I'm happy to say I will be back in the UK this time tomorrow, probably quite happily wrapped up in my own bed by this point. I have had a good time in India and done lots of work (the fact that over half my lab book has been filled in the last week or so says it all). I'm looking forward to relaxing and seeing a few people (and one person in particular). I have to recover from this long haul travel as I'm gong to the Reading Festival on Thursday and want to be on top form for that. One thing I am looking forward to, not that I have particularly minded it, will be a meal where rice doesn't feature... oh the possibilities, pasta, potatoes and of course pizza(!) - looks like that healthy eating will be going out of the window. No, of course not. It will be nice to have a bit more variety though. I do love the food here but I like to sample different things everyday really... though I probably do normally fit into the pasta meal or pizza quite (and probably too) often.

I'm in two minds to do more work now or not.. I'm tired but I did just read two papers and that made time go flying through. Oh and out of interest, the woman from Swiss Air (why do I keep wanting to call it Zurich Air?) told me not to take liquids, toothpastes or any gels through immigration... guess what the immigration person said... oh thats fine. I wonder if I will actually have an issue at the security check point just before I get on the plane...I guess so, so I think I will just remove the bottle of water from the equation and drink it. :-)

Oh and I finally just beat this blasted computer at chess... woo hoo!

... addon.. I'm now through security... gosh that was a big big farce! Firstly I had to wait about 30 mins in a queue just to get to the front and wait a further 10, I'm sure this is nothing compared to the recent stuff at home but gosh there were only 15 people in front of me. I understand why they sent us through to security control so soon.. I did have my wonderings. After the scan, every part of my bag was checked.. and they even got a nice message of Henry (the teddy bear that Lizzie bought me).. lets just say it took a minute to explain!! ARGH, its a bloody bear! They even took exception to my Malaria tablets (but once they realised what they were and the fact that there was prescription advice on the front of them they put them back in my bag. Luckily I avoided the turn on and off of my laptop, I guess my laptop does acutally look like a laptop!!! Time to just sit back and relax.. and why do I keep finding Indian currency in my pocket, I'm sure I excahnced it all back to Pounds Stirling.

What a farce. When we got on the plan I thought it was odd that not many people where on the plan very quickly, it turns out that they were still all in security. The Mumbai airport staff where overwhelmed since two planes loads worth of people where going through the same check point. Absolutely ridicolous, I can't help blame some of the passengers, the notice to go through security went up about an 1 hour before... so they definetly had the time to go through. Anyway the plane was an hour late from taking off, not really a huge issue for me as my connection from Zurich to Birmingham isn't until midday. It has meant some people have missed connections though. I'm also not very happy as i had some inconsiderate wanker sat infront of me, who noticed when he originally tried to move his seat back that my legs were pushing against it, and still did it. I really wanted to argue with him about it and then show him what it is like to have a sleeping idiot apply pressure on his knees. Well I thought better of that, I didnt't want to cause an incident and once I feel aslep I didn't think about it. The plane and the crew were quite nice (the one forced him to put his seat up for the breakfast meal and he then kept it up...), I have never been on an A330 before but it was really nice with inseat screens.. not that I used it I did just want to sleep.

Zurich Airport is quite nice.. I paid an over the top ammount for a newspaper but at least I got the news that Liverpool drew with bloody Sheff Utd, argh.. that was worth paying for! Anyway nice seats bit too stylish but I'm going to sit back relax and maybe do some shopping as I have a good 4 hours here.

A new term, time for the Physics Society committee to pose...

I decided that (well I think Lizzie did to be honest) we should carve up some pumpkins for halloween so we did:

yep mine is the one that looks like a 5 year old child did it, oh well I've never been good at arts and crafts.. does using a kitchen knife actually count as arts and crafts? who knows, who cares! :-)

As usual the Vale fireworks were spectacular. This must be the 5th or 6th one I have been to and for a free display you can't get much better... my camera was running out of battery but I did get to take a few pics:

and I short video (for those who know Brum Uni... how much cooler would it have been if they had ended it on destroyed the derelict Mason??)

No Guy... no bonfire? No real celebration of this British event... instead some huge turtle and some lackluster fireworks. To say I was disapointed would be an underestimate. You would also think that they would know how to do crowd control instead of putting thousands of people through a very small gap, can't have been more than 10ft wide! argh... anyway I did take a couple of pics (and a video see bottom of post):

Oh and I made a video, which I won't embed this time, and you can see it at: [www.youtube.com]

I can't believe it, Eddie's one of my fav clubs in Brum has burnt down... on a selfish note: there goes another place that doesn't play rap shite. See: [bbc.co.uk]

I'm not sure this comes under news, but definetely current affairs....

At 22:20 last night I got mugged.... shame that as I really liked that phone. I was walking past somewhere on my own and a guy I had notice on the bus with what appeared blood on him had obviously followed me. Noticed my phone pulled out a knife and asked me for it. I reckon I could have took him but the state of him really put me off having a go. Well I decided that it was best to give him the phone (especially since he didn't know I had my mac laptop and my ipod in my bag... feeling quite smug about that part to be honest). I did, however, make sure that he didn't get away with my sim card... I told him you can have the phone but not my sim card I want that. Since he backed down on this I probably should have just gone at him but I thought again best not too and I was getting the thing that really mattered to me out of it all. So s**t happens. People are w**kers. Oh well... ruins my other perfect night... just gave a public talk about exoplanets in Kidderminster....

The week before last the University of Birmingham Astronomical Society, whom I am Chair, hosted our 4th PPARC public lecture and our speaker was Dr David Gregory who is a science journalist. We had a very enjoyable talk and for publicity of the Uni we had the below photo, which I really like, taken:

I am on the left (with the messy hair), David is in the centre with the camera and Kym is on the right (Kym is the secretary of the society).

I got my Wii yesterday and wow its lots of fun! :-) I have to say it is the most intriguing of consoles I have ever owned and its so much fun! The technology involved is startling and just playing the simplest of games on the machine is very easy and active. I guess it has to be a conspiracy to get all gamers fit and healthy by jumping around the room!

Lizzie and Heather seemed to love it much more than me :-)

The BBC have an interesting article up at the moment about "Is it OK to go online on Christmas Day?"... I say it is, of course it is, life goes on and without the internet I wouldn't have found out that James Brown died or that Charlton FC have a new manager. Ok, this isn't really important and I know that it isn't but whats the harm in spending 10 minutes surfing and sending a few merry christmas emails? I know I am happy. So Merry Christmas to you all.

And here is the article [bbc.co.uk]

Welcome to 2007, I can't believe it is 7 years since the millennium night!

Highlights of my year, in a sort of chronological order with relevant posts below

Birthday, Jan 9th (hint to you all who normally celebrate this with me!): curry + a rather drunken night at snobs, I am blaming Tom for topping my vodka and coke with champagne!! It also involved some punches and me not standing upright all night. Oh well.

[my birthday]

Chair of the University of Birmingham Astronomical Society (astrosoc), again! I wasn't moaning particularly as it gave me the chance to take the society further forward and finish off a few things that I didn't get time to do the first time around.

[back to astrosoc]

European Astrofest - sat on the FAS stand all day is always interesting but the company on the way back was much better. I traveled down on the train to run the stand and during the day I bumped into a bunch of first years who were there representing Astrosoc. It was good to see
Heather, Tom and Lizzie and when they offered some company for the commute back I was not going to say no. I got to have a rather long and interesting conversation with Lizzie... the start of the best things in the year.

[astrofest was mentioned in my 800th post]

I gave a talk at Stafford & District Astronomical Society on galactic things, this was the first talk of the year and seemed to go down well. I love getting out to astronomical societies and giving talks. I actually rushed back to my own society after this talk. To be honest I was pretty eager to see a girl... why do trains have to be canceled! I made it in time for a quick drink but we decided that it was such perfect weather that we would rush off to the observatory... like you do. Oh, the observatory is a good distance away (far enough that you need a car!). It was so clear and lots of fun. I love going to the observatory for observing.

[A trip to Stafford], [36 hours without sleep]

The next and probably the biggest highlight of the year. Getting together with Lizzie. This happened after a low attendance astrosoc and with bad weather I gave a short talk on something (i.e. I showed a video) and we went to the pub (okay we do this too often!). This gave me the chance to talk to her and after some time I still didn't have the testicular fortitude to do anything, lucky for me I didn't need to have any as she made the first move... and I will remind her of this forever. :-)

So the big highlight of the year... going out with Lizzie.

The PPS Ball.... at Burlington Hotel.. as a committee member we are still dealing with the stupid finances of this event but as a person it was great fun at one of
Birmingham's best venues. I was nice and smart and hoped I looked the part.

[Ball Pic], [More Ball Pics], [the ball]

The National Astronomy Meeting... I got to present a poster of some work and I was able to (if I am honest) get drunk at the space centre... oh and it also produce the most embarrassing photo of me for the year (me drifting off during Al's talk... woops!)

[National Astronomy Meeting 2006], [astronomers are odd pics]

Camping in the cold wet Wales... with those blasted loud sheep. Oh it was fun I got to spend the weekend with Lizzie, Heather and Martin by the beach.. can't moan now can you? Yes.. it was freezing and wet, why couldn't it have been clear so I could have done some stargazing!! At least my tent took the weather! Oh and I got play in the sand!

[Camping in Wales...]

ALIEN WEEK... well it wasn't the most involved week but we had a talk at astrosoc on aliens, by Mario di Maggio from the Birmingham Planetarium and we had a decent audience. We also had a BBQ on the vale and film night.

I also jetted off to Canada with my dad.. I never got around to posting many pics about this, in fact all I posted was.. [CN TOWER] and [Hello from Toronto!].. so here are a couple of other photos (at some point I will post more...) ...

Then within a couple of weeks I was on the other side of the Earth, in India.. working. I had the fun of going to the Giant Metrewave Telescope in India. I spent most of my time at the NCRA in Pune, a rather interesting experience. Since I had my laptop and a web connection I posted quite a few times... [Hello from Damp India], [Independence Day], [Jantar Mantars replica at IUCAA], [Mumbai Airport has nice seating...], [End of an indian adventure], [At last a decent nights sleep], [at the gmrt], [some pics]

The weekend after I got back from India was the Reading Festival which, like always was fun!

[day 1], [day 2], [day 3], [day 4], [who did I see]

Oh I was feeling quite ill during the festival, , I think India and Canada had caught up with me.

I was the main organiser of the FAS Convention 2006 which I had organised to take place in Birmingham for the first time. It went down well with well over 100 attendees and with 5 speakers (Dr Ishwara Chandra, Dr David Whitehouse, Dr Allan Chapman, Prof John Brown and John Dobson) it wasn't a bad lineup either. I really enjoy these sort of event, just not the pre-event tension...[FAS Convention] - I also got myself a good rep by bringing along 4 young ladies as my helpers, lol.

It was now back to the time of year for teaching and yes I sortof enjoyed observatory lab again. I do find it quite satisfying.

I had a rather large part in organising the departments open lectures again this year, which kept me busy when I wasn't working.

I gave a talk at Bridgend astronomical society which I throughly enjoyed and I got to have an Indian with my good friend Clive.

Astrosoc also ran two evening public talks, Dr David Gregory gave the first and Prof John Brown gave the second. The later was our highest attended talk ever, with over 200 people there and was also our best advertised event yet.. I was pleased.

[black hole and white rabbits], [PPARC Talk: David Gregory Science in the Media]

The success of these talks really reflect the fact that Astrosoc was named the Institute of Physics Student Society of the Year by Nexus... yay for that.

Oh and I was mugged after a public talk in November. Shame that, put a bit of a disappointing end to the year.

[mugged, argh!]

What else, oh I am sure I am missing out lots of important things.. like becoming an uncle.. [Uncle Samuel! :-)] and having a tooth pulled out... but I can't quite remember it all, I am nearly 24.. thats another reminder my birthday is on the 9th! :-)

What is ahead for me, well life is a bit unsure. I need to get a few things out of the way and I will feel much better. I won't spend my time hear now but I am sure I will get to do more fun things in 2007 and hopefully I won't annoy Lizzie much, well maybe a little bit (on purpose, of course!).

A prosperous 2007 to you all... and remember: recycle, save energy, stargaze, enjoy life and read my blog!

Looks as if I am going to be talking on BBC Radio WM tomorrow about astronomy, so if you have the radio on at about 10pm you might not get to hear any words of wisdom!

Last night I and Dr Somak Raychaudhury were in BBC WM studio (at the Mailbox) with Jimmy Franks to talk about astronomy. I have to say it was a very interesting experience and I was much more relaxed than I have been about past live broadcasts. I'll try and get some of the discussion online as I would like to show the world how silly I can sound on the radio

I have managed to get the audio of the radio interview I did the other night.... I have uploaded it on a free hosting sytem (filewind.com) as I don't want to use up my own bandwidth. It will be up for a minimum of 30 days (if not accessed within 30days it will be deleted - so if it doesn't exist just post a comment here if you really want to listen to it!).

Anyway here it is: [radio clip] I don't sound too daft...

Today is my birthday... I am looking forward to some cake!

I'm now 24... argh.

It was my birthday yesterday, . I got cake, ... I didn't eat too much so no, . I might have even worked off a few calories on the dance machine:

Then I probably did some more on the airhockey, I won by losing control of my "hitter" (what do you call them?). I had to win though really, the puk had my name on it!

I then went for food at Frankie and Benny's, went for drinks at Apres and watched Liverpool lose 6-3 (argh!). It was all made better when we got back to Lizzie's and had cake!!

I get to go pick up the Best Student Society award tomorrow night at the Institute of Physics Awards evening, I' m quite pleased as this shows that our efforts to make the University of Birmingham Astronomical the best society we can be have not been in vain, yay! :-)

More on the award [here]

Astrosoc, the University of Birmingham Astronomical Society, which I am Chair of won the best student society award of the Institute of Physics for 2006. We were really honored by this. Kym and I had the chance to go and pick up the award at the IOP Awards dinner on Thursday night, it was a rather grand affair. I am not used to being introduced to a room when I enter and having to shake peoples hands. It was nice though. I am also not used to having to toast to the Queen but I guess that is what you get when you are having such a large event at the Savoy hotel in London. It was very enjoyable and I had a great night, shame about the weather. We had huge issues on the way down but, unlike some people, at least we got to the event.

Tree on the line on the way down:

Kym and I looking happy with the award :-)

Ok I was pleased to have a name tag! :-)

I never thought I would be doing this again.I guess it was two years ago now that I stepped down as Chair of The University of Birmingham Astronomical Society. I was in the 4th year of my undergraduate degree and I had to. Now I am in the second year of my PhD and ran astrosoc again last year because people wanted me to. I have enjoyed another successful year. We have had some great events including a rather full lecture theatre for our December public talk by Prof John Brown, Royal Astronomer for Scotland. We were also given the award of Best Student Physics Society for 2006 by the Institute of Physics, this is an award I am most proud to have received. Anyway, tonight is out with the old and in with the new.

On Thursday I stepped down as Chair of Astrosoc. Being my second time of doing this I am slightly pleased to know that I have put in lots of hard work for the society. I have now been on the committee for a total of 4.5 years! However, I have not stopped being on the committee yet.. I have rised to the challenge of being the webmaster. A much lower role but allows me to still be involved, which I am pleased about :-)

Like always we had a photo opportunity at the end of the night...

The old committee...

The new committee... slightly dodgy pic but thats normal..

oh and me talking (and boring everyone) for the last time as Chair.

We went to Oceana in Brum on Monday, this was my first time there. Though it did have an interesting range of rooms it wasn't the greatest as it didn't seem to have much atmosphere - maybe its the rocker in me showing.. I don't go to non-rock clubs that often!

They did have a rather interesting disco entrance...

oh and guess who's drink is mine and who's is Lizzies?

Woohoo, It snowed overnight and left a nice white blanket!

and on the tree...

Last Night I had the pleasure of watching Bowling for Soup rock the Birmingham Carling Academy. The gig was great and just as I expect Bowling for Soup definitely put on a show. Sometimes a little too much show and not enough gig but it was thoroughly enjoyable. Lots of fun and well worth the cash. They are coming back for Download (which I may attend this year for a change from Reading) and a tour later in October... I think I will have to see them again.

The Fabulous Bowling for Soup....

Bowling for Soup with UK tour background..

A soft focus image of the stage...

The otherday, well Friday, I was on the BBC Asian Network Breakfast show to talk about the Lunar Eclipse that was going to happen at the weekend (It happened last night see my pics [here]). I was only on for about a minute as we were caught short due to another item, I don't mind it is always fun to try and promote astronomy. I am not sure I was entirely happy talking next to an astrologer but I do have a lot more respect for people who do it for reglious reasons like the Hindu chap who spoke after me. If you aren't doing it for financial reasons then it isn't so bad. I'm not saying that I won't try and convince people that astrology is a pile of... but at least he has more of a reason behind it. Anyway if you want you can catch the whole 3 minutes of fun... [here] (thanks again to mediafire.com)

The last time I was on the radio was a bit longer and if you fancy hearing me and Dr Somak Raychaudhury have a general chat about astronomy on the BBC WM Radio station take a look [here]

Last weekend me and Lizzie celebrated one year together by taking a short trip down to London. It was a nice few days away and also lots of fun...

On the Sat we went to the Science Museum were I had my pic taken next to an F1 car.. sssh, I don't think we were allowed to take this but we didn't notice this till after, woops.

I also got to start off some vibrations...

On the Sunday we travelled down to the London Eye but it was a bit busy so we just took a walk up the river.

The eye had red noses added:

Lizzie doesn't seem to impressed with my constant taking of photos, I'm obviously happy:

Lizzie takes photos of Big Ben

We visited St Paul's Cathedral on the Sunday before we left...

On Friday I travelled up to Liverpool to give a talk to Liverpool Astronomical Society. I spoke about extrasolar planets (full title being "Extrasolar Planets and their Aurora"). I have to say I very much enjoyed it and it was a pleasure to speak at the oldest Astronomical Society in the UK (and the world, I think). I felt it went down well and I hope I was clear with my explanations, though I know I can be "hand-wavy" on occasion. I love giving talks about astronomy.

Anyway since I was in Liverpool I went to meet my good friend Katherine, who incidentally put me up overnight..

On Sat morning she gave me a tour of Liverpool, which I very much enjoyed... now come the pics, which are much better than my boring text.

The Roman Catholic Cathedral at night (where I gave the talk, not in main room - I would have been scared if it had been!):

Radio City Tower:

My fast food place (yeah, right! ):

St Luke's Church that was destroyed by air raids in the second world war:

outside the Anglican Cathedral:

inside the Anglican Cathedral:

Liverpool University:

Oh yes I was on the radio again yesterday! This time to do some promotion for the talk we had at the University of Birmingham last night. Oh out of interest this was a talk by Prof Ian Morison of Jodrell Bank Observatory. He was talking about the possibilities and the quest for the detection of extraterrestrial intelligence. Anyway, I gave my 2pence worth on this subject earlier in the day.. on the radio, ekk.

Oh here is the link to the file (thanks to filewind!)... [BBC WM: me on Aliens]

Last night was the University of Birmingham Guild Awards 2007. These took place in the decked out Deb hall (it had a massive star cloth which looked well cool!). It was a good night (once a few sillness' at the start were sorted). Of course I am going to be happy as I won an award! YAY!

I was awarded the "Ross Barlow Memorial Prize for outstanding individual student" which means alot. I have been invovled in Guild societies (abliet mostly astrosoc) for 6 years and I feel I have put in a huge amount of time - enjoyed every second. The Guild means a lot to me, though I do moan about it most of the time! I'm not sure exactly what to say on this, I'm not saying I don't like attention but I am used to being the person who does lots of organisation and isn't always in the spotlight.

I found Ben Whitehouse's (Project and Event Support Co-ordinator.) words on facebook quite fitting...:

"My other favourite memory will be watching the various groups and individuals who won look slightly surprised as they punched the air. I even got a little teary as I watched Sam George accept his award for outstanding individual student. It's been two years since I met Ross Barlow briefly at my first event at the guild of students. It was the student group awards on the Tuesday of my first week at work. I was very new and very unaware of just how passionate our groups could get. Ross clearly loved volunteering for various groups and got a kick out of being involved. Ruth described Ross as having a dry sense of humour... I caught just a little of that on the night. Ross died in a hang gliding accident later that week."

More about the event: [redbrick]

And now some pics... me and Lizzie having fun..

Me and Kym,

Adam and Maz perform for Ballroom dancing..

Last weekend [Astrosoc] went camping... lots of fun!

We headed down to Maz's house near Bristol for some clear and dark skies. It was nice and clear but the
blasted Moon stopped it from being too dark. We knew this would be the case so weren't too bothered.
It was damn cold though, with the wind chill it must have gone under freezing, some decent observing conditions
but not the best to sleep in a tent in! It was hard enough to put the tents up, nevermind sleep in them though...

The first night brought a lovely sunset... (note: the birds, which I stood ages trying to get!)

With the sunset out came the Moon, alowing me to take this nice shot of it over the local Church.

As it became darker the Moon's full glory was shown and I managed to get quite a few shots (just a select few here) of the Moon via placing my digital camera up against the telescope eyepiece (not the proper way to go about it, but it works!)...

Once we had the Moon we decided to go Planet spotting... and up came Saturn - I saw Saturn with the best view I probably ever have had, shame I couldn't manage to get the best shot but at least you can tell it is Saturn.

The next day we went out for a drive, starting off at Cheddar Gorge. For this me and Tom decided to become the brave explorers we always knew we were...

After another (cold) and fun nights observing we were heading back to Birmingham... not before some odd antics...

Yesterday I took a journey out with Lizzie's family to Burton-on-water ... I got to meet [Brum], yay!

(it was a shame I forgot to take my proper camera! :-( )

I have never really rode a bike in my life. I think I must have tried as a kid but I never really had any sense of balance. Well a while ago I decided I should learn so I bought a bike. Yesterday I gave it a go, with Lizzie's help, and managed to stay on for a while. We realised that there were a few issues we needed to fix, we had not tightened the handlebars enough and they moved making it hard to ride. Today, I went over to the park on my own and though I kept looking like I might fall into the lake (consquently having to stop to readjust) I managed to ride quite successfully about the park. I was knackered though, really showing my lack of fitness. Oh well, lots of fun! Why did I not do this as a kid?

Well then another year another [National Astronomy Meeting]. This year's event is taking part at UCLAN in Preston. It started yesterday so not much has occured yet. The exoplanet session was yesterday which of course was quite interesting - I was originally hoping to present a talk in this session but I didn't get the spot instead I got to present a poster. You can find my poster [here]
(note: its about 2mb in size). I think the funniest moment (ok I'm being a geek) occured when the symbol for the mass of the Earth was replaced with a , oh well, at least I laughed.

Well then the highlight of the 3rd day really has to be the football tournament. The days talk's were very interesting, especially the degenerate astronomy session. I was very much looking forward to the football tournament but I did not enjoy being trounced 11-0. Oh well.... I wish I hadn't pushed myself so much though, I did quite badily hurt both of my legs.. couple of pulled muscles was not nice - and is not nice but at least I am sat down.

This weekend and next we will be invading the BBC Mailbox's public space to give a big burst of space based action... including air rockets! Should be fun - if you find yourself wondering past the mailbox on Sunday this week or Sat next come along... we will be being all spacey. Take a look [here] for more.

Last weekend and the one before were so much fun. We took over the BBC Birmingham's public space inside the mailbox to build and launch air rockets. This resulted in me being quite tired after launching countless numbers of them! This was part of the celebrations for the 50th Anniversary of the BBC television show "The Sky at Night" - a show that is produced at the Birmingham centre. Over the course of four days some 2,000 members of the general public passed into our reaches! They were treated to a variety of fun activities that utlimately ended up with kids building rockets and having them propelled upwards by compressed air. Lots hit the ceiling but only one managed to wedge itself into the roof tiling. Woops! It was lots of fun.. if you missed out, watch out as we might come and do this again.

The event was put together by the BBC and the University of Birmingham Astrophysics and Space Research group (with lots and lots of help from Astrosoc, the University's astronomy society).

I took some quite cool vids of the rockets being launched and I'll get these put online soon....

More photos can be found [here].

I'm proud to say that we have launched a new astronomy outreach website, [talkandtelescope.org.uk]. This site is aimed at promoting the public talks that are run at the University of Birmingham by the UoB Astronomy Society and the School of Physics and Astronomy. Go on, take a look... you never know you might even fancy coming to hear one of the talks! Oh and refresh that page a few sides and see if you can spot something changing at the top...

Not only did I take lots of pictures of rockets being launched during the event at the mailbox but I also took a few videos of the rockets being launched so, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1,.....

Now I feel like a proper scientist.

The Sidewalk Astronomers (i.e. on the pavement!) have been helping people to observe the night sky since 1976, last night was the first [International Sidewalk Astronomy Night]. This meant that many people around the world took out their telescopes to the streets around the world. Here in [Birmingham] we did the same. The 'scopes were provided by members of the [Birmingham Astronomical Society] (a few members of the [Uni society] were also present but without 'scopes). It was great fun. We had well over a thousand memebers of the public passing by and asking what was going on before looking through a telescope. For many this was their first time and some of the reactions that we had when people realised that the bright object in the sky was in fact the planet Venus were wonderful to see. It was even better to see their faces after they saw the rings of the planet Saturn for the first time. Great fun! We hope to do similar events in the city centre again.

The Moon and Venus were very nicely placed for some photos as well (it was a conjunction after all)....

More pictures can be found: [here]

I'm pretty sure I have mentioned this in the past but I have noticed a bit of a change since I last did (whenever that was, I'm tired and being too lazy to search the archives!)... but if you are an astronomer and want to switch over to linux to do your imaging etc... then you should really give Lin4Astro go. Lin4Astro is a pretty solid Linux distribution that has a combination of the usual and bloody essentially linux tasks and some very cool and sophisticated astronomical software. This should nicely fill most observers needs and of course is being developed continously, oh and its free!! Take a look... [lin4astro.org].

Oh and on that note take a look at [usinglinux.org] for a decent list of useful astronomical software available on linux (this list is very far from exhaustive though).

In other news, cause I'm tired and in the need for a bit of a rant... I think I may have just completed my first paper to be submitted to the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Publication... wooo hooo.... better check it in the morning though as tiredness has really kicked in now!

"If the world's future lies in scientists' hands, the answers are unlikely to come from the UK unless we reverse decades of political neglect" wrote Nobel laureate Sir Harry Kroto in a article for the Guardian newspaper last week. Shame its all true.

The UK is seeing a drain of people interested in science... and it has been noticeable over the years I have been at Uni.. more people now do "silly" courses than did when I started my undergrad.. what do they hope to get from this? Do they really think that a useless degree will help them in a future career.. a degree is a degree after all, it has to mean something doesn't it? Well this is not true for all degrees. It is well worth doing a subject if you have a natural enjoyement / interest in it but is it worthwile doing if you think it will make you rich? Possibly, some degrees might but most probably won't. They will put you in financial debt. Of course going to Uni is far from just about the academic education but it is not worthwhile going into it blindly.

Anyway, the article by Sir Harry Kroto (thanks to Lizzie's mom for pointing it out...) is well worth a read and can be found at: [education.guardian.co.uk]

BrainFall.com have a bunch of those online click an option sort of scripts and it tell you what you should be... so I decided to fill of their "What College Major Are You/Should You Be?" and I got:

It's a tie!
Your major should be part Computer Science. You like nothing more than spending long nights with friends in the computer lab... which is a good thing since that's exactly how you'll spend the next couple years.

Your major should be part Business. You believe confidence is everything, and nothing's more important than a first impression. Success is measured in dollars and your attitude's going to make you very successful. All that's left is to choose which I-Bank to work for after you graduate.

Oh well I guess that is actually not to far from the truth.. but I did physics I'm not entirely a computer geek....

On Tuesday I gave a poster presentation at the University of Birmingham's first graduate school poster competition. This is not a major event but I thought it would be the chance to try and explain some physics to non-scientists and thought it would be fun, it was....

The abstract for my poster was:

The field of exoplanets is one of the youngest in astronomy, the first exoplanet was discovered in 1992. Currently some 200 planets have been found orbiting nearby stars. All of these have been discovered via indirect measurements. A large number of these planets are quite unlike the planets in our own solar system. We shall describe their nature and the methods of detection. We also believe that exoplanets will be strong emitters of radio energy thus allowing a means for direction detection.

Oh and the full version can be found [here] (its a 4mb file).

Astrosoc's 'Annual Dinner this year took place at the Edgbaston Golf Course. Mr Mike Frost was our guest speaker with a talk on how to lose weight, it was a wonderful nigh.. lots of fun! I have to say the Golf course was really nice to go to and I do wonder how many times I have been past there but never inside... it felt kinda special! .. don't they look like they are having fun...

Looks like I am, according to this test...

A couple of weeks ago I went on a much needed holiday... to Plymouth . Yep I didn't need the shades as the rain that has blighted the british summer continued, oh well. I still had lots of fun, plus I got to spend 5 days with wonderful Lizzie, I'm sure she might not quite see it that way around... oh I will do these highlights in pictures mostly.

Though there weather was not always great we did get a couple of really nice skies...

One of the first features that came to my eyes was the lighthouse, moved a considerable distance onto the Hoe for protection...

I even went up to the top of it...

As our walk continued I realised I probably should not have taken this...

A rocky beach...

.. but lizzie seemed to enjoy throwing rocks.. well I did anyway

I love this photo, I feel I have captured Lizzie and rocks quite well..

In Devon you have to eat pasties (though we didn't eat here as lizzie would not pose eating a pasty for me... )

What more walking...

The Merchant's House, a must visit if you want to learn about the history of Plymouth. It has lots of cool stuff inside, including a whole old chemist with the shop front and all.... some wonderful ladies spoke to me and Lizzie in there, giving us probably the best value for money historical site I have ever been in (it cost just £1.40 each)...

We also went around the Elizabethan house which was good fun and there is some nice but not completely inspiring gardens..

..though it did have a water feature...

.. and some interesting stone work.. is this the Mayflower?

We also had a look around the cathedral that was devestated in WWII, it now has some modern stained glass windows, I love stained glass windows...

.. oh and we also went on a boat trip, not quite what Lizzie had in mind but I was more than happy as we went around the docks and we saw the nuclear subs... but I'm not a boat person...

Oh and we did countless other things, but we really can't forget the National Marine Aquarium it was great fun, with lots of fishes and the deepest shark tank in Europe!

In all it was great fun, many other photos can be found on my flickr account or [here]

The other day we (I and Lizzie's family) went for a nice day out up to the home of UK Radio Astronomy. It was a very good day for it too. Nice blue skies with some interesting clouds. When we got to Jodrell Bank we found that the Lovell telescope was unfortunately parked at the zenith for some maintenance work. This is not a huge problem as you still get to see how quite enormous this structure is. I have seen quite a few radio telescopes now but the Lovell telescope always makes me go WOW! It was great fun walking around the site and though the visitor centre isn't very large they do have quite a fun little 3D space theatre and it is all pretty cheap. Its a great family day out and since it is the 50th anniversary of the Lovell telescope and indeed Sputnik, it is worth a pop up to see it.

oh and trust me to find Ceres (a dwarf planet in the asteroid belt normally) in an odd place:

After we Jodrell we went over to Little Moreton Hall for some lunch and a nice walk around. I can't believe I'm saying this, I might actually becoming cultured, but I joined the National Trust... only because it will be cheaper in the long run, honest! Little Moreton Hall was quite interesting - its a timber-framed, moated manor house! It was built in the 16th Century and has not changed much since the time of the Tudor's.

I'm now approaching the end of my second year of my PhD... and I have now had my first paper accepted to Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society - obviously I'm pretty pleased . If anyone fancies taking a read look at [arxiv.org] - this is the preprint before it is published in the journal. Oh and the abstract looks like:

GMRT Low Frequency Observations of Extrasolar Planetary Systems

Extrasolar planets are expected to emit detectable low frequency radio emission. In this paper we present results from new low frequency observations of two extrasolar planetary systems (Epsilon Eridani and HD 128311) taken at 150 MHz with the Giant Metrewave Radio Telescope (GMRT). These two systems have been chosen because the stars are young (with ages < 1 Gyr) and are likely to have strong stellar winds, which will increase the expected radio flux. The planets are massive (presumably) gas giant planets in longer period orbits, and hence will not be tidally locked to their host star (as is likely to be the case for short period planets) and we would expect them to have a strong planetary dynamo and magnetic field. We do not detect either system, but are able to place tight upper limits on their low frequency radio emission, at levels comparable to the theoretical predictions for these systems. From these observations we have a 2.5sigma limit of 7.8 mJy for Epsilon Eri and 15.5 mJy for HD 128311. In addition, these upper limits also provide limits on the low frequency radio emission from the stars themselves. These results are discussed and also the prospects for the future detection of radio emission from extrasolar planets.

A couple of days ago I went off to the West Midlands Safari park, great fun! They have quite a large park and this takes quite a while to go around and you can get quite close to quite a few animals, though the main attraction the baby white lion cubs were being shy!

They also have a large leisure area and a sea lion show.. quite odd Peter Pan show but quite fun

Oh and there is also the large hippo lake - which was fun!

Reading Festival 2007

I know it is a while ago that this happened but I've been too busy to think.

Anyway here is a quick summary of the festival.

- Travel, took way too long the driver got lost in Coventry (we weren't supposed to go there!) and drove around aimlessly not finding the coach station - eventually we got there!

- Dry, not wet, bit damp in places but not at all bad...

- Fun as always, though it wasn't fun being woken up at 4am to here someone breaking into my tent and grabbing my bag.. shame for them that they left their phone behind and my bag only had my coat in it. They came back for their phone.. I was naked and I got my bag back - really seemed like a surreal dream.

- Bands, how many did I see... 40 in total - not bad really.

- I saw:

On Friday: The Pipettes, The Sounds, The long blondes, Manchester Orchestra, Aiden, The Draft, Plain White Ts, Jimmy Eat World, Maximo Park, Interpol, Enter Shikari, The Subways, Brand New, Ash

I think the highlight of this day was probably Aiden and Jimmy Eat World. Aiden were quite a surprise and very enjoyable. Jimmy Eat World were just fantastic! I should also mention that, like always, Maximo Park and Ash played great sets!

On Saturday: Paramore, Dead 60, Kids in glass houses, Mute Math, The Shines, Nine Black Alps, Angels and Airwaves, Cobra Starship, Panic at the disco, Bloc Party, The Twang, Biffy Clyro, Battles, Red Hot Chilli Peppers, The Academy Is..., Hot Hot Heat

The disappointment of the festival came with the Chilli Peppers - I got annoyed and decided Hot Hot Heat were a better bet.. and they were. Mute Math were pretty cool doing some rather interesting drumming... Cobra Starship put on a good gig and I think Lizzie enjoyed them.

On Sunday: Stalker (I think), Gym Class Heroes, Hellogoodbye, Billy Talent, The Used, Funeral for a friend, Fallout Boy, Lost Prophets, NIN, Smashing Pumpkins and New Found Glory.

This was a good day for music (apart from the Gym Class Heroes!). Billy Talent were great, I really enjoyed their set but the gig of the day (and probably the festival for me) had to go to the Lost Prophets who played a kick ass set, really good music and they got the crowd going! I think I would have probably enjoyed New Found Glory more if it wasn't for me feeling a tad ill...

Oh and here is the Moon over the arena...

I recently went over to Germany, primarily for a conference in Bonn but it didn't stop me taking a short break in Cologne first with Lizzie. Cologne is a fantastic city and there was lots to do - and we did lots. I think the most striking feature of the whole time in Cologne is their wonderful Cathedral:

I could have, and probably did, spend hours looking at this. They have recently had a stunning new stained glass window installed. Critics might say its a bit abstract but when you stand there staring at it you really understand what the artist meant (it is so beautiful), the photo does not do it justice:

We did many things in Cologne including going around a few museums. The EL-DE (about the Nazi's in Cologne) which is a former SS prison house, quite scary to be honest. We went to the Roman museum which has some interesting finds from when Cologne was Roman including a rather odd mosaic floor (not sure if this is really from the period or not...):

We also went around a couple of smaller museums but the most interesting of all the museums has to be the Schokoladen Museum (i.e. the chocolate museum!):

.. lots of fun, not enough free chocolate (but I think Lizzie was more bothered than me :-p). It was quite interesting and in terms of interesting content beats Cadbury World here in Brum...

The conference I went to was hosted in Bonn.. a short journey away from Cologne and that is where Lizzie left me. I have to say I was a bit nervous I have never used public transport in a foreign country on my own before. It was, as I honest expected, simple... and on time!

Bonn isn't quite the city Cologne is but it is still rather nice:

oh and its nice to see that they have problems with graffiti too..

Oh and here is a pointless photo:

As part of my conference we went to the wonder 100m Effelsberg radio telescope:

All in all, I had a great time! For more of my photos (I took lots, like always) see: [here]

Today is the 50th anniversary of the start of the space race and I have the chance to be at the celebrations at Jodrell bank, now thats cool! It should be quite an interesting and fun day - I'll post some pics later.

Last Saturday was the Federation of Astronomical Societies annual convention and once again I was one of the organisers, gosh how time goes by. It was again another hectic day for me having to be there to do all the setting up and running around but I think it was worth it as we had about 100 people along on the day for a day of astronomy talks and a large trade fair. Our 3 main speakers (I did give a talk but was only a short one) were: Prof Mike Cruise (University of Birmingham), Prof Phil Diamond (Jodrell Bank) and Prof Colin Pillinger (OU). All gave excellent and enjoyable talks.

Lizzie and Heather were once again on duty meeting people:

Colin Pillinger gave the last talk of the day:

and it all took place at the wonderful Birmingham and Midland Institute:

My paper about radio emission from exoplanets has now been published, so as you can tell I'm pretty pleased

The abstract can be found [here] but if you don't have a subscription to mnras you can't view the paper, however, you can find the pre-published version (not many changes) [here]

Every year the University of Birmingham host a fireworks display to celebrate Guy Fawkes night... like always I went and here are a bunch of pics I took (more can be found [here])

This weekend I spent in Wales, well Porthcawl to be exact, with my lovely young lady. I went to Bridgend to give a talk on exoplanets and stayed on for a really relaxing weekend. The sunset on Sat night was fantastic and I took a couple of pics...

... holiday's are coming....

Yesterday I travelled down to London with Lizzie and her family to go see the Lord of the Rings show at Theatre Royal Drury Lane. It was absolutely stunning, the set was really cool with it rotating moving up and down and changing rapidly. Very impressive. Oh and here is a pic of what it looked like at the start before the curtain (yep thats the curtain!) went up...

There were many aspect that I loved about the show and I would urge any LOTR fan to go see it, I'm not going to say too much now as it would just spoil it. I have to say though, that I loved the way the riders looked and how the fireflies were done.

Oh since we were in London we also popped to Trafalgar Square....

So then, its that time of the year - the end! I can't believe another year has passed, it doesn't feel like 5 minutes since we started this one. It has been a successful one and since I constantly listen to music whilst I am working I feel the need to think about my favourite music from the last year... and here we go... this is my top 20 albums, I don't have time to do anymore (or the singles like I once did). All of these albums have been released in the last year (at least in the UK I should say).

20. The Bravery - The Sun and The Moon

I have to say I was very disappointed by the second album by these guys, I was expecting much more - still its a pretty solid record and I feel it deserves to just make it into the charts.

[www6.thebravery.com]

19. Sum 41 - Underclass Hero

Like the Bravery, Sum 41 slightly disappoint with their latest album, its good but no where near what I would have expected from their past work. My fav track has to be their opening track... goes a bit downhill from there, unfortunately.

[www.sum41.co.uk]

18. VA - Transformers: The Album

Ok, this is really not a "proper" album but the film was kick-ass and so is the soundtrack! Plus it was the first time I came across 'Armor for sleep' and trust me with the amount of played them this year they deserve an include - this album also has wicked track on it by a band much higher up the listings....

[transformersalbum.com/]

17. HIM - Venus Doom

Yet another solid album from my favourite 'heavier' band. HIM are often referred to as a "love metal" but are probably better described as a cross between Gothic rock and early heavy metal. Glorious guitars and singing throughout this one. Oddly they also came 17th last year...

[http://www.heartagram.com/]

16. Anberlin - Cities

Anberlin really do know how to make me rock and I think I've spent as much time jumping up and down in the bedroom listing to this as I have through any other activity this year... ;-p I think Godspeed is my fav track but I'm not entirely decided, depends on the mood.

[www.anberlin.com]

15. The Academy Is... - Santi

Not as good as their debut album (was 4th in my charts, last year) but then again the first time I heard this was at the Reading festival - it can't have been all that bad as I decided to keep watching them over the Red Hot Chilli Peppers!

[www.myspace.com/theacademyis]

14. Chris Cornell - Carry On

"You know my name" I remember hearing him shouting before he went onto that song at the Birmingham Academy this year, great live - oh and the album well, it opened my eyes to his music, bit lame that I really have only just started listing to him I know. Oh well.

[www.chriscornell.com]

13. New Found Glory - From the Screen to Your Stereo Part II

Ok its not a 'proper' new album from NFG but still you have to love it.... "oh, kiss me..." :-D . This follows on from their last 'proper' album ("Coming Home") coming 3rd in my charts last year.

[http://www.newfoundglory.com/]

12. Thirteen Senses - Contact

"Follow Me" says it all about this album, lovely melodies and strong singing - really does give me a feel good factor. Oh and in 2004 their first album made 16 in my charts....

[www.thirteensenses.co.uk]

11. My American Heart - Hiding Inside the Horrible Weather

The start of this album at first put me off... "boys! grab your guns", hmmm.. but the track improves after about 2 seconds and the album just grew on me instantly.... so "boys! grab your guns, its all in good fun!"

[www.myspace.com/myamericanheart]

10. Ash - Twilight of the Innocents

Do they need that woman playing guitar? After this album I would definitely say HELL NO! Great album (not quite as good as Meltdown, which came 6th in my charts of 2004), good to see them back with some good music - oh and they played a great set at Reading (did I mention I went to the reading festival?! :-D)

[www.ash-official.com]

9. Editors - An End Has A Start

The second album from the Editors does not disappoint and they follow on quite nicely from their first album. Though it hasn't made quite as much impact as their first album did on me.

[www.editorsofficial.com]

8. Good Charlotte - Good Morning Revival

Good Charlotte return with another mix of "dancey" beats and some rocky overtones. Great album, I think this is probably my favourite of theirs. Oh and they still have time for some beautiful songs, I particularly think the words in "Beautiful Place" are quite nice.

[www.goodcharlotte.com]

7. Avril Lavinge - The Best Damn Thing

I know this is a bit teeny but so be it, I quite enjoy Avril... and yes that also includes "Girlfriend", I'm really not sure why though... oh well. 7th is much higher than in 2004 where her album "under my skin" was 19 - so either I have regressed to being a teen girl (something I could never be)... or I have been hanging around a certain young lady too much... (:p)

[www.avrillavigne.com]

6. Fall Out Boy - Infinity on High

A cracking album, full of songs that you can dance to - well that I can jump up and down and look like I am dancing. Did I mention that I saw them at Reading this year? :-D Its a really good album though like in most of the cases this year I'm not sure its as good as their earlier work but if you ignore a few of their more, I want to say 'rappy' (but that's not right), crap songs then its a good one. Hallelujah!

[www.falloutboyrock.com]

5. Funeral for a Friend - Tales Don't Tell Themselves

We start of in Oblivion and eventually we end up in a nice sweet place. A lovely album - with some really energetic moments. I'm quite happy relaxing to this or letting it get me nice and motivated. They did a brilliant set at Reading, probably my highlight of the festival looking back at it with time as my perspective.

[www.ffaf.co.uk]

4. Madina Lake - From Them, Through Us, to You

"Here I Stand!" the album screams from the start, the first time I heard this I was presently surprised by having such a brilliant opening track, no messing about - straight into it. I have to say I do find myself listening to the first half of the album much more than the second part, but I do like "Pandora" - the later tracks just don't really have the energy of the earlier ones. Still though, a great album very deserving of 4th.

[www.madinalake.com]

3. Paramore - Riot

A girl screaming her lungs out and a guitar being played rather aggressively... now what could be wrong with that? In my opinion not much. Paramore's second album is brilliant and I think a massive improvement on their first (which I loved by the way). I'm still a bit annoyed with myself for missing a large part of their set at Reading (due to me wanting a fry-up for breakfast!) but I'm going to see them at Brum academy (in Feb, I think). Oh, they aren't all shouting - they do have some nice, quieter, more melodic tracks - which really complement the strengths of their singer.

[www.paramore.net]

2. Maximo Park - Our Earthly Pleasures

Maximo Park are the band I have seen the most, I've actually lost count on how many occasions I've seen them (its definitely in the teens). Their second album does not disappoint. Frankly its fantastic. Something for every mood. I think my favourite song has to be "books from boxes" - and its probably because I love the intro. I've seen them twice this past year and both of their sets have been really good, mixing both this and the first album together. I can't wait for a third. It was really hard to choose between this and the eventual winner....

[www.maximopark.com]

1. Linkin Park - Minutes to Midnight

Without a doubt this is my favourite album by them since their first, its great. Nice mix of classic metal beats and some of their earlier work. "Bleed it out" is a great example of this, I just love the rhythm this song has. I also like the fact that this is quite a long album, with lots of tracks - and none are really just there as filler.

[www.linkinpark.com]

Links to past years:

Albums 2006 - [here]

Singles 2005 - [here], for some reason I did not have time to do albums this year...

Albums 2004 - [here]

As you can guess I'm pretty excited about the next couple of days! I'm really looking forward to going to the GMRT again. This time I'm going to do some observations of brown dwarfs. Brown dwarfs are essentially failed stars - they are more massive than planets and have some nuclear fusion but they do not have enough mass to fully sustain this. Their radio emission is quite interesting, if they have any, and it allows us to build up a much better understanding of their structure. Anyway, I can't wait - hopefully I will have time during my manic schedule (I'm the principle investigator on this one!) to post on here... so watch this space!

Its hot, I'm tired and having to work, eeek! I need sleep.

During my last set of observations in India all I was presented with were cloudy and dank skies. Tonight was different, not only do I have a wonderfully clear sky (Orion is sitting on his side, which for me is a bit different!!) - shame about the bright Moon - but I got the pleasure of watching a gorgeous sunset. It really made all that traveling worthwhile, maybe.

Well here I am, in India observing again.. I was a bit nervous for a while then but now I'm actually observing my source I'm pretty pleased and getting a bit more relaxed. Since I've had most of the day to sit around waiting I've managed to write a substantial part of the paper I will write up these observations into... and I took a walk and took some pics. The first is of 3 of the GMRT antennae, its just one of those types of photos you have to take when you go to a radio telescope,

and the other one is a bit more artistic / scenic.. flowers..

I woke this morning feeling a lot more relaxed, well sort of, I'm pleased the first observations appear to have been successful and I'm definitely more relaxed about that. The problem is my internal clock. I went to bed around 11:30pm last night (which is 6pm in the UK) and though I was absolutely exhausted I could not manage more than 2 hours... I finally managed to go to sleep at 6am, which is close to my time of going to bed in the UK. ARGH! I can only hope that today's long observations really knacker me out and I sleep - but then I'm going to only have 4 hours to the start of my next observation!

Oh and I took a few more shots of the sunset last night... its a spectacular view.

I bet it wasn't sit in one of the worlds largest radio interferometer's control rooms? I have to say it might sound uber-geeky but I'm totally in awe of this facility. [The Giant Metrewave Radio Telescope] is absolutely wonderful and I hope you have seen some of the photogenic side of things in my previous posts but this time I thought I would give you a bit of an insight into what I've done on my Saturday night.

Ok, I'm not going to lie, my Saturday night has not been just work - I have been monitoring the English Premier League - like any football fan would be. Anyway, with that omission out of the way - what have I been doing?

Well the GMRT has a telescope controller, there is no way you could use this machine without considerable training, who you basically give a command file that has all the instructions on what the telescope should do during your observing run. So the first thing, obviously before the observing slot, you produce this command file. In radio astronomy you have to have a bunch of calibrators of known structure and power (flux). Basically you start off with the flux one and use this as the scale for the rest of the observations. You then use a close by source (to your actually object) as your secondary calibrator (phase). Basically you let the telescope go and do its thing, obviously there is a lot more to this but we would get a bit technical. The other thing that is important is you choose the frequency to observe at - tonight I'm observing at 1.28GHz. You might wonder why - well this frequency relates to frequency of the emission of the object and is based on a calculation for particle in the magnetic field of the object.

So once the observation begins what do you "see" obviously in radio you just get voltage signals - and yep thats what you can "see" - you can get a plot of the antenna amplitudes:

and yep I have been watching this all night... well not all the time, just occasionally to make sure nothing goes wrong! I won't actually have a proper "image" until I have analyzed the data in a package and that will take a while - it is also a story for another time.

I hope this has given you a better insight into my geeky evening and what you do at a radio telescope... if you ever wanted to know that is!

Its not often that I actually go out for a walk for the sake of having a walk. I wish I did it more often but a combination of laziness and living in the city (with the same walk I do everyday) really holds me back. I'm sure that there are some really nice walks and interesting photos to take around where I live. I think I shall endeavor to do this more often. Anyway, today I decided to take a walk around some of the dishes here. There are many better walks to take, but its hot and I did not want to go too far.

Starting off I approached the first antenna and like yesterday work was going on, but it was pretty close to the floor and I thought that this was quite an interesting shot..

It was really quite warm and I really wish I'd put suntan lotion on - but I wasn't in the Sun for more than an hour in the end. After a while I decided it was time to take a break.. so I thought I'd try and do the "Contact" pose. You know, the film Contact? With Jodie Foster in where she "hears" the alien radio signal? How preposterous! If I'm getting this right she was using the VLA (in New Mexico).. and listening to the signal.. as if - can she do Fast Fourier Transforms of signals in here head? Don't worry if that comment meant nothing to you - just me being a physicist. Basically there is no way she could do this. Anyway, I thought I'd give it a go. After gently setting up the camera (and the timer, the first time I've ever used this).. I ran and grabbed my laptop.

Ok, its not great but you get the idea... shame I was listening to New Found Glory and not alien signals...

Oh and I found some more flowers to take pictures of.. I have no idea what these are again but they looked pretty and a great chance to take some colorful photos.

Oh yes, the fun of early morning observations. Its just getting light here and I've been up for 2 hours! I know some people do this on a daily basis but I bet they were not working till midnight before then. I'm tired, slight confused and a bit disorientated about what the time should be. Oh well, I'm still quite happy - though I have to say I'm missing home now (especially a certain... xbox 360!). Anyway, yep I'm observing again. This one is going to be quite interesting, and should produce a paper no matter what. We are looking at an object that has been observed at high frequencies and I'm seeing if we can get anything from it. I'm a little concerned about the Sun rising though - I much prefer to do observation at night but then again the ionosphere is as problematic during the night as in the daytime.

I was going to blog these pictures later but something tells me I might well be asleep till my next observation begins this afternoon. So here are some pics I took yesterday that I didn't blog...

and yes some more flowers

... and there is still another 4 hours of observing to go! I'm going to take this moment to post a few other pics...

Over the last few nights at the GMRT I have been constantly visited by a small lizard, I think it is a Gecko...

thankfully it keeps itself to itself.

On Saturday I had a day in London, this was primarily for the Federation of Astronomical Societies council meeting but since I got down to London a bit earlier I was able to do a few other things.

I managed to take a quick trip to the London Science Museum. I was actually very pleased with myself over this, navigating a very hectic tube system without my trusty diary map! Its actually pretty easy to get from Euston to South Kensington station and then walking down the huge subway to the Science Museum. The museum was really packed, but I didn't expect anything less. The only real reason I went in was to take a look at the "new" (well since the last time I was there) space gallery. They actually have rebuilt the University of Birmingham built Spacelab 2, which looks really cool:

oh and they have a lunar lander mock up, which I'm sure will inspire a bunch of kids:

My main task of the day was a trip to the Royal Astronomical Society at Burlington house for the FAS meeting. I won't bore you with the meeting, like always interesting but heavy going. I managed to take a shot of the RAS's lovely galaxy window, I'm not sure who this was designed by and the exact name, but it pretty spectacular:

Last Friday was the Poynting Physical Society's annual ball. It is a rather fun occasion where we all get dress up, eat expensive food and pay too much for our drinks. It is always worth it though. This year was no different and it was lots of fun. Of course, being me, I took lots of photos...

more can be seen [here]...

It doesn't seem too long ago I got all excited and went and got my mac book pro. As time has gone on I have loved that laptop (and still do) but I wanted to get a really small and truly light one. I had heard about the [eeePC] a while ago now and then the other day we came across it at, you may be surprise, Toys R Us! Turns out they were out of stock and after going back on Friday it was still the same case. After running around and a tip off from one of my mates (cheers Tony!) we managed to get on at Curry's. I have to say I have fully fallen in love with it!

The key reasons I got one was: Size: 225 mm x 164 mm x 35 cm, Weight: 920g incl battery. Remarkable! It was also only £250.. so it is not going to break the bank.. and god forbid it happening but if it did get stolen its not quite the same as the £1,500 for the mac...

Though a bit small for my fingers its absolutely wonderful. It comes with a custom built version of [xandros] (a linux OS). Its a pretty cool operating system and after a few tweaks (take a look at [eeeuser.com]) you easily can have a fully windowing system and not just the default tabbed display. I now have an installation of XUbuntu running off a memory stick... which I will eventually replace with a SD card.. so I don't forget to bring the OS with me! :-D If you have one and fancy doing it take a quick look at: [installing_alt_op] or [ubuntu-eee.tuxfamily.org]. A cool video showing what you can do with Ubuntu on this small machine can be found on [youtube.com].

What else to say but this thing is cool and has probably lead me to way too much distraction as of this weekend... and probably will in the next week!

For further reading the [wiki page] provides some interesting background... and if you want to know what it looks like on the inside then some cool (but maybe also crazy!) person took his apart [tweaktown.com].

I have been nominated for a "Sir Arthur Clarke Award" in the category for "Best Student Achievement". The award ceremony will be held during the 2008 UK Space Conference on 29th March in Godalming, Surrey. It's a shame that I won't be able to get along but I have long standing outreach commitments that I really can't turn my back on... and I'm sure its for that work that I got nominated so it would be really bad if I cancelled so I could party!

The "Arthurs" have become recognised as the space equivalent of the Oscars. They provide recognition and pay tribute to those who have worked for the advancement of space exploration. Nominations are submitted by the public, and the winners are voted for by representatives of the space industry, research institutions & universities, and space-related organisations. Nominees for other categories in the 2008 awards include Sir Richard Branson (in the categories "Best Individual Achievement" and "Space Entrepreneur") and Stephen Hawking ("Inspiration Award").

Well I finally did it I moved my main desktop machine over to boot only Ubuntu (been running it on other machines for donkeys), I'm not sure what the finally straw with booting windows and running X in it but something was and thats that. Ubuntu is a pleasure to install and use - I'll blog more about what I've got running and how when I get time but you probably don't need to hear this but for any of you windows fans out there I will try and convert... oh and if you still fancy using windows, well you can run it inside ubuntu (8second boot up...)

oh and if you are ubuntu fan.... now get it in drink form:

its pretty good cola.

It snowed yesterday! I love snow, it can be so much fun. Me and Lizzie took to the task of building a snowman! Most of the work was Lizzie's, when it comes to snow I'm more of an annoying snowball person.

oh and talking about snowballs.. Lizzie got me back...

I then decided it would be more fun to try and take some cool photos... not sure they came out as well as I would have hoped but they are quite nice:

I'm a bit unsure what the title of this entry should be and I'm a bit unsure about what I should actually mention. I had intended this to be a collection of things I did after I had installed Ubuntu on my machine. This could be, for some of you, the most boring entry you have ever seen. Hopefully some of the geekier readers will like this. I'm still not sure what is going to go here / if it will be of use for anyone. At least I will use it as a point of reference for myself. Hell that's what this blog is all about. It is about me being too lazy to keep detailed notes and diaries.. and hopefully to give some of you an insight into my mind and what I'm upto. Lets be honest I'm pretty sure my most dedicated reader is my Mom (hi Mom - trust me this entry is not one for you... but if any of this sounds better than that Microsoft Vista installation I dumped on you...!).

Oh well here goes. Hopefully this might inspire some of you to give Ubuntu a go, its simple really and to install you just pop in the cd and off you go...

Audio Visual

Probably the most important, lets get some metal on while we do the rest...

Sort out your soundcard...

[http://ubuntuforums.org]

Install Mplayer and Multimedia Codecs (libdvdcss2,w32codecs) in Ubuntu 7.10 (Gutsy Gibbon)

"MPlayer is a movie and animation player that supports a wide range of codecs and file formats, including MPEG 1/2/4,DivX 3/4/5, Windows Media 7/8/9, RealAudio/Video up to 9, Quicktime 5/6, and Vivo 1/2. It has many MX/SSE (2)/3Dnow(Ex) optimized native audio and video codecs, but allows using XAnim’s and RealPlayer’s binary codec plugins, and Win32 codec DLLs. It has basic VCD/DVD playback functionality, including DVD subtitles, but supports many text- based subtitle formats too. For video output, nearly every existing interface is supported. It’s also able to convert any supported files to raw/divx/mpeg4 AVI (pcm/mp3 audio), and even video grabbing from V4L devices."

[http://www.ubuntugeek.com]

Use amarok for your music! works great with your ipod... sudo apt-get install amarok - and you can use it with last.fm - and there are tons of scripts out there! [amarok]

Copying DVDs (note: this is for legit purposes...) - XDVDShrink: [XDVDShrink]

This and some important codecs can all be installed using Automatix2 - [Automatix2]

Mounting your disks...

How to fstab - [http://ubuntuforums.org]

The configuration file /etc/fstab contains the necessary information to mount the disk. This file comes read at the start of the system and can be modified only by root user. [ubuntu.com]

How to edit and understand /etc/fstab [tuxfiles.org]

I finally got it to work by setting up the fstab correctly and then chown the directory it was mounted so I owned it! This took me longer to think of than I would have expected, silly brain as it was a pretty obvious thing to do.

Reading NTFS disks, Ubuntu Gutsy did this for me ok but for reference [ubuntuforums.org].

Booting

Grubb issues, don't we love to hate it! :-D

How to restore Grub from a live Ubuntu cd [ubuntuforums.org]

Recovering Ubuntu after installing Windows - if you dual boot: [help.ubuntu.com]
(I'd suggest you don't dual boot.. well if you only want to use a few windows task or play simple games - if this is you then think Wine or booting windows in a virtual machine).

Run other operating system's inside Ubuntu!

Virtualbox, how to: http://howtoforge.com/virtualbox_ubuntu

Create and Manage Virtual Machines Using VirtualBox: [www.ubuntugeek.com]

Once installed remember to add yourself to the group that can use Virtualbox - if stuck try this page (note in French!): [doc.ubuntu-fr.org]

Windows apps inside Ubuntu

Wine is what you want, and irfan view rocks for image manipulation: [help.ubuntu.com]

How to run Windows applications on Ubuntu - [www.zolved.com] (this use a gui interface for adding packages, I'd recommend you use the above one which uses the commandline and apt-get, much faster if you can deal with the fear of not clicking...)

Mail

Copying over thunderbird files from Windows: copied over files and then edited profiles.ini so path was the old one...

[General]

StartWithLastProfile=1

[Profile0]

Name=default

IsRelative=1

Path=b1na6jtf.default

.. open up thunderbird and there you go, all your files and settings! ref: [ubuntuforums.org]

Backup

Making system images - VERY USEFUL!! Why repeat all of the above and below ever again! Creating Custom Ubuntu Live-CD With Remastersys: [www.ubuntugeek.com]

Create, Recover and Automate System Images - the above did the trick for me so I did not use the below in the end but its worth a look at: [ubuntuforums.org]

How to create an ISO image, pretty straightforward but always useful to check! [www.tech-recipes.com]

Simple Ubuntu Desktop Backup with Backerupper - I haven't tried this yet, I have rsync scripts todo my backup in conjuction with crontab... [www.ubuntugeek.com]

Backup Ubuntu using rdiff-backup - I'm guessing this is similar to rsync, I haven't tried this yet. When I get chance I should add some stuff on rsync: [www.ubuntugeek.com]

Backup and Restore Your Ubuntu System using Sbackup - a GUI, I might run scared but this is probably very useful for the person who runs scared of the commandline :-D (I used to have that fear!) [www.ubuntugeek.com] (more on this at: [www.zolved.com])

Networking

How to open bittorrent ports from the command line: [www.ubuntugeek.com]

Ubuntu Firewall confusion, interesting posts about opening ports in ubuntu: [ubuntuforums.org]

Installing a firewall... I haven't done this - I have a hardware firewall and ubuntu does not have open ports: [www.linux.com]

Misc

13 Things to do immediately after installing Ubuntu - some are obvious and some seem already there, [linuxondesktop.blogspot.com] - I'm also recommend the ubuntuguide.org

JAVA - [www.javalobby.org]

Epiphany Browser - nice and light weight.. [ubuntu-tutorials.com]

Fonts - not really needed, but oh one likes to play... [ubuntu.wordpress.com] [www.zolved.com] and how to install Microsoft fonts, but there is some copyright issues - I haven't done this: [ubuntu.wordpress.com]

Enable Smooth fonts on Ubuntu Linux - [www.howtogeek.com] - I'm not sure this really made much of a difference!

XBOX 360 Controller, I'm still to try this one... [ubuntuforums.org]

Keyboard shortcuts - [ubuntuforums.org]

SKYPE - don't get me started, this is the only thing I'm having problems with (though its really the usb phone and not skype)! [help.ubuntu.com]

Interesting sites

[www.ubuntugeek.com]

[www.brunolinux.com]

[fullcirclemagazine.org]

[www.justuber.com]

What app do you need? [www.gnomefiles.org]

To all you wannabe converts, remember that Linux is not Windows! Its much better :D [http://linux.oneandoneis2.org/LNW.htm"]

How to get good help on linux forums, interesting read, [ubuntucat.wordpress.com]

I have to say I'm really proud to announce the 10th talk in the public lecture series that I'm one of the organizers of at the University of Birmingham...

Our next public talk is to take place on the 8th May at 7:30pm
The 10th "Patrick Moore" lecture
[www.talkandtelescope.org.uk]

Dr Mike Hapgood (Space Environment Group; Rutherford Appleton Laboratory)

"Space Weather and Lunar Exploration"

OPEN TO THE GENERAL PUBLIC

The talk starts at 7:30pm on Thursday 8th May
Poynting Physics S02 (LLT)

Snacks and tea in the Study lounge from 7pm before the talk

If clear, sky viewing with telescopes with the help of Astrosoc members after the talk

Talk synopsis:
The Moon is embedded in the space plasma environments that surround the Earth. As a result, it is exposed to a range of space weather effects including radiation, electrical charging and electromagnetic induction. These effects have profound implications for lunar exploration. Radiation is a health hazard to human explorers but also poses a risk to robots by disrupting and damaging electronic devices. Electrical charging of the lunar surface poses several problems. It is thought to be the primary process driving the transport of lunar dust above and across the lunar surface, so studies of charging underpin studies of the threat that dust poses to lunar exploration. Electrical charging is also a direct threat to systems deployed on the lunar surface since it may induce electrical discharges that can disrupt or damage electronic devices in those systems. Electromagnetic induction inside the Moon arises when it is exposed to large scale changes in the electric and magnetic fields embedded in the space plasma environment. It poses little or no immediate risk to exploration activities as the systems to be deployed on the Moon are fairly small, but it can be exploited as a tool for exporation of the lunar interior. The talk will review these effects and discuss how they change with the natural cycles of solar activity and the Moon's orbital motion. It will also discuss the Apollo experience of these effects and show how it influences of our current understanding. Finally, the talk will look ahead and highlight some important lessons for future exploration.

Speaker Bio:
Mike Hapgood is Head of the Space Environment Group at the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory in Oxfordshire. He has a long involvement in solar-terrestrial physics and space weather. He has worked on the ESA Cluster project for many years and is lead scientist for the ESA-funded Cluster operations centre at RAL. He has also led several ESA studies on space weather projects and is current Chair of the ESA Space Weather Working Team. He also served on the recent BNSC Space Exploration Working Group. His current interests include the impact of space weather on lunar exploration and the application of space plasma concepts in other astrophysical environments.

This series of talks is funded by STFC http://www.scitech.ac.uk/, (Public
Understanding of Science grant), and is organised by the School of Physics
and Astronomy http://www.ph.bham.ac.uk and the Astronomical Society of UoB
AstroSoc http://www.astrosoc.org.uk)

For more information about our outreach activities visit:
www.talkandtelescope.org.uk

The conference proceedings for "From Planets to Dark Energy: the Modern Radio Universe" have been published, we presented a poster on radio emission from exoplanets and briefly mentioned what else can be achieved by the wide fields possible at low radio frequencies. For more on the conference see [pos.sissa.it] and our conference proceedings can be found on [astro-ph]. The abstract for the poster was: "We present results from new low frequency observations of two extrasolar planetary systems (Epsilon Eridani and HD128311) taken at 150 MHz with the Giant Metrewave Radio Telescope (GMRT). We do not detect either system, but are able to place tight upper limits on their low frequency radio emission."

Last week I was interviewed for [AstrotalkUK]. - a UK based podcast for amateur astronomers. I was talking about the Federation of Astronomical Societies and the resources that we have available to the wider amateur community. So if you want to listen to it go to [www.astrotalkuk.org] and look at episode 19 (I'm the last speaker on) or go to the direct link [here].

I should really clarify a few things that I said in the interview: The FAS convention this year takes place at the Institute of Astronomy, Cambridge on 20th September ; the actual costs to become a member society can be found on the [federation of astronomical societies webpages].

I also mentioned my work for looking for radio emission from extrasolar planets, more on this can be found at []

I know it was almost two weeks ago now but I've finally gotten around to having some time to write up on here what I thought of the [Download festival]. It was indeed my first time at this festival and I have to say I was very impressed. It was also the first festival that I have been to that we drop to and from every day. Donnington isn't too far from Birmingham so its easily feasible and is the first thing I was very shocked about. I was expecting since we were driving each day to have to wait in long traffic queues. Nope, it appears that the place was very well organised and the longest we had to wait was 10 minutes when we left on the second night, now that's not bad! Anyway onto the music...

Highlights:

- seeing Kiss, they were great showmen

- a certain song by Motorhead, this time I was not waiting for the young lady to come of the loo!

- HIM, they were excellent but I have to say I was really shocked by the numbers of people watching them, I guess they were all off watching the Offspring...

- The Offspring, we saw half of their set and wow they were great, shame they didn't really do much of an encore but then again we were expecting an half an hour extra gig off them after Kiss...

- The rock (and peg) game, see below for pictures - essentially a game of deception when you end up with about a ton of rocks in your bag.. well Alice did!

- Simple Plan, we caught about half of their set and they were great!

- The storm troopers that got me and Sean...

- Ash, solid set!

- Clean toilets... actually coming home to have a shower every night was very nice!

- Free Muller rice, "eat it cold, eat it hot, eat it free"... we had a lot of these.

- The crazy guys on bikes, wicked show (yep the guy is upside down in a ball in the second pic, at one point they had 3 guys in there!)!

- Lostprophets... great set, but I just don't think they are a headline act...

- Airbourne, great set... really got the crowd going!

- oh and meeting 001... we got a pic with Sean... I missed out :-(

Disappointments:
- seeing Kiss, they really disappointed me by not playing a certain song... they also went on a bit!
- the price of the food.. but what do you expect
- Incubus, they were good but I just didn't enjoy it as much as I thought I would.
- Kid Rock not turning up... oh wait I didn't care this is was a highlight! :-D
- having to put up with Sean the whole darn weekend!
- how cold it was on the first day... having to buy a new jumper.. not that I really minded!
- the fact that Lethal Bizzle was there... we walked past to have a game in the EA hub and he was on, there were lots of people there. I think a lot were booing but a number (more than the people who saw HIM) were jumping up and down... argh! If your band don't play their own instruments then get off the stage.

Saying all that, overall it was a great festival and it was a lot more spread out and relaxed than Reading... I think I will be going back to Download.. especially if they keep the quality of the bands like there was this year!

I wrote into the Birmingham (Evening) Mail the otherday in response to a comment made about the lack of adult science activities in Birmingham. It actually got in to the Mail yesterday, . Anyway, I'm not sure I should post a copy of it here, but I'm going to... take a read if you want (though I expect you will need a larger version, see [here]:

I've just about gotten around to start thinking about my travels around Europe this summer, I'm not sure if I will actually get around to blogging about it all... but lets start, Venice. I wrote this on the train between Venice and Rome.

Venice is just different. I don't think you can really make an analogue with anywhere else, well nowhere I have been to anyway. It is beautiful in its own way. It was also very, hot, busy and at times very annoying.. but fun.

We got to Venice later than planned due to our night train from Salzburg being a whole hour later than planned. Very annoying. The night train was good fun though. I slept well and it was quite convenient. I'd do it again. I was not prepared properly for the stewardess to take our tickets away but to be honest it makes sense. I was just tired and she was not really dressed like what I expected the Austrian conductors to look like. Oh the aircon did not work which became a problem on the long wait into Venice, especially after she had locked the toilet doors!

Venice itself - the train station is a dump, I moan about Birmingham's but after this I love New St.! The left luggage had huge queues and was a complete rip-off but again I expected that.

Venice is a place you could easily get lost in, well I don't think you could (with the sings), full of lots of street alleys and close housing. (I bet anyone from the USA would get a bit more disoriented - no grids here!). The housing makes good shade from the Sun. The first day I got
completely wiped by the lack sleep (we got on the train at 1am) and the Sun, which resulted in a long (I guess like the Italian's do) lunch. Good pizza! We then walked over the Rialto and down to per San Marco. We looked around the main square but as time was getting on and I was feeling dodgy we got a boat (well the bus) down the Grand Canal to the bus station,
which when the new bridge is built will be very easy access to the train station. We spent the night at a nice little (probably not that little!) camping village. We had an ensuite shower in our 2 bed room - this went down very well!

On the second day I and Lizzie went around on our own as the other were going home. We walked gently up to the San Marco looking at the sights, all a bit later than expected due to the huge queue at the station left luggage again (it took 40 mins!). Due to time constraints (we had a 2.30pm train to Roma) we only had time to go around the Dodge's palace. It is well worth the entrance fee, especially as a student (7.50Euro). Lots to see in this palace but I think my highly was the bridge of sighs and the fantastic banquet room.

If you would like to see more of my photos from Venice, see [my flickr page]

Over the last few days of had a great time in the Loire Valley region of France. The weather was Sunny and the evening skies were fabulous (I've never seen the Milky way looking so wondrous, I reckon this was the first time I've seen the gas clouds).

We flew into Poitiers since there is a cheap flight between Birmingham and there. Its a quaint little airport that was quite nice to go to. A nice change from the massive multiple terminal airports.

with some fascinating stained glass windows (I do like stained glass windows in Churches):

On the second day we went to [Blois]. We visited the famous Château de Blois, a Renaissance château once occupied by King Louis XII. He can even be seen on the outside:

Once inside the first thing that took my attention was the staircase tower, an example of the intermixing influences of French and Italian design during the construction of the François I wing (during the renaissance period).

Inside the building you are met by a range of beautiful furniture and at times very over the top wall paper.

The emblem of François I, the salamander can be found through out this wing, quite an odd symbol really.

The Saint Calais chapel has some lovely stained glass windows in it. This chapel was built by Louis XII and was consecrated in 1508 but the stained-glas windows were done by Max Ingrand in 1957.

In Blois, we also went to La Masion de la Magie... which offered an interesting afternoon magic show and a number of intriguing optical illusions.

During the short stay we also managed to take a trip out the to the former

The Château de Chenonceau was built on the Cher in the 16th century by Thomas Bohier and this involved razing the castle-kepp and the fortified mill of the Marques family. The Marques tower was kept and now lies in the forecourt of the Château.

During the second world war the Château entrance was in the occupied zone whilst the Southern door provided access to the Free Zone... an advantage many people would have taken:

The Château has a large amount of grounds with some very well kept gardens, fountains and even a maze!

If you fancy seeing more of my photos from this trip see [here]

I've been trying out Tumblr as a means of bloging and I like it - I think I might attempt to maintain an astronomy blog over on their system for a while and see what happens... if you want to take a look at my fledgling new blog see: starrydude.tumblr.com.

I took a couple of photos of the University campus over the last couple of days, its been pretty gorgeous....

tree and joe (the clocktower)..

the moon, bird and joe...

joe and the moon