Elephants.

Did you know that duel core processors come from elephants?

It's true. what you do is, right, take your elephant. It has to be a bull elephant, the hormones in the cows mess things right up, and the Bull has to be over three years of age, otherwise there is not enough magic smoke accumulated the the body of the bull. (by the by, I am still talking about elephants. Males and females are the same as cattle.)

So, You have your three year+ old bull, and you get a dirty great syringe One of the really really HUGE ones. It helps if you have a fairly fat elephant, because there is then a layer of fat between the epidermis and the muscle of the 'phant. This helps because the stuff you're after is much the same colour as the muscle but, is situated right underneath the epidermis. It also has some very strange properties wherein if you apply pressure to it, it turns into a liquid: kinda a reverse non-neutonian solid.

So you've got this odd liquid. About 5 ccs is enough for one processor here. Now you need to centrifuge it at about 14000 gravities for twenty-six hours.

The liquid will have separated into three distinct bands. the upper layer, about one cc, will be a straw yellow colour, and it may be cloudy. This is just plasma, carrying nutrients and stuff too and from cells. The bottom layer is about two cc and should be a reddy brown colour. This is the iron that this liquid we want seems to trap Discard it. And there may well be a white pellet in the bottom. This will just be the cells and the organells of the cells. Discard this too. It is the middle layer you want. It is a bright emerald green, which under pressure turns grey. With 5 CCs of starting liquid, you will have about 2ccs of this green liquid left.

So You've separated the liquid you want. now you need to centrifuge it again, for 36 hours and 20,000 gravities. After this you will have a colourless liquid and a grey pellet at the bottom. Discard the liquid.

Put the grey pellet in a mixture of sulphuric acid, iso-propyl alcohol and milk. Ensure the base of the container has the shape of the processor etched into it, and leave.

Eventually all the liquid will evaporate off and you will be left with a hard plasticy shape which you can put through the rest of the processes a processor goes through to become a processor. Magic, if you ask me...

And you thought that elephants were becoming extinct because of the ivory trade.

The productivity of moaning.

Company is a funny thing. Sometimes you crave it and other times you really really don't. Sometimes all you want is to be left alone to do your own thing in your own way at you own pace.

I have just shifted labs at my placement. I have gone from the biggest lab in the building, where we used a good three quarters of it to one maybe a quarter of the size. I had only just gotten used to where everything was: we moved there so our fume cupboard could be replaced, and now, having to find where everything is again and spending what feels like half my time apologising for getting in the way of the other people in the lab. Thing is, I hadn't realised just how much time I spent distancing myself from the rest of the lab: I would move to the furthest bench to do my work, and usually end up with my back to them all whilst I worked.

Thing is, in the new lab I physically can't. And I'm becoming more and more aware that I'm having to stop short of biting the heads off the other two placement students.

Don't get me wrong, I'm managing, most of the time, but sometimes it is hard. And when I'm not concentrating so hard that if I so much as think something else I'll lose count of the colonies on my plate and have to start again, I'm more than willing to interact with the others, help them out if they need it, and hold conversations with them (today it was history and the feasibility of empires)

How do teachers cope having to give all of their attention to twenty-five plus students at a time? I couldn't do it. I'm glad I recognise that now though, at one point I was thinking of going into teaching.

Why am I so antisocial at work? Maybe part of the reason is that we have moved and I'm having to re-adjust to where everything is and whats going on. Another part of it may well be that work has picked up and we're getting more jobs in more often now, and I'm more likely to be leaving at half five, six or even later than half two/ three o clock.

I think that the two have combined to feel like I've started a new job, and everything is all a little bit new and overwhelming again. Maybe when I've settled down in the lab I'm working in for the rest of the year it will get better.

And I'll stop being such a grumpy cow. And I'll not be so tired that I want to come in from work and curl up and sleep straight away, and actually be able to do something with my evenings.

I can always hope...

Realistically, work isn't so bad. I'm enjoying it, and my supervisor isn't constantly on my back about every little thing. I just didn't realise I was so set in my ways. And that changing them would be so hard.

This post has turned into one giant moan. but I'm thinking clearer and feel more relaxed, so it was a productive moan. And it is the weekend. and I'm running the first session of my game come Sunday. I'm certainly looking forward to that. Spirit of the Century is full of shiny win.

I'll leave you with the thought that I have just looked up and seen AIDS, Ebola virus and Algal Scum staring at me from the mantle piece. And I think Ebola just waved.

Africa-sat Calling Earth...

Earth View from Africa-sat1
picture taken on the17th Aug. about 5ish in the evening.

Take a look at the link above. The earth. Taken from a satellite orbiting the earth. Now, when I saw it, it was in darkness, except for the creeping dawn line on the right of the picture. In other words, it looked like a crescent moon. And that got me thinking again of old childhood fantasies and wishful thinkings. Now, when I was younger, like many other children, I wanted to be an astronaut. I wanted to go in to space, work on the ISS, the Hubble, see the stars without atmosphere getting in the way (apparently, it's an amazing sight). And most of all, stand on the moon.

And, I saw that, and realised, actually, I still want to be up there. I want to stand on the moon and look at the earth, as it now, and I want to see it changing. I want to see what it will be like ten, twenty, fifty years down the line.

So many of us have dreams we give up without a fight. We dismiss them as fantasies and pipe dreams and carry on with what we consider reality with out a backwards look. Most of the time anyway. Sometimes you stop and think. What if... What if I had pursued my dream? Finished my A-levels, gone on to aeronautical training, applied to NASA or ESA? Where would I be now?

Well, a lot fitter for one and I wouldn't have had the chance to meet all the truly amazing people I have up here. Would it have been the right choice? what would I have done whilst I was groundside? And after I was too old to fly anymore. This crosses my mind sometimes, but usually it is just the silence, the beauty, and the fact that I can't imagine it that keeps it boiling away in the back of my mind. Maybe being in space is my pipe dream, but you can be sure, given the opportunity, I would do it.

But that's what dreams are for. To help us reach for more. To advance and evolve as a race and an individual. We just have to be sure that in reaching for our dreams, we don't miss what we have in our reality.

Grab your dream and hang on hard.
But be sure to keep a hand free for reality.

Cows that go moo in the night.

So. I've noticed that once again, my posts have gotten all irregular. I think that my inspiration gets worse in the summer.

Here's a little something to tide you over (whoever you may be... I'm not entirely certain the is a definite you, or whether you are just an amorphous blob, made of of a huge amalgamation of the world's population. And wether, which I was going to write earlier is actually a castrated ram. that made me giggle. Sheep using the internet.)

Molly ambled over to the the fence, browsing the grass as she went. She liked it by the fence, the dessert grass tasted more like chocolate and less like sweets over here. Peering over into the next field, where here friend Rachael was having a meal in the main course grass. Lasagna by the looks of it. She took another mouthful of the dark, rich chocolate and stiffened in surprise as her brain processed what she had seen.

'Rachael, but what have you got on your feet?!'

'Hya Molly, do you like em? I got the sheep to order them from e-bay for me. They swear that they'll make my milk better! Mind you, they also said that they would stop stormlight from hurting you. That's silly, stormlight doesn't hit us!'

Molly shook her head slowly, as she thought about it. Rachael always had been an odd one, never quite fitting into the herd, always willing to try new things. It had been Rachael who had made the man-carrier make loud noises and start trundling down the hill, much to the amusement of the herd, because watching the farmer run after it with his arms waving like that... well! Everyone knew that that would spook it more.

'The sheep you say? Hmmm. I wonder if they are trying to pull your udder. You do look silly you know!'

'Naw. Remember when I sat on that fox and stopped Louise's new lamb from being carried off? They said they owed me one.'

'Ah.' Molly chewed the cud, and thought again. 'Well, I guess they aren't to bad, for manhide. I never realised that people butchered farmerkind for their feet. Are they comfy?'

'They're not bad, Moll, Although I don't understand why they have this big hollow bit at the front of their hoof. It is most bizarre. But you're right. It is odd that people butcher farmerkind. I didn't realise they did it. I wonder what happens to the rest of him?'

'Hmm.' Molly thought some more. Confusing things, farmerkind. So confusing that it required fruit flavoured grass. She wondered off deep in thought, flicking her tail at Rachael as she left in absent farewell.

Later that day all thought of Rachael's manhide hoof coverings left Molly's head as their farmer came and herded all the cows into the top field, where, to their surprise, there was a new stormlight attractor. Sniffing the air, Molly noticed that there was rain on the way, and enough to make the chocolate grass field covered when the stream broke it's banks. Hmm.

That night was the heaviest storm that Molly or any of the other herdmembers could remember. the rain came almost horizontal, and the stormlight and the stormnoise came without pause, often hitting the stormlight attractor that stood looming over them.

A particularly bright stormlight filled the air all around them and everything went dark.

When the farmer went to check on his herd the next day after the storm broke, he was shocked to see them all dead under the new electricity pylon he had fought against for so long. All except for one cow who huddled next to the fence closest to him, and for some inexplicable reason, was wearing wellington boots.

Dreams

What do you get when you lose your dreams? Some say reality, others say despair and someone else once told me that to lose your dreams is to face extinction. Either as a race or an individual. Everyone has dreams whether or not they admit it. Where they are now and where they will be in a month, a year, ten years. I know I dream. A lot.

Dreaming is essential to the human race. If we couldn't dream, not only would we not drive forward, but we would also not be able to cope with the real world. It is like the pressure valve that lets us cope with the world when we have to.

Because no-one is truly content. It's true. Even if they think they are there is something, a drive, a dream or a sense of adventure. If they didn't have it they wouldn't bother getting up in the morning, nor looking after themselves.

I believe that without dreams we lose our fight, our drive to improve. To see new things, to talk to new people, to find new ways to look at old things, we'd lose our way forward. We may have dreams but we are inherently lazy. First we forage, then we realised that it is easier to put the plants where we want them, not where they just grow, so we started farming by hand. Then we saw the usefulness in draft animals, and eventually in engines. Ever more efficient, ever easier. Our drive to make things easier for us is what drives us as a race. Our ability to chase dreams is what drives us as individuals.

The two things go hand in hand really. The easier life is the easier it is to dream. The easier it is to dream the easier it is to lose the real world. And lose those who can't dream and fall through the cracks of the world.

Like anything I suppose, dreaming is needed in moderation. Too much water can drown you, and too much heat can burn. Too many dream can make you lose your way and forget the dreams you have made a reality.

Moving Day

Moving house is a strange thing. It means the end of one way and the start of another, a new beginning but also another ending. Now this can be a good thing, or a really bad thing.

I have just moved out of halls, and into my first house. Granted it is a student house, but it is a house nonetheless, and I find I am quite bewitched by it. Even more so that the house has three levels and I have lived anywhere with more than two, if you count a flat has having only one. I have a poky little bedroom, which is fine. In fact, the only problem I can see with it is that I cant reach the rail in my wardrobe. And that if I'm not careful then I'll, (and even more so for those unfortunates taller than 5”6') hit my head when going downstairs into my nice spacious kitchen.

Best of all, Archimedes and Screw aren't illegal any more. And they will never, ever have to go over the bumps in Storthes Hall again.

I'll miss Storthes, Not least the fact that when humanity got too much for me I could disappear into the woods for a few hours, or that fact that I could play at being all grown up without actually having to be all grown up. Now I have to pay bills. No, I'll miss the antics of the other students I saw, and the friends I made, and the security guards. When all you have to do is buy food and pay rent, well, it's like the paddling pool of real life. Yes. This year is going to be a corker all round.

Not only am I having to pay bills, am responsible for my own place, and have gone from having six other people to make sure I don't do anything too blond, to one. I'm also going to be working. Like a normal person. From 9 till 5. For a whole entire year. I start Monday, which, by the time this will have been posted, will have passed, because I'm not getting internet till next Thursday. Yes. Next year, I get to pretend that I'm not a student and pay my bills, like a good little proletariat. Only with substantially less money. But then, students are always meant to be broke.

So. Now I have internets, I can finish it.

This past week has been a lot of fun. I've got a new house and a new housemate. I've had to learn how to live with a new person and how to work in a lab, and not work in a lab practical. I've learnt the different between the experiment not working and the product not working, making the experiment look like it wasn't working. And that hurrying to make sarnies in the morning is a bad idea unless you want the contents of the fridge on top of you and that if you are going to wake someone up, do so with a cuppa for them. They'll forgive anything for that. It is definitely still early days when it comes to the job; I'm looking forward to going in come Saturday.

Paperwork

I have decided that our country, glorious or not as the case may be, does not, despite evidence displayed every sunny day, run on warmth and the energy of the sun. Neither can it be run on chocolate, although there are certain females I know that would protest otherwise. So is it fuel? Oil? That's what we joined the war in Iraq for, isn't it? Well, nope, it isn't that either. I have come to the realisation, having followed in the footsteps of many who have gone before me, That our country is run on paperwork.

More precisely on the anger, annoyance and despair generated by those unfortunates trapped inside with a pen and a sheaf of paper in front of them. They say that everything has it's own level of vibration. colour, noise, radiation. So why not emotions?

Of course, different emotions would clearly emote on different wavelengths, so happiness and joy would broadcast on a much lighter wavelength, not packing as much punch, and so it is harder to get so much energy out of them. The darker emotions however, these are much heftier, and the amount of energy that can be garnered from them is somewhere in the region of 4 to 5 times more than those of the happier emotions.

And how do the government receive that energy? Like so much else, circles. Those giant radio microscopes on Jodrell bank (As an aside, my spell checker is insistent that Jodrell is in reality Scoundrelly) are actually emotion receivers, aided and abetted by satellite dishes everywhere.

They are also helped by the florist industry. How? Well, many flowers are the perfect shape to reflect small amounts of negative energy out of the home, and towards the nearest government receiver. Not only that, but when the finally die and have to be chucked, how many people aren't just a little bit upset that such pretty flowers are having to be chucked away, thus aiding the energy gain.

When the energy is received, it is sorted through a series of transducers, much like solar energy is and sent into the main grid. But that's the negative emotions. Surely if they are good for paperwork, the positive emotions have a place too?

They have. Ever felt so happy you could fly? Well time was you could. Witches on broomsticks and all that palaver. (Ask me someday and I may tell you the true reason witches used broomsticks. All I can say is ouch. Splinters.) Then the government realised that the happier emotions could be farmed as well as the darker ones. The Victorians truly were innovative. What did they use them for? Well they coupled them with the electricity gained from the unhappier emotions and then used them for lifts. The cables were just for show. Because if people realised, they would be incensed. There would be riot.

It has turned out, over the years, to be a secret tax. And as technology has progressed, it has been used not just for elevators, but escalators, planes, Anything that requires power to elevate a position. In Grecian times, Archimedes figured it out, hence the Archimedes screw. He wanted a hot bath without carrying it upstairs. It made him very happy, but he never managed to re-create it after the screw. A little boy called Peter figured it out too. And he flew away to a better place, but you all know that story.

This energy is still being collected today, and in it's own way channeled into the grid. But like the NHS, it was last structured in the forties and is trying to cope with over twice the number of people who were around then. So the system needs a restructuring before it can work to the full benefit of all concerned. At the minute, there are loads of little signs that it is giving under the strain. Lifts braking down, escalators stopping for no reason...

There is a whole secret world of emotions out there, and the energy they produce. Let them out, and maybe you won't be stuck in a lift next Tuesday, or find yourself in a power cut on Thursday evening. I know I'd find that preferable. But maybe you like the darkness between the floors?

Infinite Questions, Finite Answers

How can we truly understand infinity? What can you say you know that goes on for ever and ever and never ends? The world? It was once formed from a cloud of interstellar dust, and it wasn't a world then. And while it has lived - is living - it will have to die eventually and return to the pile of dust it once was.

Time? Time is a human concept. We decided how long a second should last, a minute, an hour, a year. And even then these minutes, these seconds have only been passing since we decided they existed and we are the ones who have imposed time back to the start of the universe.

Start. If infinity truly existed, there would be no place in our vocabulary for the word start, nor for the word end.

I have heard some people say that emotions are infinite, and they give rise to human creativity. That there is a never ending circle of life and death, children being born and people dying. None of these things are infinite. Not really. There was a first life, a single celled organism. When and where I don't know. There was a first human life too. Or rather a first germ-line mutation that led to Homo sapiens sapiens. And the answer to when that was haunts a lot of people. And eventually, who knows when, who knows where, there will be a final human life. Either through extinction or evolution, but it will happen. And when we die, so will our creativity. Our love, our hatred, our laughter and our tears. No. None of these are infinite. The life span of the human race is fleeting. The length of a life of an individual even more so. And this is a good thing, because our minds and our hearts are only equipped to deal with the finite.

Not even the universe is infinite, it has to end and it has to start somewhere and somewhen. And even if you believe in the big-bang-big-squish theory, when was the first bang? When will be the final squish?

Everything comes down to circles in the end. Nature likes circles and they fascinate us as well. And a circle shows, at least to my mind, the closest thing to infinity. Ever seen a Möbius strip? Follow it which ever way you will, it has only one side. Your finger tracing a side is inside, and then outside and then inside again. But even this is finite. For the infinity, the foreverness is trapped within this single piece of paper which itself is trapped within the world that we see and know. And how can something that ends hold something that doesn't?

As a human being, I look at the world from within the laws of finity. And to be honest, that sits a whole lot better than the concept of existing without end ever will. It scares me a little. Because to never end, it has to never grow or develop, and that leads to stagnation. I have never found something that I want to keep exactly as it is. Things need to grow and change, or else they wither and die. Even love. I love my parents dearly. I always have done and I always will do. But the love I feel for them now is different to that I felt when I was three, or ten, or will feel when I am thirty. Because it has grown with me. It has changed, and ended and started again in a different shape. It may have done it so gradually so as to fool you into thinking it was one continuous never ending thing, but it has changed, and it is different.

Infinity is one of those questions that will always be at the back of my mind, along with a few others, like, why do we use the word blue to describe the colour blue? When was it decided that that particular syllable(s) - blue, bleu, azule - was the right word to show what it was? I suspect that these questions will always muse in the back of my mind, never to be answered. But that's aright. Because by putting the concept never on it gives it a finite value, a 0 instead of a maybe that would otherwise be the case.

Still. The question remains. How can we truly understand infinity?

Froth Froth Froth

A fair bit of prior warning to people. This post is entirely to satisfy my LARP froth. LARP = Live Action RolePlay. Live Action RolePlay = win. Epic, epic win.

I mentioned in an earlier post something called LARP. I may have mentioned it in more than one earlier post, but since they are coming up to 'bout a year old now, there isn't much chance I'll remember, given my track record.

Anyway, a couple of weeks ago, I went to my first truly big LARP event. I've not talked about it sooner because, well, you know how it is. Revision yadda yadda, exams yadda yadda... You know, just the entire reason I'm visiting the great northern wilderness for.

Anyway, I went to Wigan for one of the big CP events, one that is held there every year. I am now going to sum it up in 10 words. No particular order I hasten to add. just, the words that say it the most to me, as a complete newcomer.

1. Mud. Soo, soo much mud. I lost my boot in the mud whilst cooking bacon. EVERY morning.

2. Rain. I have been assured that it usually pelts it down at Wigan and this year was no exception. Although there was enough sun to get sunburned. Go figure.

3. Bacon. I have come to the conclusion that LARPers Aren't actually entirely human. They can apparantly live off bacon alone. They seem to be some sort of half carnivore, half machine construct.

4. Kit. Ranging from the ooohhh my word Iwoot to good grief, is that for real? mostly Iwoot though. Shiny shiny kit. Weapons and shields and bottles and bags and uuuummmmm LARP shinies.

5. Tents. Some beautiful IC ones and some funky (and huge, and tiny, and colourful...) OC ones. Having to take off boots before I could crawl into the tent was fun too. I had to hang my socks out to dry.

6. Roleplay. Done live style. No dice for these hard core members of the gaming community. I saw things that genuinely moved me that weekend.

7. Battles. Epic, EPIC battles. Both observed and participated in. Watching you could see patterns and where these pattens broke up and where people when down. Participating in them? Chaos. Amazing chaos. You are focused on the person in front of you, the one who is trying to hit you. If you're lucky, then they go away and there is another person in front of you. If not then you go away and there is another person in front of them.

8. Death. Most notably to me, my own death. And funeral. and standing down ceremony. I cried. Blubbed like a baby. You forget the outside world to that level. It's pretty immense. And intense.

9. Monstering. An uber uber uber part of the weekend. A chance to let your character rest a little and play something else. An angry cripple, a vengeful goblin, an upset ogre. Doesn't matter if you die. Coz, you know, monsters can respawn. Monstering is so so much fun. A chance to just let yourself go.

10. Refs. White tabbards, hi-vis vests, paggering :p They kinda make it work. they stand there, looking a bit out of place if they have the high-viz vests on, they make up the monsters and get them to where they're going and telling them what they need to do. I liked the refs I met. They were geekier than I was.

Well, the explanations there make it slightly more than ten words, but take the first word of every point and then the rest as a sub-vocal blurb. THEN it works.

The entire weekend remains as a series of snapshots. The frying pan, the standpipe with it's lack of a drain, Gate guard, the alchemists meeting, Water carrying for the monsters and then dying because of the monsters. Dying, and the funeral, that bit is fairly clear. Strong emotions attached I guess. And the OC tent. Thinking I had broken the zip, fixing it. breaking the zip on mine and then another sleeping bag. Lord knows what I would have done had the event been any longer. And then packing up. That bit was rather busy and then the journey home? I didn't even get out of Wigan before I was asleep.

All in all, it was one of the most amazing weekends I've had in a long while, to the point I'm still frothing about it on a near daily, if not daily basis. Leek is next. I want! I want NOW.

I'm sorry the formatting is so dense folks. apparently, it doesn't want to do what I'm telling the computer to do. I'll see if I can fiddle with it when I'm back on my machine, and back in FireFox. Also, sleepies and lack of spacing means that there ARE mistakes in there. I just hope I caught most of them.

Late Nights and Labyrinths.

I'm sat on a bed in my friend's room, whilst both friends are asleep on the bed, with the Labyrinth on in the background- Bowie for the win. Just for the hair- and for the first time in months I'm not aching all over. Codeine really is a blessing in disguise. N.B. apparently, they're not asleep, muttered comments about well, yes, about 42 must be kept to myself in the future.


Where does inspiration come from? From the heavens? From beyond that, beyond the universe? Is it a tangible thing, or is it like a shadow on a cloudy day? Or is it the pattern of light hiding in the water and throwing sparkles up on your wall?

It's different for everyone. They say Newton got his inspiration from an apple, a physical thing, and Archimedes found his in the bath. I do a lot of my good work at night, in the small hours of the morning, like now in fact. Things drift to me on the night, 'soft as velvet, dark as sin'. I must admit, when there is light around, I am usually more concerned with wanting to be elsewhere, namely out in the light, enjoying it. I don't do that enough regrettably. Not enjoying it for it's own sake.

Moods play a big part, well of course they do really. If you have lost someone, you want to write something to remember them by, if you have just had the best day of your life then things will naturally be a lot more exuberant than it would be in another case. (the birds are singing now. Its times like this when I could almost forget that I am in a small room in a huge student estate, surrounded by people.)

I find that most ideas come to me in the small of the night because by that point I have had a fairly full day, and my body is accustomed to earlyish nights. So by three or four in the morning I am at that point where I am half asleep, half meditating, and because I'm not chasing ideas down they can form naturally. Do you find that? The more you try to force an idea, the less it works or works well?

But once that idea is there, and has been left to brew for a while, then it works and that is the point you can push it along and cause it to have a more structured shape, to make it work for you, If you're really lucky, it turns out to be a fantastic idea, not simply a good one and the writing seems to write itself. (If you had seen that last paragraph unedited, you would be able to tell when it is being written: It had lost all attempts at sentence structure and grammar. Which is a pity, me being a fair bit of a grammar nazi.)

Looking at some of the wonderful pieces of art, be it a painting, a sculpture, a book, or even an inspired piece of research it's hard to believe that it is all due to a chaotic connection of nerves in someones brain. And that leads to the thought of is there outside help? is there something giving us ideas and thoughts, and if so, are they tangible to them?

I can imagine it wouldn't be a glamorous job, not at all, I can envision an open office plan building, with a typical office warren made of noticeboards for walls and pictured of the wife or the dog on the desk, with those awful inspirational calenders that seem to find their way into every office environment of this type, with thousands upon thousands of workers, all at their desks, filling out forms on old clunky computers that don't work very well any more.

'Oh hell, I've got another P189. Lord but there are a lot of them going around at the minute, production must be trying to fill a quota, although why they want yet another bad lesbian porn manga, I'll never understand.' And: ' Arrrrrrrggh that stupid computer has crashed AGAIN, all this last week's work was on that. I'll never get that production bonus if this carries on, tech support promised me this wouldn't happen again, PROMISED!'

If it is like that, then I think that I would rather prefer that it was random mis-firings of neurones. Because lets face it, the normal neurons would be concerned with keeping the body alive. Self preservation is a wonderful thing, and sometimes I think genius must run counter to that. 'The good die young.' Sure they do. Because they forget to do the normal things like eat and pay the bills so they have clean water and heating in the dead of winter and such.

I think that because it is now full light and I started this in full dark, and because the ramblings in my head, let alone on paper are starting to get increasingly disjointed, I will end this here, because I could go on for a long time and this is already of rather epic length. Good day.

The sea.

It's said that you don't realise how much things mean to you until they are gone. I found that not entirely true. I grew up by the seaside. And, even though I didn't go very often, the smell and the sound of the seagulls and when I was close enough, the sound of the sea were sounds I was more than used to. Then I moved up north to the middle of the country. The smell was wrong, although at first I was too excited to finally be at uni to pay that much heed, and there are no seagulls. Now, don't get me wrong, I'm not a massive fan of the seagull. They've stolen my fish and chips before now, and the birds up here don't half make a racket, but it's not the same.

Anyway, last Thursday I went to the beach. We parked in a car park right on the coast, overlooking the sea, and walked up the sand towards the town. Only when I was there and the smell and the sounds and the wind- not even the wind is the same inland, and as for being able to read the weather? I wish.- It just took me right back home and right back to my childhood. People say that smell is the most vivid aide-memoir to the memory, and it made me relax truly and completely for the first time in a long while. I guess, once a child of the coast, always a child of the coast. It's like a child brought up in a city, they will never be truly at ease in the quiet of the countryside where nothing is really going on. I hadn't realised before now just how much of a sea person I am.

And this begs the question: Can I really settle here in Huddersfield, in the middle of the country? Or will I eventually have to move to the coast? It's funny really. Out of all the universities I looked at, Huddersfield was the only one not on the coast, and I chose this one in the end by closing my eyes and stabbing a finger at the screen. And yet, I've been so very happy here, except, I now realize, for the lack of the sea.

The sea is an amazing creature. It has moods and feelings, and the sheer variety of life it holds in all of its waters from the hottest to the coldest is simply amazing. If you go to the seaside in the middle of summer when the wind is barely stirring, then it can seem like it is sleeping, waiting. In a light wind, enough to make the water a little choppy, on a sunny day, if you stand on a pier and look down into it, it can seem like there is light trapped just below the surface, like a school of fish, and if only you can get down there, you can capture that light and save in a bottle. And in a storm...

I was taken to Newhaven marina one time during a big thunderstorm, and we sat there in the car and watched as the waters came crashing over the arm of the marina, grey and sullen with so much energy it was almost breathtaking. I went back the next day, and the waters had calmed down again, but there was still a fair chop, moderate rather than good and the white horses were out in force.

When you get the crest of a wave and it breaks, and the white foam moves outwards from the point of the break and spreads along the rest of the wave, people see horses. I see one. Just one for every broken crest. And then I see a heard of them galloping towards the beach. And sometimes, it's not horses at all. Sometimes, it's wolves. When the wind picks up that little bit more, the horses take on a meaner edge, race a little bit faster, and to my mind, take on a little bit of that pack mentality of the wolves.

There is always something new about the sea. every time you go, it is different, a different face, a different piece of water is there. And as you watch that water bows out and lets the next principle take it's place on the surf.

I spoke of the shipping forecast earlier. One of these days I will go into greater depth about it, because I like the shipping forecast. It is like poetry as much as the sea is.

Let there be cake. Let there be jelly. Let there be... jellypig?

I am a fairly geeky person. At least, I have been told I am a fairly geeky person. I do, and enjoy doing things that are so far into the realms of geekdom you can't even see the border to normality. Things like roleplaying, Live Action Role Playing(LARP), Science, 'specially biology. And this doesn't bother me.

It does however have a point. Last time I was LARPing, before Time in (when I was effectively Hanna and not a Sergeant in the militia (another story... maybe forthcoming)) some other people, equally as geeky as I am, who have been doing it for a lot longer than I have discovered my equal geekiness when it comes to biology. And more specifically, Genetics. At the same time another conversation was going on about pigs and the yummyness that is pig meat. And I mentioned that you can get glow in the dark pigs. Well, their trotter and teeth glow in the dark.

Cue disbelieving silence.

And my insistence. and, bless her, that of my friend also on my course and also a LARPer. Soon we had won them round. "but how can you have a fluorescent pig?!?" they asked.

Well, I replied, you see, Jellyfish have this gene called green fluorescent protein(GFP). This makes them glow in the dark (incidentally, I found out today in my lecture that you can get yellow GFP and red GFP. How fun, multi-colours!), so scientists managed to put the GFP in the pig so that the trotters and the teeth glowed in the dark.

And now, I have a commission. I am to make jellypig. Strike that, I, we, have two commissions to make jellypig. For two people. It's a pity really. I wanted to make my hair glow in the dark. Still I guess it will have to wait for a bit. For the funding. and the Permission. and the lab space. then though, then Thunderbirds Are Go!

In the meantime, I shall have to stick to my other hobby. Cooking. I am going to have to figure this one out, but I'm thinking jellypig, giant jaffa cake style. they will get their pig. alternatively, get some pork and encase it in jelly the shape of a fish. a little less edible however, I think on the whole, I like the cake idea better.

So there shall be cake. And it shall be good cake. And people shall eat and enjoy their cake and all will be well.

Erudication

I have some nights when I just can't sleep. Just can't for one reason or another. So, a couple of late nights ago, I re-wondered across dictionary.com . And fell across the word of the day. And decided that I was going to take that word of the day and make a blog entry out of it. The last time I had a look, the word was Ellipsis:

el⋅lip⋅sis 

Grammer.
1. a. The omission from a sentence or other construction of one or more words that would complete or clarify the construction, as the omission of who are, while I am, or while we are from I like to interview people sitting down.
b. The omission of one or more items from a construction in order to avoid repeating the identical or equivalent items that are in a preceding or following construction, as the omission of been to Paris from the second clause of I've been to Paris, but they haven't.
2. Printing. A mark or marks as--, ..., or ***, to indicate an omission or supression of letters or words.

/ɪˈlɪpsɪs/ Show Spelled Pronunciation

Now, it is beautiful sounding word that slithers off the tongue. It makes me smile in the same way the word susurrus does. As I have indicated in a previous post, I read a lot. And a lot of what I read is fantasy. And a lot of fantasy delineates the need for precision when performing magics. So I got thinking, what if... The thinking stopped there on that occaision, because I got a healthy ker-thud across the back of my head with a foam zwihandler. It sometimes doesn't do to think in the midst of a LARP fight.

But, after falling into an exhausted sleep that night, I woke up nice and early the next day and continued the thought. What if there was an ellipsis in Magic. In a spell or something of the like. And a story was born. Mostly born. The sketchy outline of the twinkle in a father's eye was born. On a side note, I have just twigged what that means. And I am sat here shaking my head at my obtuseness.

Because, every time I see an ellipsis in some writing, I a) get distracted by thinking: that's an ellipsis, pretty word! and b) start thinking of something completely random. I believe last time the song ten little speckled frogs started playing in my head, only it started at the number three. And just for the record, it's PIE dammit! There ain't no grubs to be seen. So the story has come across it's challenges. But it is being written. But I have a feeling that It'll be a touch too long for a blog, which was it's original intention. So I'll either have to publish it in stages, providing it is fit to be read by the public, or there is going to be one very long post. I can't make any promises, but it may be appearing soon-ish. Mark the ish. It will be very ish.

In the meantime, Nose back to the grindstone. Work work work... oranges and sea-salt don't go together. See what I mean. now that song'll be stuck in my head for ages.

Books, books, books.

They say that a person's bookshelf can tell a lot about them. I'm kind of curious to know what mine would say. Because I do have, and read often classics like Jane Eyre, and they sit next to some scifi/fantasy that most people I know haven't even heard of. And that's sat right next to a whole load of pop-sci books. Not quite enough to rival my father's collection yet, but give it time.

In a way. I can actually blame this on my genes. On both Nature and Nurture. My father is a big big reader, and his siblings, the only ones I see of a regularity, also love to read. It became understood that when we went to see my uncle, we would raid his bookcase. Now he doesn't have wallpaper in his bedroom. He has bookcases. And books. Lots and lots of books.

All of this has combined to the point that I am a BIG reader, and by big, I mean that, in certain portions of my life, people literally never saw me without a book in my hands. Recently, I have become a fairly big facebooker as well, and I found this whilst browsing (or facebook stalking and certain of my friends call it). So, curious, I pulled it off and followed most of the instructions. All bar step six, in fact.

Apparently the BBC reckons most people will have only read 6 of the 100 books here.

Instructions:
1) Look at the list and put an 'x' after those you have read.
2) Add a '+' to the ones you LOVE.
3) Add a '#' to the ones you didn't like.
4) Star '*' those you plan on reading.
5) Tally your total at the bottom.

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen*
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkein x
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte x
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling x
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee *
6 The Bible
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte x
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell x+
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman x+
10 Great Epectations - Charles Dickens (I keep trying. I'm two thirds of the way through now. It's not that I don't like it, but I keep getting distracted)
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott x
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy* (sitting on my shelf, looking at me disapprovingly)
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller x+ (clever. very clever)
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier * (possibly one of the most famous first lines ever... now to read the rest)
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien x
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveller’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger*
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell*
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams x+
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck*
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll x
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame x
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis x+
34 Emma - Jane Austen x
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis x
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini (I think I started this. then got distracted. by that annoying work thing.)
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres (Apparantly better than the film, but the film put me off. The French Leftenent's Woman, however, is a cracking read.)
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden x+
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne x
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell x+
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown x
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery x
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy*
48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood *
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding x
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52 Dune - Frank Herbert x
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons*
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon x
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez (ish. I had to give it back to the library half way through)
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck*
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding
69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie*
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville*
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett x+
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson x
75 Ulysses - James Joyce x
76 The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome x
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession - AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell x
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker x
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte’s Web - EB White x
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Alborn x
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle x+
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton x+
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Eupery
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams x
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute x+++(if I had a favourite, this would be a hot contender)
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare (I've heard the song summery by Martin Carthy, does that count? Oor Hamlet, if you want to find it)
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl x
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

Meant to have read 6 out of these? Is the fact that I have read more like 35 a sign of a misspent youth? Now a few years ago, the BBC did something called The Big Read. I followed this with interest, and now have a copy of that list on my board, because I am determined to read through it. That list is different from this list, although a lot of the titles are the same. Which is why, in part, I have actually read so many on this list. For example, A Town Like Alice which is one of my ALL time favourite reads, (I must find that copy, I know it is hanging around somewhere) I only read because it was on the list and it was the first one I found in my father's bookcase.

I don't know if I will ever finish these lists.I can hope, but equally, I also hope I won't, or at least that they get added to by a new big read list. Because that means that there will always be books out there to read. Not that there wouldn't be, but, the lists make it more realizable somehow.

I think I have run out of steam just about. So I'll go back to my book. Not one on the list, but a wonderful take of the beauty and the beast fairytail. The Fire Rose it is called. By Mercedes Lackey. Try it. Consider it the start of my list for you. Whoever you may be. Enjoy.

Fish

This week has been a fishy week. First, there has been a want that has been growing all week - so far unsatisfied - for fish and chips. Then I end up watching Big Fish (Tim Burton, good film), eating mackerel for lunch and having conversations about the follies of making fish wear jumpers. (The jumper would get wet, so they'd just be colder. So don't take a fish for a walk in winter.) And then I go to make myself a cuppa, and discover Darwin in the tea cupboard. I'd forgotten I was meant to be fish sitting. And this time around, she isn't playing dead.

This week I have also been trying out contact lenses. The most bizarre feeling in the world, after nearly 18 years of wearing glasses, is to be able to look around, and realise that there is no wire rim around my sight, above which everything is blurry. Although, looking at the little booklet that has a list of do's and don'ts, I wasn't aware that people had a desire to lick their contact lenses. I certainly don't.

The trying of the contact lenses shows just how much a creature of habit I really am. After putting in the lenses the other day, I saw my glasses. And thought, hang on, I'm not wearing any glasses. So I put them on. Everything, of course, went very blurry, so I decided that I hadn't got my glasses on, and went looking for them. It was only when I found my spare pair, and went to put them on as well did I realise. I think that leaving the lenses for hitty-hitty LARP fun in the future is a good idea.

Chocolate has also featured. One birthday cake, and one birthday, well, you can't rightly call it a cake. Or anything other than rich-gooey-chocolatey-maltezery-mess. 335 weight watchers points for the whole thing. Ouch. but ummm. It's a good thing birthdays aren't everyday.

Speaking of chocolate, it is time to feed the fish. And the sister. And decide what is for tea.

The three modes of me.

I have three modes of action. Thinking, doing, and apathetic.

If I am thinking about doing something, I tend to become blond in all other aspects of my life, and everything I'm doing sort of, well, grinds to a halt. I still say someone forgot to tell me where the on/off switch was for the rest of my mind. Thinking also seems to kick in after doing something. Often something silly. It's funny how these are sort of joined. Like on a boat on tow on a very long rope. Sometimes the swell and such will bring the thinking closer to the doing. And then, indeed, I can seem almost normal. Post-doing thinking is often triggered with a 'Hannnnnnnnaa! what have you done?!' or such similar words.

Heh. I've just realised I have compared my brain to a sea. Big and wide and wet. I am...wet, and apparantly bigheaded. Hmmm. not entirely sure how well that one worked out.

Then there is the doing. Doing usually involves little thinking, either during or beforehand. I am often quite blond then as well. There's nothing more I can really say about the doing, except that it has produced some epic fail, but some equally epic win at times, so overall, it is a neutral mode. And then there is apathy.

Apathy is something we all experience from time to time. Even the most energetic of us. Times when our Get-up-and-go Gets-up-and-goes. When you just can't be bothered to do anything. Anything at all. (Truly, and amusingly, I have had that paragraph sitting on my computer for about three months before I could be bothered to do anything with it.)

Obviously, as a member of Homo sapiens I have other emotions and modes and ways of being. But to my mind, they all seem to click into these three categories. (it's amazing how simple we really are when we get down to it.) Like now. I am in blog mode, whilst also desperately tired. but the doing mode has taken over and I will finish this blog entry. Which I think I may have. it does seem to have come back to the beginning.

So, ah, well. Goodbye.

pology

I meant to add at the bottom of the last post, it came from a cartoon that should be found at www.nearingzero.net I've lost it but I'm sure it is still there. If it isn't, there are plenty that are.