A test

I totally forgot about this blog.

Anyway, is anyone out there?

Filler material

At the moment, I have a real lack of inspiration and focus in all areas of my life, so instead of getting my thoughts together and ranting about something petty - here's a song.



Karma Police, Radiohead

I walk the streets to stop my weeping....

Song title and artist?

So, I haven't posted in a while, the reasons for this are as complex as they are tediously boring - but in a breathtaking example of simplification it can all be attributed to laziness, busyness and a general lack of inclination and/or inspiration.

In case anyone reading my blog wants to know what happened with the work I had to do (see last post) - I ended up spending pretty much the whole night (i got under 2 hours sleep) before the deadline editing it because those in my group tasked with the crucial final check had been somewhat slack - a case in point being instead of a proper source and reference for a figure we used, there was just a question mark... yeah, I know.

But anyway, who cares? That's all ancient history now.

Here's a list of things I've either learnt or had re-enforced recently;

1. Norse mythology is so much better than any of the boring stories christianity has ever come up with. (I read The Poetic Edda over the christmas holidays)

2. The new Queen and Paul Rodgers album The Cosmos Rocks is a very good album, definately worth a listen.

3. The only 'meaning of life' we ever have is the meaning that we, ourselves, give to life.

4. It's possible to construct a little fort out of unread books, it's also a fun activity and well worth the time it takes to plan and build it.

5. Women can be very confusing.

6. Buying bottles of wine in cases of 12 may sound like a good idea....and it is.

7. The average cat is probably smarter than the average human.

8. Daydreaming your childhood and youth away is a real waste, especially if you have/had plans for the future.

9. The River Thames has a real intangible beauty on cold and crisp very late evenings or early mornings.

10. Firefly is the greatest tv series there has ever been, fact.

Well, i've reached my 'blog filler limit' for today.

See you space cowboys...

To quote an occasionally wise philosopher, 'They couldn't organise a piss up in a brewery'

It's 11.40pm local time on a saturday night and i'm taking a brief break from my work to complain about it - I shall be up late working on it, then shall be getting up early on a sunday morning to go into Uni for a full days work with the rest of my project group. Anyway, now to complain about the work.

It's fucking shit, honestly it's so ridiculously awful that for the first time in my life my colourful and expansive use of certain areas of the English language has failed to find the right words to describe it.

To rub salt into the gaping rusty serrated knife wound that are the tasks they require us to do - the course fluctuates between being very poorly organised (hence the title of this post) to showing no signs of organisation at all.

The course is mandatory for the final year students - It's nothing at all to do with physics, just another stupid attempt at 'adding value' to our degree program or giving us the chance to 'develop professional skills'.

FACT - The premise of the course is total bollocks. Doing unrealistic and pointless tasks does not do anything for us, especially when we don't receive adequate (or any) feedback on what we hand in.

It takes up such a disproportionate amount of time and the people running it have consistantly not shown up (clearly they don't have access to the timetable that THEY WROTE) to lectures or have emailed 10 minutes before to cancel one - when most people are already on their way to the lecture theatre.

Anyway, that's enough from me for now. I wish I had more time to construct a full flowing rant (just wait until they hand out the course feedback forms - i'm really going to town on that, and I certainly won't be the only one) but the hand in for a big report is on wednesday so I best get back to it.

Take it sleazy everyone.

But I don't sense affection, No gratitude or love

Title - Song name and artist?

Today, I have pretty much nothing to say - Too many things have annoyed me recently to single something out and subject it to one of my clumsy and incoherent attempts at a rant.

Anyway, I'd like to share a few things that I've learnt recently: -

1. Turns out that I'm all about drinking straight Vermouth, no ice, no gin/vodka/etc., just Vermouth.

2. Allegedly I'm enigmatic. Yeah - that perplexed me aswell. I vehemently disagreed, my defense was that I'm like an open 'colouring in' book - simple, everyone can read me and containing no surprises.

3. Cats are the greatest creatures on Earth or anywhere else (well, I knew that already but it needed repeating).

4. Jokes about Josef Fritzl (Austrian cellar man) are very funny.

5. Harry Redknapp (new Spurs manager) is the closest thing to the idea of god that humanity can ever reach.

6. There's a large Sainsbury's not that far from my flat, just a bit out of the way from my usual routes.

7. It is possible to quote from the film Anchorman as a form of protest against the menial courses that the department forces upon final year students. (It was actually my mate who did this)

8. The Thames is a wonderful river to walk along on a brisk and cold November day.

9. Some stuff about symmetries, tensors, normal co-ordinates and field theories.

10. Christmas is coming, look busy. (For evidence of this see previous post... or a calender will inform you how much time must elapse before it is the day of the 25th December 2008)


Anyway, sorry for posting what is clearly 'filler' material. I'd like to say that soon i'll be back to posting at my best, but we all know that's not saying much - I've set the bar pretty low on the whole interesting/quality/coherent writing front.

Time takes a cigarette, puts it in your mouth,...

Post title - Who can tell me the original artist and the name of the song?

I haven't posted in about a month, unfortunately I've been quite busy. Another reason that I haven't posted is that nothing interesting or blogworthy has happened to me over the last few weeks.

So anyway........ let's talk about something.

A few weeks ago I realised that Christmas was coming, that's right - Starbucks changed all the menus to include all the christmas specials (and sneakily raised a few prices of the regular drinks), the takeaway paper cups are now the red christmassy ones and the music being played in the background is now a really, really annoying mix of christmas tunes - Therefore it must be christmas soon.

To strengthen my assertion that christmas will be among us soon, all the supermarkets are now selling those useless giftsets that are only ever bought because people lack the creativity to buy a real present for someone - and wrapping paper, every store has metres and metres of wrapping paper for sale.

I'm fairly indifferent to the whole christmas thing, when it was just a 12 day binge and pigout called yuletide I positively approved - but then the religions came, stole it and turned it into some shitty ceremony celebrating the alleged birth of some glorified cult leader who may or may not have even existed, at that point I lost interest.

I think we do have to be grateful to the many national and multinational companies that are really working hard to commercialise the whole holiday season, removing any (and hopefully all) religious connatations and making it all about plastic green trees, cheap fairy lights and doing all your shopping in the space of 10 minutes on amazon.co.uk.

But anyway, christmas comes and christmas goes - It's just enough day to me really, though getting presents makes it slightly better.

Ok, nothing more to say.

Strange days.......

For the first time in about a month, I've had a day pretty much to myself. Early this morning my wireless router arrived, hence my posting - I'm back online.

After a relaxing morning checking emails, websites and generally sorting out my long neglected paperwork and bills, I decided to take a long walk before my afternoon lectures.

I set off without a direction in mind, 'letting the mood' (ha - sorry, that sounds so lame) and coldplay on my ipod dictate the direction. I ended up along a popular London shopping street, in a waterstones - Without thinking at all, as I walked past the philosophy section, I spotted the only book by Bertrand Russell left on the shelf, 'The Conquest of Happiness', I picked it up and kept on walking, to have a look at some science books - I saw the Feynman books and 'The Character of Physical Law' was in my hand and I was walking to the till to buy them in seconds. This may not sound very remarkable to you, but it is certainly is to me, very remarkable indeed.

Moving on.....

Afterwards as I was walking towards my all time favourite coffee place, I spotted some of my most hated foes and absolute arch-enemies - Yes, people blocking the pavements holding clipboards trying to get you to sign up to some charity or cause or whatever. Luckily for me, the pavements are quite wide and there were enough other pedestrians, so my wonderful 'shield' defense technique could work (there has to be at least 2 other pedestrians between you and the 'clipboard soldiers', thus protecting you from them).
I broke throught the first cordon with ease, then the second, just one more and I would be free and safely in my favourite comfy chair, with brand new books in my favourite coffee place, just one more....but no, I was totally blindsided by a piece of honesty and slight naivety.

As I was using my shield technique to perfection (oh yes, I actually meander on the pavements to maintain a buffer of at least 2), my defenses crumpled as my 'shields' were very rude middle aged men with mp3 players who just sped up and ignored the charity worker.
This happened just as I was passing, I thought, 'Oh shit, just speed up and let's hope you are in a blind spot or already considered gone'. As you may have guessed, no, I was spotted and the charity worker said (no, pleaded),
'Oh, please don't ignore me and walk past'

Never, ever, ever have I heard anyone, doing her job ever say that to me or anyone else. I had to stop and turn around to face this new breed of street pledge collector.

Turns out she was a delightful girl of about maybe 19/20, good looking (Oh come on, who didn't see that coming?), who most importantly of all, was only on her second week of the job. She knew all the relevant facts and made a good sales pitch, even had a nice fridge magnet to give as a gift if I signed up there and then (of course I didn't sign up though, I'm too paranoid to give up any financial details to anyone, let alone strangers in the street).

When it became clear to her that I wasn't going to sign up there, she said she believed I'd go to the website and sign up as I had indicated because she said she can trust me. We said goodbye, even exchanged names and as I was turning to walk away she said, 'I love you for stopping and talking to me'.

She knew perfectly well that I had no intention of even going to the website, let alone signing up to donate any money.

I'm well aware that she could have of course been using her 'women tricks' in order to get money out of me, but I doubt that is the case this time. She was good looking, but not in an imposing and dazzling way, she also had an honesty and shyness, which would prevent her from consciously using her looks as a weapon. Added to the fact that this is a new job for her, and most people walking past at that time were of older generations who totally blanked her or even gave her a cold stare as they marched past - she must have been at least slightly disheartened by the job. Thus the chance to speak with someone who was within a few years of her age and had a neutral demeanor must have seemed like something not too be missed, hence the pleading for my attention.

Of course, she have just been playing along and being a good sales girl only to be thwarted by my paranoid ways - either way, she did well.

My 'good deed' done for the day, I carried on to get some coffee. A few hours later in my lectures, while absent mindedly drawing and writing silly quesions on my empty cardboard coffee cup (from a different place, tasted awful) and drawing clovers, sunflowers and clocks on my arm, the sound of idiotic questions stopping the lecturer and destroying the flow of the lecture a mere background noise at this point, I suddenly got thinking about many different things, most are still in my mind now.

How is all this related?

Well, it all happened to me for one and two; it isn't.

It's just been such a long time since someone has asked me how my day went and what I got up to, I thought I'd take the liberty and just answer as if that question had been asked.

Ha.