Thursday 30 September 2010
I Was Thinking Of Growing A Beard
But I think that the last thing I need is to draw more attention to my heavily-laden piggy eyes. I'll continue shaving, having seen the high quality artist's impression below.
Wednesday 29 September 2010
Time To Man Up
The only conclusion I can come to when I see my naked self is that I'm on the path to looking like my Dad. Simultaneously weedy and with a prodigious belly. Though it isn't visible now, I know from the way that my body changed during my 36th year that it is on the way.
Flimsy arms and shoulders beside a non-existent chest and a gut are what is in store unless I deal with things. So, I'm going to man up.
My daily regime will be 4 x 25 press ups, 4 x 25 sit ups and 4 x 25 squats.
When I can do that easily, I will crank it up. I will also try and get some cardiovascular work involved- ideally playing football or something.
LOG - Day 1 - 29 Sept: I do three sets of 3 x 25. After two solid days in bed with an illness and this being day 1 I let myself accept that. I'll do an extra set on day 3 to catch up.
Day 2 - 30 Sept: Not physically up to it. I am now 3 x (5 x 25) in debit. Poor start.
Big CD's Stag Weekend
As a recovering drunk with not much of an appetite for strip clubs, I tend to view "stag" events with trepidation. But I really enjoyed this weekend.
We travelled to Windsor on Friday and went to a few bars then retired to the hotel to play poker. On Saturday we went to the race meeting at Ascot and then to a few bars. On Sunday we had a big pub breakfast, then travelled back to watch football in the Clifden.
It all sounds very normal, and it was. But it was the company and not the events that made the weekend special. As is so often the case. Of course there was the odd reckless moment but mostly it was good clean fun.
Thursday 23 September 2010
The Black Ivy
This smashes the original "Take Ivy" look (which I love) right out of the ground. I am gobsmacked!
The Black Ivy.
I am literally shaking with excitement!
The Black Ivy.
I am literally shaking with excitement!
Roberto Di Matteo
West Bromwich Albion 2 Manchester City 1
Any question marks remaining were swept away in style tonight. When the second string are that well organised and motivated, these can be no doubt about where the credit lies. A lot of last season we coasted games and won purely by virtue of having better players and so you never really knew if the manager was the real deal. But his style of play, organisation, motivation, signings, tactical switches, clear head, pragmatism and apparent man-management skills are clear for all to see now.
I think I'm a little bit in love with him. And his taste in clothes shows potential.
Any question marks remaining were swept away in style tonight. When the second string are that well organised and motivated, these can be no doubt about where the credit lies. A lot of last season we coasted games and won purely by virtue of having better players and so you never really knew if the manager was the real deal. But his style of play, organisation, motivation, signings, tactical switches, clear head, pragmatism and apparent man-management skills are clear for all to see now.
I think I'm a little bit in love with him. And his taste in clothes shows potential.
Wednesday 22 September 2010
The Other Guys | Winter's Bone
Saw both of these at the cinema last night.
The Other Guys
90% shit
6% average
4% childish giggles
Winter's Bone
70% worthy
18% drags
8% spot the Deadwood actor playing against type
4% I wish these fuggers would have a wash
The Other Guys
90% shit
6% average
4% childish giggles
Winter's Bone
70% worthy
18% drags
8% spot the Deadwood actor playing against type
4% I wish these fuggers would have a wash
Monday 20 September 2010
Space Research Department
Sticking with the space theme, here's a sign in the building I'm working in at the moment at the University of Birmingham.
Man, I wish I could get through that door!
Friday 17 September 2010
The Final Frontier
Following on from reading up on The Fermi Paradox, I was (totally coincidentally) sent a link to some amazing space photographs in The Boston Globe. Here are some of my favourites made small for the blog, get on the link and see them in all their glory!
Wednesday 15 September 2010
The Fermi Paradox
Really enjoyed reading up on this during a train from work to Gloucester last night and back to work this morning. Science (and this borders on the geeky no-go area of Sci-Fi in parts) isn't really my thing but I loved this.
The Fermi Paradox is the apparent contradiction between the high statistical probability of the existence of extraterrestrial civilizations and the lack of evidence for (or contact with) them.
What I found interesting is the number of assumptions that scientists have made and the mind-boggling amount of possibilities that this rules out. I am perfectly happy with the high statistical probability of existence- though this in itself is an assumption which rules out the Rare Earth hypothesis (the billions of enormous coincidences which created human life would almost certainly not happen again) in favour of the mediocrity principle (Earth is not special, but merely a typical planet). I'm happy to go with this; partly because of my natural bias toward humility but also because the Rare Earth scenario requires us to assume that only human-like species can exist. There are 70 sextillion stars in the visible universe (that's 70,000,000,000,000,000,000,000!) and so I am happy to presume that there is a high statistical probability that other civilizations exist or have existed or will exist somewhere amongst them. To deny this would cause me to rule out the infinite monkeys with infinite typewriters scenario which I genuinely can't. It's a leap of faith but one I'm comfortable making.
The other side of the paradox is the one I struggle with. I read a great deal about the search for evidence and found that the way in which we are looking and the expectations that this is built upon seem deeply limited and unimaginitive. This is not to say that I have a better alternative, my criticism is from the 'I know this is wrong but I don't know what is right' school.
Evidence is expected (or hoped for) in one of two ways; either by seeing them through one of our super-duper telescopes or by having them come and find us. Both of them are deeply flawed.
"Radio technology and the ability to construct a radio telescope are presumed to be a natural advance for a technological species" apparently. And I have a real problem with this as a starting point since it rules out infinite possibilities in favour of the one we're comfortable with from our limited human experience. What it means is that we are looking for evidence of radio technology (meaningfully repetitive signals, unusually intense radio waves, brighter than expected signals) which are either deliberate attempts to communicate or the by-product of normal activity. Assuming all of the little green men watch analogue TV we should be laughing. And this leads me onto another problem with the expectation of evidence we could find by scanning the sky: Earth would have become visible in this way in 1901 and as we switch from analogue to digital our visibility will cease. Let's say that we have 150 years of visibility, that's a very small window on a planet that is billions of years old for a species that is 200,000 years old. As I read "a civilization may well have been visible from 1325 to 1483, but we were just not listening at the time". In addition to this we have only had the capability of seeing this activity in others since the radio telescope was invented in 1937 and that even our most sensitive radio telescope (the Arecibo Observatory) could only detect signals at distances up to 0.3 light years. And in the direction that we point it.
And so we're expecting to see human-type activity that occurs for a relative blink of an eye and that we're only able to detect for a relative blink of an eye in a tiny fragment of the universe. It isn't a wonder that we haven't seen any evidence, the wonder is that we expect to.
The less clearly-defined type of evidence that we're looking for is proof in the form of aliens coming to visit or deliberately communicating with us. There are a number of assumptions here; that they would want to (the Zoo hypothesis supposes that we're being watched without interference, as does Bowie's Life On Mars for that matter), that they are sufficiently advanced to (and we aren't and won't be for the realistically foreseeable future even if the Arecibo Observatory miraculously stumbles across a civilization that we might like to visit), that they are sufficiently human-like for us too recognise (imagine a species made up of clouds who communicated telepathically- is this more outlandish than the theoretical existence of humanoids?) and that they haven't already arrived and we simply didn't recognise them (could historical myths or religious figures have been alien species? Could they be sufficiently advanced to be able to cloak themselves?).
It's a bit of a brain-fuck but I'm content with my own assumptions; that there could be alien civilizations, that we could conceivably never know and that some brainiac scientists can be really dumb when they want to be.
The Fermi Paradox is the apparent contradiction between the high statistical probability of the existence of extraterrestrial civilizations and the lack of evidence for (or contact with) them.
What I found interesting is the number of assumptions that scientists have made and the mind-boggling amount of possibilities that this rules out. I am perfectly happy with the high statistical probability of existence- though this in itself is an assumption which rules out the Rare Earth hypothesis (the billions of enormous coincidences which created human life would almost certainly not happen again) in favour of the mediocrity principle (Earth is not special, but merely a typical planet). I'm happy to go with this; partly because of my natural bias toward humility but also because the Rare Earth scenario requires us to assume that only human-like species can exist. There are 70 sextillion stars in the visible universe (that's 70,000,000,000,000,000,000,000!) and so I am happy to presume that there is a high statistical probability that other civilizations exist or have existed or will exist somewhere amongst them. To deny this would cause me to rule out the infinite monkeys with infinite typewriters scenario which I genuinely can't. It's a leap of faith but one I'm comfortable making.
The other side of the paradox is the one I struggle with. I read a great deal about the search for evidence and found that the way in which we are looking and the expectations that this is built upon seem deeply limited and unimaginitive. This is not to say that I have a better alternative, my criticism is from the 'I know this is wrong but I don't know what is right' school.
Evidence is expected (or hoped for) in one of two ways; either by seeing them through one of our super-duper telescopes or by having them come and find us. Both of them are deeply flawed.
"Radio technology and the ability to construct a radio telescope are presumed to be a natural advance for a technological species" apparently. And I have a real problem with this as a starting point since it rules out infinite possibilities in favour of the one we're comfortable with from our limited human experience. What it means is that we are looking for evidence of radio technology (meaningfully repetitive signals, unusually intense radio waves, brighter than expected signals) which are either deliberate attempts to communicate or the by-product of normal activity. Assuming all of the little green men watch analogue TV we should be laughing. And this leads me onto another problem with the expectation of evidence we could find by scanning the sky: Earth would have become visible in this way in 1901 and as we switch from analogue to digital our visibility will cease. Let's say that we have 150 years of visibility, that's a very small window on a planet that is billions of years old for a species that is 200,000 years old. As I read "a civilization may well have been visible from 1325 to 1483, but we were just not listening at the time". In addition to this we have only had the capability of seeing this activity in others since the radio telescope was invented in 1937 and that even our most sensitive radio telescope (the Arecibo Observatory) could only detect signals at distances up to 0.3 light years. And in the direction that we point it.
And so we're expecting to see human-type activity that occurs for a relative blink of an eye and that we're only able to detect for a relative blink of an eye in a tiny fragment of the universe. It isn't a wonder that we haven't seen any evidence, the wonder is that we expect to.
The less clearly-defined type of evidence that we're looking for is proof in the form of aliens coming to visit or deliberately communicating with us. There are a number of assumptions here; that they would want to (the Zoo hypothesis supposes that we're being watched without interference, as does Bowie's Life On Mars for that matter), that they are sufficiently advanced to (and we aren't and won't be for the realistically foreseeable future even if the Arecibo Observatory miraculously stumbles across a civilization that we might like to visit), that they are sufficiently human-like for us too recognise (imagine a species made up of clouds who communicated telepathically- is this more outlandish than the theoretical existence of humanoids?) and that they haven't already arrived and we simply didn't recognise them (could historical myths or religious figures have been alien species? Could they be sufficiently advanced to be able to cloak themselves?).
It's a bit of a brain-fuck but I'm content with my own assumptions; that there could be alien civilizations, that we could conceivably never know and that some brainiac scientists can be really dumb when they want to be.
Monday 6 September 2010
My Dream Last Night
I rarely remember my dreams but I woke up in the middle of this one and made a note of the details. I had just joined the police as a detective and was investigating a crime which had as its biggest clue the existence of a previously unknown Shakespeare play named 'Ross of Blackburn'. In my dream I joked that it was about a caller to TalkSport.
That's all the detail I noted down, in my fuzzy-headed state I assumed that it would prompt me to remember the rest.
That's all the detail I noted down, in my fuzzy-headed state I assumed that it would prompt me to remember the rest.
Sunday 5 September 2010
Wayne Rooney paid a prostitute £1000 per visit
He'd be well advised to let his agent conduct his contract negotiations next time out as he clearly has no gift for this himself.
Saturday 4 September 2010
The Stairs and Landing
More DIY this weekend for me and I have to say when I was instructed to get grey paint and gold paint for the stairs and landing I was rather reticent. The grey, I think, looks pretty good leading on from the purple of the lounge and as the wall will be filled with pictures in gold frames a pretty neutral backdrop isn't a bad idea.
Not sure that Laura will be happy with the gold, though, I can see myself having to paint over that pretty quickly.
The dark colours also shrink what is a pretty confined space to begin with.
Not sure that Laura will be happy with the gold, though, I can see myself having to paint over that pretty quickly.
The dark colours also shrink what is a pretty confined space to begin with.
Watched An England Game Last Night
Outside of tournaments this is pretty rare. I love being English but the national team leaves me cold as it is (in the main) populated by half-arsed egoists, reported on by saboteurs and followed by lumpen idiots. The game was rubbish, the opposition were abysmal and awed, the performance was lazy and the commentary was barely above moronic: "this 442 so much more fluid than at the World Cup" cooed Clive 'That Night In Barcelona' Tyldesley about the exact same discredited throwback of a formation which looked so pedestrian and stilted against a decent side. The difference, of course, was the absence of a decent side to play against. And even this shower were threatening in spells before the new national hero Joe Hart saved our bacon. No, England are going nowhere. They'll progress through this gift of a group no doubt, but at least Cardiff away might be interesting.
The high spot was, of course, the Peter Saville designed kits with 1982-style royal blue shorts, blue numbering, minimalist socks, Henley collar and some really quite fruity touches on the shoulders. I might buy one ready for 2012's unexpected capitulation in the Quarter Finals of the European Championships. But I'll wait for Mike Ashley to reduce the price to £20 first.
The high spot was, of course, the Peter Saville designed kits with 1982-style royal blue shorts, blue numbering, minimalist socks, Henley collar and some really quite fruity touches on the shoulders. I might buy one ready for 2012's unexpected capitulation in the Quarter Finals of the European Championships. But I'll wait for Mike Ashley to reduce the price to £20 first.
Thursday 2 September 2010
Emptied The Loft, Filled The Office
We're having the loft re-insulated tomorrow and so I've spent nearly five hours emptying the loft to accomodate the process. It was a nightmare and I am fucked. And the process has to be reversed when it's all over- only up the ladder.
Ah well, here's the office:
Ah well, here's the office:
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