The Bran Report

The Difference

2007-10-15T22:42:00.000+01:00

Thanks, internet. Now I'm scared of the Turing Test. Thanks a lot.

The Drum

2007-09-25T12:47:00.000+01:00

I like to call Durham "The Drum". Honbestly, who pronounces vowels anymore? Not anyone who's been throuhg Lfbr, that's for certain.

It has lots of hills.

So far, it has very little internet.

Normal service will resume on termination of hostilities.

Huh

2007-09-14T08:10:00.000+01:00

In a fortnight I will, for the first time in my life, be living and working closer to John O Groats than Land's End.

THe Podium and the Grave

2007-09-12T07:19:00.000+01:00

You know what my favourite game is? Public Speaking.

Today I get to play a special no-holds-barred version, where the audience ask me a bunch of questions and plus also I\m horibly unprepared, and I get given a mark at the end that determines whether or not I've wasted the last three months!

Yaaaaaaaaay

Subsidiary to the last post

2007-09-10T16:05:00.000+01:00

Having a full-page screencap open on your monitor is a good recipe for a lot of panicked clicking.

I am an idiot.

Public Speaking

2007-09-10T15:58:00.000+01:00

(Click for larger)

This thing's only worth 6% of my Master's, right?

News dump

2007-09-08T17:34:00.000+01:00

YES.

In other news:

I'm not in as deep trouble as I thought I was with my thesis. Hooray!
"9 Crimes" by Damien Rice initially made me want to eat a gun, but the video is so comically ridiculous that it completely deflates the song.
I will be drunk in 150 hours or so.

That is all!

Bang to rights

2007-09-07T14:06:00.001+01:00

Throw on a column for self-pity, and you've got my year. Let's hope Cathederals and awesome wooded ravines make everything better. I am confident that they do.

The Wrong Kind of Crazy

2007-09-02T12:19:00.000+01:00

Well, I have definitely strayed out of thought and time. However, the report is still struggling along at the "Chapter six: wild failure" stage. I can only conclude that I have gone the wrong kind of crazy. It would explain why I went into town and spent money on buying a CD of Jonny Cash singing operatic covers of Nine Inch Nails songs. Yeah, really.

The Beard of Demosthenes

2007-08-31T18:15:00.000+01:00

I have made a choice. As you all realise by now, I don't care for my current lifestyle at all and this discontent will be jarringly driven home next week when I present a paper and lecture based on my research. I really don't want to have to make a Poerpoint slide that says "During the day I played Minesweeper and read the Durham webpages. At night I drank Guiness and wept in the dark".

So that I won't have to lie, I have chosen to go crazy.

From here on out, it's spreadsheets, streamlines, powerpoints, timing cues, references, all the paraphenalia of someone who sacrifices their life for a career. In short, I need to live the life of the City Man for a while.

Do not expect my prescence on the intertron until August the 16th.

Peace.

Alternate formulation of this post

Deadlines!

Or anyone, really

2007-08-31T10:12:00.000+01:00

I wanna go shopping with Randall Munroe.

It's That Time Of Year Again

2007-08-30T14:48:00.000+01:00

Among my own kind

2007-08-29T14:37:00.000+01:00

I am shortly to become a Johnie, and am excitied to learn that other old Oxonians and Cantabrians will be joining me in the MCR. Does that make me a racist?

(Also: the graduate tutor at John's is called Julian, so I am now unable to shake the image of Siddig El Fadil. Does that make me a dork?)

Excerpt from my list of life goals

2007-08-21T09:48:00.000+01:00

14. Learn to play the Zither
15. Spend a year in Iceland
16. Square the circle
~~17. Rebuke a thief while naked~~

Loughborough has, as I may have mentioned, failed to impress me- but yesterday it allowed me to cross something off the ol' list.

I'm real late for work so I won't go into more detail, but I have learned that saying "Hey, no, get the hell out of here" in an irritated tone is appently enough to get someone to abandon a burglary attempt.

Oh Loughborough, your small-town quaintness never fails to charm.

Argh

2007-08-20T11:01:00.000+01:00

You know what's awesome? When you're doing numerical calculations and it turns out that the computer you've been allocated doesn't have a USB port. It's got a floppy disk drive, an infra-red port, a modem port, some ports that I think might be RCA and SCART and (goshdarn it) a DVD burner, but no USB, no firewire, nothing.

Also, the C drive is almost full and it doesn't seem to want to workany harder than 20% CPU.

I have to present my results in two weeks and I can't get this darned thing to...

Oh look. Windows has thrown up an error message. I'd go ask my supervisor about it, but he's decided to go on holiday for three weeks. THANKS, SIMON WATSON.

Maybe now is a good time to move on to the hot-air-balooning-millionaire-explorer stage of my career.

Rise up, my people

2007-08-15T08:09:00.000+01:00

The reason an Englishman chooses one newspaper over another is to read someone else stating his opinions.

Retroactive on the Bearocolypse

2007-08-12T13:48:00.000+01:00

Lessons I have learnt:

1) My face is not nearly as long as I had believed
2) It is entirely possible for a 23-year old to still be rubbish at shaving
3) If you spend the summer with half of your face shaded and half not, bad things happen.
4) A beard lends an air of guant sophistication. Guess I'm going to have to cut down on pies.

I think I might settle on a piratical all-over stubble. Time will tell.

Upshot of a conversation on the stairs.

2007-08-04T16:38:00.000+01:00

Things my housemate apparently believe:

1) All white Americans, regardless of their words or lifestyle or voting record in the Democratic primary, are (in their heart of hearts) afraid of "The Blacks" and want to oppress them. (Citation: Bowling for Columbine).

2) Immigrants, regardless of their words or behaviour, in their heart of hearts, don't respect England and they are ruining the country and should be deported immediately.

3) Time is a social construct.

To be fair, she didn't use the exact words "social construct", but when I asked "I measure the time interval as X seconds. You measure it as X+5 seconds. Is it possible for us both to be correct?", she answered "Yeah, why not?".

A Cautionary Tale

2007-08-03T19:07:00.000+01:00

Peter Griffin: Holy crap, Uhura's black?
Me: Ha ha! How remarkably oblivious to his surroundings that character is. Anyway, that's enough animation. Time for some space westerns.

(Later that day)

Me: I wonder if it's significant that there is only one black character on Serenity, and he's a mysterious outsider? Kind of like Othello, in a way. You see...
P: What about Zoe?
Me: Oh.

In my defence, I had noticed that she is a) Conscientious b) an unstopable avatar of war and c) super-hott, so I'd like to argue that this just represents an enlightened set of priorites. Think that'll fly?

Beardocolypse

2007-08-02T22:43:00.000+01:00

I had a variety of objectives in mind when I stopped shaving. One of them was saving a few minutes every other morning. I have achieved this admirably. Another was to acquire a nickname taken from the Star Wars franchise, and this was accomplished partially. A third was to get some kind of enhancement bonus to WISDOM, but it turns out that real life doesn't work that way and looking back on it, I do recall coming up with this plan while staring at a gallon of milk.

I've had this hair on my face for a little over a year now, and since there are still no signs of magical powers, I can only assume that I have learnt as much from it as I am going to.

I am going to shave on Sunday, August the 12th.

What should a man do when he knows he'll only be bearded for ten more days?

(I regret to inform that "take a plane" is unlikely to be achieved. It looked sketchy when I was late for my ship and thought I'd have to buz into John Lennon International and say "Hi, I'm a haggard bearded young adult travelling alone without luggage. Any chance you can sell me a one-way ticket to Belfast with no advance booking on this fine Friday midnight?" Fortunately, it turns out that Norfolk Line Ferries employ much more lenient check-in staff than Ryanair do.)

Whiteout Theatre

2007-08-01T19:02:00.000+01:00

Lately I have been thinking about the role of the unsaid in art. Well, kind of. I've actually been thinking about Four Thirty Three and humming The Sound of Silence. As I understand it, someone has tried the same chortle with a blank canvas at some point.

What's the point, you might ask? (Not about the Sound of Silence. That's an awesome song.) Well, you could argue that by putting a little blank in a frame, you're making a statement about framing, an attempt to divert attention to the artistic beauty of leaves and pies and fire hydrants. Sometimes, it's a statement about authorial intent and primarily of interest to the kind of academics who spend their budget on tea and biscuits rather than on lasers and steam engines (known in the trade as slackers). Sometimes, I like to think, it's a statement about the Emporer's New Clothes.

The real value of the unsaid, if you ask me, isn't about blank canvases and silent songs. You need material to make a framework, and the viewer fills in the gaps with their own virtual reality.

This, incidentally, is something that humans are already doing every waking moment- in fact, we do it on levels higher than the neorological: in evidence I present the fact that Homestar is reognisably human, and can display a wide range of emotions, depsite lacking almost every feature. I'd go so far as to say that our perceptions are "really" a spotlight, constantly darting from faces to hands and most everything else goes unnoticed.

More relevant to art, though, are the gaps we fill in our ridiculously non-sequiteur conversations and the agent thinking that is behind (among other things) animism, cartesian duality, and Freaky Friday.

So, not at all originally, I thought I'd take a piece of communication and destory some of it's message with some digital tipex. I think the new version carries a strong story not intended in the author's vision, because it is supplied by my (and hopefully your) social library.

I call it Li'l Suzy and the Pink Pistols¹. (For sanity reasons, it'll only display on the post page: click here if you don't see it.) For context, the original unexpurgated Li'l Suzy is here, but I warn you: I don't think she's half as cute when you can hear her.

1. I'm a bad internet citizen. A simple google-search would have taught me that the Pink Pistols name belongs to a real group of people. In fact, they are jolly interesting people who I may discuss at another time, though fans of terror and mayhem will be disappointed to learn that they don't seem to be out for the blood of every straight person. Instead it's self-defence, sense of belonging, rights of the idividual, blah blah blah. Since my original choice of name is misleading, how about... Li'l Suzy and The Isle of Saphos? Li'l Suzy and Her Audition fort Hallmark?²
2. I really hope that Hallmark don't object if I compare them to cute kids over-acting a U-rated love scene.

You have to say it in Block Caps, because that's how it is in the source text.

2007-07-31T23:13:00.000+01:00

My most recent posts have concerned, in order:

Lord of the Rings
Harry Potter
Final Fantasy VII
Star Wars

As they say in the trade, SO MUCH FOR KISSING SUPERMODELS.

Holbytla

2007-07-31T22:32:00.000+01:00

I am rewatching Return of the King, and today I am struck by the change in culture between now and the forties.

(I don't know if I've talked about this before, so bear with me.)

In the books, I always got the impression that Merry and Pippin were pals, while Sam and Frodo were brothers-in-arms.

In the films, I think the Took and Brandybuck are a couple. Having just seen Pippin leave Edoras, I have a hard time seeing it any other way. In the appendices they both get off-screen wives and children, though it has been remarked that this is not as watertight as argument as it seems, and even less so in the forties. (That's right, viewers at home. Return of the King has hours more material they cut out of the films, detailing people's grandchildren. Peter Jackson may not have hurried, but he didn't keep more text than he needed to either).

Sam and Frodo's relationship is much the same as it ever was: even in the books, it was never quite clear if Frodo did or did not have the love that dare not speak its name. Maybe his peculiarly celibate lifestyle are meant to show how messed up he was by that Morgul blade. Sam has always been unambiguously keen on the ladytypes- a dramatic neccesity, given that subservient devotion is his defining characteristic.

In many ways, I wonder to what extent the extended explorations of the varieties of male affection are a consequence of its origin in the pre-feminist era- when you only introduced a female character because she was going to be praised for her beuty or deliver a line that approximates to "Ha ha, I don't have a penis so good luck with that prophecy pal, P.S. please eat this sword".

Well, Tolkien phrased it a little more elegantly.

No-one is allowed to tell me what a Horcrux is

2007-07-26T17:20:00.000+01:00

I don't read an awful lot these days. Between 55-hour working weeks, Neverwinter Nights and drunkenly trying to sing along to On Avery Island, I don't sit down and read words too often.

I have a thriteen-hour journey to undertake tomorrow, and I have decided to go and buy myself one of those "I'm not reading a kid's book, honest" editions of The Philosopher's Stone.

I hear that Harry is a Horcrux. To block out spoilers, I'm going to assume that a Horcrux is an experimental super-soldier with amnesia and genetic material from Jenova.

Furthermore, I assume that the following exchange takes place in Halfblood Prince:

Voldemort: Dumbledore never told you what happened to your father.
Harry: He told me enough!

So. I guess that as of tomorrow I'll be one of those people who make excuses for wearing silver and blue.

Thousandaire

2007-07-24T18:32:00.000+01:00

Today I got a cheque for a thousand pounds.

I won't be going crazy, since I owe Oxford £700. Also, I owe my parents seven thousand. Also, I owe the government seventeen thousand. Still, it's nice to be able to put off extending my overdraft a little.

You might ask, if I have this breathing space, why am I still going to the Quick-e-mart to earn sublegal shillings and pence? Well, it's simple. For weeks now I've only been going because I'm too nice to make my employers look for someone else. I'm free in a fortnight, and that;s good enough for me.

This also demonstrates an alrming bit of emotional leftism in me: I feel that any old fool can earn money, but being handed it says "What you're doing is worthwhile." It's like getting a little blue ribbon from the state. And I like that.

Volver

2007-07-22T21:50:00.000+01:00

Up until now, when people asked me what I thought it was like to be a woman my answer would be something like:"I don't know, I guess pretty much like being a man only without the constant desire to fornicate and destroy."Now, though, I have a new anser. I now say"Hey, did you see that spanish film that came out last year? With Penelope Cruz? Yeah, that's how I think it is."

This may be the most oestragen-soaked film I have ever seen. You are made aware of people's relationships constantly, and the characters in this film apparently feel that events such as murder or spectral visitations shouldn't get in the way of a lengthy discussion about feelings- or indeed, about glucose and cholesterol. I feel almost certain that by now someone has produced an edited version where a little counter tracks the number of cheek-kisses and hugs. Rest assured, they are going to need a lot of digits on that thing.

Admittedly, I have only watched half of the film so far. Having made this statement, it is almost certain that the remainder of the film is a gun battle during a car chase to stop terrorists blowing up the Miss America pageant.

Still, I can get a little bit Textual Evidence. I don't want to ruin it for you though, because this is actually an awesome film that I want you to go and see.

So, you know, SPOILERS.

Neville Longbottom is Kaiser Soyze LOL.
So far there are six female leads and a variety of supporting female characters. I have seen two named male characters:
Emillio has one scene, which boils down to "Hey, I'm leaving for Barcelona. Look after these keys to a plot point for me, will you?". (Note: this scene also refers tangentially to rape and menstruation.)
Paco is the big male lead, as Raimunda's husband. He has three scenes.
Scene one: Drinking beer, watching televised sports, fails to provide for family.
Scene two: Selfish in bed. Jacking off.
Scene three: Shivved and wrapped in a carpet.
It's a tough time looking for sympathetic male characters i nthis show is what I'm sayin'.

On a final note, when one of the Loughboroughites talks about this film I swear she calls it Vulva. This distresses me for two reasons. 1) If I'm just mis-hearing, that gives Freud and Sapir-Whorf and the rest of those artsy-fartsy ne'erdowells too much credit. 2) If she's really malapropping, is it a sharp (and consummately delivered) pun? This reopens the whole No one is really that clueless, it's an act, debate.

hashi

2007-07-18T16:42:00.000+01:00

Life is strange. Things often don't work out like you expected.

For example, today I expected to work in the lab until five, then go and stack shelves for a few more hours. The lab in question, by the way, is a mezzanine suspended in a huge steel shed over a cleanroom used in making silicon cells. It also shakes distressingly during thunder. I've been spending a certain amount of time watching progress bars fill up, you know.

Then it turned out that I didn't have to go into Quick-e-mart, so I figured I might come home and remind myself what the thrust coefficient is. Instead, it turns out, I'm eating yoghurt raisins with chopsticks.

My eyes feel like there's hair on them.

I thought my 250th post on the Bran Report would be something worth reading. Instead, I'm just thinking about how it will be winding down in sixty days or so. Expect more navel-gazing of that kind later.

I'm going to get some sleep.

American Ballet

2007-07-16T19:22:00.000+01:00

I realise that I've been a substandard blogger lately. I don't have a lot of time to sit down these days, what with my sixty-hour weeks and my driving commitment to getting drunk alone in the house. I've drafted a few posts, but I was raised to believe that people don't want to read "Fuck you" copy and pasted a hundred times next to the names of people who have wronged me^1,2.

So I will just say this.

Pro wrestling is functionally equiavlent to kabuki or narrative dance. How is it that I never realised this?

1. Loughborough University, Imago services and the urban planners of Charnwood borough council are all near the top of the list.
2. I was also raised with the belief that swearing was a hallmark of a small vocabularly, as a result of which I command a very small range of swearwords.

Kaccha

2007-07-15T17:47:00.000+01:00

So. Boxer-briefs.

I have yet to be convinced.

I should stress that, despite wanting to show off my GCSE in RE¹, what I am wearing are not Kaccha². Just, you know, boxer-briefs.

I am not one to discuss my man-parts on the internet, so I guess I'll just draw this little note to a close. Don't know why I mentioned it.

1. A full GCSE, too. I took extra classes, and can say gloss Jihad to The Good Fight with the best of them. Of course, this makes the Express's tubthumping all the more grating since they like to invoke one in order to defeat the other. Hey, guys, do you think maybe it would be peachy-keen to make your newspaper logo a soldier from a religious war? AWESOME.
2. There are three main reasons that it is innacurate to describe them as kaccha. a) Instead of a drawsting they have an elasticated band b) I am a firengi³ c) I'm not wearing them because I'm a member of the Khalsa, or because I've triumphed over lust (I haven't) or even because of the philosophy of martial independance developed by Guru Gobind Singh. I'm wearing because they were cheap⁴ and fulfil all the core functions of underwear.
3. For reference, I am also a Gringo, Gweillo, Gaijin and a Sassenach.
4. Since I bought them in the town market, I assume this is because they fell off the back of a corrupt night-watchman at a Nottingham warehouse.

BADGERS!

2007-07-13T09:31:00.000+01:00

"UK military spokesman Major Mike Shearer said: "We can categorically state that we have not released man-eating badgers into the area."

If that snippet doesn't make you want to read on, then we really have nothing further to talk about.

Startling theological relevations

2007-07-11T09:14:00.000+01:00

Pope: "Catholics rule, Protestants drool. Also, Vatican II sucks".

Do you remember that episode of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine when a Bajoran came out of the wormhole, thereby undermining Sisko's position as Emissary? And he's all "Hey guys, how come no-one wears doublet and hose anymore? Where are all the lutes?" Man, that was a great episode.

Woomch!

2007-07-09T19:17:00.000+01:00

So, I had a post about anti-semitism brewing in my brain. Instead, I'm going to link to animated gifs featuring Boromir.

I wonder, have we grown less reverent as a society? If computers had been around earlier, would we have got Tales for the leet in the 17th century? have we always loved turning things on their heads?

(PRO TIP: Do not watch the last thing I linked to unless you have the patience of the moon and the stars.)

Seven Samurai

2007-07-07T20:25:00.000+01:00

Man, does anyone really like this film?

Maybe it's just from a different age, or maybe it's just from a different culture, or maybe I'm just a bad person.

I mean, The Seventh Seal was... OK. Super-long, but OK. The Good, The Bad and the Ugly was realreal long too, though I had an easier time with it on account of it was dubbed very well, had more humour, had, in fact, my cultural reference frame in common. Seven Samurai, though. I thought it was almost done but it turned out to be less than a third done. Long pauses, phrases left unsubtitled, exchanges I just plain don't get...

Actually, I have found a way that I like it more. Play it on 2x speed. Of course, there's no sound, but it has next to no sound anyway.

Watching classic cinema on fast-forward. I'm so americanised, by this time tomorrow I'll be popping ritalin.

Cultural Learnings

2007-07-05T10:08:00.000+01:00

Every day brings me closer to tattooing "ACHEWOOD" over my heart.

Secondly, I have discovered that in Loughborough is is not accpetable to express dislike for a prodocut, service, idea or (say) an East Midlands town by claiming that "it gave [me] Chlamydia".

Adding "in the figurative sense" does not break the silence.

Adding "See, it's funny, because Chlamydia is normaly associated with the sexually promiscuous, whereas I'm desperately lonely" just makes things worse.

Lesson learned!

It's my blog and I'm allowed to dork it up if I want to

2007-07-04T22:08:00.000+01:00

Today's post is only for people who know that in certain situations, such as catching their opponent unawares, a Rogue can add 1d6 to their damage on a successful attack (this damage increases with level according to table 3-15).

The PHB PSAs.

Silage

2007-06-28T21:27:00.000+01:00

They have mown the grass in the parks. Combined with heavy rain, it has the smell of silage. Suddenly, it is 1999 again.

I am putting on weight and zits at a considerable rate. I am reluctant to shave, despite widespread peer-pressure to do so. I am working on a task that is certainly ill-defined and might be endless. I have a job where I am the most educated and lowest-paid employee. Best of all, I have a heaping helping of anxious depression.

Honestly, all I need is a nametag that says RICHARD and a pretty girl that I can disappoint.

Wales sucks

2007-06-28T14:49:00.000+01:00

Excerpt from my quarter-written bare-bones outline Literature Review.

I'm sorry, Wales. I'm really referring to your Energy Agency, which had the stellar idea of "Well, we don't know the windspeed, so let's just assume a Moderate Breeze blows 24/7. Plug those numbers in aaaand... wind turbines rule!"

I hate you for doing my project in a few seconds and getting the answer that I want buyt suspect I won't get.

Words

2007-06-27T13:53:00.000+01:00

This "literature review" business is a sham. I have just read a sentance that was four lines long, with narry a punctuation mark or conjunction to be seen.

At least I know why I keep getting marks deducted for being too amusing.¹

1. A number of words in this sentance are verbatim from my last report marksheet.

Sigh

2007-06-27T13:18:00.000+01:00

I'm working in the department today. Why? Because at home, all I do is play Neverwinter Nights, drink Guiness, and pretend I'm someone else.¹

This computer monitor has ink on it.

Someone, at some point has used a biro to circle, strike-though or underline things on the screen.

Isn't there a joke that uses this conceit?

1. BLEEEEAK.

Dear Loughborough,

2007-06-23T15:51:00.000+01:00

You are just the dumbest town I have ever met.

I'll admit, at first I thought you were being ironic. Then, I though you were being subtly ironic. Then, I thought you were very committed to your joke.

Then you told me that PDFs were unacceptable and that "real people" used .doc format.

Then I realised that this town is full of physiology students who drink and smoke heavily and drive the half-mile to McDonalds.

Then you had a gun-battle in a crowded night-club.

The furore surrounding Big Brother 8 conformed to the pattern I had begun to dread.

Today, you stole my bike. Now, it wasn't the most desirable bike, I know. When I bought it several months ago, I decided not to pay for a lock on the grounds that it would be more valuble than the bike itself. Thus, my bike has been casually propped on street corners and campus roads for the last nine months.

Today, I broke my bike in half. Literally, I "stepped on it" in order to accelerate up a hill, and snapped the rusty axle in two. A pedal hit the road with a mournful "clonk". Being the dutiful type, I pushed it the rest of the way to work and set about stacking shelves for hours.

Today is the day you chose to steal my bike: a bike that, very obviously, cannot be ridden.

Congratulations.

Your pal,
William of Occam

I am such a dork

2007-06-20T13:31:00.000+01:00

A few days ago I was in a discussion where, as will happen, literary techniques came up. In particular, Chekhov's gun: If a rifle is hanging on the wall in the first act, it will be fired before the story concludes.

It was only last night that I realised that the Chekhov in question was probably Anton (as in Cherry Orchard) rather than Pavel (as in Nuclear Wessels).

Oh dear.

Aux armes, citoyens

2007-06-19T23:01:00.000+01:00

I'm watching Casablanca, and it is all kinds of awesome.

However, even if... no, especially if I were French, I wouldn't want to sing La Maseillaise. Probabbly because of all that water-the-fields-with-blood stuff. The Internationale is better, though still a bit militaristic for my tastes¹.

Give me But For Honest Poverty any day.

Don't even get me started on the Battle Hymn of the Republic. That's a distillation of every kind of darkness in the human soul, right there.²
2. I wrote this comment shortly before discovering that is is "the unoffical anthem of the Republican Party".

EDIT: So it turns out also that the fore-runner for a distinctively English anthem, Jerusalem, might be referring to Oxbridge when it talks about "Dark Satanic Mills". Esau and Thomas I am, I am.

Two things

2007-06-19T09:14:00.000+01:00

1) I know how you feel. I know just how you feel.

2) I miss "We have nothing to fear but fear itself".

The same, but not the same as Schadenfraude

2007-06-15T16:46:00.000+01:00

Schadenfraude: taking pleasure in someone else's suffering.

I want a word that means "Taking pleasure when an enemy of yours does something to justify the contempt you hold them in".

I feel certain that German out to have this word. Someone help me out.

kcor s'tel

2007-06-15T16:10:00.000+01:00

What do you do when the sky is tearing itself in half and everyone physically capable of doing so has fled the town?

That's simple, little one. Turn out the lights and stand in the picture window, watching the storm.

Crank up the Gorillaz and just groove.

The Long Parliament

2007-06-14T20:25:00.000+01:00

As long time readers know, I am a little bit broken in the head. That's why, since I last posted on the Bran Report, I have done nothing except play with the Equal Proportions Method. Want to know my conclusions? Of course you do.

I've crunched the numbers for two scenarios. In the first, I used the standard method: start with one congressmen per state, then add each successive member according to the state with the highest priority, as defined by
A=P/√(n(n+1)
where P is the population and n is the number of congressmen assigned to that state so far. The total number of seats, 435, remains unchanged.

In the second, I left the existing states with the number of representatives they had already, and added new seats for the new states. In this version, I tried to add a number of seats so that the new states had an A-value as close as possible to the national average (613057.3). Given the variation between Utah (736139.78) and Wyoming (364162.82), the values were pretty good: all between 600 and 700 thousand.

Either way, England becomes far and away the number one state to woo. As it stands, California is the most influential with 53 Representatives, followed by Texas with 32 and New York with 29. Ohio and Florida, famous as election-breakers, have 18 and 25 respectively.

In method two, England gets 79 new seats. Scotland gets 7, the same as Colorado, Alabama and Louisiana. Wales gets 4, the same as Mississippi, Kansas and Arkansas. Northern Ireland get 2, the same as Maine, Hawaii or Rhode Island. There are 7 states with only one representative. The Old Countries as a whole get 92 new seats, bringing the total up to 527.

With Method One, the states are in the same order but the smaller total number of seats gives relatively more power to the smaller states. In this scenario, England has 60 seats, and California is knocked down to 44 (losing 9 seats). Texas and New York lose a half-dozen seats each and almost all the middling states lose two. Scotland get 6 (one less than before), Wales get 4 and Northern Ireland 2 (just as in the other method).

By happy chance, both methods give the Old County States 17% of the Representatives.

You know what? Day well spent.

The Old Countries

2007-06-14T12:44:00.000+01:00

Between Wikipedia, re-reading old blog posts of mine, and a desire to avoid work, I have spent all day thinking: what if we were the 51st state?

This is long, so it's behind a cut: Click here for it all.

How could it happen?
Well, we could be like Peurto Rico, I suppose- an insular Commonwealth. But honestly, the main reason for doing this would be to get right up in the US decision making process. The strongest argument in its favour is that we are hugely affected by Congress and Senate, but don't have a bally thing to say about it. Let's shoot for statehood.

What would the State of Great Britain and Northern Ireland look like?
Well, our wars and foreign relations would be decided in Washington. We'd get the Dollar, of course, and send represntatives to Washington. Most everything else would come under State's Rights.

To answer your question, we'd be the craziest state ever, especially if we joined as a single unit. Most states have bicameral legislation. We have the House of Commons, the House of Lords, The Scottish Parliament, the Welsh assembly and sometimes a Northern Irish assembly, all with conflicting powers. That being so, and I'm sure many Scots in the audience will applaud, we could join as four states.

But don't we hate America?
Yeah, but we loved them in 1999. We might again.
Plus, a lot of the friction comes from the perception that our wars and foreign relations are decided in Washington.

What's the biggest problem?
God save our gracious Queen,
Long live our noble Queen,
God save the Queen:
Send her victorious,
Happy and glorious,
Long to reign over us:
God save the Queen.
The United States of America started as an "I hate Monarchy" club, and the Constituion demands that States are republics, with an elected head of state. We could get around this a few ways:
Like we tried before: Disestablish the Monarchy, which is to say, take away the Civil List and Royal Assent. They'll get on just fine without it, and they can keep their fabulous private wealth, ceremonial duties and life of being perpetually hounded by journalists. Meanwhile, the Prime Miniter gets to write "head of state" after his name, which frankly they've been de facto since Walpole.
Like they do in Kinshasha: Make the Monarch an elected post. We just keep voting for Liz and her kids, and whenever America asks if we're a democracy we say "Oh yes, we're a democracy. It's just coincidence that no living head of state has been voted out of office, and no heir has ever failed to succeed their parents."
Like they do in Beijing: Hold an election with only one candidate.
Like they do in Florida: Hold an election, but only count the votes for the predetermined winner. Oh no he di-ent!

Would the Americans let us in?
Well, politically, we'd be a great boon to liberals. The current mood among conservatives is very pro-british because of our impeccable table manners. This may change is they ever hear about the kind of things we get up to over here, like "66% of British people don't believe in god" or "A school teacher telling a child that Harry Potter is witchcraft are grounds for dismissal".

How would this affect the United States?
Hugely, and don't let no-one tell you different. We're hugely Blue, for starters- we've nationalised healthcare and all our universities are, in American terms, state schools. Our minimum wage is about $11/hour, compared to the Federal minimum which is scheduled to rise to $7.25 by the end of 2009.
Labour and the Conservatives roughly match up to parts of the Democrat party, with the Old Conservative just edging into Republican. (For non British readers, Old Labour are left-wing and New Labour are centre-right. Old Conservative is right wing, and under Cameron we are starting to see a centre-left New Conservative.) Liberal Democrats are, um, very liberal Democrats. If the Four States started sending in Electoral College votes we would break the mould of American Politics like no-one's business because...

How would the Four States compare to existing states?
The State of England would be about the same size as New York State, but with the population density somewhere between MA and RI. It would be the biggest state in terms of population and with a GDP of $1.8 trillion, it would be pretty much on a par with California in terms of economy. In fact, you could do worse than just to say "It's like New England".

The State of Scotland would be a cold, mountainous state about the size of Maine, but with 5 million people rather than 1.3 million. In terms of population it comes in at around the #20 mark, comparing well to Minnesota or Wisconsin. "A smaller part of Michigan" might be an appropriate comparison, since the population density matches up about right- as does the trackless wilderness with occaisional post-industrial rusthole.

The State of Wales is almost as mountainous, but much smaller: about the size of NJ in area. The population density isn't as high- 361 people per square mile, which is lower than Deleware but higher than Florida. The toal population is down around the #30 mark with Iowa and Mississippi. Wales would be an anomoly among anomlies: arguably the only state that is bilingual between English and an indiginous language.

Northern Ireland would be a huge pain in the head, ass and most other parts of the metaphorical body.They don't really take part in Westminster, and I doubt they'd take part in Washington, but here goes: it's the size of Connecticut, with a population of Nebraska (about #40). For some reason I feel like New Hampshire is a good analogy. The part of New Hampshire with people in, though.

In fact, for a different perspective on it, let's do a mash-up. Now, everyone knows that comapring the size of cities is difficult- I mean, the original charter for London gives it an area of one square mile, and doesn't include the Houses of Parliament (technically, they're in a different city called "Westminster"). Still, I think you've probably already got your pinch of salt ready after reading the rest of this post.
New York stays on top of the pile with 8.2 million, but London breezes into second place with 7.1 M, ahead of Los Angeles at 3.8 M. Places like Chicago, Houston and Phoenix follow. Birmingham comes in at a dissapointing 11th- smaller than Dallas, but bigger than San Jose. Glasgow (Scotland) is a spit smaller than Baltimore at around 700,000. Around and just below the half-million mark are cities like Leeds, Liverpool, Sheffield and Manchester: They sit in the 30s with Boston, Portland, New Orleans and Omaha.

Let's look at "Incorporated Places with over 100 000 residents" on those same pages.

By my count, California has 62 such towns, Texas 24, Florida 17, Virginia, Colorado and Arizona have nine each, North Carolina and Michigan have seven and all other states five or less (Suprisingly, including New York: NYC, Buffalo, Rochester,Yonkers and Syracuse- this is probably because of the dominance of NYC).

Northern Ireland has just one, Belfast- about the size and importance, it would seem, as Anchorage.
Wales has three (Cardiff, Newport and Swansea), which casts it in a Wisconsin/ Minnesota kind of light.
Scotland has four (Glasgow, Edinburgh, Aberdeen and Dundee) which is Oregonesque.
England has 57 such towns.

Conclusion: If Britain were to join the USA as four states, it would be three small-to-middling states and one top-tier state.

Hell, this exercise might have destroyed my ability to do any real work today, but I kind of feel better about my country now. We ought to make that our slogan: "If we wanted to, we could be as important as New York but maybe not quite as important as California".

I'm so lonely

2007-06-14T11:53:00.000+01:00

Are any of you folks on iLike? I prefer it to Last.FM, but both it's a little pointless unless some folks are willing to "friend me".

If you respect my intelectualism, pretend I'm not talking about the Baz Luhrman film

2007-06-13T00:40:00.000+01:00

I had respect for Hamlet and pity for Macbeth. Both Romeo and Juliet just plain annoy me, though. I will even go so far as to say that it's not romantic. It's a caricature of it.

E- WOULD NOT TRADE AGAIN

He he he

2007-06-10T13:17:00.000+01:00

I love it whenever someone points and laughs at Martin Luther. Someone other than me, of course. I always get glared at when I call the leader of the Reformation a crazy old bigot.

Zzzz

2007-06-10T12:03:00.000+01:00

I could be bound in a nutshell
And count myself king of infinite space
I don't sleep well any more.

Strangely enough, I am not much affected by the things you'd think would be a problem. When eight people arrive and find that their natural aptitude with keys has been inexpicably diminished, I can stand up, be-gown myself, opne the door, nod sagely while they say something, close and lock the door, and return to bed without leaving a cozy half-consciusness. I've been Brother Doorkeeper before. A housemate debating the pros and cons of their significant other on a mobile? Not a problem. East Oxford's pro-active and paranoid anti-masts lobby guaranteed that there were several years when mobile conversations were only available to someone supine on the second flight of stairs. Those things are nothing to me now.

In an effort to eliminate other complications, I now forbid myself all of the following after six: tea, coffee, beer, wine, rum, Baileys Irish Cream, all dairy products, chocolate and industry. (Food and cogitation are next on the list). So far, this has not helped.

You know what I blame? Sodium orange and the continental climate of the east of the country. I need the world to be darker and colder. And less orange. Durham is in the north, and this leads me to believe that it may fulfil all of these conditions.

Perhaps the main reason is that seven days a week, I am awoken by an alarm. This leads me to remember my dreams, and I hate rememberingg my dreams. They vary between breathtakingly trivial¹ to the unsettlingly bizairre².

Maybe I ought to join the hippies and get mself a sunrise alarm.

1. The canonical example is a dream in which I have just gotten out of bed and am going about my morning routine. Troublesome!

2. E.G. The bombing of Dresden, a cubist take on baking cakes in a tenement in Dresden.

Not mentioning any names, FOX

2007-06-07T20:11:00.001+01:00

Let's say you've made a film. Something in that film has become a cultural touchstone for millions. OK? Well done.

When you make a DVD, don't make me watch that moment, abandoned and out of context, before the menus come up. This is especially true if the moment in question is right at the start.

Fox fanfare. Star Wars theme. Menu. Fox fanfare. Star Wars theme.

It's on a par with reading copyright information in a dozen languages, it really is.

Just a dream

2007-06-04T20:38:00.001+01:00

I'm going to attempt to make a bold statement that is, neverhteless, impossible to deny.

~~Military intervention in a foreign country is sometimes justified~~
~~Granting naturalisation to long-term illegal immigrants is the only reasonable course of action~~
~~Political asylum is a moral duty of all countries, and one that the UK is currently failing to meet~~
The first three minutes and 55 seconds of The Two Towers are what "the moving pictures" were invented for.

How do you bust the clouds?

2007-06-04T17:20:00.000+01:00

One night I overheard the prior exchanging words
with a penitent whaler from the sea
The captain of his ship (who matched you toe to tip)
was known for a wanton cruelty.

In keeping with my ambition to keep current with what cool kids were listening to two years ago, I have just purchased In the Reins and Picaresque.

I am unable to escape this thought.
Prison on Route 41 ≈ Fairytale of New York
Red Dust ≈ Hotel California

Someone please tell me I am crazy.

Also, I think I like the songs about whales and Old London Town better than the songs about horses and the summer. I'm sorry, Alyssa. I hope it is still OK for us to be friends.

EDIT: In the time it has taken me to compose this post, I have played In the Reins though the TV while workin' on tomorrow's exam in the front room. It gains greatly from bigger speakers. It's almost finished, and might well get a back-to-back playing. This race is apparently not as clear-cut as it seemed.

POLOTICS LOL

2007-06-03T13:21:00.000+01:00

Megagaltastic!

2007-06-02T10:15:00.000+01:00

Current mood: Vocabulaire.

This morning I woke up from a dream about ghost pirates¹, sat straight up in bed and said "Everyone is misusing the word sensible to mean prudent!"

On my way to work I found myself stuggling to phrase something: I needed an intensifier. What is it? Am I dead adjective? Am I proper adjective? Oh, now I remember: I'm rather adjective.

I'm rather glad I never got the twang of my Anglo-Welsh or Anglo-caribean grandparents. Despite my Debnshur upbringing, I never promise to do things dreckly², or call shopkeepers my lover. There are many reasons I'll never be a BBC radio announcer from the 1950s, but my accent is not one of them.³

However, my verbal styles are not adamant and, it seems, you don't have to be around me to influence me. Case in point: I have been known to refer to "July second" instead of "the second of July". I refer to sidewalks instead of pavements, TV shows instead of TV programs and, when on a price-gun safari, I keep prices in my head by reciting mantras of the form "custard powder: dollar forty-nine".

It's like the Clinton years all over again.

1. Actually true.
2. Directly.
3. I am too radical for the strictures of the black-and-white era.

Midnight Movies

2007-05-28T17:49:00.000+01:00

California rockers singing Knights in White Satin in french. I approve.

Oh internet, you are so silly

2007-05-27T10:46:00.000+01:00

I KNEW IT

2007-05-26T18:43:00.000+01:00

Gao the Lesser is voiced by Nathan Fillion!

You will probably not understand my excitement unless you are at least two kinds of dork.

⌘⌥S

2007-05-24T22:24:00.000+01:00

Guess what I just discovered when I was trying to turn Dock Hiding on?

VLC player can take a snapshot of what's currently playing, saving it as a PNG on your desktop.

Cool.

I get the bit about pie, though

2007-05-23T16:48:00.001+01:00

You know how you can tell when you're out of your depth?

When Series One Episode One begins with "Previously on Twin Peaks".

Guess who?

2007-05-23T08:14:00.001+01:00

Guess who just left a wallet stuffed with used notes on a table in a (defacto) public library while he wandered off for several minutes?

Hint: he is apparently a guy who does not get what he deserves.

Man, I am just a quotation re-packaging MACHINE today

2007-05-22T19:42:00.000+01:00

"Man, it's like we walk around with dynamite in our mouths"
-C. "Roast Beef" Kazenzakis

Tangents

2007-05-22T19:22:00.000+01:00

I aim to finish this report in the next twelve hours. I have just deleted a paragraph musing on the difference between impossible and intractable. What am I writing about that requires complexity theory, you ask?

The sea.

That's why I deleted it. This may be a long one.

Stay tuned to find out which is stronger:
1) My academic pride and desire to adhere to a meaningless deadline I set for myself
2) My desire to sleep like a human being does

Also, stay tuned to see if the early hours of this morning see me making a graph to explain the time evolution of those two forces. I'm thinking pride (Φ) might be constant, and sleep (Ψ) might be a Guassian around 4 a.m. We shall just have to see what the standard deviation and respective constants are.

If you think I'm joking, you may not be one of "our people".

Someone call Radio Four.

2007-05-22T15:32:00.000+01:00

Comment from: jjacques posted at April 5, 2005 3:18 PM
Opinions are like assholes: everyone has one, and if you post yours on the Internet you may end up regretting it later.

TeXin'

2007-05-21T17:24:00.000+01:00

Score fifty geek points if you pronounced the title of this post correctly. (HINT: That's not an X.)

Like everything else associated with Latech, LaTeXiT¹ is hard to get working and requires memorising a fairly large amount of commands. Then, when you have it working, it's unstoppably awesome².

1. This capitalisation makes me sad, though.
2. Unstoppably awesome if you care about alignment and capitalisation and mathematics.

BLOCKBUSTER!

2007-05-20T16:32:00.000+01:00

Guess what I fired up for the first time in a while? Simcinema!

It reminds me of the days when we'd drink Baker's Brüe¹ and sit around the table in Regent Street, trying to think of ways to remake the arthouse classic Bagpuss shrugged for the mass market. When the rich seam of the Newman's Own² trology ran dry, we tried to make a deliciously opaque, viscous coktail of a film: Jacksonville, Trail of Tears³.

Well, guess it's time to get my nostalgia on by making more hilariously offensive summer releases. Hurray!

1. A viscous, opaque, pint of madness.
2. "Paul Newman fights the mob for control of Argentina's puppet president. Quentin Tarantino directs".
3. "President Andrew Jackson plans to relocate the Cherokee west of the Mississippi... unless a kung-fu shaman of the Crow tribe can stop him. Chow-yun Fat stars."

Maddadaelie

2007-05-19T16:17:00.000+01:00

When I first saw this story, I was greatly irritated- especially since I saw it on a disreputable redtop, which also carried a cash-value equivalent of what they're doing. For reference, that figure was nine times as much as Oxfam will spend supporting half a million people for a year.

Then I heard that they were going to accompany the video with 80s pop, and I decided that it was a masterful, if very edgy, work of kitsch comedy. Now, I've swung back to seeing it as a damning indictment of humanity's tribalism¹. Go team.

1. You may prefer to see this as a damning indictment of my total lack of human feeling towards toddlers.

Ding dong, the witch is dead

2007-05-17T22:29:00.000+01:00

I admit to a certain dark delight.

I should be calculating buckling tensions right now

2007-05-17T17:08:00.000+01:00

How is it that I've never seen these before?

Genius.

I'm looking at you, Stealth

2007-05-16T22:14:00.000+01:00

OK, so it turns out that my intuitive grasp of the German language is not as good as I had hoped. We're barely past the field-full-of-empty holes stage and I have no clue what's going on.

I have, though, been reminded of one of my favourite things about the original Star Trek. It was so blisteringly progressive in it's day, and so dated now.

1966: "In the future, women will be able to go into space!
2006: "So you have one woman on the crew and she's... the receptionist? Huh."

1966: "Look, we've got a Soviet, a black person, some kind of Asian, plus that dude has hella pointy ears (great job, SFX!)"
2006: "And they're all being commanded by... a blond American male? Huh."

To be fair, we as a society still seem to be able to produce movies with three main protagonists whose names may as well be The Black One, The Woman, and The Normal One.

Anyway, enough outrage: back to Klingons shouting at Vulcans in German.

Ich benötige meine Schmerz

2007-05-16T21:45:00.000+01:00

I rent movies and copy them onto my hard-drive. I rationalise to myself that this is OK because they are for personal use, and I consider a five-day obsessive re-viewing cycle to be included in the mandate of the rental. While I'm doing that, other people may as well be enjoying the movie- especially in today's case, where I only got the film to listen to the Riff, I figure i may as well copy it and send it back into circulation. I'm increasing the value of the rental serive, therefore increasing the value of the DVD, therefore helping out the copyright holders. SO.

I have a program, and a darn fine one, to do the job but it has... quirks. Like, you can have a film with subtitles, or without. A mostly English film where folks occaisionally say something in Elvish or Klingon will NOT have helpful one-scene subtitles if you didn't set them to "on" at the get-go.

This what led me to say "Man, Vulcan really sounds a lot like German, doesn't it?"

Yeah. Apparently this DVD's first (and therefore, according to my software, default) audio track isn't the language of first production: it's the first alphabetically. Deutsch.

Time to see how much of The Final Frontier I remember. Does this one have the Crystalline Entity? Or the Genesis device?

Oh well. I guess it's just you and me, Mike. Let's do this thing.

I got the idea from Mildred Taylor

2007-05-15T20:56:00.000+01:00

I am a man who walks everywhere, and have consequently worn through my cheap-ass shoes.

Some said it couldn't be done, others that it shouldn't. They said I didn't have the know-how, or any tools.

Well, guess who's stepping out tomorrow in shoes soled with the finest cardboard a man can fish out of a dumpster.

This guy.

Thoughtcrime

2007-05-14T12:39:00.000+01:00

I am relatively unmoved by the fate of Madeline McCann.

I mean, yes. Horror. Obviously. The thing is, the world is soggy with horror and the fact that it's happening to a tow-haired tot doesn't seem enough to me to make front-page news for two weeks.

Does this make me a bad person? I have been told as much on two seperate occaisions now.

Um

2007-05-14T12:22:00.000+01:00

Did my ex's fiancé just Come Out on facebook dot com? Or perhaps he just isn't clear on the nuances of that particular website?

Some days I am convinced my life would make a good soap opera. It'd be like a cross between Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me and Beverly Hills 90210.

Behavioural consequences

2007-05-14T08:23:00.000+01:00

As a result of watching TV, I have ended up with certain odd habits:

Johnathan Creek: Thinking about my day's schedule in terms of an alibi.
Jeeves and Wooster: Using the word "bally" as an intensifier.
Firefly: Idiom abuse.
Spiderman 3: The finger-guns.
Fellowship of the Ring: Racial prejudice against Uruk-hai.

You probably don't even know what Germany is

2007-05-11T10:19:00.000+01:00

I would go and see this film. I would see it, and feel smugly superior for doing so.

This threatens my sense of cultural discernment. I'm all unsettled now.

Dear Diary,

2007-05-09T21:15:00.000+01:00

No-one here thinks jokes about forced labour camps are funny.

Sigh,
Bilbo Kenobi

Answer me these questions three

2007-05-09T12:31:00.000+01:00

1.) How did I end up writing essays for a living? That ain't me at all.

2.) Why, despite constant barrages of evidence to the contrary, do I persist in the belief that coffee enhances my essay performance?

3.) What if John Wilkes Booth had used a batleth?

The boat race was rigged by the CIA and Union Carbide

2007-05-07T16:19:00.000+01:00

Blues rule. Slightly different shade of blue suck.

It's like there's a party in my mouth and everyone's hacking at the walls

2007-05-05T21:13:00.000+01:00

I have developed two mouth ulcers. They show up every so often and hang around for a week or two, souring my outlook on life. This seems to be a hereditary thing, so I'll mark it as the first of th Three Woes my paternal DNA will probably subject me to¹. I call them Jimminy and Monstrous. Because they are partly caused by rubbing on my teeth (Jimminy on my lower left canine and Monstrous on an upper right incisor, if you're interested), holding my lips in any kind of normal human position is painful. So is talking, eating and smiling. Consequently I have spent all day in a simian grimace. On the plus side, at least this makes it extremely unlikely that anyone will want me to kiss them soon.²

My dinner tastes of blood. Sigh.

1. Early baldness and gall stones on the way! Woohoo!
2. I hate to disappoint. I hate to disappoint due to mouth wounds even more.

Use these phrases today

2007-05-04T08:00:00.000+01:00

1): Love that dare not speak its name:
This phrase is awesome because it's only a few generations old, but is hilariously antiquated. These days, we not only dare speak its name but it's the basis of several network TV franchises and at least one major motion picture.

2) Spendocrat:
Paris and I had a conversation in which I said I'd vote for the Lub Dems in the Crappington West council election. Paris asked what party favour aboltion of the welfare state and closing the borders, on the grounds that poor people don't work hard enough and that parts of Leicester don't feel like England any more. I'm fairly confident that neither of us voted, though, as it was yesterday^*1. Let's call it a draw.

3) Nine-eleven
You may skip this one if you're not running for office. If you are, the phrase is Nine eleven nerver forgive. Wait, I mean never forget. Ha, don't make that mistake. People will think you lack the proper Muslim virtues. Crap. No. Christian virtues. Geez, this is why I'll never get into government.

*1. I worked from 9 to 9 (Like I did the day before, and will do again today). She is just loosing the ability to distinguish day and night by sleeping for four-hour snatches throughout the 24, and subsisting entirely on cigarettes and snakebite.

This was actually just a list of points I wanted to cover, but it says it all.

2007-04-29T17:32:00.000+01:00

Topic: windflowers
Wizards: The Grey Towers
Pay: bus driver.
Hurray!

Geekin' out again.

2007-04-27T21:23:00.000+01:00

Today I used the word "d6". It's what YOU call a die. Or dice. Whatever. D6.

Now I am going to link to a webcomic about videogames.

Legendary.

A little reminder

2007-04-26T17:41:00.000+01:00

I have been using my new USB fash drive. Here is an image I put on there during my stay at home.

Dial-up: the futuristic magic that feels like antiquated horror.

√2=1

2007-04-26T01:05:00.000+01:00

It's one in the morning, and I'm laughing in the dark. So much so, that I have gotten out of bed, turned on the computer, and fired up blogger to tell you about it.

The punch line is "What's the square root of two? Answer: one!"

There's something wrong with me.

PS. The set up to that punchline is the best explanation I've been able to come up with so far as to why "infinitesimal" is not the same as "zero" (and consequently that 1÷0≠∞, and I don't care what anyone says). If I have time I'll draw it for you one of these days. Certainly not tomorrow though, as I have to think up good executive sounding words to sugar-coat peak oil and then make a powerpoint show about them. For real.

PPS. The other day I said "recite the digits of pi backwards" and chuckled to myself for hours.

PPPS. Yes, at my own joke.

PPPPS. Yes, at my own joke about transcendental numbers..

PPPPPS. What are you, Gandalf?

Pimeapple

2007-04-21T17:04:00.000+01:00

Hey Nathan!
Hey.
Did you just get back from an eleven hour shift at work?
Yeah.
You must really love that place, huh?
No. No, I do not.
Oh... well, then the pay must be pretty good, right?
Well, it's no so much "good" as "illegal".
I've been meaning to ask you something. Why? Why oh why?
Um... protestantism?
That's not really an answ... did you just drink a litlre of unfiltered pineapple juice in a sitting?
Yeah!

Call me Ishmael

2007-04-19T21:39:00.000+01:00

Excerpt from "Possible cool names to adopt next time I move cross-country":

Ishmael
Pro: Every introduction is now an opportunity to make a cultural reference.
Con: I don't like living in hostility towards all my brothers¹.

Quigon
Pro: Qui-gon Jinn is super awesome.
Con: But a bit credulous, when you get right down to it, and you hate credulity
Con: Also, you were only ever called that by one person for a few weeks, so you'd be reaching to claim "People call me..."
Con: The less said about Episode One The Phantom Menace, the better.

Kyot
Pro: Medieval chic
Pro: Implies a well-read background
Con: Pronunciation reminiscent of expectoration
Con: Constant need to spell it for people
Con: Sounds slightly like a mushroom?

Hamburger
Pro: Subtle anti-war statement
Con: Not sexy

Taiga
Pro: similar enough to "Tiger" for jokes, but distant enough that people will not suspect that this is my motivation
Con: Do I really want to be named after a biome?

1. Does this joke reveal that all my biblical jokes are NIV? It's a shame, because the KJV is always a comfort and friend to the dark legions who stand at the edge of darkness.²

2.Talking of the edge of darkness, man! I got really sidetracked today, didn't I? I'm a regular old clarkson when I've had too much sugar, apparently.

It's oh so quiet

2007-04-17T16:49:00.000+01:00

Devon is driving me out of my mind. Send help.

Canada gets me again

2007-04-10T11:04:00.000+01:00

I hate it when bands put punctuation in their name.

And now I'm going back down to Devon for a week. It's like Burning Man without all the art and sand. Peace.

Oh noes!

2007-04-10T08:27:00.000+01:00

My belief system is crumbling! Damn you, peanut butter!

Or, the Importance of Wahing the Hands

2007-04-09T19:56:00.000+01:00

There are many metrics for how good a man's life is. One that I think rather robust is the number of times in a given 12-month period that he feels close to vomiting. Through weakness of character and lack of foresight, I have increased this year's V-number by falling afoul of the demond drink.

I have spent a night spitting and thinking crazy feverish thoughts about how I would be less angry in the morning. When your body rejects tapwater, you know that you've crossed the line from indulgence to poisoning.

Frankly, I think it's time to start work on checking off one of my life goals: secular monasticism. Sobriety and vegetarianism¹ are looking pretty good right now. A vow of celibacy wouldn't be much of a burden when you consider my face and love of Star Trek^{2, 3}. Sustainable living, of course, is a cause celebré for me. Finally, the clothes are awesome.

1. Barbeque. I have been sweating beef fat all day. I feel like a McDonalds french-fry.
2. Oh no he didn't!
3. Picard was the best captain.

I'm so confused

2007-04-08T02:01:00.000+01:00

Have you ever done this? Today I woke up, had a shower, made breakfast, got dressed, checked my emails and websites, packed a briefcase and put on shoes before going "Why does my clock say 1.54? That's weird."

Yes. I woke up exactly four hours early (to the minute) for no real reason. This, note you, in the middle of a late-early (where less than 10 hours elapse between the end of a shift and the start of a new one. My second late-early of the weekend. I have had about 10 hours sleep total since Friday morning (the last sunset or sunrise to happen with me outside Premier Convenience Stores).

What's weirder is that, depsite apparently having only slept for three hours, I feel... well, like it's my normal waking up time.

I'm going on a clock hunt.

Today is going to be weird, I can tell.

Coincidence- or is it?

2007-04-06T20:39:00.000+01:00

1)
I just got back from nine hours of writing down things like "McV Hobnobs 300g 79pm +MkCh119pm". I helped close tonight and will be opening tomorrow. My pay remains at it's Not-Even-In-Kansas legality.

2)
The staff of Durham's admissions office are still taking advantage of the unseasonal warmth by running around chasing butterlfies outside in the sunshine and NOT SENDING ME LETTERS.

3)
A sore has developed inside my lower lip. It painfully bashes into my right lower incisor unless I adopt an expression that is dour and petulant. I assume that it is the result of an excess of joy in my body.

Oh Noes

2007-04-06T10:01:00.000+01:00

I just listened to a Bright Eyes track on the radio and really liked it. Does this mean I have to start growing my hair long so thatg I can comb it over my eyes?

Edit: Phew! I heard another one and hated it. Back to my monastic haircut and Sir Thomas Moore clothing.

Argh

2007-04-04T11:34:00.000+01:00

I have discovered something about myself. Some feature of the way my brain works makes it impossible for me to deal with any of the following...

Microsoft Office Assistant
QuickTime
thetrainline.com

...without emitting a Wilhelm.

"We're sorry, but a customer already has that email address". IT'S MY EMAIL ADDRESS. I KNOW YOU ARE LYING. WHY DO YOU DO THIS TO ME?

(one)

I am a leaf on the wind

2007-03-30T00:49:00.000+01:00

One of my big things is picking up on the hot new things of a few years back. That's why I'm obsessively listening to Sufjan Stevens, and why I'm halfway through watching Firefly.

Firstly, this thing has about a million quotable lines. It's like Casablanca in that respect, where a good 50% of the diologue is so classic people think it was said by Shakespeare and made everyone nearby say ""Good one, Shakespeare"".

Secondly, It's a western. No, I don't mean like Star Wars, a sci-fi with anti-authoritarian themes and a budget for flights to Tunisia. I mean, like, the opening credits have horses and a nasal guy singing about how the big sky meakes him feel free. It's about veterans of a war of seccesion who live a criminal lifestyle in the poorly-policed frontier. So far I have seen a duel over a prostitute's honour and a bar brawl where a guy got thrown through a plate-glass saloon window. It's seriously a western. There are also spaceships.

I love genre hybids.

Thirdly, I'm kind of glad I saw Serenity before the series. Although it's the wrong way around, chronologically... man, Serenity was brutal enough when I didn't have a crush on more than half the characters.

Damn those Reavers. Damn them to hell.

Ouch

2007-03-28T21:49:00.000+01:00

I'd like to quash a rumour.

While opening a tough package by hand at the quick-e-mart where I stack shelves for pennies, I did not (NOT) accidentally punch myself in a place not generally amenable to punching.

This is not a CV moment.

Text messages I have sent and received today

2007-03-28T00:54:00.000+01:00

This happened a while after an IM conversation in which I revealed that I have been dancing about all day because the DVD rental fairies have bought me a) some episodes of Firefly and b) the concluding part of the Lord of the Rings.

Them: We're also watching Return of the King.

Me: I'm at the "Guarding the beacon in the mountains that hasn't been used in a hundred years must be a really sucky job" stage. Also, Denethor is a total asshat.

Them: If I'm correct then he's about to get his come uppance. Or downance. On fireance.

She's a clever girl.*

*Side note: I normally wouldn't use this construction because it implies "clever, for a girl". If you don't believe me, ask Joe Biden. Still, I couldn't resist the Jurassic park reference.

The amazing Randi

2007-03-27T13:52:00.000+01:00

A little update on my life: something about the way I sleep has just barred me from a psychology experiment. And just before the stage where it paid cash, too.

Still, there were drawbacks with this experiment. For one, I'd have to spend my tuesdays in a box doing reaction time tests. For another, I'd have had to shave so that theyc ould glue electrodes to my face.

Now, although a little poorer, I can go back to working on my goal of how I want to look by the time I am 35, 55, and 75.

P.S. I <3 James Randi

PPS: Inthe month of March so far, Loughborough has had a stapping, a shooting, a rape and four "sexual assaults". Admittedly, the good folks of the Distric tof Columbia see this waiting in the Starbucks queue, but Loughborough's a market town with a population less than 60 000. I hate the East Midlands and aspire to leave them soon.

PPS. I now use the phrase "I less than 3 it" quite often. So far, no-one has ever gotten it straight off.