How my phone saved my life

So I am walking around Bristol. You do see s lot of people string at their phones.

This android phone has changed me life. People make man wild claims for technoly. I can't stand people who do that, but having this new phone is like having a new child.

When I arrived in Bristol I had a little walk around and got some food. But it was so hot. I wanted to drop my stuff off at the hotel. Normally I spend hours looking at maps trying to find hotels and staring at maps. It was so hot and I was sweating badly. But my phone showed two little dots on  a map. One dot was me and the other was the hotel. I just walked and joined the two dots. And there was the hotel! I could have died from dehydration, but my phone saved me.

As it happens I had walked quite close to the hotel, but I had not noticed it, because it was close to a Wetherspoon pub and I was destracted by thoughts of food.

I had not noticed, but my phone told me that the name of the pub was called the "Knights Templar".

My main worry about my phone is the crap battery life. It almost can't get through a day without needing to be charged

So I left my phone in the hotel to charge and went to explore Bristol. But when I was in Bristol I kept thinking this would be so much more fun if my phone was with me. I could take pictures and check my email. There was a QR diagram for a bus tour of Bristol

Anyway I hope that you find from this post that an Android phone is a useful device to have. Obviously you don't want to get addicted. On the flight over I was sitting next to a fat guy who looked at his phone all the way through the flight. As we were getting close to landing, a steward asked him to turn it off. The guy then said, he didn't think the phone would effect the plane. The steward told him to turn it off now. He turned  the phone off, the steward walked away. He turned the phone on again. I was thinking, should I complain. I don't want to die because some fat guy likes to play "Angry Birds". He did eventually turn it off

Start of a short break in the South of England

The last couple of weeks I have been feeling really burnt out. I booked a holiday to be after a deadline. Unfortunately I missed the deadline, but I still  had the holiday booked so ... I usually like to holiday in  foreign country. I grew up in the North West of England and to us the South is a different country. So I decided to visit the strange South of England, (also to visit some family).

I got the flight from Dusseldorf to Gatwick. When I got off the plane, there were a huge number of armed polices standing around with weapons staring at us. There was also a man with a dog.The dog rushed up to me and I thought I was back in Wuppertal. However the dog was looking for explosive of drugs. The policeman cam the second time with the dog, because it was a bit excited by me the first time.

Anyway I was not arrested. Welcome to England -- a police state. I now have a chip in my passport so I can go through the electronic barrier. This was a bit stressful as I had never used the system before. Anyway the barrier opened for me and I was in the UK.

What does a person need f they get off a plane around 10:00. Why a bacon roll of course. I had not eaten any bacon since Christmas (the last time I was in the UK). Gosh the bacon roll was tasty. People in Europe keep telling me that English food is shit, but have they eaten a bacon roll for breakfast. I think not.

On bile in reviews art versus science

As a physicist I often gossip, bitch and complain about my place in the physics world. However, the humanities take bitterness to critics to a new level.  For example , Alain de Botton wrote to a critic,

"I will hate you till the day I die and wish you nothing but ill will in every career move you make. I will be watching with interest and schadenfreude."

Of course in physics the most important review is the referees report for a journal article. These are used to decide whether the article is published or not. However, these reports are anonymous so an author has to first guess who to complain to. 

This review on  Damien Hirst's recent of paintings is both polite and very rude at the same time. 

In contrast this old review in physics is very mild.

The House on the Borderland

The radio shows on the BBC Iplayer can be listened to by anyone in the world. I often listen to radio plays, while I work. Last week I listened to an adaption of The House on the Borderland by  William Hope Hodgson..

Personally, I thought that Hodgson was using drugs. The story was based on a brother and sister living in an ancient old house. Many strange things happened. He was friends with HP Lovecraft which explains the weirdness.

The Eccentronic Research Council

I was listenin to the Freakzone radio show from last week. There was a great track from an outfit called The Eccentronic Research Council, The track involved Lancashire, I wanted to get the track. However, there is not to much information about them on the web. I found this site, bu it didn't have the track I wanted, which was Autobahn 666.

I tried Amazon, Itunes, and youtube, but I found nothing. This track is a well kept secret. It is not that I can't hear the track, it is also I feel my web hunting skills have been beaten.  I was willing to pay money.

Perhaps the freakzone team is making up new and obscure track just to torment us sad types who worry about these things. I could spend ten years tracking this song down...

OK now that I look at the above site, I see I just have to wait until the summer.

The E.R.C - The Eccentronic Research Council.
Post 1612 Ghosts on Pre 1977 analogue Synthesisers.
The Debut E.R.C. Album Featuring Narraration and Voices by Uk Actor/Actress Maxine Peake & SHOWCASING a few new singing Lady voices is due out this summer on BIRD (2012).

Biography of Doc Savage

I have wanted to read Doc Savage: His Apocalyptic Life  by Philip Jose Farmer for a long time. The book was out of print for a long time., but now is in the kindle store.

Doc Savage was the hero of large number of pulp adventure books written in the 30s and 40s.  There was also a not very good film in the 70s.

Farmer read over 100 of the adventures of Doc Savage and the created this biography.  Doc Savage was both a man of action and a good scientist - so very similar to me, except that I am not really rich. Like a proper biography he counts the number of times that the various characters get knocked out. In the later stories he wonders whether all the fighting gave them brain damage. All the characters started rich, but all ended in relative poverty.

Farmer spends a lot of time trying to work out where Savage's base is. In the end he thought it was in the Empire State Building. Then there is a long discussion about secret elevators and if they were allowed  under the safety rules.

Doc Savage has a college of crime where he cures criminals. As Farmer notes this was probably illegal, as it involved kidnapping and holding people illegally.

My Dr Who addiction

I am starting to think I am addicted to Dr Who. I have been listening to the Dr Who episodes on the BBC Iplayer, watching old Dr Who series from Itunes, and even reading Dr Who novels on my kindle.
I just downloaded Dr Who and the Loch Ness Monster.

When I was young I used to watch the old Dr Who series with Tom Baker, but now that I watch them again on Itunes, I don't remember much from the shows. Britain was a very different place before the evil that was Thatcher  and the lure of loads of money. The Telegraph was a handy review of the top 10 Dr Who episodes.

Below are some of the episodes that I want to track down.

• Inferno
• City of death (famous story part written by Douglas Adams)
• The Massacre of St Bartholomew's Eve
• The Curse of Fenric

Klout score = 10 out of 100

I was just reading the above cartoon. I suddenly thought, but what is Klout.? Anyway I signed up. My influence factor is 10 out of a possible 100. Only 10! Boohoo.

In physics some one once told me the more senor you are the more you can hold the field back.

Communicating Science

During the last week I read "Communicating Science" by Nicholas Russel. This book was not a how to on science communication, but more a number of philosophical essays. The author points out that the outreach phase came from scientists, rather than from the general public. He gave some examples of citizens jurys, who tried to decide on the type of research that should be followed. Good luck with trying that with a high energy theorist.

There was even some discussion of science fiction. I was amused to see the claim that Fred Hoyle wrote a science fiction story about viruses/bacteria from outer space starting life, before he had written any scientific articles.

I didn't realize that Nature was started as a popular science journal.

It would be interesting to write a history of popular physics, from Feynman to Hawking. Given the amount of controversy over Krauss's book it might be interesting. I am still ashamed that I read the
Tao of physics before I went to University. Umm, Capra has an interesting publishing history in physics. He was an expert in Chew's bootstrap theory of particle physics that is no longer used after the development of the standard model of particle physics in the middle 70s.

I can almost see the plan of the book. I could start from Mr Tomkins (that I have never read, but will one day and end with the self promotion books of modern scientists. Perhaps somebody reading this blog will give me a book deal. I could get a joint position in a media studies department of the basis of that (boy that would make me cool).

On the other hand I want to call the book: "a short history of bullshit", so it is probably best if just scribble a couple of posts in this blog. I know my place.

Me versus mother nature or alien tech

It is just warm enough for me to need to have the window to my office open. Bits of white stuff floats through the window. This white stuff is also covering the steps up to the University. I read a lot o science fiction and that is starting to make me paranoid I think it is alien technology that is tying to absorb me.

Also I keep finding green worms on me. Am I being changed by an Alien virus that is causing me to bleed green worms. My life is like the Dr Who episode: the ark in space. I am watching this via Itunes and I am being converted into a bug, but where is Dr Who to save me?

People love their dogs in Wuppertal. Given that I have a 15 minute walk through a forest to get to work everyday, I see a lot of dogs. So normally I am used to getting barked at, but when I came out of work on Friday a German Shepard dog lunged for me and almost drew blood, while his owner paid more attention to his Handy.

Eminent Victorians

The last couple of days I have been listening to someone read Eminent Victorians by  Giles Lytton Strachey. The book was a biography of the following Victorians:

• Cardinal Manning
• Florence Nightingale
• Dr. Thomas Arnold
• General Gordon

The book is famous, because it was no particularly respectful to its subjects. Also  perhaps the Victorians were once regarded as the people who built the British empire. Like the decline of the Roman Empire, most of the problems were caused by deep Christean beliefs.

Manning became head of the Catholic Church in the UK. He seemed a bit of politician type. He was famous during his lifetime, but now is forgotten. 

I was interesting to hear about Florence. She was a very driven person, who was very demanding. I didn't realize that she was really more an administrator.

The Arnold guy was the headmaster at Rugby public school. He could have reformed the public school system in a useful way, but instead he devised a system that has led the feeble public school boys, such as Cameron. Arnold was very religious -- which caused all the problems. I did like the way he delegated a lot of power to the sixth form.

Man City

I should say that I am not that interested in football, but I was very pleased to see Man City win the premiership this year.  I grew up mostly in Knutsford a small town that is sort of close to Manchester. Before I was 18 I did know about the rivalry between Manchester United and Manchester City. At the time United were not so successful, so there were fewer United fans around.

United have been so successful. The 8 years I spent living in Liverpool somehow made me hate Manchester United for no rational reason. I have been trying to see a video of the United fans crying when they discovered that City had won. Does that make me a bad person.

I was looking at the text from the Guardian. City only won in the last 4 minutes. Everyone thought City would win before the match.  So the game was bit stressful. I can' imagine what it was like for the fans.