Guy Clark

I have been going through a big Townes Van Zandt phase of my life. I just love his songs, but obviously I wouldn't let him in my flat. He was fucking crazy after all, but no doubt polite about it.

I am hoping that my new Guy Clark obsession will work out better for me. I just love the song below. It is depressing to hear the small amount of applause at the end.



And he sings about a knifes as well

Boy were they hard those song writers in Texas.

Yeah, but what about a little Townes van Zandt

Sake hot or cold

I used to drink sake on my birthday. I then changed the ritual and went on holiday for my birthday. The last time I tried to buy sake was in Glasgow, but the guy in the off license told me they no longer it, because of some problem with poisoned rice.

I saw a bottle in the \real supermarket here in Wuppertal. The bottle was lying on my kitchen floor for  a couple of months. While I watching Hari Kari I decided it was time to open it. It was a brand of sake I had never tried before and I found I didn't like it. I usually drink it cold and I was drinking it out of a wine glass.

The next night I  found my sake cup and bottle. I heated the sake, and I am back in love with sake again.

Vampire Girl vs. Frankenstein Girl

I finished Vampire Girl vs. Frankenstein Girl last night. I think I have seen too many Japanese gore films. I fell in love with the vampire chick, but I felt sorry for her boy friend.

I was mostly disturbed by that school club for self harm. Although many people could be disturbed my many parts of this film.

Dream of a dead friend,

I slept badly last night. At the end of the night I dreamed that I met up with a friend I grew up with and his wife. We had a nice time together and then we arranged to meet up the next day. The plan was that his wife was to pick me up from my flat, but I told them I would meet them in town. There was some uncertainty over whether my friend would still be in Germany.

When I woke up I remembered that my friend was dead. I don't think that the dream was some latent desire for his wife. It could of been that I was not a good friend to him in the last years of his life.

Childless comedy gold

It seems like everyone I know is breeding children. Do I feel left out or some biological need to be a father? Well not really, particularly after watching the comedy set below.

Hara-Kiri remade by Takashi Miike.

I finished watching Hara-Kiri directed by the insane (but great) Takashi Miike. It was an amazing film. I am real hard core action guy, who rates a film on the "body count", but in this film, I was praying that the final scene would not end in huge fight. The main actual suicide in the film is horrific.

After watching this film, if anyone asks me what my purpose in life is I can reply "I am just waiting for spring."

I now have to watch the original film made in 1962.

The Yakuza

On Tuesday I watched The Yakuza - a great  film from the 70s with  Robert Mitchum as the American star. Mitchum goes out to Japan to rescue the daughter of a friend. He was stationed in Japan during the war, so he has old friends there.

There is a lot of violence in this film, but there is still some great acting and a clever plot. Some of the learning about Japanese culture seemed a bit forced. Still the idea of Giri was intrinsic to the film.

I like Robert Mitchum seems a bit old broken, but he is still deadly, when he has to be. This is a much better film than "Kill Bill".

Of course I really want to be Ken Takakura. I am not sure about the Kendo though.

Feeling guilty after delaying a beautiful woman from getting coffee

I usually get into work about 9:30. I then go and but a cup of coffee at the cafe near my office. Today the student in front of me was wearing a smart brown rain coat. She had blond hair and was beautiful in a normal practical way. She went to the first coffee machine. I went to the next one along. I was just getting the paper cup ready to receive the dark coffee. Somehow there was a problem with her machine and she turned to use mine. It was a split second thing, but I feel that if I was a gentleman I would have let her use mine. She was a child off the light, so there was no question of a small  act of generosity starting a conversation leading to a relationship of some kind. I Just feel I was being selfish. Perhaps I can blame my caffeine addiction.

Dreaming about football mangers and zombies

In my dream last night I was sitting at wooden picnic table with Alex Ferguson, Arsene Wenger and two other people. I don't remember any of the conversation, so I don't have any football tips, ot any gossip about Wayne Rooney. One of the guy starting to produce a little spittle from his face. Then a lot of white fluid flowed out of his mouth and nose. The people at the table looked very surprised.

What should I have done? Frankly it seemed easier to just wake up and not deal with the problem. Perhaps the guy was having a fit, but more likely he was turning into a brain eating zombie. I am sure that Alex and Arsene could deal with the guy and if they get eaten, well ....

Me and the fall

I feel in a bit of music rut. I just purchased the latest Fall album: Re-Mit Luckily it is a great fall album. I first heard about the fall in the mid 80s. The TV played the video for Mt Pharmacist



I had never heard of the fall at the time. One of my sister's friends said something like: "The same old Mark E Smith". Given that the fall had only been going 6 years by then. I was not in the cool crowd or I would have known about them in 1979. So I only occasionally buy Fall album's because they can be a bit shit sometimes.

I was so surprised to see how old Mark E Smith looked, when people tried to interview him when John Peel died. Getting old is natural of course and he likes to sup his beer as well. I have seen the fall play only twice. They played at the Liverpool and at a festival in Glasgow. You see I am not a total fanatic.

Faster

I finished watching the film "faster" last night. It starred the "rock" in major revenge mode. I also liked Billy Bob Thornton playing a junky loser cop. If the plot had been slightly better written, it would have been a much better film. I am not sure why they needed the hit man in the film.

I enjoyed it more than the standard type of film Dwayne Johnson stars in. It was good to see him as a badass.

Three kettlebells ate my hamstrings

I have been trying to get fit (at least for me), so I am slowly starting to train with weights. I was doing so well, before the tress of preparation for the two conferences I went to this year. If you come into my flat, you will see three kettlebells. These are a great workout but I never do them regularly enough. In fact you will notice that there is dust on the kettlebells -- as though they rarely get used.

I did train with them yesterday, And now I remember why I don't use them too much. My hamstrings are on fire. Still no pain -- no gain.

I ponder robotics

I have been thinking about life outside a physics department at a University. I have been putting off the inevitable for some time, because the economy has been so bad. So things are slightly improving at the moment, but the current Tory obsession with pulling the UK out of Europe makes me nervous about the future f he future of the UK economy.

One issue that the Tory party hate about Europe is that they feel it stops that driving down wages and benefits to the normal workers. It is clear that they would really love robots to do the majority of the work because they would have zero wage bills, and they wouldn't have to deal with nasty people outside their class. (Of course you still need to buy workers and you need

I could take a political stand on this or I could learn how to program robots.

So I have been searching for books on amazon. So I looked at  Robotics: A Very Short Introduction.

Ironically today there was an article in the guardian about the effect of automation on the economy by Will Hutton. This book was also advertised around Hutton's article.

Beer glass envy in Germany

Last night I went out into the centre of Wuppertal to go food shopping ad then drink some beer in some bars. The first bar I went to had a group of older English men in. They were talking loudly, but it was Friday. They were were drinking beer in huge litter glasses. I had ordered a big beer, but in this part of Germany a big beer actually means 1/2 liter. Somehow the English guys had found a secret stash of big glasses -- especially for tourists. I spent the rest of the evening feeling bitter the effort I had put into learning German has been wasted. If I had just kept to English and spoke louder than I too could could have been drinking from a litter beer glass. This was important last night, because the service was a little slow.

I went to a new bar (to me at least( called Viertel bar. I drank  one small beer and decided to get the bus home. Kind of a boring evening really. If only I could have drunk out one of those secret liter beer glasses.

I have seen the future and (thankfully) string theory is dead.

After my use of some ideas from the Hitch hikers guide to the Universe to predict the scale of new physics. I have another idea. I can use science fiction TV shows to predict the future. I remember one episode of Star Trek that involved a lot of time travel. As part of the show we see that the android "data" is the Lucasian Chair at Cambridge once held by Newton and Paul Dirac.

What does that tell us? Well it shows that in the future physics will  be dominated by data driven science, rather than subjects such as string theory that use philosophy and the history of science to market themselves. Also we see the importance of computers for physics research (and perhaps of the android operating system).

My new way of speculative physics research based on watching TV shows is more fun that hacking computer code, but probably much less important.

A night out at the B7 club in Wuppertal.

So I did get my ass in gear and I went to the centre of Wuppertal to go to the B7 club. My head was feeling really bad as I got close to the club. I almost turned back, but I finally decide to go in. I am always nervous walking into a place with door staff. The two doormen at the club looked relaxed and perhaps a bit bored. One of the doorman gave me a piece of paper. I then waited to buy a ticket, but there was none at the ticket counter. I waited and then the doorman shouted for me to go in. I thought great no cover charge.

At the bar I tried to buy a beer. It turned out that the card was to record what booze had been ordered. it was 10pm on Wednesday so the club was not very full. Most people (but not all) people were wearing black clothes of some kind. The advert for the gig said the music was: 
Gothic, Electro, Wave, Mittelalter, Kult Classics. To be perfectly honest I can't remember what a Gothic band sounds like. I liked the music-- it certainly wasn't hard code techno.

At some stage I switched from beer to absinthe and cola. I was a bit suspicious of combining absinthe with cola, but I enjoyed the drink enough to order a second. I felt very woozy after the first absinthe. A young woman was dancing very fast to the music. The absinthe mingled with my guilty desire for the dancer. I started to feel warm and the walls pulled in and began to smolder. The second absinthe and cola was not as much fun, so I switched back to beer.

After 80 minutes I decided to leave. I payed my bill with the doorman and went into the night in search of a bus to take me home.

I felt good the day after. Sometimes I just need a night out.

My crazy idea for the scale of BSM physics.

This is a not a science blog, but it seemed like a good a place as any to tell you of my revolutionary theory of fundamental physics. The main goal of high energy physics is to find Beyond the Standard model physics. However so far no evidence for BSM physics has shown up at the LHC (see for example). So senior people are devising unbelievable crap arguments for their favoured model.

The key question to me is what is the scale of new BSM physics?

My answer is 42 TeV,

Then this is issue is what is the question. What does 42 TeV mean in turn of a specific model.
And as a lattice person we need to build a big super computer to figure out what 42 means.
You see it all hangs together.

I am impressed that the number 42 has its own wikipedia page.

Party time

I need a night out. So if it doesn't start raining I will walk down town and go to club to hear some music. I am planning to go to a club called B7 and the night out is called Dark Stop. The music is not live.

I hope they will let me in. It could be that I am too old and broken.

In love with a dream like Bulgaria woman

Last night I dreamed that I was planning to visit Bulgaria, probably for some conference. I did a trial run by train, but I didn't get very far into the country and turned back. A very nice Bulgarian lady explained to me a better route with a train map. I kept trying to find reasons to talk to her again.

The evil UK based tabloid press would say the EU has corrupted another English man, because he lusts after Bulgarian women rather than worshipping an English rose. It was a strange dream, but I will hopefully visit Sofia later this year. I follow my dreams.

Possible mistake in Nightmare In Silver Dr Who episode

I was watching the latest Dr Who episode "Nightmare In Silver" for the second time.
It struck me that the cyber computer was worrying about losing a game in 3 moves. Three is not a big number, even with different combinations multiplied in I don't see how they could not have mapped out all the possible chess moves for more than 3 moves ahead. For example the deep blue chess computer from IBM which beat Kasparov at chess, could go to at least 6 moves ahead.

It is definitely possible to map out all possible three moves, but
perhaps I should actually work out the total number of combinations.

Should I tell the world about this novel piece of insight? I could post this insight on an internet forum, but perhaps it is better not to.

Friday night

For about two weeks I have promising myself a night out in the flesh pot city of Wuppertal. It takes me about 35 minutes to walk into town, so once I am home it takes me some effort to actually go downtown. On Friday I went shopping after work and then I visited a couple of bars close to the railway station.

In the end nothing exciting happened. I am ashamed to say that I ate a bowl of nachos at the Lola bar, but I guess there is no point pretending to stick to a diet on an evening of beer. I think the next time I go out I will go to a club.

I lost my soul from watching you tube

So last night after a session fueled by absinthe and beer I decide to watch youtube. For some reason I searched for Aleister Crowley. Although I am an atheist I do have a fear of selling my soul to the devil. I am not sure if it is being tortured for eternity or the lack of control over my density. So the last think I should be listening to the wickedest man in the world.



But he has a comedy voice, so I am not scared but perhaps I should be.

My absinthe spoon

I have wanted to buy an absinthe for a while. Last night I at the Real supermarket in Wuppertal I saw a small bottle of absinthe on sale with a glass. When I opened the packet I found an absinthe spoon as well. I actually did the burning sugar this evening. I poured the absinthe over the sugar and into the glass. Then I used a lighter to set fire to it (after nearly burning my finger).

I am not sure about taking a drink with a sugar cube. I also (for the first time) added water to the absinthe. The drink does indeed go milky as the book promised.

After the first glass [of absinthe] you see things as you wish they were. After the second, you see things as they are not. Finally, you see things as they really are, and that is the most horrible thing in the world

Oscar Wilde  

Tokyo Gore police

I watched the film Tokyo Gore police over the last couple of days. The actors and actress's take it the silliness so seriously. I nice bit of fun viewing.

Exploding beer accident

It is a national holiday in Germany tomorrow. There will be no shops open at all. (Apart from garages) I was just stocking up with beer at my local super market. As I was buying the food one of the beer cans exploded and sprayed beer all over the cashier. I don't think it was my fault, but I might have hooked the ring pull a little when I put it in my basket. One advantage of not speaking German is that I would have apologized if this would have happened in the UK. The rest of the people waiting in line thought it was funny. I was the real victim because I may not have enough beer.

Dreams of martial arts

Last night I had a vivid dream where I hosted a martial arts class in my one room flat. My flat is small, but the martial arts class was small with only a few people. I had come back from some big trip, so I didn't train with the rest of the class because I was so unfit. The first time the class came round I was naked, but when they came around again I had put on some clothes. I felt very loyal for hosting class, but a bit of a loser for not training.

I would like to say that my body wants me to get fit via martial arts again. However, I manged to trash my ankle yesterday, by just doing some light stretching.

Diana Rigg age and Dr Who

I really enjoyed the last Dr Who episode: The Crimson Horror. I particularly liked the crazy woman. This turned out to be Diana Rigg. I used to really fancy her when she was in the Avengers. Her main fault was it looked as though she couldn't hit very hard. Of course time is the master of us all, so she could not have remained young and beautiful for ever.

She can still act. She totally deranged in the Dr Who episode.

The Dedalus Book of Absinthe

I just finished reading The Dedalus Book of Absinthe. The book was a great collection of everything about the drink Absinthe. I first heard about Absinthe when I read about it killing Edgar Allan Poe. It is no longer clear that it was Absinthe that killed him, because had dried out at the end of his life.

I first drank Absinthe at my cousin's flat. I was travelling to Prague and he was excited that there was a lot of Absinthe there. Now that I have read the book I find that Absinthe was originally a Swiss or French drink. It was banned in France and many other places. It was never banned in the UK, because not enough people drank it. I also drank Absinthe in Prague. I found a bar called
the Marquis De Sade bar and ordered a beer and Absinthe. At the time I thought my life has reached this low point, but then I took a sip and thought tasty.

In the 90s people drinking Absinthe became a bit fashionable again -- although it totally missed me.
The drink was imported from Prague. The usual suspects Johnny Depp and Damien Hurst were seen drinking it.

There is a lot of literary tradition with drinking Absinthe, which is why I sometimes drink it. Oscar Wilde and Aleister Crowley used to drink it. It has the reputation of driving a person to ruin. I got a bit depressed to see a number of writers who drank Absinthe to excess for some weird reality and artistic reasons. In the end they were destroyed and found no new realities -- just illness and poverty.

I usually drink a small glass of neat Absinthe, but this book convinced me that I should add water. I should get a special spoon.

Boring Saturday night made more exciting with a bomb

I was sort of planning on going out for a couple of beers this evening. It is about a 40 minute walk into town and frankly I couldn't be bothered. Part of the problem was that I had to listen to a production of Accidental Death of an Anarchist on the radio part of the BBC I player, before it was lost in the early hours of Sunday morning.

I remember watching the play in the mid 80s (I think) when it was on channel 4. The play blew me away then. It made more of an impression after 20 years of free market brain washing. People were more optimistic then I think that the left would prevail.

Or perhaps I am being naive. I would feel bad if the Boston bombers had been influenced by the play.

Wasted (but relaxing) day in Bangkok

So I only had a full day in Bangkok. I was planning to go to some famous ruins, but in the end I could not be arsed to do anything. I started the day with a dip in the Jacuzzi in my hotel room. I enjoyed the bubble, but it would have been better with a woman as well, or at the very least a rubber duck to play with.

I was staying at the President Solitaire Hotel and Spa
View Larger Map

 When I went out in the morning I found a lot of nice bars, restaurants and shops. It was hot so I didn't make it further than a block from the hotel. The pavements were full of little market stores selling tourist goods. I was carrying hand luggage or otherwise I would have purchased some butterfly knives.

I essentially just I ate food and drank a couple of beers. There were a lot of older guys with younger (but not children)  beautiful Asian girlfriends. I was so jealous. No one bothered me at all and everyone was friendly.


In the evening there were outside trucks selling cheap cocktails. I just drank one.

I had an early flight back to Singapore the next day. So I saw only a little of Bangkok.

This post from Nexus 7

So this is the future writing a blog post with my voice. I talk but the tablet does the actually writing I am just speaking. This is clearly the future.Um I still had to do a lot manual editing.

The Eyre Affair

I did manage to read a few books when I was travelling. One such book was: The Eyre Affair by Jasper Fforde. This was both a funny and sweet novel. The heroine Thursday Next is literay special agent. Unfortunately part of the book deals with the plot of Jane Eyre, which I have not read, because I am man with a penis. I am probably going to have to read this blasted Jane Eyre because it could be that the plot was changed in the book, as many other things were. Still a great book!

The Man with the Iron Fists

The first movie I watched on my tablet was "The man with the Iron fists". This film was presented by Quentin Tarantino. This should have been a warning sign. Also I rented the film from Germany, so the film was dubbed into German, but I didn't think that would be a problem with this type of film.

The film was clearly some kind of homage to 70s kung fun films, but somehow it was  not as good as the 70's kung fu films. I found the use of rap music annoying. I was sad to see that RZA from Wu Tang was in it and partly wrote it. Some of his rap and martial arts worked really well, but this movie was not good.

Oh  yeah, I found the table a bit small to watch the film.  There is no simple wired solution to connect it to a terminal.

First night in Bangkok

So when I was planning a trip to Singapore, I looked around to see somewhere close. I decided to visit Bangkok for a couple of nights -- well it had to be visited once.

I took the train from the University to the airport. As usual my luggage tied me down. I was travelling by a budget airline and I didn't think I had booked for luggage, so I put my big bag into the left luggage. This was cheap, but I wished I had done it earlier in the day to free me of my hated luggage

Things started to go wrong at the airport. After I checked in I think the guy at the airline counter lost my departure form. I was hauled away at passport control, because I no longer had it. They took  me to a separate counter where a very nice young lady asked me "how I liked Singapore", when I told her that I had been working at a conference, she said "that is so sad" in such a sweet voice. I then got a voucher for food because it  had been my birthday that week.

At Bangkok airport I took a taxi to my hotel. I didn't really take enough money from the cash machine, because the tax driver asked me if I wanted to take the toll roads and I would pay the tolls, but I was not sure if I had enough money, so we went the slow route.

I got to the hotel OK. I had a huge hotel room. There was also a big screen TV and even a 4 poster bed for me to sleep on. Room service offered condoms, but the hotel didn't seem that wild. There was also a jacuzzi

I went out for a walk. There didn't seem that much around. I found a grocery store where I purchased some beer and a tooth brush. To be perfectly honest I was a bit worried about getting mugged or some kind of disease or accidentally walking into a brothel, so I didn't explore too much.

I had a light snack of nachos and a Thai salad in the hotel bar. The bar was empty and very dark. At some stage they turned the lights back on. This seemed a bit strange until I realized that it was Erath night and the lights were turned down for 1 hour.

Django

I watched the original Django movie a couple of days ago. The film was fantastic. You have got to like a film that has a character who drags a coffin behind him through the mud. Of course the Tarantino film Django Unchained rips off the film in a shameless way -- although he would say pays homage to the fim. (The ploys are different between the two films of course).

This is probably the worst dubbing I have heard.

Saturday in Munich

So where we with my break in Munich. I was staying in a hotel near the railway station. The hotel was fine, but the room had no toilet. It seemed like a good idea when I was booking the room, because it made the hotel a lot cheaper, but it was not such good idea when I had flu and after I had been dosing myself with beer.

I had booked a first class ticket back to Wuppertal, but this meant I had to take a specific train in the afternoon -- otherwise I would have gone home as soon as I got up. I took the S-bahn back to the centre around the new town hall.  This is the area around  Marienplatz,

I  then searched for the Viktualienmarkt which is close by. I thought that is was a general market, but now that I look online I see that it is a farmers market, which explains why there was so much food on sale. There was a lot of interesting food on sale. My feet were also hot from the stupid trainers I was was wearing. People started drinking beer very early. It is traditional to have a Weisswurst Breakfast with a beer., but I didn't think it was wise with the fever I was suffering from.
At the time I misunderstood that market name and I was looking for virtual market (which makes no sense in meat space.)

There were a lot of american tourists around.

Around 13:00 I was cold and ill, so I decided to wait for the train in an Irish bar. I stayed there for two maybe 3 beers.  I think I ate some kind of curry too.

After the pub I went back to the railway station. I had booked a first class ticket back, because it was only 10 Euros more than second class. OK, so the seats were bigger, but the tea was not free and I didn't see any plugs or Wifi.

So I enjoyed my stay in Munich. It was just a pity that I was  sick.

Spring cleaning online and in meat space.

I am so behind on my blogging. After yet more travelling and a week being sick, I am back in Wuppertal. Yesterday was a national holiday, so I spent the day messing around with computers and  
tablets. I mostly installed a number of apps, while I tried to set up a media centre.

The weather was just warm enough for me to finally sit out on the balcony and read.
The leaves are finally coming back, so the view from my balcony is much improved over what I see during the Winter.

I did also tidy up my flat a little. The place had a number of piles of physics papers that I have now filed. I also hovered for the first time.