space

Here is an exciting action packed video of my hotel room in Portugal. This cost me 12 pounds a night. It was huge. In fact when I got back to Germany, I was depressed because my flat here is 2 to 3 times smaller than the hotel room. Then I remembered the reason why I live in a small flat is because it is easy to clean.

pool

Below are some photographs of the hotel pool in Portugal. I only saw 2 people in the pool over the full week. Early Sunday morning I did hear a lot of splashing and shouting. Party animals I thought. There was a pool side bar, so I did vaguely think about spending all day drinking there. But the lack of people would have made it depressing. (Drinking all day would be bad of course).

Sinister concrete fountain

Here is a picture of what I think is a fountain that was close to my hotel in Portugal. This is not exactly a wishing well. Some water comes out of steel grill. What is the point? It was not as if the water was used to help plants grow

Portugal

Somewhat confusingly I write this post from Portugal. I am staying in a cheap hotel in a town called Portimao. It is very touristy area, but has a certain style about it. I have been here for a couple of days now. I have just been lazing around and reading. The weather has been warm, but not really hot, however I am walking around in a t-shirt and shorts. I am not totally warm, but it is a holiday (and the thing to do if you grew up in the North-West of England).

It is off seaon at the moment, so the place is empty. There are lots of places to drink here, but I don't like being the only person in a bar. Every night there are football games on the TV. For example, yesterday ManU versus Liverpool. After that there was a big European game. So the sound of sport is played out in every empty bar.

Although it a famlity type area there are a couple of sex shops and a strip bar. Perhaps the strip bar is full of people in the evening.

no spare time for Wolfenstein

This is not a science blog, but I was amused by this link. I did see that paper on the Wolfenstein parameterization of the CKM matrix, but I decided from the abstract that it was probably crap, so I ignored it.

Of course after climategate it could be that I am a narrow minded scientist, but there are only so many hours in the day and many more worthy things to worry about. In the unlikey event of it being an important result, I am sure someone will let me know.

a fighter's heart

I just finished reading "a fighter's heart" by Sam Sheridan. Sam tells stories of him training in various martial arts. He starts off training in Muay Thai, but he also worked on his ground work in Brazil (where else). He also hangs out with some dog fighting people.

He also spent some time meditating, but he was bored by that, and only got into it just before he left.

I liked the parts about failure the best. He was sparring in a boxing gym, and the opponent He had a bad injury to his ribs that had stopped him training, but he was better. His opponent hit him in the ribs and he freaked and totally lost the fight. He had a lot of negative dialogue where he started worrying, and he lost focus. This used to happen to me all time. (If I every fought Sam I would train a lot of body shots to the ribs, but maybe he is smart and actually has problems with getting punched in the head. I know that this makes me sound like a bad person, but this is the way fighting works).

He did seem to get injured a lot. I felt sorry for him. He went to train in Brazil, but he injured his shoulder, so he couldn't train.

Nice try Tory, but I still hate you.

I finally understand what it means to be bought off by politicians. Download speed is an important quality of life issue. However being able to download a movie from Itunes in a minute will not make up for being under Tory rule. Even living in Germany, I am starting to feel ill with the idea that they will be back.

This means this

I have just finished reading "This means this, this means that a user's guide to Semiotics". I have been listening to Baldi on the BBC iplayer. Normally I hate priests, but Baldi is also a lecturer in semiotics, and he solves crimes. I wanted to be cool as well.

The book had a picture or some banner text on every page with a couple of paragraphs discussing it. For example, see the picture attached. Does this picture represent my feelings about Semiotics? But perhaps, if you knew that I was a particle physicist, the picture might represent my goal of the unification of forces to one single force. Maybe it is my view of string theory? Or more likely I just copied it from the Internet to make this post longer without having to write more text. This post must be enough to make me Prof. of Semiotics.

Godzilla

Yet more snow in Germany! While I was watching TV, I saw a TV program that asked what is your favourite between the American and Japanese version of Godzilla. They then illustrated the question by showing Godzilla destroying the Sydney opera house. How much more international can you get?

in the beginning was the command lin

I can't help feeling that Neal Stephenson is one of us. Stephenson is a famous science fiction writer I have just read "in the beginning was the command line". This is a short book about operating systems and computers from a users perspective. Although it is over 10 years old, I really enjoyed reading it. Most of it is still relevant

One point that book makes is that people don't buy Microsoft windows for rational reasons. Somehow it is a bizzare group delusion. Once that dream is over Microsoft will have problems. (I am not sure how getting a "free copy" of windows with every PC you buy, effects the group delusion.)

Nasty Torys are almost back...

Although I have not bothered to vote in the last few elections, I am starting to dread the next election when those nasty conservatives will get back into power. It is difficult to describe how much Thatcher and her cronnies were hated. This recession has been bad, but somehow this time around the goverment actually did something, rather than say "when my father didn't have a job, he got on his bike to find one."

The omens are not good. We are back in dispute with Argentina about the Falklands. Perhaps there will be another war once Cameron gets into a difficult patch after a few years in office.

I was sad to see that Micheal Foot had died. He was the last of the generation of a particular type of politician and journalist. I remember how the Sun attacked him for wearing a donkey jacket at a memorial. So Murdoch has won again, we are only allowed people like Blair or Blair clones like Cameron as leaders.

Since this post is turning into a bit of a rant, I really am unhappy about the closure of the 6music radio station. As per usual it is a Tory based attack on culture. 6music plays lots of interesting music, it is really sad to have it taken from us. I have joined the relevant facebook group and I will write a strong letter to the BBC trust. That shit Murdoch!

Just to lighten the mood, the video is of Bono falling off a stage.

Cryptonomicon

I once read a memoir by some guy who was on the outer fringes of the beat movement. He worked in a book shop, and perhaps inevitably he had some problems with alcohol. He wrote he was an optimistic person, because he started reading "War and Peace" in his middle 20s, but he finished it in his 30s.

I sort of feel the same thing about the book Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson. I am pretty sure I started reading this when I was living in Liverpool over 3 years ago. I finished it this afternoon. I has forgotten some of the characters, during my long period of not reading it. I think I stopped reading when one of my favorite characters got addicted to morphine (Iam romantic like that).

The book is very hacker friendly. It has not dated that badly, apart from a section where he stores some data onto a floppy disk. If I was more keen I would have played with the perl script included.

I did enjoy one section, where one of the mathematicians writes down an equation for the amount of sex he needs to work effectively.

carnival

So it is start of Carnival time around here in Germany. I am still slightly confused what this involves. There is some tradition that women are allowed to cut men's ties off and they have to kiss the man. This almost gave me a third reason to wear a tie, beyond funerals and job interviews. Apparently now some women only cut a man's tie off, but they don't give a kiss. I blame feminism.

Below are some carnival related songs. Tim put me on to Jackson Frank.

dreams and strokes

This freezing winter has meant that I have not really been out much this year so far. There has been to much ice and snow on the road for me to want to explore. So I go to work, come home and maybe go to the supermarket when I am out of vitals and beer. So I just dream.

However last night I dreamt I had a small part in a film. I was a bit worried that I didn't have a script for my part. But I mostly seemed to go into hotels for breakfast with people. At the end of the dream, I found out that there was no script, but I was going to read the part from a prompter. My acting role was in German, so I think I was worried about the German test I did today.

However, in my dream was a friend I grew up with. He had a stroke and was having problems talking, because of the stroke. I like this person, but I didn't seemed to bothered by his illness. (In real life they are healthy). All day I felt guilty about my treatment of my friend in the dream, but then I thought if I didn't actually do anything to harm him (apart from the binge drinking I did with him in my teens and early 20s), then perhaps I didn't do anything wrong. I would have forgotten about the dream, if I had not forced myself to remember it, so I would write about it. I have felt bad all day, because of the guilt my friend exposed me to, and this is probably the reason I have failed my German exam. I will send an email to him, to try and get the bastard to apologize to me.

On tea

Sometimes I am just such a slob. I was happy to find a reasonable priced variety of Tea at my local supermarket. I was getting sick of paying 3 Euros for a packet of 50 teabags. I am happy now that I can buy 50 Ceylon-Assam tea bags made by "Ja" for under 1 Euro.

Unfortunately there was an essay on tea in the Guardian, so perhaps I should explore different types of tea, and perhaps even clean my mug more often. I like the idea that a cup of tea was is a comfort. Perhaps that is why I drink so much tea.

Mad, Bad and dangerous

I have just finished reading "Mad, Bad and dangerous --the scientist and the cinema", by Christopher Frayling. In my first draft of the post I had a sentence of the form: "Among us hard science types we don't much like media studies type degrees". When I thought about I couldn't remember actually having a discussion about "media studies" with anyone, and in fact I have no idea what the field of media studies actually involves. The tabloid press (via google news) are always complaining about the number of people taking degrees in media studies.

Anyway I thought Frayling's book was a great study of the scientist portrayed in the cinema. He discusses both the mad scientist film and the biopic (of Madame Curie for example). Given that some attempts to do outreach of research can be misrepresented by the press, it is important to understand how science is portrayed in the media. (Of course I can't blame the media for talking about the "God particle", that is bullshit from certain section of the physics community).

The end of the book is now slightly out of date, because of shows like: CSI, big bang theory, and num3ers, show scientists in a slightly more realistic light.

Gil Scott-Heron

When I used to work in Wembley around 1985, a person I worked with took me to see a gig that was part of the red wedge tour. (This was a bunch of artists supporting the labour party -- pre-Blair of course). We wanted too see Billy Bragg play, but he played first, so we missed him because we were in the pub.

What I actually only remember about the gig was hearing "the revolution will not be televised" by Gil Scott-Heron. This was an amazing track, that I spent a lot of time tracking down, by buying CDs and looking in cool record shops.

Nowadays I would just do a google search, or look on Amazon for a track I wanted The guardian are streaming his new album. I was so sad to see that he had a lot of alcohol and coke problems. His early songs seemed positive to me -- even the one about living in the bottle.

Fitness

I must be at a low point for fitness. I keep meaning to do something. In the meantime I found the technique below. Not really a street technique..

winter dreams

I seem to have been going through a state of writers block. This could possibly be related to the snow that seems to have hung around all month.

Last night I had a vivid dream. We were involved in some kind of fight. I went to get some weapons out of the boot of a car. There were no more guns, so I had to make do with a large kitchen knife.

The dream changes and I am staying in a Travelodge like hotel. I was sleeping, but two of the hotel staff walked in and start making me an energy drink. I was worried by the two people walking in, but I liked the energy drink. Then I woke up.

I am not sure what it all means. I guess I shouldn't drink energy drinks in dreams if I want a good nights sleep. I am still bitter I didn't get a decent weapon. At the very least I could have got a flick knife, since they are semi-legal here.

Winter

The BBC was claiming that people in Germany were told to make sure they had 4 days supply of food, because of the new snow storm. Well fuck, no one told me! If they had I would have bourght more tins of beans from the supermarket. So far the snow has not been too thick here, so I don't think I will starve. I ran out of beer on Friday night, but that might have happened even if I had bought 4 days supply.

It is well know that the winter weather cause arguments. In my case, if I was in a relationship, I would be arguing about the heating. I usually fell a sense of failure as a man, if I have to turn the heating on. It makes me feel sluggish and slow. Of course given that it has been sub zero for most of the day, I have had to heat on for the majority of the the day. There is no heat at the moment, so I could write this post in good faith.