Dr · Gleet

Last night I sang karaoke at work. I would have done Okie From Muskogee by Merle Haggard if they'd've had it, because I always do, and I can sort of sing like Merle Haggard. I might have done Everybody's Talking by Fred Neil, if they'd've had it but they didn't. All the songs I fancied doing were woefully inappropriate for my meagre singing skills, but it was karaoke... so I went for Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood by the Animals. I can't sing like Eric Burdon, and I had to sing the chorus an octave lower than I should have. Never mind. Then I did a duet of I Got You Babe. The most surprising song in the list was O Superman by Laurie Anderson. I really should have gone for that.

rhiannon_81 came to visit today, which was splendid. We braved intermittent rain and walked down to Southsea Castle, which is one of the less impressive castles in the world, but at least is by the sea. and within walking distance.

On Friday there was a learning and teaching symposium at the university. I presented a poster, having been asked by the deputy dean for teaching and learning. I also went along to the keynote address, which was given by a physicist from Harvard, and was interesting. He made a lot of sense, and I should give some of the ideas he presented a go. Because I didn't have my glasses, I sat in the front row. This meant that the hosts - the university bigwigs - introduced the speaker to me, and we got chatting. That was all good. Because it was a big event, there was a photographer taking pictures of the speaker and the audience throughout the lecture. Then, at then end, when I was about to leave, the photographer came up to me and asked whether he could take a picture of me. I said he could - and he did. He didn't to it to anyone else... curious. Maybe it was because I was dressed so nattily, or because my makeup was so nicely done. I wonder. I was wearing my new waistcoat and pale pink pashmina. Maybe I shouldn't do that when attending events where senior staff are present, but then ... it's one of the perks of being in academia.

This morning, I was standing at Fratton station when the man who reads the Times and looks like Stuart Maconie tapped me on the shoulder and said, "You left your book on the train on Friday. Here it is." hooray! what a nice man.

poisonheadache

I once believed that Milton Keynes was named after John Milton and John Maynard Keynes. I was wrong, but it did help me immediately see the answer to the clue in today's Independent crossword "Milton Keynes' economic rival? (8)." I seem to recall looking up in Fowler about the placement or otherwise of the 's' for possessives of people already ending in s, following the apostrophe. My memory is that you should put it there if you pronounce the 's' but not otherwise. That would make the crossword clue wrong... but then, when would you ever not pronounce it? Perhaps I remember the rule wrongly. Fowler is over on the other side of the room, though, and saying "Accio Fowler" is not working, so I don't think I'll check what he says.

I picked up several shopping lists over the last couple of days. One has already gone to shoppinglists and the other should follow. They are all beautiful works of art in their own way.

Last week I discovered that wearing make up performs the same function. Win!

1. 2007 in review: In 2007 my favourite thing ever happened: Flora was born. She continues to be the most amazing thing. I also started taking exercise, which is probably related to having a child that I'm now going to be responsible for for many years. It turns out that I quite enjoy running. Living by the sea definitely helps.

2. Christmas: I was attempting to be all bah humbuggy about Christmas, but it turned out to be tolerable. It was Flora's first Christmas. She was too young to know what was going on, but it was an excuse for everyone in the family to get excited about seeing her and to buy her presents, which they did. Beth bought me a bunch of make up. I'm still learning how to best apply it, with mixed success. Today, for instance, I look like an emo boy, but I'm not going out, so that's okay.

3. Harold Wilson's Sons: On Sunday I was in London, and went to the best hostelry near Waterloo; the White Hart on Cornwall St. A man came and sat next to me, commended me on my hat, and proceeded to talk to me. As he slurred away, he was dribbling on the table; I don't think he was drunk or at least not very much, but he seemed to be suffering from some other kind of damage. Well, he was very eager to talk up notable things in his life that might impress me. This amounted to the fact that his sister, Margaret, went to Balliol College, Oxford to read pure mathematics. He said, too, that he even had a phone call from her tutor once, a certain Alan Wilson, who was the prime minister's son.
   So, I don't know how much of his story is true, but I do know that one of Harold Wilson's sons was a mathematician. Indeed, I saw him talk at the British Association Festival of Science in September. His name is actually Robin Wilson, and he took his BA at Balliol, so the guy's story is probably true - and it's just curious the one person we have in common is Harold Wilson's son. I told him that Harold Wilson's other son was a train driver for South West Trains, and he didn't seem to believe me. It's true, though...

4. Christmas Crackers: On boxing day, we had crackers, and people generally were able to recall or guess the answers to the standard jokes enclosed within them. My answer to "How do you start a Teddy Bear race?" was, instead of "Ready, Teddy, Go!" "first, you need a breeding pair of Teddy Bears..." which I thought was much funnier, but was met with blank looks. I'll keep trying...

5. New Year: Happy New Year everyone! I'm not usually one to make new year's resolutions. I think I posted a playing-music related one last year, but I didn't stick to it. No resolutions this time.

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Originally uploaded by Ghostlove

ghostlove

Since I have your attention, here's the advert: Now that it's December, why not take photos of houses near you which are covered in garish lights and sleighs and so on, and post them to my community housebling? Apparently there is a road in Denmead, which is not so far from here, which is famous enough for its housebling to attract tourists. I shall try to check it out and make a post.

Well, I'm sitting in Edinburgh airport waiting for a flight home, having flown up here this morning for a physics conference. Since it's a day trip I think it counts as commuting and I get to remain true to form. I have composed various journal entries in my head since I last posted, though the neurons involved in remembering them have since put themselves to other uses, and my original thoughts are lost. I think some of them might have involved music, along the following lines:

• I saw some bands, viz. The National, supported by St Vincent in Portsmouth, and Electrelane, playing their last ever gig, in Brighton. I sort of went to the National because some friends were, the gig is walking distance from my house, and I quite fancied seeing St Vincent. I went with a colleague who is an enormous National fan, and he enjoyed them greatly. I thought they were so-so. I tried to listen to their albums before the gig, and thought, "hey, this is not bad. Maybe if I listen to it a few more times I'll really get into it," only to think next time, "hey, this is not bad. Maybe if I listen to it a few more times I'll really get into it." And so on. The National; not bad. Electrelane were great, but I would say that, I suppose. If my last.fm profile is to be trusted then they are my favourite band.
  

  
  
  Me with a record

• I got a pretty My Robot Friend album on fiery vinyl (see photo).

• I'm not really one for flouncing out of internet communities, but beecd is very frustrating. It's a really nice idea - to make compilation CDs and share them with strangers, but one of the moderators is rather authoritarian about how he wants to run it, to the extent that there is a clear climate of fear amongst the members of the community every time they post, in case he wields his imagined power. Which he does. I think I will stay not a member, but send in and receive the CDs in future.

• I've made a compilation CD to give to friends over christmas, featuring mostly songs from 2007, or songs by bands I saw in 2007. If anyone wants a copy, please say.

• I'm going to see Thurston Moore tomorrow. I probably have a spare ticket, should anyone want one. Actually, I probably have a spare ticket for My Bloody Valentine in June...

• I'm impressed to learn that my ex-girlfriend (who I saw for the first time in years on Saturday)'s sister's husband's brother is now a member of Stereolab.
  

Being a father is still lots of fun. Flora is lovely. At the weekend, we took her up to her maternal grandparents for a couple of days. To a large extent, this is because Bethan's mum was due back from a gruelling sponsored cycling trip of India on Sunday, and we planned to be there to greet her on her return. Unfortunately, she hit a pothole, was thrown off her bike, and broke her arm, and returned on Friday. Ouch. She was in surprisingly good spirits, though.

Flora
Originally uploaded by gleet

We had a good time, and as ever at one's own parties, we didn't seem to get enough time to talk to anyone in particular, but thanks to miss_newham, hoshuteki, captainsparky, rhiannon_81 and thisiswilton and other people without suitable linking possibilities for coming. Please don't be offended if you didn't get an invite; we can't hold that many people in our house. If you want to come and visit, please do!

This morning I ran 4.5 miles. Click here for the map, if interested. It is now getting to the stage that the runs take quite a while, so finding time in the morning could get difficult. I still made the train that should get me in to work for 9, but unfortunately it got stuck behind a broken-down slow train just outside Liphook, and then had to to take on the role of the slow train and stop at all the stations between Haslemere and Guildford. I ended up getting in half an hour late. Still, it was a beautiful morning, and the scenery is very pretty around there, so I gazed at it while listening repeatedly to Two For Joy by Electrelane.

P.S. Anyone want a ticket to see the Wedding Present in Portsmouth tonight? I've decided I'd rather spend the evening at home...

Me in Helsinki Airport

Flora

Being a father is really the best thing ever, and Flora is a constant source of surprise and delight. She's getting bigger all the time, and is getting ever more alert and aware of her surroundings. Now she smiles when she sees or hears me or Bethan, the novelty of which hasn't worn off me yet.

Scenery in Keuruu

The purpose of my trip to Finland has been to attend a workshop on nuclear energy density functionals. These are a method for solving problems in nuclear structure physics, such as 'if I have 20 protons and 20 neutrons together (this makes the most common isotope of calcium) then what will the nucleus look like? What will it's shape and size be? How much energy do I need to give it to make it vibrate and what do those vibrations look like?' to name a few. Trying to do this by worrying about the individual motion of the 40 particles, along with all the associated pairwise interactions (all 780 of them) is a dead loss in terms of the sheer effort it would take. The density functional approach says that all that really matters is the density of the nucleus at any given point - i.e. the concentration of the protons and neutrons in one part of the nucleus or another. This is a much simpler thing to calculate, and it turns out that knowing about this density lets you answer most of the questions you want to answer.

The workshop was interesting, and I gave a short talk, which seemed to go okay, and prompted some interesting discussion. The workshop was in a resort hotel which is in this middle of nowhere place from the picture above. Its isolation seemed to attract huge numbers of Finns wanting to get away from it all, and paradoxically not succeeding. In the evenings, the hotel appeared to be the gathering point for nearby people to drink and dance to a quite competent band who covered sixties pop songs in Finnish, which was entertaining for spectators. As fun as it all was, I've very glad to be heading home to see Bethan and Flora.

Finally, and in unrelated news, I've recently gained an appreciation for music with synthetic voices. Such music really spans genres, and here is a small selection: Sample and Hold by Neil Young, O Superman by Laurie Anderson and Intergalactic by The Beastie Boys.