Watermelon

We've just got back from a weekend away visiting my parents. When we got home, Tim finally made me do my least favourite task in the whole world - vacuuming out the car. Still, it turned out to have an unforseen benefit, as our next door neighbour Mr. Bibi offered us a large chunk of the watermelon he'd bought for his family. According to his daughter, who delivered it, he'd bought an extra large one so that he could look after his neighbours as well! What a nice man. Tim and I are now stuffed with watermelon - yum :-)

Bad Science

...is so good this week I'm posting it here in it's entirity:

· Last week I asked: what's the most stupid thing anyone has said to you about science at a party? And it would seem that the great British sport of moron-baiting is more popular than ever. Lots of you encountered philosophers. Guy Davidson was told that "science doesn't tell you about the real world, only an ideal version of it". Yup. Well, light still travels faster than sound no matter how you look at it. Balthazar Florentin-Lee met someone who told him his discussion was flawed because it was "based only on logic" and someone whose email I lost got: "Logic isn't real, you can prove anything you want with logic. It's meaningless." Edwin Whiting was told that "science is how the devil perverts God's will" (bravo!), and the popular idea that "science is a way of life you choose just like religion" (via Yaniv Chen) perhaps explains why party philosophers then moved on to "not everything is scientific" (via Heather Bayley) and "science can't tell us everything" (via Conor McGeown). We never said it could.

· Most interesting were "folk" theories about the natural world. Amanda Fergusson had the misfortune to spend some time on an intensive therapy unit where she heard someone solemnly explaining the workings of the ventilator to relatives: "The machine slowly brings her back up to atmospheric pressure: when she's there, then they disconnect her and she can breathe for herself." Max Zavood was told that evolution obviously wasn't ongoing because there "weren't any new species of humans" ("how do you know what they'd look like?" was his sinister reply); Stewart Hotston was told that copper bracelets worked by "creating energy", "just like petrol creates the energy needed to drive a car". John Frizell was told that "global warming is nothing to worry about because energy and matter are interconvertible", and Derek Sellars got: "Science will never unravel the basic structure of the universe because when we think about subatomic particles it affects the way they behave."

· Lastly, pity William O, a sensitive soul who answers customer queries for a supermarket chain to fund his science career, and so finds himself explaining to baffled angry customers why the quoted number of calories per 100g on the label of powdered soup should go down when you add water (dilution), that GM foods are not radioactive (they're just not), and why the amino acids in shampoo won't burn your scalp. "I feel arrogant and guilty when I get frustrated with these people ... but I just can't help it." This man is a saint.

(the original article can be read here. http://www.guardian.co.uk/life/badscience/story/0,12980,1536986,00.html

There's something fishy going on

As we hurtle towards 100 posts on the blog (this is 99, apparently), I'd best do as the wife says and blog my fish news.

I've now got 12 fish in my tank (at least I did this morning), after buying 3 more last weekend. There's space for a few more, but narrowing down my list of possible candidates for the next additions will take some time, so this is it for now.

Platys:
My, haven't they grown! I've tried to get a picture so you can compare against my first fish post, but have so far been unsuccessful. The women in particular have been putting a lot of weight on. Females do grow larger than males, but I'm still suspicious of the size of their stomachs and am expecting babies some time soon. Then again, I have been for about a month. Another thing adding to my suspicions is the way that one of the men follows one of the women around all the time. He was even chasing away others who came near her the other day. Quite cute really, if a little needy.

Cories:
They're still very shy, which is a shame. If they see you coming they'll shoot off and hide, but then you can trick them by waiting for a while and they'll come out again. Their favourite hiding place is under a log in the corner of the tank, and it's quite fun when they're all huddling up there in a little row. Here's a nice little picture of one of them coming out for his tea.


Rainbows:
The new guys. Dwarf neon rainbowfish melanotaenia praecox. I've seen rainbowfish arouns and they're always described as "a bit boring when they're young but nice and colourful when they grow up" or something. I really like them and these chaps are very nice - they don't grow too big which is one of my criteria for the tank. Having said that, when I was in Mr Fish at the weekend I saw some very VERY nice banded rainbowfish, which are currently high up in the running for my pair of larger fish which I will have at some point. Anyway, these guys have got a lovely shimmery blue body and red/orange fins. Photos really don't do them justice, but here you go:

One with the lights on


And the same guy with the flash on, showing his nice blue scales


I have 3 of these, as I said: 2 males and 1 female. I think one of the males is bossing the other one around a bit, as the smaller one is always hiding in the plants and has lost a lot of his colour since I put them in. I'll have to monitor the situation. One of the fun behavioural things that the big guy does is to sprint across the front of the tank, then put the brakes on and extend his fins as much as possible. It's quite amusing to watch him showing off. I'm looking out for signs of a love triangle here - surely the lady will fall in love with the small, dull one and spurn the advances of the bully? Watch this space.

Scrabble

I think I need to remedy the situation since Elspeth cast doubts on my geek status. So I'm going to blog a game of scrabble that my dear wife and I have just played.

Ok, not really. The real reason is that I came up with possibly my best ever scrabble word. Witness it:


Elspeth wasn't too impressed, as she was winning by a good 67 points until I hit EQUITY (there, I have learnt something in my new job) with Q on a triple letter and a double word, then the magnificent EXPUNGER using all of my letters, before making it EXPUNGERS the following turn. I was quite pleased.

Elspeth did manage WEE though, which was pretty good.

Geeks

We went to a BBQ yesterday with Tim's work mates - a very enjoyable event. On the way home in the car, we commented on the fact that almost all of Tim's colleagues are married - in fact, only two of them are single. In contrast, the majority of my co-workers are single. At this point, Tim commented disdainfully 'well yes, all your work mates are GEEKS!' Ouch. Obviously now he moves in the world of corporate finance he no longer feels that geekery is a good thing...

Another weekend...

...which means another two days off work - bliss :-) I was ayaw in bristol for two days this week, being trained in using a piece of software I already use regularly. Still, it was good to have a couple of days away from the office to really concentrate on learning. If I'm at work there's always something else I ought to be doing... one of our more senior members of staff left on Friday, so we're all going to be even more busy. We're looking to recruit two/three new people by October, so if any of you know Maths/Engineering/Physics-type people who are looking for a job, let me know!

I should point out that Tim has bought yet more fish. Hopefully he'll post some pictures soon...

Not a good weekend

I just thought I'd share the experience of one of my work colleagues this past weekend. She and her boyfriend have been in the UK for about 8 months since moving from Switzerland. In this time they'd never really got out of London, so they had planned a nice weekend away in Exton, Rutland (very close to where Elspeth and I stayed at the start of our honeymoon, coincidentally). My aforementioned colleague spent the previous week finding a nice hotel with rooms available, and generally looking forward to exploring some of the country. Her boyfriend picked her up from work on friday and off they pootled.

She told me yesterday that the weekend wasn't great: they took a wrong turning on the way. Unfortunately, that wrong turning was to follow a route to Exton, Devon. And they didn't realise they were going South-West rather than North until they got to Exeter. That's a 9 hour round trip to get nowhere. Ouch.

Bizarre Badminton

As some of you know, Tim and I play badminton with a group of friends every Friday. We haven't been for a couple of weeks, as the sports hall has been closed due to private functions, but badminton was back on yesterday. We usually have about 8 people there using one court, so can swap around and play lots of different games. Yesterday we had 4 people - for two hours - and I was the only woman! We were all rather hot a tired by the end, though we did have some good games. I get frustrated as I *know* what I need to do to improve my game (run around more and cover the sides as well as the middle of the net), but I never do it!

Last night was a bit bizarre as we played to a non-stop accompaniment of Michael Bolton songs played over the sound system. The obligatory key change at the end of each song was slightly off-putting, as was the fact that I knew most of the words as I used to own 'the best of Michael Bolton' on CD. I like to think my tase in music has improved since then...!

Graduation part 2

Tim and a proud wife :-) 


Yes, Tim is now officially a Doctor! We spent a very enjoyable day at Reading last Friday, meeting up with all of Tim's year plus a few others and laughing at them in silly hats. I got to sit in the great hall for it and applaud all the PhD's very loudly, but Tim extra-specially loudly :-)

Tim looking pensive... 


PS Thanks to Helen and Tim for putting us up the night before and plying us with far too much red wine and rum...

Not nice news this morning, with the attacks on the tube/buses in London. Thankfully, all of our friends are OK, and Tim got in to work late but with no problems.

I'm not sure how I feel about the media coverage of it all. Both BBC and Gurdian sites have got minute-by-minute coverage and pages of experiences e-mailed in by readers. Somehow it seems a bit excessive, and doesn't actually give any useful information. Makes me think that perhaps 24-hour news coverage is not always a good thing?

Green fingers?

While Tim has been busy admiring his new fishes this weekend, I have finally got around to doing a bit more gardening. This bed at the rear of our garden was a mass of weeds yesterday, but looks much better now! It's early days, but eventually these plants should be a mass of evergreen shrubs, hiding the nasty corrugated iron wall. On the far right you can see our compost bin, and a very small gooseberry bush next to it, the start of out 'fruit patch'.

The rest of the garden still needs a lot of work, but I'm quite pleased with this as a start. I have realised that I'm turning into my Dad, though - I'm incapable of walking past a plant stall these days without stopping to look. My Dad reads this blog sometimes, so is hopefully quite proud of me!  

More fish!

It's been 4 weeks since I got my first fish for the tank. There haven't been any major incidents to blog (no floaters James, thank you, and no babies yet, although one of the ladies looks a bit pregnant) so I've been quiet on that front. The platies have all grown considerably, and are very friendly. Elspeth woul say nosy, but I prefer to think they are just happy to see me. More likely they're after more food, but never mind. This evening I'm giving them their first bloodworm which I'm expecting to be rather messy.

This afternoon, on our way home from a band gig in Hitchin, we stopped off and bought some more fishies. We now have 4 corydoras catfish (corydoras trilineatus) which are settling in well I think. There seemed to be a little bit of tension between the new arrivals and the established fish, but they're getting on well now: the platies seem to be exploring moreof the tank now, and one was certainly following one of the corys around earlier on!


Here is one of the new fellas, with another one hiding behind. These are easier to photgraph as they generally sit around on the bottom of the tank and don't go in for swimming around too fast. That said, they're a lot twitchier to sudden movements outside of the tank at the moment than the platies are. Maybe this will change as they settle.


The corys and platies playing together. Or something.

You're welcome to come and marvel at the fish next time you visit us!

Graduation part 1

We journeyed to Cambridge on thursday for the first family graduation of the season. My brother Andy is now a Master of Engineering and a Bachelor of Arts, and probably has a certificate to prove it. It was a nice day, reminding me of my own graduation in the same senate house 4 years ago. Next week's graduation will probably remind Elspeth of hers!

We went with my sister Rachel and nephew Samuel. I can thoroughly recommend to anyone who is going to a graduation at Cambridge to take someone's small child with you, as we got moved to the front of the queue and were placed in prime position on the front row. After the ceremony we mooched around for a while, then headed to Trinity, Andy's college, to have some lunch on hallowed turf, enjoy the playing of a good quality brass quintet, examine the treasures of the Wren library, etc. It rained quite considerably just as we were finishing lunch, but this didn't dampen the fun of the day. Congratulations again to Andy on his degree success!


Quite pleasant robes really, considering. Not quite as showy as the Reading PhD ones though...


Not all memories evoked from the day in Cambridge were good ones. The moment I espied the chap in red I was transported back a number of years to a maths lecture series I really didn't enjoy.


Andy having a Cambridge moment.