Door Anguish languish moose beer month a moth faux net tickley verses tile ant flecks a bill languishes spur ken honours. Wither ladle procters, eaters easer two ewes whirrs inn quiet
weedy queue louse weighs.
Dizzy woo nose a tin naan teen fitter sex, ah gentile moon aimed Hough Ardle Chase deed eggs ark lead art? Hear oat uh buck kern tame in severer furry tells, nosier rams, fey mouse
tells, ant thongs, end duke cane henge joy atoll own lion. Half pun
wit tit!
Par hips eye shut starred rye teen owl may blocks boats lark these?
I’d just like to say a few words of praise for Andy‘s new album, The Signal and the Noise. It’s not
the first time I’ve said nice things about him, but it’s the first time since he’s been recording
under his full name, rather than as “Pagan Wanderer Lu”.
I can say this for sure, though: The Signal and the Noise has finally dethroned my previous favourite Lu album, Build Library Here (or else!). It’s catchy, it’s
quirky, and it’s full of songs that will make you wish that you were cleverer: so far, so good. I think that one of the things that particularly appealed to me in this album were that
the lyrical themes touched on so many topics that interest me: religion and superstition, artificial intelligence, the difficulties of overcoming materialism, cold war style espionage,
and cryptography/analysis… all wrapped up in fun and relatable human stories, and with better-than average running-themes, links, and connections.
One of the joys of Andy’s (better) music comes from the fact that rather than interpretation, it lends itself far better to being issued with a reading list. To which end, here’s a
stack of Wikipedia articles that might help you appreciate this spectacular album a little better, for the benefit of those of you who weren’t lucky enough to have read all of this
stuff already:
Oh; backing vocals, you’re too kind! But this is just another chapter in the story of my life.
The Omniscient Narrator
The final track’s a little weaker than the rest (the actual final track, not the “hidden track” bit), and I’m left with a feeling that this was so-close but not quite a concept album
(which would have been even more spectacular an achievement), but these are minor niggles in the shadow of an otherwise monumental album.
Go get a copy.
By the way; I’ve got a spare – who wants it? Spare copy’s gone to Claire as an early birthday present. Somehow she failed to preorder a copy of her own.
The British Rail flying saucer, officially known simply as space vehicle, was a proposed spacecraft designed by Charles Osmond Frederick.
Purpose
The flying saucer originally started as a proposal for a lifting platform. However, the project was revised and edited, and by the time the patent was filed had become a large
passenger craft for interplanetary travel.
Design
The craft was to be powered by nuclear fusion, using laser beams to produce pulses of nuclear energy in a generator in the centre of the craft, at a rate of over 1000 Hz to prevent resonance, which could damage the vehicle. The pulses of energy would then have
been transferred out of a nozzle into a series of radial electrodes running along the underside of the craft,
which would have converted the energy into electricity that would then pass into a ring of powerful electromagnets (the patent describes using superconductors if
possible). These magnets would accelerate subatomic particles emitted by the fusion reaction,
providing lift and thrust. This general
design was used in several fusion rocket studies.
A layer of thick metal running above the fusion reactor would have acted as a shield to protect the passengers above from the radiation emitted from the core of the reactor. The entire vehicle would be piloted in such a way that the acceleration and deceleration of the craft would have simulated gravity in zero gravity conditions.
A patent application was filed by Jensen and Son on behalf of British Rail on 11 December 1970 and granted on 21 March 1973.
The patent lapsed in 1976 due to non-payment of renewal fees.
Media attention
The patent first came to the attention of the media when it was featured in The Guardian on 31
May 1978, in a story by Adrian
Hope of the New Scientist magazine. There was a further mention in The Daily Telegraph on 11 July 1982, during the silly season. The Railway Magazine mentioned it in its May 1996 issue, saying that the passengers would
have been “fried” anyway.
When the patent was rediscovered in 2006, it gained widespread publicity in the British press. A group of nuclear scientists examined the designs and declared them to be unworkable, expensive and very inefficient. Michel van Baal of the European Space Agency claimed “I have had a look at the plans, and they don’t look very serious
to me at all”, adding that many of the technologies used in the craft, such as nuclear fusion and
high temperature superconductors, had not yet been discovered, while Colin Pillinger, the scientist in charge of the Beagle 2 probe, was quoted as saying “If I hadn’t seen the documents I wouldn’t have believed it”.
Last year, I saw at least one other person, proudly wearing their towel. This year? Nothing. I even made sure to take a walk out in the glorious sunshine on my lunch break, and didn’t
find even a single other towel-wearer. What is the world coming to, when you can’t even rely on a student town to follow these fun and important traditions.
More importantly, what will all of these people do if they find themselves without their toothbrush, face flannel, soap, tin of biscuits, flask, compass, map, ball of string, gnat
spray, wet weather gear, space suit, etc.
I’ve got chests full of diamonds and a huge fortress of solitude in my singleplayer world. I’ve found the End Portal and I’ve got enough eyes to activate it. But why bother? Alone, I
don’t stand a chance against the Ender Dragon anyway: I’m just not that good a player. And it doesn’t matter how much time I spend enachanting all of my stuff, it’s never going to be
good enough.
So there’s no point. I’m sat here, alone, and I’m not achieving anything anymore. Sometimes I just want to delete the world and get it all over with. It’s not like anybody will miss
me.
It feels like most of the time I’ve spent in a car this year, so far, has been for travel related to somebody’s recent death. And so it was that yesterday, Ruth, JTA and I zipped up and down the motorway to attend
the funeral of Ruth’s grandmother.
It went really well, but what I wanted to share with you today was two photos that I took at service stations along the the way.
A sign I discovered at a motorway service station.
This one confuses me a lot. If I buy alcohol from this service area, I can’t drink it either inside… or outside… the premises. Are they unlicensed, perhaps, and so the only way they’re
allowed to sell us alcohol is if we promise not to drink it? Or is it perhaps the case that they expect us only to consume it when we’re in a parallel dimension?
Costa have decided to cut down on graffiti by writing all over their own walls.
It’s hard to see in the second photo without clicking (to see it in large-o-vision), but the sign on the opposite wall in this Costa Coffee implies the possibility of being an
“Americano Addict”. And there was something about that particular marketing tack that made me cringe.
Imagine that this was not a café but a bar, and substitute the names of coffees with the names of alcoholic beverages. Would it be cool to advertise your products to the “wine addicts”
or the “beer addicts” of the world? No: because alcoholism isn’t hip and funny… but caffeine addiction is? Let’s not forget that caffiene is
among the most-addictive drugs in the world. Sure, caffeine addiction won’t wreck your liver like alcohol will or give you cancer like smoking tobacco (the most-popular way to
consume nicotine) will, but that doesn’t detract from the fact that there are many people for whom a dependency upon caffeine is a very real part of their everyday life.
Is it really okay to make light of this by using such a strong word as “addict” in Costa’s marketing? Even if we’re sticking with alliteration to fit in with the rest of their
marketing, wouldn’t “admirer” or “aficionado” be better? And at least that way, Costa wouldn’t leave me with a bitter taste in my mouth.
For the last few years, though, the population of Aberystwyth has been dwindling, and Adam’s parties have turned from an immense hard-to-squeeze-everybody-in ordeal to a far more
civilised affair. While simultaneously, groups of ex-Aberystwyth people (like those of us down in Oxford, and those who are up in the North) have been having their own splinter
satellite parties.
And you know what? I miss doing Eurovision Night with you guys. So this year, we’re going to try to bring Eurovision Night back to its roots… with technology!
Google+ Hangouts. One of the technologies that will bring us closer this Eurovision Night.
Here’s where the parties are at, this year:
Adam’s house, in Aberystwyth – mission control
New Earth, in Oxford (hosted by Ruth, JTA, and I) – technical operations
…and… anybody else having one this year? One of you up in the North, perhaps?
If you’re one of the usual crew, or one of our newer friends, come on over and join the party! Or if you’re going to be watching from further North (Liz? Simon? Gareth? Penny? Matt? Matt? Kit? Fi?), let me know so that I can bring you in on my proposals for “sharing the experience”, drawing together our votes, and
whatnot.
And regardless of whether you’ll be joining one of these parties in person, or not, I hope you’ll be joining The Party at Adam’s and The Party on New
Earth digitally. If you’re among the 17 people who are actually on Google+, come and join us in our Hangout! Dust
off that old webcam and point it at you or your little party, make sure you’re in Adam or I’s “circles”, and then log in on Eurovision Night and join us via the power of the Internet!
You’ll have to provide your own crisps and beer, and (unless you’re at Adam’s) you’ll need to bake your own cupcakes with adorable European-flag icing, too, but at least you can be part
of the moment with the rest of us.
This weekend was the worst net weekend of cinemagoing experiences that I’ve ever had. I went to the cinema twice, and both times I left dissatisfied. An earlier blog post talked about the second of
the two trips: this is about the first.
You know what – 2012 has been a pretty shit year, so far. We’ve had death (my father’s), more death
(my partner’s grandmother’s), illness (my sister’s horrific face infection), and injury (a friend of mine lost her leg to a train, a few weeks ago, under very
tragic circumstances). We’ve had breakups (a wonderful couple I know suddenly separated) and busy-ness (a cavalcade of day-job work, Three Rings work, course work, and endless bureaucracy as executor of my dad’s will).
But it gets worse:
Of all the things that have gone horribly, tragically wrong so far this year… going to the cinema to watch this film was the worst.
On Friday night, I went out with my family to watch Piranha 3DD.
This is one of those bad films that falls into the gap of mediocrity between films that are bad but watchable and films that are so bad that they wrap right around to
being enjoyable again (you know, the “so bad they’re good” kind of movies). To summarise:
[one_half]
The Good
Lots of nudity, all presented in 3D. If there’ll ever be anything that convinces me that 3D films are a good idea, porn will probably be it. Boobs boobs boobs.
3D films remain a pointless gimmick, still spending most of their time playing up the fact that they’re 3D (lots of long objects, like broom handles, pointing towards the camera,
etc.), and still kinda blurry and headache-inducing. Plus: beams of light (e.g. from a torch) in 3D space don’t look like that. The compositor should be fired.
The cameos mostly serve to show off exactly how unpolished the acting is of the less well-known actors.
Plenty of less-enjoyable pop culture references: if you’re not going to do the “false leg is actually a gun” thing even remotely as well at Planet Terror, don’t even try – it’s like trying to show a good movie in the middle of your crappy movie,
but not even managing to do that.
Unlikeable, unmemorable characters who spend most of their time engaging in unremarkable teen drama bullshit. Same old sex joke repeated as many times as they think they can get
away with. And then a couple of times more.
Lackluster special effects: mangled bodies that don’t look much like bodies, vicious fish don’t look remotely like fish (and, for some reason, growl at people), and
CGI that would look dated on a straight-to-video release.
This weekend was the worst net weekend of cinemagoing experiences that I’ve ever had. I went to the cinema twice, and both times I left dissatisfied. This blog post is about the second
of the two trips.
Man, this movie looks good. Wish I was watching it and not, say, a black screen.
The less-awful of the two trips happened on Saturday. Ruth, JTA and I turned up for the 20:10 showing of Avengers Assemble at Oxford Vue. We were quite surprised, entering the cinema right on time, to find that they weren’t already showing
adverts and trailers – the screen was completely dark – but we found our way to our seats and sat down anyway.
A little over 20 minutes later, nothing had
happened, so I went out to where the ticket collectors were doing their thing, down the corridor, and asked if they were planning on showing a film in screen six at some point this
evening. “There’s a technical problem with the projector,” I was informed, “We’re trying to fix it now.”
“When were you planning on telling the audience who are all just sat there in the dark?” I asked. There were mumbles of concern, but they were half-hearted: these people were paid
primarily to tear tickets, not to deal with irate customers. The stub collector apologised, and I returned to the cinema to feed back to the others. Sensing the dissatisfaction of the
other audience members, I briefly considered making an announcement to them all: “Ladies and gentlemen: I regret to inform you that Vue Cinemas doesn’t care about you enough as human
beings to tell you themselves, but there’s a technical fault and they’re working on repairing it.” Instead, I grumbled to myself in a British fashion and took my seat.
“I could have downloaded a pirated copy by now,” I joked, “But then I wouldn’t be getting the real cinema experience.”
“For example, it’d start when you pressed the play button,” replied JTA.
(for those of you who know the story of his employment there, you might be unsurprised to hear that this was the very Vue cinema at which Paul worked, very briefly)
"Is the film on yet?" / "Nope; still just a black screen."
A little while later – still with no announcement from staff, we got sick of the whole thing and went and demanded a refund. The manager – when we finally got to see him (apparently
he’s also the guy who was fixing the projector: I guess the cinema must be run on a skeleton staff) – was suitably apologetic, offering us free passes for our next visit as well as
giving us a full refund. Another staff member apologised for the delay in sorting out the refund, explaining that “it always gets busy, especially on Orange Wednesdays.” I’m not sure why he told us this, given that it was now Saturday. Perhaps there were
still patrons from the previous Wednesday, also still waiting to see their film, too.
As we explained to the manager, it wasn’t the wait that bothered us so much as the lack of information about the reason (or an estimate of the duration) of the delay. All it would have
taken would have been a staff member to turn up at five or ten minutes, apologise, and explain, and we’d have understood: things break sometimes. All we wanted was a little respect.
