The future's bright, the future's amythst

I admit I am probably not on a psychic's top 10 favourite people to walk through their door. Not because I am intent on exposing their art as fiction, but because I lack the common neuroses that normally drive individuals into their curtained centre of operation. I am unplagued by relationships past, feel good about my job and positive about the future. Plus, I went with a close friend and comparing your secret and private fortune is hardly to be encouraged. However, it was the combination of all these good vibes that made the prospect of visiting a psychic while in New York City a truly humorous and enticing prospect.

The sign outside the door advertised a reading for $10. Of course, once inside, we were told that this was only for a face reading of your personality and really what we wanted was a palm reading for $25 or, more likely, a tarot card reading for $65 and probably a crystal ball gazing for a couple of hundred. We originally opted for the palm reading but eventually allowed ourselves to be talked into a combined offer for palm + tarot cards.

My palm, I was told, predicted a long life and a happy one. It portrayed me as a cheerful, kind individual who said things to people's face and not to their backs. Well, flattery will get you everywhere and I am blogging; I say things to everyone's face. In the world. I was also told this would get me into trouble and wondered vaguely if this resulting post would cause me to be sued.

We then moved on to the tarot cards. To my disappointment, my psychic did not read the cards per se, rather she placed them face up on the table and claimed to "draw energy" from them to give me my fortune. This was the point when I started seriously disappointing the poor woman.

Attempt #1:
"I see there is a past relationship that you cannot stop thinking about. Who is that man?"

"Um. Well, I don't actually know. My last relationship finished a while ago and I really wasn't that bothered."

Attempt #2:
"You wake up feeling very lethargic and you feel you have made bad decisions in the past."

".... Not really. I'm really pleased with the way my career is going and the changes that have happened.... I woke up slightly hungover this morning?"

The woman's eyes narrowed. No love issues, no career issues. A happy, optimistic customer. This lead to really only one obvious conclusion...

Attempt #3:
"I sense someone is very jealous of you. I see a woman with black hair."

My eyes slid to the right. I couldn't help but notice that the other psychic had black hair. Still, I did know one person who was pretty irritated at me for no decipherable reason. She doesn't have black hair, but you know, it was a good try and I was impressed by the logic: Your life seems to rock. Therefore someone probably hates you. It could be me or my friend over there.

At the end, I was allowed to ask two questions of the cards. I scratched my head:

Q: "I travel a lot. Do you see me ever settling down?"

A: "Yes, I do. But not this year. This year is a good one for travel."

Good line to throw at the girl with the British accent in New York. I had to give her some credit for using her head.

Q: "Do you see me getting married?"

Well, doesn't everyone ask that question?

A: "I see you meeting your life partner in 2 - 3 years from now."

2 - 3 years? Well, there's no point in dating anyone I've met recently then.

A: "You will also have three children and be very happy."

.... Three?!

In the back of the room behind a curtained partition a small boy starting screaming his lungs out. The psychic turned to bellow at him to shut up.

.... Happy?!

I shifted in my seat. As we drew to a close, the woman told me she wanted to give me a stone. By "give" I mean "sell at an exorbitant price". Apparently, I was lacking amethyst in my life and I should keep a stone close by me at all time to give me energy and protect against jealousy. I should also tell no one about it.

.... Oops.

I was sceptical and declined. She dropped the price. This protection, she insisted, was essential. I lifted an eyebrow and turned to my friend who was also just finishing.

"Have you just been offered a stone?"

"Yes. I was thinking no."

Psychic: "How about just $10 for the stone?"

I considered it. "Well it would make a cool souvenir."

My psychic looked askance, but the other one smiled and agreed. In the end we gave in and I purchased a small lump of amethyst, my friend a rose stone. We then took them over to a jewellery making shop in Brooklyn and turned them into pendants. Were we ripped off? Of course! These stones cost about a $1 on the street. Do we have the most awesome memento of our crazy psychic trip? Yes. Yes we do.

Psychic reading: $45
Protective stone: $10
Memento of crazy psychic trip with childhood friend: Priceless

As we wound wire around our rocks, my friend and I compared our futures. They were incredibly similar. Clearly we were really twins separated at birth.

In conclusion, my friend declared: "This trip has saved me so much money!"

I stopped winding wire and looked up. "Saved?!"

"Yeah. She said I was to have two boys. I only want a girl, so there's no point in having kids at all. They would have cost me loads!"

JFK airport when I finally ended my trip was in carnage. I collected my boarding pass to discover yet again, I still didn't have a seat. But this time, THIS TIME, I had an amythst power necklace. What could possibly go wrong?

Arts life

"So, the cast are all on stage, but they haven't got their lead role; apparently, she's left with her boyfriend. The director turns to the audience and says, 'We're sorry, the play is canceled; you can get a refund at the door'. But then, a girl puts up her hand and cries, 'Wait! I've seen this play ten times because I have the same name as the star! I can totally do her part!'. The cast discuss it and ask, 'What if she can't act?' but then they point out the other girl couldn't act either, so what's the harm? The kid is pulled on stage and, with the help of stage prompts, she gets through the whole part. Everyone is delighted, especially since her father is a baker and the actors all want pies."

And so went my lunchtime conversation at the American Academy of Arts & Letters. This 250 member organisation supports the creators of the arts, for example, writers, composers and visual graphic producers but not performers. With the size of the establishment fixed and every appointment being for life, the only way a new member can be appointed is in the wake of a death which, as also came up at lunch, should probably result in a homicide investigation surrounding each new face.

In case it was not entirely obvious, I was there to cheer on a friend who was receiving an award for her composition, rather than for recognition of the great American novel which I'd been keeping numb about. Prior to lunch, we started the event with delicate h'orderves and I eyed the crowd over a wine glass, comparing it to my more usual haunt at astrophysics conferences. In place of jeans with the occasional button down shirt, I was surrounded by smart suits and dresses. If that was disconcerting, it was totally overlooked by the guys on mutant segways. Well, at first they were normal wheelchairs, but to bring their occupant up to eye level, these robotic transporters rose up on their back wheels in a way that looked frankly dangerous. They could even roam about like that. To me, it seemed one step away from a Gundam suit.

Moving onto lunch, I sat next to a writer who had recently converted the children's book "Gina Farina and the Prince of Mintz" to a stage production. I still have no idea if what he was telling me was part of the plot or a real event. Despite its different clientèle, there were decided similarities in the stories circulating the table with my own discipline. There was the eminent composer, for instance, who placed a CD on an LP record player and complained in disgust at the screeching noise it produced as the needle carved up the disk. This was only marginally worse than a nameless professor scanning overheads to use them in powerpoint presentations. Except, well no; the latter does actually work.

The fellowship my friend was awarded was created by Charles Ives, the inventor of life insurance who made his fortune and then turned his hand to composing. Perhaps the awards were funded out of his own policy upon his death; it is unknown. What is known is that he never attended one of his own premieres. Allegedly, he couldn't stand them and refused to listen to a first performance of his work even on his death bed where the likelihood of him hearing a later version was rather low.

At the ceremony itself, I clapped, cheered and freaked out the person next to me by admitting what I did for a living. Oh, and I introduced myself to Meryl Streep and shook her hand. Just thought I'd throw that in there.

A love story

USA border control. I'm going to come right out and say I don't like 'em.

We have a relationship that goes back some five and a half years (with one casual encounter prior to this). Some might even consider it semi-serious, especially if you view my move to Canada as a way of spending more time with them. They, however, have denial issues. No matter the frequency of my visits, they refuse to acknowledge that I have ever passed this way before and behave as a jilted lover with a vengeance fetish.

This time, our date took place at the Niagara border on the way to Buffalo airport. I had driven that way twice previously but, out of caution, had allowed an extra hour for bad traffic or a queue at the gate. However, once I had skirted the school buses piled up outside my house, neither of these concerns manifested themselves. The drive was easy and the bridge over to the USA entirely empty. Well, we had been winning the hockey; why would anyone go that way?

What I had not allowed for was the time required to get a visitor visa. The I-94 slip is valid for three months and the last two times I had driven over the border, I had one that was in date. But come on; it's a one page slip that they deal with in five minutes at the airport. How long could this seriously take at the much quieter land crossing?

The answer, it transpires, is 45 minutes.

It also costs $6 USD. I guess the cost is including in your plane ticket when you fly. While not exactly a substantial sum, the problem with requesting USD from people who are in Canada is .... Yeah. I had plenty of CAD but no USD. Well, OK, I had $1. It seems to me that it would make more sense to accept Canadian dollars at the Canadian border but no, apparently not. Fortunately, they do accept credit cards. I waved VISA then I left, now eying the clock.

Almost directly after the border is another bridge. It's a toll one. Did I mention I had no USD? It was possible that the amount they wanted was only $1, but there was no sign before the one and only turn-off before the toll booth, so I couldn't risk it. I pulled into a small gas station and ran my debit card through their ATM. Then I put my foot on the gas, staying slightly behind the guy who obviously was speeding and looking decidedly less innocent than a bright yellow VW beetle.

The bridge toll, incidentally, was $1.

I arrived at Buffalo airport exactly an hour before my flight. In theory, I was fine but I still had to park and I'd been caught out before by over zealous airport attendants. Not waiting for the shuttle bus, I cut across the grass to the terminal, rushing in to find it ... complete deserted. Like really, it was quite eerie. The check-in desk was devoid of human life, but I talked to a machine that printed me a boarding pass but refused to assign me a seat number. Ominous. Was departures empty because everyone was in fact flying to NYC and my flight was packed? I took my ticket and hurried to security.

.... it was also empty.

Seriously people, what do you know that I don't? Feeling like the lead in "28 days later", I pushed my bag through the x-ray machine (this was at least manned) and went and got a sandwich from the food court. Everyone smiled, everyone was nice and everyone was not a passenger. Hmm.

Arriving at my gate, I found three other people there. Somewhat reassuring. I passed my unassigned seat boarding pass to the airline steward at the desk. He frowned and went to his computer to print off a new one. It also had me on the reserve list. The steward raised his eyebrows and tried again. Same result. It appeared that despite this flight being seemingly empty, the computer was determined that I would stay behind. Perhaps it found an empty plane aesthetically pleasing. Perhaps it was in a love affair with the US border control too.

Two phone calls later and I do now have a seat. We will see if it's on the wing.

Roll to me

I have always found feet a disappointment. I mean, they work and everything but life is so much more exciting when you have alternative transportation as footwear. It seems I am not alone in this desire and with the snow and ice gone, many Canadians have switched blades for wheels. Skaters pass me on the way to the University, around town and along the tracks surrounding the lake. Since I possess a pair of roller blades (two actually, for various reasons) I am totally up for joining them ... except for the fact I haven't the foggiest how to stop.

On ice, the sharp sideways pivot hockey stop can bring you to a direct halt almost instantly. On wheels, such a maneuver would result in full body contact with the ground which, while technically fulfilling the intended purpose, lacks a certain something. This restriction is reflected in the rules of roller hockey where the game is played four-on-four, rather than five-on-five, and with no off-side rule. Recreational skates have a back break, but how do you use this without falling on your arse?

This issue is exasperated still more by the difference in intended skating location. In the rink, if I didn't stop I ended up crashing into the barrier or a member of (hopefully) the opposite team (did I take out your ringer? My bad). Here, I would likely end up sprawled in the middle of the highway. Not cool, free health care or not.

There was really only one thing for it and I signed up with a competitive roller blading guy who was offering lessons in Toronto. The class I joined was for beginners and he did warn me over email that they might not get onto stopping in the first lesson. But, he said (and I quote):

"I can make you more confident and stable so stopping won't seem quite as important."

Yeah! If I'm confident I can just go play chicken with those cars! Bring it on! .... I dug out my helmet and pads from the basement.

There were five of us in the class ranging from raw beginners to people lacking in confidence and needing a bit of advanced instruction. It was actually very good and I learnt a bunch of techniques for stability over rough surfaces. I also found that I could stop slowly; when approaching a wall, I stepped inwards to slow myself down. One of the other girls in the class noticed and commented:

"You stopped. How did you do that?"

".... I don't know."

"I think you know more than you realise."

Possibly she was right and it's probably likely that a few years ice skating plus a few more on quad skates helps with the learning process if not technique. I am still, however, going back next week. Life is full of surprises, but I'd rather mine didn't involve a dog's leash (horror story from our instructor), a small child armed with a bicycle (horror story #2) or a large truck (what I'm trying to ensure isn't horror story #3).

Mudball

Canadians, it transpires, have a similar stiff-upper-lip attitude to weather as their British counterparts. Given their notorious winters, this perhaps isn't surprising and the upshot of this truism found me in ankle deep wet grass, weighing up whether it was really needful to remove my hands from my jacket sleeves as the other team came up to bat. I would have been feeling less hard done by if every day when I wasn't outside, it hadn't been gorgeous sunshine. For the last four weeks, mind. Still, I could hardly complain; I am British after all. I was also keeping a wary eye on a flock of geese that seemed to have taken over the right outfield. I found this somewhat unnerving since rumour had it that, should these fowl be involved in play, there would probably be two loosing teams.

By the time we had reached the forth innings, I had concluded there must be a more civilized way to settle our differences. A coin flip perhaps? I was even prepared to weight the coin to allow for their indecently competent first baseman. A friend suggested we put in an offer of 12 to 14 and call it a day. Admittedly, it would have been rather generous to us but then it was our suggestion. Instead though, I was left to peer through the netting and wonder why the umpire had not invoked the mercy rule as the other team went on a batting spree. The answer to this turned out to be because the man in question had a second game after this one and wanted company while he waited. As a result, we played all nine innings although our sodden score sheet is only testimony to about the first six. After that, it was home runs from everyone all the way....

..... >_> ..... <_< .....

There is nothing water resistant to prove otherwise.

Thwack

First softball game of the season after, uh, two practices one of which I didn't make. But I was unperturbed; I had all that extensive rounders experience under my belt and well, I promised nuffin' when I was conscripted for this team. I felt I fulfilled this obligation when I showed up with a glove stolen from my office. It was a great start.

The team we played were from material engineering. This, someone suggested, surely meant they were unlikely to be any better than us. That cheerful, brash assumption transpired to be entirely false. The game is governed by basic projectiles and as physicists we could all calculate the ball's trajectory to within three decimal places. Unfortunately, as engineers, our rival team could actually hit it to within 1.  It was revealed somewhere around the fifth innings that the other team has actually won the league last year. The person with that knowledge had kept numb on the subject until he thought it might sooth our lack-of-home-run pride.

Nevertheless, the weather was warm and it was great to be outside. I discovered that catching with a GIANT HAND is not easy. For a start, I really had no idea where the extent of this mutant appendage was, so getting the ball to hit the glove centre was hard going. It was also difficult to bend the glove, so the ball tended to drop from it rather like a marshmallow from the mouth of a stunned spectator. After determining this, I was put to be a rover (woof!) which involved standing between the diamond and out field where most balls that come your way will be rolling.

About half way through the game, someone asked if us on the bench wanted to know the score. We all cheerfully declined. I did hit the ball when I batted though. That was almost useful and I felt cool baseballer on TV.

I need a cap.

Free food

So phdcomics.com? All true, in case anyone was in doubt. My group meeting today can be summed up by the reoccurring theme presented in this strip:

We had gone down to our usual location of the second floor coffee room in the science building to find the scant remains of a pre-Chemistry lecture snacks. Evidently, the speaker had been someone important since the nibbles had consisted of prawns, olives, good cheese and a variety of raw vegetables with dips. We concluded from this two things:

1. Firstly, the Chemistry department had too much money and Physics should either raid it or grass them up to the Dean.
2. We had to devour the remains before they were cleared away.

A couple of the grad students went to work filling their plates but had to up the pace when a guy appeared pushing a trolley to wheel the dishes away. A basket of crackers, plate of cheese and a pot of olives was swiftly secured for our group meeting table which we had safely surrounded. The rest of the discussion then went like this:

Student 1: "I need to calculate the full width half maximum of this graph."

Student 2: "Hmm, crunchy."

Student 1: "..... I have crumbs on my graph."

When people stopped eating, our adviser declared the meeting over.

Hot bubble

Montreal (East) has snow. Alberta (West) has seen a sudden severe spring blizzard sweep over it. Us, in Toronto? Hot bubble.

The only thing wrong with this image is that's it's taken from inside the Physics department at the University of Toronto, rather than outside on the lawn balanced precariously on an ice cream cone.

*Steams*

Rounders for boys

Spring has sprung and in the wake of the shock that followed the melting of snow and ice, the Physics department has formed a softball team. Softball, fellow Brits, is exactly like rounders except not socially confined to small school girls in gym skirts. The ball, also, IS NOT SOFT. This horrifically inaccurate misnomer is doubtless there to lure innocent postdocs away from their desks with the thought 'Eh, what's the worst that can happen?'[*]. On a plus side, I did get to wear a mit so I had one GIGANTIC hand. It was ace.

Despite being reassured that it was fine to play with only one day spectating the Tampa Bay Rays baseball team as way of recent experience, I was mildly apprehensive about batting. I mean, my memories of outer fielding told me that, positioned carefully, I could probably play solitaire on my iPhone inbetween pitches (except I had this GIGANTIC hand, did I mention?). Batting, on the other (smaller) hand, puts you front stage. There's even a diamond to emphasise this. Fortunately, I didn't turn out to be as big a failure as I anticipated. Metal hit ball frequently. Sometimes the ball even went somewhere. This was almost certainly due to our skilled pitcher, but hey! If he plays with us in the games who's to know? The bat, incidentally, is way heavier than the little wooden rounders bats I used to swing. My wrists got quite sore after a few.

Returning to fielding, I discovered a clash with my game play in other sports. I had an unpleasant habit of stopping the ball with my shin or shoe. I do this with the puck in hockey all the time; stopping it on the side of my ... padded ... skate or, um ... shin pad. Ah yes. That would be why it didn't hurt then. A friend commented I 'took one for the team'. I grimaced and tried to pretend that I was just hard like that.

Next practice, I'm going to stop staring at my GIGANTIC hand and catch a ball in the glove. Small goals. It's going to be great. 

[*] The answer to that quandary will doubtless be covered in future posts.

"Yes, I see wonderful things" -- Howard Carter

In 1922, a British archaeologist found what he was searching for; the untouched tomb of the boy Pharaoh, Tutankhamun. The result was 5,000 catalogued artefacts and a cold (or rather mummified) case of the unexplained death of a 19 year old king, some 3,500 years ago. In keeping with the traditions of the day, this haul was evacuated, divided up and now part of it is a visiting museum exhibit at the AGO in Toronto.

Since the Ancient Egyptians were ahead of their time when it came to Astronomy, I was confident that I could skip off work to see this exhibit and maybe offer it up at journal club without anyone clocking this research's publication date. Besides, how often do you get to see golden toes that sat over the actual mummified digits for a few millennia? Not often.

The exhibit starts not with Tutankhamun, but with a collection of other finds from digs connected to his relatives. It is interesting, but lacks a clear time line for those viewers whose ancient history is not entirely up to speed. Terms such as 'New Kingdom' are dropped without any indication of what defined this period or even when exactly it was. That said, who couldn't enjoy the tale of Hatshepsut, the female Pharaoh married to her half brother who seized power from her step-son to rule for about twenty years? Her gender did not prevent her bust from sporting a fine oblong beard. Marriage to your sibling was a practice reserved only for royalty in Ancient Egypt. The rest of the masses had to resist the urge.

There was also a large statue of Akhenaten, father of Tutankhamun, who was famous for denying the traditional religious picture of many gods and introducing instead a monotheistic view of a single sun god, Aten. Whether he denied his own destiny as a god-to-be (Pharaohs were considered to become deities upon death) is less clear. The religious move was deeply unpopular and Tutankhamun started the process of revoking it in his short reign. It is possible his close connection with his unpopular father triggered the erasing of his name from statues and records after his death. Ironically, as the exhibit points out, this attempt to delete all memory of Tutankhamun from history was to rather backfire.

Tutankhamun artefacts consist of many smaller pieces. None of the four consecutive coffins that held his mummy were on display, although the casket that held canopic jars in which his organs were placed was there, as was one of the jars itself; a beautiful peice in the form of the god of the underworld, Osiris, that once contained Tutankhamun's intestines. The official guardian of this delightful slice of Pharaoh is the jackal Duamutef, whose name was engraved on its base. There were also jars that held two foetuses, thought to be Tutankhamun's daughters by an unknown woman. Other items included countless pieces of jewelery, his bed and many servant statues that were buried with the deceased to perform the menial labour that would be asked of them in the afterlife.

The end of the exhibition leaves the cause of death of Tutankhamun largely unaddressed. However, boards outside show results from the latest research. Once thought to be murder by his successors, the boy king's demise is now considered less violent. The cracks in his skull are thought to have occurred after death, since body scans revealed the presence of the dislodged pieces. The very latest concept seems to be that of malaria. Not quite as exciting as homicide perhaps, but he might have preferred it.

The tour naturally ended in a gift shop. Tempted as I was by a cloth headdress in the shape of King Tut's burial mask, I really would have liked an overview of the history to read on the bus back. Unfortunately, the only tomes of the right length were clearly aimed at ten year olds with the implication that anyone with a more advanced grasp of literature should clearly be wanting the full detailed itemized list of the 5,000 items on the tomb's inventory. The headdress started to look more promising.

Myyy PRECIOUSSS

I asked you all about smart phones. You almost all had BlackBerrys and loved them. I therefore ignored you all and got an iPhone... >_>

In my defence they are shiny! I mean, um, good tools. The web browsing in particular seems to be really fast and easy, which is a feature I especially wanted for role playing reading journals. Yes. It was really this that swung it for the iPhone.

Anyway, since I had only recently joined my network provider in Canada, I couldn't get an iPhone through them without buying it outright at some exorbitant price. So I hunted through online ads to find someone selling the model I wanted (3GS 16 GB). Some of the posts were more suspicious than others. I contacted one guy to ask if he still had the phone he was selling and he replied no, but he could get another by the end of the week. One can only assume he was planning to go out and steal one for me. I was touched by his dedication. I also declined. The person I did buy it from had recently been giving a BlackBerry from work and seemed to have only one handset to sell. Always a good sign.

The hardest part of the purchase turned out to be putting on the protective screen guard. They come in packs of 3 for $20 which was somewhat outrageous and even more so when you consider I managed to screw up applying the first two. These failed attempts made it appear my screen was totally scratched up when in fact it was just the sticker. Not cool. Kinda defies the point of having an undamaged screen too.

Did I mention this phone was shiny?

I did make one mistake, and that was telling my cell phone company I'd switched my sim card to an iPhone. Previously, I had a little LG phone that could do a bit (read: painful and frustrating) mobile browsing. It transpired that during the last few months my plan had changed unbestknown to me (ok, they probably sent me a letter but I never read such missives) and my data pack had morphed to include unlimited browsing. Prior to that, as soon as I stepped away from my network's own pages, they charged me. They don't allow such things for the smart phones (bah! To Canada's cell phone plans) so once I'd confessed they moved me onto a plan with a 500 MB limit. I'm consoling myself that not fessing up would have led to other problems with voice mail and the like ... probably.

So any recommendations for Apps? Shiny shiny apps .... myyyy precioussss.

Trains and boats and planes

In an original bid to cut down carbon emissions, Ontario seems to have opted to make the major airport in Toronto almost impossible to reach. The first hint of this scheme came as I attempted to catch my flight on Good Friday. Since it was a public holiday in Canada, I checked the bus times and concluded they appeared to be running on a Sunday schedule. Fair enough and really no problem, since Hamilton is a decent sized city (~ 0.5 million) and Toronto is close, so the network of transport is frequent even at weekends.

It transpired that travelling on Good Friday is actually an unforgivable sin. As such, it is not enough to cancel all public transport to prevent you from trying, rather half of all buses and trains are removed from service (hence the confusion when I glanced innocently at the timetables), so you may begin your trip but must end it stranded in the middle of nowhere. This is Canada. Most of it is empty space and they therefore do "nowhere" rather well. It took me one bus, one train and a panicked phone call to a friend (thank you Mubdhi!) to enlist his skills as chauffeur to make this epic 35 mile journey.

On my return, I was more confident. After all, the difficulty was just because it was a public holiday, surely. First off, I miss my flight. I confess I probably cannot entirely blame this on Canadian transport and a more honest spectator would point out the merit of rising half an hour earlier. However, no matter. I was put on the flight one hour later and reached my change-over point in Atlanta only a small amount of time behind schedule. We boarded ... there was a fault ... we disembarked ... waited ... changed gates ... waited some more ... got on a new plane and sat on the tarmac to show this off for a bit. Again, not really linked with Toronto. Still damn annoying. On a plus side it made it worth paying for the wifi connection in the airport lounge.

I finally arrive at Toronto at around 7:30 pm. Early enough, I thought, to safely take the bus back to Hamilton seeing as it's JUST DOWN THE ROAD. I find a public bus stop, but discover it's the wrong one and I have to go over to terminal 1. Upon arriving there (tired and weary by this stage), I find a shiny GO bus stop, complete with timetable, bench and a sign saying as of the 3rd April, they are not running buses there anymore. They recommended using a local bus service that doesn't run in the evenings.

I took a shuttle service back and billed it to my research grant. Enough was enough.

I have just booked my next flight which will be to New York. From Buffalo.

App my life

So I want an iPhone. I mean, who doesn't? They're shiny, allow you to check email, surf the web, play games and there's even an app to tell you if someone is a cylon. Obviously, I need this. But here's the thing:

Travel rates SUCK.

For the US, I'm looking at $1-2/MB and for Europe around $5. Given my basic package for use in Canada would include 500 MB/month, you start to see the problem. (The fact some companies put the prices per kB to make the numbers look small says a lot. They tried to fool me. It didn't work >_>).

I understand that when I step away from my cosy home country I'm transmitting waves on someone else's network, but this is a MOBILE phone. I want to be mobile! That doesn't mean a quick trip into town; I need to use it all over the world. After all, while it's a close run thing, I can manage without checking livejournal while I walk to work. (OK, once I went into a coffee shop en-route but ONLY ONCE). While I'm propping up a bus shelter in Rome waiting for a vehicle that may or may not show because timetables are more suggstions in Italy then I need my smart phone and google maps.

One thing I did discover in my harassment of cell phone companies at the mall was that the Blackberry compresses data by 4x the amount the iPhone does. So while the data plan would be identical, in theory I should get considerably more bang per MB on the Blackberry. (The Blackberry bold, since I was told this was better for world travel). A google search of this fact revealed it to be true, but oddly there weren't 800 listings of people saying this was an absolute must for users with ADHD when it comes to countries. Does this compression not make the difference I'd naively think it should?

Blackberrys are supposed to be unrivalled for email. Unsurprising, since this was what they were designed for. I am told though, that web surfing is not nearly as good and there are many less apps than for the iPhones.

Has anyone else hit this dilemma? What did you do and do you regret it? (Confessions limited to phones if reply is public ^.~).

America's Got Talent

"How do you feel about blowing off half a day of the conference?"

"What an outrageous idea! I'm here to learn not to holiday!"

"We've got tickets to the live recording of 'America's Got Talent' in Orlando."

"... I fell in with such a bad group of people here."

So it turns out that Britian's contribution to American society is ... game shows. 'Who wants to be a millionaire?' (which morphed into a show of the same name, but substantially less money), 'Pop idol' (which morphed into 'American idol') and now 'Britain's got talent' (the morphing of this name will be left as a problem for the reader).

The last of these shows (for those not indoctrinated via Susan Boyle) involves any form of activity from singing, dancing, juggling, stripping (... we'll come back to that one), acting and so forth with your prowess being assessed by three judges. These crushers of poorly conceived dreams were Piers Morgan (who pretty much failed every act before it was done), Sharon Osbourne (wife of Ozzy) and Howie Mandel (known for his fit knocks because of an OCD that makes him hate hand shakes).

Watching the show live is far slower than the resulting production. We were told to arrive at 6 pm, yet they weren't due to finish recording until after 11. In addition to breaks between acts, there was a large amount of time spent on audience filming where we were told to pretend to be cheering a contestant, booing them and gazing at the stage with the intensity normally given to the finale of 'Lost'. These snippets were clearly going to be used as fillers in the editing room which just goes to prove; live audience reaction? Not so live. As it was, we gave up on America's talent at 9:30 pm and disappeared to find the more certain talent of the Cheese Cake Factory. The judges should have done the same; chances of passing to the next round dropped
exponentially with time.

The dress code was strict; no shorts, no hats, nothing with a logo printed, no bags, cell phones or cameras. Overall (it was stated) our attire had to be 'hip'. This caused raw panic among the group of astronomers I was traveling with. We had dedicated our life to Physics ... largely because we had failed to be exactly this.

Biggest surprise of the night? Probably the 74 year old grandmother who performed a heavy rock song in a spangly black dress. Worst act? I'd say the stripper. Yes, that's right, this guy's speciality for one of the biggest talent shows in the world was removing his clothes, down to a tight pink tee-shirt and Y-fronts. The judges laboured the point that this was, indeed, the smallest talent they had ever seen.

There was also a British (and everyone seemed okay with that ...) juggler, a knife thrower and an ex-army dude whose story begged the producers to use the 'intent staring' footage they'd pulled off the audience earlier.

During our return journey, I debated whether I should have entered myself. After all, I did have my conferenece presentation all ready to go right there on my laptop. There were some damn fine graphs in it. Damn fine.

Once they are up ....

The crack of dawn (actually a few minutes before) found me sprawled on a blanket on the grass at Cape Canaveral watching as the space shuttle, Discovery, launch on one of its final missions. Said vertical departure was scheduled for 6:21 am and due to a cunning plan that saw us with a NASA employee in our car (the fact she was on crutches was not our doing), we bagged VIP spots inside the Kennedy Space Center about six miles away from the shuttle. This is almost as close as you can get, since greater proximity results in death from fumes, noise or pissed off alligators; largely to be avoided.

At 6:10 am, the International Space Station (the shuttle's destination) could be seen as a bright, fast moving speck crossing the moon. This was the indication that the narrow window for launch was now open and with no problems to forestall it, the engines fired and Discovery vanished in a white burning mass that lit up the night. It had risen well into the sky by the time the noise and vibration reached us, and we followed the reverse shooting star until the speck finally vanished, leaving an artistic cloud design that was dyed different colours as the sun rose.

My photos are still on my camera, so I am going to cheat and steal one of Alison's:

I've seen a couple of launches before, but always in the day time. Technically, this was not a night launch, but the experience cannot have been terribly different since the only hint of dawn was a slight lightening on the horizon. On one of my previous times I also had VIP tickets, allowing a close viewing spot, and was able to see the shuttle physically turn over as it ascends (the fuel tank is bright orange which gives away the orientation if you can make it out). In the dark, this was impossible since the shuttle was completely obscured by its burning fuel but you were able to follow its path for considerably longer.

Escaping the Space Center was rather less fun and we succeeded in moving 2 miles in an hour. I declare this speed suboptimal. Still, four hours later found us eating a large breakfast .... or was it lunch or dinner? .... with eggs, soar bread toast and sausage \o/

I also discovered Starburst jelly beans. As a result, I still feel fractionally unwell.

Row your boat

So canoeing? Way harder than I was led to believe. Okay, so trip was might have been entirely partially my idea; a celebration of the fact that water is in liquid form in Florida. I also had a short wooden paddle but, if I was strictly honest, I doubt it affected my technique all that much.

We rented canoes on the Silver River in Ocala; pretty route that wound through thick greenery packed with wildlife. We saw turtles (huge ones), alligators (huger ones) and monkeys (less huge but made up for it with quantity). I'd previously only heard rumours of wild monkeys in Florida; largely from Curtis who also tried to tell me that the British bird population had turned carnivorous and was eating the cows. I believed neither story but am now casting a suspicious eye on our sparrow population.

There are some that is, all of our canoe trip who might argue we were utterly slightly optimistic about how far we could paddle in one afternoon. (This might have been partly because we rented boats at a place further down from our original port of choice.) However, the fact I am having some difficulty moving my fingers from the top keyboard row to the bottom speaks for itself is coincidental. The weather was beautiful, the wildlife stunning and the injuries ... well, I at least I have free health care again.

The only blip on the trip was the presence of a large number of motor boats whose engine exhausts are basically at the level of a canoe. At first, I was irritated by these creations; the noxious environment-damaging metals beasts! By the time I was heading back, I was furious. Damn it all! Why wasn't I on a boat with a BBQ, eh?

The distance of the trip is a subject for debate. In my personal opinion, an unfortunate wrong turn caused us to bag half the coast of Florida. Length-wise.

Faux-pas of the hilarious kind

"This is not what is known as an SPH calculation. This is a real hydrodynamical system."

And with that single sentence from our colloquium speaker today, my week was made.

For those who through incomprehensible reasons have not been reading my thesis as their bedtime story book, 'SPH' and 'AMR' are two rival techniques for simulating gas in astrophysics. The first represents the gas as a series of particles while the second maps it onto a grid. Because these implementations are extremely different and the computer codes large and cumbersome, most people learn only one technique and remain fiercely loyal to it throughout their careers. Yours truly is, as you might have guessed, an AMR grid coder or, as so beautifully put above, the coder of 'real hydrodynamical systems'. (^____^)

Okay, I admit, the guy misspoke and meant 'semi-analytic' (a technique in which a recipe for a process like galaxy formation is used, rather than following the actual event in the simulation) not 'SPH' but we all know it was a Freudian slip.

RE: Your mail

No one likes replying to distressing emails. If someone has said something to upset you, why on earth would you want to write back? Still, it in an inevitable fact that we all need to deal with such events from time to time. This morning, I had the misfortune of receiving two such missives. The first was linked to my research, the second to my role playing game. The amazing point was that I realised my answer to both parties was essentially the same.

Being able to link a message regarding simulations of galactic evolution with one concerning your alter-ego as a teenage Japanese boy is not something that can be achieved every day. It is therefore with some pride that I present the following delete-as-appropriate response:


Dear ex-advisor / RP moderator,

After giving your email detailed consideration today, I have reached the unfortunate opinion that you are quite mad. Your request that I re-run all my simulations / stop dead a plotline after months of work is excessively unreasonable. Your justifications for wishing this to occur do not make any sense since no one else believes this change will make a difference / this plot line does not involve your characters. Additionally, the work is all done / characters are controlled by me, not you and you do not have the right to interfere with no consideration to the effort I have put in or my views.

I would be more inclined to heed your opinions if this was a single occurrence. The fact remains, however, that I have spent a huge amount of time compromising and altering the wording in the paper / character events to please you, despite the fact you will not do the same in return.

Given I am first author / the mun of these characters, I think your insistence that such minor topics are corrected by me, at huge personal expense in terms of time and energy, is both selfish and upsetting. I should like to remind you that this is not my main priority and that it is supposed to be science / fun.

I do not wish to not publish the paper / quit the game, since I think there are many aspects that are extremely good about it. However, I will not be bullied.

Yours,

Finger prints

It transpires there are times when twitter's 140 characters are just not enough to get across what I want to say. Actually, that is perhaps a lie since my friend and I managed to thrash out the premise of our argument in about 6 tweets. Personally, I feel this opens the door to how Prime Minister's Question time might be improved if Gorden Brown and David Cameron had to conduct it via an iphone. Is there an app for that yet?

But I digress...

The subject of our debate was the use of fingerprint scanners in school cafeterias as mentioned in the children's news website here. (Why yes, this is where I get my news from. DON'T YOU JUDGE ME!).

Like the concept of national ID cards, such plans tend to open up a can of worms regarding an individual's privacy and even more where a minor is concerned. Words such as 'disgusting' and 'appalling' are banded around before being thrown on placards and taken to the streets. The question I am pondering (and it is a genuine ponder, I have yet to decorate a sign) is what exactly our enthusiastic protesters really object to.

On the plus side for the above mentioned scheme, paying for school dinners via finger prints would remove the need for children to carry money, prevent loss of meal cards and speed up the lunch queue. The first would hopefully save Mum and Dad the trial of finding the required change in the morning and prevent kids being bullied out of the cash everyone knows they are carrying. The downside seems to be a more certain way of identifying the child. Yet, is not the sproglet registered at the school by their name? They had better be, since it's a legal requirement to attend until the age of 16. The record of the finger print will doubtless be held for as long or as short a time as school records have always been held.

The same argument holds for national ID cards. Perhaps there is a point for not making them compulsory, but do not most of us hold passports? Are our wallets not filled with driving licenses, credit cards and other forms of identification that we use regularly for exactly that purpose? Why do we feel better about a system in which a photograph identifies us instead of our biometric data?

I conclude that people prefer a world in which fraud can exist. If they feel that they could, in principal, fake their passport, move to Texas and run for President they feel more free. On the other hand, when they can't get a car loan because some bastard stole their credit card and eloped with an Elvis impersonator to Vegas they get pissed, if only because they didn't think of that first. I like the idea that I could cut all ties and sail off to Fiji any time I desired as much as anybody, but if you want passport you can't do this without breaking a truck load of laws and I doubt any of us are prepared to give up what identity security we do have in order to make that procedure easier.

Even without the finger print scans that US border control diligently collect, if the Government wanted to track me they have school records, college exam results, job contracts, credit card purchases and tax filings (note to self: do these soon). The only addition my finger prints would make is to add a level of assurance that the data was accurate. But then, one of my most recent papers was entitled "A test suite for quantitative comparison of hydrodynamic codes in astrophysics". No one makes up shit like that.

Perhaps the point is; since we choose to operate as a society, it's too late for this argument.

That all said, if anyone is still concerned about the use of such a system for school kids, I would like to reiterate the assurances of Bethany, aged 12 from York:

"In my old school we tried using finger print scanning in the library - it never worked because people's hands were so dirty!"

Ewoks

I went skiing and found an Ewok village. This picture totally isn't doing it justice because I only had my phone camera with me, BUT! There were ramps, and ledges and tunnels all up in the trees.

Ewoks I tell you.

Or maybe a tree top trekking course, but I prefer to think it was ewoks.