Futility

I am a salmon. I am swimming against the current, going nowhere, fighting a path upstream to some unknowable goal, for some intangible reason. At the moment I am stuck beneath a weir; some man-made bullshit designed to keep my nose pressed down against the slimy bottom of the river. I can't find a way up.

My body is filling with cortisol. Whenever I get wherever I am going, I will die.

Colours

Unreal Engine v3

Wanna see some screenshots of the "in development" 3rd version of the Unreal Engine?

Link

Oakley MP3

Oakley MP3 player. Good or bad? Hmm.

New Build

A new build of old and second hand parts, for a better winter/commuting bike:

Autumn Approaches

HalfLife 2 Delay?

Could HalfLife 2 be delayed another 6 months?

Link.

Twitching

Remember that thing I said about coping pretty well with no PC gaming? That it's not an addiction? Well forget it. I'm starting to get really fucking jittery now. Next week it will be a month since my gaming rig blew, and my new components (OK, some of them are a *little* esoteric) still haven't all arrived. Dawn of War was released today, and my NTL broadband speed has been upped - ripe for some online gaming now it's getting dark and wet outside. I need some 1st person shooter action, some top down strategy mindfuck, some multiplayer online competition. I need to win. Either I need the brain chemicals I'm missing, or I need to satisfy some hormones that are raging.

Christ, it's like my PC's having a period or something.

More Press

The ARC (the funding body paying for a current research project of mine) just phoned to ask if I'd be in their monthly magazine. Sheesh. When it rains it pours. All this publicity might go to my head! Or not.

Sod

People scoff when I claim that you can measure the law of Sod.

Yesterday morning I was running (well, cycling) late to catch my train (Jack was up early). With the foreknowledge of Sod's Law I predicted that the busy dual-carriageway that I have to cross every morning would be particularly busy because of my worry & tardiness. It was. The traffic was thick. No gaps, & the lights took longer than usual to allow me through. I had to up my pace to catch my train.

This morning - glorious as it is for it not raining right now - is a bit chilly. But I didn't realise this until half a mile down the road. It should have been the first morning for gloves. Instead of losing time by stopping I decided to put them on at the busy dual-carriageway, but then Sod's Law slipped into my mind & I knew this wouldn't be possible. Indeed, traffic turned out to be very light & I just slipped across the road, between the gaps, with cold hands.

OK, we're talking about n=2 here, but this is about as much evidence as people put up for the prescence of ghosts (a spectral orb on infra-red camera? Or maybe it's just a bit of dust? Aaargh! Quit it you loonies!) so I thought I'd mention it. Don't expect me to be recording any long-term logs here. I'm sad, but not that sad.

My brother says my belief in Sod's Law is just a mark of my pessimism. He's probably right.

Lazy or Busy?

I've been a lazy blogger of late. Frankly, I've been far too busy to write anything of interest (as if I ever do), & at least you got some moblogged photos. The medicine course is in its second week now, & while my prediction that bullshit levels would drop off was correct, so also was the one that said my workload would in no way be reduced. I hate to break this to any students reading this, but a lot of the teaching is being prepared on a week by week basis. The busier lecturers (yeah, I'm talking anatomy here, but not solely) are ahead of you, but not by much. God forbid one of us gets sick.

I know that students traditionally hold the long-standing belief that lecturers give an hour of teaching every so often & then have lovely long summer breaks, but that's just not true. Asides from the research parts of our jobs (as important as teaching?) there are all the preparative and organisational tasks hidden just beneath the surface. I'd probably rather bury them in shallow graves, but I'd better not.

A good example is the, er, sensitive material that teaching anatomy requires. There are security, transport & logging issues that have been in the planning stages for a long time & are now coming in to play. We have no technicians yet to pass these jobs on to.

This is a new course in Swansea, & as such the content is also all new. We have good guidelines to work to thanks to Cardiff University, but there's a mass of ongoing preparation. Once the first year has run in its entirety & the students have all passed their exams (they're all loving that word right now) most of our stuff will be repeatable to a new batch of students. But then we'll have two years to teach...

We're also a bit keen on the old elearning business, which we're making good use of already, but will be a resource that expands over the years rather than months.

I'm actually going to get home before dark tonight for the first time in over a week, which I'm very glad about. I solved some Filemaker Pro problems in time to catch the 4.30. It was the autumn solstice yesterday: the nights are as long as the days again. I haven't seen much of Jack recently. My sister visited us from Sunday to Wednesday & I only saw her for a few hours each evening, which I don't feel great about. I'm not whinging. Oh, wait, yes I am.

I have a holiday in a couple of weeks' time. The problem is that I'm going to have to work twice as hard until then to make up for all the time I'll lose. Will I relax for a week in Cornwall? Probably. Hopefully. I can't remember what it feels like.

To any of my mates reading this: we'll catch up soon. Really. Come round & help me drink some single malts. It's getting cold outside.

Histology Practical Class

The Last Train Home?

Not really - just listening to the Lost Prophets.....

Elearning

Skulls

I'd not seen these before - they live in the biological sciences building opposite me. They have a great collection of skulls, bones, and so on.

The skulls of a hippopotamus and and Indian elephant.

Spinach Power

A new technology has hit some headlines. It's hinting at using a spinach protein to convert energy from sunlight into energy for your mobile device. Read more here. A green phone, in more ways than one?

Sea Monster

Sea monster?

Star Wars DVDs

There's a very positive review on DVD Forums this morning about the Star Wars Special Special Edition DVDs released today.

Hmph. Maybe I will buy them then. No hurry though.

Cougar

I bought a frame for a new commuting bike off a mate:

Weekend Away

If anyone's interested, I'm doing this on the 3rd October in Northamptonshire. I know some of you wanted to join me and make a weekend of it. We'll probably be staying in the Hilton.

Holy crap. They've changed the website since my printout: machine guns and axe-throwing have been added. I'm slightly crapping myself.

Lab

The labs are beginning to fill with kit. Does anybody want a job?
Post-doctoral researcher required for research into articular cartilage
repair in the new Swansea Clinical School.

ATI

Which one, which one?

Taff

Almost home.

Mills Memorial Building

Bristol University

Simon!

Sox9 & hypoxia, eh?

Bristol University

It Begins

We finally began teaching today. I'd like to think that it went OK, and that we started the course off in a reasonable manner.

The anatomy itself was introductory, but hopefully interesting enough. The students themselves, on the whole, appeared keen and often worried that they didn't already know more. Hey - if you already knew it all you would already be qualified. We're here to teach you. It'll take you the best part of a year to cover it in the detail you want, and today is only the first day.

I'm off to Bristol now, for what promises to be an interesting 2 day research conference.

Sunday Mornings

Prinknash Abbey

Medicine

At last we begin teaching medicine tomorrow. The students have arrived (mostly), they know who we are and where to go to get taught. They have hopefully been enthused and bouyed by the inspirational speeches from the directors of the project and they're ready for the deluge of information they're about to receive. We'll try and start slowly and gently, and they (you?) will soon slip into the way of things. The course will at least be incredibly interesting for most of the time. The students have a wide range of backgrounds and ages, so some will slip into it all more readily than others.

Tomorrow I am teaching a little terminology of anatomy, so I'll work into it an introduction to terms for regions of the body - useful for describing where things are (pain, for example) in a clinical setting. I should be able to whitter on for half an hour or so about abdominal contents with a little Greek and Latin thrown in. This will be the first time we will have tried teaching in small groups in the anatomy labs, although we have tested the labs for large group teaching already. It'll be a good indicator of how this style of teaching will work for the rest of the year, and, thus, for the anatomy teaching for the course as a whole.

Jack's feet

Jack took a photo! But of his own feet...

Port Talbot

Staff

Guild Hall

Early Morning

Bike lights on for the first time since last winter. Daylight hours are quickly receding.

Football

I forgot the football was on!

Lecturers

Lecturers late in the afternoon.

Lecturers

Lecturers in the morning.

Term Starts

Time/Money

I chatted to a guy on the train home today. It turned out that he had an operable brain tumour, (and probably lung tumours too). The conversation summised the problems of time and money.

I've had a belief for a long time that throughout your life you either have time, or you have money, but rarely both (unless you're very lucky and win the lottery, for example). He agreed. At the moment he has plenty of time, off work sick, waiting for operations. He wants to travel, to see the things he's always wanted to see, but he doesn't have the money because he can't work and he doesn't have savings. He'll probably go, and borrow the money and be damned (and why the hell not?)

He explained that when you're in your 20's and working you enjoy earning money, and you work to get hold of the cash to buy the things you need when you're young, and you set yourself up in life. Often you're looking forward to the weekend, and then the weekend goes too quickly for your liking.

In your 30's and 40's you work harder because you're raising your children and looking after your growing family. You earn OK, but you spend much of your time away from home and your kids think you're a stranger at times, they see so little of you.

When you reach your 50's maybe you have a little more time, as the kids have flown the nest, and the mortgage is manageable (if you still have it), and maybe work pressures are reduced as you're settled in your final job and ambition is not what it was when you were 25. Is this the point we're working towards? Are we working towards the periods in our lives when we are plentiful in free time, in our 60's and 70's? The problem then of course is that your health is also not what it was when you were young, and again the increase in free time comes with a pension in your 60s, the size of which depends on how prophetic you were when you were 25.

This guy was in his 50s. Time hopefully hasn't run out completely for him, but you can maybe envisage where he is in his life. We plan and plan, but the best of plans often go to shit. What am I trying to say? Maybe I'm just trying to put the point across that work and free time need to be balanced throughout one's life, and don't plan in too much detail. Do stuff sooner rather than later. you might not get a warning.

These aren't novel concepts, but we still fall into the traps we set for ourselves. I for one am particulalry bad for it, but I do love my work, which helps. But maybe I'll take a bit more holiday this year than I normally do.

BBC

The BBC have been with us in the Swansea Clinical School all morning. Some stuff went out with the breakfast news, another item will go out at 1.30, and then some more on this evening's BBC Wales news and also on S4C's Newyddion. They are, of course, reporting on tomorrow's opening of the latest medical school.

It's funny how some people get very nervous in front of a TV camera. I guess I'm just so used to looking like an idiot that I don't care that much any more. Oh, and I only get really, really nervous 30ft above my last dodgy piece of gear on a gnarly route and my arms start getting pumped. But you learn to deal with that. (Otherwise you end up in hospital).

Day 5

Forgive me Father, for I have not kicked alien arse in 5 days since my gaming rig blew.

Actually, going cold turkey like this might have been good for me. I've caught up on The West Wing series 2 on DVD, which Kim has been nagging me to get on with for ages. I had a weekend doing DIY stuff in the garden, helping Kim potting plants and getting stuff she needed. Jack wouldn't get out of the car (he loves trying to drive at the moment) so I washed the car with him in it. I have time in the evenings to do bits and bobs, and the upstairs of the house isn't 50C (because of manic overclocking of my PC) when I go to bed. I wonder if Kim's glad I'm not gaming?

The gaming gap's going to be a bit longer. A lot of the water cooling kit I ordered is on back order from the supplier, and I still haven't tested my graphics card for knackeredness. Good job Amazon have knocked back my HalfLife 2 release date to November 1st.

Dead

Say goodbye to my blown rig. It's getting disassembled ready for repairs and a new home. Yeah, it was starting to look a bit Y2K, so time for a new style.

Path

Students

The students arrive on Wednesday, and honestly, I am looking forward to it. I've only been in Swansea for 6 months, and the other lecturers have been here much longer, but we've spent so much time in preparation that I'm really wanting to just get on with the teaching now. I want to see it all slot into place, and to finally begin to get some sort of balance between the teaching and the research. At the moment the reseach is almost all getting done in my spare time (not that I officially have any spare time any more), and it'd be nice to allocate a day or half a day to getting these papers submitted to journals and these grant proposals written.

Anyway, looking forward to meeting you all next week.

Dead PC

On further examination the power supply in my gaming PC *is* blown after all. It's spinning the fans but nothing else is powering up. The mobo doesn't begin to boot, the disks don't spin, the CD trays won't open and the graphics card's fan doesn't spin. I still believe the graphics card is burnt out because of some of the original symptoms, but I might get lucky.

I shelled out for a new case and some water cooling kit . I'll take it slow and pick out a new graphics card when I'm sure this one's dead. I'll be going ATI again, and as cheap as I can, probably.

Work

See the taller building? That's the university area. I work here! Wouldn't it be nice to live by the sea too?

Lunch

Students

Students arrive in one week.

Sabotage

Do you reckon Kim sabotaged my PC because I've been playing too many games recently?

Bang!

Ooooh crap. I was running around inside Doom III last night and my PC switched off on me. I left it a few seconds, and (probably unwisely) switched it back on again. Bang! Crackcrackclickbang! Off again. Uhoh.

Usually when something inside a PC goes bang it's the power supply. With a bit of sniffing around - literally - I couldn't work out whether the smell of burning silicon and rubber was coming from the power supply, the graphics card or both. I unplugged it and left it all to cool off. An hour or two later I tried powering up again, and it flickered on and powered off. So the power supply's not dead then. Oh dear - that points towards the graphics card. a particularly expensive part of my system. Oh wait, it IS the most expensive part of my system. Shiiiit.

The ATI 9800 graphics card draws power directly from the power supply, so I unplugged it from the whole thing, and the computer started up fine. Of course it wouldn't boot because there's no graphics card, but the PSU seems OK. I plugged the graphics card back in, powered up and watched a little flaming molten droplet fall from the card and wink out on the base of the case. Oh dear. Oh dear oh dear oh dear.

OK, so it was a teensy weensy bit overclocked, but there were no artefacts onscreen. Hey, even ATI supply overclocking tools in their drivers these days (I'll find and post the link later).

Anyway. The card was over a year old, and I can't even remember where I bought it from, so I'll be buying a new one very soon. I need to decide, ATI or Nvidia?