Archives
June 30, 2005
Ras de Cymru
I'm marshalling for the first day of the 5 stage bike race, the Ras de Cymru tomorrow.
Link.
June 29, 2005
Vitamin C won't prevent colds
A review of 55 studies suggests vitamin C supplements don't lower the risks of getting a cold.
Link.
June 28, 2005
Storm
There's a storm out to sea, tracking me as I cycle east, & coming closer.
Am I going to get wet?
I heard it before it hit me: the heavy rain on the sand. I managed to get to a tunnel, put on a waterproof & wait for it to pass over. Lightening followed by thunder. I got bloody soaked cycling the rest of the way anyway.
June 27, 2005
Postdocs
I'm interviewing tomorrow morning, for a post-doctoral research associate (postdoc to you & me). I have a year of grant-funded work to complete, and I'm more than eager to get it done so I can publish a ton of data sat on my computers. So I get to employ someone.
This has been much delayed by beaurocracy, but this might turn out to be provident as I'm trying to get myself back in the lab to run some other experiments, so I'll have time to introduce, supervise, teach & train. Hopefully the successful candidate will have a fair bit to teach me too.
Following this come responsibilities: getting continued funding to keep them employed, getting them trained up in new lab techniques to keep their CVs improving, making sure they present their work to useful conferences & published in decent journals, etc.
We've done most of the teaching, now on to the research.
Beach Bums
Cycling to work this morning, around 9am, it was already warm & sunny. Warm to the point that on the beach was a red and rotund man, in a very small pair of black underpants, drinking a bottle of stella. (Truth be known, I wasn't actually close enough to see the brand of green beer bottle, but tell me it wasn't the most likely). His much thinner friend was a little better dressed.
I love Swansea Bay.
June 24, 2005
Mobile Working
I went back to Cheltenham last night after work, for my brother's 30th birthday. It's funny when your little brother hits 30. It'll be strange when my little sister does.
I decided to work in Cheltenham today, to avoid rushing back to Swansea. On the one hand this was probably sensible because of the extent of the flooding in South Wales with today's thunderstorms (accidents on the M4 & A48M). On the other hand, it ended up being hard work, & the day was so busy that I should probably have driven back to Swansea first thing this morning (its about the same commute-time by car as my usual Cardiff-Swansea bike-train-bike). On top of this I've been getting crap from an insurance company that doesn't want to pay for repairs after I got knocked off my bike. Useless.
So I've got work to do tomorrow. I'll go back to Cardiff tonight & drink lots of beer.
Summer is a break for students from University, but not for lecturers. It's a break for lecturers from students, I guess.
June 23, 2005
Wiki it
For those of you that don't know, there's a great resource for clearly explained information on the web, called Wikipedia. It's a free internet-based encyclopaedia. The really novel thing about it though, is that entries can be created and modified by anyone.
To quote, "Wikipedia is an encyclopedia written collaboratively by many of its readers. Lots of people are constantly improving Wikipedia, making thousands of changes an hour, all of which are recorded on the page history and the Recent Changes page. Nonsense and vandalism are usually removed quickly."
If you're new to a topic or term, go straight to Wikipedia and find out about it, usually in clear English (or another language, if you'd prefer). If you're an expert, go to Wikipedia and check the entries in your subject area. Can you improve them? Are they accurate?
Use it as a starting point - a jumping off base, from which to get the basic facts and then find out the detail.
Examples:
- cartilage
- arthritis
- gene
June 22, 2005
June 21, 2005
Pens Update
A lot of people have been asking about the pens situation. It was resolved quickly and peacefully, without injury to any hostages (froggy, purr purr and oink) or damage to property. All pens were found concealed behind the living room door as part of an amnesty agreement.
June 18, 2005
June 16, 2005
Concealed Weapons
Kim's interrogating Jack as to the whereabouts of 2 coloured pens. They've been counted out, and they need to be counted back in again. It's like a handgun has gone missing, concealed somewhere for use in a future premeditated crime.
"Where are those pens? What have you done with them? Are they upstairs? You're not going anywhere until you tell me where you have put those pens."
A toddler with a pen and pale coloured walls. A dangerous situation.
June 15, 2005
Meat & Cancer Risks
The results of a new, very large sample (300,000 people, of which 1,330 developed bowel cancer) studying dietary habits and cancer again suggests we should eat a balanced diet. But the generalised nuances of the stats are interesting:
- increase your bowel cancer risk by eating red meat too regularly
- increase your bowel cancer risk by not eating enough fibre
- decrease your bowel cancer risk by eating fish very regularly
Poultry doesn't affect the risk. There are many other benefits to eating oily fish regularly too (such as mackeral, herring and salmon), such as reduced risk of heart disease, improvements in immune function and IQ, and reducing the development of arthritic disease (BBC Food - fish).
Read the BBC report of the study.
June 14, 2005
Rosie Around The World
In October 2003 Rosie left Wales to run around the world, covering as much by land as possible with no support or backup team (nuts). She's running across Northern Russia at the moment. She's doing it because she can (impressive) and is raising money for The Kitezh Community for Orphan Children, The Prostate Cancer Charity and the Nepal Trust.
This is a really incredible feat of endurance, will, trust and belief. And serious mileage.
Follow her progress on her website, written by her son:
June 12, 2005
So close
Ooooh - so close. We've had our house in Cardiff on the market since November or December, and we've had viewings but no offers. Our estate agents inform us that our most recent viewer (Monday), was about to put an offer in to buy, but the buyer for his property pulled out the next day. So close, and yet so far. He did say the house was perfect though, which makes Kim feel good.
We've dropped the advertised price considerably, and really can't afford to drop it any more. House prices, in South Wales anyway, are certainly falling now, and it's a buyer's market. Commuting between Cardiff and Swansea every day is expensive and time consuming, but selling my house for any less than the current asking price would cost me more. Oh well. Whenever it happens, it happens. I won't count my chickens until contracts are exchanged.
June 10, 2005
Second Office
This is my office this morning. It's about 400m from my normal office and has sand, an ocean and no roof. Much nicer. I have a laptop, a GPRS data connection and lots of sun.
I might go for a paddle later.
June 08, 2005
Dodgeball
A sunny day in Swansea, and the students are all playing dodge ball on the lawn.
Buggers.
June 07, 2005
Obese Homer
LOL! After my earlier post SkyOne played the Simpsons episode where Homer gorges himself to reach the weight of 300lbs so he can work from home with a disability benefit. That's what I'm talking 'bout.
You can't write this stuff.
Oh, and if you need to spend the evening swapping out the hard disk in your Apple notebook, you'll be needing these superb guides from PBFixIt. They're a fantastic resource when you need to crack open your Mac for any purpose. Bacon saver.
It's Salmon-time
I'm feeling the risk of becoming like the salmon again. Breathe and count to ten. Not helping.
OK, you've probably not noticed the seamless move of this website off-site to a new server. Good eh? I was getting a bit panicky about the age of my hard disks and the weakness of my backup solution, so as this blog hit 1000 entries I moved it to my rented space on a pro server. It now has a new domain name: www.dontbeasalmon.net. Go on, try it. Using www.samwebster.net will also always work.
Do you remember the salmon?
The new name is supposed to remind me of the salmon's fate and slow me down, but when you've been knocked off your bike twice in 5 months, each time destroying a laptop you rely on for any hope of effective working (and still waiting for repair costs), your commute has stolen over 3 hours a day from you for a year and a quarter (and over £2500), and the work you want to do is made so much harder by the neverending crap you don't want to do, you can feel those steroid hormones bubbling away. And that makes it worse.
Fuck it. I'm going to eat 20 doughnuts a day and get huge sitting on my sofa playing on the Xbox (I'll be too big to get in my PC's chair). Ace.
June 06, 2005
June 04, 2005
Hex
A perceptually screwy experience at Alton Towers. Ace!
June 03, 2005
Black vs White
My desk is getting silly again. My laptops haven't been replaced yet so I have to work with a variety of solutions.
Annoying. Very, very annoying.