September 2005 Archives

Join Us

Slow

Yeah, so it's a slow blogging week. I've actually got quite a lot going on, but not much I want to talk about yet. I'm busy at work, and busy at home.

Have a picture to keep you going:

Teaching Alternative Theories

Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster.

Curly Wurly Slide

2 x videos:

Ascent.

Descent.

Taking Shots

Yeah, so I got a new phone with a camera in it. I'm all 3G and that now, so I got the world in my pocket. So the camera's not quite my D70, but hey, it's always in my pocket so you'll see more of these.

Sundays

Oxwich Lunch

We've been mucking about, looking at areas of Swansea to move to, & new houses. We thought we'd better take Jack to the beach as he's obsessed with it.

Big Fish

Jack's magic fish has grown! It's huge!

Swansea Bay Video

Click the photo to see a pan video of Swansea Bay from my cycle to work this morning. Yeah, I got a new phone that takes video :)

If you're struggling to view it, get the latest Quicktime viewer.

Swansea graduate aims for space

How about the International Space Station as a venue for working on your PhD? A Malaysian graduate of Swansea University looks as though he may just do that.

Read the article here.

Pirate!

Jack's been out facepainting with his mum. Yarr!

BSMB Manchester

BSMB

Magic Fish

Teaching begins again tomorrow. In the mean time, track the progress of this magic growing fish here.

Curriculum

Our new Director of Curriculum started just before the new intake of students. Look, he's so busy he didn't even notice me sticking my face up against his door & taking a photo.

Lecture

A full room of new students.

Labour Day

The USA had its Labour Day holiday a short while ago. It celebrates the introduction of the 8 hour working day. In theory this gives 8 hours for work, 8 hours for recreation & 8 hours for sleep each weekday.

Yeah, that'd be nice. Do you get anywhere near that? I get 6-7 hours sleep & about 4 hours at home. The rest is spent at work or travelling to or from.

Return of the Students

The new intake of 1st year graduate medical students have arrived at Swansea. Croeso! More importantly, good luck & work hard.

3G or not to 3G?

How dumb is this?

I'm in the market for a new mobile phone and a new contract. I'm a mobile data user (for example, this blog is written mostly on the move), so I'm considering going to a 3G phone and network. 3G is a high speed mobile data network, largely touted for mobile video calling. I don't know anyone with a video phone, but I would like high speed, cheap data. If I could browse the web more easily on my laptop or PDA, I can make use of online science databases, like PubMed, and work more effectively on the move. This would make commuting slightly less of a pain in the ass.

So, what are my options? Mostly Vodafone, Orange and Three. Now, Three were the first to setup a 3G network, so I thought it would be worth rewarding them for this. Speaking to them on the phone though, I find out that although they have a high speed data network, you can't actually send and receive any old data over it. Bear with me.

You can use video calling (if you have a mate also on a 3G video phone), you can download ringtones (oh, great), video clips (why?), and get various flavours of news and information (which you can do on a bog standard non-3G network). You can also send and receive bucket loads of emails, if that's your bag, but you cannot connect a PDA or a laptop and browse the internet. You cannot access the huge source of information that the world relies on day to day. What's that all about? With Orange's 3G service you can access anything you like (they act as your internet service provider), and their current offer means you can transfer 1GB of data a month for 3 months. That's a lot of internet use!

What the hell are you doing, Three? What use are you to anyone over the age of 18? I guess I'll be buying a new contract from Orange. Check out the new Sony Ericsson.

iPod Nano

I assume that by now you've all seen the new iPod Nano? Crap, that thing's so small I'd lose it. As usual though, it's damned nice.

Oh, and iTunes 5 is out. Mostly to look after the new iTunes Motorola phone, I guess.

Cycling home

I cycled home last night, from Swansea. It was a beautiful evening, & I had a tailwind most of the way. Look at these suckers in their cars. You're missing out!

Ashes - 5th Test Ticker

At work? No TV? Want to keep up with the cricket on your PC? Use the live match tracker from Tiscali Sport.

Dawn

By the dawn's early light. The camera on my PDA didn't capture this very well, but the reddish light of dawn lit low lying mists. Pretty.

The nights are getting longer. If you look for it, you'll see that the leaves are beginning to change colour. Autumn is here, so I guess it's time for a new intake of students.

Stag Weekend Pics

Some snaps from Dave Mundow's stag weekend are up on the photos page. Nothing too raucous.

A morning back in work

2 weeks off work, 264 emails. Hmmm. And that's after spam filtering (but only 512 spam emails in my junk box - wierd). OK, delete weeklies I'm not going to read, and the missed spam.... 166 emails. Delete all the car parking, car lights left on, missed meetings.... 126 emails. I guess I'll actually have to read the rest.

Back to Swansea

Ug. Back to work. Treat me gently.

Wierd effect on this fence with the train flying through stations.

Ireland

Back on another plane :)

Back

Flying back to Blighty!