Halloween

With Phil it's not just the time of year that causes this change of colour.

Skeletons everywhere

I haven't got this skeleton in my office because it's Halloween, honest. It's because we're starting to teach musculoskeletal anatomy next week.

The Pentagon Press

This is interesting: "The US defence department has set up a new unit to better promote its message across 24-hour rolling news outlets, and particularly on the internet.

"The Pentagon said the move would boost its ability to counter "inaccurate" news stories and exploit new media."

So the US military is losing the propaganda war and aims to emulate its enemies to write history for itself, victor or not? This suggestion of the strong-arming of the press comes rather soon after the BBC admits its bias (although maybe for altogether more daft over-politically-correct employment opportunity reasons).

I'm guessing that if you're already sceptical about your news sources this won't affect you much, but what about those that take what's written in print as gospel?

A pic from the park

Jack and I were playing in the park between rain showers.

Testing the Xbox 360

Rich and Vicky came down to visit us last week. Jack and Rich went shopping to test next-gen consoles ;)

Halloween Party

Last night we went to a Halloween party. As usual, there are no photos of me. I went as either the bodysnatcher Burke or Hare (search link) with my own corpse and shovel. The corpse was made of a rubber mask and old clothes stuffed with stuff, just in case you were getting the wrong idea.

Swansea: Bomb team detonate wartime mine

A German wartime mine netted by a fishing boat crew off the south Wales coast has been blown up.

BBC article.

Blood

Hmmm, it's Halloween (almost) and they're taking lots of blood at the university this week. Coincidence?

So should I go swimming today or give blood?

Hallow's End

For some reason I really like the Halloween season. There's not that much to get me in the mood yet, except for World of Warcraft, which becomes strongly themed around this time of year with carved pumpkins decorating buildings, trick or treating innkeepers, masks and apple bobbing. Online festivities.

Read more here.

Bones photos

I've been taking photos of bones this morning for elearning materials, exams and so on. Greg popped in and this strange photo occurred by happenstance. (He was looking at the skull).

Embryology podcasts

I've added the podcast for the "First 18 days of the embryo" lecture to iTunes and the medicine page. I missed it out by accident thinking I had already created it. Thanks to Eve Bridgeman for the recording.

I want to include images as part of the enhanced podcasts, but I need to draw these myself and have unfortunately had nowhere near enough time to do this. I'll revisit these recordings in the future and add them at some point, and I'll make note of that here.

Key Performance Nutrition

Take a look at my new website: www.keyperformancenutrition.co.uk. Want to buy some nutritional supplements?

If the site gets a lot of attention we'll probably add the ability to buy from the site directly. At the moment it's an online catalogue and an advert for the shop. I should also be adding some interactive stuff, like a forum and a gallery. It should be a source of local bodybuilding news. I wrote the bulk of it a while ago, but it took until a mammoth session (several doughnuts and much coffee) yesterday to get the rest of the content sorted.

Tarmac!

Holy cow! The road outside our house is actually getting covered properly! Tarmac seems to be going down today, and it is supposed to be cobbled when it's finished. We won't know ourselves when it's done. At the moment I've practiced the method of parking next to high curbs with high drains to a fine skill. They've even had extra holes in the road and large cones to up the challenge this last week.

New Grips

I regripped my woods. These are a couple of old clubs from eBay (hey, there's no difference between £100 and £20 per club when I'm struggling to hit the ball) that looked like they still had their original grips, probably from 5 or 6 years ago. It took me about 20 minutes to remove the old grips and fit the new ones to both clubs, and cost about £8. It really makes the clubs feel so much better, and isn't difficult to do as long as you have the right tools (curved stanley blade, shaft grip and a vice or work bench) and don't skimp on the solvent.

I recommend Golf Grips Direct. They sell packages including everything you'll need to do the job except the vice, (and they sell those separately too).

I hope this helps (I need all the aid I can get).

Ultimate Ironman, Ultimate Father

Dick Hoyt and his son Rick compete in marathons, triathlons, and ironman events. While that in itself is an excellent thing to be able to do, bear in mind that Rick is disabled and his father pushes him the distance in his wheelchair, or on his bike, or pulls him in a dinghy.

"Eighty-five times he's pushed his disabled son, Rick, 26.2 miles in Marathons. Eight times he's not only pushed him 26.2 miles in a Wheelchair but also towed him 2.4 miles in a dinghy while swimming and Pedaled him 112 miles in a seat on the handlebars--all in the same day."

Article link here. It's a must read.

Mum and Jack

At a park near mum and dad's house.

Embryology lectures

It's difficult (embryology, that is). Both teaching and learning the subject is difficult. As a subject that I am used to, albeit in a rather superficial manner in most areas, it's not easy to know whether I'm getting the key points across or if I'm muddling the ideas. The group of students in the Swansea Graduate Entry Programme are from such a diverse range of backgrounds that it is impossible to treat them all alike (particularly in their first year), so to what level do you cater? Medical students don't really need a huge amount of detailed developmental biology knowledge but the basic processes and concepts are very important, and will help them. Are the lectures too simple, or not simple enough? I suspect that the answer will be different for each student. Am I overly repetitive, or is reviewing ideas helpful? Is the subject matter itself interesting enough, or must it be clinically oriented to hold their attention?

In the last couple of years students have done well in this part of their exams. As to whether I have aided or slowed their understanding, I'm uncertain. I hope the exam results tell the true tale.

Visiting Lecturers

Dr's Vogan and Bishop popped in to the university yesterday.

Tired Boy

New sports

I am an awful golfer, but I'm enjoying myself.

Kim often complains that I don't try new things because I hate being crap. There may be a sprinkling of truth in there (who likes to be bad at something?) but I think my current golfing skills indexed with the number of hours I spend each week bashing at a little white ball with a golf bat strongly suggest that she's wrong. She sees my history of sporting performances and remembers the good times, but forgets the effort I put in to get there. Each time it was the fun that got me there.

Playing today we hit some good shots, and we hit lots of bad shots. I hit my 3 wood 200+ yards off the tee. I chipped the ball from beneath the green up and across the hole. I hit my 4 iron straight and where I aimed it. I'll not mention my putting. Of course I also fluffed tee shots, got caught up in the rough, and completely forgot how to strike the ball properly too, and my scorecard was abysmal by the end. Those patches were frustrating. We had to remind ourselves that we'd only been playing since the end of August and that we'd only played on proper courses a handful of times, and we relaxed, and it all came back together again. Look to the future.

As long as it remains fun, I'll keep playing. There's no hurry.

Amazing pavement pictures

Take a look at these amazing pavement chalk drawings using perspective to confuse.

More here.

MSN upgrade

So after the post below I checked for updates, and there's a new version of MSN Messenger for the Mac: Version 6. So I downloaded and installed it. It won't even log me in, and only gives me an error if I put the wrong password. So now I can't even use the software. Great.

Another high quality product from Microsoft. Any loon that is looking forward to buying Vista is a true nut. If you want me I'm in iChat (also via AOL IM, but I wouldn't recommend that piece of cr*p to my worst enemy).

MSN Mess

I've been having problems with my Mac for the last couple of working days. It's been really, really slow, and everything drags and takes an age to do. I work it hard, and have a lot of things running together so I couldn't easily put my finger on the cause. So I had a look in the activity monitor and what did I see labelled in red? A Microsoft application. Bloody Microsoft MSN Messenger was using 98-99% of my 2.16GHz Intel Core Duo processor, which is impressive for a supposedly tiny instant messaging app. I killed it and all is good.

This explains to you why I may not be visible on messenger...

Local Golf Courses

Avoiding the expensive Gower golf clubs, there are a couple of golf courses I'll try over the next couple of weeks:

Palleg GC

Glyn Abbey GC

This is far safer than rock climbing, and I still get out and about. My life insurance premiums are much better these days.

Golfing family

This weekend I played golf with my dad and my brother. This was a new thing for me, but my dad and Nick have played many times before and this showed in their competitiveness. We had fun, even though I was crap. Dad's course (he's a committee member) is very nice and was in excellent condition. It's a very nice place to play and I'm looking forward to going back, but I'm looking forward even more to improving. I'm starting to get a feel for these new irons and they're feeling good.

I'm not bored yet, so practicing is easy. It's sociable, it's enjoyable, it's stimulating. Being able to play with Nick and dad gives me something else to look forward too as well.

Drinking tea cuts cortisol

Drink tea to reduce your stress levels:

BBC article.

I'm needing an urnfull of tea today then.

Lost 3

The new season (3) of Lost begins tomorrow night (er, in the USA - how in the technological marvel that is the internet could we possibly hope to see this new series before it ships across the atlantic?): ABC's Lost site.

The first episodes of the series are likely to reveal the most.

New sticks!

Moving from 40 year old blades to modern cavity (or pocket) backs. Good timing too as I broke my 8 iron on Sunday with a perfectly normal swing.

Pics

A cloud. This morning.

Post-school play-doh!

Too much spent time at the local driving range and short course. It seems to be paying off though...