April 2009 Archives

Visible Body

Students saw me working with the Visible Body beta software online in the anatomy revision session on Wednesday. After today's anatomy exam (and with the last exam of the week coming tomorrow) you probably won't care any more, but here's the link:

www.visiblebody.com

It has been in a free to use, beta format up until today. From May we'll have to pay to use it but they're still offering 7 day demos.

Hot, cold, hot, cold

I had a VO2max workout this morning on the track, running fast miles. The first felt good, the second felt horrible, and so it continued downward (but I maintained my times). My warm down was a 1600m shuffle, not a run. It was a good workout and one of the toughest I have to do, so I only do about one a month as it destroys my legs. If I did it every week I'd soon quit running.

The point of this post is in linking back to Alan Couzens' article on serious recovery again. As recommended by Alan and by Gareth Davies, the guy in the Swansea University Sports Village who for want of a better description, looks after my legs, I used a hot shower - cold shower cycle to warm and chill my exhausted muscles after the run. The aim, you'll remember, is to use alternating vasodilation and vasoconstriction to aid pumping the fluid stuck within the muscles back into the systemic circulation. It makes your legs go an interesting pink colour too.

It felt pretty good. You can certainly tell when you've warmed up your legs properly as when you stick them under the cold tap a swearword will appear from nowhere. The muscles cool quickly though and its quite comfortable. After five or so cycles I was done. Walking (very, very slowly) back to my office my legs felt, er, "clean". It's difficult to describe. Fresh is definitely the wrong word, but they didn't feel heavy, fat or stiff. They were tired, but they felt good. I'll see if I can get a stock of ice in for the Tewkesbury half-marathon in 10 days' time.

Ideas

"Once the toothpaste is out of the tube, it is awfully hard to get it back in." ~ anonymous.

New Orleans Voodoo

Do you like that? Jo brought me back a voodoo doll from New Orleans (she was at an anatomy conference there last week). This thing is horrible. It's much more horrible in real life and this photo doesn't capture the tackiness or the nastiness of whatever this thing is stuffed with (coconut hair?). I'm tempted to take it to this morning's exam to sit and hold it against my chest with a mad, mumbling gaze. I'm not sure the already freaked out first years would find it as funny as I would, though.

Jo and I try to bring back the worst gifts we can find for each other when we travel. I don't see how I'm going to beat this.

Bradley's cake

Cake in use, originally uploaded by samwebster.

I think everyone liked the cake. I think Kim did an amazing job. Its probably not a great time to start up a new cake making business though, eh?

Twitter, twitter, twitter

Do you still not Twitter? OK, so much of what I tweet is random crap, but I'm sure that was the original, microblogging intention. And I'd love to know about your day to day random crap.

It feels as thought Twitter is everywhere these days, and I think that's a good thing. Can it keep socially lazy people like me connected to you? I'm approaching my first 1,000th tweet, BTW.

Twitter.com

BBC article: Can Twitter survive the hype cycle?

Peppa Pig cake!

Peppa Pig cake!, originally uploaded by samwebster.

Kim made this for Jo's son. How great is that?

St George's Day

It's St George's Day today, patron saint of England and many other countries.

Who?

Serious Recovery

Alan Couzens has written a great article about recovery (Serious Recovery For Serious Athletes) on his blog. More chillaxing and hot baths for me then, but how can I freeze that much ice? Less food and more water in the freezer I guess. Sorry Kim.

Link:

Serious Recovery For Serious Athletes.

Back home & back to work

Stocks, originally uploaded by samwebster.

Yep, we're all back to the routine today. I thought I was tired running around after this lot last week but my brain seems to be working much better after a break from work. And I only came back to 200 emails, so Easter might not be a bad time of year to take a break.

I'm guessing that Jack & Ben had similar expressions to those of the photo above on their way to school this morning after the Easter break. They'll be happy in class though.

Away!

Students: I will be away next week. Most of you are asking me similar questions so if you work with each other you should be able to share this information. You might want to organize yourselves for embryology tutorials when I get back, if you need them.

Even more shoes

I've got a good pile of shoes developing at work too with the addition of some light flats (the red ones). I didn't notice the detail text on the heel until last night. Show your opposition a clean pair of heels, eh?

BMW's Smart Car Doors Stay Shut When Danger Is Around

Gizmodo have noted the development of car doors that won't open when danger is approaching; for example a cyclist passing a parked car. Great idea! I've been caught by a couple of car doors and each time it has been disastrous and expensive.

"BMW has teamed up with Technical University of Munich in creating these smart car doors, which have produced positive results so far. They expect these doors to be available on the market within the next 12 months, although the doors might be licensed to other manufacturers instead of BMW's own cars."

Gizmodo article (brief).

Bunny

Annabel is getting attached to her bunny to a neurotic level. She can't sleep without it. That's a given. If she wakes up in the night and can't find bunny, we all wake up. During the day when she realises she hasn't seen bunny for a while she has to find it, and runs up to me or Kim calling, "bnybny, bnybny". Cute, but then we have to search the house for bunny. Even when she's eating she wants to cuddle bunny, and with the mess she likes to make she'd get the cloth snuggly filthy. And then we'd have a smelly, sticky bunny left in various places around the house.

We learnt from last time though. Kim bought 3 bunnies even before bunny became Annabel's favourite soft toy. Smart!