Kill the Crazy Frog!

Newstatesman devoured, and thoroughly sunned, I'm back. Now I'm going to post a comment, and it's not on one of the many important socio-political world issues that abound within the pages of the fine paper - for I would be here all night if I started down that futile, if scholarly enriching, line. It seems that the Crazy Frog has become an insidious feature of British mobile culture, and we have the Swedes to thank for it apparently. Bastards.

I say this on the back of an ns:leader comment [Leaps and bounds ahead]:

"Talking of Europe . . . Britain has once again succumbed to the power of the Swedish export. The effortless rise of the "Crazy Frog" ringtone towards number one in the music charts - 5,000 sold an hour, with the prospect of it becoming the biggest-selling hit of the year - is testament to our masochistic streak. Is there no depth to which the public will not sink? At the last count, two members of the New Statesman staff, senior ones at that, have admitted to possessing the offending item on their mobile phones. Both plead in mitigation that they were forced into it by ringtone saboteurs (their children). Meanwhile, an even greater affliction is about to befall high streets and offices across the land. Word has it that an even more arresting jamster ringtone, "Sweetie the Chick", is preparing its assault on our CD racks. One NS offender has already been identified, and there are surely more to come."

....and I was worried about what people might think of me watching the occasional Big Brother. We have bigger problems than that people, much bigger. I am disgusted.

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Long weekend....

Yet another superbly long Bank Holiday weekend has now almost passed me by. It was quite unlike us to not go somewhere for the full long weekend, but instead we played "domestic".

So another Big Brother is apon us. A bad thing? Well, if you don't like it, don't watch it. I quite like it however, it's kind of like an old friend that comes to visit for the summer. Perhaps somewhat out of character for someone who despises gutter trash tabloids and "consumer TV" (i.e. gameshows, mid-day and weekend prime time TV). I didn't watch the 2nd and 3rd ones, but I quite enjoyed the last one, and this year has held my interest. Whether this is the same sort of (ghoulish) "interest" that one might might themselves experiencing at a train wreck I'm not sure, but it's a human trait I'm not about to deny. So I will be watching it if it happens to be on, and I will see about pointing my XML reader in the BB website direction too. Readers will also have to suffer my opinions on the matter too.

The weekend hasn't been about BB though, no, my car has ensured that. You see, the new car is a bit of an attention seeker. It has this metallic paint that just looks particularly dusty all the time; but is not helped by the stone cutting that my neighbour has been doing recently. For that matter, the few thousand Bees that permanently inhabit the Cotoneaster hedge along side my car (at home) are also doing a number on it's polished state.


The Beast

The car is still a bit of a gas guzzler at the moment (for a diesel that is), which is to say it is only giving me around 46 mpg; this will improve in time I hope. We set off to Malham in the Yorkshire Dales NP yesterday, see pics below, and before I had moved 5 feet in the car, the low wiper fluid alarm had sounded, then the low fuel alarm, then the alarm for an unfastened seat belt. It's all "me, me, me" with The Beast. So I watered and fed it and decided we'd take the Missus's Passat to the Dales instead - that'll teach it.


Classic Dales field near to Gordale Scar.


View of Malham Dale from the limestone pavement escarpment of Malham Cove.

I've had a shamelessly materialistic weekend, with pub food, sunny day trips and some shirt and tie shopping. I've also been off today, alone again though, so have spent my time reading through Friday's edition of the newstatesman and trying to figure out whether the Egyptian gods Hathor and Sekhmet are realy one and the same, which would be somewhat of a contradiction, or whether in fact Bastet was the true incarnation of Sekhmet. So, mindless wanderings aplenty there.

Ooh, I did find this in a shop on Saturday: [Sigmund Freud] action figure. How cool is that!?

Comments on the above later, I will be back, as undoutedly I will grow bored of my current reading (the coptic faith).....on the plus side, I do have a sun beam and a beer. What more could I ask for?

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Random Science Class #2: Walsby's square bacterium

Yes, you can indeed get square bacteria, well, they're actually archaea, but who's quibbling. My immediate thought was, "You're having me one" when I saw this. Indeed, my boss commented that if it wasn't the May edition of Trends in Microbiology, it might be taken for an April Fools joke. Never the less, our ignorance of their existance now abated, we can appreciate these bizarre little cells for what they are: something from a Star Trek episode! (hehe).



So what's the deal with square cells? Well, it has to do with turgor pressure. Free-living, single-celled organisms do not have the benefit of isotonic surrounding tissue within which they can adopt such shapes. Most free-living cells are distended, due to the turgor pressure genrated from the water potential between the cell interior and the surrounding solution, i.e. they want to pop because the cell contents have a higher solute concentration than the surrounding solution. If you remember your Biology 101, in osmosis, water flows from a region of low solute concentration, to one of high solute concentration. Thus, theoretically, one might expect such cells to distend and rip along the edges (which would represent the weakest part of the structure). If you're a spherical cell, then the turgor pressure is distributed along the whole cell surface.

However, Walsby's suare bacterium live in a hypersaline environment (they're halophiles: "salt loving"). So they have the opposite problem, where the outside is more concentrated than the inside, thus they risk drying out. They prevent themselves from shrinking by creating an internal environment that near enough matches the external environment in solute strength. This is quite a feat, for a long essay of reasons.

The bottom line is that these guys experience no turgor pressure, thus they are free to assume whatever shape they please. The paper I linked to does reiterate an interesting point I've oft' made. If we follow this issue of turgor pressure through, it is organisms living in freshwater (rather than halophiles) that are the extremeophiles, such are the lengths they must go to control turgor pressure; likewise aerobes might also be considered extremophiles (rather than methanogens) as to use oxygen as your metabolic electron acceptor, you need to deal with all the toxic reactive oxygen free-radical species that degrade the life it fuels.

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Angle-Grinder Man

Don't ask how I came across this, but amuse me it did: http://www.ananova.com/news/story/sm_819416.html

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Memory-Map – The Lake District - £100. NASA – The World – for free!

Ok, some may remember my recent purchase of the Memory Map navigation software for my Lake District jaunts. That cost me a few bob, but I appreciate it. Now NASA offers us the World, for free. Well, not really for free seeing as it was paid for by the US tax payers (but it’s about time they did something for the rest of us – our tax pounds being spent to balance their energy addictions). So anyway, as long as you don’t plan on using it to go hiking (the resolution is only 90 metres, but you get the whole world man!) Work your way in from orbit down to the most back and beyond areas of the globe. Great stuff.

It does come with one caveat. You need a decent computer. You need a couple of free Gigs of space, at least 256 MB RAM and 1 GHz of processing power, oh, and a powerful dedicated graphics card. Seeing as everyone has these now, it shouldn’t be a problem (erp!). So, go [here] to get the 180 MB *.exe file that gives you the basic rendering of the world (and the latest patch). As you zoom in, it will need to draw more data from NASA (so you’ll need a DSL connection too). Enjoy.

I’m blogged out for the moment, and I have to go get the last part of The Missus's birthday present *grin*

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Pride ridden T-Shirt

I had to laugh the other day. I was in a slightly pricey clothes store, merely browsing on this occasion, but there was this one chap (Carling drinking football fan kind of bloke). He was in the process of buying a T-Shirt, but there was no tag on it. The guy running it up grabbed an identical one to scan the tab. “That’ll be £110 please”. The guys face went bright red. The till guy asked “Did you know it was £110?”, to which the guy (bravado, machismo and pride on full alert) said “Yeah” (in an incredulous manner – though badly acted). Oh how funny, they conned you out of your money!

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The Makers of Tea

I hate making tea. I hate other people making tea even more. I don’t having tea made for me, so long as I don’t have to se it being done. If you’re going to make tea, it should be done in a proper pot, and poured. No mashing and messing around. There is just too much obsessive behaviour associated with tea making. Everyone has their own way, but they all invariably involve large amounts of rhythmic OCD movements, mashing, stirring, topping up. It’s awful, it really is.

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Soap thief....

I just want to begin by saying, once again, how much I hate computers. I say this to people over lunch all the time, and they just "Ho-Hum" saying, "They're merely a means to an end". Hmm, they certainly are, but not the "end" that they have in mind. The trouble with computers, and all technology for that matter, is that you can't get past all that technology. Things would be easier, but all the silicon and binary circuits just get in the way....actually, that's probably a little harsh, because invariably it is the hardware that keeps going. It is all the fault of the software designers and the "user interface" (GUIs - Gooeys - suck!)

Whilst hardware can follow the cast iron principles of physics (there's a contradiction, ok the semi-conductive liquid Helium principles of physics), the software is very much a product of the mad human mind. Thus GUIs are simply the extrapolated, artificially senile extensions of human error. We don’t all have artificial intelligence in our computers, but we all have artificial dementia in them. This creates random bugs and coding problems that not even “Deep Thought” could have seen coming, especially those divisible by “0011010000110010” (which is binary for “42” by the way)…leaving us with “issues” that not even our departmental computer cultists department can deal with. Anyway, that’s enough on that matter, suffice to say “01100100011000010110110101101110001000000110001101101111
01101101011100000111010101110100011001010111001001110011”
(Damn Computers!)

Ok, so what happened to my soap? Having recently moved around the block to some new laboratories whilst they install air con and negative air pressure in our old ones, we have to make use of new, erm, conveniences. Now as a rule, all the soap in this department is crap. It is liquid, smells awful and rips all the oils from your hands leaving you with “Tut Hands” (as I call them, short for Tutankhamun Hands). Anyway, last week someone kindly brought in some lovely coconut liquid soap. Nothing special, but much appreciated. There wasn’t much left, but that didn’t matter, there was enough for a week…..that was until the cleaning lady came and instead of refilling the "crud tub", she filled up the new (nice-smelling) tub with the usual departmental filth. So now there is the very slight essence of the nice soap in with the muck, but nothing that stays on your hands when you’re done. Damn them! Why must they do this?!…they do it with the Kimberley-Clark paper dispensers too…”we must fill zem to zee top”, which means that you can’t get any out of the bottom without tearing them due to the pressure. There's no need, you're here every day, and I warrant that a whole tub of soap and dispenser of paper will not be used before you return on the morrow! Grr. “Less is more people!”

Whilst I’m here ranting, can I just say that that mobile phone tone, the singing frog, needs to die. Now! It makes me physically ill every time it pollutes my viewing experience; such that I have to dive for the remote to silence the offending amphibian. Evil. Evil it is.

Oh, and on a semi-aquatic note. Tuna. Tinned Tuna. Why do they need to add so much salt? I wouldn’t mind if it were more nutritionally balanced sea salt, but NaCl! What are you trying to do? Kill us. Tuna should bepart of a healthy diet, but not one loaded with Sodium!

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Writer's blocked...

Ah, another weekend came, and went.

I went shopping for clothes on Saturday, with the Missus of course, which was a novelty. I was shocked at the number of Chavs who now skulk around the city centre. There were all sorts, from the real poor dregs wearing hand-me down shells, to the questionably well financed bling Chavs weighed down with all the chavements usually sported by this insane, delusional class of people.

I think they really see themselves as being fashionable, completely unaware that they are the butt of the rest of the nation's jokes. Of course, it's not like they get too much opportunity to realise this, because they don't spend enough time in school, and they only computer they have is the one they've just nicked. Oh well, at least I haven't come across too many Chavlogs. I guess typing with your forehead slows things down a bit.

We really wouldn’t miss anything if we just rounded them all up and shipped them off to the deserts in one of the former Soviet republics. Re-establish the Gulags! The last thing we need is to see the corpulent ass of some foul mouthed chavlass stuffed into pink velour track suit bottoms, with hair that would blind you if you got too close. Oh, and the chavlads, especially those trying to grow a moustaches like their Dad’s, but which looks more like their grandmothers! Get me out of here. Foul mouthed, stunted, illiterate, pill popping, drunk, sex-crazed criminal scum. I saw one chavlad ask a well dressed man for the time, which was duly provided. The Chavlad was wearing a watch, so either his fake Tag had broken, or he still couldn’t figure out the difference between the hour, minute and second hands. It probably didn’t have numbers on it either.

With such stimulus I decided not to venture out again on Sunday. This was in part due to the Missus getting inebriated with her father on Saturday night, playing pool in the local fine ale house with a pair of nice chaps we met. So Sunday was spent waiting for her to get out of bed. In the mean time I had one of those Star Trek days. I had hours of VOY and TNG stored on the hard disk recorder, plus there was extra VOY on Sky and ENT later in the afternoon. I was set. It was fantastic. I did drag myself out for a run later on, but I can say without a doubt that tree pollen season in here. My chest went and I had to walk home for my Clarityn and more Start Trek (and the roast dinner that the Missus had managed to whip up and invite a mate over for!). Yay.

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Coffee and insurance...

In the couse of finding myself the best car insurance I was startled at the huge range of the quotes. I feel compelled to tell eveyone that Norwich Union most definately did not "quote me happy", nor for that matter, has it quoted anyone I know happy. In fact, it might be better if their gimmick was "quote me incredulously". Needless to say I found myself once again with my current insurer, and that'll do....but all this talk of car insurance leads me very neatly into a completely different topic. Coffee.

What is it about coffee that people like so much? One might suppose it is the caffeine addiction, but I myself am a fan of coffee, and I am most assuredly not a caffiene addict. I know this because I never actually drink the stuff, I just linger around when I smell it brewing. Perhaps it is because there are three distinct facets to the dark nectar: it has flavour, which in the terminology of Heston Blumenthal (of The Fat Duck fame), has to do with how your nose perceives it; the taste, which frankly is about as appetising as sucking on old leather ashtrays; and caffeine, which is a pretty potent pharmacological agent, and is probably necessary to justify the taste. SO I guess I'm a flavour fan. Of course this doesn't really work out if you're going to be a chap "what does lunch", as you can't very well order a cup of coffee for the purpose of smelling it. Can you?

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...turning Japanese.

My name in Japanese. Have a go.

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Phnar...

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Still here. We've moved labs finally, and the computing department has seen fit to finally reconnect my computer to the network. Yesterday was conference day in Birmingham, and I was there presenting my work for the fifth year in a row. In fact, I was introduced as "part of the furniture", which was nice!

It was a very long day, and I arrived back to heat up some of the Missus's fantastic Bolognese and sit down to watch a hard disk full of Star Trek and other such frivilous pursuits. Alas I got hooked on the Extraordinary People documentary "The child who's older than her grandmother" updating the story of the now 6 year old [Hayley Okines] who is one of about 48 children worldwide suffering from the premature ageing disease progeria. You couldn't imagine a more thoughful, intelligent and lively young girl, but parts of her body are ageing at 8-times the usual rate and she'll be lucky to survive into her teenage years....not that she lets that bother her, and that is a lesson well noted. Needless to say, I blubbed like a girl.

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A win (just...)

Well, it's been a while. I've been back to my alma mata college in Wales this last weekend, and very much fun it was too....plus I also picked the new Audi up on Friday and got to take it for it's first decent trip across country. Excellent, though I can't help feeliong that people are now out to get me - driving in the middle of the road at me; pulling out too far at side roads; opening their doors into the side of my car (this actually happened if you can believe, within having the car 3 hours we have a small chip out of the paintwork because of some shit bag English scum).

Anyway, so we're back to the mill, I voted (and it wasn't wasted) although a mere 1500 votes (but a few %) separated us from a Tory win in our constituency. Very close. Turn out in our area was 66%, which isn't too bad - better than many surrounding areas I sampled - but could be better. I was hugely disappointed by the large number of votes for the BNP in neighbouring constituencies. We had only 2.3% facist votes, but others had over 13% (over 5000 votes!) That's scary. What exactly do they think they're voting for I wonder?

So I guess Blair was given his slap, although I'm quite sure that a number of constituencies are reeling form discovering a Tory MP is now representing them rather than a Labour one. There are two areas near me where the Torys made insignificant gains, but purely duie to the swing vote from labour to Green/LD, the Torys got in through the back door. This represents rather inanely stupid voting, and I'm quite sure that not one of those swing voters wanted a Tory MP (otherwiuse sureoly they would have actually voted for them). So now they can just suffer. It's a dangerous game to play, but you have to size up the opposition. The Greens and LD were never going to make any gains in these areas, and if you really couldn't bring yourself to vote Labour, you could have gotten online and voted tactically for the party of your choice - perhaps in an area where they would have made a gain. Oh well, serves you right.

I was glad to see the LD seats rise. Not by much, but each seat does represent a hard fought constituency. I was glad to see that Westmorland in South Cumbria had actually switched from Tory to LD. As usual, the rest of the vote for Cumbria was the same, Labour along the west coast and Carlisle, and Tory for the some of the most beautiful countryside in the UK - which is why: low density population and the rural vote. Labour just had no chance, what with the damage to rural relationships, and the large number of Tory Southerners living in the Lakes.

Anyway, that's that.

I found out that my much covetted garage that I lease from a local agent has been put up for auction (my garage is one of four just up the road from the university - a cushy little arrangement). Anyway, hopefully they're being sold as a going concern, and whomever buys them won't put the rent up - but I can't be sure. I just can't go back to the days of fighting for parking with the f**king students - my last two cars suffered innumerable bumps and scrapes because parking on the road side around here is like playing dogems. I couldn't afford to put the new Audi through that. I half thought about buying the garages, but their guide price is £25,000! Can you believe it!? For four garages, with no lighting, with no planning permission to build anything else! So being garages with a guaranteed annual income of £1470, it'd take some 14 years to start making profit - there is some logic amiss there, or perhaps I'm missing the plot on a potential development?

Oh well, suppose I better go find some alternate parking in preparation for being kicked out.

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