2009 Resolution
I'm a bit worried about 2009. Firstly, because even before the world fell into recession I was barely making ends meet. If everything dries up in the next six months I'm in trouble, and I really need to find new sources of income. So that's one problem.
But I'm also getting increasingly antsy. I need to do something. I just graze on other people's content, and nothing I do helps the world in any way. I'm 25, which - despite the never-ending bleating I hear at parties1 - is obviously far from old. But it's a good, commitment-free age to be doing things, and atm I'm wasting it.
I have a nurse friend who's volunteering on a ship in Peru this summer - they sail down the Amazon, providing medical treatment to remote communities. This is Properly Worthy. Me, I do nothing. I don't contribute anything to the skeptical community other than occasional sarcastic fiskings2, I don't volunteer locally, and my BHA membership is just that. I suck.
This has been building up for a while, but sitting in art theory lectures, discussing how Oyster Cards have "produced a whole new gesture", brought them properly to the surface. I've got to start contributing or I'll go nuts.
So, resolution for 2009: Fucking Do Something.
2008 Review
2008. Pleh. In my head it went: uni, The Summer of Teenage Angst, uni. But looking over my archives it seems a bit more did go on. Particularly memorable bits:
- Watching Katie Melua on a lovely summer's evening in Devon.
- Playing Guitar Hero and Rock Band.
- Splitting up with Abi.
- Losing my regular dance partner, but meeting another (who's rather better than me).
- Six weeks of ceroc dancing, despite my inability to talk like a normal person.
- Running a dance evening, which scared the hell out of me.
- Mingling with people way out of my league at a Neil Gaiman signing.
- Trying to revamp myself, a bit (as a result of a naive romantic EPIC FAIL).
- Selling my first photo.
- Completing my Year 25 Project (then crashing out of Year 26).
- Seeing James Randi live in London.
- Seeing a whole brigade of humanist awesomeacity at the Bloomsbury.
- Watching Doctor Who, Studio 60, Strictly, 30 Rock and Battlestar Galactica, as well as WALL-E, Hancock, The Dark Knight, and Juno.
- Staying up all night to watch the US election.
- Reading Atul Gawande's two fantastic books on medicine, which I never got around to reviewing.
- ...and I still think Where the Hell is Matt is the best viral video of the year.
Most of which is quite good, really. 2008 got a solid 'meh' before I started typing this, but I've now upgraded it to 'ok'. Lots of room for improvement, though.
Bring on 2009. It's a much better number than 2008. 2008 is numerologically pants.
iPhone Rationalisations
Help me out here. I can't afford an iPhone, but - unsurprisingly - I really really want one. So I'm rationalising my way around the expense. Here's what I have so far:
- My iPod is 3.5yrs old and keeps freezing. I'll need a new one soonish, and they're very expensive. An iPhone would solve this issue.
- iPhones are only available on O2. O2 offer £7.34/month broadband to their customers. That's £10 less than my current home broadband. Now, as my current mobile phone contract is £20/month, and an iPhone is £30/month, that means it's paid for already. Sorted.
- Quidco will pay me £45 if I get my contract through them.
- An iPhone would be lighter than my current phone + iPod combo, and would give me more jacket space.
- The lighter, thinner iPhone would improve the line of my coat, thereby making me more attractive to women.
I think we can all agree #5 is the best rationalisation ever. You can't say I'm not trying.
sum1 may hav flshy-thng-d me
I was groggy on Christmas morning. I wasn't in bed till late, then I must have been yanked out of R.E.M. sleep, or something, as everything pre-breakfast is a bit of a blur. I unwrapped a couple of presents, then began my ascent of the Glasgow Coma Scale before reaching full consciousness sometime after 1000.
I mention this because one of the presents was put underneath a calendar, and I completely forgot about it. Hence my delayed excitement at remembering, this evening, that I HAS IT.
The I Can Has Cheezburger book - it is mine!
Srsly, it is a thing of beauty. I shall carry it with me everywhere to cheer up the glum and the snippy.
Hats. The cold. The truth.
In the last few days I've heard a few rants over whether wearing a hat will keep your head warm. Honest. I hardly believe it either.
You see, the BBC posted a list of winter myths, and one of them was apparently 'you don't need to wear a hat to keep warm'. This has been lauded as a clear example of how scientists are a) stupid and b) change their minds every five minutes.
Well, guess what? Ranty people are wrong. The list of myths came from the British Medical Journal, and here's how they describe it:
As temperatures drop, hats and caps flourish. Even the US Army Field manual for survival recommends covering your head in cold weather because "40 to 45 percent of body heat" is lost through the head.19 If this were true, humans would be just as cold if they went without trousers as if they went without a hat.But patently this is just not the case.
This myth probably originated with an old military study in which scientists put subjects in arctic survival suits (but no hats) and measured their heat loss in extremely cold temperatures.20 Because it was the only part of the subjects’ bodies that was exposed to the cold, they lost the most heat through theirheads. Experts say, however, that had this experiment been performed with subjects wearing only swimsuits, they would not have lost more than 10% of their body heat through their heads.20 A more recent study confirms that there is nothing special about the head and heat loss.21 Any uncovered part of the body loses heat and will reduce the core body temperature proportionally. So,if it is cold outside, you should protect your body. But whether you want to keep your head covered or not is up to you.
They're busting the myth that 40-45% of body heat is lost through the head. That's it. That's all. To be concise:
- Your head loses heat at the same rate as the rest of you.
- If your head is the only thing exposed, you'll lose most heat from it.
Nothing about whether you should or shouldn't wear a hat. Is this clear from the above? Well, yes. Not if you decide you know what it says before you read it, though.
Merry Christmas (and how Colin saved Christmas)
My four missing Etsy parcels didn't show up. I was annoyed, and worried they might have been stolen from the communal post-table. Once, though, Postie left a too-big-for-letterbox package with Colin The Butcher, and didn't leave a note. So I nonchalantly ambled into said shop, trying not to look too hopeful. Colin looked up, said 'ah', disappeared into the back, and returned with a stack of five padded envelopes. He apologised for not delivering them, because, you know, butchers don't have much else to do on Christmas Eve. I explained his new status as The Man. He saved Christmas. I bought some ham.
Hope everyone's had a merry merry Christmas so far. I have a lovely Annie Liebovitz book to read, amongst various other entertainments, and am a happy bunny.
Also, here is a useful family tree explaining cousins, x-th cousins, cousins once removed etc.. It was necessary this afternoon.
Advent: the results show
In case you were wondering...
Click through for more details. Kudos and kisses to anyone who can identify the black/white spotlight-thingy in the top left - I'm baffled.
Nearly there…
Last year I didn't finish present wrapping / delivering until 9pm on Christmas Eve, and I was grumpy about it. I used to quite enjoy the thrill of doing everything last minute, but then it just became annoying. It meant I had three hours to properly relax, which wasn't enough (Christmas Day itself is lovely, but couldn't be described as relaxing 
).
I've done a bit better this year. Most presents have already been delivered, but I'm waiting on four parcels which were posted last Thursday (from different places). Three others, posted the same day, arrived on Monday. I know the Christmas post is slow, but I'm a bit worried now. If they don't arrive I can make do, but it'll be a disappointment. Still, not much I can do other than wait and hope...
I'll move in with my parents for a few days, as it's no fun waking up on Christmas day on your own. Also they have lots of chocolate. Hopefully I'll be ready a bit earlier, too.
Uni project: science-y Christmas cards
Six weeks ago I was given a broad photo project. The possible themes were 'still life', 'a journey' or 'a document', which meant I could shoehorn in anything I wanted; I just needed to come up with something interesting.
I had an idea. It only required dry ice, a prism, fifty light bulbs, and access to a physics lab. So one Saturday morning I was figuring all this out, and at the same time (in an uncharacteristic fit of forward planning) looking for decent non-religious Christmas cards. I idly tweeted about the dearth of good cards from the BHA/NSS, and Andrew of Apathy Sketchpad replied with a comment about making your own. Well, that did it. I couldn't let the opportunity pass, so I changed my entire project in an afternoon1.
So I wanted to produce images for non-religious Christmas cards. Not in an avowedly there-is-no-god way - no need to be a jerk about it - but (somehow) pro-science and secular wonder. My lofty dream result was images that evoked a sense of awe. Not at the aesthetics or my photographic skill or anything2, but at the facets of nature they represented. They'd have a festive air, but be about reality and the joys of discovery. I also wanted them to work as images on their own, but with a 'something else is going on here' for anyone interested. If that makes sense.
That's what I wrote in my project proposal, anyway. I figured this might be pretty difficult in practice, but really I just wanted to produce some cool science-y Christmas cards that I could actually send out. The only catch was the project needed to be on film, so I couldn't use Photoshop - everything had to be done in-camera.
Anyway, I had good fun with this project, and did eventually produce some actual cards (until WH Smiths ran out of photo-card printing packs, anyway). If anyone's interested, here are the final results (the captions were printed on the back of the cards):
The Candle Aquatic
(no Photoshop involved)
http://tinyurl.com/6owruo
Fibonacci Cones
Pine cones grow to the Fibonacci golden spiral:
http://tinyurl.com/6qk3kc
Oh say can you C
(yes, if you know one Smartie = 15mm)
http://tinyurl.com/5pqyff
Bauble Fractals
http://tinyurl.com/69n2hu
More info after the break, for anyone interested.
The Pope’s festive priorities
Here's a charming festive message from that glorious leader of mankind, the Pope:
Pope Benedict XVI has said that saving humanity from homosexual or transsexual behaviour is just as important as saving the rainforest from destruction.
What. A. Dickhead.
He wraps up his bigotry in transparent nonsense about gender theory, and blurring the lines between male and female leading to the end of the human race, whatever that means. As if. What he really means, of course, is 'ewww I don't like it don't make me think about it gross'.
This is the problem with getting your morality from the millennia-old demented ramblings. You can't be trusted. You get 'don't kill people' and 'be nice to your neighbour', which is lovely, but at exactly the same level of importance are 'don't wear hats on a Thursday', 'budgies are unclean' and 'eeewww ickky gay stuff it should be banned'. And (in some religions) most people ignore all the latter, because it's transparently insane, but the leaders can't, so you get this kind of bigotry splashed all over the media when it should be in the gutter where it belongs.
It's 2009 in a week. That's THE FUTURE. In the future, nobody pays attention to pathetic homophobic dickheads.
Hello!
Hey, thanks for coming! I'm Andrew, and this is where my headthinks come to breed. They often meander around humanism and photography, but they're flighty and you can't trust them, so anything is possible.
Do feel free to email me - I get lonely:
Your hair looks swish, by the way - have you done something new?
Recent Comments
- vicky: going up this weekend having done all the welsh peaks except 4 snowdon, cant wait
on Climbing Snowdon. - vicky: what, how can u live in the 21 c and say that, probably a sexist thing
on Climbing Snowdon. - vicky: da iawn laura, cant believe what im hearing, all this fuss, anyway love the site, and i agree, normal people who swear and curse clomb mountains cos we live in the...
on Climbing Snowdon. - Andrew: Did a few quick test shots to check the light levels, then balanced the camera on the arm of a bench, set it for a 20s exposure and hoped for the best
on ISS. - lynsey: Wow, how did you take that photograph?
on ISS.
