eep! – a blog

Aaaaaaargh – you’d think it knows I’m in a rush to get away!, originally uploaded by rob78.

Yet again, the dark forces contrived to delay me getting away from the office. It’s as if they *know* I’m planning to do exciting things…

Never mind. All is good now. Patience is a virtue. And… breathe.

One way and another, I’m in quite a few places on the internet – this blog, twitter, flickr, and of course the ever-ubiquitous facebook as well. I used to have a myspace account (two actually) and I’ve dipped into the world of internet dating as well. And the thing that goes with it everywhere is your profile picture, which defines you from the outset before anyone knows anything about you. Whilst I’d like to say I don’t think too hard about my profile pictures, I’d be lying if I said I didn’t think about it at all – after all, no-one is going to deliberately post a bad picture as their representation online, are they?

Anyway, all this leads to this awesome piece of work on OKcupid which someone had linked to on twitter earlier. Statistics fans – it’s a good one :)

show me the data!

…Star Wars X-wing fighter trainers:

adidas_xwing_bg.jpg (1000×750).

So I’ve gone and made the blog all minimal. Behind the scenes it also auto-updates twitter and facebook. Flickr is set up to post here as well (see the ‘fingers crossed’ entry for an example).

Posterous and tumblr might be the new kids on the block, but WordPress was here first :)

What do you think?

(Colour was so 2009 anyway)

Lamebook – Facebook Fails, Wins, LOLs and More » Further Complications.

I can’t help but keep coming back to this site

Flying Bridge | frozenly.com.

Title says it all. Engineering madness :)

Me and my camera, originally uploaded by rob78.

So this is a quick test to try and tie up flickr and this poor ignored blog. I’m using flickr more and more at the moment, so am going to see if I can use it to post a bit more too. Fingers crossed…

Hello world :)

January – Best European snowboarding trip so far – Flaine – recommended.

February – Met an incredible girl. Joined twitter :)

March – Girl turned into girlfriend. Didn’t do enough dissertation.

April – Finished my dissertation on time, after massive effort. Became an uncle to Eloise. Felt awesome on both counts.

May – JH’s wedding, my birthday, lots of fun and socialising.

June – Got 67% for my dissertation, therefore a merit for my whole MSc. Really pleased. Got dumped too. Not so good.

July – Spent a lot of time moping around, but dragged myself out to do Bristol’s Biggest Bike ride, 50 miles in all.

August – Seemed to spend a lot of time drinking (with others, not on my own!) Thank goodness for friends and sunshine.

September – Ordered my new car, therefore gauranteeing rain for ever more.

October – Marked the end of the month with my 10-year anniversary at work, crazy to think about it. Collected new car :)

November – Went to the smallest gig I’ve ever been to, tested my new snowboard, both in Manchester. Graduation at Bristol Cathedral.

December – Had a load of leave to use up, so spent it with friends and family. Felt properly relexed for the first time in ages.

[2008] [2007]

Today, the scientists at Cern have succeeded in circulating two beams in the LHC and have achieved the first collision. As a confirmed physics geek, this pleases me immensely, particularly after the whole startup and almost immediate shutdown last autumn, when the refrigeration units packed up.

Anyway, the only thing possibly greater than the feats of science going on, are the hoardes of crazy that appear whenever the LHC is in the news. Today, I present my pick of the comments from The ‘MySun’ pages of The Sun online, from JT_Cro, pasted below for your analysis (complete with original spelling+grammar):

i dont like the closeness and trusting these bumbling fools to destroy this planet we live on just for some thoery that has no basis leading back to square one. if you ask me, i would have this machine shut down and disassembled to be honest, i would rather be ignorant and scared of this machine then dead because these fools miscalculated and caused a catastropic disaster that led to countless deaths of every lifeform, i maybe overexaggerating but with enough protons, it could disstabilize the earths magnetic core and possibly cause a massive earth quake that could shake the planet to pieces.

Well thank goodness for the voice of common sense – JT_Cro, clearly has done a far more thorough risk assessment than the teams of scientists at Cern. Quick unplug it. Then take it apart in case anyone is tempted to come back and restart it. Yeah, that’ll learn ‘em.

The thing that upsets me the most here (and I am ranting, I realise) is the statement “I would rather be ignorant and scared of this machine then (sic) dead”. How can that be any sort of way to live? I don’t have a death wish, but seriously, surely, nothing ventured, nothing gained?

On a lighter note, imagine 10,000 years from now, there are no records of the Cern experiments left in the world and TimeTeam find the LHC’s 26km main collider tubes?

“Tony. TONY! I think we’re going to need a bigger JCB…”

As seen on the b3ta newsletter.