Bad Graph Day

I believe I just had what is quite possibly the worst day for graphs I have ever had (or will ever have) in my whole scientific life. Check these beauties out.





Super-bonus points to anyone who can identify my area of research.

As it happens, while I was a-projecting today, creating the monstrosities before you, I was quite taken with the iPod Touch of a fellow research student. I spent an age fiddling with a particular game on it called Evolution RGB.

Now, it would almost be worth describing this game except that it is nothing more than the poor cousin of another game that predates it, which I came across one day on the Big Bad Internet.

The Falling Sand Game is really a series of Java applets, each containing a different set of tools and materials, such as (but definitely not limited to) sand, water, fire, plant, oil, wax, napalm and the enigmatic but annoying "???". There is no objective other than to create marvellous interactive sculptures - it is really just an advanced virtual sandbox. My favourite version even features little zombies, which you can bury in the ground and watch as they attempt to dig their way out.

Come to think of it, my graphs do kinda resemble zombie-battered shelves of wax.

The Falling Sand Game

The Anti-Jon Story

It turns out, yet again, that happiness is a worthwhile pursuit. It has resulted in creativity!

Sctott and I were having a discussion a little earlier about a mutually disliked former acquaintance. His name is Jon, and for all his good looks, scientific prowess, grammatical flair and vast alcohol tolerance, he is an arrogant, disparaging, insensitive... person (RE my previous post: it's ok, I forgive him).

Jon likes to make known his written works, almost at the expense of others; he brazenly puts forward his efforts with the pretence of a self-deprecatingly modest genius ("Here's my submission to the magazine - I doubt it would make much sense out of the context of the book, but it's my best shot anyway. I'm afraid I can't come to the publication meeting.")

It so happens that Sctott saw Jon today, and within the context of literary creation too, as Jon was nosily trying to oversee Sctott's work on the aforementioned magazine, the society of which Sctott is the president. Neither Sctott nor I care much for Jon's work, reeking as it does of ostentatious self-assurance, since in the past he never cared to ever look at ours and pass any criticism, positive or negative. Thus it was decided that what we needed to produce was an anti-Jon story. This would be a story of Jon's made of antimatter, such that if he ever tried to get one of his stories near us again, especially in the context of a magazine submission, we would use the anti-Jon story to destroy it.

As everyone knows, when matter comes into contact with antimatter, both annihilate, resulting in a complete absence. As everyone also knows, antimatter has the property that it is exactly the same as matter except for a reversal of time symmetry. The effective result of this is that antimatter is regular matter travelling backwards in time. Obviously.

That's when we remembered that back in the first year Jon had had a sudden problem with one of his computer's hard drives and had lost a significant amount of his writing. And we realised that he lost it because our future selves had clearly written an anti-Jon story and sent it back in time. We had not written any such thing, however, creating the condition that unless we wrote an anti-Jon story there and then a time paradox would cause the universe to explode. So we decided to write one. The effort follows.



THE ANTI-JON STORY
by Me & Sctott, featuring the Housemate Third
All idiocies, grammatical or otherwise, are intentional (we promise).


Once abom a time (theabom was made of jelly and nitrogen and cumin and fire) there was a car-crash and it was really witty. The ombomniscient narrator died of StTurf maccarony. Therefore the story is therefore narrated in the 3rd person without a narrator. The story will be as deep as a ladies garter.

Won day, there wos a pirate whose name wos Won Jon Silver. He wos friends with a Jedi named Jobi Jon-Won Jon-Bon-Jovi Kenobi. I think we need speech marks now, "said the pirate." But not like that! Get them right, for Jedi's sake! "Ok, sorry" I'll stop now. "I should say so," said the pirate to me, "and stop speaking in the first person." Ok, the non-existent narrator will stop talking in the first person. And will stop mixing tenses.

Won Jon Silver and Jobi Jon-Won Jon-Bon-Jovi Kenobi were walking in a field when they saw a beautiful girl. She was cryin'. "What's the matter?" they asked.

"My dad is Bob Marley the Evil Rainbow, and he has forbidden me from being sarcastic and witty. I hope you like cryin' too."

"We don't," said the pirate and the Jedi, and so they left.

(Un)Happiness

Today I have been thinking about what makes people unhappy.

I think the answer is insecurities.

People get unhappy when they are unsure about things. Most importantly, other people. I think any situation in which people experience a negative interaction is 99% likely to be based on a misunderstanding. After all, I guess it is impossible not to misunderstand someone to at least some extent when all we have is the slight, subjective slice out of some unknowable greater reality. That which we do perceive is cut down and coloured by our own experiences and capabilities: eyes see only the "visible" portion of the electromagnetic spectrum. Furthermore, biased eyes refuse to see anything but yellow (to paraphrase a paraphrasing, very popular with one of the most influential people I know).

The other 1% of negative interactions are fuelled by previous experiences which were built on what was 99% likely to have been a misunderstanding.

Misunderstandings proliferate freely and can breed insecurities, which can breed further misunderstandings. There is probably no immediate prevention for either of them. But people would be happy if there was a cure.

Is there a cure? A way to learn to be happy? I think so. I've been trying for a long time to keep myself cured, and for the most part the cure is successful. It would be wholly successful if it was permanent but, like everyone, sometimes I get sad. I believe with practice the cure can become permanent, at which point it is also the prevention.

I think the cure is acceptance. I do not mean acceptance in a resignatory sense: one is not "doomed to fate" but one can accept and understand one's own lot along with the almost limitless possibilities for change. This is the start of being able to cherish it if it is good, or change it if it is bad. Not everyone is in acceptance, however, and these are the people prone to insecurities and misunderstandings.

It cannot be expected that other people will learn to accept. Therefore if they behave in a manner fuelled by insecurities they must be forgiven, that is, accepted. When receiving acceptance they may learn to become more accepting themselves.

I hope that one day I will become permanently accepting. When that happens I will be like Jesus or Buddha, or some shizzle like that. Then let's have a party and be happy.

Danger Danger, High Voltage

"Are you busy?" calls Tim. He comes to me. "Because if you are, feel free to tell me to bugger off. I just need your help for a minute, if you could." Indeed, I have just finished what I was working on, so I go to help him out.

Tim is a lab technician. I see him every Monday and Thursday as I work in the labs on my final year project. He cusses and talks to himself. He grins at you madly when he catches your eye. He watches BBC news on the web at lunchtime, as he munches his way through an entire shopping bag of lunchtime goodies. He is enjoyable company.

I am not sure why Tim is where he is, exactly. He left school to work as a technician for the university. Work, that is, not study, but he soon decided he did want a degree after all, and is somehow now simultaneously a technician and a student of electrical engineering who doesn't really spend time around other students. It is his job to fix the magnetism department's machines and to build random electrical toys. Toys - I don't undertand either - like a ball bearing rail gun.

Or today's aluminium-disc-jumps-skyward-for-no-readily-discernable-
reason-or-purpose thing. He is adding more capactiors to it so that the disc can jump higher.

"Right," says Tim, handing me a stick of wood. "I just need you to be here in case anything goes wrong. It's highly unlikely, but it might, so I need you to be ready with that stick." I should point out that the stick is about 1 m long, 5 cm in diameter and completely solid. "Stand back in case anything blows up. If I electrocute myself you need to beat me with this stick until I let go of the electrics."

Sometimes I really love the occupational hazards of my subject.

Resolution #1

I have no more room in my life for pens that do not work. I'll give 'em a Good Scribble, lick 'em, burn the nibs, and if they still do not work after that then they are going in the bin.

Now, if only I could convince my brain to work by threatening it with spittle and fire. After my pens and brain are working I can finally write.

Dog:

Come, let us look at dog.

One Man's Junk

I have been watching a program called "Dumped" in which a certain number of people agreed to take on an undefined ecological challenge which, laughably, many at first just assumed to involve lounging about on some tropical island. But that wouldn't be much of a challenge, now would it? Instead, they have been asked to live for three weeks on a landfill site, living off only what they salvage from the dump, a basic supply of fresh food, and hot water.

I would so much love to try out this challenge. As a child it's the sort of thing I always dreamed of. I don't mean the smell or the rats or the dust, which are just disadvantages where any situation would have its pros and cons. What I mean is the chance to live by one's wits, making big bits from little bits, scavenging with an eye shaped with ingenuity and adventure in mind. I don't mean I'd like to live in poverty either - I want a good bed to go back to at night. It's just, I was always the child making tents out of blankets and chairs, dry grass and palm fronds into cool garden lairs. There's something magical about the art of learning to use what is around you for more than what is immediately evident.

And so, the challenge attempts to transform these wasteful British brats into people aware of the cost, ecologically as well as quite literally financially, of what they simply throw away. As is the way with these things, a lot of them seem to be selfish whiners. There's a woman who is asserting her right to build abstract art sculptures, squandering resources in the process, instead of helping people to build their settlement. There's another who uses all his underpants and socks as disposables: use once, throw away. There's the bitch clique, who sit in the shade complaining of how they have been sidelined only to ignore a suggestion by another participant so they may continue to be the undervalued minority, bitching at leisure. Then there's this man:

Program Advisor: So, you've all been quite lucky so far, because you have a steady supply of hot water. We will not take that away, but I think it will be a good challenge to see if you are able to harness the power of the sun to heat your own water.

Participant: Why is that lucky?

Program Advisor: One billion people on this planet have no clean water at all.

Participant: So? That's not lucky. I live in Britain. It's a developed country, so when you live there, there are certain things you expect, like hot water. I don't see why that makes me lucky.

Program Advisor: You really are a smarmy bastard, aren't you? I wish I could slap you, except that would get this pulled off air.

Participant: You're right, I'm sorry. "If you're not part of the solution..." eh? I vow to change my ways.


I may have made up either the first or last part of that dialogue, but not both.