the life and blog of daniel peake
News
Flood alert!
Sep 20th
Here’s a few titbits from Day 3 of my Malta trip:
There’s a flood along my corridor from an unknown source. It rained inside and formed a puddle, and now it’s smelling quite mouldy.
I broke one of my flip-flops today. I guess you could say I broke my flip. Or I broke my flop. I don’t know precisely which one broke.
I ate so much watermelon today, I wouldn’t be surprised if I gave birth to a watermelon in a few months time.
Red jelly is not just for kids.
One of my dinner courses today consisted of watermelon and red jelly.
And in other news, I randomly met the grandparents of someone studying meteorology at Reading, that I probably taught as a masters student year before last.
The weather has also been rubbish today – 30mph winds and not particularly warm, I had to put a top on when outside! Shocker! It turns out it is difficult to swim into the wind when waves and spray are being blown into your face by the wind. Especially when it turns out you’re in a pool and the spray is coming from waves crashing 6ft high over a wall!
Tomorrow things should calm down a bit, I hope so as I’m heading to Gozo (small island north of Malta) on a ferry and I hope the ride isn’t too rough. If my writing is sideways in tomorrow’s post, then you know I’m a bit seasick.
A Cracker of a Eurasia-vision Song Contest
May 16th
This weekend saw the annual Eurovision Song Contest, where countries from across Europe (and Asia now really) have three minutes to each sing a song, everyone votes for their favourite country/political neighbough and we all go home comiserating how poorly the UK continue to do. It’s a tradition.
This year saw a group of us get together to have a cheesy party through the evening. We played ‘Buzz it’ before the Contest started, a game where you must mention things in a particular category within 8 seconds or you lose. I was disappointed to have “breathe” disallowed from “Things you do on public transport”, because I’m sure I don’t hold my breath when using the train. OK, given the state of the buses around here it might actually be a wise thing to hold your breath, but still.
Once the contest started, we were each given three countries randomly. The person whose country won would get a silly little prize worth 99p, the loser would have to do a forfeit. I had the UK, Switzerland and Estonia and, halfway through the voting Estonia was firmly at the bottom of the table. Boooooo. All of a sudden however, a few countries gave Estonia some points, and it lept to the penultimate place on the table! My joy turned to dispair when I realised the country it had overtaken was Switzerland, which was also mine.
The forfeit I had to perform was the rather irritating 3 cracker challenge, where you eat 3 dry crackers as quickly as possible. It can be done in under a minute if you don’t mind your throat becoming perforated. I’ve never tried the challenge before, and apparently my time of 3 minutes 46 seconds is “respectable” for a first ever go. Ot felt like the sheer dryness of the crackers sapped out any moisture anywhere in my body. I think if I drink another few hundred litres or so of water I’ll quench my thirst. Swimming pools in my local area are advised to be on the look out for anyone with a very large drinking straw…
Moving Season
Apr 25th
It’s been nearly a year since I moved into my current house, a whopping 12 doors away from my old house, and that means either it’s time to renew or move house. I’ve chosen, mainly due to the landlord wanting to sell the house, to move. A good choice there, I thought.
So, I’ve found a decent house, about half a mile away from where I am now, with nice decor (taste permitting), good security (thief permitting), a low maintenance garden (gravel-raking permitting) and a room that faces west with LOTS of sunny shiney sunshiney stuff (nature permitting). The people I’ll be moving in with are also pretty nice (lack-of-naked-me permitting)
The catch: The move in date is one month after the move out date of my current contract. The solution: move home, get meals cooked and laundry done (although I may be completely wrong about that), and pay fewer bills. All told, not a bad solution – the commute to work is a bit strained though, so I’ll only be in work a couple of days a week. I’ll just have to work from home… oh the trials and tribulations of being a PhD student. I do realise how cushy I’ve got it, and the thought of joining the Real World and getting a Proper Job fills me with fear and turns my trousers a different colour.
Still, work is progressing well on the PhD. Results are plopping out of the super computer pleasingly frequently! I’ve just got to start writing up the results and present my work at some conferences. Ideally, I hope to submit before Christmas this year (2011) and then write up papers for the scientific commumity for three months in 2012. Then…. onwards, upwards, outwards, skywards and maybe even jobwards!
Polygon
Mar 29th
My trip to hospital to remove Polly the Polyp has been and gone, and it’s been a success!
Last week, I went into hospital for the op. I wasn’t allowed to eat on the day of the operation and by 4pm op I was ravenous! Having the injection of anaesthetic was a very cool experience. If you’ve ever seen House or ER then you’ve probably seen what it looks like when they inject dye and see it go through the veins – it was similar thing when they injected the general anaesthetic. “It might tighten your chest a little” was what they said, and it did in a strange way. When it was injected it hurt in the vein up the arm, and then i could feel that spreading all the way up my arm and branching off like the dye, and by the time it reached my chest I was under.
Apparently when I was in recovery I was shouting to the world “I FEEL LOOPY” over and over. I don’t remember this… which is probably a good thing. I apologise to any of the hospital staff who I asked the same question to over and over again. My sister got asked “Well, how are you?” 3 times – I only remember asking once!
I only had one meal at the hospital, breakfast. Shredded wheat, toast, and a plate of marmite. That’s right, a PLATE. I didn’t eat it all, funnily enough.
Since the op, my nose and face has been quite sore. I’m resting as any activity makes my nose start to bleed. Hopefully that will subside soon.
An anti-stain
Mar 19th
I have an ‘anti-stain’ in my room – it’s a region where the carpet is much cleaner than the rest of the room.
This morning, after showering, I brought a full pint glass of ribena up to my room. Ribena is one of the most purple liquids out there, except for solutions of potassium permangenate. Made from blackberries, it can stain most light coloured things it comes into contact with.
So, *of course* I had to knock over the entire pint of ribena onto my *cream coloured* bedroom carpet. Murphy, your Law of Sod bites me in the behind once more.
To clear this up I went into down and bought some carpet mousse and I’ve given it a good scrub and it’s come up as good as new….. but it’s the only part of the carpet now that is clean! The stain has turned into an anti-stain. It looks like I’ll be doing much more carpet cleaning tomorrow….
Slightly weirder than Inception…
Jan 27th
I’ve always had quite bizarre dreams. Monday night saw two for the price of one – I wonder what Freud would say…?
The first dream I had was that I was Jack Bauer, trying to prevent a bomb going off on a runaway train. I seem to remember getting to the bomb to try to deactivate it, realising it was about to blow up, getting off the train in true “leap and hope you land on something squidgy” fashion, and seeing the train explode. So much for saving the world then!
I then had a dream where I was represnting Scotland in the Eurovision Song Contest. It was being held in a large sports stadium, and I remember being backstage going “Why me? I can’t even sing! Why have they chosen me to represent them at singing?!” and having a right flap and panic. Luckily for all involved, I never actually got to the singing part of the dream, which would have probably seen me singing out loud in my real bed and waking up my housemate, my neighbours, my neighbours cat, people across the street, and any bodies in cemetries within a couple of miles.
And all that without eating cheese before bedtime.
Sleeplessness? Maths to the rescue!
Jan 22nd
I do enjoy maths. I enjoyed (and still enjoy) the Maths Challenges for secondary school students run by ukmt.com , and I like “numerical crosswords” that are included in the crossword magazine Magpie (www.magpie.com). Occasionally I manage to solve a wordy cryptic crossword too.
The other night I was unable to sleep and I started thinking about one of the latest numerical crosswords I had solved. It occured to me that one of the clues “Palindromic prime” could not have four digits. To cut a long story short… within 30 minutes I’d realised that there can be no palindromic primes with an even number of digits, as they are all multiples of 11.
Talk about an over-active mind, all I wanted to do was sleep!! Still, it did help me get to sleep.
My PhD thesis plans have changed a bit recently, I now hope to submit in the first few months of 2012, as there have been a few techinical difficulties that we’ve had to overcome. One of the difficulties was the super computer that I use stopped working. I wish I could say the same about me!!
I dreamt last night that I was a small dog and I couldn’t bark. I hadn’t lost my voice completely, I was just a little husky. Boom boom!!
Fatal Hair-ror
Dec 8th
I went into town earlier this week to get my haircut and also deposit my seven lovely winning £10 Walkers cheques from predicting rain. I’d gone just after work and I meant to change into an old jumper when collecting things from home so that, when I had the haircut, I wouldn’t have to deal with all the little itchy bits of hair on my work jumper. Sadly, I forgot to do this, and I had the haircut while wearing my work jumper. Doh!
This means I had to dump that jumper and wear a different one to work the next day. Oh, the travesty! Still, at least I look nice and presentable now. What do you mean “oh no you don’t”?!
CHILLY con carne…
Dec 6th
It’s turned a bit nippy outside, what with temperatures of -5C and all, and this has had profound effects on my heating bill. The downstairs of my house is quite drafty, so we’ve used double the gas to heat the house in November than in October. The upstairs gets quite toasty though, so I’m thinking of employing a large fan to waft the air downstairs into the living room. There’s no flaws in that plan whatsoever, even if you risk a decapitation when going up/downstairs.
I did receive a text from my Dad who’s currently on a cruise around the Mediterranean at the moment. At the time of writing, he was currently in Rhodes where it was 22C and sunny. Oh the schadenfreude of him currently being stuck in Spain due to the unofficial air traffic strike.
In Accumulate! news, filming has begun on Season 3 and there have been some terrible puns already. It’s shaping up to be a good season… More Accumulate! news will follow soon, but if you want to watch the previous season(s), then you can watch it here: http://www.ruon.tv/ondemand/episodes.php?serid=16 .
I’m off to light a small fire in our office to try to raise the temperature above freezing. Tata!
Lip Balm < Chapstick
Dec 2nd
There can be no surer sign that winter has arrived than having chapped lips. My lips could be used as sandpaper, if the need arises!
So, to combat this, what product shall I choose? I know it’s an Americanism, but I’d prefer to use ‘chapstick’ rather than lip balm. Despite them being the same product, there’s something comforting to me about the word ‘chapstick’. Maybe it’s because it’s CHAPstick that makes it sound more tough and manly.
Having said that, I don’t have any lip balm or chapstick. I should probably buy some before my lips crumble off my face!
