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Showing posts from September, 2005

Sensible soccer



Ahhhhh yes, you have to love sensible soccer. It is a game that I played almost constently when I was a teenager, with Nic and Dave being my main opponents. I had forgotten almost everything about it until about a month ago my brother found a little box that emulated a SEGA Megadrive and let you play the sensible games on your TV. I swiftly brought it for his birthday and got addicted to it. It is just simply excellant. The graphics aren't up to much by todays standard but the gameplay is simply marvellous. Do they make games like that these days ... I don't think so.

In the last couple of weeks I have managed to get an Amiga emulator working on linux and of course Sensible world of soccer works too. This has provided me with a welcome brief rest from my thesis writing which is great.

The world truly has come to the end

Not only is the The Guardian changing their format to "berliner", a strange cross-breed between tabloid size and broadsheet size, but they have decided to get rid of LIFE, the science supplement that comes out on Thursdays. They are replacing it with a daily science page which I feel is a considerable weakening of it.

They did the same with "The Editor" a few years ago which was an excellent summary of the weeks news looking at lots of different newspapers. That hurt when they changed that to a page a day too, I think they have gotten rid of that completely now. I do not know whey they have to keep mucking around with everything. I still refuse to buy it everyday.

The bad

Also a lot of crappy stuff has happened in the last week too, but I am surviving and I will fight my way through. So here is the bad stuff:

  • The grant that I was a part of has been rejected. This was to the EPSRC and both reviewers and the board liked the proposal but we were just below the cut off point. I learnt about this last Wednesday and I was completely gutted. It would have given me the prospect of a well paid postdoc. I was not sure whether to take it or not anyway, but I think the way I reacted to it being rejected means that I would have taken it with open arms. Ah well. Looks like staying as an academic might not happen. At least I did not have to make a decision whilst writing up.

  • The groups paper has got rejected for the second time, this time from PLOS Biology. It is really annoying as it is really great stuff but some of the reviewers just do not seem to be able to get it. I feel sorry for Martino and Mike who have to look through it again.

  • England losing to Northern Ireland in the football. The team were so lackluster it was unbelievable. I couldn't believe that the team was made up of so many great players. I think Sven has to go now.

  • My thesis write up is going incredibly slower and is starting to do my head in. Things that should take a day take a week, but I have to get there. If I don't get a first draft done by the end of September I will be really gutted. I do not think I can work until 8pm for 6 days a week for much longer. Arrrgggghhhh

The good

Life is very hard work at the moment but there has been a few good things in the last week:


  • I have had a letter published in The Guardian. Only in the Online supplement but still pleasing.


    Shared mail

    Both your article by Peter Judge (Small talk, September 1) and the letter by Paul May (Feedback, Septmeber 1) seem to find a major failing in Google Talk to be the difficulty in getting a Gmail account. In fact, it is very easy, as there are many sites that give out Gmail invites free, relying on others to donate them to the shared pool. One example is www.highwayman.org/gmail/.
    Daniel Brewer
    London

    Note the misspelling of September!!

  • Some very good friends of mine have told me that they are having a baby. Whoop Whoop. I am incredible excited about it and cannot wait to see the little blighter once it pops out.

  • The MRes students took me out for a curry and drinks to thank me for the help I have given them this year. That was great and made me all warm and fluffy inside. The thing is I love to help out, but it is nice that someone appreciates it.

So despite writing up being completely soul destroying there is still some good bits coming along to brighten my day.

Lovely picture


Here is a picture from my research that I rather like. Good old gnuplot