The Man with No Time

The end of the year is nigh! Like most of the blogosphere, I’m going to mark the occasion by taking a look back at the year that’s ending. 2012 has been a pretty good year for me all told, but how well did I meet my aims and goals for the year? Spoiler Alert: I missed a lot of my targets for 2012.

It’s the end of the year 2012? Well, almost. Over the next few days I’m going to be writing a series of posts based around reviewing the year that’s gone, and looking ahead to 2013. To start it off, I’ll be using a meme that my friend James has posted every year. It’s a set of questions designed to test your recollective powers. Or at least that’s how it felt! I rather liked this image. Quite appropriate. (Credit: liveoutload.com)

<Insert appropriate greeting for whatever winter festival you celebrate, if any> I hope that everyone out there in internet-land has had a pleasant, relaxing day, or at least found it not too stressful! I’m writing this from the sofa, in front of the television, after what’s been a pretty good day. Merry Christmas everyone! (Credit: speckyboy.com) Over-indulgence has, of course, taken place; food is a big thing in my parents’ house, with plenty of snacks everywhere, and we’ve spread our Christmas dinner courses over the entire day for several years now. But this year, for a change, my brother and I managed to help out with Christmas dinner without getting in the way too much. There’s a first time for everything. My traditional Christmas activity of lounging on the sofa with a new book for the afternoon fell by the wayside this year, but we did spend the early evening playing board games instead. I call that a net gain, particularly when it’s games like Tick

Today was the last day of the autumn semester here at the University of St Andrews. It’s been an interesting one for the most part, and I want to take a quick retrospective look at it today. Hooray, it's the end of semester! (Credit: harringayonline.com)

Just a quick update today. I’ve heard back from the job that I applied to at Oxford, and I’ve managed to get an interview for the position! It’s going to be on the 22 nd of January, but sadly I won’t be travelling down there. Instead the interview is going to be over Skype, which will be interesting. I suppose, assuming they’re interviewing everyone in the same fashion, that it makes things fairer if they have a lot of international applications, but it’s going to be an odd experience. Still, and interview is an interview. Time to get practicing! (Credit: kwasistudios.com)

After "The Dark Knight Rises” , I think that “the Hobbit” was the film that I was looking forward to the most this year. I loved the book as a child the first time I read it, and have a beautifully illustrated version, as well as the Radio 4 audio play from many years ago that I’ve listened too many times. I also really enjoyed Peter Jackson’s “Lord of the Rings” trilogy (LotR), and was when I found out that he was directing the Hobbit I was very excited. Sadly, my excitement was tempered this year when I  found out that, rather than the two films that were planned (already a stretch), it would be a trilogy. The book is only 300 pages long, around 20% of the length of the Lord of the Rings, so how on middle Earth was he going to get 9 hours of film out of it? Even with the fleshing out of the side-stories that was going to happen? Martin Freeman is  Bilbo Baggins. (Credit: theweek.com)

Today marked a momentous occasion. One that is penciled into calendars at work months in advance. That’s right, it’s time to switch on the office Christmas lights!

It’s time for another lifesaving competition report.  Yesterday saw the London Universities’ competition, held at the University of London Union (ULU). This is always a slightly odd event, and doesn’t start until the afternoon owing to the BULSCA Rules Meeting that takes place in the morning, at the same venue. It’s usually a great competition though, and in the last couple of years has seen success for St Andrews, with a Bronze medal two years ago followed by a Silver last year. We weren’t aiming for medals this year, but I was confident that we could get a strong result. The Seacows team for London Competition. (Credit: David Brown)

A few weeks back I talked about my apprehension over the next stage of my career, and my indecision as to whether I wanted to stay in scientific research. I also said that I was intending to spend some time over Christmas thinking about what I wanted to do, and then start applying after Christmas. Well, you know what they say about well-laid plans….. (Credit: onefootovertheline.com)

I spent quite some time back in the Spring posting about the NHL playoffs , following them through each round and commenting on the games that I managed to see, and the teams that progressed. After the end of the NHL season the summer in America traditionally belongs to baseball, with some basketball thrown in for good measure. I have no interest in either of those sports, but fortunately for me ‘America’s hat’, better known as Canada, starts its football season in June so that they’re finished before the worst of the winter weather hits.

This weekend I found myself back in Wales. The occasion this time it was the wedding of two old friends, Jenny and Jon, from my Warwick lifesaving days.  My previous visit, mere weeks ago, was for the associated stag do , and I was really looking forward to the wedding. The table decorations were very pretty. (Credit: David Brown)

The second competition weekend of the BULSCA calendar has been and gone. This time around it was the turn of Bristol to host University lifesavers from around the UK, as they held their second league competition. Their inaugural effort for the 2011/12 season had been a great success (with some reservations regarding the social muttered from some of the older members), and we were all interested to see whether they’d be able to repeat it. Hamish, the club mascot, psychs himself up for the competition. (Credit: David Brown)

The final year of my PhD is now well underway, and I'm currently making good progress with my thesis writing. At the moment I have three chapters that are almost fully drafted, out of the six that I intend to end up with. Of the remaining three two are the introduction and conclusion chapters, so I'm looking in good shape at the moment. I'm deliberately pacing myself with the thesis; at the moment I'm working on the science content of the fourth main chapter, which requires running lots of code for long periods of time, so I've got a lot of time on my hands. (Credit: PhD comics)

This weekend was the first BULSCA lifesaving competition of the year. Taking place in Southampton, as has been traditional in the last few years, the Freshers' competition is designed to ease new University lifesavers into the experience of BULSCA competitions. The St Andrews sent only a single team of Seacows, none of whom were truly Freshers! I've been doing this for some time now, and Teddy has been competing for three years. The two girls on the team, Robyn and Hanna, joined the club last year, have been to a couple of competitions as bodies, and have each competed once before. We did have a Fresher with us though; Amandine came along to see what it was all about, and to act as a body.

Bond is back! Hurrah! I’ve been a fan of the series for a long time, and have really enjoyed the two most recent films starring Daniel Craig. These were something of a ‘reboot’ for the series, and were clearly influenced by the gritty and realistic Bourne films. Craig’s third outing as the eponymous secret agent marks the 50 th anniversary for the franchise, but is it up to scratch? Skyfall marks the 50th anniversary of James Bond. (Credit: facebook fan page)

I’ve just got home after the first of two weekends that I’m spending in North Wales this semester.  In a few weeks I’ll be traveling back down for the wedding of my friends Jon and Jenny from Warwick, which is taking place at RAF Valley on Anglesey. This weekend was the accompanying stag do for Jon, and it’s been good fun. Beautiful Snowdonia (Credit: David Brown)

I write this from my room in the ESO guesthouse in Santiago, having finished my observing run and made my way down from the mountain. The last two weeks have passed surprisingly quickly, and what seemed to be turning into a repeat of my lame duck observing run from last time ended up as a very successful trip to La Silla.

Today has been my first day at the top of the mountain, at La Silla observatory. It's as beautiful as I remember it, in its own rather desolate way. The dome of the ESO 3.6m telescope that I'll be observing with. In front of it is the shelter for the NTT. (Credit: David Brown)

My (2nd) grand adventure in Chile has commenced! I'm writing this from the ESO guesthouse in Santiago, after a rather eventful journey that didn't exactly set the kind of tone that I was hoping for for this trip. Still, after 36 hours of travelling I have at least arrived in one piece and with all of my luggage, which is a bonus. Expected, given that I only brought hand luggage, but still a bonus. The ESO guesthouse in Santiago is a place of peace and tranquility. Just what you need after travelling around the world to get there! (Credit: David Brown)

Something that I've not blogged about, but am very much looking forward to, is an upcoming trip for work. On Monday I'm leaving on my third observing run, and my second to La Silla in Chile. I'm going out there to use the HARPS spectrograph on the ESO 3.6m telescope. Last time I was at La Silla to use HARPS I was with my supervisor, but I did a lot of the target selection and list preparation, so I'm not too worried about being on my own this time. La Silla is an interesting place, and I'm hoping to actually get a look at the telescope this time around - it's at one end of the site, and I'm going to be working down in the control room at the other end! The dome of the ESO 3.6m telescope. Hopefully this time I can peek inside. (Credit: David Brown) I've got a pretty hectic travel schedule, and I'm going to be confused as hell about which sleep pattern I'm on, but it should be good. My only regret is that, with teaching having starte

Last weekend I took a big step on my lifesaving journey. After 9 years of being involved in RLSS awards as a candidate, I took the Survive and Save assessors course to become an official trainer/assessor. It's a fairly big step, but one that I'm pleased to have taken. With lifesaving having been such a big part of my life, I feel that it's time I put something back into it. I've already done that at the local level, but now it's time to expand that. The Survive and Save program was introduced last September by the RLSS (Credit: rlssonline.com)

With the start of our respective semesters rapidly approaching, my girlfriend and I decided to take a last minute holiday to prepare ourselves for the onset of much busier schedules. After looking at the available options we decided to take a five-night city break in Paris. We’ve both been before with our families, but whereas Ellen’s visit was for a few mine was for a single day as part of a larger family trip to France, so I was interested to have a look around a few more of the sights than I managed the last time. Looking across the Seine to the Eiffel Tower during the late evening. (Credit: David Brown)

Looking back through my posts it seems as though this blog is becoming a bit of a review blog. That certainly wasn’t my intention when I started it! The frequency of my posts has also dropped off a bit too, which is annoying. To be honest though, I’ve had a fairly quite summer, with the exception of the events that I’ve already blogged about. My hobby time hasn’t yielded much in the way of finished products, so there’s not been much to show there, and the advent of the summer holidays has brought with it the annual drought of lifesaving events. My work too has been going through a bit of a lull recently, I’ve submitted my third paper, and am waiting to hear back from the referee, and have started writing my thesis. But that’s about it as far as interesting progress that I can blog about. However the new University semester starts tomorrow, and with it comes the recommencement of my lifesaving activities, the resumption of teaching, and a return to a livelier feel around

In recent weeks I’ve been gradually discovering some new music. A lot of it is new albums from some old favourites of mine. In most cases I wasn’t even aware that they’d released new singles, let alone new albums! I thought I’d share some initial thoughts after a couple of play throughs. Be warned though: I’m very much a person on whom music grows. Sometimes, and there are a couple of cases here, I love a particular song or album immediately. But most of the time it takes some time for me to appreciate new stuff. But in the end there’s a reason that some bands are my favourites. There are quite a few mini-reviews here, so I’ll put them in separate posts and link to them here. Linkin Park - Living Things Keane - Strangeland LostProphets - Weapons Paloma Faith - Fall to Grace The Subways - Money and Celebrity Muse - The 2nd Law

One of my favourite bands ever since I started to listen to music that wasn’t orchestral or on the radio, Muse have somewhat defied categorization and pigeonholing. Almost a spiritual successor to prog-rockers in my mind (which makes me wonder why my Dad doesn’t like them), they’ve never been short of ideas, inventiveness, or character. Nor have they been short on bombast and portentous lyrics, and their work has always been rather bleak and apocalyptic in tone. Listening to their previous 5 studio albums in order clearly shows the growth in both experience and confidence that the band has undergone. “Showbiz” was a favourite from the start, but has rather been superceded by their more recent work, “Origins of Symmetry” I disliked initially but has since grown on me immensely, whilst “Absolution” sees the band start to experiment with different instruments, styles and sounds, and has a couple of stand-out tracks. “Blackholes and Revelations” was, in my opinion, the heigh

I went to see the Subways live during my undergraduate days at Warwick University. I was looking to see a gig at the Students’ union, and asked one of my school friends, whose taste seemed to match mine somewhat, whether he’d heard anything from any of the bands on the list. He recommended the Subways, and I’m eternally grateful that he did. Album cover for "Money and Celebrity" (Credit: fakeplastictunes.com) The Subways are one of my ‘hipster’ bands. Really good, but you’ve probably never heard of them. I loved them when I heard them live (it was a small gig, my first ever, and the atmosphere was brilliant), and their two albums to date, “Young for Eternity” and “All or Nothing” are full of catchy, almost punk-rock tracks, most of which are worthy of multiple listens. Their new album, like Keane’s, is more of the same. But whereas I found Keane’s new album “” to be boring and predictable, I find “Money and Celebrity” to be exciting. Perhaps that’s a co

Paloma Faith is one of the acts that people see in music collection (at least the non-orchestral part) and are surprised by. She doesn’t seem to fit amongst the rock, indie, alternative and metal bands that I have tended to favour. However I’ve always had a bit of a soft-spot for people like the Rat Pack members and Michael Buble, and Paloma Faith, although a bit more of an oddity than those acts, fills a similar niche. Album cover for "Fall to Grace" (Credit: entertainmentempire.blogspot.com) I first heard her music performed live on Jools Holland’s Hogmany Show a few years ago. I liked the quirkiness in her performance, and the vocal style that she had. The full album, whilst not a favourite that I’d listen to constantly, was certainly one that I’d pull out fairly regularly when I wanted a change of pace. I, along with many others it seemed, liked what she brought to the industry. However Paloma Faith herself disagrees, and is on record as saying that

On first play through my impression of “Weapons” is much the same as for the  Keane  albums  – more of the same. However on reflection I’m not sure that that’s true. Album cover for "Weapons" (Credit: idobi.com) LostProphets are another discovery from my school years, and I bought their first album on the strength of the title track, which I love. Unfortunately I didn’t get on with the rest of the album so well, and it’s my least favourite of theirs so far. Their follow-up albums were, in order, pretty good anthemic pop-rock (“Start Something”), very good slightly softer pop-rock with some edgier songs (“Liberation Transmission”), and excellent, mixing aggressive, repetitive hard-rock with more lyrical numbers (“The Betrayed”). “Weapons” seems to revert back towards “Start Something” in feel and tone, at least to me. That doesn’t make it bad, just not what I really enjoy from LostProphets. “The Betrayed” is, in my opinion, their best album, and after h

Keane have actually released two albums without me noticing, and I only took notice when they appeared on the drive-time show on Radio 2. I loved their first album, was ambivalent towards their second, and didn’t really get on with their third, although a couple of the tracks from it have been real ‘growers’. Album cover for "Strangeland" (Credit: hangout.altsounds.com) Their most recent album, "Strangeland", is basically more of what you would expect from Keane. Soft melodic pop-rock, led by a piano with bass and drums as backing. Overall I’m underwhelmed by both of this album, as it's just a bit samey. Perhaps that’s symptomatic of me just listening through it though; the tracks from “Perfect Symmetry” that I like only really jumped out when I listened to them in isolation, and perhaps the same will happen here. I’ll give the album more time, but I’m not hopeful however. Highly successful as they are, it seems as though Keane have gone wit

Linkin Park were a band I listened to a bit at school through my friends’ CDs, and through Kerrang TV which was my preferred choice of background music during study leave for my GCSEs and A-Levels. I always thought that their music was ok, but not amazing. A bit too angsty for me, and full of pseudo-rap that didn’t do much for what was then a mind focused on either orchestral music or proper guitar led bands. However after hearing the single “What I’ve done” on the Transformers soundtrack, I decided to check them out again. They’ve gone through a bit of a reinvention, becoming a bit more mellow in their sound but keeping the lyrical style, and also become a bit more political. Album cover for "Living Things" (Credit: culturetease.com) “Minutes to Midnight” (from which “What I’ve done” is drawn) was a decent album with a couple of stand-out tracks. “A Thousand Suns”, their next album, seemed to follow rapidly, and again had some excellent tracks. A bit of

This weekend saw the second big outing for the Planetarium show this summer. After our successat the Royal Highland Show we were invited by the Forestry Commission for Scotland to be a part of their marquee at the Edinburgh MELA . The MELA is a festival celebrating cultural diversity, in a variety of forms: music; dance, and food. The days were slightly shorter than at the Highland Show, only from 12:00 to 6:00, and the MELA only runs for two days over the weekend, so it was going to be a bit shorter than our last big event.

.....that I found online today. I was browsing Facebook, and found that the Chain Attack podcast guys had linked to this video. I thought that it provided a decent look into Warmachine, and a bit of insight into the reasons why I play the game. Sure, it could have been longer, but I feel that the level of depth was perfect for people looking for a quick explanation of what the hobby provides for people.

Yesterday I took my annual trip down to Knockhill for the British Touring Car Championship . This is one of the few big, live motorsport events that I can easily get to these days, or that fits in with my busy schedule at least. I’m sure that there are lots of club meetings at Knockhill that I could get to during the summer, but that’s also my prime time of the year for gaming events, what with the Autumn, Winter and Summer being full of livesaving. British Touring Car Championship race 1 gets underway at Knockhill. You've got to love the variety of cars entered this year. (Credit: David Brown)

The London 2012 summer Olympics have finished after two weeks of top quality sport. It’s a sad moment, as I’ve really enjoyed this Olympics. More so than Beijing, but I suspect that that’s in a large part down to the fact that I was in the right timezone, and could actually watch the events, rather than just the round-up shows every day. I’ve discovered a couple of new sports along the way, and want to share some of my thoughts on the event as a whole.   The official logo is still pants. This one is much better.

Last weekend I took a long holiday down in Brighton with some friends from my undergraduate days. I had to drive down, which was a long journey, but I was able to stop off in Coventry both ways, which really helped make the journey bearable! It’s many years since I went to Brighton, and I never really saw much of the place. We either went to the beach, or were on the seafront for the Brighton Speed trials. It was therefore rather nice to actually explore the town a little more. My friend James, the driving force behind the trip, has fond childhood memories of wandering the lanes, and of the beach, and was keen to show the place off the rest of us.

The Olympics are here! Hurrah!   Every four years (ok, every two years if you include the winter Olympics), I get very excited about a whole bunch of sports to which I normally pay very little attention. The Olympics are, to me, a wonderful celebration of sporting achievement, and the chance for many sports to showcase themselves before a much larger audience than they would normally receive. The competition is of the utmost quality, and there are always moments of high drama. Because the real logo looks too stupid......(Credi: economicshelp.org)

Time for another film review! This time around I’m going to be looking at second of the three films that I’ve been looking forward to all year, and another check mark on my ‘films to see in 2012’ list. This film is possibly one of the cinema events of the year in fact, particularly for those of us with a tendency towards geek hood. It’s time to look at “The Dark Knight Rises”   One of the official posters for "The Dark Knight Rises" (Credit: screenrant.com)

I've just got back from my latest holiday of the summer. This time I was visiting the Sherwood Forest Center Parcs  for 4 days with my family, my girlfriend Ellen, and my brother's girlfriend Rebecca, who was visiting Center Parcs for the first time and seemed to have a great time. We were staying, for the first time, in an executive lodge, which came with a dishwasher (hallelujah!), wi-fi, and a sauna! Sadly we never got to use the latter feature, but we did make good use of the blackboard that was on the wall. The blackboard after the girls had finished drawing caricatures of all of us. (Credit: David Brown) It was a really fun weekend, and as usual we crammed it full of activities. Fortunately for us the weather was also glorious; it turns out that England is currently enjoying temperatures in the mid-to-high 20s, with beautiful sunshine and a nice, cooling breeze. So much better than what Scotland has been putting up with for the last month or so! Travelling home

Last weekend was a busy one for me. As well as trekking along part of the Fife coastal path on Saturday, and playing in the Warmachine: Colossals launch event on the Sunday, I also decided to go and see "The Amazing Spiderman". After my day of gaming finished I had just enough time to get lost and find somewhere for dinner before the 20:00, 3D showing at the Livingston Vue cinema. At the time I would have preferred 2D, but in hindsight I think that 3D was a decent choice. The previous Spiderman trilogy , starring Tobey Maguire and Kirsten Dunst, is generally well respected among comic-book aficionados as being faithful to the character and history of one of Marvel's most recognisable super-heroes. At the same time the three films are considered pretty good by the more general public, and certainly the first and second films are regarded highly by most viewers (the third however is generally panned). As such there was significant apprehension about a reboot of th

This month has seen the release of the latest expansion for Warmachine: Colossals. This new expansion has only two releases per faction (three for Mercenaries), but they're well worth the wait. Each faction has a new warcaster, which is a third incarnation of one of the Prime warcasters for the four original factions, and a colossal warjack. Unlike with the battle engines though, this time the Mercenaries aren't left out. Mounted on the same 120mm base as the battle engines, these new colossals primse to be game changing, and I can't wait for the Cryxian Kraken to be released. The new Cygnar Stormwall colossal. That thing is scary to deal with. (Credit: David Brown)

Last weekend it was miraculously relatively sunny up here in St Andrews, so I decided to tackle an item on my bucket list that I've been planning for a long time. My housemate, John, his academic son, Alex, and I walked the Fife Coastal Path from St Andrews to Anstruther. Naturally, we stopped for fish and chips at the end. Trekking across one of the small but beautiful beaches along the path. (Credit: David Brown)

Time for my first book review. I've actually read quite a lot of books since my  Time-sinks post  on books and other media, but this is one of only two that I've read that have grabbed me strongly enough to warrant a blog post. Well, that's not strictly true, but in most cases I've not managed to get around to it! The book up for review today is Brandon Sanderson's "The Alloy of Law", part of his Mistborn setting. This was the first book of Sanderson's that I've read, although I've heard of him and been meaning to read some of his output for some time. He was the other chosen to finish off the Wheel of Time upon the death of Robert Jordan, and my friend James is a big fan of his work and has been pestering me to try it out. Actually, this book was originally bought for James, but he already had a signed copy so gave it back to me! UK paperback cover for The Alloy of Law. (Credit: thebooksmugglers.com)

The week after I got back from Le Mans I was straight back into an incredibly busy week. Not working on my PhD, but doing outreach with the Planetarium team. We were invited, for the first time, to take part in the Royal Highland Show at Ingliston. I, of course, jumped at the chance to reach a much wider audience, but didn't realise just what I was letting myself in for! The poster that was drawn for us by the marquee's resident artist. (Credit: David Brown)