The Man with No Time

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 aft...

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.