The Man with No Time

Time for another job update, and as you might guess from the title of this post it's good news - I've got myself a new job. Or rather, a first job. I'm not sure a PhD counts! In the  last update  I posted about my job hunt I talked about the jobs I'd applied to. I also mentioned in my  Le Mans retrospective  that I'd missed out on a couple of things I wanted to do, and had to trek into the town. Well here's the story behind it all.

On my way to Le Mans I stopped off in Birmingham to see Bill Bailey’s latest tour, Qualmpeddler. I’ve wanted to see Bill Bailey live for quite some time now, but have always been out of luck. Either I’ve been busy during the convenient dates, or I’ve found out about it too late to get tickets. This time I was able to find out about the tour far enough in advance to make sure I got tickets. The poster for the Qualmpeddler tour. (Credit: billbailey.co.uk)

[I'm trying out something new for my NHL playoffs series this year. Since there are so many games, I'm going to watch the highlights each day and jot down some thoughts on each one. I'll add a summary of each series once it's decided, and put up the post when the round is complete.] The conference finals didn't quite live up to their billing in a lot of ways. There were some great games, but it was little disappointing overall as far as the quality of the series went. But the matchup of the Boston Bruins against the Chicago Blackhawks in the final looked scintillating. How did it play out?

A week ago I wondered whether my trip to Le Mans this year would live up to my first visit, just over one year previously. Well it turns out that despite being a very different experience, it definitely could. The whole week seemed to fly by. Yet at the same time it seemed, particularly at the start of the week, to last for ages. I will also say that there are several reasons, both good and bad, for why I won’t be forgetting this year’s event in a hurry. Standing on the track looking down the pit straight towards the Ford Chicanes. Actually being able to get onto part of the track was magical. (Credit: David Brown)

Later today I’m off to Le Mans for the second year in a row. I’m very excited about it, having had such a great time last year, but I’m slightly apprehensive. Partly that’s because of the logistical issues I’ve already alluded to , but partly it’s because I’m not sure it’ll be able to live up to last year’s event. Not many events can be as good at the second time of asking to be fair though. Who's going to stand on top of the famous podium this year? (Credit: David Brown) In P1 the Toyotas look to be further away from Audi than ever, so I think the overall win could be a foregone conclusion.  P2 will be very exciting again though, with its huge field and close competition. The GT categories also look like they could be fun, with essentially five works teams fighting it out in the Pro class. Aston Martin look like they’ll be hard to beat though with their five car effort! We’re arriving slightly later in the week this year, just in time for the first practice ...

(This blog entry was originally posted over at the 'Explore your Universe' website: link . I'm cross-posting it here for a different audience, and my own records) It’s been a while since I posted up my introduction, but I’ve been pretty busy over the last few months. Yesterday though I took the chance to break out of my normal routine, and help enthuse a new generation about science. Dundee Science Centre were holding a ‘Meet the Expert’ event for local schools, and I jumped in to help out as one of the scientists. It was a really fun, and very busy day. There were three scientists taking part; I took along a display of telescopes and showed the visitors how they worked, and how I use similar telescopes for finding planets. The others had a display of electronic circuits being designed for use on space satellites, and a set of experiments demonstrating electromagnetism, including the ever popular van de Graaff generator. We had four or five different school...

A quick wargaming update today. I should really be painting Cryx models for my Venethrax Theme force as part of the Lost Hemisphere Challenge 2013 . But after getting two layers on the skin of all of the Mechanithralls I wanted a break from them. Fortunately I (like most wargamers) have a large supply of unpainted models. So I dug out some of my Firestorm Armada models.

[I'm trying out something new for my NHL playoffs series this year. Since there are so many games, I'm going to watch the highlights each day and jot down some thoughts on each one. I'll add a summary of each series once it's decided, and put up the post when the round is complete.] Round 3 was exciting on paper, with the Stanley Cup champions from the last four years facing off to see who would get the chance to lift the trophy once more. But whilst there were some good games, the round as a whole didn't really live up to expectations.

Time for another quick job-hunting update. After a fallow period for likely looking postdocs and non-academic jobs, there have been several all at once in the last couple of months.  I’ve applied to three separate jobs; two are academic, and one is an outreach job that I was actually alerted to by one of my friends.