The Man with No Time

As has become my tradition, I set myself a series of personal goals for 2014. These covered a variety of my hobbies, my work, sport, etc., and were designed to be at least vaguely achievable. In 2013 I did pretty well, so how did I do in 2014?

2014 has almost come to an end, so it's time for my three-part, end-of-year review. In the first instalment I'll be looking back on 2014, and what I made of it. (Credit: 123rf.com)

Marvel have become something of a cinematic giant in the last five years or so. First there were the X-Men and Spiderman films, then Daredevil, then Hulk, then the Fantastic Four. Then they took matters into their own hands with Iron Man, Captain America, Incredible Hulk, Thor, and Avengers Assemble. After building the 'Marvel Cinematic Universe' they carried on at full speed, and the second round of releases is by now well established. We've had Iron Man 3, Thor 2, and Captain America: Winter Soldier. That's not mentioning the Amazing Spiderman and X-Men: First Class series, which although Marvel properties aren't controlled directly by Marvel. So far it's all been established characters and franchises. Stories that the general audience will at least have a vague idea about. But there are increasing signs that Marvel is starting to branch out from this set of 'core' properties. The first of which is the release of Guardians of the Galaxy. &q

I've just got back from a long weekend spent with some of my best friends. It's been almost a year since I left St Andrews, but I still miss the people that I met, and the friends that I made while I was there. I've been able to catch up with some of them sporadically via conferences (for the astronomers) and competitions (for the lifesavers), but time's always a bit short and it's not really the best way of spending time with your friends. (Credit: David Brown) As a rule the St Andrews Seacows are pretty bad at organising themselves to do anything, but we finally managed to arrange a weekend away for as many people as we could get. Options were limited for places with enough space to sleep all of us, but my friend Ella's parents were away for the weekend, so we all traipsed down to Sandwich, on the Kent coast, for four days. Well, some of us for four days, others for less than that owing to prior commitments. Even with the dates planned nearly three

Part of every scientist's job is to contribute to the literature. This responsibility comes in two forms. First, there's writing your own papers, submitting them to journals, and having them be published. With my thesis now fully published, I've got a decent amount of experience at that - four first author papers, and several papers on which I'm a secondary author. Fine. The second part of the responsibility is that of being the referee (or one of the referees) carrying out peer review on submitted papers. Asking around at work it seems as though quite a few people actually did this for the first time during their PhD, or at least fairly soon after starting their first postdoc position.  I actually had a request last year, but I was in the middle of writing up and just didn't have the time, so I turned it down. But a few days ago I received my second request to review a paper. Since it's something I'll have to learn to do at some point, not to mention

The Wheel of Time turns, and Ages come and pass, leaving memories that become legend. Legend fades to myth, and even myth is long forgotten when the Age that gave it birth comes again. In one Age, called the Third Age by some, an Age yet to come, and Age long past, a wind rose in the great forest called Braem Wood. The wind was not the beginning. There are neither beginnings nor endings to the turning of the Wheel of Time. But it was a beginning. " A Crown of Swords " marks the halfway point in my journey through the story of " The Wheel of Time ". But it doesn't feel that way at all, either in terms of the story itself, or my enjoyment of it. After brief slowdown with the previous volume (occasioned by my going on holiday for two weeks, without space to takes giant books), I'm back to rattling through roughly 50-75 pages a night. A measure of my enjoyment can be found in the fact that I've re-established a bad reading habit, namely jumping ahead

As it was a nice day today, I decided to do something a little different to get myself out of the house for a while.  Since I moved back to Coventry I've discovered quite a few interesting sounding museums that I want to visit, and I thought that it was the perfect opportunity. A museum might not sound the best place to go on a summer's day, but this one was mostly open air. It was also the closest one to my house, which may or may not have played a part in my choice! The Midlands Air Museum is a small, volunteer-run museum right next to Coventry Airport. It's more of a collection of aeroplanes than a 'proper' museum, with the majority of the exhibits being planes on display outside. But it's' no less interesting for that. It's not a terribly assuming building. But the true gems are sitting outside, behind the hangar. (Credit: David Brown)

Privateer Press have just put up their latest round of previews from the next Expansion book for Hordes - ' Exigence '. And oh boy, is there something awesome in there. The cover art for ' Exigence ' features Skorne against the Legion of Everblight, who seem to get onto all of the Hordes covers. (Credit: privateerpress.com) One of the nice things about getting in weekly games at Warwick Sci-Fi is that it lets me try out different things compared to my normal Cryx force. The main thing I've been doing this year is learning to play with my fledgling Circle Orboros army, and I've been particularly enjoying playing with the two Baldurs and the various Wold constructs that they have. So you can imagine my excitement when I saw this in the new previews: Meet the Circle Orboros' latest warlock - Bradigus Thorle the Runecarver. I want this model so much. (Credit: privateerpress.com) Ohmygoshyes! I want it!  Now Bradigus Thorle has been in

Monday nights is our weekly gaming session at Warwick Sci-Fi. There are only three of us that regularly play Warmachine & Hordes: myself, Paul (a PhD student), and Dom (a final-year undergraduate). It’s a bit of an awkward number, but we’ve worked around it with smaller points levels, three player games, and by only having two of us there a lot of the time. As Dom’s graduating this year he’s going to be leaving, and since last night was his final week at Sci-Fi we decided to do something a bit special as a send-off – a massive 100pts, two warcasters per side game. I’ve got easily the biggest collection, so I agreed to take one side by myself using my Cryx. Paul and Dom would take 50pts each of Khador and Circle Orboros respectively. I had several advantages going into the game. First, with 100pts to myself I had full control over my side. Second, Paul and Dom’s limited collection meant that I had a decent idea what they would be taking, particularly for their War

I've just got back from a work day out. Well, I say just got back. I've got back, had a shower, and put on some fresh clothes! All of which were entirely necessary, because as the title of this posts says we went paintballing! I've not been to a paintball site for about four years, but after we all had so much fun at Laser Quest a couple of months ago this seemed like the obvious next step. There were only 11 of us, but it turned out that we were the only group on site this afternoon, so it was just us. Which was nice. We played five games - two capture the flag, two team deathmatch, and one VIP. My team, despite a one-person advantage, managed to lose the first three games horribly. But we rallied to scrape a win in the second deathmatch, and absolutely destroyed the other team in the VIP game when we managed to sneak our VIP around the left flank, and  get the the flag from the middle into their base as well. We still narrowly lost on points though. It was a

The Wheel of Time turns, and Ages come and pass, leaving memories that become legend. Legend fades to myth, and even myth is long forgotten when the Age that gave it birth comes again. In one Age, called the Third Age by some, an Age yet to come, and Age long past, a wind rose among brown-thicketed hills in Cairhein. The wind was not the beginning. There are neither beginnings nor endings to the turning of the Wheel of Time. But it was a  beginning. Book six of the Wheel of Time saga is entitled " Lord of Chaos ". It's an apt title in many ways, as the sheer number of plots and counter-plots, secret machinations, and intrigues that are going in is mind-boggling. In fact by the end of the book the source of some of them is still not entirely clear, and I'm sure that for some of them it will remain that way by the end of the series. There's almost no point to some of the things that go on, other than to cause havoc, which they certainly do.

Another month, another Guardians of Tyr Warmachine tournament! This time it was back to Northampton for another 35pts Steamroller even. However, this was no ordinary Steamroller. One of the things that I like about the Guardians of Tyr setup is that they try to mix up the even formats throughout the year. They ran a Highlander (there can be only one!) event at Northampton to start the year which I sadly missed out on, and have run Who's The Boss at Milton Keynes this year as well. This time it was "4-Headed Hyda". The idea of the Hydra event is that you make a single list, assuming a set number of warjack/warbeast points - in this case 35pts, with +5 warjack/beast points. You then choose a number of warcasters/warlocks equal to the maximum number of rounds to run the list - in this case 4. Each round of the tournament you select one of your warcasters/warlocks to use, and each can only be used once. It's an interesting twist, and forces you to think about list s

Just a quick post today. I've finally managed to get the last science chapter from my PhD thesis published in an astronomy journal. It's a taken a while - I only worked on it on and off for several months, and it actually needed a fair amount of work done to it. Then the referee had several, really rather useful suggestions for improvements, which held it up a bit more. But as of today it's available online, either from the journal itself or as a preprint on the arXiv. If, for some reason, you're interested, here are the links: Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society version arXiv preprint version Happy reading!

Earlier today I got back from my second holiday in three weeks, and my third trip to the Le Mans 24 hours. Now that I've recovered (I really needed a nap when I got back to the flat), I wanted to talk about it a bit. There was a new logo for the race this year. But the on-track action was definitely classic. (Credit: David Brown)

Today is very much a day of recovery. I got back very early this morning from my holiday, and although I had a lot of fun isn't wasn't exactly the most relaxing of holidays - I spent a week cycling around France with a group of friends from the orchestra I play in! The group had previously done a cycling tour of vineyards in Burgundy, and this year thought that they'd do something similar. Except instead of wine, they'd tour the cider (or should I say cidre) region of Normandy.  Since I rather enjoy cycling they invited me along, and I eagerly said yes. I promptly spent quite a lot of money getting my bike ready for the trip; I took the opportunity to replace a few parts that were getting a bit old (the saddle, handle bar grips, rear tire, and brakes), and fitted pannier racks front and back. I also had to buy some panniers, although fortunately only a front pair as I was able to borrow a set of rear panniers from one of the others. I was slightly apprehensive

Last Saturday I travelled down to Milton Keynes for my third Warmachine tournament of the year. Like the last one I went to ( in Northampton ) this was organised by the Guardians of Tyr, and was a 35pt standard steamroller event. This time around though there was no Divide and Conquer in play, so no need to play each list, and the event was a little bigger - 24 players rather than 16 thanks to the extra space in the Milton Keynes branch of Wargames Workshop. After my bad form in the last two tournaments I attended, where my record was 0-7, I was really hoping that I'd at least get one win in. But in some ways that was a secondary goal - my main aim was to have fun, be a good sport, and try to give my opponents an enjoyable experience playing me. WARNING: Like most of my tournament reports this is going to be a really long post!

The Wheel of Time turns, and Ages come and pass, leaving memories that fade to myth, and even myth is long forgotten when the Age that gave it birth comes again. In one Age, called the Third Age by some, an Age yet to come, and Age long past, a wind rose in the great forest called Braem Wood. The wind was not the beginning. There are neither beginnings nor endings to the turning of the Wheel of Time. But it was a  beginning. It's taken me a while to finish book five of the Wheel of Time. That's not because it was a drag, far from it. But I've been very busy recently, and have been catching up on some other reading that's got in the way a little. Nonetheless, I still hooked on the story, and just about on course with my goal to finish by the end of the year.  The revelations continue to pile up, and this book has some truly shocking events in it, including the death of one of a major character. It's hard to talk about the book without discussing these, so

From the very first time that I saw a trailer for the LEGO movie I knew that I wanted to see it. I had to see it. The trailer was very, very funny, and the film was clearly going to make the adaptability and creativity inherent in LEGO a central part of the story. I was sold. Sadly, in a familiar story, I missed it at the cinema. My old fallback, the Student Cinema, looked like it would come to the rescue once again, but I ended up being busy on the night that they showed it, so it looked as though I would miss out. Then I decided I wanted to see a film over the bank holiday weekend, and to my surprise saw that the Odeon had a couple of showing in the morning. So off I went. Even the poster is awesome. (Credit: en.wikipedia.org)

Last night I went to my first live gig of the year, at the Institute in Birmingham. I went to see Pentatonix , who are an a capella vocal group that I discovered on Youtube towards the end of last year. About a month ago I saw on Facebook that one of my friends from St Andrews was attending their gig in Glasgow, and wondered if they were playing near me. They were, and I was lucky enough to get a ticket (which wasn't too expensive either). I'm so glad I did, because it was amazing. Getting artsy with my camera. The stage was simple, and didn't detract from the music (Credit: David Brown)

The Wheel of Time turns, and Ages come and pass, leaving memories that become legend. Legend fades to myth, and even myth is long forgotten when the Age that gave it birth comes again. In one age, called the Third Age by some, and Age yet to come, and Age long past, a wind rose on the great plain called the Caralain Grass. The wind was not the beginning. There are neither beginnings nor endings to the turning of the Wheel of Time. But it was a  beginning. The Wheel of Time continues to turn, and it's starting to get serious. Book 4, ' The Shadow Rising ', is an extra 50% longer than longest of the volumes that precede it.  Not only that, but Robert Jordan once again ups the stakes with some astonishing revelations, whole new areas of the world explored, and some events that could (and probably will) have massive implications. 

In something of a departure from previous years, I've actually managed to get to a race meeting before  I go to Le Mans this year! I suppose that's one of the benefits of living in the West Midlands rather than Fife - lots of tracks in easy range (there are four within an hour's drive of Coventry). Easter weekend is traditionally a busy time for motorsport, with the four day weekend allowing tracks and series to run events over various combinations of Friday to Monday, meaning that if you plan well you can get to see more than one race meeting. This year you had British GT at Oulton Park and BTCC at Donington on the Sunday (both of which I considered going to), and British Superbikes at Brands Hatch on the Monday. But with my love of sports car racing I was always going to go to the endurance double header at Silverstone - European Le Mans Series on the Saturday for four hours, and World Endurance Championship on the Sunday for six hours.  The new pit complex, kn

Last Sunday I travelled down to Northampton for my second Warmachine tournament of the year. It was being held at Wargames Workshop Northampton, and being run by the ' Guardians of Tyr ' gaming club. Despite a poor showing on my part in terms of results, I have to say that I had a really enjoyable day at what was a very well run tournament.

Tomorrow I'm travelling down to Northampton for my second Warmachine tournament of the year. It should be about double the size of the last one, with 16 players signed up for four rounds, and I'm looking forward to it. I've had my Cryx on the back burner for while so that I can learn how to use some of my Circle Orboros models at weekly gaming, which has been a lot of fun. But it will be nice to get the undead back on the table.  After my disastrous results at the last tournament I attended, I'm setting my sights low. I would like to win one game, and if I manage that I'll be happy. 

It's been a good year for me up to this point as far as TV watching goes, at least in terms of quantity compared to the last couple of years. The latest series of Sherlock was decent, the second season of Arrow is entertaining and possibly stronger than the first, and I've been able to catch up with some old shows that I enjoyed when I was younger. Then there was Orphan Black. I'm a bit late to the party with this one, and despite being only ten episodes long it's taken me some time to get through the first season. That's definitely not a comment on the quality of the show, more on my own viewing habits, but I am so pleased that I took the plunge as it's an excellent sci-fi show. Orphan Black doesn't exactly make a secret of the fact that it's about clones. (Credit: geekwire.com)

Last weekend saw the third race of the 2014 Formula 1 season, and I thought it was about time I put finger to keyboard and articulated some of my thoughts on the direction that the series is going. 2014 is a year of massive changes, many of which will take some getting used to, and most of which have caused a lot of controversy. I don't have much new to add to the discussion, but want to get my thoughts out there. It's becoming a familiar sight at the front of the field - the silver arrows way out in front. They've only been this close to each other in Bahrain though, and it was spectacular. (Credit: telegraph.co.uk)

Shock, horror - I've actually managed to finish painting some models! I've been fortunate enough to have a lot of free time the last couple of weekends, and have used it putting paintbrush to metal. I've had a fair number of figures for my Cryx army partially complete for some time now, and with some tournaments coming up that I'm attending/planning to go to I thought I should get some of them actually finished. What a novel concept. Look ma, zombie pirates! (Credit: David Brown) First up on the block were most of my unit of Revenant Crew. I say most because there are two still to do, including a second copy of the most awesome model in the unit (the diving helmet guy), but they need stripped before I tackle them. Even so, eight models down isn't too shabby; it's been a long time since I got any kind of unit done, so I'm counting this as a victory. Sadly I don't have any plans to use them in a list at the moment, although I'm mulling over

The Wheel of Time turns, and Ages come and pass, leaving memories that become legend. Legend fades to myth, and even myth is long forgotten when the Age that gave it birth comes again. In one Age, called the Third Age by some, and Age yet to come, and Age long past, a wind rose in the Mountains of Mist. The wind was not the beginning. There are neither beginnings nor endings to the turning of the Wheel of Time. But it was a beginning. It seems that my read-through of ' The Wheel of Time ' is accelerating as I get into it! This third volume in the series proper took me only a couple of weeks to finish, and marks a bit of a change for the series. The 'epicness' of the series seems to have ramped up, and the scope and scale, not to mention the stakes, and becoming bigger and bigger.

The events of Batman: Arkham Asylum have had dramatic repercussions for Gotham City. With the asylum declared unfit for purpose, the city's slums have been segregated by giant walls and turned into a super-prison where criminals are free to roam. Various gangs have sprung up with allegiance to the main supervillains of the Batman mythos, and fight for control of Arkham City. Enter Bruce Wayne, who declares his opposition to the scheme only to be arrested and thrown into the mix. As Batman, he must try to find out what the prison's governor, Hugo Strange, is planning, discover what 'Protocol 10' entails, and thwart the plans of his arch-enemy, the Joker, who is fatally ill after his Titan formula overdose. Arkham City is the second entry in Rocksteady's Batman franchise, and builds on the hugely successful Arkham Asylum to create a larger, free-roaming, sandbox environment. All of the hallmarks of the first game are present and correct: the hard-hitting, viscera

The Wheel of Time turns, and ages come and pass leaving memories that become legend, then fade to myth, and are long forgot when that Age comes again. In one Age, called the Third Age by some, an Age yet to come, an Age long past, a wind rose in the Mountains of Dhoom. The wind was not the beginning. There are neither beginnings nor endings to the turning of the Wheel of Time. But it was a  beginning.  The Wheel turns, and the story of the Dragon Reborn continues.....in just three weeks I've made it through the 681 page second book of the Wheel of Time. As with the first book I really enjoyed it, and the comments that I made for that book still hold true.

This year there's been one film that I really wanted to see, and that everyone told me I had to see, that I just haven't been able to. That film is ' Gravity ', and yesterday I finally managed to see it thanks to Warwick Arts Centre . They put on a few extra showings as part of their viewer's choice feature, and I gladly took the chance to finally catch the film on the big screen. The film poster. Don't. Let. Go. (Credit: en.wikipedia.org)

After the BULSCA Nationals at the weekend, I had a discussion on Facebook with one of the competitors about captaincy, specifically about how I'd been evaluating the overall marks for the wet SERC. To remind you, the incident was split somewhat, with a casualty that couldn't be moved on both sides of the 50m pool, the casualties in the water concentrated at one end, and the two short sides out of bounds. This presented the captains with a couple of tricky decisions. Do they stay on the side where they entered and direct from there, or do they swim across to where the suspected spinal injury was? If they stay where they came in, do they get the unconscious in the water over to them, or to the side with the spinal? Where do they send the rest of the casualties, as there were several that could easily be rescued from the entry side. It might seem that the answer is obvious - the captain crosses to the far side, and gets as many casualties as possible over there next t

After playing in a concert on Saturday evening I had to drive straight to Bath ready for the BULSCA Student Nationals. I had to be at the venue by 8:30 am Sunday morning, so rather than risking sleeping in and being late I decided to head down the night before. Two closed motorway junctions and attendant diversions later, I eventually made it to the Travelodge where I was spending the night. I've always enjoyed the BULSCA Championships as an event. More so since they switched to a 50m pool. Last year was my first taste of the competition as a non-competitor, as I organised the whole thing ; this year I was going to be judging.

It's been a busy weekend, so I'm breaking the posts up a bit to avoid a deluge all at once! Not only was it the final weekend of the 2014 6 Nations, but also the BULSCA Student Championships (more on that tomorrow). Except that I was only able to attend the Sunday of that event this year, because I had a concert on Saturday night! My orchestra, the Leamington Sinfonia, were performing at Kingsley School in Royal Leamington Spa. We had a great program of music, featuring one of my favourite symphonies, and gave what I think was a really good performance.

The final week of the 2014 6 Nations tournament was incredibly tense. Not necessarily because of close games it has to be said. Two of the three were blowouts, but the finale really made up for it as the momentum swung back and forth between the sides, and the final standings correspondingly went in favour of one team or another. I'll get to that eventually, but as usual I'll start with Scotland's performance.

Something a little bit different today - I've been on television! I've mentioned it briefly before, but my boss is the 'Head of the Science Team' for the new ESA PLATO mission. Since it was selected by ESA last month he's been very busy giving talks, presentations, and interviews about the mission. Yesterday he had the science team from the local BBC TV channel along to interview him about it for a short piece. Since he was getting a bit fed up with the whole thing he decided that it would be good for myself and Dave (one of his PhD students) to get involved too! I was a little nervous about it, as I've not had any interaction with the press before. But it turned out to be a lot of fun. The science reporter was very easy going, and made it seem more like a chat than an interview. He did give me one piece of advice, which was to finish my thoughts even if I stumble rather than trying to restart, as you can always edit and do retakes. Very much like

The penultimate week of the 6 Nations is when the shape of the table starts to become clearer, and is often where championship hopes are dashed. After all, not everyone can win. This year there were four teams (England, France, Ireland, and Wales) on four points, and potentially in with a chance. By the end of the weekend at least one of them would be behind the others, possibly two, or even three.  Scotland were playing France at home. They haven't beaten les Bleus since 2006 (a match I remember well), but after the events of week 3 this wasn't just going to be a French benefit.

The Wheel of Time turns, and Ages come and pass, leaving memories that become legend. Legend fades to myth, and even myth is long forgotten when the Age that gave it birth comes again. In one Age, called the Third Age by some, and Age yet to come, and Age long past, a wind rose in the Mountains of Mist. The wind was not the beginning. There are neither beginnings nor endings to the turning of the Wheel of Time. But it was a  beginning. And thus my journey through the Wheel of Time really begins.

Something that we've been talking about a little bit at work recently is "why do we study exoplanets?'"It's an interesting question, and one to which different people give different answers. Everyone has their own motivation after all, and it's been fun to hear what people say. Ultimately though I, and apparently several other members of my group, think that many exoplanet researchers are lying to themselves and each other. Not to cause harm or detriment, but because we think that 'admitting' the real reason will make other astronomers sneer at us, or sideline our careers. It's not hard to see how that comes about; there's an attitude in professional astronomy that we should be in it for the love of the job itself, and that we should be heavily invested (often emotionally) in our particular topic. Leaving aside the rather pertinent point that that whilst a postdoc or PhD student that is, to some extent, dictated by what your boss/supervis

So I found myself in Brussels over the weekend. Strange I know, but there was a reason for it, honest! Yesterday the project that employs me, the eta-Earth project, was having it's review meeting at the European Research Executive Agency in Brussels. As they pay me my boss thought that I should go along, and since I've never been to the city I decided that I'd spend the weekend there as well. It was fun, if slightly different to what I expected. Left: the central square by night, when it really comes alive. Right: the city hall, which is a fabulous building. (Credit: David Brown)