The Man with No Time

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...