August 2008 to March 2009... what the heck?

I have been wholly subsumed by my thesis until now... why now? because I am back in japan!

I just came back today after a long abscence. There has been one mildly amusing moment from within the suffering of intercotinental plane travel...

The Japanese Customs Inspector...

My dear lady and I came to the desk, not a little frazzled after the long (and sadly turbulent flight).

Customs guy to me: Have you got anything to declare?
Me: No, nothing?
Customs: What? Nothing? No Scotch?

(Because all westerners should be carrying a bottle of single malt at all times dammit!)

Now not only was I sure that I didn`t have any scotch but I tend not to drink it these days as it makes me even grumpier. Yet as soon as this nice smiling policeman asked me, I had to reassess! "Am I indeed carrying whiskey, even though I wasn`t 5 minutes ago and try not to ever?" Spontaneous scotch generation must be prevalent in these area, obviously!

What have I been waiting for since January. The Olympics.

What has the collapse of our TV signal and a sudden black hole in internet connection prevented me from enjoying? The opening ceremony of the Olmypics.

It is a official. The Heavens hate me.

Brave sir robin, brave sir robin ran awa...

Anyway, um.

Bought a new PSU, installed. All drives currently functional. No loss of data. No overheating problems after 2.5 hours of UpTime... WOOHOO!

Back to the thesis. :(

You know those times you have been away for a weekend, you reach down to your PC's "on" button and you think "I do hope nothing bad happens now."

... yeah.

Pika's PSU is now doing a good paperweight impression...

...I just hope that her MoBo and HD aren't too...

...%$^#@£!!

Today we had a titanic battle... Me vs. The Leaky Washing Machine of Dewm.

Yep, you heard me.

Yesterday, the housemates and I spent a delightful hour or so mopping up after (we thought) our washing machine sprang a leak. After checking the seals and so on we couldn't find the blasted thing, so cautiously delcared it off-bounds.

Being the sensible soul that I am, I decided to ignore this and run a load through... but just keep a really close eye.

So I did... and all went well until I heard the suspicious pattering sound from under the sink...

...turning the machine off at the Speed of Terror (tm) I peer beneath the fixture in question and found water fountaining out of the outflow pipe. It was obviously blocked at the water was being forced back up.

Desperate measures were needed, to save the world, the country, the house, its floor... and quite possibly my sanity I concocted a Cunning Plan...

...I ran a bypass with parts from the Vaccum Cleaner.

No. Really.

No, really. I am not having a good time at the moment. Jon is not happy...

...and so you can imagine how my warm feelings towards humanity increase when I am dragged through a goddamn downpour into an 11am meeting because another PhD student is claiming that the software I gave him, that he hasn't had to learn about and write for himself, doesn't work...

...Why is there this mysterious error?

Because he didn't bother to check the filenames that he was feeding into it in the first fsking place.

Of course it can't find the files you want to load! You haven't #$%^ing told it how!

...of course the best part was when he tried to suggest it was MY fault.

No, really

As young Samwise Gamgee would say "Well, I'm back".

And so I am. As might be expected considering the circumstances I am not overly pleased about this fact. Her Ladyship's newly imposed absence from the british Isles is... difficult. I am not dealing with it very well. Not least because until today I hadn't realised that I wasn't dealing with it very well. Things have felt somewhat off kilter, nothing is quite in my comfort zone, everything has been just that little bit harder to manage. I thought that was the change in circumstances, weather, language or going back to work... but it isn't fading. Not one bit. So I do apologise to people if I seem a little more scatterbrained or a little less like myself than I usually am.

On the other side it was really nice to see people in London today, both old faces and new. Odd, but nice.

My recent adventures in Japan have led to copious notes and images. I will try and share some with people from here on in. Some of the better images, a short description and quite possibly a pair of observations; one good thing and one bad thing about my experience in Japan.

Would we be interested?

Just a quick poll for my (few) readers...

Picture the following situation and rate it on the mind-meltingly-embarrassing scale...

You are sitting with your girlfriend and her entire immediate family (Father, Mother, Brother, Sister-in-law and Paternal Grandmother)...

You decide to share the photos you have collected between you from England and your travels so far in Japan...

...You make an agreement between the two of you that the picture she took of you in the onsen (nekkid although pretty well covered) will not be shown.

You insert the media card into the family TV which brings up the slideshow on an enormous colour screen.

The TV seems to be lagging the show so the (entirely innocent) lady of the hour attempts to hasten things by shuttling...

Entirely by accident the picture comes up and due to lagging considerations will not shift for a good minute during which time the family is chuckling at your extreme embarrassment.

...What rating do you think it deserves.

...

...Yeah, that happened a couple of hours ago.

Just off to hide in a dark hole for the next year or so until my face stops glowing like a baboon's bum.

...and it is out of chronological order.

I saw this castle yesterday. It is in Kumamoto City, the "capital" of the prefecture where Her Ladyship`s family live. Apparantly it (and it`s grounds) are considered one of the three most beautiful in Japan. This is just the inner keep, the walls, passageways and turrets are yet to come. This is both tester and taster.



One thing struck me though... why weren`t European castles ever this pretty?

More soon!

Now that my `net access is more limited, every time I come in to access things I make sure that I do *everything*... including posting here.

4 days into my trip and I am now (having flown in from Tokyo yesterday) in Kumamoto. This area is in the far south-west of Japan and you can pretty much feel the distance from Tokyo. I saw a few cool things in Tokyo in the two days I was there and I will be seeing more when I go back for my second (and longer) visit. Kumamoto is different; rural, pretty, different... the pace and even the language is different here. Tokyo is frenetic, almost manic. Kumamoto is far more relaxed. Slower anyway.

Having finally found myself in a real Japanese home, I realise just how much there is to learn...

... beware the toilets!

Well hello people,

Here I am in sunny (but mildly chilly) Tokyo, Japan.

We managed to fly in yesterday morning with no serious problems. Next time I am flying in at a time where the next thing I do after arriving is sleep. I can`t kip on planes and so by the time I got here I was exhausted, and yet it was still 10am so I couldn`t do more than have an hours kip without messing up my body clock totally.

Japan is a very different place to anywhere I have been before. Nowhere in Europe or the US resembles it in any significant fashion. And that significant is significant. It seems odd to have to say it but the media does draw you into the belief that if you have a map and a smattering of the language you have it cracked. This is not the truth. On the face of things Japan is very like the US and the UK, buildings generally have walls, doors, many of the shops are similar as are the travel options.

However... what things mean and how things are Done are different. The systems, rules and manners and expectations result in a mental discontinuity.. a little edginess that finds you watching yourself and the people around you a little more closely that you would usually do. Comparing your actions to their responses becomes a habit very quickly. Things that seemed　obvious to my (Japanese) travelling companion came as a serious surprise to me. I am collecting notes in my moleskeine and will happily relate things as I can. I may even add pictures if I have access to Wi-Fi rather than having to come to a "Manga Kissa" (Manga Cafe) filled with Internets, Manga and Complete Privacy (*shudders*).

In just over 6 hours I get up so that I can travel to Japan... for 3.5 weeks. I will be back in the UK on the 26th of March. Until then... if I can find a wi-fi hotspot, I will post. If I can't, I won't.

Take care all and see you in a bit!

Sorry for the haste... but packing On Time is still a mysterious art as far as I am concerned.

Firstly, today we buried my great aunt Mollie... who I was actually pretty damn fond of. Not a good start to the day.

Secondly, I get back to Brighton after driving from Mum's to Worcester (1.5 hrs) and back again (1.5hrs) and then back to Brighton (2hrs-ish if I am lucky) in one day... to read about This.

By the way, my PhD is funded by the STFC. The PhDs of many of my friends and colleagues are funded by the STFC, the facilities we use and the staff researchers who guide us and make use of those facilities are funded by the STFC...

So as to not fly off the handle I actually read the "Delivery Plan" (big business trying to make science decisions) for the next couple years. It included the innocuous little line :

"We will cease all support for ground-based solar-terrestrial physics facilities."

That is my job dead, my field dead, right there.

WOOHOO! Time to emigrate, boys and girls!

I am actually being serious about this. Solar-Terrestrial (ST) Physics is haemorrhaging people, and not because they want to go. These people, talented, trained, skilled, useful people are going because they have to. They are jumping, or being pushed... but this boat is sinking.

The science minister Ian Pearson seems to have had the unalloyed gall to say "The science budget is actually going up over the next three years,". To my knowledge, he is wrong. Utterly wrong. The "science" budget isn't increasing. The "commercial science" budget is increasing. If they can get money out right now then they will fund it. Blue Sky Research? The search for Understanding instead of just Products? Dead. This isn't Science, ladies and gents, this is an Argos Catalog.

...It incenses me... and scares the hell out of me at the same time...

I have wondered for a while now if "My Kind" were welcome in this country anymore...

...now I know.

Ever found yourselves wanting to share a few passages from a book with the blogging public because they touched you... and been more than wary about doing so because of the copyright (read: lawyer) based issues?

Gnarg.

...ROBERT!

Well, that is that bit over with.

A collection of two random things today.

1) As a nice break from the daftness of others, more of my own special brand of the aforementioned.
Ever get to the end of a shop-assistant totalling up your goods to realise that the debit card you used to pay for your parking in the city centre didn't make its way back into your wallet from the car pocket after you had used it?


2) I invented a new verb when describing the end of a series to a friend, "To Wolf's Rain". It is applicable in any kind of TV series but most often crops up in anime. I will be nice and impose a cut for the sake of those who haven't seen the series and might want to one day...

( Spolier (and swearing)-saving cut )

...in the case where I used it, it was actually to describe a WR-fakeout. A situation where everything pointed to a good, hard WR-ing and they Deus Ex Machina'd their way to a (comparatively) Happy Ending. This is rare in anime. I have only seen the Machina imposed Happy Ending once before... and that time my response was much the same. I was ready to cast away the disc in fury after they had killed my favourite characters... only to find that everyone who had died so far got resurrected in the last scene or two. This shift wasn't quite that drastic, but it still left me blinking in surprise in between bouts of the Mildly Warm Fuzzies.


All better now? Good.

NED SLEP!

Ah-ha! Another tale of daftness and woe (and more WOE) abounds...

A couple of days ago a housemate of mine dashed into the house, up the stairs and set his ker-nuckles to ker-nocking on my fair door... or even my UNfair door. When I hastened to the portal in question he vouchsafed that his car had "broken down" and he thought it was through a lack of petroleum based accelerant. He requested that I drive him to the nearest garage so he could purchase some... and a petroleum carrying can. (Note to self, in future be very wary of assumptions about garage-shop produce)

I assented and soon we were off to the garage. I parked, he dashed, I called my girlfriend to make sure she wasn't on a train from London at that moment that would force me to abandon my young passenger to his fate. She was not. The young man returned. "With what?", you may well ask. Was it with a shiny new petrol can filled with petrol? Nope. Was it an old but serviceable can filled with petrol? Nope. Was it in fact any container that would suffice filled with petrol? Nope. Was it, in fact, a 2 litre plastic milk-bottle that was half filled with water? Give that monkey a Gold Star. To be honest my frank look of disbelief may have caused him to reconsider. He informed me that the garage had no such container and that they suggested the milk-bottle. I suggested we should go home and either: 1) Empty and dry this tiny container, or more likely b) Find something that would actually do the job and not just look good to a panicked person. So, home we came, and search we did, and find we an elderly petrol can? Oh yes and thank the lords. So back we went and petrol we gained and then I asked the question that I should have asked an hour before. "Where did you leave your car?"

At 6:30pm, in rush hour, I found that we had been running around for a half hour while his car was... you've guessed it. Stopped in the middle of the lane on the busiest road between Falmer and our own fair Woodingdean with its hazards on. I jokingly suggested to him that if this were, in fact, the case we should expect to have the Boys in Blue greet us when we turned up. I should have put down a bet. As we crested the hill into the valley where this road runs we say lights. A lot of lights. Of both red and white. A veritable plethora, cornucopia, collection... nightmare of stuck traffic. The centrepiece? The strobing blues of The Law.

With great trepidation (and no small amount of cursing) he clambered from the car and ran down the line of traffic towards his distressed vehicle. I followed at the snail's pace that the queues allowed. Drawing in in front of his car, to see him throwing more petrol over the road than into his car I withstood the glares of the (slowly) passing motorists well enough, I believe. The legal, gentlemen, directed the traffic as best they could while my housemate attempted to start his car. It turns out, that while it was without petrol and with hazards... it ran down the battery. BUDGETH IT WOULD NOTTE! The plan of action was resolved as follows:

1) I would drive down the road to the nearest layby, stop, call my housemate, he would relay the distance and road-side to the Police.
2) They would decide whether it was a job for pushing or towing.
3) In either case they would contrive to assist moving the car (now only effective as the world's first moveable traffic jam) to this layby.
4) My housemate would then not be causing a major traffic incident and would only need to call his breakdown service.

What actually happened.

1) I drove down the road, found the layby, stopped and called my housemate with the information that it was about 300m and up a hill.
2) The Police decided to push the car.
3) I realised that it would be my housemate steering and pushing and one policeman pushing. Not wishing to incite the wrath of the gentleman in question I sprinted back down the roadside through very cold, very wet grass to lend a hand. I knew that hill was going to kill someone if they tried it alone.
4) Arriving cold and wheezing at the car I proceeded to assist with the pushing. Those were the coldest minutes of my life. I have never been that cold. Not even when playing rugby in shorts in the middle of winter with a wind so harsh your skin would burn. Not when climbing waterfalls in North Wales when your fingers and arms had to be moved by sight because you sure as heck couldn't feel them. Not even when taking a barge through a series of 10 locks in a downpour of freezing rain and slush when ones every movement was a symphony of extreme discomfort. I. Was. Cold.
5) With much panting, and straining the Policeman and I man-handled the car halfway up the hill, my housemate was steering from within. We saw a small turning into a field and our considered response was "&£%# the layby, the field will do."
6) With much thanks and an agreement to stay safe, the Police left and the traffic cleared. So now we were left: In a field, with a leaking petrol can, in a small car, with the only ventilation being of the negative temperature variety.
7) It was discovered that his phone had little credit, and less battery. We contrived to contact his parents, his brother and the man on the moon in a hope of finding the RAC number... which was actually in his car manual the entire time...

And after 100 minutes of this saga? I had to leave to pick up my girlfriend. At whose house I got warm, dry and far far less peeved.

Never. Again.

Another episode in my continuing litany of lingual mistakes.

Yesterday (or technically the day before yesterday... well, Saturday anyway) it was Japan Day at Her Ladyship's college. This is a day when the students and tutors all turn their hands to introducing visitors to many of the cultural aspects of Japan; such as Origami (Paper Folding), Shodou (Calligraphy), the wearing of Kimono/Yukata (Yukata is a less insanely formal Kimono), Japanese Food, a Karate demonstration and Sadou... The Tea Ceremony.

I attended with Her Ladyship (she was helping people climb into Yukata) and (DarkDesigns/DD/Fidelis/Fiddles/"Put That Down, NOW!"/The world's only humaniform bread and butter pudding) (select as appropriate). With herself being all full of work and helpfulness the boy and I wandered around together. Anyway, we went and cast ourselves upon the tatami and took part in a sadou (shortened and simplified). His daftness was good, polite and interested. Especially in the meaning of the various actions comprising the ceremony. Now the word Seiza conjures fear into the heart of those of us who are un-limber... like me. It is a wonderful way of comfortably sitting that conveys respect, humility and a general lack of fear of pain. Seiza is murder on the legs (Wiki the thing if you don't know what it is). My legs especially. So Fiddles wished to understand the deeper meaning of this particular action, so asked (in English) the practitioner (Japanese) about seiza and its meaning. There was a little confusion and during the attempt by both to comprehend the other I cast about for the Japanese to do the job.

Something came to mind, though I am now desperately glad that I listened to the warning bells that went off in my head when I formed the sentence in my brain. What I came up with was approximately:

Seiza no imo wa nan desu ka?

The problem? The problem is the third word. "Imo", the Japanese for Meaning is not "imo", it is "imi". The correct sentence is "Seiza no imi wa nan desu ka?" which translates as "What is the meaning of Seiza?"...

...The meaning of my original sentence?

"What is Seiza's potato?"

Now do we see why I was glad I didn't ask it?

I last posted to this journal at 18:17 on the 31st... Faster than a speeding bullet one of my friends took up the gauntlet of righteousness and set out to beat some sense into me using it.

littlebluefish is the august personage in question... by 19:15 (only 58 minutes later) she had read, digested and called me about (and in fact on) my comments in my previous post. Dispelling my doom-n-gloomy with the verbal walloping of shiny-happiness.

Yes I have been reading too much Nodwick.

So to set the record straight:

1) My supervisors are pleased I have my data and are not peeved that I was a bit of a noodle about getting it.

2) My abstract for the MIST conference, to be submitted this afternoon, is complete and looks a lot like the following... W00T! and possibly even Yay! My first cut!

( Jon's Waffly Abstract )

3) I have discovered that the best way to make a supervisor's day is to refuse to delete him from your list of co-authors.

Now I am going to go and spend time with a certain rather delightful woman of Japanese extraction because I have ignored her to an extremely cad-ish degree over the last 48 hours while trying to finish my work.

...I need to call my friends more too!

Here is a nice little Hallowe'en tale for you to chill the blood and terrify the soul...

Imagine there is a satellite. Imagine it has a very useful instrument on it. Imagine that this instrument has two sub-sections to it, each providing its best guess at the data. Got that bit?

Imagine there is a website that is set up to hold an archive of this data. It does. Yet you are told that this data isn't of high quality, that it isn't for publication, that it isn't to be trusted.

Imagine that there is another website that has data from both sub-sections but in two formats, One is in a format that you can't easily make use of, the second seems to match the data that you aren't supposed to trust from the first site.

Imagine you prevail upon a friend and colleague, when you see they have (what you are told is) useable data, to send you some so that you can do your work. However... getting data this way is difficult for you, so difficult that you worry yourself and your supervisors about the fact that you might not be able to finish on time... add to that that it is risky for him to give it to you because you are parts of different academic institutions. He may well get into hot water for doing so.

Scene set? Good.

Now imagine one of your supervisors raises a query about whether the data on the site really *is* the same as the one you aren't supposed to trust as the Principle Investigator for that satellite instrument told you to use the data on the second site...

... so you do a comparison of all 4 data sets... the bad site, the good site (with both sub-sections) and the data from your friend...

And you realise in horror that actually the data from you friend is exactly the same as the data from the second sub-section of the instrument from the good site... and that the data from the bad site is the same as the first sub-section for a reason.

Website instructions vs. PI instructions not matching aside... all the data you have ever needed started being available from the good site a couple of months ago.

So, you see, I really do deserve to be called...

... Cretin.

last night Oliver (Ollie) Crofts passed away. He was put to sleep after being hit by a car and having his back broken when he chased after a pheasant onto the open road. Some of you met him... some of you may even have liked him.

He smelled, but I loved him...

... the dear fuzzy little idiot.