pogoism

Freemasons (feat. Sophie Ellis-Bextor) – Heartbreak Make Me A Dancer

David Guetta (feat. Kelly Rowland) – When Love Takes Over

Yay!

I’ve been blogging for exactly 1 year. I’ve got to be honest, I actually didn’t think I’d be able to keep it up, but I have, and I’m very pleased with myself :)

A lot has happened this year: I started pogoism when I was in Belfast, and I’d just heard that I’d secured a place on the UNSOM International Student Placement Programme, so I figured a blog would be a more enjoyable way to keep in touch with friends and family, rather than copy and pasting the same text into different e-mails. In August, I moved to Reno. I’ve been to San Francisco, I’ve been to LA. I’ve learnt to snowboard. I saw Obama. Twice! I’ve done a lot, and I hope I’ve done a good job documenting the bulk of it here. But the main thing is that I’ve actually enjoyed it. There’s something nice about sharing what I do with the world. Yes, I know some people think blogging is incredibly vain: “What makes you think people want to read about every mundane thing you do?” kind of thing. But you know what, there are some people who care, as I can see from my stats that I’m building quite the following. Also, being part of the “blogosphere”, connecting with other bloggers not only around the world, but also in my own areas, has been fascinating.

If you’re interested here’s my first post, from 1 year ago.

And finally – thanks for reading, you guys!

Photo via Flickr user Jessica N. Diamond

Firstly, sorry for not posting all week. It’s been an odd week, where I’ve had to do some teenager-style thinking and stuff. But I’m back! So yay :)

This weekend in the US is Memorial Weekend, probably one of the biggest public holidays, and a three-day weekend.

Last night, we spent the night camping by the beautiful Pyramid Lake, about 35 miles northeast of Reno. The lake is situated in the Pyramid Lake Paiute tribe’s reservation. The lake itself, with a max length of 48km, and a max depth of 109m is big (at least by my measly UK comparisons).

We arrived at Sand Hole beach at about 6, and began to put up our tents. As soon as we began, the skies clouded over and the sun disappeared, something I’m not all that used to any more. Anyway, we erected our tents (quite a tricky task in sand) and then the wind started blowing. We had to move all our tents to the far side of the beach, to avoid them flying into the lake. Then came the next challenge – trying to get the bar-be-ques lit. You would think this kind of problem-solving stuff would be no trouble for a group of scientists, but alas, it was. After a few attempts, and half a bottle of lighter fluid, we got them lit, and started cooking our food. And we made a campfire. Well, we didn’t, we left it to the new Spanish guy who assured us that he did it all the time back home.

Now that all that was done, it was time to settle down to some drinking and chilling. It was nice to hang out with mates from work (and not the annoying mopey ones, either), and make some new ones. It made me realize another big reason why I love working in science (other than actual science, of course). Because of the nature of science, where its international, and transcends nations and language, I work within an incredibly varied department, probably at least one person from each continent. Its fascinating talking to people about where they’re from. For instance, Fran, from Spain came with us to the lake, and I was chatting to him quite a lot. It’s so surreal talking to someone who, comparatively, isn’t from that far from where I hail from, but how different their culture is. There’s also a lot of young (ie, <35) people who do science, which makes for a dynamic working environment, with new people coming in all the time.

A few awkward moments through the night, however. Some random guy came up to our camp, naked, with his wife, and started blabbing on about the war. I’ve learnt never to bring this up, as a lot of people here are in the military, but one girl we were with insisted on carrying on the conversation…

Didn’t end up getting to sleep until about 5am, stayed up to watch the sunrise over the mountains at the other side of the lake, and then I slept by the fire. I have no idea how much smoke I inhaled over the night, but the next day I lost my voice.

Right, that’s all I want to write right now, I’m off out to enjoy the Memorial weekend sunshine.

These are fantastic! A guy called Michael Gregory has been using a nifty piece of software called Auto-Tune that alters singer’s voices to create the perfect pitch, and has been doing it to news clips to create these videos. They’re really, really good – go watch!

Reno is great for 2 things – eating out and drinking. There’s not a whole lot else to do, other than snowboarding in the winter and kayaking in the summer, so in the last few months I’ve been to a lot of restaurants. But in my 9 months here, I haven’t found anywhere that has totally satisfied me, until yesterday.

I (foolishly) walked home from work yesterday, all the way up McCarran, on the hottest day of the year, so by the time I got home, I didn’t really fancy cooking. After looking up Bavarian World, and discovering they had very little in the way of non-carnivore food, I remembered Naan and Kabab. It advertises itself as a Mediterranean restaurant, but the name and the font on their signs is a give away that it isn’t.

It’s Middle Eastern food. I can see why they wouldn’t want to market themselves in this way, this is America, after all. But don’t let that put you off, this place is delicious. Alonso and I started with the veggie combo, which was dolmades (rice stuffed vine leaf), falafel, hummus and baba ganoush (mashed eggplant). For main course, I had the prawn kabab, and Alonso had the salmon kabab. The prawn was delicious, perfectly cooked and flavoured. The salmon one… not so much. We finished all that off with baklava. Amazing food, and all for less than the price of sushi too! The service here is fantastic, even for American standards – at one point the chef (Chef “Maurice” – not his real name…) came round, and asked us how our meal was. “Good enough to tell your friends?” before thrusting some business cards in our hands!

Go try this place if you haven’t already. You won’t be disappointed.

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I got my list of possible final year projects this week. Out of a list of 90, I have to somehow whittle them down to 10, and rank them in order of preference. That’s going to be a long task, as I have do at least a little bit of background reading for each project I’m interested in. I’ve got until August 10th to do it though, so it’s not so bad.

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As I’m sure didn’t pass you by (unless you’re in America), Eurovision was today. I love Eurovision. It’s camp, it’s ridiculous, it’s trashy, and it’s over the top. Yet, bizarrely, it makes me proud to be European. My national identity is something that I’ve been thinking about for the past few weeks. I’m thinking about coming back to the US to do a PhD program, and after that probably settle here, but in order to do that, at some point I’d have to become a US citizen, and possibly surrender my UK citizenship. After some though, I decided I didn’t really want to do that. I’m proud to be from the UK. Yep, it certainly has it’s faults, but being a UK citizen also makes me a citizen of Europe. Being from Europe is something I’m extremely proud of – it’s such a vast place, full of different cultures, people, languages and opportunities, something America will never be, no matter how hard it tries.

Oh, and by the way, how did Germany do so badly in Eurovision? They had Dita von Teese for heaven’s sake! And why did the UK give Turkey 12 points?! Am I missing something? Those water things from the roof were amazing too.

Last week, my boss gave me a new Mac for the lab. I spent most of the day messing around with it, installing Leopard and the like, and by the end of the day I had an almost up-to-date Mac.

On Monday, I e-mailed the IT tech, and asked him to set the computer up so that it would work on the network. Now, I know this isn’t a hard job, all he had to do was set it up with a new IP address – something he could have e-mailed me and I could have done myself. However, we had to wait a few days.

This morning, he comes down, and needs to go see another computer in another lab. We take him there. The guy in the other lab, who is also a new Mac user, asked if he could use his University Exchange account on Apple Mail. IT support guy instantly said no. Well, I don’t like it when people lie. The computer had been upgraded to Leopard, and therefore he *could* use his Exchange account on Apple Mail. I know this, I do it myself. So, I tell him, that yes, he can use it, as his computer is on Leopard. IT tech guy points at the tower, and says “it doesn’t look like it’s on Leopard”. How you can tell that by looking at the tower, I’m not sure. He looked a little irked…

Anyway, my point is, that I wish IT techs wouldn’t hate Macs so much. Yes, I know they’ve probably been trained in Windows and resent the fact that people are starting to make the switch to Macs, but really, get over it. The fact are, for most people, Macs are better. They don’t crash as often, they don’t get as many viruses, and they require less maintenance. Ideal for my work situation.

Rant over.

I saw this on my Starbucks cup a few months ago, but never posted it here. It’s probably my favourite quote, and I often refer back to it whenever I’m feeling a bit useless…

The world bursts at the seams with people ready to tell you you’re not good enough. On occasion, some may be correct. But do not do their work for them. Seek any job; ask anyone out; pursue any goal. Don’t take it personally when they say “no” — they may not be smart enough to say “yes”.

- Keith Olbermann, Broadcast Journalist

Big day in gay marriage news.

Maine became the fifth state to legalize same-sex marriage. The bill passed the Maine Senate with a 31-8 vote, and just an hour later Gov. Baldacci signed it into law. Baldacci had previously been opposed to gay marriage, saying

I have come to believe that this is a question of fairness and of equal protection under the law, and that a civil union is not equal to civil marriage.

This new law does not force any religion to recognize a marriage that falls outside of  it’s beliefs. It does not require the church to perform any ceremony with which it disagrees. Instea, it reaffirms the separation of church and state. It guarantees that Maine citizens will be treated equally under Maine’s civil marriage laws, and that is the responsibility of government.

Later in the day, the New Hampshire House approved its version of the marriage bill with a narrow vote of 178-167. It’s now up to Gov. Lynch to sign it. He hasn’t given any indication of his intentions as yet.

So, that’s 5, almost 6 states down! Only 45 to go…

I heard about Spotify when it was first unveiled back in October last year, but since I was in America, I didn’t really pay much attention. When you go onto their website from outside the UK, you get a message saying that the service is not available in your area.

I assumed that if I tried to use the service, I wouldn’t be able to, much in the same way I can’t use the BBC’s iPlayer here, and you can’t access most content on Hulu in the UK.

I was wrong. Turns out there’s no geographic restrictions on actually using the service, so long as you set up the account in the UK.

Yay! So I can finally see what all the fuss is about.

First impressions? Spotify is *amazing* and FREE. I watched an interview that said Spotify will probably reduce the number of illegal downloads, which, at least for me, it will.

Top marks to the record industry for coming up with a useful, practical solution to piracy. Plus, it’s always nice to have something the American’s don’t. ;)