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Archive for the 'Neither here nor there' Category

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The Laotian ‘puzzle mouse’

Monday, May 23rd, 2005

Scientists have made a stunning discovery on a food market in Laos.

According to this week’s New Scientist (21 May 2005, p. 18), what Robert Timmins from the Wildlife Conservation Society, New York spotted next to a pile of vegetables is not just a new species of rodent but a new family; making the Laonastidae, the first new family of mammals to be discovered in over 30 years. The creature, locally known as kha-nyou and scientifically as Laonastes aenigmamus has subsequently been trapped in the Khammouan National Biodiversity Conservation Area but the discoverer has yet to see one alive.

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The Sudoku Craze

Monday, May 16th, 2005

The country is in the grip of a craze. Everywhere—on the tube and trains in cafés and at home—people are obsessively filling in grids with the numbers 1-9 in each column, row and 3×3 square. I first came across one of these puzzles in the Times 10 days ago when visiting my in-laws and was immediately hooked. A few days later there was an item on Newsnight because the game of Sudoku (based on the invention of carrés magnifique by the great 18th-century mathematician Leonard Euler, according to Saturday’s Independent) apparently helps to sell papers. The Guardian carries a version that is ‘hand-crafted in Japan’ and the Independent, my staple, publishes three levels ranging from elementary to difficult. Every Saturday, they also publish a super version of a 16×16 grid comprising the numbers 0-9 and letters A-F. This I brought back with me when I arrived at our mates in Islington after my trip to Bilbao.

All night, they and John sat up, trying in vain to solve it (I tried and failed three times to solve the normal-sized version before giving up and going to bed) and John and S consequently spent most of Sunday writing a program that eventually cracked it. John is working out the system behind it. If successful he might enter the Independent’s competition to become Sudoku Grandmaster of Great Britain but I’m not getting my hopes up. There are people out there who can do this in their heads but a computer scientist, a mathematician and another mate who has a PhD in both were not among them. At least I’m not alone 🙂

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Blogging break

Sunday, April 24th, 2005

Looks like I’m not going to post here for a while.

I’m currently caught up with other projects and travel isn’t one of them. I haven’t been on the boards for ages, nor followed my favourite bloggers (and, gosh, there are so many now! The Boots blogosphere is fairly exploding—and it’s great!). That is sad, but it is good to take a break sometimes. The blogs will still be there and will make great reading when I’m getting ready to go on that trip myself. By then it won’t be about running away from things any more. But it will be a while. Meantime, I’ll post occasionally when I have a story to tell (or perhaps a recipe to share, but I’m cooking less as well).

One thing’s for sure: I’ll be off on my Blue’s Cruise very soon. Fin whales and sperm whales have already been sighted in the Bay of Biscay in mid-April. That is unusually early and means I shouldn’t be waiting any longer to book my berth—although the weather is always a lottery when whale-watching.

I’ll see you then.

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Loser’s London

Sunday, April 17th, 2005

<rant>
Thatcher used to say that anyone over thirty still taking the bus, is a loser. I think anyone over 40 who can’t afford to live in the capital is definitely a loser. Coming to London for the writer’s group yesterday, I certainly felt like one. I wondered how all the people that live in the tiny shoe-box flats south of the river manage to pay their rent, but one thing is for sure: I’d rather live in a hovel in Deptford than in a house in Hampshire.
[read on]

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Story finished

Friday, April 15th, 2005

Phew, the first draft of my first ever SF story is finished.

It only took two months…and without John’s help I couldn’t have done it. And the writer’s group meeting is tomorrow. They have reluctantly accepted my attendance and send me three stories/excerpts to review. And boy, they are professionals. They are in a different league altogether. But stuff it, I’ll go. Having finished this story has filled me with a crazy, drunken confidence—even before I get to the pub where the meeting is held. Wish me luck…

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We’re in the money!

Sunday, April 10th, 2005

John’s inheritance money has arrived!

While most of it will be invested (and some is sadly needed to make up the shortfall resulting from John’s artificially low salary this year), he has promised me the funds to go on a trip. So now I’m in the enviable situation where I can jump on a plane and go wherever I want in the world (budget permitting) at a moment’s notice.

But outside the sun is shining and the long summer lies ahead and I’m quite busy with all sorts of little projects—in short, I’m in no hurry to leave. Dragging out the planning of this trip is in itself a delicious feeling; especially since at the end of this summer there won’t be another miserable, drizzly, chilly, dark and snivelly winter. Towards the end of the year, John will also be due to take some leave so he won’t wiggle out of coming along for a few weeks.

Meanwhile, it is high time for a tobacco run. And where better to go than the ferry to Bilbao, whalewatching in the Bay of Biscay! I could book the tickets right now—if I wasn’t about to go for a meeting with Genesis SF club in half an hours time.

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Open Access Biology

Tuesday, April 5th, 2005

It looks like the Open Access movement is winning. Slowly but surely. —Finally!

A lot of (former) students will have shared the frustration of not finding an important article in the library. In my postgrad years, I have spent a sizeable chunk of my spare time running around the various libraries in London, trying to track down a list of elusive references often hidden in obscure specialist colleges or the dusty vaults of the Science Library, then secretively hidden in the West End and accessible only through an unmarked entrance and after a bag search—very James Bond.
[read on]

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The Future Revisited

Monday, April 4th, 2005

In the ‘summations’ at the start of his annual ‘best of’ SF anthologies, the editor Gardner Dozois repeatedly comments that many critics, readers and even writers lament the ‘death of SF’ (he then goes on to show them how wrong they are with his intriguing choice of stories published in the previous year). The truth is that we now live in the ‘future’ that authors of classical SF wrote about in the 40s-60s and it is all rather a bit of an anti-climax.
[read on]

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Brief Intermission

Wednesday, March 30th, 2005

I’m behind with this blog because something for the other one has caught my attention: The Mood Virus (!)

Sounds like a good idea for an SF story, doesn’t it? But this is because it has been done to death. As a former virologist, I have to be careful not just to write plague stories. I’m actually working on one now, which is based on discussions from the Virology usenet in the early nineties. At the time I thought the guys were kidding—they weren’t.

Normal service will resume shortly.

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Healthy School Dinners

Sunday, March 20th, 2005

You can tell that an election is looming when the Prime Minister, no less, is quick to back a campaign that school dinners be made healthier and food cooked freshly. Such campaigns have been around for years, but thanks to Jamie Oliver and Channel 4’s shrewd decision to broadcast their latest food series in the run-up to the election, this time the voices have been heard. And the beauty is that once in place, no future government will be able to refute the changes. We will have healthier, smarter and cooler kids, as J himself put it.

Even better news is that Blair is in talks with the Soil Association about offering organic food in schools which I hope will mean that the ingredients will not be sourced solely from factory farms. There is a (very slow) increase of food awareness in Britain which, over the next couple of years, may well lead to a food revolution. Just when we were about to move to Australia in disgust. Damn.

I don’t have kids myself, but what I have seen has angered me—which goes to show that this initiative is a sure-fire vote winner not just from parents but from a great many people (I don’t vote, but that’s another matter).

Intruigingly, a while after junk food was scrapped in one Greenwich primary, the teachers remarked that inhalers had not been used where usually there was a steady demand. Of course, this could be coincidence, but would it not be shocking if additives were linked to asthma attacks in some children? Studies should be set up to monitor changes in children’s health and performance in class as schools change their menus—this is too important, and too good an opportunity, to miss.

If this turns out to be the case, I wonder if we could sue junk food provider for damaging consumer health…

Of course, this has absolutely nothing to do with travel, but here’s a link to school dinners around the World 😉

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