| Wednesday, June 27th, 2007 |
| 8:16 pm |
Look! An update!
Life is too short. But especially in the last six months things have been kinduv crazy ... and this will continue for a couple of months yet. So I've been pretty crp about staying in touch with folks. So I started the new job about 7 months ago and moved to Swindon. The thesis is now printed and submitted after ~6 months of sitting on my hard drive inactive. I'm currently waiting for an exam date. We are in the process of moving into the new house in Lechlade which we are (very) busy trying to sort out... new drive should arrive on the back of a lorry sometime next week, lots of painting and gardening and so on been done already but still needs (lots) more work. Learning to drive. Test next week which I expect to fail, but we'll see how it goes... And also off to china in a couple of weeks to find the deepest cave in the world (aka mess around in the hills for a couple of weeks). Which should be exciting! Then giving a conference talk at NuFact immediately afterwards... I have a deadline for everything finished by the end of next week or so. I might suggest to my boss to turn the work into a journal paper at some point as well. We'll see if it works. Plus all the usual stuff ... competed in the Lowe Alpine Mountain Marathon a couple of weeks ago. We entered the D (easy) course - 45 km through the Scottish highlands over two days, carrying all of our camping kit. We came in the top 40 in a field of 140 which I thought was pretty good for a first time. Caving as usual, but also getting into the cycling (I commute 10 km each way on the bike at the moment). I'm quite keen to try a longer distance bike ride at some point (100 km+) but perhaps won't be time this summer. Hopefully come September things should calm down a bit (but I doubt it)! |
| Monday, January 29th, 2007 |
| 11:51 am |
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| Thursday, January 4th, 2007 |
| 2:15 pm |
New Year, New Journal Entry...
Ooh look, it's a new year, time for a new LJ entry. One a year isn't bad? So what... I've moved to Swindon, home of many roundabouts. Kinda dull, after three months I still haven't got off my as.s and actually met anyone. But nice to be living with Pip :) New work place is nice - boss pays a bit more attention to what I'm doing which has both good and bad points. Commute is long - walk.train.bike takes about 1 hr 30... but at least I'm getting fit. Thus the inspiration for Learning To Drive. So I have my first lesson in ~10 years on Saturday (after I failed my test when I was 17). Got thesis corrections back from my supervisor finally. Lots of stuff, but nothing too major. In general he seems quite happy with it. I'm on the fourth book in the Wheel of Time epic - "Epic in every sense" as the blurb on the back says. I actually think it's one of the worst books I've ever read, and this one is almost 1000 pages long... but should be about half that. The characterisation is attrocious, the plot predictable and slooowwww... I keep saying I won't bother with the next one but then end up reading it anyway. And now I've read the first four I have to keep going? Mixing it with a history book on the train. We have a vague date for the wedding, September 8th, but we want to buy a house before then so we haven't really confirmed anything yet. May take a while before we do. So... life continues to pootle along... |
| Wednesday, August 2nd, 2006 |
| 8:30 pm |
Wandering around tescos (praise to tescos) wondering what to get when my eyes descended upon ... Jon Bon Jovi - Keep the Faith. I have sinned mightily and yet it feels so good! Mmmm guilty pleasures... In other news Pip and I got engaged the other week - now sorted out a ring and everything - gosh we're organised ;-) ... now trying to decide whether it should be Pippa Rogers or Chris Crosby :P |
| Tuesday, June 13th, 2006 |
| 9:16 am |
After whinging last week - I saw a chipmunk and a pair of beavers (stop giggling in the back) on Sunday while walking in the woods around the lab during the coffee break... v cute. Back in the office, seem to have defeated the jet lag (hurray). |
| Friday, June 9th, 2006 |
| 3:46 am |
Sigh. There's something very depressing about Naperville. Maybe it's the stock phrases that the waitresses (always women) reel out to every customer in a mockery of friendliness "Hi, my name's Wendy, I'll be your server today. The specials are ..." "Sure, would you like a side with that?" Maybe it's the fact that every shop is like one of those horrible trading estates. Somehow it feels like living in Alton Towers. But with motorways everywhere so you can't walk anywhere. I've eaten out every night and still haven't found a proper restaurant - just a collection of different tacky mass-produced theme diners. I'm sure it's the same in England but I'm used to it there. And I don't end up working such stupid hours (70-80+ hour week this week!) Hmm. Don't like travelling. |
| Thursday, May 18th, 2006 |
| 10:11 am |
I just sent someone an email asking them to reverse the polarity of the solenoids. My job is to try to figure out why there is a matter-antimatter asymmetry in the universe. How cool is that! |
| Thursday, May 4th, 2006 |
| 11:51 am |
I was surprised to see police officers armed with machine guns outside my polling station this morning. Article from the Beeb: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/4970794.stm"Police officers are being deployed at several inner-city polling stations to protect against vote-rigging." Should the police be involved in this way? Is this dodgy or is it just me? It's a bit intimidating walking past a bloke with a machine gun to get into my polling station... should civil servants be overseeing elections of their bosses in this way? Who else could/should do it? At least they weren't inside the polling station - when that happens we are living in a police state. ps: it didn't change my vote... just a shame that out of the ~20 candidates there was only one that I wanted to vote for. pps: forgot to mention - recently been listening to Soma FM - good music! |
| Wednesday, April 19th, 2006 |
| 10:10 am |
Nice - but if Greenpeace (1 Mb) are to be believed, it's only a matter of time before the wildlife around Chernobyl mutates into evil monsters intent on ruling the world. In other news, I heard semi-officially that I got the job at Rutherford Lab - now waiting for the offer letter... and need to make the choice of Didcot vs London. |
| Wednesday, April 12th, 2006 |
| 4:53 pm |
Just back from a conference in Warwick - nice to see some old faces, including Evil Will, Vladimir Gligorov and Elmyra_Delmar. Got rather merry last night at the conference dinner in Coventry Guildhall (Tescos sells booze at one in the morning nowadays, apparently). Good fun until I got fined by Virgin for buying a ticket for the wrong train company. Cynical Chris suspects they've set up the system to earn revenue from fines. I haven't paid yet - let's see how long I can hold out. |
| Thursday, April 6th, 2006 |
| 4:38 pm |
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| Friday, February 24th, 2006 |
| 9:22 am |
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| Friday, January 13th, 2006 |
| 12:59 pm |
rant
The new sports centre at imperial is to be called "Ethos". Bullsh-t is the antithesis of science - I hate the way they are introducing BS into Imperial. Current Mood:  frustrated |
| Friday, December 23rd, 2005 |
| 9:57 pm |
Happy christmas everyone! Get it in early before the rush starts. If anyone is in the Red Lion in Barnes I can say happy christmas in person... Take care, Chris |
| Thursday, December 8th, 2005 |
| 4:42 pm |
Just (finally after loads of hassle from estate agent) moved in today... woo hoo! Off home to unpack! |
| Wednesday, November 30th, 2005 |
| 9:17 am |
A day of a ROCK methinks Current Mood: busy and p-d offCurrent Music: Sepultura - Roots |
| Thursday, November 24th, 2005 |
| 10:42 am |
Getting the goss off one of the girls from work last night - some nice stories about various different senior physicists in various states of indecorum. Thanks to El for her help with the vital question "what was that song from bridget jones??" ... |
| Wednesday, November 23rd, 2005 |
| 1:22 pm |
The Daily Mirror reported yesterday that the government entered into discussion with Bush on the bombing of the hq of Al Jazeera in Qatar. The government did not deny these allegations, instead issuing a banning order as some of the documents involved were rated Top Secret. From the government this is tantamount to admitting that the report is true in the central allegation. Note that this is the same Mirror that published the faked photos of prisoner abuse by UK soldiers in Iraq. Fine. But I was gobsmacked when a senior American politician (I can't remember the name now) appeared on Newsnight and said that such an act was okay. And if they talked about bombing Al Jazeera in Qatar, what of the "accidental" bombing of Al Jazeera in Baghdad and Kabul? This government, and their party, is evil. Current Mood: Words cannot describe my anger |
| Tuesday, November 1st, 2005 |
| 8:10 am |
A busy couple of weeks... building up to the Collaboration Meeting weekend a week ago, where everyone working on my experiment turns up. Plenary talk on the Monday followed by software workshop all week. Not enough sleep! Now have a house for when I get kicked out of my current one. The location is Fentiman Road, a mere cricket ball's throw from the Oval and Vauxhall tube. Well we paid a holding deposit at least. The plan is to walk into work, may prove infeasible - I guess about 45 mins. Or get a bike, possibly a nice route along the tow path. Move date is beginning of December (I think I'm homeless for three days, planning to invade parents...) Oh, by the way, my fellowship application went in, thanks for all the comments. Contemplating applying for a fellowship in geneva/CERN - a long way to commute but the pay is good enough to afford it! The application round is in March so plenty of time to think... Work is bubbling over - I'm trying to swim in two groups at the moment, contributing to the Beamline group that is designing the beam transport line from where we make our muons, and trying to emerge as a big wig in the Analysis group that studies how we make our results and turn them into useful physics. Probably doing too much but it is good fun! |
| Tuesday, October 18th, 2005 |
| 9:31 am |
Pub til 1 in the morning last night, in at 8 am, pounding dance music while my code compiles, drowning in coffeeeee.... geeky heaven :D :D |
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