Category Archives: akatsuki talkingrot

Pot of tea

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The SNP victory in the Scottish elections can be taken in several ways:

  • A kick in the teeth for Scottish Labour (one long in coming, an election overdue);
  • A slap in the face for the Lib Dems (a protest to the shenanigans of the Lib Dems in Westminster);
  • A door slammed on the face of the Tories (not enough to boot them out in the last few elections, but now a fence is being erected to keep them at bay);
  • Resulting in the SNP being welcomed in for a seat by the fire with a nice cup of tea and a biscuit (dare I say, an indication that conditions are becoming favorable for a true divorce from the Union).

With the Tories mucking up the whole country in their usual heavy-handed way, the Lib Dems lending a hand, and Labour mewing pitifully in the corner, the SNP have mopped up all the dissatisfied and disenfranchised votes.

Now, if only the SNP could do something about the new Home Office limits on the number of academic visas, I’d brew them a whole pot of tea.

The Currency of Aggravation

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While waiting for my crappy work PC to copy some Excel data onto a Google Doc spreadsheet (why does it take you so long, crappy PC?), I like to browse through the 1000s of unread blog posts on my RSS reader. And sometimes, I get to read more than the headlines before the crappy PC hangs. And today, I came across a line that just seemed so appropriate for Crappy Thursday Evening Traffic* on the westside in LA that I had to share it**.

“It’s a currency of aggravation that gathers value with incredible ease.”
–A Customer Service Assistant on the London Underground (via the Going Underground blog)

So true. So apropos.

*TM City of Los Angeles, home to many other crappy times of traffic, but especially on Thursday evenings.

**What do you do when you come across an interesting quote on the interwebs? Bookmark it? Stick it on del.icio.us? Blog it? If it’s on my RSS reader, I’ll star or tag it, but that doesn’t cover non-RSS feeds. I used del.icio.us for a while but gave up when it kept making me re-logon on my crappy work PC.

Who needs another reason to drink whisky?

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We interrupt this lack of bloggage to bring you this piece of breaking news:

Speyside distilleries will now be burning whisky waste, aka draff*, to fuel their operations.

While the case for biofules is still in debate, with naysayers warning of famine being a result of farmers switching over to more profitable biofuel crops, it’s still a step in the right direction, methinks. Without continued experiments and innovation, how are we supposed to find an alternative to our dwindling resource of fossil fuels? Sure, all the alternative energy methods at present have their flaws, some social, others economic, and some even environmental. But all these paltry attempts to use solar, wind, tidal and agricultural sources to power our thirst for energy-sucking devices will one day pay off. Hopefully before we run out of pressurised fossils.

*And before anyone jumps in with the point about the allegedly waste draff already being used to feed livestock, I acknowledge that some research is needed into how much draff is actually used as feed at the moment and whether the draff going to the power plant is truly surplus to requirements.

Should auld acquaintance be forgot

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And never brought to mind?

Of course not.

It’s been a turbulent year. We have lost people dear to us, gained new precious ones to look over, and tasted bitter and sweet in our careers and home life. It has, perhaps, been the most life-affecting year of this decade for P and I.

As once written (or interpreted, if you want to be precise) by the gud Rabbie Burns:

“We twa hae run about the braes1,
and pu’d the gowans2 fine;
But we’ve wander’d mony a weary fit3,
sin auld lang syne.”

So, we’ll tak a cup o’ kindness yet,
for auld lang syne.

Raise a dram on 2010 and roll on 2011. We are ready for you.

1 hills
2 pulled the daisies
3 wandered many a weary foot

Somewhere at the end of the road

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cottage, originally uploaded by framboise.

No, it’s not snowing in Los Angeles. Not yet, anyway.

Just felt this photo taken during the winter of 2009 was somewhat appropriate for my mood today. I can see somewhere warm and welcoming, but I’m still on the road. It’s paved like a treadmill that does not allow me to get any closer despite walking as fast as my legs can go.

We all have days like these. At least it’s sunny outside in SoCal. ;)

Future, Filed

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Today I stood in my old office,
Shelves stacked with files and folders.
As I wiped down the desk
And emptied the drawers,
My mind drew a blank
On the contents of all these data holders.
Four years, they represent,
Of toil and thoughts in equal measure.
Half happy, half bad,
And ninety percent kept strictly to myself.
This career is one, I thought,
That lends itself to introspection.
However we bluff and bully,
Only in our minds is the truth known.
Four years of data gathered,
The same of literature read.
So full of potential,
Yet so full of trash.
On my shelves,
My future: filed.

and breathe…

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It’s been manic. My summer disappeared in a haze of work (good) and people throwing hissy-fits at work (not good). Early autumn was devoted to preparing for, attending, talking at, and then recovering from a large science conference in Chicago. Some fortuitous foresight on my part in summer meant that I also had a few days to enjoy Chicago after (more on that later). Post-Chicago, I hit the ground running again on the work front, and also dived into the craziest social season my mega-lab has seen since my first summer in LA. It was great but hectic. All in, this left barely any time to just sit, relax and breathe.

Today is (was, by the time I type this) the great American holiday of Thanksgiving. So, as an honorary resident alien, I give thanks today for the chance to have a wee breather.

And grill a chicken with a beer can up its bum (recipe).

The Chicken - Back

And drink some leftover mango cocktail.

The Cocktail

The dog was happy that we were home all day, despite how she looks in the photo. (She’s just shy…)

The Dog

I even started and finished a new knitting project (’twas a swick… it was only a wee owl…).

And I remembered what it was like to be able to breathe. For that, and a whole bunch of other onions, I am thankful.

Notes on Quiptic No. 514

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I was having one of those days at work. You know, the ones where you spend the whole day setting up stuff and waiting hours for the bloody enzyme to do its work… All hurry up and wait. And I was reminded by a comment about quiptic crosswords, which are an excellent way to pass the time when one is sick to death of reviewing manuscripts… I’ve not done any cryptic/quiptic crosswords since my subscription to Guardian Unlimited ran out a few years ago. And as a super pleasant surprise, I found that the Grauniad is no longer charging for access to their crosswords. Nice one!

This week’s Quiptic No. 514 was set by Arachne, whose crosswords I have a slightly better chance of completing than many other setters… And since I’ve come back to these after years away, I thought it might help to write wee notes about solving these types of clues… Here are a few that took my fancy in lazy list fashion (highlight below to see answer and brief explanation):

  • 9 across: Crimes of those who receive stolen goods (8)
    Offences; those who receive stolen goods=fences. add the “of” before it to get… crimes!
  • 12 across: I practised a complicated branch of medicine (11)
    Paediatrics; an anagram (indicated by the use of “complicated”) of “i practised a”.
  • 1 down: Tending to fall over kid’s misplaced computer accessory (6,4)
    Floppy disk; tending to fall over = floppy and an anagram of kid’s = disk.
  • 6 down: Blushed and wept about male child (9)
    Crimsoned; this one really annoyed me for a while… It had to be “son” or “boy” somewhere in the middle, surrounded by a synonym of wept, which I reckoned must be “cried”. Only after I worked out the word by solving intersecting clues did I realise that I also had to add an “m” for male. Duh.

Anythehoo… If you stumbled across this looking for hints on how to solve quiptic crosswords, I hope this helped a little bit. I learnt by a combination of trial and error and discussing the clues with my crossword-loving colleagues in my previous lab. What one of us couldn’t get, another would. I miss that lab…