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There's 12 hour webcast from CERN, called Beyond Einstein tomorrow from 11am GMT. It's all about Einstein, his legacy and the future of physics. The slot hosted from London (which I've been involved in organising, a little bit) starts around 4.30 GMT.

a pig in search of a roof

This weekend I went to Cambridge to see a couple of places I could live. Both are possible, both are lived in by lovely people, both have advantages and disadvantages. I'm going to see a couple more places in a fortnight's time, so I'm trying not to make a decision on where to live until I've seen all the options.
It's a tricky thing, deciding where to live, especially when you've never met the people you're going to live with before. You might get on brilliantly, you might annoy each other totally, you might just live parallel lives in the same house. All of these things have happened to me in the past. It's good to have a few options though. I think I could live happily in either of the places I've seen so far. All the places I'm looking at contain at least one other Christian girl, which is the main thing I wanted. God's good.

running away

Last night, it all just got too much. The stress of flat-hunting, the fact that I've got to write an essay by Tuesday and I've barely started, the fact that I'm leaving people, place, circumstances I know to start something new in a little over six weeks time.

So I'm very glad that today I'm taking the afternoon off to run away to Exeter for the weekend, to see HP (briefly), HP (confusing I know) and NL. Paddington here I come.

sunset

London sunset, originally uploaded by the pig wot flies.

Monday may not have started well, but it finished beautifully.

London sunset III, originally uploaded by the pig wot flies.

ba bah ba ba ba bah

Reasons why today is a bad day

It's Monday.
It's cold.
My office is cold and smells of cabbage.
I've just exploded a blackcurrant teabag while trying to detach it from its sister teabag.

Reasons why today is a good day

It's one of those beautiful crisp and frosty mornings in autumn that I love.
I have pink fluffy gloves to keep my hands warm on the bike.
I've now got a steaming cup of blackcurrant tea (and I've cleared up the mess).
Psalm 118 v24: This is the day that the Lord has made; let us rejoice and be glad in it.

UPDATE: I've found a heater. Much better!

future bus

I've just seen my first fuel cell powered bus. They're currently being tried out in nine cities across Europe. How exciting is that? Of course, there's still the problem of how you make the hydrogen and distribute it. According to Transport for London's handy (and not at all over simplified ;-) ) diagram of how hydrogen is made you need electricity to electrolyse water to make hydrogen and large tankers to transport the hydrogen around, so it's not a totally zero-emissions process. Still, a step in the right direction.

More information about London's fuel cell buses.

flat-hunting

I don't think I like flat-hunting websites. It's all a bit scary and intimidating. You find yourself endlessly analysing 10 word descriptions of people trying to work out what they're really like. I more or less know what I want, it's just working out how to find it. What I really want is to live with other Christian girls about my own age. I'm not convinced I'm currently going about this the right way. Has anyone any advice?

where's your blog at?

Is it just me, or do other people have mental maps of where blogs (and other webpages, but mostly blogs) are in relation to each other? For instance, looking at my blogroll, Adrian's blog is on the lefthand side of mine, Beyond Lilith and my knitting blog are on the right. I just went through the list and realised that for each one, there's a specific direction, mostly left or right, some diagonally. It seems entirely arbitrary. I thought perhaps there might be some logic to it, e.g. male on the left, female on the right, but Brosdee's view is also on the right and Lori Smith is on the left, so that doesn't work. I don't think it's political either. It's just further proof of the oddness of my brain.

Perhaps it's a synaesthete thing. The UK Synaesthesia Association calls synaesthesia "a harmless condition in which people experience perceptual sensations that are not shared by most other members of the population. For example, people with synaesthesia may experience colours with letters, sounds, or words; they may experience shapes with tastes, or smells with sounds, to name a few varieties. It has a biological origin and is found in at least 1 in 2000 people." I think it's more common in women than in men.

For me, most numbers and letters and days of the week have colours. Words and sounds have shapes and colour. I also have a kind of mental number line. the cardinal numbers are arranged as if on a rollercoaster, climbing up from 0 to ten, then steeper from 10 to 20, a long shallow slope up to 100, then spirals getting tighter and tighter away to infinity. The negative numbers are there too, droppping away from zero into their own spiral. I can fly round my number line, zooming in on different bits. If I get close enough, I can see the numbers in between, the fractions, decimals, irrational roots. Somewhere over to the left are the complex numbers, sideways branches out from -1. This number line serves no practical purpose, it's just always been there, ever since I can remember. I also have mental maps for years, months, days of the week. Sometimes they help me plan, or think about time. I often have to think in shapes when I work out when things are happening. If you see me doodling in the air while thinking about a particular date, that's why. So perhaps my having a mental map of the internet is inevitable. It's just that I've only just realised it.

It's back!

I've been Lomoless for several months after my LCA broke on holiday. It was less than a year old, so still covered under the warranty, just about. I contacted the lomo people and sent it off about a month ago. I hadn't heard anything more, so assumed they'd contact me in time.

Yesterday I got home to find a parcel from Austria waiting for me. My lomo was back! Mended and working again. Thank you lovely lomo people!

I took it to a fireworks party last night, along with the practica, and took lots of shots of things whizzing into the air and sparklers whirling round and round. I can't wait to see how they come out!

the worst sound in the world

If you want to hear some truly excruciating sounds and take part in a massive science experiment, go and play with the Bad Vibes site. You'll need sound, obviously. It's quite fun, but some of the noises might set your teeth on edge.