Things are getting along quite well in the new lab. Large pieces of aluminium have been turned into small pieces of aluminium (and a lot of swarf), spectrometers have been upgraded and calibrated, and I’ve just finished building some constant current regulators for low currents.
The current regulators don’t work how I thought they should, but they seem to work nontheless. I should try and work out what is or isn’t happening, so I have some idea why things are not how I planned them.
I first saw this poem on a poster as part of the Poems on the Underground project run by London Underground. I only saw it once, and could only remember a couple of lines – making it hard to search for.
This morning I suddenly remembered much more of the poem and so was able to find it online. Yay!
Quark by Jo Shapcott
‘Trancendental,’ said the technician, ‘to stumble on a quark that talks back. I will become a mystagogue, initiate punters into the wonders of it for cash.’
‘Bollocks’, said the Quark, from its aluminium nacelle. ‘I don’t need no dodgy crypto-human strategising my future. Gonna downsize under the cocoplum or champak, drink blue marimbas into the sunset, and play with speaking quarklike while I beflower the passing gravitons.’
If a title like that doesn’t bring the hits in, nothing will.
The Thesis, my Magnum opus, is now finished, bound up and submitted. And I’ve just spotted a couple of typos in it. Bugger. Nothing severe like my last thesis, where I got the year wrong on the very first page. I didn’t spot that until 20 min before the viva.
After the viva and corrections I’ll stick a copy online for anyone that really wants to read about lasers making things go bang[1]
Reminded of this by a post from Scaryduck today.
DTL vs the Fluff-Ball
The was and still is a misrable old bastard up the road from me. He walks a yapping bundle of fluff up the road twice per day, letting it shit where ever it wants. Complaints about this are shrugged of with
“its only a fuckin’ dog. I can’t stop it shittin'”
and several days of the dog ‘deciding’ to drop a load right outside your house.
It was after the poo stared to pile up on the pavement outside my house I decided to get revenge.
From the juices of the Sunday joint, I made up some of the tastiest gravy known to man or dog, poured it into a cup and left by the microwave ready for the evening dog walk.
Seven PM rolls by and the yapping gives away the aproach of the dog. The microwave goes on to warm up the gravy and thirty seconds later I’m at the door, cup in hand. Waiting until the Miserable Bastard can see me, I pour the gravy over the pile of shit remaining from the morning walk.
Fluff-ball scampers up seconds later and starts wolfing down the gravy covered shit in full view of Miserable Bastard. My job done, I head back inside to watch dog being dragged back home in disgust with the Miserable Bastard ranting and raving at the dog ,
“stupid fuggin dog”
and the world in general,
“bastards!”
I’ve had no trouble with that dog shitting outside the house since.
Scientists must update their DNS when changing servers else their websites vanish from the ‘net for for a week.
