It's still Autumn

It's still autumn, and I recently remembered something cool ("cool") and autumnal that I found out last year that I could share.

Last October I was writing a news story about the breakdown of chlorophyll in bananas. The link to the digital mag is here if you want to check it out. It turns out the areas around the brown spots on bananas glow blue under UV light (Apparently; I'm yet to get hold of a black light and verify this, but it sounds worth having a go to me). Chromatography was used to figure out much of what was going on in the tiny banana cells, which meant I got to write about it but also read around the subject a little. As the chlorophyll in the bananas fades the banana goes from yellow to brown and in the middle of that process you get the glowing stuff. Stick that stuff in a chromatograph and I have a news story! Yay!

But really interesting ("interesting") bit is that the fading chlorophyll is the same process that makes green leaves go red this time of year. I never really thought about why it happens but it's reassuring to me that someone out there has got a handle on the situation.

Chlorophyll is the important bit in leaves; capturing sunlight and looking green. As the summer ends and the shorter days mean they don't need to do this so much, the veins in leaves close off and the chlorophyll starts to fade. As the green disappears, oranges and yellow that were hidden all along can be seen. In some trees, like maples, glucose is trapped in the leaves after photosynthesis stops. Sunlight and the cool nights of autumn cause the leaves turn this glucose into a red color.

So yeah; how brilliant is that?

Work Blog 1: Office move

We're moving offices at work. Our floor gets it doubly bad because we have to move upstairs for a week before the full move, so I am currently 2 metres higher and 5m closer to our final destination.

I've been tidying up in preparation of this for the past month, but I still ended up being the last one carrying piles of junk upstairs. This has also provided all sorts of opportunities to find interesting stuff.

I awarded myself the 1999 Quality Editorial Gold Award (just need a black pens to change the names).

Uncovered a Rubik's cube which I can very nearly do... two thirds so far - this last side is just impossible - but it provides a great distraction and I'm getting super fast at getting the top and middle so that's some kind of progress. Do you think they have world record attempts that only cover those two levels? A world record would be nice, but I think my hands are too shaky for it. Before anyone suggests it; I will not be pulling off the stickers, and I'd also rather not just check the internet for the solution, as actually using my brain to try and figure it out is equal parts frustrating and fulfilling. All corners are in place now, but I couldn't tell you how I did it. Sigh.

Best thing that I found would have to be the carton of Smoked Haddock Chowder I found while clearing out my superior's desk. Unexpected, hilarious and some how still in date. Could be I only find Smoked Haddock funny because it reminds me of Red Dwarf and Ace Rimmer. Those that don't know "Smoke me a kipper, I'll be back for breakfast" are definitely missing out and need to track some quality British TV at the next opportunity. Strangely Red Dwarf popped up again today while I was checking Twitter, as it seems the Leicester Space Centre is having a Movie Mania weekend with a heavy Red Dwarf theme to Saturday.

Unfortunatly I can't go to that because I have used up my Geek quotient for this month by attending Doctor Who Live last weekend. It was all the music and monsters, really loud and hilarious to see tons of people dressed up. I took my sonic screwdriver and as the lights dropped the crowd filled with dots as other similarly minded individuals lit theirs as well. Pretty and quite funny to see.

Also mildly related to fish is the news story I tracked down first thing this morning. A Sea Snail that shoots a harpoon-like tooth full of paralysing venom into it's victims! Luckily for me they analysed the thing using TOF LC–MS so I get to read up on it. Sweet! It's also fun to discuss poisonous snails with people who only get to write about pharmaceuticals all day - sometimes my job is nice ;)

Blogging for work: The Prequel

So I'm blogging again. Professionally. As part of my job. My boss told me to think of it as like a commission, but there's a chance he was trying to convince me to do something he didn't think I'd want to.

This, in case you hadn't guessed, is not the real blog; that goes out fortnightly, but probably the other fortnight to this one. Or the alternate. I'm not to clear on the terminology, but I do like the word fortnight because it confuses our American colleagues. The plan in my head is one week of not for profit bloggage and then one week of problogging, in some kind of fresh keeping method. I'll see how that goes.

The logic behind this that I've been told to put some personality into our social networking site for chromatographers; the thing that worries me is that that means these guys are going to be getting my personality. These are people that our company feels the need to tell that if they want to get "fun" with their profile picture they could perhaps use a pet photo; and I would be happy to write Alice in Wonderland every other week and list all the unusual sounds I've heard that day.

So my new blog is going to be about science. And I guess science related things, things of interest to people with potentially serious minds. Technically it should be about chromatography and chromatography related things, but there's a good chance that would become a fortnightly bitch about how nothing interesting ever seems to happen in the world of chromatography. (This isn't actually that true, my job also features news writing on the subject and I have managed to cover sharks, dinosaurs and mummies, but it hasn't been easy).

Then again... I may listen to this over and over and write about spaceships, and movies, and TV, and monsters, and my dreams (you've missed graveyards; ash; playing cards covered in blood; me as Homer Simpson; Tron; and people pixelating and merging their faces in a seriously creepy fashion). Did you know they're making a wiimote that looks like a sonic screwdriver? There's a good chance that's going in there. Oh and stuff like this.

Yay, for dashing about and being marvellous!

New Blog

I have moved to http://www.f-a-w.net/wordpress/Captain_Doug/

If there is any one actually interested in my continuing adventures that's the site to visit.

Muppet hands

It's cold in Wales, still.
But I've been wearing my gloves (a number of girls with powerful maternal instincts will be pleased).
The thing is my coat has farely tight and long sleaves and this leads to my gloves getting pushed down my hands, not off exactly but to the point that my fingers arn't always in the glove fingers.
I call the phenomena Muppet Hands, coz I spend most of the time wiggling my fingers and making Fozzie Bear noises when I realise it's happened.

So I'm stuck in Chester coz the bus hasn't turned up and there's a bunch of unsavoury types standing around looking menacing. I just have this vision of them dsciding to off me and all I can think to say is "Hey fellas, you wouldn't kill a guy with muppet hands would ya?"

HA, it's only funny if you don't die.

Also I've been having issues getting my hair to look like anything resembling sanity.
But I have managed to get it to go to a bit of a crest going on. I think it make me a look a bit like a chicken, but a cool one.
Sample dialogue:
Guy: "Doug, you look like a complete cock."
Doug: "Thank you very much" :)

Madness

I arrived at work today in a unusually chipper mood. All this coz they played Dolly Parton 9–5 on Radio 2 this morning. Some hilarious singing along ensued.

Got me thinking for the umpteenth time about what songs I need to get available on Rockband/Guitar Hero. (The “band” that I am part of is full of chickens so I have to sing - which is fun but also painful after too long (8 hours is a long gig for anybody))

Anyhoo: Songs that I want:
Aerosmith: I don’t want to miss a thing
Bryan Adams: Everything I do
Dolly Parton: 9–5
Anything from an animated Disney film

These are just a sample, but the point remains that I need more silly songs to sing. Serious rock is fair enough, but a little bit of childishness or even just some rock balladery would be nice.

That said I may just continue singing serious songs in stupid voices, giving emphasis to the wrong words. The song that goes: (in an extremely high pitch) “Raaaape, Muuurdeeer”, springs to mind.

2009 et cetera...

And I'm back online!

So I've moved to North Wales now that I have a job in Chester. It's a nice place (even if I dislike the huge signs everywhere in English AND Welsh). I knackered my back putting up my Ikea bed which was vastly unpleasent and my mac refuses to go wi-fi which means I shouldnt be able to get the internet. However, I am a sneaky bugger and so I've shleped the machine downstairs to the router and am currently blogging in them middle of the living room floor.

'Course your all dying to know what my new years resolutions are (people at work had proper ones and I managed to make myself look the usual amount of stupid when they asked)

1. Say "Hello?!" when I find things. (I saw it on Doctor Who and I looks really cool)
2. Say "Et cetera, et cetera" more often. Think of how much time I could save if I stopped listing things in full.
3. More reading and possibly jogging if the temperature out in the Welsh wilderness gets super zero. (That's totally the word for higher than than zero; it's gotta be the opposite of sub zero)