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)

A Fork

My future is forking.

That is to say that I will find out soon if I have got a new job, but I just wanted to remark upon the diverce futures I have in front of me.

Most days you know roughly what will happen and the jist of what tomorrow will be, but today I get to be excited by the fact that I have no idea which tomorrow I'm getting but will shortly find out.

Tension and the Unknown, Huzzah!

Top tip 1

When making plum crumble (or any of the various fruity crumbles and dishes that need a bowl greasing) DO NOT use butter to grease the dish and then go to the fridge to get ingredients out. This leads to low friction fridg-crobatics with bottles flying out of hands and into carefully arranged jars.

I learnt my lesson the hard way so you don't have to.

More Weird Dreams

First off I feel slightly guilty about only having dreams that are worth mentioning (vs an actual life to write about) but until I get my job sorted there's nothing going on.

That said, my dreams can be pretty entertaining. Also, chock full of famous people.



For those of you that don't know that's Supergirl from Smallville. Any way she was there which may make some sence, but so were these guys, who are characters from an animated series that uses Halo:



Hooray! New level of craziness for my crazy brain!

Also I need to mention a fly the size of a bar of soap with a small elephants trunk that was slurping along a twig in the bathroom, but dream me totally got him with serious dream fly spray.

Pie!

I have made pie!
I imagine this now allows me to achieve the title of piemaker, which is probably a good thing.

A list of things that have recently mentioned pie:
Pushing Daisies
Dr Horrible's Sing Along Blog
The West Wing
Waitress

I think it was Pushing Daisies that made me want to make pie the most, and now I have, so yay.

Pie plans for the future (Pie in the sky ideas):
Eat Pie
Think of more Pie puns
Make more with thinner tops and a variety of innards

Fame!

Is it wrong I was totally amazed that riding a bike is just like riding a bike? (in the, once you've learnt you never forget, sence) Anyway I took a car to be MOT'ed and rode back from the garage on a bike I'd crammed in the boot/back seats/passenger seat. And despite a bit of wobbling to begin with I managed it. Hooray! (Well I was excited)

So excited in fact that I almost considered it more important than the fact that my work can now be purchased on Amazon. So yeah, how about that? Last I checked it was sitting around 8,000th in the bestsellers, making it more popular than Harry Potter (in latin) or The Da Vinci Code (Illustraited version). In your face less sucessful authors. Ha.

As for plans for the future, I shall be making pie. So look for that to debut, ('hot' off the press, boom boom), this weekend.

Dream Science

I was watching a program about dreams recently, it said that you dream with the left side of your brain and that you read with your right. This means that you cannot read things in your dreams.

However, last night I was being I.D.ed by a Colonel while shopping (I am not responcible for the complete lunacy of the dream situation) and when I got my I.D. back I clearly saw that the surname on it was Pfeuer (which he pronounced Shearer). Then I woke up and realised that you can't read in a dream.

There are four possibilities here:
1. Batman: The Animated Series is not a ironclad source of scientific infomation.
2. I only dreamed that I could read it, rather than actually reading it.
3. Using both sides of my brain at the same time was possible as I was waking up and so not totally dreaming.
4. I am magic. Hence, I can dream and read with the same parts of my brain like some kind of X-Man.

Premature Shopping

You know what's amazing?
Toothpaste.
I was running out so I went and bought more (this, to clarify, is not the amazing part), there were like billions of choices, but I managed a decision and got the replacement tube home and waited for the apparently empty tube to finally die.
That was weeks ago.
This tube is hanging on like a crazy thing.
I am getting to be quite amazed.
It must be like the tardis in there, only full of toothpaste.

Or (if nobody else's toothpaste tubes do this) perhaps I'm magic?
I could be like the guy that went round after Jesus fed 30,000 people fish sandwiches, who made sure they all had minty fresh breath with one tube of paste.
Hmm, I do have very cool sandels/official Haynes flip flops.
Could I get in trouble for claiming myself to be a/the dental messiah?

Adventures in pickling

I'm back baby!
There was nothing, but now there's me! Hooray!
I've been working in a library this week, which would be dull, but because I'm doing something other than wandering around Cambridge or watching TV, it means I have been dreaming again (when I sleep) which is great!
Course the contents were gibberish - fireworks, Montmartre and more running than an episode of Doctor Who - but it's the fact that my brain still works that's good.
I then spent the day giggling that a book with the code F-O-X had been put next to a book with the code H-E-N. Oh, library japes, will you never end?

Speaking of doing nothing for a long time:
I made an experimental mixed bean salad a while back, literally mixed beans with a vinegrette dressing thing (all guessed based on the what-would-Jamie-Oliver-do principle) and it tasted alright so I ate most of it. Weeks later I find it at the back of the fridge and the ebans were still good! Also, as a by product of being in a vinegrette for many weeks they had becomed pickled! Hence the preserving. Wow. I was amazed - so I ate them going "wow, I can't believe they're pickled"

Learning

Well, I now have more free time.
The people at work figured out that, despite being a fine writer, good looking, charming, etc, etc, I'm not terribly good at writing health and safety news. Also my massive lack of determination, motivation and the other one (perspiration?), meant I'm now looking for a new job.

Well, among other things of course.

I have been dog-sitting, which involves a great deal of sitting around in Newark. But I have been doing lots of learning, as I tend to in this sort of situation.

I have learnt what Dulche de Leche is. I found the recipe in a cookbook (literally stick a tin of condensed milk in boiling water for three hours) this recipe then goes on for half a page with warnings about the dangers of following the recipe. You see heating a sealed can wrong would make it explode. Opening a heated can would cause it to explode. It was the warnings that got me interested. Also I didn't know what it is so I gave it a shot. This required constant monitoring of the can for three hours as it clunks and rattles in a pot of boiling water - very exciting and probably not as dangerous as it felt. Turns out it's like caramel spread. Quite nice.

Also while sitting around in Newark I got a snazzy new hair cut (the old one had lost its pizazz) and at the same time visited the opticians, where I learnt another valuable lesson. Never watch a lot of Angel (or any Vampire programme) just before visiting an opticians. Having someone lean in that close was extremely uncomfortable as I was sure that the bloke was preparing to bite me. Also, I learnt that Leamington Spa is so much classier than Newark (Specsavers-wise at least) Leamington: Nice location, fancy machines, pleasant folks.
Newark: The thing is in Morrisions, the tech is very low, and the contact lens bloke turned my eyelids inside out on purpose! (What the hell?!)

Lots of TV watching besides Angel; Pride and Prejudice, The Office mostly. But did you know:
That the first of Disney's High School Musicals used 20 shades of lip gloss? Me neither! But more amazing is that the second one used twice as many! 40! Gee-whizz, that sure is a lot. I was so amazed, that I began seriously looking for something better to do with my life.

Suggestions welcome.

Easy Bake Fridge

Well, I've got the latest in the long line of unpleasent things that my basement flat does.

I could not figure out why all of my food was going off so fast when I was keeping it refridgerated and has absolutely no idea why my beef was going very strange colours (the colour of jerky is ont what you expect after two days in the fridge)

Anyway, there's this toy in the States, possibly here (i'm not really up with girls toys) it's called and easy bake oven and you've probably heard of it. It cooks cupcakes with a lightbulb in a box and perhaps you can see where this is going?

The light in my fridge does not go off when you close the door. Normally it vanishes by magic, but not down here. No magic in that kitchen. The light stays on. HEATING the top corner of my fridge. MY FOOD HAS BEEN COOKING IN THE FRIDGE! THE FRIDGE IS A F**KING EASY BAKE OVEN!!!

This is wrong, the only thing you should be able to cook in a fridge is fridge cake and that's just using freezing powers.

There's actually a bowl of mine hat has been up against the icy bakc of the fridge and the light, so that one half is frozen and the other is hot.

AAAAAAHHHHHHHKKKHHHHAAAAANNNN!!!!!!

Cooking in the fridge just boggles my monkey.

The time I went to Strawberry Fair

What's the hottest you've ever felt? (temperature-wise obviously)

It was sunny today and I was doing my laundry and sitting by the driers reading was pretty boiling, but I'm sure that I've felt hotter. It's kind of odd that you can remember images and smells and tastes and things from those obvious sences, but that you get nothing from temperature or the other sneaky sences.

My bathroom's started to smell like a vets. It's kind of nice because it can remind me of my dogs, but it's a rather odd clinical smell that doesn't make a great deal of sense first thing in the morning.

Of course my bathroom here is just one oddity to the next. The latest occurance is a new found sence of danger and urgency in the shower. I reckon this is caused by the sunny weather, people are shedding all their hair for the summer and so the drainage hole is never clear. As well as being gross, this can be quite exciting as showering goes one of two ways:
1) The usual way, where the clog sits there not letting water out. This gives you only a few minutes before the bottom of the shower fills with water and overflows everywhere! This is just on the edge of the level of intensity that I can handle first thing in the morning.
2) The new way, with enough foam surrounding the clog, it can actually float off the hole and start travelling round the bowl in the currents. First thing in the morning, with no glasses on and water in my eyes, a fuzzy disc in a white cloud circling my feet is enough to make a memorable showering experience.

But I was talking about the heat, and the sun. It's kind of ironic that today it's boiling and sunny, when yesterday it was muggy and dark. You see yesterday was the Strawberry Fair. The exact famousness of the fair isn't really something I can judge - I'd never heard of it before, but everyone at work has been talking about whether or not they're going so I guess it's a big deal to some. From what I can tell it's a hippy fair. Lots of people setting up tents in a cow field and... being hippies.

So I poodle down in the cloudy afternoon, I had no idea where it was - having never been before - but finding huge crowds of people doing a weird kind of zombie walk over there, I blended in and headed over.

There's a big blueish smoke haze in the distance marking our arrival. So I stagger round among the tents selling jewellery, and tie dye shirts and all kinds of food, listen to some bands (one of which was good) and I spend £5!!!!! on a glass of cider (£5!!!! for Old-sodding-Rosie!!!! £5!!!! Jeez!! for an anti-captitalism bunch, they sure chrage rediculous amounts for alcohol) Getting bored and feeling ill from the fumes I stagger into Cambridge city centre from an angle I've never seen before. Eventually finding somewhere I recognise I shuffle around in Borders until I get my head clear. Then I went DVD shopping, which, rather than being under the influence of anything perticular, actually proves that I'm back to normal.

It was just a bit strange that yesterday was so gloomy and everyone was sitting in a field pretending to enjoy the weather, while today it actually is sunny and I only have a park to enjoy it in, instead of a field full of hippies. Who smell bad.

Still ice lollies and Harry Potter, in the sun, watching the girls go by. Great.

Define Action?

I was going to post something about my not being jobless and the common unprobability of my continued survival.

Also (maybe unfortunatly), the almost certaintude of my continuing at this job (barring any sudden HUGE drop in skill) for quite sometime as the other news and feature writer is leaving and I would imagine that keeping me around rather than making themsleves 100% writer free is the company's prefered course of action.

Anyway, was going to say all that but:

I set fire to a potato. With a microwave. It was potato coloured on the outside, and toasted black at the heart. Also there was a very great deal of smoke. Action was lept to. More or less.

It's emergencies like this where you learn what kind of man you are. So while everyone else fled the kitchen as the air turned grey and unbreatheable I carried the smoking potato-rock to the sink and drowned the bastard. Then turned on the extractor fan. Then put my beans in the microwave. As the fire alarm went off and others left to shut up the siren, I got some bread and fired up the toaster - if baked potato is outthe window (or technically underwater) I guess beans on toast is the only remaining dinner option.

Who am I?

I'm Doug (not Spiderman)

Work...

How do you know things about what you do?
How do you know if it's right for you or wrong for you?
I guess it's guess you just have to know one way or the other.
But even then you don't have to act on that
One of the (many) things I like to see myself as is Wile E. Coyote, not because of cunning or relentlessness or the many other fine qualities; I'm the foot stuck in a loop of rope dragged behind the giant rocket boucing along the ground before I hit a cliff face, expode and then get smashed by a falling rock Coyote.
It always seem like I'm about to be splatted/exploded/crushed, but, not yet.
I guess the better side of me keeps us going regardless.
Hooray (for now)