The beaver is a proud and noble animal
Notes from a bemused canuck
My e-book reader arrived from the US, huzzah! huzzah!
Dr John didn't get arrested at the border on his way back and because of this, I have my new toy! It's all charged up and there are already two dozen books on it :)
This makes me inordinately happy :)
I took last friday off and had myself a 3-day weekend (it's a little-known fact, but according to EMBL rules, if you work on a sunday, you're allowed to take 2 days off at a later time – I love my contract).
I spent most of friday and saturday reading the last Harry Potter book. I'm pleased with the outcome. I'd read the abridged version as reviewed by the Guardian: Harry Potter took was waiting in the Dursleys' house in Privet Drive. They were sent off and would never be heard from again. His reverie was interrupted by the arrival of Arthur Weasley, Ron, Hermione and 10 other familiar characters. “We've got to get you out of here,” said Arthur. “The protective charm runs out when you are 17, and You Know Who and the Death Eaters will be after you. Six of us are going to take some Polyjuice potion to create some decoy Harrys.”
Harry knew he was up against it this time. A favourite character from an earlier book had been killed off within the first 80 pages. That Rowling woman meant business. “OK,” said Harry, grimly, as Ron and Hermione embraced. “There might have been time for that kind of adolescent awakening in books five and six. Now, it's time to get serious.”
Hermione recovered her customary poise. “You're right, Harry,” she replied. “The Ministry has been taken over by Voldemort, and the Order of the Phoenix is compromised. Nowhere is safe. You must continue your quest for You Know Who's Horcruxes.”
The scar on Harry's forehead burned, but an intense migraine was a small price to pay for giving the reader a chance to find out what Voldemort was doing and catch up with more back story.
It was the morning of Fleur's wedding to Bill Weasley and Harry, Ron and Hermione were examining the strange bequests they had been left in Dumbledore's will. “Why have we been given this effing rubbish?” Ron laughed. “I've told you before that book seven is not the place for jokes and swearing,” Harry answered sternly. Just then he saw Ginny passing. He didn't know why – though he suspected it was something to do with letting the reader know that although he was a goody-goody on the outside, he was a rampant horny hetty on the inside – but he kissed her passionately. “Stay safe for me,” he whispered knowingly.
“I've found a strange mark in this book,” exclaimed Hermione. “What do you think it means?” Harry frowned. “I've no idea,” he murmured, “but my scar will start hurting again soon and we'll find out.” Sure enough, the tingling sensation soon returned. As he came out of his dream, which revealed yet more back story about Dumbledore, Harry intoned solemnly: “It's the sign of the Deathly Hallows. We must find them and the Horcruxes.”
Harry, Ron and Hermione had criss-crossed the country getting out of ever-tighter scrapes with wizard spells, but still Harry felt no nearer to knowing what to do. Yet he had the strange feeling everything was becoming clearer. “I'm leaving you two,” Ron declared one day. “I need to create some narrative tension.” Harry was lost again but a Patronus spell led him to the Sword of Gryffindor. He had to step naked into an icy pool to retrieve it. “I knew getting the lead part in the school production of Equus would come in handy,” he thought.
“I'm back,” said Ron, as Harry's scar continued to reveal yet more of the seemingly endless back story. Sometimes Harry didn't know if he was awake or asleep, alive or dead, as so many old characters flashed through his mind. “Don't worry,” said the figure of Dumbledore. “This time, no one knows what's going on either.” So Harry made his way back to Hogwarts to face Voldemort. It would end as he had always known it would. With everyone wondering what JK would do next.
And yes, it was quite accurate. There were a few things in the book that did annoy me though. First off, I don't mind that they killed off a bunch of characters. It was done in context, and nothing was too gratuitous. But the whole Percy thing, I-was-a-prat-but-I'm-better-now-forgive-me, was completely unnecessary. Then Harry is killed. Sorta. But doesn't die. Again. And then it's all better. Yes, I can understand the whole justification of the thing, but still. It bugged me.
Rowling still left herself a way out for spin-offs and more books by means of her last chapter “19 years later”. I'm pretty sure it's not the last Harry Potter book that will grace the shelves, though I'm thinking that the next one will be a while in coming – if only to let the woman have a break from writing and a chance to play with all of her money.
Conrad 'Barron' Hilton, head of the Hilton clan and Paris' grandfather, has cut off her million inheritance. Hilton senior, the only member of the family left with a sizeable stake in the huge hotel chain, has let it be known that he intends to donate to charity the billion he will gain from this month's sale of the company to private equity firm Blackstone.
The money will go to the Conrad N. Hilton Foundation, the charity set up in the name of the founder of the family business. The 79-year-old patriarch is said to have told his high-living family that he is cutting Paris loose – and for good measure his other 11 grandchildren, too, none of whom will now benefit from the windfall. Instead, he is determined to carry on the family tradition for philanthropy.
“He was, and is, extremely embarrassed by how the Hilton name has been sullied by Paris,” says Jerry Oppenheimer, the author of House Of Hilton, the biography of the clan. “He doesn't want to leave unearned wealth to his family.”
I hope the money will be put to good, charitable use. It might be a bit of a slap in the face for Paris, but having said that, business is booming for her at the minute. If anything, her “jail term” only prolonged her 15 minutes of fame and it is believed that she will quadruple the million Forbes estimates she earned last year by lending her name to tacky product endorsements, perfume lines, jewellery designs and pet clothing range.
So yeah. Poor, poor Paris. It's a hard life…
I'm back in BraaaaaTisLAVA (don't ask, long inside joke) and I have an hour to kill before my flight. Interestingly, there's free, open wi-fi. I don't really dare log into anything sensitive, but livejournal should be a safe bet, or so we hope. My firewall and virus scanner should stop anything too intrusive.
I'm glad the conference is done and over. It was interesting, but I think I'll limit my conference attendances to Javapolis and other tech-related ones. The scientific ones just have way too much waffle and I'm realizing that I'm just not as interested in it as I used to be. I'm more interested in ways to store, manipulate and handle data as to having long talks about What-It-All-Means.
We had a few hours to spare in Vienna in the afternoon, so I managed to convince a few people to go to the Haus Der Musik, an interactive music museum. It was a nice send-off from Vienna. Had one final ice cream cone on the way back to the hotel to pick up the bags and we headed to the bus stop where we'd be taking the shuttle to Slovakia. There was already quite a crowd of people trying to get on the bus. Thank god we had pre-booked seating. They actually checked my passport this time at the Slovak-Austrian border, but they barely glanced at it. At times, I really, really like travelling with a Canadian passport. It's nice that most countries like us.
If all goes well, I should be getting home at 1:30 or so. I've realized that I've done something daft and forgotten my earplugs in the hotel (at least, I think they're there – they might be in my shaving kit). End result is that they're not in my bag. This would normally be bad bug I've recharged my ipod and my earbuds will block out most of the plane noise.
I'm looking forward to being home and the feeling of normalcy it entails. To quote a co-worker, “I need a bit of TLC”.
The conference is almost over. People are packing up the stands. The general consensus is that it was an ok meeting, but people are looking forward to going home.
The last 2 days have been better than the first two – mostly since I've been doing things on my own agenda. On monday night, I had a nice meal at Cantinetta Antinori with Judith, a former student that was at the EBI about a year ago. She didn't have any plans and decided to join me at the last minute. The food was lovely and the wine list was impressive. We shared a starter of beef carpaccio with parmesan and I had homemade pasta stuffed with ricotta covered in a thyme and lemon sauce. I think I offended the waiter by having a glass of really good Montepulciano but following it with a glass of rose :) Screw him. Good wine is what you like to drink, I say. We had some ice cream from the bajillion gelato stands in the inner ring and went walkabout, taking pictures at a leisurely pace.
Last night was the conference dinner, which I skipped in favour of having dinner with Tia at Firenze Enoteca. Even though the restaurant is rated higher than the cantina, the food was better at the other place. I had shrimp risotto, which was a bit spoiled by having too many cherry tomatoes. All in all, it was ok though. The old truism that I've discovered with Michel about italian restaurants still stands. The better the food, the worse the coffee. I had espresso at both places, and it was bad at both places… Ah well. Tia and I spent a nice evening chatting and walking about. I bought some postcards that I still need to write and send. She suggested we go to a little bar and listen to some live music near her apartment. When we got there, it was so hot in the basement that there was nobody there. The band decided that they wouldn't play the set so we left and then we ended up at the outdoor film festival, watching a really fucked up movie about … I'm not too sure about, but it involved two people singing opera in french about moving to Paris and living together (the together part being really, really, REALLY important). And then the keystone cops showed up. And they sang some more. It made my brain hurt.
The plan for today involves finishing up the conference and… waiting. The shuttle to Bratislava is at 6pm and the flight is at 9:30 (or thereabouts). We're already checked out of the hotel so there's not a lot to do. Some people are thinking of going to the Museum of Music and kill time there. Sounds like an interesting plan.
I had a lovely piece of fish with grilled peppers today. This makes a large improvement over yesterday, where I ate nothing. Well, a kit kat and a squished sausage roll don't count.
Dinner didn't fare any better, which *really* pissed me off. I'll get to that in a bit. The longer I'm at this conference, the less I like it. The venue is horribly organized. I had to stand in front of my poster for 1.5 hours last night during the reception. Imagine a three-sided building. There are posters on all 3 sides. There are three bars. Only one is open, where there is booze and copious amounts of free food. Guess where most of the crowd hung out. Now imagine that my poster is diametrically opposite the bar. Yeah. I was thrilled that I actually had a few people who were genuinely interested in the poster. It's been the only good thing about the conference so far.
The plan was to go to the hotel and drop our bags off, then head into town go to eat at a cafe near the cathedral. Unfortunately, the plan morphed along the way and we ended up going to an outdoor markt near the Rathaus that serves ethnic food. By this, I mean paella, kebabs, curries, greek food, spanish tapas and burgers. You know, all the sort of food that'll kill me. People were going “we're sure you'll be able to find something you can eat”. Yeah. Like I came all the way to Vienna to eat a fucking burger (no offence to burger lovers).
One guy was actually really good about it, going to stand to stand with me, but I just didn't feel comfortable with the whole concept of street food. I'm sure it's really good, but when it can cause you severe discomfort to say the least… I just didn't want to trust it. Call me paranoid, call me silly. In the end, I told them I'd go eat something at a sit-down place I'd try to find near the cathedral and get back to them for drinks.
Unfortunately, I managed to get myself hopelessly lost (my map was in my bag, which had been left at the hotel). I know I have all the navigational aptitudes of a drunken carrier pigeon. I've never claimed otherwise. Walking in a new city at night? Not my bestest idea. In the end, I managed to get myself at the right place, but I was so stressed out about the whole thing that I wasn't really hungry anymore. Also, it was now 10pm, and the concept of a meal was no longer so appealing. I just headed back to the hotel and spent a while talking to Katy. I tried texting the guys to let them know, but on top of everything else, my phone ran out of credit.
Another sign that my hotel is shit: when I got there, I wanted nothing better than a pot of hot water to make myself some tea in my room while talking to Katy. They had no teapots. I had to pay 3 euro to get a sodding cup of bad tea and burnt myself bringing it to the room.
Today is a better day. I made myself a few ham and cheese sandwiches from the breakfast buffet and snuck them in my bag in case lunch went pear-shaped. Turns out they were not needed, which is a nice plus. Later on today, I will go walking in Vienna on my own, in daylight, with maps to go see the sights *I* want to see and do the things *I* want to do. Antisocial much? At this point, I don't give a damn.
Edit: I've already made reservations to a lovely-sounding Italian restaurant tonight. Can't wait :)
I'm not build for this weather and I'm not a happy camper. Heck, I'm just not a happy camper in general at the minute. Let's recap.
I got up at 2:45am Saturday morning to get ready for my 3:30 pick up to get to Stansted. I was running on automatic, because what little sleep I got was broken up by waking every 30 minutes or so cause I didn't want to sleep through my alarm. At 2am, I gave up and spent a half hour petting the cat that had climbed up on my chest and was purring away quite contently (he's been getting more affectionate since we put a collar on him, go figure).
The flight was perfectly normal by Ryanair standards and, aside from a bit of drama when my poster tube fell off the luggage belt on the wrong side of the luggage pick-up area, the bus trip to Vienna from Bratislava was uneventful. We took the tube to the hotel and that's when we knew we were going to be in for a bumpy ride.
The rooms were a sauna. There was no AC and no wind circulation. My room faces the afternoon sun and is just above a busy street. Joy. The heat was so bad that I had to open a few windows. People who know me will realize just how bad it was. To make matters worse, although there is wireless internet at the hotel, apparently my room is one of the few that gets no reception. Oy.
Anyway. We got some euro and some sunscreen to protect my pasty white skin and headed out on walkabout. It was a good pootle, but it was just too warm. The best bit of that afternoon was having an ice cream cone (in a proper cone, that disintegrates in your mouth as soon as you bite on it). The heat got the better of me though, cause I started getting a bit woozy. Went back to the hotel and had a cool shower and a nap, but I elected not to go out to the opening reception. I didn't feel all that grand by then so I had Katy call me and then went to bed. From what I hear though, it was nice and then people went out to drink afterwards. There are a few places that I want to go see for myself when it's cooler, so I'll keep note and play hookie at some point during the conference.
We're there now. I don't like the layout of the place – it's on 3 levels of the venue and it's a real maze to get from point A to point B. The posters are on 2 levels, which means that since I'm in a back corner, I don't expect to get a lot of visitors…
I'm also pissed off about lunch and will be putting in a formal complaint with the organizers. When I registered, there was a specific form entry for dietary requirements and food allergies. I though to myself, yay, I might be able to finally have a proper lunch at one of these things. Of course not, silly boy. I just asked the catering staff to make sure (I had to use my multi-lingual “I'm going to die if I eat any of the following… ” card) and they said that there was garlic in everything. So yeah. NO SOUP FOR YOU! Bastards.
It's not so bad. I can have a good breakfast at the hotel and I can have nibbles during the coffee breaks (that marbled cake is nice! but you can't live on cake alone – no matter what some people might think). I also came prepared a bit and have some nibbles of my own. It's always the case though. My diet goes to shit when I'm on conferences… I'll go back living off salads when I get back home.
RAF jets scrambled to intercept Russian planes
Two RAF fighter jets were scrambled on Tuesday to intercept two Russian planes on course for British airspace, it emerged yesterday.
The incident marked the latest escalation of tensions in the standoff between London and Moscow. As Moscow hesitated in its response to Britain's expulsion of four Russian diplomats, two Tornado fighters raced to meet the Tu95 “Bear” bombers that had been dispatched from their base near the northern port city of Murmansk in the Arctic Circle. The planes turned back before they reached British airspace.
The incident, now rare according to the RAF, but once commonplace during the Cold War, may be seen as a show of defiance by the Kremlin. But Moscow said the Russian planes were on a training flight unrelated to the current diplomatic crisis over the murder of Alexander Litvinenko.
Source: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/07/19/wrussia419.xml
Listening to music releases the same “feelgood” chemicals as eating and having sex, researchers have found.
The neuroscientist and former rock music producer Prof Daniel Levitin said music activates the brain area responsible for feeling pleasure, excitement and satisfaction.
Prof Levitin, an associate professor of psychology at the McGill University in Montreal, Canada, suggests that understanding how different types of music affects the body can help people choose songs or bands that could help them achieve tasks or goals.
He found the brain of someone listening to music reacts in a similar way to that of a gambler when winning a bet, a skydiver about to leap out of a plane or someone who has just taken drugs.
Someone listening to songs or tunes they enjoy experiences a release of dopamine, the hormone linked to reward and happiness. This association has led Prof Levitin, who worked with Stevie Wonder and the Grateful Dead, to claim to have discovered the “sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll” centre of the brain after collating research to be published this year.
He said: “The sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll scenario proves that music is at the heart of creating moods and reactions.
“Research shows that music has specific effects on the body's physiology, including heart rate, respiration, sweating, and mental activity.
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“Music is effective at moderating arousal levels, concentration, and helping to regulate mood through its action on the brain's natural chemistry.
“People who can have music follow them around during their daily lives can use these properties of music effectively, to form a soundtrack for their day and their lives.”
Music has been shown to cause activity in brain circuits associated with physical reactions, such as sweating, sexual arousal, and “shivers down the spine”.
Researchers used a variety of methods to measure the effect of music on the body, including heart rate, blood pressure, sweat response, breathing and brain wave activity.
Scanning techniques have allowed scientists to look at changes in specific parts of the brain.
Dr Levitin found instrumental music such as classical, jazz, techno or bluegrass were better for people studying text to avoid becoming distracted. Energetic tunes with a tempo above 96 beats per minute were best for those cooking, cleaning or doing household chores.