Thursday, 8 July 2010

Note: "Save the title 'till last" - (a testament to boredom)


The ambiguity of this poem is I think part of it’s awesomeness. As a small explanation, it was constructed by myself and three others who were sitting round a table in a leaky conservatory in a shared house on the outskirts of Oban, Scotland. We’d not had internet since we arrived several days before, the weather was torrential rain and we were quite bored. We did, however, have a fairly large supply of amusing quotes and experiences from the last couple of days - which are the source of many lines and much of the inspiration behind it.


“Save the title ‘till last”

I hope that’s not a tomato
blocking my flow,
I feel I’m slowly turning
from a rock into a seal

I’m sitting in the living room,
In my inflatable canoe,
with my wine bottle of soup
and my little pot of Gu

The shower that floods the hallway,
And the heat that doesn’t go,
The missions to the bathroom,
To make the bubbles flow...

Sitting in “Old Gappy”
getting dripped on by the rain
we have the strangest feeling,
That we’re all going insane.

The washing machine
that spins them wet
is far from being fun,
not enough switches for all of the lights,
And far too many for none.

In the kitchen, where time stands still,
And coal sandwiches are discussed,
We’ve come to the conclusions,
That the internet is a must!

Or the army of rock seals,
Will come to steal the day,
Oi! Don’t take the piss
or you’ll be sor-aaay!

This poem serves as proof,
that you should never have let,
The four of us live here,
without the internet!

Wednesday, 7 July 2010

Note: a small piece of Scottish beauty



I’m working nonstop this week (only a week to accomplish the impossible for my course) so not much chance to write - or internet access really. I’ll leave you with a minor miracle for today. Oban is a rainy place, as my previous entry can attest. Far from being an anomalous day, rain is a constant companion, overcast and damp and punctuated by 15 minute surprise shots of sunshine. You never know what it’s going to do, though it is inevitably pretty, especially in the sun. I had infact forgotten what the sun felt like, until a chance encounter with a sunbeam whilst sitting in the bus this evening made me remember.

Anyway, so I’m up in Oban working on numerical modelling for my uni course, at the Scottish Association of Marine Sciences (SAMS), an institute sitting on the shores of a loch. I’d been told how pretty it was, but didn’t quite realise how pretty ‘till the sun came out for briefly for the first time since I’d been there. I rushed outside and snapped a quick panorama. It’s below, hopefully bigger if you choose to click on it...


Tuesday, 6 July 2010

Discussion: Gulf of Mexico an oil well minefield?


The Deepwater Horizon, as is fairly well known, was in the middle of a procedure designed to plu the hole with cement when the blowout occured. This procedure was part of an operation which would render this test well ‘temporarily inactive’. A recent article by the Associated Press has, however, highlighted yet another area of concern related to the Gulf. That not only is the Deepwater Horizon one of the thousands of oil wells in the region, but it was infact about the join the 27,000 abandoned gas and oil rigs in the area.


Detail of a map showing geology, oil (in red) and gas (green) fields, in the Gulf of Mexico Region Illustration: U.S. Geological Survey US Geological Survey. From the Guardian website.

This may not seem to be an issue, but the fact is that these abandoned wells are pretty much forgotten. They’re not routinely checked to assess the seals, and they’re *. Some of them are under the heading ‘temporarily abandoned’ which just seems to mean the oilcompany has to less rigorously plug them... and some them have been like this since the 1950s.... that’s over half a century. Similarly, many were plugged before the relatively stringent safety conditions were applied, so even the original condition of the plugs comes into question.


Changing geological conditions can alter the pressure within the boreholes and cause the cement to fail, or the oil and gas to force its way through. As a result, both fully and temporarily abandoned wells found on land have been regularly found to leak, and it stands to reason those under the sea would too, especially with the added negative conditions of water and pressure. Spokespeople for various oil companies seem to maintain the dubious notion that plugged wells ‘do not normally degrade’ and even the Government regulators in America say abandoned wells are ‘presumed to be properly plugged and expected to last indefinitely without leaking’. This seems unlikely, and the fact oil companies don’t seem to want to even consider this notion publically is fairly worrying. ‘Me thinks the lady doth protest too much’ or words to that effect...

Sunday, 4 July 2010

Note: Oban



Today I investigated Oban, in western Scotland. I arrived at 9pm yesterday evening, after a fairly gruelling 11 hour train journey from Wales. I'm staying in a shared house just outside Oban, though right now it's apparently uninhabited.

Having arrived in a cloud of torrential rain, I awoke to find it was still there. It was just one of those damp yukky days. There were maps on the kitchen table when I arrived, and though none of them directly correlated with my quickly printed googlemaps I was eventually able to find a road which matched. It wasn’t too much fun in the rain, but eventually, by coming out exactly where I’d hoped and finding the fish and Chips shop on Georges Street. Though the food wasn’t as nice as I’d hoped, it made up for it by have some rather entertaining menu items. These included “wolfdog sausage” (which I would have tried had it not cost £5.50), “red, white or black pudding” - and since I know what black pudding is I really dread to speculate what the other two varieties might be - and perhaps most worryingly of all, “deep fried pizza”, which you get get whole or half sized. Hmm. Did give me the opportunity to pick up a tourist brochure, though.

I also caught a glimpse again of a building I’d forgotten when I arrived tired and hazy in the train station the night before. It looked for all the world like a mini colosseum, just sitting on a hill above the town. I made a mental note to check it out, but decided to walk along the pier alittle more. Found a fantastically named shop called “The Pointy Hat”, which was actually an ice-cream parlour. Though the ice-cream wasn’t anything special, he did give me directions to the Colosseum-like building, called "McCaig’s tower".

I don’t think I would never have found the road by myself, and it was narrow and incredibly steep, winding up the hill towards the tower. I was surprised that there was no notice or anything as I approached the tower, nothing which explained what it was or why it was there. The only information I could find out about it was a brief paragraph in the tourist leaflet, it was built as a memorial to his family by a man called John McCaig from 1895 until his death in 1902. Hi was a successful local banker, who in a rather public spirited enterprise built the tower in the winter only, in order to support the local stone masons who were out of work during that time. Quite a nice idea, really. It had some amazing views from the top, and happily when I got there the sun came out for alittle bit.


Saturday, 3 July 2010

Top 5: To-do list software (mostly free)


Lists fall under the heading of something I like to call "constructive procrastination". I find list making is essential to feeling in control of the many tasks that you have to do - but before I looked into list making software I used to have multiple sets of paper lists that I would inevitably lose.

This was when I investigated the computer to-do list options, and found multiple ones to choose from. I have found a list of the 5 top ones, some browser based (thus accessible from multiple computers) some requiring installation on your computer itself.



pros:
- it's free
- lets you give items points... which I would totally use to say "done A, B and C now, earned enough points to get myself a coffee..." or something
- it's pretty

cons:
- online (not a negative really, though you did say you preferred something you could access on your laptop without being online. Online ones do have the bonus of being accessible from any pc though. They also have the benefit of being, generally, free :)



pros:
- a nice summary of pros is here
- also, if you use the google homepage , you can add it to that :)
- also it's free

cons:
- online - though it is available on the iphone too



pros:
- simple interface
- nice organisational touches (to do dates, projects etc)
- free

cons:
- online - though also available on the iphone

4) To do list Project (for Windows)


pros:
- downloadable (ie you can stick it on your laptop)
- simple to use, fairly intuitive
- free

cons:
- not the nicest looking design ever...



pros:
- lovely interface
- can split tasks into projects
- can split tasks into 'now' and 'next' ans schedule recurring ones

cons:
- not free...
- mac only

Friday, 2 July 2010

How to: Blender tutorial 8 - The Rendering Settings


3D animation may seem to be the realm of big budget movies, and certainly major companies like Industrial Light and Magic use big budget software. Thankfully, the if you want to try 3d animation as a hobby, you can do an impressive amount of work using free software such as Blender. Alot of the principles are transferable across animation software in general.

This is the eighth in a series of tutorials I've written for Blender - which will introduce you to the rendering settings. Though this tutorial is a short and sweet one don't skip it! Understanding these is crucial to rendering your animation efficiently.

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one - the render buttons

The Render buttons are the first buttons you see when Blender loads up:


two -- saving a render

To save a render press F12 (or render) to render the image..

Then press F3: this will bring up a save dialogue box where the buttons were. When you name your rendered image remember to type .jpeg at the end.

Sunday, 27 June 2010

How to: Blender tutorial 7 - The World Settings


3D animation may seem to be the realm of big budget movies, and certainly major companies like Industrial Light and Magic use big budget software. Thankfully, the if you want to try 3d animation as a hobby, you can do an impressive amount of work using free software such as Blender. Alot of the principles are transferable across animation software in general.

This is the seventh in a series of tutorials I've written for Blender - which will introduce you to the world settings. But for those of you who want to skip:

**** **** **** **** ****


**** **** **** **** ****

Now that we can create objects and make them pretty – a background would be nice.

one - creating backgrounds

First select the "background button" on the toolbar:


This will reveal the extra settings on the toolbar