Sara Bury

Moving House

Mon, 15 Aug 2011 10:30:18 +0100

Soon I’ll be moving house, and not just a change of walls but also a change of place. I’m finally leaving Lancaster. Well I say finally, there are a lot of people who have stayed longer than I and still not left, but I think 8 years is good enough for me.

I’ve been trying to work out what I think about leaving, what I’ll miss and what I’m looking forward to leaving behind, but I actually think it’s affecting me less than it feels like it should. It isn’t like I’m moving a million miles away to a place I don’t know, I’m moving to an area that give or take 10 miles, I essentially grew up in. A place I spent many holidays, roaming free over the hills and fells exploring. It doesn’t feel like a scary place to be moving to, and I don’t feel like there will be a lot to learn.

It is going to be a change though, and I think a change for the good. Having to do things a bit differently, seeing new scenery, meeting new people. It’s what I’ve needed to do for about 2 years but have been unable due to academic commitments. I’m glad that’s nearly over.

I’m finding out more about my new job and the people I’ll be working with, and the things they have planned for us to do in the induction week sounds like I’m becoming a fresher again. I’m a bit too old for that kind of stuff these days. Trying to decide if I want to go to the graduate ball in October, there are apparently hot air balloon rides… that might well sway it for me.

All in all it’s an exciting time. Not least because I’ll be living very close to a zoo with giraffes.

MRI Scan

Mon, 13 Jun 2011 11:57:54 +0100

After quite a long wait my MRI appointment finally came, scheduled for 7.45am on Saturday at the RLI. If I’d read the letter better in advance I might have questioned the time since the MRI department doesn’t actually open until 8am and sure enough it involved standing around in a corridor for a while until there was actually someone to let me in.

I was only having my knee scanned, and I didn’t really know what to expect. I got ushered in and was asked to fill in a form asking me about various different medical (and otherwise) reasons I might have loose metal about my body. Then I had to change out of my clothes into a hospital gown. I should imagine it looked quite strange to Andy, gowns are sort of intrinsically connected to “people who are ill”. I just thought it was cold and found it a bit strange wandering about without shoes and socks on. As I went into the MRI room the technician asked the questions again, I guess it’s really important you don’t take loose metal in there… I remembered I had a metal wire along the back of my teeth and panicked a bit, but she said as long as it was attached I’d be fine.

I had to lie down on a platform, and put my knee into something which looked a bit like a brace. It came in two halves and surrounded the knee that was being scanned. I have no idea what it did, maybe gave the machine some sort of frame of reference, but it wasn’t tight or uncomfortable. Then the technician told me the machine would be very loud, so I’d be listening to some music through headphones to take my mind off it. I’ll be honest, when she said I’d need to have my mind taken off what was going on, that was what made me worried. I hadn’t been until that point. She gave me a choice of genre, I asked for rock and was offered Meatloaf. We came to a Queen compromise.

The headphones were awful quality and the album was a live one but I was glad to have something to take my mind off having to lie completely still for 25 minutes. I was moved into the scanner so that only my head was sticking out, and the machine constantly blew fresh air on my face. I can see how that might help someone who was feeling a but claustrophobic, but it just made me cold, especially only wearing a cotton nightgown. The machine was indeed VERY noisy, sort of pulsing as the scan happened. There was also a loud background noise like a very noisy computer whirring next to my head. The headphones helped but they were a bit big for my head, so half of the ear piece was over my cheeks.

Lying still is hard. It felt like forever had passed before she let me go, but when she did that was that. I didn’t get to see the pictures that had been taken, and she didn’t give me any indication that the scan had shown anything, or nothing. I suppose they aren’t qualified to make judgements, but it felt like a bit of a let down. I’m hoping that when I get the follow up appointment with the surgeon he’ll let me see the insides of my knee. I understood why she’d been so keen to move me on when I went to get changed, and found the next willing volunteer ready to be taken through.

All in all it was painless, a tiny bit stressful but not for any good reason other than you’re being made to lie inside a massive noisy machine that the employees seem to be taking great care not to stay around. I guess a bit like having an Xray really… I am looking forward to seeing the pictures that were produced, technology is awesome.

How To: Fix “Unknown keyword in configuration file.” Ubuntu USB Boot

Fri, 20 May 2011 17:44:46 +0100

How To: Fix “Unknown keyword in configuration file.” Ubuntu USB Boot:

Decided to reinstall my Acer Revo which involves booting from a USB drive as the machine doesn’t have a CD ROM. I was thwarted by an “Unknown keyword in configuration file” error on boot, and this lovely site explained how to fix the problem.

Credit where credit’s due, but I’ll also repeat the solution as replicating useful information on the Internet is always a good thing.

Open the the syslinux folder in the root of the flash drive.
Inside is a file called syslinux.cfg you’ll want to edit that.
Find the line “ui gfxboot bootlogo” and simply remove the “ui “.
Save and try booting again.

Worked perfectly for me, though he also suggests you can get around the problem by typing ‘help’ at the boot prompt and hitting enter a few times. Whichever works for you. I was just pleased to be installing Natty Narwhal on my TV computer :-)

Catch Up

Thu, 31 Mar 2011 23:51:26 +0100

I haven’t posted here in a bit, and a lot of stuff happened. I sort of intended to write at length about each thing, but I lack the resolve and that’s stopping me from writing anything. So in order to get back in the swing of things I thought I’d post a catch up entry. I don’t really know who I’m telling these things; really I think it is more for myself than anyone else, but it gives me something to do while Andy is off cycling the width of the country without me so I shan’t let that bother me.

Live Roleplaying

I did some. A weekend of CP with Stef. I played a healer who didn’t remember her spells, and it was good fun (if cold standing outside all the time). Half way through just as I was getting into the swing of things I went over on my knee while attempting to evade a werewolf. A month later and it’s still not better. I’ll try not to let that experience colour my judgement however, I did enjoy myself and I met some lovely and interesting people.

Job Interview

I had one. Well technically I had two if you count a telephone interview. Really though only one mattered, an assessment centre for BAE Systems. It was over two days at a posh hotel in Preston, and happened very soon after the roleplaying event. I was quite stressed about it, but it did give me the opportunity to wear my nice suit and limp around with my bad knee. There was a group work exercise, a one-on-one interview (in a hotel bedroom..), a written exercise and a presentation. I felt like I aced the interview and the group work (though I got off to a quiet start), was meh on the written exercise (unlike me) and completely stuffed up the presentation.

Job Offer

The next day at 9.20am they offered me the job :-) It’s a fantastic opportunity and I grabbed it with both hands. The salary is higher than I was expecting, and working hours are really intriguing (Friday afternoons off!?). It means I am 80% certain I’ll have to move to Ulverston in the next six months, but I am more or less happy with that. Nearer the Lake District.

PhD Viva

I had it, I passed with minor corrections. The week/weekend preceding it will probably go down in my life’s history as one of the most horrible, stressful and painful times ever known. I was a nightmare to deal with, I couldn’t focus, and Andy was a complete and utter star. I would never have made it to the actual event without him, and without his help during the last year or so I don’t think I’d have ever got to the point of submission. Basically he owns my doctorate. Anyway, it means I’m now (pending corrections) Dr Sara, and that feels really very strange. I don’t really want to talk more about this. I’m very glad it’s all over, and it was an experience. I loved the travel and the people, but I don’t think I could recommend to past me that it’s a good idea. Without having done it my life would be very, very different, so it is hard to put things into perspective, but I’m very glad that chapter of my life is coming to an end.

So, yes. I don’t know what’s next. There’s going to be some big changes coming up, new house, new job, probably lots of other little things. I intend on using this blog more regularly again, and starting to take some more photographs. I want to do some more travelling, and carry on learning Japanese. Other than that we shall see what comes.

Lotus F1 Factory Tour

Sun, 23 Jan 2011 17:47:00 +0000

For Christmas Andy bought me a ticket (and himself obviously) to tour the Team Lotus Formula 1 Factory in Norwich. We chose to attend the final day of tours before the season kicks in, and that happened to be last Friday. Hard to believe the F1 season has come around again so soon, well testing at least, but even so. Barely seems like any time has passed since the final race of 2011.

Anyway, the whole trip was a big adventure. Norfolk is a) a long way away, and b) surprisingly hard to get to. We decided to drive as it gave us a bit more flexibility - since we were going all that way south it seemed silly to head in and straight back out, so we’d arranged some other stops on the way, in Cambridge, Derby and Manchester. There’s far too much to talk about however, so this entry is mainly focussed on the Factory Tour.

The drive down was about five hours in total, with some extra time being taken up queueing in a traffic jam on the A1. We eventually discovered this was because a boat had fallen off someone’s trailer; driving past a speedboat sat in the next lane over was somewhat surreal. Other than that the drive down was pretty much uneventful, apart from a massive rock hitting the windscreen on some section of the A1(M). Unfortunately we were moving rather quickly, and so was the rock. There didn’t seem to be any immediate damage, but 3 days it’s turned into a 7” long crack. New windscreen time :-( The hotel was very nice and we ate in the pub next door. Sausage and mash in a giant Yorkshire pudding. Giant wasn’t a lie.

Next morning we set off to find Hingham, it was about 30 minutes drive away from the centre of Norwich, but the trip was amusing. The countryside in that area is quite beautiful, very flat, and agricultural, but quite green and rural. The further away from Norwich we got, the more unbelievable it was that anyone would have set up a Formula 1 team there. The factory itself was hidden in a small industrial park, marked only by a small Team Lotus sign. We parked up and saw some Air Asia people hanging around outside a nearby building - Perhaps the new Air Asia GP2 team’s base?

Upon arriving in the factory foyer we were given visitor’s passes and left to amuse ourselves while the single secretary answered and redirected about 1000 phone calls. The foyer was interesting though, they had a full size (replica) F1 car parked in the window that we could nosey around, and a cupboard full of memorabilia. Multiple helmets, one signed by Alonso for some reason, some gloves, and a pair of Heikki’s racing shoes. I should imagine that cabinet is intended to hold trophies eventually..

When everyone had arrived (10 of us) we set off, firstly upstairs into a medium sized conference room full of LG televisions and their old reserve driver’s racing overalls. We watched a short video about the making of Team Lotus (and it was branded as such too, must have been recently changed..) which was fairly interesting, mostly as it showed the state of the factory and facilities when they had taken it over the previous year. This was fun to compare against when we were actually wandering around downstairs. Our tour guide introduced herself, she’d been working in F1 for 6 years and had come to Lotus from Toyota, something we soon discovered many employees had in common. Even the factory had previously been owned by Toyota, but that did rather beg the question why they, a company not associated with Norfolk historically at all, would choose to place their factory out in the middle of nowhere near Norwich, but it seemed to have worked out for Lotus.

Our first real stop was in the design office. This, as you could imagine, was a room with many desks and computers, and with geeky looking people (I say this from the perspective of a geeky looking person, no offence intended) completely absorbed in moving around whichever car part they were working on on the screen. Their CAD was all focussed on improving the aerodynamics of the car, and everyone was working to a very tight schedule. The tourguide said that new employees were most often taken on in that department, and almost every time she visited there were new faces she didn’t recognise. Anyone aspiring to work in F1 take note; get good at CAD.

Next stop was downstairs in the actual factory. We had to put on white coats, and ventured into the area where they make everything out of carbon fibre. The carbon fibre comes on massive rolls, covered in plastic sheeting - they looked like giant rolls of linoleum. She said that they kept the rolls in giant freezers to ensure it remains fresh and doesn’t begin to take shape or harden. We saw the beginnings of the cockpit of the 2011 car, still very much under construction, and got to inspect some pieces off the 2010 car to understand how the carbon fibre is used. Most aerodynamic parts of the car are not 100% carbon fibre, but instead are pieces of shaped foam, or honeycomb sheeting, layered with carbon fibre over the top. This is cheaper, and keeps the weight down. Also the honeycombing absorbs some crash damage.

Next the carbon fibre items are placed in giant ovens called Autoclaves. The factory had already been fitted with two - one of the main reasons it was purchased for Lotus. The first one was fairly small, for making body work and wings. The second was very big, apparently installed for the creation of Le Mans cars originally, and was large enough to drive one inside. Something had finished ‘baking’ so we watched them opening the door. It was like a cross between a James Bond villain’s hideout, and a giant bank safe, complete with moving floor.

Then we watched some painting, or rather some masking off. They said they paint almost everything themselves, and the paint is mixed specially for Lotus, unsurprisingly. It is possible to race with a car completely decked out in stickers rather than painted, which is cheaper (you don’t have to pay painters or buy paint!) and lighter (every layer counts..) but it wasn’t yet at the point where the benefits outweighed the drawbacks so they hadn’t considered it. It was funny seeing people working on painting F1 car parts, doing stuff I’d watched my Dad do all the time when I was younger (he used to spray cars for a living).

After that we visited the machine shop, where the team crafts all the metal items that are required, nuts and bolts, pedals, etc. It was a weird mix of the ridiculously modern, and the ancient, with metal lathes that looked like something from my high school DT lab, and computer systems running configurations made using CAD. The team hires a member of staff whose full time job is making sure that there are enough parts in stock. Each race the team takes their two running cars, and enough parts to build a third should the need arise. They aren’t allowed to take enough for a fourth car, but making sure there’s the correct amount of nuts, bolts, screws, brackets.. for even one extra car must be quite a task. Particularly since the majority seemed to be made by hand.

Next came the part of the tour everyone had been waiting for, visiting the actual workshop you see on all the factory photographs. Sadly the 2011 cars weren’t around, they were away being painted and not due back until Monday, but Jarno Trulli’s car was there, the same car we’d seen in Turkey, and more specifically seen missing some body work and a wheel in the pitlane. It looked somewhat less sorry for itself, having just come back from the Autosport show in Birmingham. Since we hadn’t been able to bring in any cameras the tourguide had us all pose individually sat on the sidepod, and we should be receiving photos via email :-)

We saw a mock up of the 2011 chassis, made of wood, with engine parts made to specification but out of hard plastic. The aim was to make sure everything fit together properly before the actual engine and gearbox arrived. We also got to handle some of the pieces of metal they use for ballast, damn they are heavy, and have a look at the kind of seat that would be used. The mock up chassis is where the drivers sit to have their seats fitted, but the seat we saw was generic. In some ways the most interesting part of the 2011 car we saw was the fuel tank, and I use tank very loosely. It was actually a fuel bag, made of kevlar. It’s created externally to their specifications, and was sitting to one side waiting to be fitted into a car. The tourguide said that in order to fit it, they tie it tightly with string, to compress it and make it as small as possible. They then put it into the space within the car through a small hole and cut the string so it expands to fill the space. I don’t think I am going to be able to hear commentators talk about fuel tanks without imagining it sloshing around inside a bag in the car. Interestingly the inside of the ‘tank’ is filled with many compartments, baffles, to stop the car being affected by fuel moving from side to side in the corners. We peered inside and the compartments seemed to include zips!

Down on the factory floor there were loads of little interesting things, of which I’m sure I shan’t remember everything, but a few things come to mind. There was a Simpsons pinball machine, and an old arcade stand up cabinet with a game called Apex. Apparently these were donations from Mike Gascoyne’s private collection for the engineers to play with. There were pieces of car everywhere, bits hanging from the walls from specific races, and parts gathered together. On the wall were yet more LG televisions, one showing CNN and the other BBC One. I’m not sure you’d be able to hear much over the sound of loud machinery though.

Our last proper stop was in the trimming room, where the ‘baked’ carbon fibre items are cut down, polished, and essentially turned into the finished product. It was fairly quiet, but the tourguide got shouted at for implying that not much important was going on. One engineer was working on the front wing for the Valencia test, combining a 2011 middle section with 2010 endplates. He expected that before Bahrain he’d have created two entirely different, new specification wings. A lot can change in a couple of months.

Outside that room an electrician was working on part of the pit lane garage interior - this had surprised me from my time on the grid in Turkey, when the teams turn up at the track their garages are completely empty. Just a shell. Anything you see the teams using, from the obvious computer equipment and toolboxes, to the light fittings and overhead gantries is all transported there and installed by them. The piece we saw was one of the overhead sections, described as a giant extension reel. Inside it had breakout sections to provide electricity, power the tyre warmers, and provide data and video for the info screens the drivers check while sitting in the car. Most interestingly for me, that aspect was controlled by a standard Acer Revo, attached upside down in the roof, exactly the same as the one I have in my bedroom. I suppose if it does the job…

Sadly that was the end of the main tour, and we went back upstairs. She’d nicely arranged a Q&A session with Jarno Trulli’s race engineer in the conference room, and this amused me as I’d started following him on twitter only the previous week. He was very interesting, another Toyota import, and he’d been working with Jarno for six years. He explained how difficult it had been to man manage Jarno in 2010, where every single hydraulic failure seemed to happen on his car. How he’d had to explain about the parts which were breaking, and how it was pure chance and not mistakes by his mechanics. Apparently the parts which were failing were bought in from an external company - I think they came with the gearbox. So when they broke it was something of a black box, all they could do was complain about them being rubbish, get some more and suffer the same problems.

We asked him about the challenges for 2011 and he talked about the new tyres and how that would open things up, everyone could work with the Bridgestones in their sleep, so it was nice to have something new. He did say that from the initial impressions, they appeared to give the car a more stable front end, which sounds promising but unfortunately would not be good for Jarno. He was already considering how best to set the rest of the car up to bring it in line with what Jarno would most appreciate, and said that man management was one of the biggest aspects of his job. Keeping everyone happy, and working at their best.

And that was the end. We went back to the foyer and were given a goody pack, a little unusual because they hadn’t had time to make any proper bags up. We were given a framed photo of Heikki in his car each, a Team Lotus cap, a team notes magazine, and the best bit, an actual piece that had raced on the car in 2010 - an aluminium wheel nut each, still covered in grease. I have no idea what I’m going to do with it, but just the fact I own a bit of an F1 car makes me grin.

I’d highly recommend the tour to anyone, if you’re interested in F1 that is.. but it was well worth the money, and effort of getting there. I learned a lot about how the cars are made, and how difficult a job it actually is, even after however many years of watching ‘behind the scenes’ segments in the F1 coverage. I’ll be watching Team Lotus in 2011 with a whole new respect.

A picture, to apologise for the huge block of text. This is the...

Sat, 25 Dec 2010 00:33:32 +0000

A picture, to apologise for the huge block of text. This is the present I got from my Secret Santa person. Many thanks to you!!!

Secret Santa & Present

Sat, 25 Dec 2010 00:31:46 +0000

I mentioned taking part in the Reddit secret santa this year in an earlier post, and it’s taken a while but I have some updates on the subject.

Firstly, I received the present intended for me from a very nice gentleman in Canada. He had tried to purchase something inside the UK and have the company amend the postal details so that it would be addressed to me. Unfortunately he was unable to get them to agree to that, and instead sent me a message explaining that in the next few days I’d be receiving a small parcel addressed to an unknown man, and I should ignore that and open it up. Sure enough a few days later the package arrived, and it was a beautiful minichamps model of a 1998 Jordan F1 car, driven by H-H Frenzen. I was amazed, I don’t know how he worked out I was a Jordan fan, I mean the team hasn’t existed for nearly 10 years. Essentially my SS was a genius, and they made me very, very happy.

Secondly the parcel I sent to Japan *finally* arrived! I had begun to worry that customs officers searching for illicit sweets might have ripped it open, but no it was just taking its time getting half way around the world, and understandably so really. The person posted a really nice message about the present on the Reddit Gifts site, and included a shot of his 5 month old daughter wearing the Christmas hat I’d sent. It’s left me smiling from ear to ear and I really am glad that the bits and pieces were received in the way they were intended.

Lastly, the talk of Secret Santas made my Mexican friend Ricardo realise that in all the years we have been talking online, he’d never thought to send me a Christmas card or anything before, so we swapped addresses. I don’t know what I was expecting, I had briefly said that I’d be interested in anything stereotypically Mexican but it rapidly became apparent that postage to the UK is restrictive and expensive. Anyway, last week I came home to find a parcel waiting for me, with a Williams F1 sticker on. Somehow I partially convinced my brain that I must have made a Williams order at some point and completely forgotten, but the more I thought about it the more it didn’t make sense. I opened the packet, and out fell an assortment of Williams F1 clothing, all in my size. I was completely awestruck, I couldn’t work out how I’d ended up with not one piece of clothing, but three, and seemingly out of nowhere. And then I checked the package note and saw the billing name. Mind. Blown. Completely and utterly not what I was expecting, and oddly well timed since we’d been discussing the F1 races we might attend, and I’d been reading about the Williams F1 museum.. (more on this). I’m pretty much speechless, and I need to attend an F1 event to make use of my wonderful clothes, though so far I have worn two of the t-shirts randomly, to the pub and even to pre-Christmas dinner. An amazing gift :-)

So yes, museums! For Christmas Andy has (provisionally) arranged for us to go on a tour of the Lotus F1 factory :-D. It was a toss up between whether to have a guided tour of the Williams museum, which does really look fantastically interesting, or having a look around the actual factory used by Lotus to make and maintain their F1 cars. Difficult choice, but with everything that’s going on behind the scenes at Lotus at the moment, and with them currently being the only F1 team to offer such access to fans, I had to go with them. So it is hopefully booked for January, just before the tours get paused for new car development. It’s going to be amazing, and I am really looking forward to the journey down there, I’ll have to make sure I’ve sorted out some good music to listen to.

Secret Santa

Fri, 03 Dec 2010 13:07:12 +0000

I decided to join in with the Reddit Secret Santa this year, and I think it’s really made me feel Christmassy, more so than I thought it would. I spent this morning wandering around town searching for gifts having done some Internet research to find out as much as I could about my giftee, and it just made me feel happy.

It probably helped that the temperature outside is about -3, there was snow falling around me and I treated myself to a gingerbread latte. Definitely aids the Christmas spirit when the world looks like a Christmas card. I hope the recipient appreciates what I’ve got them, they’re from Japan and I really didn’t know what to get! Also my wrapping skills leave a LOT to be desired. I shall keep my fingers crossed.

Halloween! I decided to go as a Lemming, and it seemed fairly...

Mon, 01 Nov 2010 17:28:13 +0000

Halloween! I decided to go as a Lemming, and it seemed fairly successful. The wig was awesome, but I was most impressed with my home made cardboard pickaxe. I still would have liked to make a white number to hover above my head, but I’d have spent the whole evening making people think I was about to blow up!

My new car :-) I’d been having some problems with my old...

Sun, 24 Oct 2010 17:12:05 +0100

My new car :-)

I’d been having some problems with my old car, which is a shame, it was by far the most luxurious vehicle I’ve ever owned. Sadly the brakes had always been a bit of a worry and it had developed some kind of ‘issue’ on the rear drivers side which was causing the pad to stick on, scraping the brake disc. Also it was due taxing this month and I wasn’t sure whether I’d be able to afford to fix the brakes, hence was there any point buying it six months more tax?

Thankfully my Dad found an excellent solution, a friend who was selling a Peugeot 306, and another friend who was willing to buy a Vectra with broken brakes! The deal ended up being even better than expected when the seller knocked £50 off for me, and the whole transaction cost me £150 and gained me a car with tax for six months, and MOT for 13, and brakes that work!

Very happy. It’s amazingly fun to drive too.

Japanese - Week 2->4

Sun, 24 Oct 2010 16:57:00 +0100

I said I’d post more about learning Japanese and it’s been ages since I talked about week 1. It’s progressed quite well and I’m starting to feel like there’s too much to try to keep in my head! We’ve covered quite a bit; asking what things are called, telling people what things are called, asking where things are, what time things open and close, asking the price of things and saying ‘that’s too expensive’. I’ve decided if I ever travel to Japan I’ll make sure I have a watch, asking and understanding time is terribly complicated!

We agreed to learn some writing as well, so the teacher has started us learning groups of Hiragana and a little bit of Kanji. It’s mostly memory, but then also knowing what words are once you’re able to sound them out, more complex than it sounds. I really need to sit down and work on the characters we have learned as I don’t feel like I have actually learned them at all, more I wrote them on a piece of paper a few times and then they fell out of my brain.

Andy and I attended a Japan Day in Manchester a few weekends ago, but we got there fairly late on. It was interesting, but I think perhaps if we’d been there to see some of the on stage events it might have been better. I also missed out getting a raffle ticket by about five minutes - no free flights with FinnAir for me!

I’m actually really enjoying it, it’s nice to be doing something different, and it feels like we’re making progress too.

Japanese - Week 1

Sun, 03 Oct 2010 13:18:00 +0100

I didn’t know what to expect of a language evening class. The only thing I had to base my opinion of learning languages on was from school where the overbearing feeling is embarrassment - you have to say things in a silly accent infront of your peers, if you get it wrong you sound stupid, if you get it right you sound like a swot.

As it turned out it started off embarrassing, or rather I felt self-conscious. The teacher put a lot of emphasis on “who knows some Japanese words”, “who’s watched Japanese TV”. Unsurprisingly there were a number of manga/anime addicts and it turned out they knew more Japanese than they were letting on. I think the teacher was too rigidly trying to follow a lesson plan she’d picked beforehand though, and when she’d relaxed and stopped trying to fit too many things in it started becoming more fun.

Lesson one was about counting to 10, basic greetings, how to ask and answer “what is your name?”. We learned about the three different kinds of Japanese characters, and when they’re used (seemingly all three, interchangeably a lot of the time). She asked us if we wanted to learn about how to write in Japanese since it wasn’t actually part of the syllabus and we all said yes, should be interesting!

I came away from the lesson feeling like I wasn’t likely to have learned very much by the end of the eight weeks, I thought the progress during two hours had been slow and I hadn’t taken in as much as I’d wanted to. During this week however, I’ve copied my notes across into the right notebook (OCD FTW) and tried copying out some of the characters to make the sounds - having a phonetic language is actually really interesting. Andy and I have played some word (actually more like number) games, and watched some Japanese TV… and wow. I’m amazed how much I’ve taken in without actually realising it. It feels like a language to be learnt now, as opposed to something mysterious, just sounds that blur together.

I’m properly excited for Tuesday evening, really looking forward to learning some more building blocks so I can start constructing my own sentences instead of parroting phrases - not sure that’s likely to be something we’ll learn soon, but anything more than having the same boring “nice to meet you” conversation over and over again will be a plus ;-)

I’m sure I’ll update here again when I’ve learned some more. For now, Sayonara :-D

Weekend

Mon, 27 Sep 2010 17:14:31 +0100

I had a nice weekend. There’s a lot of assorted stress in my head at the moment but it was just good to have a nice weekend. Andy took me to see 1984 at the Dukes and it was fun, I’d not been to the theatre in quite a while and 1984 is one of my favourite books. I didn’t agree with some of the emphasis they placed, but I think I’ve always read 1984 in a particular way so it’s to be expected it wasn’t identical to how I’d imagined. We’d also had a lovely meal at Pizza Margherita, and followed up theatre with some drinks in 1725.

Sunday was relaxing. Watched the Singapore GP which was decidedly boring, went for a short walk. The weather’s getting quite cold again. In the evening we watched the NFL match on Sky Sports 4 which was a fantastic game - went into overtime! Ended the evening watching some 30 Rock which I’d never seen before.

The rest of this week shall be filled with many and much writing. Apart from Tuesday evening when I am taking some time to learn Japanese! Should be an interesting experiment… I’ll report back.

Sky Broadband - ADSL Migration

Tue, 21 Sep 2010 12:58:49 +0100

So far I’ve been incredibly impressed by Sky - I made the leap from Plusnet to Sky TV + the Unlimited broadband package last week, and today was the migration date from my previous ISP. I was a little bit worried as I logged into the Sky website and it told me my Broadband order had been cancelled. I wasn’t completely freaked out simply because I’d already been sent the Sky router, not sure why they’d have sent that if it was cancelled.

Anyway, I was told the migration would happen today, but not really very much more than that. Some internet searching suggested that the migration could happen any time, up to midnight (semi-concerning as we’re down as raiding this evening), and it could take anything from an hour to five days. I did my research, found the appropriate number to ring if everything went tits up and sat down to wait.

10.30am my current Internet connection stopped working. I disconnected the old router and connected up the new DLink one from Sky, it booted… and started working. I think the downtime can’t have been more than 5 minutes. So far I have slower download speeds than previously, but apparently Sky apply line management for the first ten days to find the best speed for your line. Hopefully it should bounce up after a few days. The download speed is already higher and the ping times lower.

The installation engineers from Sky were friendly, helpful, and more than anything quick. The Sky box is brilliant, the HD service spectacular, and since installation I’ve watched live football, cricket and NFL. Happy customer… guess we’ll see if this continues!

Sindragosa Silenced! Beware Arthas...

Wed, 08 Sep 2010 00:00:00 +0100

Finally we downed Sindragosa!! I thought it was never going to happen, but for some reason the stars aligned this evening and with very little effort she was dead. I’m so glad I don’t have to listen to her dreadful voice acting any more.

Now we’re onto the Lich King, seems like a complex encounter but not as terrible as Yogg when we first got there. Looking forward to my Kingslayer title :-)

Stieg Larsson - The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

Thu, 02 Sep 2010 00:29:00 +0100

Next up was a book which seems to be the “cool” thing to be reading at the moment, give or take a year - I’m a bit late to the party. I’d been recommended this book by a wide variety of people, and it appeared to fall into my broad interests as a crime/murder mystery so it wasn’t really difficult choosing it as the second book to read.

I really liked it. It was hard to get into at first, the start is.. tough going. Lots of intricate details of Swedish politics, corporate infighting and setting the backstory, but with not very much apparent connection to what you go into the book expecting to be the main plot. Then suddenly out of nowhere, everything gets interesting. The political, whistleblower drama suddenly becomes a locked room mystery, where the room is an island. From that point on I was hooked.

My only criticism was that it all felt a bit clinical, I didn’t find myself getting completely drawn into the world in the book - I was just enjoying reading a story from the outside. I wonder if perhaps this is a side effect of the language as a translation, if only I could read Swedish and then I might know. A lot of the time the language felt functional rather than crafted? This all sounds incredibly pretentious and like I know what I’m talking about. I don’t.

All in all a cracking story, the big reveal was interesting and it’s bitten me to the extent I’m now 100 pages into the second in the series. I’ll report back when I’m done.

5/5

I went on a short walk to investigate Lancaster Cemetery, but on...

Wed, 01 Sep 2010 20:32:00 +0100

I went on a short walk to investigate Lancaster Cemetery, but on the way I couldn’t resist wandering through the park and past the allotments. I noticed a road I’d not ventured down before, which led me along the very top, and presented me with this view.

Really it must be amazing to have an allotment with that kind of view, after my brief exploration into the world of gardening I’m actually quite jealous, though my patch would have to have at least mobile Internet I think ;-)

If one picture could sum up how lovely my day spent at Lancaster...

Fri, 27 Aug 2010 10:01:00 +0100

If one picture could sum up how lovely my day spent at Lancaster City was, it would be this one. Nearly all the children present were wearing stewards outfits and they were taking their job very seriously. So nice to see :-)

James Patterson - 1st to Die

Tue, 24 Aug 2010 16:10:20 +0100

It’s taken me a weekend to finish this in fits and starts, I was caught between intrigue and wishing it would just hurry up and get to the point in equal measures. I don’t know whether if I’d read it in one sitting rather than in (sometimes as short as 15 minutes) bursts, but the twists in the last quarter of the book left me more confused than convinced. Particularly the very final twist which didn’t seem to actually make any logical sense.

The story was fairly absorbing but the characters were rather two dimensional. The series focusses on a group of women in powerful ‘crime solving’ positions, a police officer, an attorney, a crime reporter and mortuary doctor. Unfortunately they hadn’t yet formed in this first story, and even when they did it felt unnecessary and like their group only existed because the dust cover blurb said they should.

I don’t think I can judge James Patterson on this one book so I’ll try something else and come back to make my mind up, but I hope in future stories I actually feel something for the characters - the primary investigator in this story was suffering from a potentially life threatening condition and believed she was going to die, but I couldn’t bring myself to care.

3/5

(Re)starting Reading

Tue, 24 Aug 2010 16:02:05 +0100

I haven’t read a lot in a long time. I used to read all the time as a child, never without a book and often reading multiple books at once stacked up my bedside table. When I came away to university I stopped having “free time” that wasn’t able to be filled with a billion other things and I just got out of the habit.

For a few reasons, most notably the increased availability of e-books and the fact I carry around a reader (my iPhone) everywhere I go, I’ve decided I should try reading again. Unfortunately I can no longer remember what genres and authors I liked so I’m having to start again from scratch.

When I remember I’m intending on posting my thoughts when I finish a book on here. I’m no literature critic and I haven’t written a book review since primary school, but I want to remember what I think so hopefully I can build up an idea of what I like. We’ll see how long before I get bored…