jamiecollin

Two posts in as many days?

Thu, 24 Aug 2006 15:09:44 GMT

There is a reason I'm making many posts. I'm supposed to be working hard. I don't like that much so I'm procrastinating instead. Interesting news for the day. Rectified diffusion isn't all it's cracked up to be. I don't think that this is actually good news. Sounds as though it is something that is only relevent for a very small range of bubble sizes and mostly they are the sizes that would have undergone instantaneous inertial cavitation anyway. How is that for irritating.

No, you weren't supposed to understand that, not unless you really like acoustics. I'm irritated that something that I thought was true turns out not to be. An alternative explanation must be found. Irritation abounds.

The way things seem

Wed, 23 Aug 2006 14:33:00 GMT

Back from the dead! Or Belgium! Who can tell the difference?

Yes, I have had a holiday. I've been sailing the ocean blue in the inestimable company of Mr. Michael Pinna, Mr. Thomas Gill and Capt. Chris Gill, much as I do every year but with one major change. The addition to the crew of Miss Chloe Ewing. As I'm sure some of you will have gathered Chloe is off to the other side of the world forever(TM) come next wednesday. Which is quite soon. Due to unfortunate events (like my transfer report deadline being the same day) I rather failed to take enough time off to have two separate holidays this summer so I persuaded everyone concerned that it would all be *fine* for Chole to come sailing with us. And it was. OK, so we did have the first call of "Man overboard!" ever and she came back absolutely covered in bruises (nope, not me, gov) but that is besides the point. Two of my best friends like her and she likes them. This might not sound like the biggest acheivement but if not then you've obviously never spent and entire week in only the company of four other people with nothing for entertainment except each other. If you come back not absolutely hating everyone, including yourself, you've probably done rather well.

Anyway. The other major event of the last couple of weeks has been being best man at a school friend's wedding. Dave was married to Helen last Thursday in Harrogate. I sang "The Call" from RVW's "Five mystical songs" as Helen walked down the aisle. I didn't lose the rings. I grinned all the way through the service but managed not to make the maid of honor either giggle or cry. I have witnessed a wedding. I gave a speech which was well received. Very heart felt, but still full of warm recolections of our youth that made people laugh. Then I danced. For about five hours straight. To some of the worst wedding tat you've ever heard. My particular favouite has to be Barry Manilow's "Copacobana" which I frustratingly proceeded to have stuck in my head for the next five days, though I think Bloc Party has finally killed it. All of this in front of Chloe. And we are still together. Remarkable. Oh and I lost the game approximately five hundred times.

Being silly

Tue, 18 Apr 2006 16:08:16 GMT

Being silly isn't as silly at it seems. Or something. Having got to work at around eight thirty (a good two hours ahead of average) due to a desire not to get a parking ticket I'm now on a bit of a sleep deprivation high. Odd. Ended up reading Vurt by Jeff Noon instead of sleeping, a perfectly acceptable substitute to my mind. Loved it. Kind of Micheal Marshall Smith like. Great for those that like their SF tinged with Fantasy. Possibly the other way around; slick, cool fantasy that you can read without being associated with D&D beards. Besides the point. I'm wondering what to do with this blog. I only seem to post when I'm in a bad mood. Or rather I only feel that I have something to say when I'm bothered by something. Now I have a new plan. I might just start (!) keeping this blog regularly.

OK, so that might not seem like a biggie to you regular users but it is different for me. For starters I don't really know many people that use lj so it is unlikely to be read by many people making this a rather self indulgent plan but hey, it might improve my writing. After reading that last sentence you can see my point :) Unfortunately my life atm doesn't really have much to report - I go to the lab, fail to do anything all day and then go to the pub with my mates. A pretty good lifestyle for me but it isn't really a great spectator sport. Who wants to read that everyday? So... I'm thinking of just making stuff up. An imaginary camping trip to fort william with a swift jog up ben nevis, anyone? I can do all that and not even have to get cold and wet. Bonus. The other route to go is to follow countless others and have a little commentry on everything around me. What I see in the news and what I think of it. Given that I only really get news from the bbc website and everyone reads that already that might be a little silly. Maybe do a PhD blog. Nah. Then I'd have to achieve something to be able to have something to write.

Inspiration evades me in a way that the coffee machine rather fails to do today. When I fail to post anything for another nine months you can throw stuff at me.

More musings

Tue, 11 Apr 2006 21:17:09 GMT

More musings indeed. I'm sitting having spent the day without exchanging words with anyone except Ahmehd the kebab van owner (oh and chloe rang mid post writing) so I've been feeling a little muse filled. Beginnings then.

Of all that has happened to me recently I suppose that girls have as ever been at the center of my attention. Some form of tension, now codified, with Laura, much more tension about the impending meeting with Frances, released like shoving at an open door and now a new girlfriend, from out of the blue. Frances is an odd subject for me to write about; I am, perhaps purposefully, blinded to my own feelings about her. In love with a ghost, a memory, a dream? Maybe, in part. Fearful of pain, exposure and regection? That is another aspect. Being aware of the impending meeting at the MA graduation ceremony had come to occupy rather too much of my thinking. Brooding. It wasn't being confronted with her that I feared; it was the spectre of my own feelings, too long hidden away, that I think I wished to avoid, coward that I am. In the end though I was reconciled to it, had faced much of what needed facing and felt ready to meet her... only to find that she (for my sake?) felt that she couldn't be there. Certainly it saved the day for me, but did it do any long term good? Who knows. Time is, they say, a great healer but it is not the only medicine. Cynical as I am about such things I'm forced to think of homeopathy.

Conincident with the culmination of these stresses I attended a dinner at Magdalen with my little sister, Rosie. Ish. She couldn't make it so Nick was her stand in. She can hold her booze better but he has more facial hair. Over coffee I got chatting to one of the guests. A fun, light hearted conversation - I dashed to the loo as seating for the second half was taken and there happened to be a seat between her and Nick when I got back. How convenient :)

After a too many drinks and a comparison of emotional scars we had some more drinks. Her host was leaving a little early but as she left she asked for my surname. Little did I think of it at the time.

A couple of days and some deft digi stalking on her behalf and there appeared an email in my inbox saying something along the lines of "nice to meet you, if you are ever around in London would be nice to see each other ..." Ho hum. I manufactured a reason to be in London and off we went. Now she has met some of my best friends and my closest family. They like her. She likes them. Ho hum indeed. What a difference a month makes.

So... perfect romance? Perhaps. I certainly like her more than well enough. There are some concerns. She has just applied for a couple of jobs overseas with the British Council. Each for a period of nine months. Feel the weight of this ho hum. She tried to talk to me about this at the weekend but I shrugged it off. It won't be for several months yet and much can change in that time, why not leave it until nearer the time to worry about it? A worthy argument but not one that will hold. I'd love to live in the sheltered garden of my dreams with nothing to fear and the sure knowedge that everything will endure but I am a little too old to do that properly. To walk blindly, to laugh at risks, to love without fear.

Ha. I take myself too seriously. When I am with her I smile. When we touch there is tenderness. When we kiss there is passion. Beyond this, all is frippery. Laugh in the face of the storm and clasp for shelter and comfort.

I bow and wait. The future can take care of itself. There is time yet for me.

This Modern Love...

Tue, 03 Jan 2006 16:22:18 GMT

Always use a quote as a subject. That way you can get through all of your life with a buffer between you and everyone else. Shit. I did it again. Ooops.

Anyway - welcome back to my life! For those that haven't been following (and you won't have been through the nine month lj hiatus) I'm living in Oxford now doing secret and vile experiment on small fluffy animals. Ish. Well, my building is called the Medical Engineering Unit, allow me to maintain some myths. Actually there was an only just funny incident where one of the technicians took his puppy to work as it was too young to be left alone. Taking it for a walk at lunch time in his lab coat he was accosted by some bloke demanding to know just what he was doing with that dog. And I thought lab coats were supposed to be sexy. Ah well.

So, Oxford. PhDs. Or rather DPhils. Just for fun. I'm a term down and I'm loving the experience of being a student again after a couple of years out. Young people. Wow. Especially after the Stur. Work wise things are looking up. There was a decidedly dodgy point in the middle of last term where my experiments were pointing a rather unhappy finger in the direction of failure. Doom and gloom I thought, yes I did. Then Adam M (one of my lab mates, not to be confused with Adam W, one of my lab mates - just as I, Jamie C shouldn't be confused with Jamie C, one of my lab mates... obvious, isn't it?) noticed that the report that was the legacy of last year's incumbent wasn't totaly in accordance with the quoted source for the making of part of the experimental setup. Ho Humm we thought. A little different? Well, of the five ingredients, four were wrong. That counts as different.

A new set of phantoms later and something funny was still showing up. "Fucksticks", I said under my breath. Several hours later I said it out loud too. Still the problem was found in the form of a dodgy amplifier (who buys kit from ebay?). Fixed up with some fluff we were off! Storming gobbets of experimental gold started dripping out the back of the oscilloscope. We got a mop. And a bucket. And the PhD started to look doable again. Phew. Perfect time to go home and watch telly.

Hows that for a cliff hanger? Will the results still seem promising under the harsh light of repeat experimentation? Will analysis eek out the vital information required to beat world hunger? Can anyone tell the difference between the two ginger Jamies from Magdalen? Have you ever seen them together? Tune in next term to find out all this and more!

So thats how you do a PhD. Socially things are fun - lots of dancing like a monkey - but romanticly unsatisfying. I broke up with Mel at the begining of term for various "Jamie is a mess" reasons and promptly turned that into "Mel is a mess". I've met some lovely girls and found out that they had boyfriends, sometimes before I kissed them, but why should that be a barrier to lust? I've met up with a couple of old crushes and remembered why I fancied them. Oh, and kissed one of them too. What I've not done is find someone that gives me pause. Too much running from moment to moment. Too much lived in the present not from some idealistic stance but from fear of the past and of the future.

MMVI. Hmm. Take it slow. See how it goes.

Life, the universe and...

Mon, 06 Jun 2005 22:45:18 GMT

... what happens when you listen to the hitchhiker's guide cd's all in one go. Driving trips suddenly become shorter. Though inexplicably you have to stop at nearly every service station to go and dispose of the pints of caffeine that are substituting for sufficient sleep for the past week. Or maybe that is just me.

Life continues, often in the next episode after a bit of an artificial cliff hanger where one of the characters fails to tell another some vitally important fact until after the advertising revenue has been counted. And crap metaphors get strained to the limit by overtired and grumpy bloggers.

So, another holiday, another first day back at work suffering from a feeling of disillusionment with my life. And my coworkers. And everything. Ok, ok ok. I've stopped. No more nice Mr. Fry reading my lj at me. Promise. But still. So, what does this tell me, other than that I really should sleep more on my holidays? Not really sure. Who knows, and to some extent, who cares. Had an interesting lecture from Becky (Beth's best mate) on the subject of going away about which I was rather flippant to Beth and Ned the next day but which I thought was rather interesting. Once you get past the presentation. Always ammusing to find a mirror of some aspect of your own behaviour. And to simultaneously admire it and reject it in yourself.

Oops, I did it again. I really must stop writing stuff that only I know what it means. What is the point of splaying my brains over the web if you need to be a soothsayer to find anything left in the wreckage. To be clear, or clearer at least;

Becky (who I don't respect *only* because she is very beautiful, what do you think I am, shallow or something?) has my habit of assuming that what she is doing with her life is *obviously* the correct thing to do, because she is doing it. I thought that for a long time. Until I realised that actually... sorry, I had it imposed upon me... that I was slowly ruining my life. So now I don't think that. But of course I'm still always right, you aren't going to get away with things like that, like implying that I might ever be wrong. Or have been wrong in the past. Anyway, what was I saying... Becky's rant went along the lines of "What the fuck does a different place do for you that you can't get here?" along with the implication that all changes that are needed are internal. Or something. That was how I took it at any rate. My immediate reaction was (being the twat that I am at heart) to say to myself "Of course she is wrong, does she actually have the audacity to assume that her summary of your situation can possibly compare with your months of agonising over the situation - lay the slap down!" followed by "NO! STOP!!! Don't deploy the full strength of your intellectual capabilities for fear of breaking the poor girl's mind like a pencil!" and "Or you could just not engage because facing up to what she has to say might involve too much duplication of effort that you have already spent in contemplation. Just let it wash over you..."

Did I ever mention that I consider myself to be a nice person? I was probably lying to you. Or myself. Anyway, none of that is strictly accurate or true or complete. Or flattering to anyone, including myself - so, am I trying to emulate mpinna and alienate all the people that care for me and respect me or is there a deeper purpose to this rant. Well, I'm not sure.

Lack of engagement (my standard response to people who have opinions that are wrong, where wrong is synonymous with different-to-Jamie) is at once a deeply unsatisfactory and gruesomely effective tack so that didn't last long and Beth (henceforth Bittie) and Becky abandoned me to my self imposed thought exile and went to bed. I collapsed in a small heap remarkably reminiscent of a week old blamanche on the couch with, as I was informed in the morning, my head at the wrong end. Not, however, before pitying myself for a while, as is my wont, and considering everything from that day that I could have done better. Not a short list, but I am *very* clever and I do tend to skim over some things that I can't be bothered to think about like if I should have admitted to having done some of those curry farts and should I really be so rude about and to people that I hardly know. Insignificant things when compared to major issues such as "Does Mike feel dissatisfied with his life purely because I imposed my own feelings upon him?" and "Should I have been a little less drunkenly letcherous towards Becky?". Or when sober for that matter. If you've not met her, she is very nice. She has my flaws - she *must* be nice :) But has a nice boyfriend :( And lives nearly as far from me as Reno. Anyway, I thought about things. Lots. Unfortunately I was drunk so I fell asleep and forgot everything that I had thought, so I'm having to do all that again. Oh the introspection. Oh the time to polish the dirt from my soul.

So, the moral for today is that you shouldn't write lj when you are too tired to have a coherent conversation where the other person might help you by doing the other half let alone write a structured self contained monologue. Other than that...

Since my last post I have found that there are still glories in this world to be seen and to be felt and that there are glories within my own mind that I can never share. That dreams can be made and shaped as well as dreamed and that perhaps this is not always a bad thing. And some other stuff too, but if I told you everything, what would we have to talk about when we meet in real life?

For a final prize, a monkey will be awarded to anyone that can tell me why I think that the artist of this image is severely damaged and confused man.

If you are Mike, you don't win a monkey; your prize is that you are a monkey.

Musings on friendship

Mon, 09 May 2005 21:08:56 GMT

Has been interesting to see mpinna struggling with his own inner demons as I have a look at my self. Good for both of us, I'm sure.

Interesting point raised by him, but not close enough for me to actually comment on. Who do we choose to be our friends and why? In the case of the two of us it is just because we are so similar that we reinforce all the traits in each other. Oh, and that the two of us have a certain arrogance that assumes that what we are is the best thing to be. Obviously seeing someone who has that same perfection makes for a good friend. Or something. Perhaps we just don't like to be challenged. There are however a lot of people for who I see no such blatant reasons. Why should mpinna be so devoted to Rick to the detriment of other relationships? This is probably more of a role model thing. Rick is, for me at least, the guy you wish you could be enough of a shit to be like, just for a while. He doesn't care if he offends people. To be fair, he revels in it. In that lies a sense of freedom that is incredibly attractive, unbounded by other people's opinions. This desire for and envy of freedom is part of what has inspired my recent wibble about my course in life to some extent. I mean, what is stopping me leaving tomorrow (apart from not having done my washing from my last trip)? The only real thing is that I don't want to offend people. I don't want to turn down a PhD, not because I'm afraid of losing an opportunity but because I'm worried that I'd be letting down people who have been good to me and have put in a lot of work to get this for me.

A bit of a digression. Hmm. Anyway. Friends - role models, people you feel comfortable with, people you find to be exciting to be with, people who are supportive of you. Is there a "right" mix? Can you get so trapped by feeling comfortable that you don't ever see the excitement in the person next to you in the sandwich queue?

One thing is for sure. I don't have the answers. But then I'm not a coloured sugar coated chocolate.

ooh, so this is what it feels like to have blog

Sun, 08 May 2005 21:22:06 GMT

As you can see I've finally succumbed to the lure of letting people know what I think without actually having to talk to them. Hmm. Anyway.

Return from San Francisco has left me in a rather contemplative mood. I have had a fantastic couple of weeks and it has been great to actually talk to mpinna, something I've not really managed to for the last two years or so. Really interesting to see how he has changed and in what ways he has stayed the same. Nice to know that we can still spend two weeks in each other's pockets without killing one another. Much interest indeed.

Taking it on myself to talk for him to some extent, the two of us have both found this to change the way that we look at what we are doing with our lives and how we have chosen our current directions. More to the point how neither of us has ever had to make a really significant decision and have always taken the path of least resistance. This may have life changing significance or it may not. We will see.

Things to consider come from all over the place: do I just feel like this because I'm jet lagged and grumpy? Am I still just trying to run from Frances and does that matter? If I drop the PhD will that matter? Would I have finished it anyway?

On a much happier note, though tinged with sadness, I met a beautiful, witty, lovely girl in SF. The day before I had to fly back. Still, e-mail exists and I'll not forget her.

Ugh. I want to be in SF.