August 2004 Archives

After looking at sex toys and a hot-positions catalogue in Anne Summers yesterday, Huéy took me on a hunt to find some new loafers since I am slightly impaired in the shoe department -- I live almost exclusively in Cat Boots or trainers, though I've walked all over Cambridge barefoot on more than one occasion now and found it very freeing -- we narrowed it down to one pair of shoes in each of four different shops, and whittled those down to an eventual success in Ravel; I am pleased. It was a welcome escape from the lab, much needed too since I ended up sticking it out there past 21:45 last night, and was a chance to spend a little extra time with the lovely lady before she left for the US this morning.

Passing a moody person in a wheel chair, brought home a hypothetical question. If someone in a wheel chair approaches you and gets a bit pugnacious, do you treat them like anyone else, or offer just a little more temperance given their situation? And if they start trying to hit you, is it fair game to release their handbrake, whip them around and shove them down a steep hill?

It's like sitting at the control deck of a starship; in front of you floats a steel plate, roughly a metre squared, suspended perfectly at the horizontal by pneumatic cylinders driven by a compressor in the next room; to the right, a pair of flat panel displays offer up a digital control panel of mind numbing complexity, a small box covered in green-glowing buttons dismisses its size by looking very important, and twin multi-gigahertz computers controlled via bluetooth add to the technoarray with their steady hum and sheer bulk; to the left, a squat panel of eight illuminated switches flanks a rack of heavy black steel that carries four cylinders; two Helium-Neon lasers, each about a foot and a half long and two inches in diameter, a single diode laser nestled beneath them, and to their right, an argon laser, five full inches in cross-section and mounted by a fuck-off-huge cooling fan.

And in the middle, sat square on the steel plate, and connected to the flanking equipment by a quarrel of fibre optic cabling and wire is the photomultiplier, the centre of this mechanical universe; behold, the confocal microscope, all £190 000 of it. And I am taking it for a test drive.

I like that I can be left to assess $350 000 worth of scientific wizardry all on my own. Put me behind the wheel of a car worth three hundred and fifty times less, and I'd feel far more concerned about doing something wrong -- perhaps because doing something wrong in a car is more likely to involve my neck -- but there are no cars here; on my planet, the poofs are armed with lasers.

I've managed to miss a good few sessions on the river, of late, as a result of the heavy work schedule and two consecutive weekends away from Cambridge that were on the books for weeks in advance. On Tuesday, however, I managed to sneak in a session between dinner and my later return to the lab, and what a wonderful experience it was.

After splashing around aimlessly for a while (no one was prepared to go for a long distance paddle, which I like best as it's a proper workout), one of the überpaddlers drifted over and asked me if I wanted to try learning to roll (correcting yourself after capsizing), even though it might take weeks to learn.

Stairs explodes into a broad nervous grin

This is something I've always wanted to have a go at, and while I'm not a big fan of being upside down in water, which learning to do it would invariably involve, I figured that then was as good a time as any to have a go. I was described the theory of the technique, then asked to try setting myself up for a roll - upside down, thank god for nose clips - whilst not actually trying to execute the roll itself.
After doing that, I was invited to try for the whole hog; I went over, didn't move an inch, stuck my tongue out in consternation, regretted it, and then used an adjacent stern to bring myself upright. Told not to concentrate on my paddle but on my knees, I went over again, and this time, my draw stroke lifted me half way out of the water - whee! - except that it wasn't enough, and down I went again. That little bit of motion was enough for me to work out what it was I should have been doing, and having enough air for a second attempt before I had to come up, I attempted. And it worked! And it was the most thrilling feeling I've had in absolutely ages!

Two minutes of grinning and whooping ensues

Each attempt thereafter, whilst not always pretty, brought me upright, so even though I wouldn't yet claim to be capable of rolling, the foundation is there, and I'm totally chuffed. Yippie-kai-yay!

Excessive exposure to Depeche Mode whilst working the substerranean plant growth chambers this morning has caused Stairs significant brain damage - no, it wasn't by choice - he is therefore leaving the United Kingdom for a few days to recover. More detail and some extra images from the last two weekends was intended, but work has managed to get in the way yet again. Eventually...