The place where lost socks go...

Yesterday was Groundhog Day. It was also the day that I proved that the Nomad fails at obscure humour. It has been observed that the previous entry was posted twice. It seems that all who noticed this glitch chalked said duplication up to a mistake. Alas, not one of my dear friends observed that the time loop might have been in honour of Groundhog Day.

Does anyone remember the 1993 film, Groundhog Day? I'm not surprised that my Brit friends may have let this one slip by... but surely some of you Yanks can recall it, no? After all, it has even been added to the United States National Film Registry for being deemed "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant."

For those who do not remember -- or those who have never seen the film -- here is a brief synopsis: The main character, Phil, is caught in a time loop on February 2^nd. He repeatedly wakes up at 6:00am [1] on Groundhog Day as his clock radio plays Sonny & Cher's hit I Got You Babe.[2] As a meteorologist, Phil is in Punxsutawney to interview the famous groundhog with whom he shares a name, Punxsutawney Phil[3]. Although he is stuck in a time loop, he can remember all of the previous events. No one else can.

Hence the clues left in yesterday's post. They are all there, calling out in their little clue-voices to be found! Don't believe me? Check out this short clip:

I had several hundred points on hand, ready to cheerfully award to the first person who suggested that I might have slipped into a time loop. But, sadly, no one did.

So, as I said at the start of this entry, the Nomad fails at obscure humour. Or else all of you collectively do, gentle readers. Perhaps it amounts to about the same thing...

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Yesterday was also Imbolc, which is the first day of Spring by some calendars. Huzzah! Indeed, there is some significance in this: Today is February 3^rd and, for the first time since November 7^th, the amount of daylight hours in Oxford is not less than the minimum received in New York City. As a NYC native who has lived half his life in the Big Apple, I use the City that Never Sleeps as my reference point. On the Winter Solstice last year, New York received 9h 15m 05s of daylight between sunlight and sunset. Today, over six weeks later, Oxford receives exactly the same amount, with a precision of one second. The deepest part of the Dark Period -- which I use to refer to the 87 days where Oxford receives less hours of sun than the NYC minimum -- has now ended! Huzzah! Verily, the daylight is coming back!

This last sentence is probably of little use to those who are now under the Blizzard that Ate the United States. Still, for somebody who has been back in the Deep Dark North for nearly a month now, I certainly do appreciate the change!

Interestingly enough, the latitude difference between my once home of NYC and my current home of Oxford is just about enough so that we spend about 1/4 of each year getting less than their minimum (i.e., Winter), 1/4 of the time getting about the same amount (i.e., Spring), another 1/4 getting more than their maximum (i.e., Summer), and then a final 1/4 getting about the same once again (i.e., Autumn). The pattern is clear... but the fairly even divisions of time makes for an interesting coincidence.

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[1] Note the time stamp on yesterday's entries.

[2] Note the "current music" on yesterday's entries.

[3] Note the subject field on yesterday's entries.

Happiness is....... listening to the utterly amazing squeektoy42 singing It's Raining Men, Barbra Streisand style! My beloved cheshcat and I nearly fell over laughing. For that matter, so did Squeeky! Who says that last minute festival preparations have to be boring, all work and no play?

Good morning, gentle readers! I hope that your week is off to an excellent start! If not yet, though, the following may help bring a smile to your Monday.

I do not usually use my journal to report on news stories. In general, I trust my friends to gather their own news through the media of their choice. However, I now make an exception, as the headline that I just read is too good to miss! I would have expected to see it featured in The Onion or The Daily Mash. But, no, this is coming at you direct from the New York Times:

Y.M.C.A. Is Downsizing to a Single Letter

Need I say more? Sometimes truth really is stranger sillier than fiction!

Looking at my diary, it seems that the next free day I have[*] is Tuesday January 19^th. Guess it must be time for December holidays or something! Having a collaboration meeting in Japan immediately afterward[**] does nothing to lower the levels of busy, of course!

This week, for instance, I have a much-anticipated date with the charming miss_amaranth tonight (Monday); some very special time with the beautiful bunnypip tomorrow evening (Tuesday); an outing to University College London during the day on Wednesday, followed by the monthly Oxford Bi Meetup in the evening; the High Energy Physics Christmas Party on Thursday evening, followed by a late-night T2K SK meeting; and on Friday, my beloved cheshcat and I will be making our way up to Stratford-on-Avon to see a performance by the Royal Shakespeare Company.

See what I mean?

As such, the level of posting in this journal may be somewhat sporadic in the coming weeks. Ditto for my ability to reply to e-mails in a prompt and timely[***] fashion. I do have about eight LiveJournal posts bouncing about in my head that I wish to commit to [virtual] paper[****]... but most of those will likely have to wait. That includes the write-up of the lovely weekend trip that cheshcat and bunnypip and I took in the Cotswolds to celebrate cheshcat's birthday!

Some things, however, cannot wait. And one of them is this:

Following up on the phenomenal success of last month's Muppet Bohemian Rhapsody -- timed specially for Bohemian Rhapsody Day 2009 -- our Hensonian friends return with a new video to celebrate a new holiday! Being both a bell ringer and a Muppet myself... well, it really was impossible to not post this and help spread the love! Enjoy!!

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[*] By "free", I mean that there are no special plans. For a weekend day, that means no plans at all. For a weekday, it means no plans other than work and bell ringing.

[**] As in, I depart for Japan on the morning of Sunday January 3rd... before the first workday of the new year.

[***] This phrase brought to you by the Department of Redundancy Department.

[****] Not counting travelogues of road trip adventures, from earlier this year, which I have all but given up on!

Some fun moments from today:

Lunchtime - Was chatting with a graduate student from Duke University. Asked him a[nother] question about a part of the analysis in which he is an expert. Was told that this would be his last "free" answer. From here on in, apparently I must best him at skee ball for each additional question that I want answered.

Now - Most of us are on dinner break. I said "most". I am finishing my presentation for the meeting that begins in an hour and a half. Some of the most senior people in the collaboration are also not on break right now, as there is a meeting of the Institutional Board -- one of the governing bodies of the collaboration. When the before-dinner session ended, they were all summoned to meet in Room 101. Need I say more?

Can you tell that I'm having fun here?

Riding home on the Oxford Tube right now. And, yes, the timestamp on this post has not gone wonky. It has been a long day at work! Started with a meeting at ten o'clock in the morning... and, actually, it is still going on. I've an international video conference starting in an hour, and lasting until one o'clock in the morning. Hopefully, I will be awake enough to make my presentation coherently!

One more nice thing about the long Summer days is that, even when I work late, it does not feel like I am. The sun did set a little while ago... but the sky is still quite bright with the long twilight! I did miss bell ringing at St. Giles tonight, leaving work a little before nine as the practice -- fifty miles away -- was ending. Still, it has been a very productive day at work, which is quite satisfying!

Besides the long Summer days, which are unchangeable at this latitude, the English weather has also been uncharacteristically good. Excellent, in fact! Especially on the weekends! This has been quite a wonderful surprise... and has paid off in terms of some awesometacular trips! Although I have been living in England for over three years now, I am still very much a tourist. As such, I like to use the Summer weekends for adventures, exploring more of the land of Eng!

So far, this Summer has been quite excellent for adventures! During the holiday weekend at the end of May, my beloved cheshcat and I had a phenomenal five day trek around the Northernmost bits of England. The travelogue for that trip is still in the process of being written up; three days down, two to go! The following weekend, first in June, the adorable bunnypip brought me to Coventry, to visit the cathedral(s) and the mass war grave. And -- to complement the trip Up North -- last weekend, cheshcat and bunnypip and I all went Down South together. There we visited Salisbury Cathedral and Winchester and explored the New Forest[*].

The trip Down South was wonderful -- as were they all -- and, thus, deserves a proper travelogue just as much as the trip to Northumbria. I shall write one... but only after I finish chronicling the Northern trip. One thing at a time! Readers of bunnypip's journal may have already seen a trip report, which she wrote as two locked posts; others can bide the time as they wait for my write-up by enjoying the following video -- next in the "Nomad Walking Tours" series!



Meanwhile, I am hoping that this trend of warm, clear, dry, sunny weather continues! No road trip is planned for this weekend. Nope -- instead, for this weekend's adventure, I shall be hopping on a friend's boat in Oxford on Saturday morning... then cruising along the Thames all weekend long! As a water elemental, I need hardly explain why I am quite excited about my impending aquatic exploration!

[(00:24) ETA: Meeting is over early! Excellent!! This means that I can get nearly eight hours sleep before I have to wake up and go into work for the next meeting. Also, my presentation was well received, which is nice. And, apropos to nothing, I notice that my journal currently has 10101 comments on it. So... who is going to comment next and break the binary symmetry?]

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[*] In this case, "new" means "established by William the Conquerer in 1079".

As mentioned earlier, I stayed for the full astronomy course this weekend, rather than just presenting my lecture and leaving. This allowed me to hear several interesting talks on topics that I do not usually encounter.

Two of these talks were on exoplanets -- or worlds outside of our solar system. In my previous post, I mentioned the talk by Dr. Suzanne Aigrain on New Insights from Transiting Exoplanets. In her talk, she discussed how we can work out the composition and atmosphere of exoplanets, which impressed the heck out of me.

The other talk on exoplanets was more general (titled, quite simply, as Exoplanets), and given by Prof. Hugh Jones. Overall, I found it to be a less interesting -- and less organised -- talk than Dr. Aigrain's. However, he did mention -- somewhat cryptically -- that we should keep our ears pealed... as there would be an exciting announcement coming on Tuesday.

Well, it is now Tuesday. So what was Prof. Jones hinting at?

Turns out, he was not exaggerating. The news is out, and can be read about in brief here.

Or, to be even more brief, just read on: Another planet comparable in size to Earth has -- for the first time -- been discovered! How cool is that??

For those who are unimpressed, please recall that, until 1995, the prospect of finding any planets outside our solar system was considered to be more fantasy than fact. Hundreds have now been located, by a variety of methods, but they are nearly all giants -- making them far easier to detect. The discovery of a planet comparable in size to Earth -- orbiting a star twenty light years away -- is an astounding discovery, indeed!

Still not impressed? Fine. Perhaps this will entertain you instead: Following in the footsteps of the wildly successful Talk Like A Pirate Day (Sep 19) and the more amusing Talk Like A Ninja Day ([*]), the day after tomorrow -- Apr 23 -- is Talk Like A Shakespeare Day. Zounds! To celebrate the birthday of the Bard, people are being encouraged to speak like an Elizabethan playwright! Now is the winter of our discontent made glorious Springtime by this son of Chicago...

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[*] The concept of Talk Like A Ninja Day evolved as a response to Talk Like A Pirate Day. It was independently proposed by multiple sources, of which yours truly is one. As such, it is difficult to find which is the best day to celebrate, though Dec 05 may have the strongest claim.

Whilst I may continue to be delinquent in updating with my January/February summary, I can at least get three thousand words (and change) closer by employing the PIWOTW rule[1].

On February 21^st, I went with cheshcat, bunnypip and darkfloweruk to the British Museum to see the Babylon: Myth & Reality exhibit. Whilst waiting for the time on our tickets, we explored other areas of the museum, including the Michael Cohen Egyptian gallery -- newly reopened after ten years of conservation work and research. There, I met with definitive proof of my ancestry! If bunnypip and darkfloweruk had not previously believed me when I said that I was of Egyptian descent[2], then this picture provided sufficient proof[3,4]:



Meanwhile, the following week I was in Essex with bunnypip to celebrate our 0.5^th anniversary[5]. We visited Colchester, with its awesome castle/museum; Southend-on-Sea, where we took a long walk on the world's longest pier; and Chelmsford. The trip was most excellent, and deserving of a true travelogue. In the meantime, however, here is an inspired photograph that we took on the Southend Pier (as well as its inspiration):



And, on that note, my coach has arrived in London. So heigh ho, heigh ho, to study neutrinos I go...

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[1] Known in less acronymic language as "Picture Is Worth One Thousand Words".

[2] Which, I might add, is different from Arab descent. The Coptic Egyptians, of which I am ostensibly one, did not interbreed all that much when the Muslim Arabs arrived. Hence, the Copts are genetically the direct descendents of the ancient Egyptians.

[3] And I swear that I made no adjustments whatsoever to my hair before the picture was taken!

[4] It is worth noting that, whilst our hair has not changed in the last five millennia, our eyes have moved from the side of the face to the front. Evolution at work!

[5] Also known as a demiversary.

This afternoon, the excitement in our office has revolved around a small plastic helicopter[*]. We have been taking turns using the remote control to fly it about the office.

I do have at least five other LJ entries percolating in my head, but no time to write at the moment. Besides flying helicopters, there is a metric boatload of work to get done before tomorrow's meetings. Will try to write more during the commute home tonight...

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[*] Pun intended.

Gentle readers! I have just learned that today is "Bohemian Rhapsody Day"!

Apparently, the appropriate way to celebrate this holiday is to listen to the Bohemian Rhapsody twelve times!

Won't you all join me in the remembrance of this joyous occasion? I will award five hundred points to anyone who comments letting me know that you, too, have honoured this most venerable of holidays![*]

ETA: A bonus hundred points can be won by anyone who posts about this in their own journal and spreads awareness of this important occasion! I first offered these extra points only to lunarbitch, but it seemed unfair so I now make them available to all!

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[*] Honour system here, people. Don't profane Bohemian Rhapsody Day by lying about this. I know the points are valuable, but still...