Bauer and Pirates

24 is such an epic programme ! *No spoilers will be given away* Yep, Jack Bauer's back for an 8th season ! Poor guy's gotta save the world again... I wouldn't be surprised if his blood pressure goes into overload because:
1: He doesn't sleep for 24 hours whilst running around with explosions everywhere.
2: He never seems to eat or drink for 24 hours which is a major health risk when doing a lot of physical activity. I've never seen Jack Bauer having a nice sit down meal at ANY time. Come on, the guy deserves it.
3: He's not allowed to swear because the show is shown on American prime-time so he's only allowed to say "DAMMIT". Swearing has been shown to be a good way of venting ones fury and not being able to do this, it may have psychological consequences.

So please, be kind to poor Jack Bauer. If you ever meet him during a series, offer him a coffee at least.


Even the simplest things can help


It would seem that a new video of the Chandlers that are being held in Somalia by the so-called pirates (If they don't have eye patches and/or wooden legs and drink copious amounts of rum, they aint pirates). They're seen pleading with the British government to come get them. If they had been French nationals, we've sent our army to get them out. I mean, it's not as if they're hidden in a jungle, their out in the open and the news knew near what town they were so how hard can it be to blitz a small enclave of fugly pseudo-pirates with our highly trained men ? Hell, last year, Somalians captured two French secret services officers. What did Sarkozy do? he sent two unit of our finest stormers and we left no-one alive apart from our two agents. Though it was amusing when I read in the news that Somalians on a dinghy had attacked a french battle-cruiser, thinking it was a commerce boat. We sunk their battle ship. Seriously though, if we send the military, we could wipe the floor with them in under two weeks. NATO should get in there.



I know who my money's on


I don't think many people will understand, but ever since I've played on Fallout 3, I find olde jazz music SERIOUSLY creepy. Music such as "I don't want to set the world on fire" by The Ink Spots. It makes me shiver... Anyway ! Most of today was spent writing an essay about object permanence in infants which wasn't fun. When I went to submit my file on the university website, I noticed at the bottom of the page a section written "If you are registered as having learning difficulties attach image here". What ?! What I am I supposed to do ? Send a picture of me in a wheelchair ? I mean, wouldn't it be nicer to get students that are unfortunate enough to have a disability just to write any ailments they would have without asking for photographic evidence ? Eh, I'm probably missing something. Answers on a postcard...



How cruel



Well, tomorrow's Monday which means I have a FULL day ahead of me. Stats at 12, Mini-project meeting at 13, Stats practical at 14, health psychology at 17 then ballroom from 19 to 20. Woo, can't wait for tomorrow evening ! Exciting

PS: I've designed the tickets for the dance society's Valentine's ball *Boo valentine's day, Boo* Any good?


£10 for members and £12 for non-members !

Detergent and Disaster

Work, work, work ! All that seems to have happened today ! I've been typing up all the lecture notes of the week for about 8-odd hours which isn't my favorite way to spend a weekend but nothing much was on so I might as well have ! An advert for the detergent Vanish just came on TV and I'm asking myself "Why wouldn't that woman ask questions about why a lady in pink randomly turned up in her house and asked to clean her clothes?" I'd like them to film that same advert using a paranoid man with a tazer. Now THAT would be entertainment !



What the advert SHOULD look like. (Click on the picture to see it in full size)


WHAT AN IDIOT ! I'm watching the day after tomorrow on TV and this guy just jumped over a huge crevasse just to get some metal poles... can't he just buy some new ones when he gets home? These "whole world dies because of climate craziness" films are a dime a dozen. Though this one's got Mickey from Hustle so it's cool. Gutted, the whole worlds going into an ice-age. These films are so predictable...

In other news, I've got a popcorn machine in my room left over from yesterday's filming. It's awesome. It's in the shape of a duck. We've ran out of popping corn though so at the moment, its only use is for music videos !




Tomorrow should be much of the same, got some research to do and some last lectures to type up so it should all be very exciting ... I should also finish editing C and I's music video in order to publish it ! My cousin's been asking about visiting us in February which would be awesome ! He sais he misses English nights out so I'm thinking... UNION ! :D
Right, I'm going back to my film... everyone's sadtiming due to the ice-storm thing... nice

HD and Signposts

Today was a good day ! I had to wake up at 8 this morning, which is WAY to early for a psychology student, in order to go to a cognition lecture about semantic memory. The lecturer's one of the best we have but the structure of the lecture was something like this "Here is theory x. This is why theory x is wrong: ... Here is theory y. This is why theory y is wrong: " I mean, can't they just give us the epic theory that actually works and be done with it ?! Turns out psychology still hasn't a foolproof theory for working out semantic memory... Future research ?

I spent a lot of the day producing music with C (making the music, recording vocals, recording the video, editing and producing the video) which took us about 9 hours. I'm rendering the final version as I type in 1920x1200 full HD so it's taking a good deal of ages to finish !! I won't give the song away just yet as it's already finished but I'll post up the video soon .

I need to have a rant about the roadworks that are happening behind the Vue Cinema... It's been going on since I came back from France this summer, that is mid-september. Since then, they've dug up the old safety barrieres, taken down all signaling, retarmaced everything, made holes in the new tarmac for the new signaling posts... and that's it... in FIVE months ! So at the moment, there aren't any safety barriers, the new tarmacs being destroyed everywhere to make way for the signals, no-one knows when it's safe to cross because pedestrians don't have signals, leading to a game of Shall-I-Cross based on what cars are moving and what the opposite signalling lights say. So dangerous and there never seems to be more than 5 people working on it at the same time ! Stupid council would do better to concentrate on putting safety barriers back over one of Reading's busiest crossings instead of asking themselves whether Melrose Avenue and parallel streets should become cul-de-sacs...

The weekend will be spent working, working and working (yay...) so I haven't got much fun stuff planned. My usual weekend then !

Sleep :)

Gradients and Theories

Nostalgia ! I love it ! I'm currently listening to some tracks I've found online of this cassette I used to listen to when I was younger and it's bringing back good memories !! My musical Madeleine if you will ! I'm listening to the 80's tracks one by one but I'd love to be able to get my cassette into MP3 somehow. Got to be some shop in town that does this sort of thing... Makes me sort of wish i was alive in the 80's they knew how to do things !


Nostalgic Goodness

Today was a good day, went to uni for my miniproject meeting where we had to come up with some variation of a study about visual perception. Basically, Proffitt (a psychologist) got participants to go to the bottom of a hill and guess how steep the slope was verbally (So just saying "I think it's 45 degrees"), with a circle where they could turn a wedge to represent the slope visually and also with a platform that they could tilt to represent their perception of the slopes angle (the latter having to be done without looking at the platform) (called Haptic). He found that participants who had guessed verbally or visually always overestimated the slope's gradient. He states that it's not only the visual system that makes this exaggeration but also the body's metabolism which takes into account the energy expenditure of going up this slope. So to incite the person to not go up, it alters our perception. Or so he thinks. My group have decided to investigate whether a person going up a slope blindfolded (thus taking out the visual aspect of slope gradient perception) will estimate the slope to be as exaggeratedly steep as those who have their eyes free. We will also give two groups of people heavy backpacks, one with blindfolds ones without expecting them to give a more exaggerated gradient seeing as they spent more energy going up. It's all fun. I'll update on how it's going soon, we're meeting up on Monday after the stats lecture so we'll see !



The results found by Proffitt et Al. - The straight line is the true gradient. As you can see, both Verbal and Visual conditions give exaggerated results whereas the Haptic condition gave surestimated gradients suggesting that it visual appreciation of the slope makes our metabolism over-estimate our perception in the hope that we don't go up the slope ! Lazy




The (dark-green) wedge that you can turn up and down until you think it's gradient matches the slope's in the visual condition.



The Haptic condition with the tilting plate that the participant must move without looking at it.

Salsa was on tonight which was as good as usual ! We were worried because five minutes before the lesson was supposed to start, only three people had turned up ... Not good for the profit (I'm treasurer) ! But then, people PILED in so that we had a record number of students for one lesson (I'd estimate it at about 60 students). We did some pretty hardcore stuff, even in the first hour with some to-me-to-you (I think it's called?) which involves some over-arm manoeuvres which aren't the easiest to pull off. The second hour was as awesome as ever with a mini-dance off being incorporated into the routine. One of the fastest paced routines we've done yet because we didn't put many basics between moves.

Today's lecture was Social Psychology with some very, very quiet 50-something woman who seems to enjoy wasting time. Seriously, she started the lecture five minutes late and went into a monologue on where to find lecture notes (which we've known how to do for the past year and a half) before saying "We won't be able to finish in time". Yeah, no shizz... Still, it was an interesting subject even if not very useful in practice. All about people's perceptions of people, why they like them, why they don't. But the general conclusion was that we can't really tell which is a classic psychological phrase. "Actually, you can't measure this so here's some half-assed theory on how it might be should we all follow the same thought process". So yeah, yet another aspect of psychology that will be very, very hard to beat. And emotion is one of the hardest aspects to study because it's so unquantifiable so who knows, when brain scans get more in-depth we might get some answers...

Haven't had much time to myself today so I think I'll watch me an episode of Prison Break before bed (I'm on season two and it's AWESOME !). I was gutted when John Abruzzi got killed ! He was my favorite character :( I'll keep y'all updated on where I am in the storyline. At the moment, they're trying to dig up DB Cooper's money in this woman's garage but the cops have arrived and everyone's like "ah crap...". Awesome !


These naughty chaps have some serious running to do

Radars and Melodies

Avatar ! I went to see it last night with my sister not just in normal cinema but in THREE DIMENSIONS. Cinema just left the original two planes of existance... Or it would've seemed so with all the "Oh mai God" and "Wóaa" that were being whispered around the room as if it was revolutionary which is strange as I remember those videos in America back in '96 that would fly out at you ! Back to the film... In a nutshell, I'd say that Avatar is basically the bad, horrible, industrial humans versus the Smurfs on crack. Ticket to a brilliant film if you ask me! I won't give any of the plot away in case people haven't seen it yet but the film is basically one HUGE special effect, but the story-line and humour is awesome even if it's a bit like the usual not-so-subliminal "stop building stuff otherwise you'll destroy the environment, kill things and everyone'll be sadtiming".


Aliens Good. Humans Bad.

In other news, I was working at uni yesterday doing some research, listening to Radio Nostalgie when I decided to check out some news on lefigaro.fr, a french news site. I was wondering what happened to the Kurd immigrants who had just arrived in Corsica under mysterious circumstances. Apparently they had arrived by a Russian or Ukranian cargo ship which had dropped them off just when the French radar system went offline. So the problem is, should they stay or should they go (Sarkozy's gotta let me know) ? The verdict was, most of them could stay in France but we would send them back anyway because they arrived illegally. At the same time i was reading the article, "Lets twist again" was playing on radio nostalgie and a vastly amusing mental image came to me. Sarkozy, Hortefeux, Alliot-Marie and Lagarde doing the Twist whilst lots of Kurds got kicked out of the country.
Something like this:


Takes Political Party to the next level

Today was awesome, G came round for lunch and the afternoon. We made a track which could be described as... historic rap ? Anyway, we recorded all his "vocals" and most of mine and all the videos we need so all I need to do now is produce it ! Should be good but were not expecting to break the industry with this ! It's good fun and you may even learn something from it because the chorus is read out of a history book (Thanks for that G) . Here's a sneak preview of the song (lucky y'all)


Busting out the moves

Anyway, watch this space !

Studies and Alzheimer's

I'm in the Agric building, waiting for the second part of a psychological study i'm taking part it. You see, in order to be able to use first and second year students as guinea pigs in our third year dissertation projects, we have to participate in 20-hours worth of studies over two years. So I've had my mind probed, my eye movements tracked, thrown a ping-pong ball into a Starbucks cup no less that 180 times... Still, just now I had to eat 50 gramms of chocolate (awesome !) and need to go back in two hours for a series of psych tests. Then I need to go back next week same time to do the same. Still, after that, I'll have 19.25 of the 20 credits we need ! The thing is, the dissertation i've applied to will be happening in Oxford so I doubt I'll be using Reading Uni participants but it's still good to help out the third years .

In other news, I got the bus this morning because it was a miserable drizzly day. So there i was waiting for the 17 to arrive and arrive it did ten minutes later... Only to let everyone off and drive off saying "Sorry not in service". So everyone at the stop had a rave. Not too much of a problem as there was still a good 40 minutes before lectures started so I waited for the next one. In true British bus style, not just one bus arrived 20 minutes later, not just two buses arrived 20 minutes later but THREE buses came lounging into the station 20 minutes later. So we were spoilt for choice as to which one to go on. In the end I arrived at uni just in time for my lecture.

We had Neuroscience this morning, about Alzheimers Disease and it was such a depressing lecture ! 15% of us will get Alzheimers, with a higher chance if we have a certain gene. This was partially based on studies carried out by a bunch of nuns in the 1930's which is all fair because they were in a controlled environment all their lives. They found that nuns who's applications contained simple English with not much elaboration had a higher dementia rate when they got older. Conclusion : Uneducated people have a higher dementia rate than the educated. So... in order to avoid Alzheimers, you need to go to university and not have a certain gene? Wrong. To quote the lecturer "We only know about 10% of the causes of Alzheimers"... Great... Though it doesn't beat yesterday's lecturer who ended the lecture with "in conclusion: dadadada, dada dadada". Nice to see we pay £3000+ for a high level of teaching !


Alzheimer's causes brain tissue degradation over time so prevention is much better than treatment which is why giving to research programms is important


I also need to find someone who owns a power drill because I've got a photo-canvas of a tree I want to hang in my room but I don't have the tools. And to put my huge whiteboard over my desk. All for a more organised life ! I'm listening to radio nostalgie which is such a good radio station because I like modern music but the radio gets so repetitive and a bit of olde music is always good !

I won't write more for now because I've got loads of research to do for my essays so I'll say ciao for the time being !

And so it begins

Well, everyone left, right and center seem to be making blogs, editing blogs, blogging about blogs and such, so why not make my own with my views on life and all it contains. Awesome...

Thought I'd start off with a concise history of me:

Now this is the story all about how my life got twist turned upside down and I'd like to take a minute and sit right there and tell you how I got from Rives to Reading (via several different countries)... quite...



"Pacing it down the Slopes, 1993" AND "First holiday, 1991"

Born on the 12th August 1990 in the Rives maternity ward, Isère, France, I didn't stay long in my grandparents house because my dad who worked (and still works) in the hotel industry had found a job in Scotland near Glasgow. So off I went on my first plane journey when I was 2 months old to take over Scotland with my Sister (09/1988) and my mum. So there I was, chilling in C for a whole 8 months before we packed our bags and flew back to France near C-S-A in the Alps. I then celebrated my first birthday back in my hometown of V (I call V my hometown as well as Rives because technically I came to this world in Rives but my parents were based in V) being cool with my baby-bouncer and quiff. When I started growing hair, my fringe, for some reason decided that it wanted to go for the Tintin effect but to EXTREME lengths so there I was, the baby with the EXTREME quiff... nice !


"Painting of me, 1992" AND "With my sister and dad, 1993"

After 2 years of lounging it, learning French, how to walk, the letters of the alphabet etc... We went BACK to Glasgow in September of '93 where I was put in a nursery with hardly any notion of English ! This meant that I learnt English pretty darn fast and with a small Scottish accent to go with it ! Nursery was pretty awesome as far as I can remember though that was short lived as but a year later, we moved to B, a town not too far from Glasgow where I learnt my skills of riding a bike and such. There I started my primary school career at B Primary where I paced it through the years winning some ribbons in the sports day and all (damn foreigners: in our country, taking our ribbons) ! Life was good in B with friends all around and the awesome family being... awesome. We stayed there until June '96 when my dad decided it was time to cross the Atlantic and hit the USA with all we had. So we packed up and moved back to France for a while from July to October whilst my dad had to get paperwork sorted out. I remember going to London and waiting in a ha-YUGE hall with the family to see if we'd been accepted to enter the US. Turns out they approved of us and we were set to leave !


"Looking chuffed, 1996" AND "With the world's CREEPIEST Santa Claus, 1993"

So we jetted off to America in September of '96, as my dad had got the job of chef for this rich guy in C, Ohio. This meant that we lived in a pretty sweet mansion for the 9 months that we remained there. In that time, I managed to pick up a strong American accent which I have a few recordings of... I'll be sure to share them one day if I manage to work out how to get tape into MP3... America was so good, I went to school by school bus (exactly like the one in the magic schoolbus except this one didn't shrink or transport us to the moon or anything) to H Elementary, enjoyed my 1st grade chowing down on peanut butter and jelly sandwiches when nothing else pleased me in the canteen menu. When you're a kid in America, and you don't think much about what's inside your food as long as it's delicious, the food is AWESOME what with delicious artificial flavours. I always get good flashbacks whenever I eat Reese's cups, Hershey's kisses, tootsie rolls or Air Heads ... Well, America went well and then the decision was taken to return to Europe in June '97. 9 months wasn't long but some of the best times I had in my younger life happened in there. Still, Europe called us back so who were we to ignore it ?


"Doing an Olympic-Level jump, 1997" AND "Quiche? What Quiche? I didn't TOUCH the Quiche!, 1997"

After spending autumn term in my local primary back in V, we then moved back to Scotland again where something weird and unnatural happened: My American accent slowly mixed in with my suppressed Scottish one which resulted in some freaky accent which I also have a recording of ! So here we were in Inver, some miles up the road from Aberdeen. Joining K Primary in January of '98 was the beginning of my most recent stint in the UK. I was in primary three, meeting many new people (moving so much, I think I must have met hundreds of different friends !) and learning new stuff on the way... as you tend to do in schools... Anyway, Inver went well and we stayed there for two and a half years (a record !) until June 2000. A lot can be said about my time in Inver but that'll be for another post lest the "concise" aspect of this post fall through. Having been offered a job as Duty Manager in a hotel in M, the family took its first steps in the country of England !

"Check it ! I'm Jesus !, 2001" AND "Spreading the good vibes, 1999"


A lot of good times were had in M from October '00 to September '02. I finished my primary education and stealthed it into secondary at S P's in S. In two years, my crazy accent melted in with the English accent to form what I sound like today . By the time my dad got a Manager job in Birmingham in 2002, I was ready to hit year 8 with all I had.

One paragraph is WAY not enough to describe what went on in Birmingham for the 6 years we stayed there. My parents didn't want to move any more so that my sister and I could finish our secondary education in the same school : Bishop Vesey Grammar School for Boys *cheer*. How do I know this? Because the second I leave the house to go to university, they jet off to Mauritius to enjoy the good lifestyle !! Awesome !

So here I now am, in my second year of university at Reading Uni. Living the city life in our apartment. Hopefully in future posts, I'll have more time to speak about the more recent places I've lived in.

Well... that's a basic history of me ! I had an awesome childhood !! I didn't write much from '02 onwards because that'll be for another day I think :)

Guavas

Man I love the taste of Guavas. Guavas are so good !

This is madness you say?
No.
THIS. IS. DELICIOUS !


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