England!

After losing count of the amount of times my passport was needed at Schiphol, two metal detector securtity searches and a eventually a one hour flight, I got off the plane and was welcomed to England by, of all things typically associated with the place, drizzle. Nevertheless, by the time I had my luggage (checked, checked and checked again, just everything and everybody else in the baggage claim area by the most hyperactive and happy sniffer dog I've ever seen) the weather had stopt being silly and actually provided some nice sunshine. From there on I caught a train running perfectly on time, speeding me from Bristol to Exeter. Service is very good around here, with at least one attendant on every platform and one at the arrivals / departures notices to help people out. Yes, NS, that's customer service. And, if booked in advance, it doesn't even cost too much (GBP 7.50 for a 100km stretch, takes 59 minutes with three stops). As a disclaimer for those who know my extensive rants on trains in the South East: this is the South West, things do work here (though the smaller places are a bit more difficult).
Exeter is a lot better in sunshine, as compared to gery skies and rain, which is how I saw the place last time around. The festive lights are about to come on (official ceremony on the 17th), which makes them festive lights and not winter lights, which is what the Dutch seem to be turning them into.
Anyway, there's not really that much to update on - I'll be moving around a bit, and I'll be back late on Sunday. I should be able to post before christmas. I think. Possibly.

In Flanders' Fields

In Flanders' Fields the Poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place: and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders' Fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe;
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high,
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though Poppies grow
In Flanders' Fields.

John McCrae, 1915
[more info]

At least, that's the first thought I had upon opening my mailbox. Apart from the majority of e-mails concerning the next Friday meal (soon, very soon, I can see the uni spam-filter starting to protest), there's one from the programme coordinator, In which he says that from a reliable source he knows that me and a girl form the programme would be willing to organise at least one borrel (and effectively become the student commission). Somehow, I've become primed to respond with a 'oh-no, here we go again' type of reaction, and this flashback to a number of ASIC meetings. Oh well, I'll just go right ahead and fall for it again.
Also in the mailbox, more UC mail. They still haven't learnt some of the basics: the 'high urgency' field is NOT just for adding a nice little red exclamation mark to your mails - especially if they're about an upcoming event a week away that half of the people aren't interested in. Also, attachements, and with that I mean images, larger than, let's be generous, 200kb, aren't necessary in most mails, as people only view this on-screen at 72dpi at a max resolution of 1024*768 without noticing jpeg artifacts. It is, however, despite gmail, still interesting to see how fast your mailbox can fill up. One word: downsampling - I'll be caught dead before sending my 4.5 Mb 3000*2000 pixel pictures just to have a funky background. Okay, that didn't go wrong in the last backgroundy e-mail. And oh yeah, if you do start editing images: remeber that jpeg is lossy compression - meaning the more often you save the file, the worse it gets. Anyway - I'm ranting a little too much.

For the geeks amongst us: Reading solis mail with Lynx is possible. In some ways it's even better than expected. (Yep, the dual boot with gentoo is working, even wireless networking is up).

In the lab my protein gels are turning into artwork (well, at least one) - and with that I don't mean that they're so perfect. The comment 'It's never done that before' just about covers it. The other one was normal.

Time to link out.
First up: back to cow tipping. Aparently there are a number of hitches, as outlined here.
Actually, that's all I have time for...

Weapon

The following lyrics of a Matthew Good song are not being used as a statement reflecting me personally. I do, however believe that another person wil find that it may very accurately reflect his/her situation if seen in the correct light. In the odd-chance that you may read this - I hope it somehow helps. Apologies to the rest for not posting properly - this has priority.

Here by my side, an angel
Here by my side, the devil
Never turn your back on me
Never turn your back on me, again
Here by my side, it's Heaven

Here by my side, you are destruction
Here by my side, a new colour to paint the world
Never turn your back on it
Never turn your back on it, again
Here by my side, it's Heaven

Careful, you be careful
This is where the world drops off
Careful, you be careful

And you breathe in and you breathe out for it
Ain't it so weird how it makes you a weapon
And you give in and you give out for it
Ain't it so weird how it makes you a weapon
Never turn your back on it
Never turn your back on it again

Careful, you be careful

Update for the sake of updating

First of all: my apologies to those people that I should be mailing (K., A., and the rest of the world). I'm just not finding enough time.
The same goes for finding links - I'm running one of the Beta versions of firefox, and I'm too lazy to get things like flash working, so I'm using IE and paying the price. I'm finding out how many commercials there are on the web, and also how many of them seem to involve scantily dressed people. Oh, and my other machine is running Gentoo with Enlightenment as a window manager. The in-use one is now a dual boot WinXP / Gentoo (only basics at the moment).

Ah, yes, the lab update: Current lab opinions include: I can bake cake; We're nearly out of bad luck, but we don't need to re-order that; Zis iz Boolshzit (let's not go there).

Oh, alright, I'll just through in a random link (category: what the...): Clouds.
And the stupid action of the week award goes to the company that has very nice product pictures online: There's a picture of everything that comes with the graphics card they're selling, including all the CDs. The latter also involving a copy of a well-known action game, which requires an installation key to be installed. This key is printed on the CD. And yes, it's clearly legible on the picture... Good news for everyone with an illegal copy...

Oh, and Sabrine's blog is active again (see comments previous post)