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Having spotted a news item today, I was somewhat shocked to find out that I’m fluent in a language I didn’t know.  Nerdic.

Nerdic, apparently, is the language of Nerds (yeah, you’d never have guessed that would you now).  It means the person is fluent in all things technological.  Like Wi-Max (yes I know what that is), Dongle (they say it’s a new word but Dongles have been around for years) and 3G.  Well stone me, everything on the list I read I knew about.  Eeeks.  Now speculation on whether or not I can include “Fluent in Nerdic” on my CV.  What say you readers?

More about this item can be found in the following locations:
http://www.pocket-lint.co.uk/news/news.phtml/14022/15046/nerdic-geek-speak-fastest-growing-language.phtml
http://www.channel4.com/news/articles/science_technology/parlezvous+nerdic/2030047

Please excuse me, I’m on a bit of a science trip at the moment…

I’ve been sitting here musing the differences between scientists and spiritualists.  What I find amusing is that you have religious groups saying that God is the word, regardless of the religion.  They rely on the writings of a book, that can no longer possibly be perceived to be accurate (Chinese whispers anyone?), to tell them how to go about their life.  More often than not they do not deviate from this book, or let themselves open to alternative interpretations of what might actually be. 

Perhaps, this is why I do not believe in a religion.  I hate being told what to do.  I rebel, I can’t tell you why.  If you ask me then I’ll be more open to the thought of it.  Perhaps I don’t like the thought of there not being a possibility of something else, for there to be an explanation that has something of more substance than a “thing”, a “being” creating the earth.  It’s very much a case of “is that it?”

Perhaps I like the humbleness of scientists, I mean they are forever coming up with theories and laws and then disproving them and saying something different.  Maybe it’s the openness to different thoughts and changing ideas is what makes me smile.  That instead of settling for a book of words and a belief that makes you feel warm and cosy scientists don’t settle for just that, that they constantly question things and not settle on one answer as the right one.  

If you’re bored, and fancy looking at some amazing science, then might I recommend you pop along to www.google.com/sky It might just blow your mind.

This week has been all things science.  I’ve watched the two part documentary on Stephen Hawking, a National Geographic documentary on Huble (amusing as it was filmed years ago and the assumptions it made about what was going to happen in the future were ever so slightly askew) and now I’m in the middle of watching Contact. 

The debate about being able to go into space is an interesting one.  Whilst I’m a science geek at heart (even if I was lousy at it when I was at school, doesn’t help me being in awe of modern scientific achievements) and I’m not in the slightest way religious (lets not get started on that one), I don’t fancy going into space.  I’m happy to sit here on earth, and let others have fun. 

My mind is torn between exploring distant galaxies for other life, or the quest to understand how our galaxy was born.  Perhaps with better understanding of where we came from we might be able to understand what life is out there, and how we can communicate with it.  I still can’t get my mind around space being infinite, I mean surely, it’s got to stop somewhere? If it’s infinite, and galaxies are expanding how can they expand any further if space doesn’t stop? I know it’s the cliché from the teaching advert, but it’s quite true in asking, what the hell can we expand into?

Of course I’m all for SETI, I’m just a bit hesitant, not for the spiritual reasons that would bug so many, but because, well, you’ve seen what Hollywood has made of Sci-Fi… I’m sure not everything out there is good, there being so much hatred and suffering on our own planet, what makes us assume it’s going to be any better out there?

I love a good conspiracy theory.  Can’t help myself.  You know the normal things like was there someone on the grassy knowl? Was it really the titanic that sank? So when I picked up a book by James Rollins last year I never expected that the book would mean I wanted to end up buying books that are filled full of Nazi conspiracy theories or dare I say it, ones about Quantum Mechanics (ok so point and fact that I haven’t book the one on Quantum Evolution, as that’s what it’s really about, mainly because I procrastinated for so long it’s now out of print! curse it!!).

Anyway, I’m currently reading a book about the Bell, which is rumoured to be a device developed under the Nazi’s that has inexplicable powers (I say this because nobody knows what’s happened to it, only that it did exist).  There’s tons of conspiracy theory in there, and lots of information about the various technologies that the Nazi’s were developing.  Before I carry on, I don’t condone the Nazi’s but as I said, I love a good conspiracy theory and I love science & technology.

I can’t tell you much about the book yet, but I guess I picked it up in the hope that it might give me some ideas about writing.  I have lots of little ideas in my head but they go nowhere, so I need a theme, a pique, something that will grab my head and a whole story will come flooding out of it.  Given that I loved John Twelve Hawks books, James Rollins latest books and various other books that are pseudo-sci-fi (i.e. they’ve got a bit of science fiction in there, but not enough to make it a bona fide sci-fi book).

I have to focus, I have a goal this year and that’s to write more.  I’m not really doing well so far, mainly because the move down here has been the only thing on my mind really.  However I’m going to try really hard to start thinking about writing again.  Picking up my writers notebook and making little meme’s to myself.  I’ve already started by attacking the word of the day on dictionary.com.  So perhaps I should challenge myself on here to write something each day.  Not that I often seek responses from people, but what are your thoughts?

It would appear I’ve been tagged by the lovely spacesilver

Four jobs you’ve had in your life: (think more 400 as I’m a contractor)
Pizza Slut… I mean Pizza Hut Waitress / chef… yes I did put chili’s in wankers pizza’s
Helldesk person… yes there often was a case of PEBKAC (problem exists between keyboard and chair for the un-initated)
Shop Girl - WH Smith anyone
Web Change Manager - up hill struggle anyone?

Four movies you could watch over and over:
Weird Science - “Gimme the keys… I’ll drive”
Replacement Killers - “Meg Coburn? Never heard of her”
51st State - “Let me get this straight… bollocks is bad… but the dogs bollocks is cool?”
Layer Cake - Non quoteable, but damn… Daniel Craig!!

Four Places I’ve lived:
Taunton - oh how I miss Somerset
Canterbury - too many French tourists
Newham - In the ghettoooooo (Cartman People)
Mottingham - not bad, but it’s hardly Monaco

Four TV Shows you love to watch:
Lost - WHEN is the next series on over here
CSI - LV or Miami… hurry up next week
ER - Why oh why is Noah Wyle not in it anymore
Scrubs - Sorry, Dr Cox is my idol!

Four Places You’ve been on Holiday:
South of France
South of France
All over Europe
South of France (are you seeing a pattern here?)

Blogs you visit daily:
Spacesilver
Someguyonajourney
Random Acts of Reality - it’s addictive
Bignoseduglyguy

Four Favourite Foods:
Mexican - home made enchilladas
Lentil Soup (well almost any soups)
Roast Lamb
Nigella’s Chocolate cake

Four Places You’d Rather Be:
Monaco
Chamonix
Taunton
Paris

Albums You Can’t Live Without:
Sasha & Digweed - Northern Exposure Vol II Disc 1
My Driving Tunes CD I made - Including She Sells Sanctury by the Cult and My Favourite Game by The Cardigans
The Space Brothers
Godskitchen - Worldwide CD1

Four Cars You’ve Owned / Borrowed / Nicked:
VW Polo Mark 1 - first car… never again
Peugeot 106 - First brand new car… lacked oomf
Clio Sport 172 - Va Va Vooom… although it’s loosing it’s appeal
Honda Civic Type R with too many engine mods to mention - not mine but did get to take it to Sainsburys on Sunday, and damn I love the looks I get when I rev the engine… just don’t tell the owner.

Four Beautiful People to be Tagged:
I’ll tag ‘em but who’ll respond… anyway Spacey got to them first!!
Ok BNUG

Right, where was I? Oh yeah, being dragged out of bed at stupid o’clock in the morning to go racing… mwahahahahaaha!! (Damn must curb the evilness). NB I will add a small edict here, the clocks went forward in the UK, well they’d gone forward for us when we got to France anyway. I had asked the day before if they went forward in Germany but was advised they hadn’t by my fellow team mates… hmmm never trust a group of petrol heads I’ll get to why this is funny when I get to day four (I think you’re getting the picture, we didn’t realise the error until the following day).

So we drive up to the circuit, getting lost upon the way, I think the “Guys, we’ve missed the turning” was the icing on the cake, then to rely on the car with the sat nav. Hmmm wonderful invention, we’re pointing in one direction, and it appeared we needed to go in the other direction. Instead of saying, turn the car around; it took us on a 10-minute detour around some dodgy town. Cue lots of laughter while we turned the car around.

As we get higher and higher into the hills it’s becoming apparent that it’s a bit foggy. I mean REALLY foggy in fact. No racing for a fair while then. It was decided we would go out on the track that day so it was a tad annoying that we didn’t get very far to start with. It was even worse to find the Cliosport club had turned up… wooo yeah… the bunch of people that think their Clio’s are faster than any super car “ungh, yeah, mate, I totally beat that Porsche 911 GT3 away from the lights and I so kept him off me, ee was ‘aving it ee was.” (Excerpt from an average conversation on there). So the stakes were set, we had to show them that we could whip their arses. NB Yes I know I’ve got a Clio Sport, and yes I do love my car, but the club do annoy me.

Anyway we waited around, had a coffee and waited for the fog to clear. Took a while I can tell you. Finally the fog clears, the load in the car is lightened and stabilised. And that’s it; we’re out on the track.

So the circuit, I wish I could tell you loads about it, but well you are going kinda fast. We got to the end of the first straight where you go right, up under the stands at the grand prix circuit, only we didn’t go right. The Grand Prix circuit was open… woohoo!! hehehehe. So we were off racing. You don’t have time to spot the bits of armco that were replaced, you barely have time to register the people standing on the side of the circuit as you go through. You do notice the bits where you get lift.

Conclusion (sounds like my science lessons… “Conclusion - never mix chemical a with b if that’s not what you were told to do, oh and cold cream is great for cooling singed eyebrows…) Whoops slightly side tracked there. Yes the conclusion, hairy, fast, and nervy but good fun.

The second time was even more scary… the tie fighter was faster this time around… yikes, going sideways around two corners, getting a small amount of air and well it was great fun.

Ended the day hiking through the forests to get photos of things on the track, which included (and no I’m not kidding):
3 Coaches (two were from the UK as well) - we saw one of them going around the Karousell, scary stuff!!
1 Quad bike (insane)
1 Redneck Roadster (some dodgy American pickup painted with camo colours and huge wheels).
Several vans
1 vw camper van
lots of beat up cars…

If you’ve got it… drive it I think.

I’m sure more will come back to me about it but I’ll add it at a later date.

So here are a few tips:

if the ticket says 22Euros instead of 15Euros for one lap… I think it means they’ve opened up the GP circuit for you.
If they make an announcement over the tannoy in German, it means someone’s crashed and the circuit is closed
Never trust a man when he says “we’re only going for a little walk” when there are cars and the nurburgring involved.

The next instalment is shorter as it involves getting up way to early, driving in convoy back with walkie talkies (call sign rubber chicken thank you), me driving super fast down the French roads, all our cars being eyed up by the Belgian police, and only just managing to make it to Calais in time to catch the ferry, all because we’d not put our watches forward, luckily made the ferry even if we did spend far too long sitting in the Passport control queue. Hang on a mo. that was Monday pretty much, oh well, saves me typing it out again I guess.

So I’m a webmaster (webmistress actually but that’s just being pedantic). I’m not going into specifics about who, what or why because it’s just not cricket.

Anyway, on the site is preside over (this is a work one), there is a link to another site that has information about current recruitment campaign. Now this site has gone down, it’s not just this site it’s the whole network for the Recruitment company. I’m bound because I can’t really put anything on the website saying when it will be up because other than saying “how long’s a piece of string” I can’t give time lines, as I don’t know (sounds like dodgy DNS problem to me).

So here in lies the problem, I’m being bombarded with e-mails, about 50 of them since Saturday… “did you know the website is down”… “… Website down, Please advise”… now come on people… here’s a hint, if the site is down, what do you do? KEEP TRYING… argh!! it’s not rocket science, really, it doesn’t require a doctorate in smugness, it just requires you to keep checking the blinking site. So do us all a flavour, use a small iota of common sense!!

Trains running late and they only tell you why when you get to the station.
Two people in front of you in Starbucks paying for their coffee with a credit card… ffs people… have the right change!!

That’s all people…

Today I will mostly be looking at an exhibit at the Science Museum… yay!! (no really, I’m looking forward to it).

Happy 200th Post to me…. :o)

I’ve read a few interesting things in the news in the last couple of days and thought I’d point them out (because they make for interesting reading if nothing else).

CURRENT AFFAIRS

The first news story is in relation to a film that has recently been release called Shattered Glass. It’s not really the kind of film that interests me, but the news article did. The story is about a Journalist that wrote for New Republic, he wrote about a hacker holding a technology firm to ransom. A journalist at Forbes thought that he had been scooped on a story, a bit of investigation realised the whole thing was made up.

The thing is this, how many more journalists out there are making stories up? At least two others have been caught out by this and who knows how many more there are out there. How can we trust journalists at the end of the day? Look at the press coverage for Sally Clarke, the British solicitor who was accused of murdering her two sons. At the time I thought “guilty as hell” because of the media coverage. But a review of the information and the review of her case proved she wasn’t a murderer. The press made me think she was.

SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY

First comercial space flight is a success!Well as far as it didn’t blow into a million pieces or crash land into the Mojave desert. Although there were a few faults that they are now examining in order to determine if they can compete for the x-prize. For those of you who aren’t aware of what the x-prize is, it’s what this space craft was built for. To get two manned flights into space within one week. OK so there’s probably a bit more to it than that but it’s the essential idea behind it.

SPORT

Several drivers seem to be in agreement with me about the Race at Indianapolis on Sunday, drivers all over the shop are calling for an enquiry. Pointing out the saftey hazards to the drivers and the ones involved in crashes. The marshalls said there were “mitigating circumstances” Yup that would be the three seperate crashes, the debris on the track, the problems at the start, etc, etc, etc. If they’d red flagged the race on the first corner, they probably wouldn’t have had any further accidents, they could have declared JPM’s car and thus allowing him to race the full course rather than 16 laps short of it. There were a lot of mistakes made and personally I feel they need to be addressed before another race is held at the Indy speedway.

ENTERTAINMENT

Oasis have said that they don’t want any drugs backstage at Glastonbury this weekend. OK, boys, what’s wrong? if they’re there do you know that you’re going to take them?

QUOTE OF THE DAY
I thought this might be a good idea, you won’t win any prizes but it may (or may not) get your brain going. You don’t have to guess the person who said it, but give me the film at least

“Gimme the keys, I’ll drive!”

The answer will be provided tomorrow.

I’ve managed to finish that Michael Connelly book, it was really good as well. I have written a review for the book and submitted it to Amazon but knowing them they’ll probably not publish it.

Anyway, it’s a great way to carry on with the Harry Bosh Character, I was a bit sad that Terry McCaleb had been killed off in the book, was quite sad as the last book with him in was quite a while ago (or so it would seem from where I’m sitting). Anyway it kind of introduced a new character to the book, who I’m sure had been in another book but I just can’t remember her. However it was another FBI agent, which kind of makes you think that Harry has a thing for female FBI agents. Never mind eh?

It twists and turns and the end of the book finalises a few things which is a good way to get closure. The book is about the seemingly never ending chase for the Poet who is a serial killer with a twist, he was the former head of the FBI’s Behavoiral Science unit at Quantico. This killer has been the subject of a number of books so reading this you hope that it’s going to be the last one. I won’t give it away if they do catch the Poet or not but it makes for a damn good read whilst you’re trying to find out.