quizcustodiet

Sigh. It's all one word again, it appears - it's like now that the bowlers are ticking over again, the batsmen are insisting on their turn at being rubbish! Most depressing statistic for the day - Harmison and Panesar put on more runs for the tenth wicket than any other partnership during the innings. Jones is out for a duck again. Bell is apparently feeling nostalgic for the 2005 series, so has decided to reprise his much-admired bunny role. I wish there was some conclusion to be drawn, but I'm not sure there is - just that England seem to panic when they start doing well, and so stop doing well very quickly. At least they're back in their comfort zone..

I got rejected from both of the internships at the Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology - one without even an interview. This is particularly puzzling, as the writing sample that I prepared was actually for the requirements of the one that I _didn't_ get invited to interview for; I kind of kludged it into the requirements of the other one just on the off chance I might succeed. But apparently not.

In more positive news, the Open University _does_ want me - to teach the course about atomic and quantum physics that I mentioned previously. So hurrah! This was celebrated on Friday evening with Belgian chocolate truffle cheesecake and dessert wine.

In other news, I've been continuing to enjoy Launchcast for its ability to provide background music somewhat suited to my tastes. Thus, five songs that I really like and would never have known about except for Launchcast:
1) 'I Don't Believe You', by The Magnetic Fields
2) 'God of Wine', by Third Eye Blind
3) 'Perfect World' by Simple Plan
4) 'City of New Orleans', by Arlo Guthrie
5) 'Zoe Jane' by Staind

Today I have been mostly... bailing out my lab. Yes, thanks to today's torrential rain, my lab flooded. Sigh. Fortunately this is not the first time, so everything electrical is at least three inches off the floor - nothing was damaged. Just a really tedious day using a wet/dry vac to hoover up the water.

On the brighter side, I get to go to a posh dinner tonight as a thank-you for running a pub quiz during Freshers' Week - hurrah!

Ok. Shameful confession ahead: at the age of 10, I dressed as Mr. Spock for Halloween. I've played online role-playing games based on Anne McCaffrey, Tolkien and Regency England. While home this weekend, I even discovered a binder full of my old Magic: The Gathering cards. (Revised Edition and Ice Age - I hear there have been like 7 more editions since I stopped playing. Ah, well.) I will never successfully pretend not to be a geek. And even so, I'm baffled by a housing development based on Bree and the Shire.

Still, it would be cool to be the security guard. "You Shall Not Pass."

Not England's best day on the cricket field, though I think the BBC's description of Pakistan having 'crushed' England is harsh - they had seven wickets in hand, yes, but only 4 overs left. Three cheers for Jon Lewis, though - he's had a rotten time this summer, time and again making it into the England squad and then being sent home on each first morning. In admittedly perfect conditions, he bowled a beautiful spell - 8 overs, 4 maidens, 2 wickets for 11 runs - which will hopefully keep him in the one day squad. Even, perhaps, the Test squad - it's like having Matthew Hoggard twice! How can it go wrong?

After midnightmelody mentioned it in a comment to another post, I decided to have a play with LaunchCast by Yahoo. For those who, like me, hadn't heard of it before - it's internet radio, but you rate songs as it plays them and it uses those ratings to decide what kind of music you like, and plays you more of that. So far - aside from an apparent conviction that I really like flamenco - it's done quite well by me, certainly for background music.

But the really cool part - at least for those of you who don't think I've sneezed when I say 'Otaku' - is that one of the first ten or twenty tracks it played me was 'Spiderman', by Moxy Fruvous. That's the first thing I've ever heard of them, but I liked it, so hopefully it will play me more.

ETA: That's even cooler! It appears to have given me Moxy because I put Stan Rogers in as a favorite artist! Hurrah!

... just so that I can vote for Barack Obama. Those of you who are interested in the way politics interface with religion may want to have a read of this speech - it outlines why he thinks both the Republican and Democratic parties are currently getting their attitude to religion wrong, and it's one of the most sensible things I've read in American politics for some time.

For those of you who don't want to read the full text, I'll attempt to summarize ( behind a cut. )

A busy weekend all around. In short:
Friday - interviewed for the job of Junior Dean at St. Peter's. Didn't get it, but it's good interview practice if nothing else. One of the other graduate students in my group organized a nets session in the afternoon in order to introduce us furriners to cricket - I'm unbelievably rubbish. In about an hour of 'bowling' I only managed to hit the wicket once. And that was because there wasn't a batsman in the net at the time. I batted for about 20 minutes and only managed to lose my wicket three times. Ah, well - nowhere to go but up.
Saturday - Masoquizm! This is a mirror tournament, where we had six British teams playing matches from the questions used for NAQT's national championship, the ICT. It was excellent fun - I played with three quarters of Somerville's winning University Challenge team from 2002, and we managed to get to the final before losing. Two of the five of us were in the top eight individual performances, though, so I now have a Toblerone as reward. Many thanks to chocaholic7 for obtaining the questions and handling the tournament direction!

Today's been pretty quiet, partially because I felt somewhat fragile after yesterday's celebrations were followed immediately by a Eurovision party. Have done some tidying, worked up applications for a couple more junior dean jobs and played some silly games. Also packed - I'm heading to scenic Buffalo, NY early Tuesday morning for my sister's wedding. Will be away from tomorrow until Wednesday of next week - not sure how much access I'll have to the internet. I'll have my phone, so anything urgent can be texted.

I quite fancy seeing Wyrd Sisters when it's on at the O'Reilly in 4th week - anyone else interested? QuizSoc members and St. John's physicists will each separately see someone they may recognize, and for everyone else there's the joy of Pratchett. I'm up for either Wednesday the 17th or Friday the 19th - let me know if you're interested in coming along!

Off to Windermere (via Birmingham) tomorrow, to attend a GRAD school. This is supposed to teach me all sorts of useful skills, and help me 'develop my core competencies' and other similar buzz-words. Surprisingly, pretty much everyone I've talked to who's been on one has enjoyed it, so I go with some hopes. Internet access is frowned upon, though - apparently it will distract us from thinking the Deep Thoughts we're meant to think about life, the universe and everything. So I won't be reading LJ or e-mail for a week or so - if you really need to get in touch with me, I'll have my mobile phone.