Ear lowering exercise

I got my hair cut today. I never know what to say to the question "What do you want done?". I don't know, can't you read my mind? That would be easier. Luckily today, I had planned my return phrase. "This long please, shows length and the same all over." Had a nice silent cut. No nattering about holidays, or the weather, the only communication mid 'compendi facere' (look it up) was when the hairdresser dropped a comb into my lap. "Good catch". Good catch? how could I have not caught it? Lastly comes the dreaded look at the back of your hair. Try and sound like you care, or if you do care, try to sound like you are happy with it. "Is this ok?" Nods. Yeah, yeah thats top stuff, brilliant, yep, thats great. "How about the other side" What do you mean "what about the other side"? Surely the other side is the same! I'm not a Topman model. Nods again. For sure, that looks brilliant, excellent, yep, thanks, top stuff. "Do you have it messy?" she asks. What! I like to call it au naturel or tousled. My nearly two year old niece thinks its messy, but I'm not paying you to say I'm a lazy bum. Lets use some technical terms here please. Yes I have it messy. Finally, I got smacked in the head with a hair-dryer, then had my head gently tousled while candle wax was massaged into my scalp.

I paid £8.50 for the experience, got a free tissue, and now I can see. Bargain.

nuff said

Past my bedtime

Played a gig at Royal Holloway last night. Thats the university, not the prison. First band were on at 12. 12, midnight to you and I. That is way too late. We didn't get on stage until 1:15 in the morning, which was "the hour that doesn't exist" due to the clocks changing. Got the car packed and left at 2:15. Suddenly 2:15 turned into 3:15. Bum. Got home at 5:30 in the morning, made me tired. I have a nice busy week at ui ahead of me, then lots of early starts due to having work commitments, followed by 4 days with a bunch of 7-11 year olds.

Fun gig though, got to enjoy these things while you can.

Make the most of what you've got left

I've recently been counting down the weeks till I finish my course (currently at 6). It's getting quite tedious, all this academia, and I've been looking forward to it all being over. Now though, I feel I've got far too negative, and I'm trying to enjoy these last few weeks. From now on I'll be smiling most of the time, and being positive and happy.

Had two hours of "Reliability Engineering" this morning. That was a test. Next lecture is "Fluid Power". How exciting. There is a reason the lecture theatre has no windows.

I'm still happy.

Digital budget

Following on from David Camerons 'witty' remarks about Gordon Brown being an 'analogue' politician in a digital world, I followed this though through, and found myself rather relieved that the man who sets the budget is analogue, and not digital.

Imagine GB, in the office, someone asks him how much tax we are going to pay. Digital brown has only two answers - on and off. "On" says GB, "lets put tax on" how much? Well on muct be 100%, and off will be 0%. This means no-one will have any money. We need to give people benefits. "Benfits on" comes the answer from Mr Analogue in the corner. Oh, we now need to fund the schools and everything else, where will we get that from? We've run out of money before we started.

Hence, if we want politicians to be digital, we must teach them to pretend to be analogue, much like Casio have done with their pianos. Good idea. What we need is an analogue modelling digital politician. Perhaps we will need politician top boxes, to translate the binary madness into a language us old fashioned analogues can understand. One day all politicians will be digital, we'll turn off the old analogue politicians.

Must make sense to DC, the first new Tory policy. If it aint broke, break it then make something that does the same job, not as well and costs more.

Nuclear Proliferation

With the nuclear campaign groups trying to convince the government to develop "small" nuclear devices, to scare rogue states from developing their own. I got to thinking, why don't we do the same with kids at school? Instead of stopping them from taking knives or weapons, we should provide the responsible ones with small kinves, which will be a deterrent to those naughty ones from bringing in their own knives. Only problem I can forsee is how to decide which ones are the responsible. Perhaps they could nominate themselves?

Never mind

Wrote a song last night. No idea what its about. Time just seems to go about ten times quicker when one is writing music.

Like a bubble, constantly rising.

Today. I attempted to do some work in the library. Wife and I came in in mid morning, having previously spilt a mango duvet on the newly washed white duvet. Bum. Most of the morning, actually all of it, was spent pretending to work, whilst not actually doing anything. The afternoon was much more productive, I wrote a paragraph and a half.

Reading are now 20 points clear, and Leeds have 8 games left 8x3= 24, can't get promoted next week, maybe the week after.

Thats what I call a productive day. Just be glad you don't have to do any academic work with me.

Searching for hay in a needle-stack

It's hard work this journal searching. I've been looking for some human cadaveric test data. Unfortunately, the type I am looking for is almost completely unavailable, due to ethical issues. Easy to get your fingers pricked. With society unwilling to let anyone carry out these tests, the project I'm working on cannot be validated.

Still, got to move all the needles, just in case there is a blade of grass in there. You never know....

Start of a brand new day

Today. I got up at an early 7:15, man I was raring to go. Out of bed, into the shower, washed, dried, clothed, powdered nose. Breakfast. 3 weet-bisks. Made lunch, marmite and peanut butter sandwiches 1 of each respectively. Made tea (1 spoon normal, 1 1/2 earl grey). Took it upstairs, gave it to wife. Emptyed washing machine. Filled washing machine. Got bike out of garage. Put on bike clothes. Left house. Got stones thrown at me by school kids. Went up to them and told them what-for, they were bally scared, said sorry sorry, we won't ever do that again. That was in my head, I actually just meekly carried on. Maybe I uttered an utterance which I shouldn't have. Up the hill some old man drove to within 6 inches of me. Raised my hand in a gesture. Realised it was an old man. Felt bad. Spent rest of journey dodging school run mums and singing softly to myself. Lecture on distillation. Welsh man saying "mole". Next lecture cancelled. Yes. Thought - I'm going to do some work now. Writes blog.

I'm on strike today. As a member of the NUS, I feel it's my duty to support our gallant and brave lecturers in their noble fight for a fair wage.

Facts: lecturers are now paid significantly less than they were 20 years ago, because of the below inflation wage increases. If we want a decent education system, we need the top academics to be rewarded for the work they do, and enough of them to prevent the 50+ hour weeks.

That's why I'm on strike today.

Plus it's raining. Who wants to get wet?

Norris

I have recently become amused with old fashioned names. Norris is a personal favourite at the moment.

Maybe I should be a bit modern, when choosing names for future Munday offspring (don't read anything into that, it's just a bit of fun). I rate Badger as an excellent choice for a young gent. Badger Munday. It's got a ring to it. Perhaps all of the Munday clan could have British animal names. Stoat, Otter and Badger, it's certainly got a ring to it. Vole. I'm becoming more and more excited by the idea. Just for good measure I'll put in Manx Cat, in reference to the in-laws ancestors. Everyones happy.