Sweet zombie jesus, what the hell was that wooshing sound? 2007 you say? What? The whole year? Done? Crap.

As difficult as it is for me to believe, it’s two thousand and eight. That being 2007 years since an arbitrary date picked by a monk called Dionysius Exiguus (or Dennis the Little in the common tongue). Let me quote from Wikipedia to illustrate just how arbitrary our year numbering is;

When he devised his table, Julian calendar years were identified by naming the consuls who held office that year — he himself stated that the “present year” was “the consulship of Probus Junior [Flavius Probus]“, which he also stated was 525 years “since the incarnation [conception] of our Lord Jesus Christ”. How he arrived at that number is unknown.

So he could have, in all probability, simply pulled out a number he thought sounded about right straight out of his cushy monk arse and decreed it year 1, rather than year 0 (which doesn’t actually exist, but would have been much more sensible and useful).

2007 was good.
In terms of things geological; I got my MSc research done, went to Hawai’i to show the world what I’d achieved and launched my geology-themed blog goodSchist around the same time my favourite snowboarding mountain erupted.
In terms of the internet, I got locked into a YouTube battle I should have thought twice about before entering (not because I can’t hold my own, but because very few people online know how to have a fucking scientific debate without resorting to school-yard name calling). I was deeply saddened by the untimely passing of Skeptics’ Guide to the Universe co-host Perry DeAngelis. I also discovered and then proceeded to waste unseemly amounts of time on Facebook – a site I will become more and more dependant on in order to keep in touch with my friends as I branch out into the world.
In terms of my life in general; I joined a gym and lost quite a few kilos before I took off to Hawai’i, but I’m pretty sure they’re all back on now (though they’ll no doubt disappear as I trek through the Aussie outback in the next couple of years). I remained dirt poor throughout what was my last full year as a student. I was instrumental in winning a lawn bowls competition at the beginning of the year, landing me and 7 other geologists with a pallet of beer (that’s 120 dozen, or 1440 individual bottles/cans), which we are still trying to finish. I also met a girl (and that’s all you need to know about that : )

So all in all, a pretty tip top year.

2008 brings us many hopeful prospects. First and foremost, it’s the International Year of the Potato (apparently) and closer to my interests, it’s also the International Year of Planet Earth (about time I reckon). 2008 is also the year I’ll finally hand in my MSc thesis and get my life back on track by starting a career in the mighty world of geology (most probably related to mining up the Australian outback). What started more than 5 years ago with the thought “I should probably get back to getting a degree”, is almost at a close with the thought “I should probably get a damn job”. Before I can make the final steps towards the latter of those thoughts, I need to finish my thesis, so I’ll leave this combined retrospect/prospect post here and get back to writing about magnesium isotopes.

I hope everyone out there has a fun and happy 2008 without putting too much more CO₂ into the air.

Yep. My research has taken me to many places. The electron microprobe laboratory, the geochemistry lab, and my office. All of which reside within a massive 30 metre radius. But later today, I’m on a plane, off to Hawai’i for the Lunar and Planetary Institute Workshop on the Chronology of Meteorites and the Early Solar System (MetChron 2007), (and here’s a link to the pdf of my abstract, if you’re interested).

Since I’m getting my tickets paid to and from Hawai’i, thanks to travel grants, I’ve also decided to spend a few days bumming around on the beaches on Maui and the Big Island while I’m there. It’d frankly be a waste not to waste time on the beach. Double negatives aside, I’m quite excited I’m getting overseas again. The last time I departed the sweet shores of Aotearoa was back in 2002 on my fourth trip to the UK (a pretty sweet trip, but so many years ago).

Here’s the thing. I’m going to be living cheap. Really cheap. I’m a lowly student with little cash to spend on luxuries like accommodation or washing clothes. That combined with my OCD-like minimalist philosophy mean I’m obsessing with packing as little as possible to survive for the 12 days I’ll be away. Since I’ll be living cheap, I want to take as few valuables as I can deal with, to the extent I’m considering leaving my precious (now fixed) iPod at home and going music-free for almost 2 madness-inducing weeks. At the moment I’m taking as many hole-free pairs of boxers and socks as I can find, combined with a few t-shirts, 3 pairs of shorts and pair of jeans. I may even take a towel, but I’m still debating whether that sensible or not….

I want a single small bag to carry everything, but taking one small carry-on bag on a trip for two weeks will no doubt arouse suspicion with those overly-paranoid goombas at customs. So rather than risking the rubber glove, I’m going to “pack” all my clothes into a bigger backpack, check that through into luggage, and then discard it once I get to Hawai’i, along with my less-liked clothing once they’ve been worn to a point where they’d normally need washing. If I need more clothing I’ll just go to the “WalMart, which I believe is where all the cool kids in the America States get their clothing.

So, now I’ve no doubt set off red flags in the governmental agencies which read blogs, with my talking of buying clothes at WalMart, I’m going to get back to “packing”. I’ll try and keep updates going if I can get to the internets while on the islands.

Woo, that just gave me a huge stroke of déjà vu for some reason. I should get some sleep.

I don’t normally review films or give my opinions publicly on them. Last night I went to see Spiderman 3 and I was so incensed by it, I feel I simply must say what’s on my mind regarding this film.

Spiderman 3 is a horrible, horrible movie. It is worse than Spiderman 1, which I didn’t think much of either. I put S1 on par with Daredevil. It wasn’t wholly awful, there were some entertaining parts, so here’s my positives and negatives:

The Good:

• Bruce Campbell’s performance as a French resterauntuer was simply fantastic. Hilarious in a John Cleese-style motif, Campbell was brilliant in its execution.
• Peter Parker walking down the street thinking he’s the shiz niz, after submitting himself to Venom, was also hilarious.
• Tobey Maguire can play a bad guy very well. He should be type cast as such. His other character acting skills I’ll get to in the bad.
• The action scenes were fantastic to watch. As you’d expect.

The Bad:

• Tobey Maguire can’t act unless he’s playing a complete bastard. As Peter Parker he had one facial expression; benign retardation.
• The movie was about 1 hour too long. Spiderman 3 would have been much better had they shortened or even cut out the scenes relating to the relationships of Peter Parker, Mary-Jane et al.
• There was no explanation for the venom creature. A meteorite landed and it crawled out. Coincidentally in a time and place where the only people around, in New York city mind, were Peter and Mary-Jane. What!? The movie spent 2.5 hours getting to little point, and they couldn’t give any background for the main enemy!?
• A portion of the venom creature was indentified by a physicist as looking like “a chondritic meteorite of the 70s”. No it didn’t, and I know it.
• At the end of the movie, when Spiderman races to save Mary-Jane in the finale battle-royale, he leaps from building to building and moves in front of a giant American flag. What!? This isn’t a moment of patriotism. It’s a man with power racing to save the woman he loves. This is not an action American at its base. I have many american friends, but seriously, if you’d been sitting in the same theatre I was, i.e, one not in the US, the overwhelming mutter at this scene was a whole-hearted “fuck off!”. American patriotism has no place in an international film like Spiderman. Seriously? Fuck off.

And I’ll leave it there. Save your cash, rent the DVD. It’s not worth a cinema ticket to see. And talking of the price of a cinema ticket, Sam Raimi and Sony owe me at least half of my money back.

I give Spiderman 3 a mark of 45%.

This time last year I made a list of new years resolutions. You know, the things that sound great and you never get around to? Well I managed some, and half-arsed others. So in review, I managed to complete the following;

• Get my drivers license – I have my restricted license, now I have to sit my full (NZ has weird driving license rules)
• Cut down on drinking – I barely had a chance to drink last year

And these are the things I did half-arsed or didn’t manage;

• Pick up my grades at uni – to be fair I did improve in the second trimester compared to the first. I’m deep into my research now, so I’m through.
• Eat better and lose some weight (10Kg) – I’ve not lost weight, although I’ve not tried.
• Get more sleep – Didn’t happen either. I need to get this sorted out.
• Get some decent exercise done – maybe join a gym – I did Kung Fu for a while and it was fun until I started injuring myself every time. I blame my weight for this.

So that leaves me with this years resolutions. I’m not going to suggest proposals as grand as PZ Myers (those are some fantastic wishes, BTW), as I need to keep things reasonable, so here are some of my goals in two thousand and seven;

• Get my research and thesis done within the calendar year. I don’t want to be at school much longer as I’m sick and tired of the poverty.
• Lose weight, eat well, exercise and get more sleep. The usual better living goal. Let’s see if I can manage it this year
• Be nicer to people. Seriously, I’ve been becoming a real cunt in recent years. I’m being a dick simply to get attention. My people-hating hassle-others-as-self-defence scheme has to change or I’m going to lose a lot of friends
• Continue in simplifying my life by reducing the things I own. I’ve been over possessions for quite some time and I still have a lot of things I need to get rid of, or find convergent solutions for

That’ll do for now. Sleep time.

Here’s some wicked-looking cushions that are shaped and textured like rocks. I’ll have some of these in a corner of my house. When I have enough money for a house. And enough to buy a few dozen of these cushions. Which I can’t imagine are cheap. In my opinion this would be the ultimate way for a geologist to relax.

Sourced from Boing Boing. The manufacturer is the French company Smarin Design.

I used to play with Lego a lot when I was young, I attribute it as being a contributing factor in my development as a fully-fledged geek. I also like Star Wars when I was young, also a contributing factor. It should have come as no surprise then, although it did, to discover that Lego has produced a collector’s edition Death Star set.

I remember the rainy days of my youth, before video games and the internet took over as my primary pass-times, being wholly devoted to making a new Lego “thing” out of bits of another Lego “thing”. I’m far too impatient these days, but just as demonstration of hpw extreme some people are, here’s two time-lapsed videos of the Death Star being built in Lego;

Remember how I said I’m too impatient these days? Well to emphasise that, I hereby agree with Scott Johnson that merely watching these videos, even in time-lapse form, makes me want to lie down and snooze. Urgh.

As a side note, I say “Lego” as the plural of Lego. I think saying “Legos” sounds retarded.

This image makes me smile:

Not only has the Akismet plugin spared me from wading through the filth that is comment spam, but it has done so silently and to an affect I am wholly impressed by. There is another point I am impressed by, in that there have been 1035 spam comments and pingbacks posted to my blog over the last 15 days, which equates to approximately 69 a day. This manner of spamming is something I had not had a grasp of the magnitude of, so I would like to express my respect to the developers involved in Akismet, and my continuing derision to those who spam.

This very sad piece of news makes me a very sad panda. Comedy Central have demanded YouTube remove all Daily Show clips. Which is a bit of a bitch, since I don’t live in America, so the only version of the Daily Show I can reasonably expect to see legally is the lame International Version once a week on C4. C4 being the channel that is barely broadcast, more yelled from the top of a transmission tower located on the Moon, unless you have cable or satellite TV. Of which i have neither. Since I’m a poor student.

I mean, fair enough, it’s their content and they own the copyright. But it’s a daily news show of which you can’t buy DVDs. it’s not like they’d be losing much business, if any. But hey, if Comedy Central want to be a bunch of cunts, no worries. I’ll just have to “pirate” the show in another manner.

In the last few days I’ve had an upsurge in the amount of comment spam I get on yorrike.com. Today alone I had on the order of 100 spam-filled trackbacks and comments to wade through. So I did something about it.

I hate spam.

Turns out the screen on my Powerbook is so thin, that a bit of sunlight on it’s back will make my screen look like this:

This is the Apple logo on the back of my laptop shining through to the front of the screen. The logos used to have their own lights in the days of old, but now they are lit via the LCD backlight, thus leaving a bit of a light hole in the LCD backing. Quite annoying, but nothing a strip of gaffa tape didn’t fix : )