Archive for February, 2005

Thespian photos & continuing experimentation…

Fyse February 28th, 2005

Again, this isn’t the much anticipated account of show week, but rest assured that the account of Me and My Girl’s astounding success is in the pipeline. Big events that provide mountains of blogging material, but no time to write as things happen, pose rather a problem. Considering the amount of time I devote to description of the most inconsequential things, I want to give enough time to things that are actually interesting. The upshot of this is that I never quite get round to writing anything at all. In the mean time, I shall continue as normal…

Actually, if you’re interested, you can now find a load of photos from M&MG in the galleries section of the site. There are photos from rehearsals and social events, as well as backstage. They will most likely be terminally boring to anyone not involved, but feel free to take a look if you have idle moments to fill. There are over one hundred and sixty, so don’t feel obliged to trawl through them all…

I have had yet another morning where attendance to lectures did not feature, but I spent the afternoon in the lab. I’m afraid the week since my last post has not seen significant change, and I am still finding it wholly unedifying. Having finished the first stage of the experiment, I am now not only counting decay events, but also measuring things such as the curvature of lines and the angle between them. Having reached third year undergraduate physics I consider myself above the use of a protractor, an infernal device not used since GCSE, but regression to such primitive methods is obligatory. Proper particle physicists would just get a computer to do all this crap…

In other news, the Cambridge weather has been really irritating of late. As a rule, I have no problem with snow, since any minor inconvenience is more than balanced by its beautifying effect and the fun and frolics it affords. As a kid, snow was a blessing beyond all others, providing opportunities to lose extremities to frost bite, and perhaps even a day off school. There has been a lot of snow falling from the Cambridge skies over the last week or so, but infuriatingly it has not settled once. Even more frustrating than this, however, was trying to take photos of Cambridge in snow last year, when almost every view had some crummy snowman in the foreground. Inebriated students do not make good sculptors. That said, last time it snowed in Cambridge a snow cat appeared in the centre of main court overnight, and photos of it were even put on the official college website. (St Catharine’s College is nicknamed Catz, in case some of you were confused. It wasn’t a randomly chosen animal.)

Tonight I will be doing work, and lots of it. I have two supervisions on Friday, as well as data to analyse for this project, and a very packed social schedule to boot. I must find time to play some pool this evening, though, since we have a crucial match tomorrow evening. The mighty Catz IVths are pushing for promotion to the first division, belying our unimpressive name, and a solid victory tomorrow could see us a long way to achieving our goal. Fingers crossed, eh?

It’s not rocket science…

Fyse February 22nd, 2005

I haven’t attempted a post from my phone for quite a while now. In fact, I haven’t posted in a while at all. This isn’t the long overdue update, however, but a post to share some of my current boredom with you all. How generous am I?!

I’m sitting in the Cavendish Laboratory at the moment, with a projector throwing images from a particle physics experiment onto the table in front of me. The slides come from an experiment at the famous CERN particle accelerator, no less, but trust me when I say it’s no where near as cool as it sounds. The data is from an experiment over 40 years ago, and analysing the images is very much like staring at a cracked ceiling for hours on end. I’m meant to be looking at the probability of a given particle decaying into either 2 or 3 particles, and this is done by looking at photos of tracks in a bubble chamber and counting the number of each type of decay observed.

Now, in the process of reading that you may have noticed a heavy feeling in your eyelids, or perhaps an almost uncontrollable urge to run screaming from the room. Allow me to assure you that the effect is even more potent when experienced directly. I’ve only examined about 15 slides so far, and I can look forward to perhaps another 40. And that’s only on this stage of the experiment.

The advantage of all this suffering, however, is that it gets another module out of the way, and a whole lecture series I don’t need to revise for the exams in June. The experimentation part goes on until a week on Friday, and the write-up is them due in the following Wednesday. It’s gonna be a hoot. Back to the wonderful world of impenetrable spider’s webs…

Random rhyming & rehearsing…

Fyse February 12th, 2005

‘Tis time once more for tales from Fyse,
Both long and tall that shall be spake,
With language florid yet precise,
And thus the idle silence break.

And this is the point where I realise I am embarrassing myself. I wasn’t entirely sober when I wrote that and, having seen a Shakespeare play earlier in the day, was in the mood for some rhyming. But I’m getting ahead of myself. Prepare for the quick-fire update…

Last time I described the busy day ahead of me, a day through which I passed relatively unscathed. I never made it to lectures, needless to say, but the singing workshop in the afternoon was useful. It got more than a little bizarre at times, but even the weirdest of things she got us to do seemed to help. She had a very strong technical knowledge under pinning all her crazy methods, and was always able to describe things clearly. I’ve had singing lessons before, but they were based on classical technique and, as she explained during the workshop, musical theatre singing is slightly different. If being forced to jump round like a lunatic whilst singing helps ‘free up my voice’, then who am I to argue? At least the only people to witness this unedifying spectacle also performed similar lunacies.

The careers event that followed this was entirely useless. Lord knows when I’m gonna get my act together to find a job for the summer, but it’s certainly not going to be till after the show now. Speaking of which, rehearsals are now more frequent and hectic than ever. We have one day of rehearsal left, before a day off on Sunday and the technical rehearsal on Monday. The dress rehearsal is then on Tuesday afternoon before we open that evening. It’s really a quite terrifying prospect.

Brief pause in typing as the fattest fly in the world is politely ushered from the room…

I wrote the beginning of this post late on Thursday evening, having just returned from the ADC Theatre bar. (ADC stands for Amateur Dramatics Club, the main Cambridge student drama society, and owner of the theatre.) I went to the Arts Theatre earlier in the day to see ‘The Comedy of Errors’, which somewhat excuses the random beginning to this entry. Or at least gives some explanation in conjunction with the alcohol. The show was very well done, but unfortunately the auditorium was almost entirely empty and the atmosphere was completely dead. Enjoyable nonetheless, and the standard of the acting was very high. Now for another treat from my drunken ramblings…

‘Twas Wednesday eve our hero came,
Called forth by our conductor grand,
Who then rehearsed, perchance to tame,
That foul and dreaded beast, ‘The Band’.

This rubbish refers to the rehearsal we had with the band on Wednesday. It’s known as a ’sitzprobe’, but I’ve never been furnished with a satisfactory explanation as to why. It was great for us all to get an idea of how things will really sound, especially for the soloists, and everyone was very upbeat after the rehearsal. A degree of tension has crept into proceedings of late as we’ve begun to realise how much there is left to do. At a theatre like the Arts, failure to produce a polished performance isn’t really an option…

Still, I’m sure everything will come together. If my experience in ‘The Sorcerer’ last term taught me anything, it’s that miraculous amounts can be achieved at the last minute. At the moment we have a good show, which I’m sure they audience will enjoy, but we’ve got lots of hard work to make it the slick and professional performance required. Just so long as my tap dancing is sorted by the time my friends come on the Thursday…

Make Poverty History

Fyse February 3rd, 2005

Warning: Grumpy and opinionated content.

You’ve probably noticed the little banner that’s recently appeared on my site, and I strongly recommend you take a moment to visit the ‘Make Poverty History‘ website, and find out about their aims. The organisation is a branch of a worldwide movement, so I’m sure there’s an equivalent in the US too. A friend of mine commented on the new banner earlier this evening, and said something along the lines of ‘I can’t believe you put that on there’. At the time, I don’t think I even responded, but since then I’ve been thinking what an absurdly stupid thing it was to say. (Feel free to explain yourself in the comments section.) There’s nothing ‘uncool’ about supporting a campaign to ease world poverty, and whilst I don’t have one of the wristbands yet, once I do I will be wearing it.

Moving on to less political / confrontational subjects, I have a packed schedule tomorrow. In theory, I should be starting the day with two hours of lectures, but I don’t see that happening. I’ve got a singing workshop tomorrow afternoon, running from 12 till 5, with a lady who’s meant to be extremely good. (Can’t remember her name though.) It’s heavily subsidised by one of the Cambridge drama groups, and loads of the M&MG cast are going along. Then, I have a brief respite before visiting a media careers event, where I will be scouting out the companies involved in popularising science in the vain hope that some of them will have summer internship schemes I can apply for. Finally, I have a three hour rehearsal to get through. If I do make it to my lectures tomorrow, I’ll be looking at a non-stop day of 14 hours. I think I might just have that lie in instead…