Well, again it’s been a whole week between posts. Back in the early days of this blog I used to post practically every day, but perhaps I’m now leaning more toward quality than quantity? You look unconvinced.

In today’s post, I bring you three hearty recommendations. The first is for a book I have just finished reading, called ‘How Mumbo-Jumbo Conquered the World’, by Francis Wheen. If you, like me, are occasionally whipped into a fury by the apparent lack of reason in the world, you’ll find Wheen articulates your frustrations beautifully. It’s one of those rare books that if everyone read, the world would be a better place. (If anyone wants to borrow my copy, feel free. Well, anyone this side of the Atlantic.)

Secondly is a great blog I’ve been following. ‘Kong is King‘ is a video diary on the set of the new King Kong movie. I religiously watched all the extras on the ‘Lord of the Rings’ DVDs, and watching footage from the set of King Kong is like seeing a load of old friends again. ‘Weta Digital’ and ‘Weta Workshop’ are again doing all the special effects and miniatures, and much of Peter Jackson’s crew remains the same. (In addition, I know someone who graduated last year and is now working for Weta in New Zealand, so I keep wondering if he’ll crop up at some point.) Andy Serkis is even doing the motion capture for Kong! It’s very interesting, watching the production of a film before you see the real thing, and has certainly built my anticipation.

Thirdly is a quick little thing, but I found it very interesting. The Real Underground shows the differences between the original 1930 map and the 2004 version, and will also morph between them and an actual scale version. You can even toggle a street map on and off. It’s fascinating to see how much the tube map has distorted your mental picture of central London. Well, I thought it was anyway…

There’s only a few days left of term now, and I’ll probably be heading back to St Albans in around a weeks time. I have two supervisions over the next week, on Wednesday and Thursday, but the stressful work of this term is now over. I met a coursework deadline last Wednesday, and though the work wasn’t very good, at least I did it. Actually, that reminds me; I have the viva for that project on Tuesday, and considering how rubbish the project was, that might not be very much fun.

I also had to give a presentation on Friday, which was mildly humiliating. My project is entitled ‘Noise and Deterministic Skeleton in Population Dynamics’. Sounds fun, no? It’s actually reasonably interesting, but my knowledge is pretty severely limited thus far. The presentation therefore outlined my plan for all the work I’m going to do over the Easter vacation, rather than recounting any actual achievement. Things were made worse by the fact that since I am the only 3rd year Physicist doing a project with the Plant Sciences department, I had to do my presentation in a group of 4th years reporting on their six month computer simulation projects. Their presentations were vastly better than mine…

I’m finishing this post at almost 3am because I’ve spent the last two hours trying to sort out my computer. I’ve developed a very high tolerance for crashes, since my computer has long had that tendency, but lately things have been getting ridiculous. I think I’ll have to just reinstall Windows, but not until tomorrow…