Geek Graffiti

Dear Esther is a gripping Half Life 2 mod which is really more akin to a film which you can walk through. If you don't have Half Life 2, I recommend, at the very least, watching a playthrough video on Youtube. It takes away some of the subtle horror when watching someone else play it, but you do get a feel of the atmosphere.

What I'm really here to talk about, however, is the cave graffiti. Specifically, the one that appears at 7:52 on this video, and which is visible at multiple areas.

It is probably a bad thing that I immediately recognised it as this image of a Helicobacter pylori cell.

Yup, I'm doomed.

Recipe: Honey Joys

I occasionally toy with writing a book entitled "Cooking for Lazy People". Here is a potential entry in the desserts section.

(No photograph, thanks to an uncooperative Bluetooth connection.)

Honey Joys
Recipe adapted from various sources

Ingredients
3 tbs honey
2 tbs butter
2 tbs sugar
2 cups cornflakes
1/2 cup sliced almonds

Preheat oven to 170 degrees C. Line a cupcake pan with paper cases.

In a large bowl, carefully mix almonds and cornflakes. Set aside.

Place honey, butter and sugar in a large saucepan. Heat at medium setting, stirring often, until boiling. Remove from stove.

Add cornflake mixture. Stir gently until cornflake mixture is evenly coated.

Spoon into individual cupcake cases. Bake for 7-10 minutes until lightly browned. Allow to cool completely. Makes about 25 confections.

Easy Going

I don't worry as much as I used to. That's good, I suppose?

Things fall into place on their own.

Patrons of Truth

"You don't use science to show that you're right, you use science to become right."

- xkcd

Scientific research is something of an idealistic profession. You're constantly testing your own observations of the reality around you, and you're always aware that you may have to re-evaluate your current explanation for any phenomena you may encounter. That means having an open mind, and while you must always be prepared to defend your own theories, you also have to be able to accept and account for conflicting observations from another person. In essence, you are never trying to prove yourself right, but rather trying to find out what the truth is, no matter how it may invert your beliefs.

Working in science as a job complicates things. Here, you are expected to produce results. Getting results does not necessarily mean accurately predicting the outcome of an experiment before doing it; it can also mean getting an unexpected result and then figuring out what it means, and then doing a second experiment to show that the revised theory is plausible. However, the whole figuring-out process is long and painful, taking shots in the dark, as it were, so most of us would like to be correct from the beginning.

That creates a lot of pressure to "get things to work." You have a theory that something should do something you expect, and so you spend months proving that it does, even while all your experiments methodically keep failing. And it is upsetting, because you have ownership over that theory - the need for it to be right, for you to prove it - although, technically, you should have no ownership. You are supposed to be impartially seeking the truth, and therefore should be prepared to discard unsupported theories.

But it is hard to be impartial when you are working for a salary, or when you are a student on a time-limit, and when you urgently need data to publish.

It is a tough thing to balance out. And once you've discovered something important, and have been acknowledged for it, it is even harder to accept conflicting evidence which may appear later. But you have to. As a scientist, you agree that seeking the reality of the truth matters more than receiving adulation over a lie.

If you don't, you aren't a scientist. You're an attention-seeker.

Green Jelly Beans Linked to Acne!

This comic made me laugh out loud.

And then the alt-text killed me.

Thank you, xkcd. You have made my day.

Love

I give it readily. I have trouble receiving it.

If I could choose my faults, this would not be one of them.

Shark Smile

I just placed number 40 on the leaderboard for Sydney Shark (total score: 4,285,663). I also scored new records in killing/destroying every type of target except, oddly enough, scuba divers. Which, uh, probably means that I have a lot of stress which needs to be pummeled out.

This has not been a good day. There is an experimental result I badly need to verify, one which I have been working towards for a year. We have a big meeting on Monday, and I would have liked to have had the result ready by then. I was even prepared to work through as much of the weekend as was necessary. Unfortunately, the particular tool I needed, which should have arrived yesterday, is still nowhere to be seen.

I'm so close, yet miles away from my target. I've worked so hard for this. And yet it's been so hard to check if what I've created is what I need. Everything which could have gone wrong did go wrong. It feels as if the world is twisting whatever it can to ensure I don't succeed.

It feels as if everyone I'm depending on is deliberately setting out to infuriate me.

I left early today. My expressions broadcast my emotions readily, and I was upset after finding out precisely why the delivery had been delayed, so I thought it best to take myself away from everyone else. As I was passing out the door, my co-supervisor was walking in. I thought I smiled as I bade him farewell. I can't have done too good a job of it, given how he jumped out of my path so quickly he almost fell over.

What a nice day to make fools of others.