Hands Falafels Weddings

Hello everyone. It's been an exciting week.

I threw a falafel party.

It was possibly the first truly successful social event I have ever hosted. 50% of the playlist was purchased in a charity shop the day before the event, and literally the only thing we did was eat falafel. Economical, simple, delightful. Falafel is the future of parties. It's incredibly easy to make. I have been envisioning a future in which all parties invovle a large amount of falafel, and it is beautiful.

I went to a wedding.

My cousin got married, which was great. I saw my sisters, which was great.

Lost my hat.

Still love weddings. All the Lovells of my generation are married now, excepting myself, my sisters, and a couple of cousins, including this handsome rogue:

The pretty one (on the left)

Get in touch if you're interested, I'll see what I can do.

Even my course has been pretty interesting lately. I've been learning about Biomechatronics. Today I read a paper about the long term ethical concerns of Brain-Computer Interfacing. Will human beings share a hive mind? Will our earthly minds become eternal? Will society be divided into two classes of being? Is it wrong to kill bees? Is there a bee heaven?

My friend Henry is going a kill a queen bee today. He says it's for the 'good of the hive'. He's beginning to sound like a bee.

Would you like to know about a lab I did the other day? 

You definitely do.

It's about the myoelectric signals that control your fingers.

Here is the signal:

 Here is the signal reflected in the x-axis, filtered to eliminate its high frequency component, and normalised (amplified by a constant so that the maximum amplitude is 1):

 Here is an overlay of the corresponding muscular force data, and the computed predicion of muscular force based on a mathematical model that relates the normalised, full wave rectified, low-pass filtered electromygraphic signal to muscular force.

They're pretty similar. That's good news because it means that we can use surface electrode data from somebody's arm to control a prosthetic hand. It's not actually quite that simple, and it gets wibbled around when you do it in real time, but it's getting better all the time.

That's enough of that.

That's enough of this.

I dated your sister Mary Pat a couple of times until you told me not to anymore

If you read last blog, you learnt all about France, a country famed for it's abundance of sharp downhill bends and gravel. I'm so good at the words that I forgot to tell you all about the pictures. Sit back, relax, buckle up and enjoy the fun that is having other people show you their holiday photos.

In France there are cars, tractors and even beautifully framed silos. If you're very good then your nice Dad might let you use his camera while he's driving around.

Claire (little sister) has gone to Cambridge. Everybody thinks she's very clever. 

It's the end of an era for the Lovell family, Mummy and Daddy are by themselves at home with only Ruth Lovell for company. We've all sort of flown the nest. If we all become teachers then we can be at home together at holiday time forever and ever. Maybe my parents can retire to Sheffield and I can also retire and spend the whole time climbing with Father. I guess Mum can keep working so that we can still eat food.

I'm going to a Halloween party (don't tell my mum) a la maison de mon meilleur ami Paul Wallace. I want to dress up as Ned Ryerson, but I don't know how I'll do the jacket.

I get quite excited thinking about pretending to be Ned Ryerson for an entire evening.

"Who are you supposed to be?"

"Now don't tell me you don't remember me, because I sure as heck fire remember you!" 

Actually now that I've written that down I've started to think it might become pretty boring pretty fast. Maybe I should make little business cards. The fluffy collar is the hardest bit.

My course is pretty interesting now. I'm learning about robot arms and teaching robots to play football (eventually). Let's look at that wizard cat again.

Next time I might just do wizard cat, no words. Need more gifs.

J'ai mal a la tete.

Let me tell you a story. If you’ve seen me in the past month then you’ve probably heard it already because I think it’s much more exciting than it really is.

About a month ago I was having a dream; I can’t remember what about. I woke in a state of unusual bliss. I was outside. It was sunny and I was nestled within the fold of an unusually comfortable ditch. It was a nice place to wake up, but I couldn’t remember falling asleep there. I hoisted my head a little to take in my surroundings. It felt heavy. Somebody had left a bike at my feet. Ignorant bliss began to give way to disquieting curiosity.

“Dad?” I asked. It felt as though my father should have been there, but my childish plea yielded no response. I decided to get up, and managed on the third try. A dog was barking, then a man was saying "Bonjour?".

“Uhh – Bonjour.” I said to the man. He was on the other side of a short fence. Why was the man talking French? 

"Um..." I said. I felt funny. I put my hand to my head and looked around.

wow

I spent about five seconds basically by myself in the middle of the French countryside with absolutely no idea how I came to be there. It was immensely surreal and a little bit scary. By the time ten seconds had elapsed, I was beginning to piece together a 'banged my head' theory, and I think I even managed to say "Parle vou anglais?" to my new only friend in the world. After that my Dad arrived and rescued me. There was a short car ride, of which I have no recollection, followed by lots of molly coddling and about two days of lying down all the time and showering with the door unlocked.

What else happened over summer?

I turned 21 and became a proper adult

I stroked a French kitten

I went to some very fun birthday parties

I'm really good at kubb

Also I went into the peak district for a couple of days with my course mates and now we're all best friends forever. We climbed a mountain and everything.

I'm now the proud owner of a Tilley hat (big thanks birthday benefactors). Stuff really can make you happy.

I've basically forgotten about everything else that happened because I was so excited about falling off my bike.

Hopefully blog will be more regular / substantial / conventionally formatted in future.

goodbye

Collected Works

Well it's midnight. I'm not very sleepy because earlier today I spent about four hours sleeping on the floor of my front room. I'm not sure why that happened.

My summer is about to kick off. I'm not doing anything right now because I set aside a couple of weeks to prepare for my seemingly inevitable resits, but then passed all my exams. This was an embarrassingly surprising turn of events. The third years on my course all say that second year is the hardest year, so if I learn how to try at anything then it might not be too late to make something of myself.

I've been making most of my time at home, investing in my relationship with my cat. She hurt her leg and was limping everywhere. Apparently it was very sad at first, but I only saw the funny cute part where she was hopping around. She's all better now.

My friend has a blog where he writes all about books he's been reading. Very good. Here is a review I wrote about the game 'BioShock: Infinite', a game I found time to play from start to finish despite all the important things I am doing:

"Yes, very fun. You can shoot the baddies with guns, but also you can make them die from crows. This central crow/gun mechanic doesn't really get old. Your girlfriend is from outer space and she gives you money all the time.

All of the islands are flying, and your heart rate too will be elevated when the puzzling narrative quantum leaps from here to the next. At the end of the game you will think "Oh maybe I get it" and "It sure would be good to play that again and gain a more insightful understanding into the statements it makes regarding human nature and our destructively selfish pursuit of personal redemption"

11/10 would set fire to hands again."

Here's an idea I had when I was watching The Hobbit II:
"If Smaug stopped protecting that treasure and everyone could just grab it, would the value of treasure plummet massively? Is he inadvertently safeguarding the global economy of Middle Earth?"

Look at these Russian kids lol they are my fave.

Soon I will have done so many activities that there won't be room to fit them on this exciting blog. For now we must content ourselves with this.

This is mostly about the film Groundhog Day

I've been driven to updating my blog through a combination of exam time procrastination and blog-neglect based guilt. I'm concerned that having these factors as my main motivation will result in a relatively unentertaining post. I have an exam in Hillsborough that starts in two and a half hours. I've created a Facebook event inviting people to come and play Risk at my house, and I'm sad that nobody has said they are coming yet. I rewrote the lyrics of BBK's 'Too Many Man' especially for it as a promotional item:

Shorty I rep Risk okay,

Monday to Sunday like Risk all day

You're fearful and tearful, I'm cheerful and giving you an earful; you've never been rekt this way 

Man get shook when they see me play

Pass the red dice then see me slay

Seem happy when we start the game but they're always bare vexed when they go away

YOU NEED TO PUT A HORSE ON THERE 

YOU NEED TO PUT A HORSE ON THERE

THERE'S TOO MANY MAN, TOO MANY MANY MAN, 

TOO MANY MAN, TOO MANY MANY MAN

I'm pretty sure that's fantastic. It's only been up for like half an hour, so the call from Reach Records probably won't come until tomorrow. 

Risk is a fantastic game. I'm not sure why. It's like the game itself isn't fun, but the half hour before it starts is inexplicably thrilling. It's like the rush you get before you dive into ice cold water, or during the setup time of a paintball game. Your mind and body ready themselves for an intense physical, mental and emotional challenge. If you lose, the game is always disappointing, but if you win, it's like all the grief and frustration of the last six hours is paid back three times over in the glory of your victory. It's basically a form of gambling that uses personal trauma as currency.

Why do we like what we like? I think we kind of choose what we want like a lot of the time. Like why love cats, or hats, or Risk or Groundhog Day? These are all fantastic things, but there are loads of fantastic things. How do you pick which ones you want to really treasure? It seems to me that professing love for many of these things actively increases the love I have for them. I was reading about Groundhog Day today when I should have been revising. Because it's got a relatively moralistic narrative about the human condition, loads of people of various religions understand it as kind of allegory for their own belief. Especially Buddhists, but also like everyone else. Director Harold Ramis writes:

'It always seemed ironic to me that it didn’t lead people to recognize the commonality of all their points of view, but rather, "This must be about us and only us.'

Interesting. My bud Dave Stewart thinks it's a poisonous celebration of basic moralistic self sufficiency, but I see it as an exploration of the dissatisfaction of worldly pleasure and the (seemingly) inescapable burden of our selfishness. It's after Phil tells Rita that he's "come to the end of [himself]" that he is enabled to love other people, and is thus set free from his perpetual unhappiness. For me, the most important message of Groundhog Day is the diagnosis of selfishness as the disease that has dissatisfaction as its symptom. Obviously from there I would springboard into our need for an omnibenevolent deity to liberate us from our own nature, but that's not really what the film is really about. It's a funny coincidence that most things we see convince us of the truth of what we already believe. But believe this: Groundhog Day is a fantastic film. One reviewer writes:

"Certainly I underrated it in my original review; I enjoyed it so easily that I was seduced into cheerful moderation. But there are a few films, and this is one of them, that burrow into our memories and become reference points. When you find yourself needing the phrase This is like "Groundhog Day" to explain how you feel, a movie has accomplished something."

When's the last time you watched Groundhog Day? What did you think about it? What does that say about you? If you've never seen it, hit me up around February second next year. Maybe after we've  watched it we can have like an essay writing competition or something.

Cool, groovy. Enjoy your summers, kids. 

Cat Tank

We've put the cat in a fish tank and we're not sure how she feels about it.

She seems a little uncertain, but also generally unphased; this is mostly how she feels about everything except ham and fish food. In fact it was with these very delicacies that we put her at ease following her distressing transition into her new place of residence.

The fish tank is as large as it is ugly, and would probably be wasted on the dull, translucent guppies who tirelessly roam the fifteen litre cube of yellowed water on far side of the room. A cat, however, can be easily housed without excessively burdening one's conscience.

"She doesn't look happy." Says my sister.

"When does the cat look happy?" I ask. She acknowledges the validity of my point. Cid is sometimes incredibly vocal, but those times tend to be between the hours of 1 and 3 AM. Presently, she is regarding us both with her default expression of inscrutability and vague discontentment. She is sat upright, as she often is when looking out of a window, which is effectively the case. Stroking induces a low pitched purring that echoes pleasantly around the glass chamber, and any attempt to pick up is met with loud hissing - both very normal behaviours.

The tank has a kind of glass 'inner lid', with only a small, rectangular opening in the centre. We toy with the idea that, like some of my more opinionated course mates, Cid does not acknowledge the existence of the glass ceiling. Ruth drapes a purple scarf over it to make sure that she knows she can climb out, and eventually she does. It is very cute because her tiny hind paws press up against the glass while she scrambles out of the little cat hole.

// END OF VERY CUTE ANECDOTE

It's Easter time and Jesus is still alive. As the Sunday in question draws near, I am increasingly inclined to incite the following call-and-response among my brothers and sisters in the Lord:

"He is Risen"

"He is Risen Indeed!"

"[Proclamation of delight]"

What a joyous time indeed. If some eager clergyperson / regenerate fellow engages your attention with talk of the good news over the next few weeks, why not give it a second thought? The intellect is steered by the will, and the man who never doubts his own world-view is unlikely to be justified in his thinking. If you're curious at all about the whole Easter thing, a good thing to read would be one of the biblical accounts of Jesus life. Who is this man? Why did so many of his contemporaries think him to be alive when his death was so undeniable? All this and more in any one of these surprisingly historical documents.

// END OF UNABASHED PROSELYTISATION

Yeah, I think I'm done.

I spent most of this morning writing a reading summary, which is a bit rubbish because it's all about the loss of information. You spend two and a half hours working and you only get 100 words to show for it.

Have fun every one, happy Easter holiday fun time.

// END OF BLOG POST

I am a Film Critic Now

Yesterday evening I went with my friend Arthas to a local cinema to see Jupiter Ascending.
[SPOILERS FOLLOW BUT IT'S NOT A FANTASTIC FILM SO I WOULDN'T WORRY ABOUT
IT]

Jupiter Ascending is about a girl called Jupiter Jones, who seems to spend most of the film in ironic freefall awaiting the reliable rescue of space-werewolf Channing Tatum (sigh). Channing Tatum does not fall because he always wears nice leather future-boots that allow him to surf 'differential equation waves'. Perhaps Channing Tatum does not understand how his boots work and is just trying to impress the random earth girl he met by sounding sciencey.

All of the freefalling and spaceships and planets were in headache-inducing 3-D, and yet the characters were still pretty monodimensional. The eponymous protaganist's only realy contribution to the narrative is that her DNA makes her a space princess. Other than that she just gets rescued a lot.

The worst part of the film is probably the conclusion, which features JJ celebrating her newfound sense of entitlement at the prospect of owning the planet by flying / making out with Channing Tatum. As far as I can tell, the message of the film is that it's okay to be useless because you are inherently special and maybe one day you can go out with Channing Tatum.

The best parts of the film are all the scenes with Idris Elba in. It's not even regular Idris Elba, he's all shiny like a rare Pokemon card. I also enjoyed the bit where one of the characters stated that 'bees undestand royalty', not as a poetic statement but as an actual scientific explanation of otherwise nonsensical events.

11/10 would be underwhelmed by inascusable pseudoscience again.

Also it is a very impressive publicity stunt that the movie has been released at the same time that Jupiter is actually visible in the night sky. Joe Chan and I were insisting to Jessie Hong that it was probably a planet, who was counter-insisting that it was definetely a star. We were right.

As good as this film was, it was not even the film highlight of my week. This is because Monday was GROUNDHOG DAY!!!

The last time I tried to watch Groundhog day, nobody came but my most reliable friend Martin Sherlaw. This time, there were about 15 people gathered round a warm fire, tucked under blankets in my front room, watching the most rewatchable movie of all time.

 

 

 

 

You'll laugh, you'll cry, it'll change your life

It was everything I ever dreamed it would be, and with any luck we can do it all again on February 2nd next year.

Also I'm a vegetarian now. One of the things I've learnt at university is that you don't have to be a hippie to make morally informed decisions.