h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I dunno... I'm not a sports fan generally. Still since my father and grandfather are avid cricket fans, I don't have musch choice sometimes!

Sorry it's been a while between posts but I've been in Shropshire with Becky, trying to explain to her that you can't stroke sheep cos they just run away. Unfortunately she was determined, but then so were the sheep. Finally I found her a horse to play with, which cheered her up a little.

And once again I see you have all these strange things after your name... Ace I get, but muse? Guru? Please explain...

S

I dislike sheep. Sheep are bad... well... they're okay as long as they are either a) lambs or b) not in the same place as me...

Guru... info on Gurus is here: http://www.h2g2.com/Gurus

Muse... I don't know if you've come across the Guardian angels, well the muses are sort of like them... only trouble is, I can't find the like atm...

A woman of many talents, obviously!

Haven't got long so I'll be brief.

Looking forward to going back to uni, ie 2nd year physics...? It'll be a barrel of laughs, no worries!!

Plus sheep are great. They just have a bad press.

S

I looked at my timetable today. I actually have more contact hours if possible than last year. And 2 5.15s.

So I'm not looking forward to it... and knowing my luck I'll have a prac. on monday, too...

Bad luck. Still, at least you HAVE a timetable. We don't get ours till we get back.

On the plus side, I have completed and almost fully understand the horrible booklet I got over the summer. Just try me on partial differential equations and you'll see what I mean!!

Well, OK, you don't have to I guess.

S

I could do pdes... i got my best mark on the paper with them in....
...but the emphasis is on could. I'm gonna have to start brushing up this month, I can't remeber a thing!

It's not that hard... well, not once you spend a few hours doing questions anyway!

What I'm really proud of from last year is my Relativity mark (85%), but unfortunately this was balanced by my Astrophysics mark (48%). Shame really. Still we have exciting things like entropy, statistical mechanics and quantum mechanics to look forward too. Whoopee-doo.

S

*looks at you with respect*

I cannot get my head around relativity. At all. I must've done quite well on astrophysics, cuz I passed the astro/phases of matter paper without being able to do phases of matter at all...

The trick with Relativity is NOT getting your head round it... if you try to understand it you'll never get it. Just let the knowledge flow. And use the Force, of course!

Astrophysics to me was a matter of being deadlily (is that a word?) bored in lectures and realising on the night before the exam that I knew nothing and tried to cram in things like the virial theorem and the definition of pressure in stars. Urrrg.

Going back to Nottingham on Saturday! (Two weeks before the start of term... things to do, people to see, you know how it is... )

S

I loved astrophysics, happily we didn't cover the Virial theorum this year, I don't think...
I know that about relativity. But the exam questions this year seemed designed to see if you actually understood it, rather than if you could just use the equations... hence my low mark on them.

Oh I understood it... though it took me two days of rewriting my notes about five times!

Still let's leave this generally depressing conversation. Do you know any decent web sites to wander aimlessly around? (Apart from this great organ of course! )

S

The open diary is a good place to go to if you want reassurance that other ppl are more depressed than you: http://www.opendiary.com someone recently reccomended http://www.africam.com I think it was for webcams of giraffes & elephants etc... I've recently been reading up on http://www.radio.cz/english - Radio Prague 'cuz I'm going there to protest see http://www.dropthedebt.org erm....
this page http://xenu.phys.uit.ntom/c+-.html is good for a laugh if you've done any programming at all... http://www.brunching.com/toys/toy-cyborger.html this is also good for a laugh, and have a look around the site for the Alanis Morrisette lyric generator and the random bar joke generator...
...and of course, if you're a physicist you really should have been here: http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/astropix.html

that do you

Fantastic... ta v. much!

You obviously get around the Net a lot. That C+- thing was great! I haven't had the chance to look at the rest yet, but I'm off back to Nottingham tomorrow (=free internet!!!) so I shall definitely have a glance, so to speak!

Personally I llike to stick with Zed (www.verbalvoodoo.co.uk) though I'm sure that's just a matter of personal preference...

S

oooh I shall have a look at that... not a site I'd been to before!

if you want any more links from my bookmark file be sure to let me know...

Sorry it's been a while... I'm back in Nottingham now and only just managed to find a computer (in the library!).

Send me some more links... some of those ones were really funny!

Hoped you liked Zed's page. If you know any publishers be sure to let them know about it! By the way, did you find the poem 'Mixing Physics with Romance'...?

S

http://www.escape.ca/~dcc/phys/humor.html - physics humour, some of which is funny, some of which is not...
http://www.emode.com/ -take a personality test! you know you want to...
http://www.dur.ac.uk/~d81c1k/ Quin's page, very amusing...
http://www.joecartoon.com/reddot/blender.html <-- you've probably seen this already... if not... do so now.
and finally http://www-csag.cs.uiuc.edu/individual/pakin/complaint make a complaint...

I read that poem. I really like it...

Wow, thanks for all the links!

The last two don't seem to be working, for some reason... still, never mind.

Ever been to www.thespark.com? You'll regret it if you haven't. They have the BEST tests. Honest.

S

wierd, they're both okay for me... the other thing you can try is my favourite astronomy pictures: http://www.joanna-d.co.uk/darkestnight/rise.html a bit of a waste of bandwidth, but there you go...

and yes I have been to thespark they're cool. I can't remember what percentage of a bitch I was, though...

Got those links to work... that blender one's vile though!!

Your pictures are fantastic. Keep up the good work.

Now if you'll excuse me I have to go and read some more of Zed's diary.

S

I enjoyed rreading snippets of her language.... Zobo Creat wasn't it?

d'you know her irl?