Stars, Morse code and Bob Dylan

Living in a city means giving up two things: silence and the night sky, both of which are all the more special on rediscovering them every time I return to the coast.  Beyond the university bubble of student loans and bursaries the endless electric lights cast out anything save the brightest stars, ostensibly showing there isn’t much past the atmosphere.

Between solvation models and exam revision I’ve made it my goal in the holidays to get my dad learning guitar again. Although I’ve been teaching him sporadically whenever I come down it’s been hard to get him to stick at it in between. So, in an attempt at providing the guilt required to spur him on I made him a tab book of all his favourite songs, then my brothers and I combined forces to purchase his very first guitar. I’ve just got to get him to that point where you realise you can play one of your favourite songs easily and then he’ll be hooked!

I’ve also just finished Charles Petzold’s book Code, which details the inner workings of computers all the way from Morse code and telegraph relays to Intel 8080 microprocessors and high level programming languages. I loved the way it used the history of computer science to show the logical progression of the development of computers, and though it’s now slightly dated (ending with some comments on the future possibilities on what’s called the World Wide Web..) I’d highly recommend it!

Aside from all that, January is already fast approaching and there’s maths, programming, a lab report, an initial project report, a seminar report, an essay on quantum computing, an essay on epigenetics and exam revision to be done, alongside getting a list of industry speakers for an academic event by the I-Science Society that will hopefully be the biggest one yet! So far I’ve been attempting to assemble all the scattered bits of information on my project I’ve left in various corners of my computer in the hope of making it coherent, though it looks like I’ll have to head back to university early to get everything done in time.

Shortly before term starts again is also the university’s Stargazing Live event, and this year I’ll be on the flying teabag stall, so look out for that!