ellarien: writing is ... (writing)
(Or: I was a sucky teenage writer!)

Various things that have been echoing around my f-list lately have had me thinking about my experience of secondary-school English, why it was so negative, and why I find myself at least somewhat sympathizing with those who are wary of academic approaches to their preferred reading matter even if I think it's inappropriate to express that wariness as public hostility.

Reminiscences and Introspection: Long )
ellarien: Blue/purple pansy (Default)
There's been a fascinating culture-clash discussion going on lately, in certain newsgroups. It kicked off when a British poster mentioned having a tumble dryer in the kitchen, and an American poster expressed bogglement and incredulity at the very idea, whereas all the Brits think this is a perfectly normal and obvious arrangement. (I'm actually surprised that most of the Brits seem to have embraced tumble dryers or at least combination washer-dryers by now; they don't figure much in my experience of British homes, though my sister has one.)

Musings, reminiscences, and possibly off-base thoughts. )

Diamond!

Feb. 5th, 2007 08:47 pm
ellarien: sunspot (astronomy)
So Britain has a shiny new synchrotron! I'd never heard of this until I saw the BBC story.

This brings back memories; in my postgrad (US: grad student) days, I did some work at both the old Daresbury synchrotron and the ISIS Spallation Neutron Source at the Rutherford Appleton lab -- which is on the same site as the new facility. The SNS was the shiny new thing in those days -- so new that it barely managed to squeeze out enough neutrons for my project. Google maps shows what is obviously the new thing under construction, as well as my old familiar stamping ground, the HRPD building, off in the other corner of the site.
ellarien: Blue/purple pansy (Default)

DSC07326
Originally uploaded by ellarien.

The weather has been glorious this week, with sunshine and fluffy white clouds blown across a shining sky. The wind has a touch of autumn crispness, and carries the tang of dead leaves; the trees are starting to turn colour, and drop brown crinkly leaves that lie in drifts among the lush green grass.

I've been in love with this campus for nearly a quarter of a century, and on days like this I think that it is in autumn that I've always loved it best.

And the photo? Creepers on the wall in front of the library that dominates the grassy square at the heart of the campus; if you look closely, you can spot a tiny brown spider at the centre of a perfect web.




PS: The next post might be from Romania. If I don't manage to post from there, you may not hear from me until I'm back in the US late on the 19th. There is supposed to be wireless at the conference, so we'll see.
ellarien: Blue/purple pansy (Default)
For the first time in a year or two, I've just programmed my VCR.

I'd been enjoying the last disk of the BBC Bleak House on DVD, and completely forgotten that Saturday is Sharpe night on BBCAmerica. I don't feel like staying up for the 10pm showing, so I dusted off the VCR, with a certain amount of fumbling around, and programmed it.

When I originally bought this TV and VCR, back in early 1998, I wasn't expecting to be here more than two or three years. They still work fine -- or at least the TV does, and I hope the VCR does too -- but it's odd to realize that I've had them longer than I had the ones I bought in 1992 in Birmingham and sold in 1997 for a hundred pounds and a night's hospitality before I left London.

Speaking of the Bleak House DVDs, they included a trailer for Campion (the late 80's series with Peter Davison, based on the Margery Allingham novels.) Those are rather pricey, though, so I didn't immediately order them from Amazon, though I was tempted.

Waves!

Feb. 12th, 2006 10:38 pm
ellarien: Cape Point scene (Travel)
It turned out there wasn't a reception after all, so after registering we went out for dinner. When we got back to the hotel I spent several minutes on the balcony on the ocean side, watching the sea. The tide was high, leaving only a narrow strip of beach, and the waves came in and in, tall as a row of galloping horses in the distance, then toppling and spreading out to a thin shifting curtain of lace over the sand. Little groups of sandpipers ran in the shallow parts until the waves caught them, and then rode the receding water out. The air was heavy with the salty, fishy smell of the sea.

It's been so long. Not quite as long as I thought; I did spend a week in Nice, France in 1996, and that involved at least one early morning stroll on a pebbly beach, but I don't think the Mediterranean has breakers like that. When I was a teenager we used to spend a day in Scarborough each summer, my father and my sister and I, and I loved to lean on the promenade railing and watch the waves come in.

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Reading, writing, plant photography, and the small details of my life, with digressions into science and computing.

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