Go, go, graphene!

I know little about this new miracle material - graphene - but the more I read, the more excited I become. For too long boring white coated egg heads have beavered away in the lab to give us useless products that have little application outside of an academic environment. Like DNA sequencing. Sure, you can get a good movie out of it, but come on, give me one practical example.

But this graphene stuff. Just wow.

Richard Van Noorden writes in Nature that:
According to the Nobel prize committee, a hypothetical one-metre-square hammock of perfect graphene could support a four-kilogram cat - the hammock would weigh 0.77 milligrams, less than a cat's whisker, and would be virtually invisible.

I think the phrase is along the lines of "hot diggity damn", because I for one have gone on long enough living in a world without invisible cat hammocks. Why, just last week I saw a cat, and it was SITTING ON THE FUCKING GROUND. How boring is that? From now on I want all my cats to be almost shitting themselves with fear at being suspended three to four feet up from the ground.

Thank you Science People.

Early to rest, early to rise. It keeps the mind sharp, the Sashimi knife sharper.

If I knew any wise old Sushi masters I'm sure it's the kind of sentiment they would echo. Doubtless they would frown on my approach involving Jack Daniel's sour mash whisky, involving most of a massive bag of cashews (roasted and salted), and involving copious amounts of Portal 2 till well into the wee small hours.

Oh, and don't forget the one litre bottle of yellow snot my friend brought me as a gift. Perhaps I'm being a touch harsh. We think it's Spanish eggnog, though we're not quite sure. It tastes faintly of banana. It cannot be drunk, it must be poured, much like that last globule of a runny yoghurt that would bring grief from your mother because you lifted the pot to your mouth.

Now the shot glasses of yellow goo stand on the counter top, a monument to my rudeness as a gift recipient. I truly am sorry for my initial knee jerk reaction ("What the hell is that?" I said). But I stand by it.

Anyone fancy some of my 1.0 litre bottle of strangely sweet and gloopy liquid? There's at least 0.99 of it left.

The loneliness of the short distance and moderately puffing runner

Last Friday I went for a run. Three miles, down by the river, no biggie.

Halfway through I did the usual - pause at the kiddie play area to knock out some chins on the monkey bars, and feel that self inflicted sense of discomfort - "what if someone sees me and calls me a paedophile?"

Then just this Tuesday gone - out for a run, same route, only this time I came a cropper. Put my foot on something hidden in the grass and down I went. Obviously I ruptured a whole series of ligaments in my ankle, damn near tore the whole foot off, but that wasn't my first thought.

I wasn't worried that my new nickname might become "hop along Jimbo".

I didn't care that I was now the limping buffalo calf of the Newport herd should Jurassic Park ever come true.

All I could think - I was down on my hands and knees, hidden in the long grass, lurking right next to the kiddie play area.

Now it's three days later, and though the foot has reattached itself I'm still in considerable agony.

People tell me - don't be a hero James.

But damnit, men should be men.

I'm still going on that sushi making course tomorrow.

Welcome (to the insanitorium)

All being well this time next week I should be deep into Working At Home.

The suit is being dry cleaned of wedding ice cream, victim of a particular vicious kiddie ice cream hurling match (I won, by the way), the shirt has been excised of Looney Tunes shiny stickers (here's a tip - bridesmaids find it endearing when you let their stupid little niece stick them all up your arm), and the Corporate Noose (aka my single Tie) is being dusted down, all ready for a business meeting on Monday.

That's right, I do business meetings now.

Perhaps I'll channel the spirit of something and end up like one of those well adjusted and decent human beings that people The Apprentice.

So it's back to the dusty world of this blog, the aim being to stay even a little bit sane as I while away my working life with only the C# compiler and my Tassimo coffee machine for company.

With luck I might even write some fiction.

Or just arse around on Twitter.

One of the two anyway.

Movie review: Predators

It was okay....
The premise this time is that a bunch of hard nuts are in some jungle somewhere. Something nasty and mean is lurking. Uh oh, what could be about to happen...

In case you didn't guess from the title, lots of the Predator aliens show up. Lots of things die in horrible ways. People say fuck a lot. A well known famous big star Hollywood actor is in it. He wheezes a bit, presumably unable to believe the size of his paycheck for so little work.

Though much like the Borg from Star Trek, the more we see of them, the wimpier the Predator aliens become. In Predator 6 I expect to see a group of rowdy teen Predators terrorising the residents of the Sunnydale Retirement Home. Cue lots of young punk Predators getting their asses handed to them by Granny Mabel and Grandpa George wielding a walking stick, with much comedy whacks on the back of the cool Predator dreadlocks with a big cushion.

New year, new start

Except it's January 21st, so the year's already slightly rusty. And it's not a new start because I'm working on the novel I started in August 2008. Plus the chapter I wrote today, it's a bit shit.

But, on the other hand, at least I wrote it.

So that makes me happy.

Meet is murder

It was not the worst of dates, but perhaps, not the best of dates either.

She was quirky, into animals, and well cute. After the first awkward hour in the pub we ambled the town to look for a curry house, passing an endless parade of fast food joints along the way: McMurder, Kentucky Fried Cruelty, Murder King.

"So, you're a veggie?" I said.

Too bloody right she was. Meat wasn't just murder, it was torture. It was cruel and it was unusual. Why do people even have to eat meat nowadays? I can understand back in the past, but now we have science, and soya!

I advanced the theory that go back far enough and man was pretty much veggie, living off fruits, nuts and seeds scavanged from the land. It was only after tool use that we turned to meat, and the calorie surplus that produced allowed time away from farming to devote to nobler pursuits. To art, to learning, to culture, and that's what drove our brains to grow and one day allowed us to develop the technology to print "Stop the Cruelty" bumper stickers.

That, apparently, was bollocks.

In the curry house she ordered something with chickpeas. I had chicken.

Later, as I drove her back to her car, she hummed the theme to The Great Escape.

I tried not to read too much into this, nor the twin tracks of rubber she left on the tarmac as she left.

Next day and it was bacon for breakfast.

Fucking sweet.

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This post was written months ago. Being the hippocrite that I am was waiting to see if there was a chance of a second date before posting...