Throughout the last year I've finally started going on nights out with chemists. The best nights have always stemmed from very innocuous beginnings such as chemSoc lectures or poster presentations. These inevitably lead to the realisation that it's 10pm, we've been drinking for 5 hours and not yet eaten anything. These always go on to be fantastic nights. On Thursday, Blondie and I organised another night out to celebrate the end of our time in Durham. Comprising our friends from Trevs who were still around and as many of the chemists as we could muster. Starting out in the New Inn we moved on through The Court Inn, perenial favourite the Swan and 3 before the survivors moved onto Chase and finally Walkabout.
The New Inn and the Swan and 3 have been favourites since our undergrad days whilst Chase has become our favourite post-11pm haunt over the year. My "Vote for Pedro" tshirt even attracted some attention. This is where things went to the dark side with the cheap double vodka and fake Red Bulls. How many of these we actually got through I don't think anyone knows. Thankfully, we didn't get onto the cocktails or Jagermeister like normal. What was very sad is how Blondie's group and other chemists made a big deal about him leaving including cakes and cards, where as my group couldn't have cared less that I was leaving. I've always felt on the fringe this past year (and before) - I sway wildly between feeling accepted and as an outsider and I've finished mostly on the fence between the 2.
The next day the vokda-fake Red Bulls had their revenge as I woke up a 6.30 and couldn't get back to sleep. Eventually I got up at 7.30 and wondered downstairs to be greeted by alan dancing around in his pants. I've seen it before, but this is likely to be the last time we are all so carefree.
It's been a very trying year - possibly the hardest year I've had to deal with - but it's nights out like these that have probably kept me sane in the face of a great deal of stress.
It's finally over. After seven years my time at Trevs has officially ended. I woke up in my room on Wesnesday, as it has been for the last 15 months. Everything seemed normal. By the end of that day I had started packing away my stuff - even though I've lived in the house's smallest room I've still got 3 years worth of accumulated crap. The big things like books, folders and DVDs packed away easily, but it was the small things that really made the room my own. Whether it be the notes left on my door, my "junior server of the year" tankard or even things like my fast fret jar that's now a pen holder, these were the things that I noticed every day and made it my room. Indeed, when I woke up on Thursday it was only my pictures and posters on the walls that still made it my room. As I packed these away, the room reverted back to being a college room. The subtle difference in how sounds reverberated was a reminder of its emptyness.
Thursday evening brought about our leaving do. An assortment of chemists and Trevs students gathered at the New Inn at 5.30 to celebrate the passing of myself and Blondie which you can read more about in the last post or next post - I'm not really sure what's happening.
Unfortunately, all the cheap vodka-red bulls took their toll as I woke up at 6.30 and couldn't get back to sleep. Blondie and I walked down to the department for the last time. I finished off cleaning out my desk and lab space and handed back my lab keys (although the £75 deposit refund looks like it will be mostly swallowed by the chrge for continuation). Eventually Matt had handed in his thesis and I had handed in my thesis title.
We said goodbye to Matt and dropped off our House 3 keys before getting a taxi to the station for our respective trains south. Blondie and I met on our first day in Durham and now 6 years, 362 days later here we were on our last day in Durham getting trains 20 minutes apart. Our friend Emma had accompanied us so we all said our goodbyes and caught our trains. It was nice to be seen off as it meant we didn't just annonymously leave Durham by ourselves.
I've been at home for a couple of days now and it's exactly like I thought it would be - I feel like I'm going back to Durham soon and I can't get used to the fact that I don't have to do anymore practical work for my PhD. Hopefully I get most of it written in the next few weeks and begin the fine tuning for the week after for a submission in late October. I decorated my bedroom just before my PhD so it really doesn't feel like my room at all anymore. In many ways "my room" is gone for ever.
I'm already bored and I hate television. I'd be quite happy to never watch it again. Desite Freeview having nearly 40 channels, there's either nothing on or they schedule 3 decent films at the same time. In my first 12 hours here I saw a load of adverts for the first time and now I'm fed up to the back teeth with them. The fact that my parents seem happy to witter away the nights watching ITV3 is almost unbearable. The good thing is it's made me even more anxious to get finished up and find a job so I can move out. I finally feel like I can be self sufficient, but I'm probably just kidding myself.
EDIT - In honour of having this rant made a Blog of the Day I've gone through and fixed some mistakes and added more links. Enjoy!
Well, it seems like the rants have been flowing over the past few weeks. Here's one I've been thinking about for ages. Back in the day, Sony used to be a company that charged a premium for it's products, but they were good quality and if you wanted the best (without going upto super expensive brands) Sony was what you'd go for. In addition, Sony had a hand in bringing a lot of everyday technologies to market. Sony in fact became a world-wide brand on the back of transister radios that were shipped to the US and Europe in the 50s. Sony had a hand in the invention of the CD, 3.5" floppy disc and of course, the walkman.
Of course, success tends to breed arrogance and even back in the 80s this was seen in the form of the betamax vs vhs battle. Sony developed the technically superior betamax system but was so keen to keep the technology to itself (which lead to higher prices) that the public took vhs as the better option. As JVC allowed the vhs technology to be licenced, most electronics companies produced vhs machines rather than expensive betamax systems. The market flooded with cheaper vhs players and tapes. Sony had tried to push a proprietry format onto the consumer and failed. This legacy may soon be repeated, but more on that later.
In the 90s, Sony released 2 formats which should now be dominant in the world. The first was the minidisc. Released in 1992 as a digital upgrade to the cassette. It featured all the benefits of CDs (no quality loss, instant track skips and content information can be stored) with the flexibility of recorable tapes. In fact, once you had recorded them, you could split tracks, reorganise the running order and combine tracks. Unfortunately, Sony once again decided to try and keep the market for itself, so for the first few years the only recorders you could buy were Sony ones. And, holding a monopoly lead to high prices. As minidiscs started to wane, Sony finally lowered it's licencing fees and recorders from other companies began to appear and drive down prices. Unfortunately, pre recorded MDs died pretty soon after - CD players had become ubiquitous and most of the time a CD of an album and a blank MD cost less than the MD album and could be played in more places. It didn't help that it was only Sony Music artists that had their albums released on MD. Ironically, it was at this point that the original idea for MD took off. Amateur bands started embracing MD as a recording medium and blank disc sales took off. In Japan, MDs are only now being overhauled by MP3 players so on a trip around Akihabara in May it was quite surprising to see MD recorders still comanding prices of over £100 whilst more advanced devices fail to reach even £50 on eBay in the UK.
The second format is Super Audio CD. Introduced in 1999, it had the potential to replace CDs, offering superior sound quality compared to CDs and its equally unsuccessful rival, DVD-Audio. Releases can be made a hybrid discs that feature the SACD data held on a layer below a regular CD layer, allowing playback of the standard CD version in a CD player, but also allows the high quality mix to be played back on SACD players. This would seem to be the ideal situation as it would allow you to build your SACD collection wihout sacrificing the ability to play the albums on standard CD players. Unfortunately, Sony once again seem to be imposing a licence fee that puts off most labels from releasing in this format. Even though there are over 4000 SACD titles out there, the publics awareness of this format is practically non-existant.
Further attempts to push proprietry formats (that would essential "lock" people into buying further Sony products) included mp3 players that didn't actually play mp3s (only the Sony ATRAC format), memory cards that only worked in Sony products (whilst SD and CF cards have a much larger compatibility) lead many people to swear off buying Sony cameras and UMDs - films that could only be played on PSPs with no extras for 2-3 times the cost of a DVD.
In recent years, the build quality of Sony products has steadily decreased despite their price premium remaining intact. The build quality of most brands has decreased (after all, if stuff breaks sooner, we'll need to replace it more often) but Sony have taken it to a new level. From televisions sold as "future-proof" that can't even pick up digital teletext or all the freeview channels and have been abandoned by Sony to Playstations with laser diodes that stop functioning after a year. Sony's first foray into LCD televisions provided absolutely no future-proofing as the entire line weren't HD ready - a decsion that left many peoples £1300 tvs obsolete before they'd even got them home. The reason? Film studios (including Sony's) demanding that HD content be distributed via a certain connector that Sony didn't see fit to include.
It's widely rumoured that the only part of Sony that makes money anymore is the Playstation. After being betrayed by Nintendo over a planned CD addon for the SNES, Sony continued developing the machine and released the Playstation against the overpriced and underspecced Sega Saturn and the N64 with it's overpriced games. The playstation 2 promised revolutionary performance due to its "emotion engine", but in actual fact, the machine was less powerful than all three of its competitors (Sega's Dreamcast, Nintendo's Gamecube and Microsoft's xBox). However, Sony had the money to ensure that the most popular games remained exclusive to its console. Sony have been making strong claims about the new PS3 console. Unfortunately, many claims have amounted to nothing. Initially the PS3 and xBox360 were to be released within a few months of each other and be roughly equivalent in power. Microsoft pressed ahead with a worldwide launch last Christmas opting to stick with the DVD format whilst Sony, convinced the PS3 would sell no matter what, took the opportunity to include their new BluRay format in PS3. This seems to have backfired big time for Sony. Rumours (as linked to) of the components being too big to fit into the case, overheating and reports that most of the development team had been fired kept cropping up. Firstly the release was pushed back 6 months as the specifications for the new format were yet to be finished, the specs of the console were lowered due to stability and yield problems (ie if you make 100 chips, and only 20 of them work at the desired speed, do you press ahead and loose money on the chips that don't work or do you lower the specs so that maybe 40 of the chips work?). At the recent E3 exhibition, Sony proceeded to shock even their hardcore fans by announcing a $599/£425 pricetag for the PS3 and giving one of the most embarrasing press conferences in history. Have a look at this video.
Pretty funny stuff ("new features such as real-time weapon change", "based on famous battles that actually took place in ancient Japan - so here's this giant enemy crab")
Further bad news came with the release of the first BluRay player - the picture quality wasn't up to the standard of it's rival format, HD-DVD. And HD-DVD was half the price of BluRay. Suddenly the decision to include BluRay in PS3 was looking like a massive gamble that could lead to the failure of both the BluRay and Playstation brands. If BluRay fails to win the HD war then Sony has needlessly held up the release of the console by over a year and introduced a massive cost that even they admit will take it out of the price of most households. Should the PS3 fail to make an impact, then Sony's Trojan Horse tactics of getting BluRay into the homes of the masses will have failed. Finally, problems building the diode for the drives has meant that the worldwide availability of PS3 this Christmas will be limited to 100,000 in Japan (the 2 year old Nintendo DS sells this number every week) and 400,000 in the US with Europe missing out until 2007. This also means there will be a shortage of BluRay players too.
The major problem is simply that Sony, as a company, is far too big. It has its finger in too many pies: electronics, film studios, music labels and gaming and it's this that has lead to Sony's many recent problems. When designing the BluRay format, rather than developing a system that the consumer would want, Sony's movie studios got involved and started designing the system around the restrictive needs of the studio. Without the pressure to include BluRay, the PS3 could have launched last year and at a much more competitive price. Sony music's desire to control how people can listen to music they've bought has caused Sony to loose it's hold on the market that the Walkman enjoyed to Apple and countless others. Then stupid ideas such as the root-kit fiasco and creating ficticious film critics to give good reviews to Sony studio films and most recently the unfortunate discovery that laptops fitted with Sony batteries could burst into flames at any moment don't do the overall brand any favours at all. The only real way out is to properly split up the company and let the electronics company get on with designing products that the consumer wants, the gaming division to make use of the best technology around at the time and not pin their hopes to a white elephant and the music label to loose customers by itself without draging down the rest of the company.
In the world of the entertainment business, Europe is the poor cousin of the US and East Asia. TVs are much more advanced and cheaper elsewhere. Earlier this month, Sony effectively gave Europe a kick in the teeth by delaying the new Playstation until March 2007 after promising a worldwide launch in November. Despite the population of the EU being greater than that of the US and Japan put together (462m vs 300m + 128m) - and that's without non EU countries - our traditions of different taxes and even more annoyingly, different languages, ensures we get the thin end of the wedge everytime. Today it was Nintendo's turn to bend us over. The new Wii console's launch has been anonunced around the world over the last few days. On Tuesday, it was launched in Japan with a price of ¥25000 (£113). Yesterday, it was America's turn - $250 (£132) but this included the Wii sports game that the Japanese wouldn't get. Today it was Nintendo of Europe's turn. Most people were confident we'd see a price between £130 and £150. Unfortunately, Nintendo decided to go with €250 (£168) and £180 for the UK Now firstly, why is our version so much more expensive than the US - it's £35 more for the same package! Secondly, Why do we Brits have the privalage of paying £12 more than the Irish, French and other European countries? For the last year, Nintendo have been trumpeting the fact that the Wii was going to be the machine that got "non-gamers" into gaming; a machine that anyone, young or old, could pick up and play with straight away. The unique controller was at the heart of this as was the fact that it wasn't as powerful as the new Microsoft and Sony machines, therefore it could be a lot cheaper. Now we have got to the point where it's only £20 cheaper than the xBox360 and once you've factored in another Wiimote (£40) - after all, this is supposed to be enjoyed by the whole family - there's very little to choose between the costs. Nintendo dropped the price of the Gamecube just before it's UK launch, but a repeat of that will be seen as Nintendo admitting they got it wrong.
After Nintendo's arrogance over it's #1 position in the 90s it's now only #3. Sony's supply problems gave them a big chance to gain ground , but it seems (especially in Europe) they've missed something of an open goal. Personally i intend to stick to my guns on this one and import a machine the the US - after our success with importing our DS Lites from Australia (which would have been an easy import from Japan if it hadn't been for stock shortages) it seems like the only way to go as even if it get's hit by customs it'd still be £20 cheaper than our native model. And available 3 weeks earlier.
The main even for my birthday was something we'd had planned to do since I got back from japan and typed '"karaoke box" + Newcastle' into Google. Eight of us gathered at Newcastle station for the short walk to the so-called Korean BBQ restaurant that boasted free karaoke rooms. After arriving at the street we found no such place - odd. After 5 minutes of wandering around aimlessly, we rang them and they told us to wait by Richer Sounds and someone would "come and get us". Our resident drama queen, Matt, immediately started phrophesising doom but, true to their word we were met and walked back to the restaurant - now no longer a Korean place (even though all the review cam out in May), but instead サガワ (Sagawa), an upmarket Japanese resturant. Suddenly we felt less stupid for failing to find a restaurant on a 20m long road. We were led up to our private room where our table (for some reason shped like a boat) was waiting. Whilst the rest of the party noticed the floor height chairs and lack of leg room, my attention was drawn to the 42" RPTV in the corner of the room, already knocking out cheesy renditions of classic songs. The next thing we noticed was the lcd screen attached to the karaoke machine was displaying a screen saver featuring various pictures of bikini idols. If you don't know what they are, have a search of Google and become enlightened. The drinks menu purported the availability of 2 litre cans of Asahi - surely a printing error, but no - we eventually got through 6 of these beasts (in addition to sake). We decided to get a selection of sushi for everyone to try which proved successful although Brett claimed he couls still taste the fish eggs the following day. The mains arrived and were duly finished with much slurping of ramen. Attention was now turned to the entertainment equipment in the corner. After being shown how to not put the player into Cantonese, we got started. Rather than being a hard drive-based machine, this was a DVD player with (I presume) CD+G support. There were songs in Japanese, Cantonese, Mandarin, Korean and English so the selection of songs we knew was a bit limited. The usual positive feedback loop of upping the microphone volume followed by the music volume followed. Catherine started us off and immediately put us to shame with a worryingly in-tune version of My way. As more beer was consumed, people became much more willing to "sing" and this kept going for another 2 hours. By the end, I suddenly realised that you could hear our room from the other end of the restuarant and in the toilets... The classics kept coming, and soon the duets and group efforts began.
Eventually, Matt and Hugh had to be dragged awayand the not insubstantial £250 was settled (~ £80 was beer). Everyone agreed it had been a good night. We got the stupidly early last train (10.45pm) back and then decided to go to Chase. Somehow, despite going to the bar for a 4-pint pitcher, Blondie manage to reappear with 6 pints which we set about until about 1. It was a great night and I think a few people were a bit dubious about the whole karaoke part were converted. What wasn't part of the plan was going out with the chemists the following night until 1 and then drinking till 4.30am the night after at the Trevs 40th anniversary. Whoops. Sunday didn't really happen after that.
I'm still going over the pictures from the 7th, so the "what I did on my birthday" post is work in progress. When I was a lot younger, my parents used to organise parties for me and invite loads of my friends from school. When I was about 12 I switched to going bowling with friends and then finally to going out into Birmingham at 17. When I first came to uni all my friends were very efficient at sending me cards, but they soon got pretty lax. My 22nd birthday was on the same day as my cousin's wedding. That side of my family had clearly forgotten it was my birthday and I only got 3 cards - and only a couple of friends even called/texted me. My 24th birthday was pretty good too cos even though I was in Durham (my first birthday away from home), there were loads of people around - Matt, Mel, Brooks, Matt, Tim, Carl etc so it was great. Then last year, there was noone around - even Matt who had been around most of the summer was away on his pre-PhD trip. As a result I got about 5 cards. It doesn't help that I have a really small family, but it was nice this year to round up a group of people and go out for a good night out and introduce them to something I'd discovered earlier this year (more on that in the next post). My opinion now is that I don't tell my old friends when it's my birthday - they're old enough now to keep records of these sorts of things.
So anyway, I'm now 26 and my time as a student is pretty much up. I've bought my last young person's railcard and am finishing up my lab work. I still don't feel old, in fact I think my drinking capacity has recently started in increase again if nights out in the last few months are anything to go by. This year has been a very mixed one - I've endured some hardships, at time felt completely alone and found out some things about myself, but on the other side I've made some great new friends, both at chemistry and college, and I felt more a part of the chemistry group, rather than a hanger-on. I've had a couple of amazing trips and after abstaining from traveling for a long time, I've been bitten by the traveling bug - perhaps part-inspired by my taking up of photography. I've also rediscovered cooking. After being spoilt in my 2nd year with a new kitchen I've endured a string of cramped, underequiped kitchens and pantries. Now, thanks to house 3 and Blondie's ワガママ (Wagamama) cookbook. The beauty of it is that once you can prepare the sauces in advance, so for most of the year we've had tubs of teppanyaki, yaki soba and chili sauces sat in our fridge waiting to go. Similarly, after a few dodgy examples, Blondie and I have mastered the okonomiyaki cabbage-pancake. The secret ingredients are sugar and miso paste and once Blondie managed to source some authentic sauce (sorry) they are tasting pretty authentic (to the Osakan style ones I experienced anyway).
so yes, a mixed year. I'll try to get up pics from the 7th soon.
Browsing through TIME magazine's list of "cool websites of the year" I was intrigued by the entry for Pandora. I'd briefly heard about this a while ago, but never actually investigated it properly. Now I'm hooked. The idea is that you tell it some bands and songs you like and it creates a custom radio station based on what you tell it. Don't like the song it's playing - let it know and it'll skip to the next track and play similar songs less frequently. Especially like a track - Pandora will find similar songs and play them more frequently. The more often you tell it what you do and don't like, the better the service.
Those with long memories will remember my post from last September about how I was getting stuck in a musical rut. Now I have Pandora to suggest from an increadibly wide range of music from many artists I've never heard of. It's allowed my to follow up my new found love of J-Rock (thanks to the Ouendan soundtrack) and Scandanavian rock (thanks to the Poor Rich Ones album). Thanks to Pandora, I'm going to buy albums by L'arc En Ciel and Kent. It's also nice to listen to as I type up my thesis.
The downsides aren't very many. Pandora operates via flash so there's no need to install anything. Because the music is actually licenced, you can rewind or relisten to tracks (you have to wait until they are played again) and you are only allowed a certain number of skips per hour. But, once registered you can have upto 100 different stations so this really shouldn't be a problem. After about 10 or so songs it asks you to register. Currently, it is only available for US residents but the makers clearly don't care about this as the only proof they require is a valid US zip code - not overly difficult to get off the net or even just make up.
After months of not getting around to it, Blondie and I finally sent off some photos to ProAm Imaging for enlargement. Thing thing that had put me off initially was the fact that I only had a 2MP camera. Since then I've got my 7MP A620 and been on some great trips. The attraction of ProAm is the prices - 8"x10" for 40p, and large 12"x18" prints for £1. They're a pretty retro company with no web submission forms and a paper order form that you have to send in. After a bit of hassle cropping and getting pixel densities correct we sent off the CD and waited. This week they came back and I'm glad to say they're fantastic. Most of mine are adorning my wall so here's a picture of them - for those of can't really visualise, most of the picture are 8"x10". The lustre/matt option cuts down on reflections from a glossy covering that seems to blight my other digital prints. They are so impressive that we've discovered they make very good (and cheap) gifts so I wouldn't be surprised if people receive these as presents (maybe with a clip frame if they're lucky) for a while.
Not really a rant, but more a realisation that time is very odd. In a little over 6 weeks I'll be leaving Trevs for the last time. Once again, summer has raced away like it did last year. For the first time in as long as I can remember I don't know what's going to happen 2 months from now. At the moment I have no job and thus the future is very uncertain and I'm not sure I like that. From school I knew I was going to uni and then 4 years later I knew I was going to do a PhD, so this is probably the first time I've been in this situation. When I started the PhD back in 2003 I joked to people that by the end I'd be 26 and still living with my parents - now that moment is almost here (September birthdays really aren't an advantage anymore). It feels like the world has changed so much in the last 7 years. Yesterday I put a load of old photos up onto my facebook account and seeing some of the photos from my first year brought back a lot of memories. When we arrived as freshers in 1999 Trevs was a different place: the cobbles and bar had yet to be refurbished, only about 1 in 4 people had a mobile phone (and that was mainly thanks to a Barclaycard offer of a free one) and only about 1 in 10 people had computers. College wasn't networked and the rooms weren't even carpeted and came with very old rugs (the so-called college Bungles). We had Pepsi, Fosters and Kronenberg instead of Coke, Carling and Stella and shots cost 95p. Even Durham itself has changed - Klute was the club of choice, Rixies still wasn't Rixes, but was DH1. Robbins cinema offered very small screens, mono sound and weird L-shaped rooms where Walkabout now stands. Within a few days I was so happy with Trevs and my new friends. The first 2 terms were the most amazing time of my life as everything was so different and we were completely free to do what we wanted. Being the worrier I spent a lot of time in the 3rd term thinking how this was already the end of an era - because of the way Trevs allows finalists to live back in, there wouldn't be another time when all my friends lived in college. I always seem to think about - and remember odd things. In 2nd year I realised that the calaendar year 2001 would start with us go from having just about got used to running a house and end with us 1/3rd of the way through our 3rd year. When you start thinking like that, 3 years really doesn't seem very long. Those of you who've now looked at my facebook photos (you'll need a durham/dunelm email address to sign up to dacebook) will notice that they stop after my 3rd year. The 4th year for me was a lost year. My life changed a lot as I had to make new friends and adapt to a different Trevs experience. The decision to stay for 3 more years was fairly easy to make, not only was I offered a place in an area that's reall interesting, but Durham has a 5* rating and I felt as though there was so much more I could accomplish here. The rest of the 4th year passed in a blur of big nights out and bar work. Walking back into Trevs in 2003 felt very odd. I had to continue making new friends and sure enough, by last summer I was really happy - even my reactions at work were working. I could see a fairly good short and even medium term future. This really would have been the perfect time to leave - on a high. This year I've struggled and I'm actually glad to be leaving now. Of course, once I get home I'll probably still expect to come back up to Durham, but that won't be happening. PhD funding seems to be increasing to 4 years now which is insane. When I started I was under the impression that I'd make some really important discoveries. Of course, that hasn't happened - with a PhD, supervisors are getting cheap labour and we are getting further training. And at the end of the day, it really is just that: training. By extending a PhD to 4 years and then allowing a further year to write up we're getting on for half a decade! For those that choose to stay in college, that's 8 years! Those people who are only here for 3 years might as well not have been here. Whenever I see friends who've left and got "real" jobs, they always say that they couldn't imagine going back to being a student. Well, at the moment I can't imagine not being a student.
