I shall discombobulate the entire world

In case anyone is wondering I am fine in a lovely Riad in Marrakech.

Don't quite know when I will get home though and depending on what the flights do the journey could be interesting.

I might need to go to the new town and see if I can get a jumper or a couple of tshirts in Etam or somewhere similar as I never thought I might need to spend 48hrs traveling through europe. I also need to find a bookshop selling english novels as I am already nearly through 2 of my 3

see you all soon I hope

Lost is soon to restart in the UK and the US and ABC have done a special recap. Quite funny

An entertaining 20 questions based website for characters real or fictional

http://uk.akinator.com/

Came from Neil Gaiman's Blog

Not everyday you get to hear a talk and qa session from the former head of MI5 Eliza Manningham-Buller

She was a very compelling speaker with a fun sense of humour and some interesting points to make

We got to hear her as she is now on the board of the Wellcome Trust

Don't take too long to think about it. 15 books you've read that will always stick with you. They don't have to be the greatest books you've ever read, or even books you've liked; just the ones that stick with you. First 15 you can recall in no more than 15 minutes.

1. 1984, George Orwell
2. Only Forward, Micheal Marshall Smith
3. Revelation Space, Alistair Reynolds
4. The Complete Robot, Issac Asimov
5. The Secret History, Donna Tart
6. The Solitaire Mystery, Jostein Gaarder
7. The Silver Pigs, Linsdsay Davis
8. The Terror, Dan Simmons
9. The Illium, Dan Simmons
10. Reaper Man, Terry Pratchett
11. Crypotnomicon, Neal Stephenson
12. The Children of Men, P D James
13. The Three Musketeers, Alexander Dumas
14. To say nothing of the dog, Connie Willis
15. The Poisonwood Bible, Barbara Kingsolver


If you'd like to know more about a book, or what it means to me, leave a comment explaining what you'd like to know about my relationship with that book, and I'll tell you.

Just thought people might want to sign the statement supporting Simon Singh who the British Chriopractor Association sucessfully sued for libel after he said that their use of chriopracty to treat asthma and other chronic conditions in children were bogus and unsupported

Sense about Science

Just found a image collator which people might find interesting

http://craftgawker.com/

Claire you should submit some of your posts!

Its a relation of one of the great foody sites I visit http://foodgawker.com/

From puddingcat

Association Meme: Comment to this post and I will give you 5 subjects/things I associate you with. Then post this in your LJ and elaborate on the subjects given.

1. Sugar :p
I have an incredibly sweet tooth which I suspect was started by being fed bowls of sugar by Mrs North who looked after me when Mum was at work when I was 3ish. I remember bowls of sugar, midget gems and minted new potatoes from a tin. I suspect this was only helped by the fact that Mum always baked lots and we always got sweets on Sunday after Church and a finger of kit kat or some chocolate eclairs in the car when dad would pick us up from school and provided we ate our main meal we always got dessert. Sugar is lovely

2. Apple (as in i-stuff, not fruit...)
Apple is a work thing. I am a sucker for their aesthetics but at the same osx does make my life easy in a way neither windows nor linux would. The ipods and the iphone are probably more about the design though

3. Small Relatives.
I guess acquiring such a larger number in such a short space of time has taken a bit of getting used to. I do miss the fact I live so far away from my sisters children which is weird on one level as I still don't want my own but they are interesting to watch and play with. I really should get some more up to date photos for the fridge though

4. Genetics.
I have been luck to fall into a degree I found interesting even if it did show me lab work wasn't for me, (I found out about the course when visiting my sister at Nottingham for her birthday just as I was having to pick courses) then find a masters course (a friend mentioned Leeds did a bioinformatics masters and I, unlike her, actually applied for it) and a job I love (well now two jobs I love). I always found all science interesting. One of mums favourite childhood anecdotes of me is of me reading an encyclopedia in bed and in some respects biology is the easiest thing to marry with my dislike of maths but then how did I end up in bioinformatics! I still do worry what will happen when I have to work in the real world though even is the new job is a million times more stressful than the previous one. Genetics helps define not only why we are the way we are but also how all living organisms on the planet work and thats just cool plus these days you can even see what bits a child has inherited from both its parents!

5. Forward planning!
My mum has always planned stuff, days out, weekends away, holidays in advance just the way she did things so myself and my sisters all inherited the same tendencies and I know compared to most of my friends I do take it to an extreme but I like having things to look forward to and if I don't plan things I don't get that. I also like some sort of certainty and again having things planned means that I know what's coming which again I like. This does mean we can look forward to staying in what looks like a very cute b&b in Hawaii for our honeymoon

I managed to read 60 books in 2008. The ones in bold I would strongly recommend to others

( book list )