greymullet

Crisis over; I’m listening to a band called Japanther and laughing far too hard at today’s QC. Don’t think I need to worry yet about becoming a Tory.

Incidentally, I came across Japanther while casting about on Soulseek, which I’ve been using to gather materials for a Stills/PiL mashup. I challenge anyone not to be intrigued by a band with such an incredible name, especially when the first album that I noticed was Dump the body in Rikki Lake.

With impeccable timing, Soulseek just flashed to alert me to the presence of some Flanders and Swann on the network (it has a”Wishlist” feature which can be invoked for anything that you’re having trouble finding, forcing it to periodically check up to see whether any has come online since the last search). Oddly, the song in question appears to be a Flanders and Swann/Avril Lavigne mashup. I’m scared.

Update: “Avril’s Nu Gnu” bad, Japanther good.

First political thought of this decade of my life: “Well maybe capitalism isn’t so bad…”

I thought it was liberal at 20, conservative at 40?

I am now not a teenager on half of this planet, and still a teenager on this half.

I will leave Teenage Angst on loop for the next four-and-a-bit hours, while I can still sing along.

Edit: Songbird crashed at the start of the second time through. Clearly, my computer does not approve of this plan.

1. God Creates Dinosaurs
2. God Destroys Dinosaurs
3. God Creates Man
4. Man Destroys God
5. Man Creates Dinosaurs

This film may be partly to blame for getting me into science, and is almost certainly to blame for getting me into dinosaurs.

Do not read on if you’re easily offended.
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5:22am tinnitus attack!

…if, by “tribbles”, I mean blogs. Which I do.

The bulk of my intelligent, well thought out, eloquent musings take place at around 3 in the afternoon while trudging around in the snow listening to Suede. Unfortunately, I tend to do most of my writing at around 3 in the morning, while sitting in my flat drinking overly sweet tea and listening to Jimmy Eat World (Clarity, not Futures, for what little difference that makes). (more…)

1. Fmoc protected isoleucine is incredibly fluffy and thus quite easy to weigh out. Unfortunately, it isn’t very soluble in chloroform.
2. Boc protected proline makes very nice little crystals, but they stick to the side of the phial and so are a nightmare to weigh out. Unfortunately, it also isn’t very soluble in chloroform.
3. Boc protected benzylserine does dissolve in chloroform, thankfully.
4. Doing NMR titrations at 9pm, 4 days before Christmas is all very well, but when you’ve never used the 400MHz machine before, and it throws up an error message that you don’t recognise, you’re somewhat left in the muck.

*Ok, so while this is titled “fun things that I have learnt today”, it wasn’t actually “today” at all. After I left the NMR suite I had an appointment with a bottle of red wine, a large apple pie, an Arts student, and several episodes of Clone High. I wrote this on Saturday night and backdated it. Bow before my cunning.

Time: 2:18am

Location: Montreal

Activity: Watching Sheff Uni videos on Youtube

Status: Homesick

…because I don’t use Twitter, and what would people do if they couldn’t tell what I’m doing at this very moment?

I am currently revising my face off for my Organic exam, which is in… 7 hours. Factor in time to sleep, time to eat, time to shower and time to get from here to campus, and I should have been asleep much time ago. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if the exam were about caffeine, and came with free samples?

Note to self: Once your mind-numbing workload is over, create some kind of RSS-based firefox extension  which will not only notify people of updates to this site, but nag them to check it. Then sneakily install it on friends’ computers.