Category: Random stuff

For posts about anything really

Coffee Ripples

My teaching at the Marine Station for the ‘Our Ocean Planet’ module finished early this morning and so on my way back through town I took a few minutes to stop for a coffee and to work through and write down some thoughts I have been having about the need for me to find more time for creative projects (aka research) at work. Amongst these projects is a piece of work I would like to do looking at the development of bedforms (sand ripples) in time-varying flows – these might be sand ripples formed by the wind or sand ripples on the seabed formed by currents, including reversing currents such as tides and, perhaps, waves (although the spatial scales are quite different and so the details of the sediment transport processes might be very different and require a different model). This is an area of work that I was into yonks* ago. I have a pretty clear idea of the approach I want to take, I just need to knuckle down and try things out.

Anyway, I was sitting there writing in my notebook about creative projects and ripples with my cup of coffee (Americano) in front of me on a small table. This table had a bit of a wobble and I guess I was moving my body in some manner that caused the table to rock gently from side-to-side. I only realised this because when I looked up and looked at my coffee I was confronted with a pattern of lines (like ripples) in the surface…

These lines were aligned with the direction that the table was rocking (i.e. the table was rocking left-right as I looked at it and the pattern in the coffee was aligned front-back). It was a lovely, and fortuitous, example of pattern formation in nature of exactly the kind that I was thinking about. To try to extend things further I turned the coffee cup through 90 degrees and then deliberately set about rocking the table. I was hoping to make a new set of lines appear but at 90 degrees to the previous ones. The experiment was only partially successful. I broke up the existing pattern and saw some signs of new lines appearing…

…but I think my deliberate rocking was more forceful than my accidental rocking and I didn’t quite have the patience to make things work really nicely. Apart from anything else the coffee was getting cold and so I started to drink it. I think in my second picture you can see signs of a new pattern of lines aligned with the cup handle this time, but they haven’t completely redistributed or replaced the previous pattern.

This post nicely demonstrates both the pleasure and peril of being an inquisitive, scientifically-minded person. On the one hand, there is a rich world to discover in every single thing you do. On the other hand, it becomes impossible to simply sit and enjoy a cup of coffee without asking questions about what is going on!

*yonks = many years in case you have not come across this term before

Snow in Plymouth

Situated as it is in the southwest corner of the UK, in the path of relatively warm ocean currents (Gulf Stream/North Atlantic Drift), Plymouth experiences a generally mild and wet climate. We do get freezing conditions at times but you can probably count the number of days of heavy frost, icy pavements etc. each year on the fingers of one hand. This means that when it snows in Plymouth it is an occasion of great excitement. In fact, the local newspaper website goes apoplectic at the prospect of a few flakes of the white stuff as if this will be the start of a ‘The Day After Tomorrow’-like big freeze bringing everything to a halt and catastrophe at every turn. But the fact of the matter is that it simply doesn’t snow in Plymouth, ever, at least not such that you would ever notice…

…so imagine my surprise when I woke up late this morning (my cold has really taken hold now and I am off work) and looked out of the window to see the ground covered in the white stuff. Actually, ‘surprise’ isn’t quite the right word (neither is ‘covered’ now I come to re-read that last phrase) – ‘amusement’ would be a better one, because the local paper had finally got its wish and it HAD finally snowed in Plymouth. Look, here’s the (albeit slightly melted) proof:

A Day Of Anaesthetic… for the modern man

After just over four days of feeling like I have been fighting off a cold, coupled with my decision to keep on running regardless, today I have been sneezing, snuffling, constantly blowing my nose and generally feeling sorry for myself. In some ways I’m not too disappointed that the cold has broken out with full force because that should hasten an end to it and Sunday [today] is probably the best day to be feeling really grotty. The other thing about Sundays, or at least many Sundays at this time of their year, is that there is a more or less constant stream of football on the television and so I have been able to plant myself on the sofa and let the world turn away whilst Aston Villa, Birmingham City, Newcastle United, Manchester United, Southampton and Liverpool battle it out in front of me (not all at the same time obviously).

I enjoy watching football a lot, but I have often thought that the glut of football on TV these days is a form of anaesthetic for the modern man (and woman of course). No matter what is going on in life it is possible to kick back on the sofa watching whatever match is on with a level of interest that fluctuates from ‘minimal’ to ‘fully engaged’ as the play ebbs and flows. It’s possible to forget whatever else is happening and have the illusion that you are doing something. Interaction with the real world becomes unnecessary and the senses dulled unless/until some player does something a little extraordinary (I saw 5 goals in total today and I would say that two of these fell into that category).

My view of TV football as anaesthetic for the modern man is usually something I see as a negative, even when I am the one partaking in the ‘drug’, but today it was just what I needed – I wasn’t much good for anything more challenging or active and it gave me a ‘sort of purpose’.

And Conor Hourihane’s goal for Aston Villa and Mo Salah’s for Liverpool were rather good ones…

Eating an Orange

I have just eaten an orange. If you think that this is nothing extraordinary then you have obviously never witnessed this act. For me, eating an orange is something of a ritual. First, there is selection of the orange itself and of a suitable knife to cut it, remove the peel and then remove the pith. A small serrated blade is my implement of choice…

Then comes a small cut, about 1.5cm down from the stalk angled diagonally into the peel towards the stalk and about 2-3 cm in length. It is absolutely crucial at this stage not to cut into the flesh of the orange (ABSOLUTELY crucial). After this it is a job for the fingers to remove the peel in as large pieces as possible, all the time trying to maximise the amount of pith removed and minimise damage to the flesh. I’d get upset if I broke into the flesh at this point…

Then it is back to knife work, gently scraping and levering any remaining pith away and trying to end up with a minimally pith covered and minimally flesh damage fruit. Something like this…

In truth, the above photographic example (which is from the orange I just ate) is not a perfect example. I have become better recently at slightly relaxing my standards.

Finally, it is a matter of diving in with fingers again, separating out the segments as neatly as possible and eating them as I go along. This is where the reward for my ritual lies, although sometimes there is great disappointment when the orange turns out to be on the dry side or the segments rip open spraying juice all over me and anything else in the vicinity.

Just for the record, the orange I just ate was wonderfully juicy and deliciously flavoured. Well worth the effort.

My Little Plantlet

We have just one indoor plant in our home, a weird specimen that has thick bulbous branching stems with furry looking edges, topped by medium sized leaves and a habit of occasionally showering small black seeds that look very much like mouse droppings into the surrounding area. I should have taken a photograph to go with this entry because, obviously, that description really needs an illustration to make it believable. But I didn’t. It is also incredibly resilient, which explains how it manages to still be alive. It can seemingly go for months without being watered, dropping all of its leaves but then rapidly perks up when given a soaking. I obtained it years ago from my parents. I have no idea what it is called.

The problem with this plant is that our specimen is decidedly wonky. It curves over to one side and then back again and for this reason it looks pretty ugly in its pot. So, a few months ago I decided that the next time one of its seeds landed in the soil that houses the plant and started to grow, I would grab the tiny plantlet, pop it into a new pot and TRY to keep it alive to grow a new, more balanced, specimen. Then, a few weeks ago such an opportunity presented itself.

To begin with my new little plantlet just sat in its pot doing nothing and I wondered whether it was going to ‘take’. But a couple of days ago I noticed signs of new growth and today I can see a tiny new leave to accompany the two original ones that were there at the time of transplanting. For someone who has a good track record of killing plants this is exciting and I am proud of my little plantlet as it attempts to make its way in life. I cannot wait to see what it will be like in a few months time when, hopefully, the stem will have thickened out and the whole plant might resemble its rather weird parent. For now though, I have to simply enjoy it as it is…

The Great Wave Off Kanagawa… in Mutley

Yesterday morning, at the end of a lecture I gave on Waves and Tides, I showed a picture of Hokusai’s famous work of art The Great Wave Off Kanagawa. My lecture was being observed by one of my colleagues (every year we have to observe and be observed) and she remarked afterwards that there was a Plymouth version of The Great Wave painted onto a wall in the Mutley area of Plymouth. After a short discussion we established roughly where this mural was and I was surprised to find that it is on a road that I have driven along many times. My colleague said they thought they had a photograph of it and just now they have tagged me into a tweet that they have posted with their picture. It’s absolutely tremendous – a graffiti style rendition of the great work in bold colors, somewhat simpler than the original but capturing the same scene and sufficiently similar to be immediately recognizable but not so similar that it is simply a copy.

Here is the picture – I am absolutely going to have to make a special trip there soon to find the building a take a picture or two of my own…

Meet Spike

This morning I gave a once-per-year lecture session on ‘Creating a Website’ as part of the ongoing Marine Science Communications module ‘Our Ocean Planet’. In this session I talk about how easy it is to produce a website these days using platforms such as WordPress and I use a few of the websites that I have produced over the years as examples. Amongst those example websites was, of course, this one.

I have written before about how I don’t write the entries on this blog for anyone in particular. I know that there is almost no audience looking at this blog on a regular basis. I am simply using writing these blog posts as a way to maintain a discipline of writing something everyday. Of course, I would be lying if I didn’t admit that I’d like to think there could be an audience, at least for the occasional post that I write that actually says something interesting or useful (if these even exist), but that is different from writing in the expectation that anyone out there is at all interested in what I have to say.

Today though, suddenly, this site has attracted a few readers, as evidenced by the spike in visits and views shown below:

These numbers are still small, but against the background of the visits and views for a ‘normal’ day the spike in activity is huge. It is also, of course, artificial. These visits and views have only occurred because I was using this site as an example in my lecture this morning. They simply show that there were a few students in the audience who were either interested enough, inquisitive enough or perhaps just plain nosey enough to visit and dig a little deeper. They very probably took a quick look and left rapidly never to be seen again which is, of course, absolutely fine because that just returns me back to normality. But who knows, it’s possible one or two might come back again in the future in some random moment when they are at a loss for something to do and wonder what I might be writing about, whether anyone is still sat in a chair, whether beetroot is still on the menu or whether I have finally managed to come to enjoy marking.

It has been nice to see Spike today, but he’s only passing through and will be gone tomorrow.

Okay I Am Sat In A Chair

I received a text today from my younger daughter which reads ‘Okay I am sat in a chair’. For some reason I keep turning this phrase around in my head as if it has some kind of deep and profound meaning which I cannot quite grasp. It doesn’t of course, it was simply a reply to a text I sent telling her that we would meet her in the cafe in the IKEA store in Southampton (she was already in the store and we were putting some purchases in the boot of the car). But it is going around and around my brain and I can feel myself peering into the cracks between the words trying to draw out the hidden meaning that my intuition tells me is there if I only look hard enough. Perhaps it needs some punctuation. A comma after ‘Okay’ obviously does the trick but it could be a little bit Yoda like if there was a comma after the word ‘am’ to split it into two phrases – ‘okay I am’, ‘sat in a chair’ – but not quite. Now I come to think about it, I think it is this Yoda-like quality of the first three words that is making me ponder the whole phrase, and realizing that might just give me a means to escape the mental torture that I am putting myself through thinking about it so much. I should try to move on. In fact, I should not TRY to move on, I should just move on. After all, as Yoda himself once said ‘Do, or do not. There is no try.’

Hedgehog Cake

Today is my elder daughter’s birthday. At 22 years old it might be felt that she is too old for presents and birthday cake but in my book you are never truly too old for such things. In recent months she has become rather fond of hedgehogs and so my wife decided that this was the time to take on the challenge that is the ‘hedgehog cake’. Regular viewers of the Great British Bake Off spin-off programme GBBO: Extra Slice will know that making a complete hash of making a hedgehog cake is a pretty common occurrence, with viewers sending in their pitiful but frankly absolutely hilarious offerings. Thus it is with some pride that I am able to report that my wife’s attempt wasn’t at all bad – as I put it to her in a WhatsApp message earlier today: ‘it’s imperfection adds to its loveliness’ (which I thought was a tactful way of providing honest feedback…). The cake itself was absolutely delicious, even though I do try to tell myself that SUGAR IS EVIL POISON but, of course, taste is somewhat secondary when it comes to hedgehog cakes and so I can only finish this post with a photo to show the cake in all of its glory…