My 2009

Because I'm so awesome I'm sure you'll all be fascinated to read a recap of stuff I did in 2009.

1) Leaving Bristol
I moved to Bristol in September 2002 and lived there until March 2009, a huge chunk of my adult life. During that time I completed my Masters and my PhD, but most of all it was where I made pretty much all of the closest friends I've ever had and it was certainly a bit of a wrench to leave.

2) Moving to Nodnol
The reason for my leaving was to take up my first post-doctoral position as a research assistant at the Natural History Museum. I was initially hesitant about returning to London, the city where I spent my (much less happy) undergraduate years, but I found somewhere quiet and pleasant to live and the project I'm working on is really great and ought to lead to lots of quality publications.

3) US Road Trip
Although one of the joys of palaeontology has to be the traveling I hadn't been on what I would consider a "proper" holiday since before my PhD so I spent most of the year looking forward to a US road trip with John and Phil. Our starting point was NAPC 2009 in Cincinnati, Ohio, our goal: Seattle, Washington. A good 2,500 miles away. I certainly enjoyed myself and as we never came to blows hopefully my traveling companions did too. We managed to take in Ashfalls, The Badlands, Deadwood, Rushmore, Dinosaur Park, Custer State Park, The Bighorn Mountains, Yellowstone and even Cicely, Alaska clocking up some 3,000 miles along the way. We got to Seattle in under 8 days, just in time for the Independence day fireworks and a whistle stop tour of the city. It was slightly depressing to then fly back across the same expanse in just a few hours.

4) Reading
This was the year I discovered the trick to getting through books more quickly: spend more time reading. This was prompted by a couple of things. Firstly I am now a commuter again after four and a half years of walking to work I now get the tube and hence can read on the way to and from work. Secondly I finally read Harry Potter after seeing the sixth film convinced me it would be worth it. I ordered the paperback box set and plowed my way through them in enough time to go and see the film again before it came off release. I certainly enjoyed them and the process got me back into reading novels and I now read more than ever. A quick scan of my book shelf shows that I managed to finish a minimum of 24 books this year, pretty good for me!

5) Lego advent calendar
December has been all about my Lego advent calendar and I've decided I just don't care anymore if they are supposed to be for kids. Lego is awesome, end of.

6) Footy
Although Liverpool turned out not to claim the Premiership I did manage to make it back-to-back wins in the fantasy football. However this season isn't going well on either front. I did manage to see another live game, but this turned out to contain the now infamous beachball incident. I didn't even get to see this goal as the queue to get in meant I couldn't see the pitch until about 10 minutes in. I'm going off football...

Even more distilled procrastination - animal links

Some more links for your delectation.

It seems that dog torture is doubly popular, as is that traditional pastime of cat-waking. (Although I prefer cat buckaroo.) If you want a guaranteed smile then I recommend this. I have no idea what could have inspired this, but it is just a little bit brilliant.

I recently finished this book about the sadly extinct Thylacine and was directed towards this collection of the only surviving footage of the animal in life. I really liked this gorilla photo and found this bird's appearance amusing.

This appealed to my sense of humour, reminds me a bit of the "Matt Damon" bit in Team America. Finally, didn't someone once say you can judge a nation by the way they treat their animals?

More distilled procrastination

Whilst I wait for some code to run I thought I'd post a little update with some book- and dinosaur-based links partly cannibalised from my stupidly long post. Enjoy, and Happy Christmas!

Dinosaurs

In my limited experience of being interviewed as a "dinosaur expert" I am always asked what my favourite dinosaur is and in all honesty it is still T. rex if for no other reason than our arms are the same length. Not one, but two cartoons make use of this fact to humorous effect. Presumably this is the creationist version of dinosaur extinction. Although this is more season-appropriate. Alternatively this cartoon has an eye on the bigger picture, whereas this is just silly.

Bibliophilia

I do enjoy these lists of books none of us has read most of and found these, what I can only describe as, children's books for adults kind of intriguing. I also shamelessly indulged in this hefty collection of library porn, have now discovered bookstore porn and even ceiling porn. (OK, the latter isn't book-related, but it fits here better than most places.) I found this incredibly useful blog on awful library books as well as this interesting list of things found in second hand books.

I keep finding really cool t-shirt sites, but unfortunately they are pretty much all US-based, like this collection. Other bibliophiles may also appreciate this, this, this and this.

First Lines

OK, I've added a clue to the last one

I haven't done a meme since my first post so thought I'd try this one stolen from A little bit of babbling about nothing. Basically the idea is I pick ten of my favourite books or series and then copy out the first lines. Then you (dear reader) can make guesses as to what they are. I suspect my readership will have encountered many of these before so no googling and away you go.

1. Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita mi ritrovai per una selva oscura, che la diritta via era smarrita. Dante's Inferno, guessed by Mike
2. The late twentieth century has witnessed a scientific gold rush of astonishing proportions: the headlong and furious haste to commercialize genetic engineering. Jurassic Park (I couldn't resist), guessed by Mike
3. Far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the western spiral arm of the Galaxy lies a small unregarded yellow sun. Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy, guessed by Sarah
4. Idle reader: Without my swearing to it, you can believe that I would like this book, the child of my understanding, to be the most beautiful, the most brilliant, and the most discreet that anyone could imagine. [Clue: windmills]
5. On 24 May 1863, which was a Sunday, my uncle, Professor Lidenbrock, came rushing back towards his little house, No. 19 Konigstrasse, one of the oldest streets in the old quarter of Hamburg. Journey To The Centre Of The Earth, guessed by Carlos
6. They put the behemoths in the hold along with the rhinos, the hippos and the elephants. A History Of The World In 10 1/2 Chapters, guessed by Sarda
7. It was 7 minutes after midnight. The dog was lying in the grass in the middle of the lawn in front of Mrs Shears' house. The Curious Incident Of The Dog In The Night, guessed by Sarah
8. It seems increasingly likely that I really will undertake the expedition that has been preoccupying my imagination now for some days. Remains Of The Day, guessed by Sarah (covertly) and Jenny (via Facebook)
9. The escalator strained slowly upward. In an old station like this what else would you expect? Night Watch, guessed by Rachel
10. You don't know about me, without you have read a book by the name of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, but that ain't no matter. Huck Finn (OK, major clue in this one, but not as easy as the opening line from Lolita I almost included), guessed by Sarah

Just some webcomic links

Ages ago I started preparing another post of stuff I found on Stumbleupon, but it got ludicrously large and unwieldy so I've broken it up instead. These are some of the webcomics that I find amusing/interesting/thought provoking etc. Enjoy!:

• This little piggy went into, um, well see for yourself (not exactly a comic).
• I mostly don't get The Warehouse but this really appeals to my - no doubt autistic - sense of humour.
• Apparently only men can be sexist. Ok, it's silly, but it amused me.
• The undisputed champion of the webcomic (at least for geeks like me) has to be xkcd and this is just one of the many that I have enjoyed. (Brings back fond memories of childhood when I built my own sewer out of cardboard and toilet roll tubes for my figures to play in.)
• I have always felt that marking off the days since the moment of birth is a somewhat arbitrary measure of a lifespan and this somewhat encapsulates this.
• Two great novels on dystopian futures battle it out in this really thought provoking comparison between Orwell and Huxley. I am yet to read 1984, but it looks like I've read the more terrifying one.
• Not exactly a comic, but a pretty accurate description of meetings.
• Ever wondered what the truth about opticians is?
• Another one from xkcd, I admit it took a bit of thinking for me to get this. Definitely one for the statisticians amongst you.
• I enjoyed this lampooning of a certain magazine. Some of the covers are just priceless.
• Here is a perfect retort to the kid who wants to grow up too soon.
• I always like scientific jokes such as this entomological one.
• I had to finish with one from my favourite comic of all time: Calvin and Hobbes. No doubt my readers will already be familiar with it, but it will always be worth revisiting and this strip perfectly encapsulates the thoughtful, funny and beautiful nature of Bill Watterson's work. Warning: it may bring a tear to your eye.

You can tell I was going to be a palaeontologist...

Something from my misspent youth this time. As kids my siblings and myself hit upon the great idea of producing a calendar as a Christmas present for our grandparents, quite probably because it was cheap. Basically we decided on a theme and then got drawing (in pencil first, then inking in later so that our dad could photocopy it at work). I suspect I had a pretty big hand in picking the 1994 theme (see below), the fact that Jurassic Park came out in 1993 was surely a coincidence. Anyway, as this resurfaced recently I thought I'd scan it in and post it here for posterity.

The front cover Pretty sure I've just copied these from JP merchandise:

January Pfft! This is clearly a Deinonychus...:

February We even ripped off the JP typeface for the months:

March An interesting mutant:

April Proof that randomly including Dimetrodon in dinosaur books does confuse kids:

May Apparently Toyota landcruisers were always associated with dinosaurs...:

June Obviously I didn't have great editorial control:

July Well it is the party month:

August Here we erect a new species:

September A reconstruction worthy of Waterhouse:

October Are those feathers?:

November Nice to see our notes section got used:

December It's all been building up to this:

Changing the size and colour of placemarks in Google Earth

In follow up to my previous post I have now found out how to change the size and colour of my placemarks. The trick here is to create a "style" of placemark right at the top of the file. Again, this is pretty simple when you get down to it. This time you need to post a little bit of code at the top of the file, just after the <Document> tag:

<Style id="normalPlacemark">
  <IconStyle>
    <color>ffffff00</color>
    <scale>5</scale>
  </IconStyle>
</Style>

The id part of the opening <style> tag is important as it gives each style a name that we can then refer to later for each individual placemark. This allows the user to create different styles of placemark that can be used together in the same file (rather like CSS does for HTML). Colour (<color>) and size (<scale>) are then defined as elements of the <IconStyle> tag. Colours are in a hexadecimal format:

The range of values for any one color is 0 to 255 (00 to ff). For alpha, 00 is fully transparent and ff is fully opaque. The order of expression is aabbggrr, where aa=alpha (00 to ff); bb=blue (00 to ff); gg=green (00 to ff); rr=red (00 to ff). For example, if you want to apply a blue color with 50 percent opacity to an overlay, you would specify the following: 7fff0000, where alpha=0x7f, blue=0xff, green=0x00, and red=0x00.

Whereas scale is just a number.

Now we just need to make an addition to our <placemark> tag to state that we want to use this style:

<Placemark>
  <name>110_671B</name>
  <styleUrl>#normalPlacemark</styleUrl>
  <Point>
    <coordinates>-58.73,15.52,-1622</coordinates>
  </Point>
</Placemark>

So now I am able to plot my holes as giant green pushpins:

Unfortunately it is not easy to modify the colours of the pushpin icon as it has a yellow overlay to it and I have yet to work out if there is an easier way to colour placemarks exactly as I want. This will have to wait until next time.

---

Update:

OK, this last bit has been solved by someone who asked to be referred to as "my clever volcanologist friend." Basically a white pushpin needs to be called in the <style> tag like this:

<Style id="normalPlacemark">
  <IconStyle>
    <color>ffffff00</color>
    <scale>5</scale>
    <Icon>
      <href>http://maps.google.com/mapfiles/kml/pushpin/wht-pushpin.png</href>
    </Icon>
  </IconStyle>
</Style>