Category: learning curve

CV

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Brian Bilston’s (you may remember him from such posts as Brian Bilston) CV in poem form might just be one of the best things I’ve ever read…

CURRICULUM VITAE

PROFILE
A selfish, self-centred, self-effacing self-starter.
A team-playing, dragon-slaying, modern-day martyr.
A blue sky thinker whose ideas are a vapour trail.
A proven communicator with a kean eye for detial.

EXPERIENCE
Poet – 2012-present
Duties included: being deluded,
finding myself from parties excluded,
writing sonnets on love and despair,
Netflix, and falling asleep in my chair.

Various positions – 1991-2012
Chartered Accountant. Lawyer. Cashier.
Building Site Lackey. High Grand Vizier.
Inhuman Cannonball. Scullery Maid.
Skilled Chicken Sexer. Guitarist In Suede.
Postman. Dustman. Class A Drug Dealer.
Dog Trainer. Tea Strainer. Carrot And Spud Peeler.
Batman. Batsman. Bowler. Head Chef.
Doing odd jobs for my Uncle Geoff.
Goalkeeper. Zookeeper. Dandelion Tamer.
Pilot. Hotelier. DJ. Boogie Blamer.

EDUCATION
University of Life – 1988-1991
My time at university saw diminishing returns.
Studied Scottish poetry. Got third degree Burns.

School of Hard Knocks – 1981-1988
School for me, I must confess,
proved to be
an unqualified success.

INTERESTS
In my spare time, I like to ponder
the fragility of existence
as it hangs,
like an industrious spider’s
silk-sewn threads
blowing in the late afternoon breeze,
with the delicacy of death.

I also enjoy ten pin bowling and the films of Bruce Lee.

REFERENCES
Sadly, my references
have altered their preferences;
their words are harsh and
abhorrent.

Even mother and father
have said they would rather
not comment.

Clever hidden meanings and opportunities for reading between the lines galore. Here is it on his site, which I have now added to the blogroll.

Poetry, ne? I’m suddenly feeling all cultured, innit.

SA ‘Travelling With Minors’ Rules Clarified

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We booked a trip recently and, along with the booking confirmation, we were sent this most excellent document that clarifies exactly what you will need (and, I suppose, what you won’t), when travelling internationally to or from South Africa once the revised, refined, rewritten legislation comes into effect on the 1st June 2016.

In short, if you’re thinking of taking your little stormtrooper(s) on holiday, this is the PDF you’ve been looking for.

The document details ten different scenarios in which you may need to carry extra documentation. There’s even a Parental Consent Affidavit (PCA) template attached for when you might need one.

Given the amount of time it can take for these documents to be ordered, organised and processed, it might even be a good idea to get your ducks in a row (AB de Villiers-style) now, in preparation for any future travel you might be contemplating.

Please feel free to download and share the PDF with anyone you think it might assist. The more people informed, the fewer people get denied a holiday because they brought the wrong bit(s) of paper to the airport. (I’m looking at you, Idris Elba.)

Leftover tea pic

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I may be English, but I’m not a huge fan of tea. Sure, I’ll drink it if I’m thirsty and the only other option is battery acid, but it has to be said that thankfully, this is not a situation I’ve ever found myself in. Yet.

Michael Davis, a Canadian resident, had some leftover tea and, rather than pouring it into the sink like any sensible person would have done, he flung it dramatically into the freezing air with this rather spectacular result:

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Yes. That’s impressive.

Other images on Michael’s Flickr which didn’t quite manage the same level of sheer wonder (this one and this one) suggest that he had been drinking a lot of tea that morning, which, given that he apparently ended up chucking away the last fifty (or more) percent of each brew, seems both foolish and wasteful. Silly boy.

So why does tea do this? Wired knows.

A pot of boiling water can be thrown into the air on a cold winter day, and it freezes in mid air creating a shower of ice crystals. Whereas a pot of cold water thrown into the air comes down as large blobs of water. This happens because the hot water is so close to being steam, that the act of throwing it into the air causes it to break up into tiny droplets (hot water is less viscous than cold water, listen to the sound it makes when you pour it in the sink). The small water droplets have a large surface area which allows for a great deal of evaporation, this removes heat quickly. And finally, the cooled droplets are so small, that they can be easily frozen by the winter air.

Michael tells us that it was -40 degrees when he took the photo. He doesn’t say if that’s Fahrenheit or Celsius, but THAT DOESN’T MATTER! because -40 is the magic number at which these two temperature scales magically cross, in a magical manner.

40 degrees (Celsius) like it’s likely to be in the Western Cape today is equal to 104 degrees Fahrenheit. I wouldn’t advise throwing boiling water into the air above your head (or to be honest, throwing boiling water anywhere) in those sort of temperatures (or to be honest, in any sort of temperatures).

The results are unlikely to be as pretty as Michael’s.

Goo-d Stuff

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I love this amazing Sheffield-themed design and digital art stuff from Steel City-based designer and digital artist Matt Cockayne, t/a Goo Design.

I freely admit that most of the mugs, t-shirts etc will probably mean a limited amount to anyone from outside Sheffield, but I was toying with doing this post when the man himself tweeted this, which swung it immediately.

r2d2

That is, of course, R2-D2, clearly displaying amorous feelings for a Bessemer Converter – one of the staples of steel production in Sheffield since the mid-1800s. However, given the size difference (here’s my daughter standing underneath a reasonably sized model)…


…this probably “in’t t’droid he were lookin’ fer”.

Click here to have a look at Matt’s work and the products available on his shopify site.

P.S. Having been brought up around both the initial Star Wars franchise and the Kelham Island Industrial Museum, I am astounded, somewhat incredulous and somewhat disappointed that I had never spotted this now strikingly obvious R2D2/Bessemer Converter similarity before.

Stevie’s Positive Thoughts

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Happy stuff from robot-voiced super scientist Steven “Happy Happy Joy Joy” Hawking this week:

Professor Stephen Hawking says a disaster on Earth within the next 1000 or 10,000 years is a “near certainty”.

Oh good.

“We face a number of threats: nuclear war, global warming and genetically engineered viruses,” Hawking told the Radio Times ahead of his BBC Reith Lecture.

“Although the chance of a disaster on planet Earth in a given year may be quite low, it adds up over time, to a near certainty in the next 1000 or 10,000 years.”

The first sad thing about Professor Hawking’s warning is that he tends to be correct on the stuff that he shares with us, his work on the wave function of the universe, singularities of gravitational collapse and cosmology, and the development of irregularities in a single bubble inflationary universe springing immediately to mind.

The second sad thing about his warning is that it was an answer to a question posed by a schoolboy who wanted to know whether the world was likely to end at the hand of humans or from a natural disaster.

Is it just me, or should schoolboys rather not be thinking about that sort of thing? They should be thinking about whose side they’re going to be on in the break time footy match, or – if they’re older – Katie* Chapman in the Lower Sixth. Not impending doom. Not the end of civilisation.
No man – something’s up there. This schoolboy needs some sort of assessment before he goes postal on his classmates, especially now he’s had this sort of answer from the world’s leading genius.

* Or Keith Chapman. Or both. Each to their own.