In the weekend just gone I left the house only once, to buy junk food. It was an extremely self centered weekend, the days passed pretty much like this:
Wake up, get out of bed turn on computer and log into World of Warcraft. At some point I’d get hungry (usually about 3) stop playing and get some food, then spend the rest of the day infront of the TV using my laptop to learn Directx 3D. Sleep.
Repeat as needed.

For those that are interested a truly excellent directx3D 9 tutorial can be found here
After all that slackness and bad food I’m feeling a healthy week coming on (gym, good food, WoW, etc.)

This amused me greatly:

How do you spot an extroverted software engineer?

When he’s talking to you, he stares at *your* shoes…

Having been off work for a few days last week, with what can only be described as ‘weird’. “The room’s spinning but I’m not drunk…!” I decided to do what any sane person would do in these circumstances: I watched a lot of DVD’s (and with film four now free, a lot of TV films too). Included in this was the entire series of firefly. Surprisingly this is only the second time I’ve watched it, so it was most enjoyable. The first time was a one day marathon with only crisps and possibly fried/barbequed food, the perfect follow on to a night of drinking.
Everytime I watch the series (all twice) I can’t help wondering why on earth it ever got cancelled.
I really hope they make another series, esspecially given the success of the film that followed.

Crazy network executives…..
*post tails off into mumbled ravings*

Step right up ladies and Gentlemen, we have the perfect attraction for you! This is my score, what will your’s be?

You Are Somewhat Machiavellian

You’re not going to mow over everyone to get ahead… But you’re also powerful enough to make things happen for yourself. You understand how the world works, even when it’s an ugly place. You just don’t get ugly yourself – unless you have to!

Big brother fans will understand, everyone else will also understand as I hang my head in shame.
If you ask it to give you HTML output you should be able to paste it directly into the comments.

Personally I find that rss feeds that don’t give you the whole post content highly irritating. It means that from my feeder reader (I happen to use opera) I have to click a link, go to the offending authors homepage and then decide if it’s worth reading. It totally puts me off reading other peoples blogs.
It’s esspecially annoying if they post often and I build up a backlog of posts to read.

People of the world I implore you, check your feed setup, make sure you publish the full text. Other wise you run the risk of loosing another reader!!

I think weekends should be three days long… it would suit me better.
At work (as I am now) I don’t have to type in my password to write posts. I think it has something to do with ‘cookies’ – chocolate chip I’m hoping. Unfortunately for my loyal readers *waves hello* no-one has used this fact to post interesting or humerous posts under my name. Which would in part explain the two week absence of Anything New ™.

Googling your own name can be fun, unless you come across a story about you being killed by a killer. Damn goths. Although there are plenty of other Robs in the world, any my webpage – this, here, now – does not seem to come up when I search for my name…. disappointing.

I had a very good weekend, was the end of an era, with two housemates moving onto other things. We had a final London night out to end with a bang, and it went very very well, best night out I’ve had in London for quite some time. Which is good!

I want to post more often, really I do. Hopefully I will.

“Where do the bubbles in beer come from Rob?” An almost child-like question in it simplicity, but one that can produce a rather in-depth answer. One which I decided not to explain at the time. Mostly because I was unsure of most of the facts at the time, and partly because of the seemingly high chance that the questioneer would be too ‘lubricated’ by said substance to fully appreciate the information I’m sharing with you here.

So, where to begin. The bubbles in beer, and in fact all ‘bubbly’ drinks is carbon dioxide. Thus the name ‘carbonated-drink’. Where does this CO2 come from?
Well in the case of beer it comes from yeast. When yeast grow they consume complex sugars. Their primary method of doing this involves the use of oxygen (no need to go into this further I feel, if you’re interested check the links at the bottom of the page). When the oxygen runs out, the yeast uses a different method to extract energy from sugar, the by-product of which is alcohol and carbon dioxide. Coincidently the carbon dioxide given off by yeast is what makes bread rise. So, being in a sealed environment, the CO2 given off by the yeast is held in the beer as a solution.

Why does this CO2 get released in the glass or after the bottle top has been popped?
Well this is all to do with pressure. The decrease in pressure allows the gas to essentially boil away (bubbles!). The last point to cover is the ‘dots’ on the glass where the bubbles seem to magically spring from. These are called nucleation sites, these have in fact been already touched on in this blog when I was talking about super-heated water in the microwave. Nucleation sites are usually defects in the glass which cause low pressure due to surface tension. Essentially (as far as I can make out) the sites are ‘mountainous’ enough to cause the beer problems in properly filling in all the gaps.
This reduced pressure enables the CO2 to congregate (it is evenly distributed throughout the liquid) until it has enough mass to survive without being re-absorbed in the liquid. The it releases (being less dense than the liquid) and rises. This bubble does in itself act as a nucleation site during it’s rise, which is why it grows during the assent.

That’s why beer has bubbles 🙂 I look forward to the next question 😉

Sources:
Alaska Science Forum
The straight dope
Stanford Report
EurekAlert

A common saying that I’m sure you’re familiar with. Unfortunately it does not apply to speed limits while driving. Not only is ignorance not bliss in this instance it is also, apparently, not an excuse. Which is a real problem as it’s the only excuse I had.
“Officer I was rushing with semi-haste to a dinner reservation” really doesn’t cut any substance (be it mustard or your garnish of choice). Even that would have been a lie seeing as I was going at what I thought was the speed limit… and talking to one of those automated cameras will never get you anywhere anyway.

But fortunately there is a bright side to this, the police have a newly enforced speed awareness course. I can pay what would have been my fine (£60) and take a three hour lesson in how not to speed, thus removing the need to have 3 points added to my licence. Well worth it in my opinion, so thats what I’m doing. Only drawback is that there are no local courses… so I’m having to decide where in England to take it, possibility exists that I’ll have to drive back to Plymouth for it.
As soon as I know the situation I will keep you informed, gentle reader.