AMEMR III, Plymouth

AMEMR III, Plymouth, a set on Flickr.

Spent much of this last week down in Plymouth at the third AMEMR meeting. For once I took the time to get out and about around Plymouth and managed to see, and photograph, much of its centre and harbour.

As for AMEMR, well, it was much as usual: a handful of excellent talks, many good ones, and a few that were wildly impenetrable or obscure. And it's still the case that there's nothing else really like it for giving an overview of marine modelling. The conference's focus on modelling means that people are able to talk at more length about techniques, and don't have to worry about being pummelled by disinterested observational scientists. Of course, some talks were nothing but technique, but you have to take the rough with the smooth.

The main emergent theme this time was trade-offs in plankton ecophysiology. On this note, things got off to a rousing start with a tour-de-force on this subject by the DEB modeller Jorn Bruggeman. He talked on the same subject at AMEMR II, but seems to have made vast leaps forwards since then. I don't think we're quite ready to give up on mainstream models like MEDUSA just yet, but it certainly felt like a Mene, Mene, Tekel u-Pharsin moment. We'll see.

Aside from the science, the conference was a very pleasant opportunity to catch up with near- and far-flung colleagues. Usually over alcohol and food. While we didn't get the chance to make an extended night of it, I was able grab several beers with fellow EAMG survivor SME. And BS and I had an opportunity to "fight" it out over free will (yet again). Most excellent.

The upshot of all of which is that, should there be an AMEMR IV, I'll be there.

Bridesmaids

A couple of months back I complained (largely without foundation, as readers quickly pointed out) that cinema was lacking in a particular class of coming-of-age film centred around a female character. I should have waited a bit. While Bridesmaids doesn't really fall into this class, being centred specifically around a wedding, it does provide a neat counter-example to my deeper claim that cinema is largely male-focused. Of course, I could still argue that it's a rare exception that proves the rule, but I learnt enough from the good-natured pasting I took last time round not to push it.

Anyway, Bridesmaids, as the name suggests, is built around a small coterie of bridesmaids and the series of familiar rituals (dress-fitting, hen night, bridal shower) that they pass through on the way to the wedding. At least, the structure is familiar, though the detail is definitely not. Things, needless to say, don't go to plan, and much hilarity ensues. But the film is much more than a lowest-common-denominator gagfest. Its central protagonist, Annie, goes on a journey that explores the nature of her friendship with the bride, Lillian, and forces her to confront some downright unhelpful aspects of her character. Actually, describing it as a "journey" might make the film sound far more pedestrian and convention-following than it actually is. It's not a cliché-busting work of genius, but I thought that it genuinely captured something of female friendship (he says, looking in from the outside), as well as more obliquely covering the societal roles of women at the start of the 21st century. Now I'm making it sound like a didactic piece, or, more likely, sounding like I'm travelling up my own backside.

Anyway, by way of summary, I thought it was great. It appealed to my base humour, while leaving plenty for me to mull over afterwards. Which is far, far, far more than can be said for the film that it's frequently compared to, The Hangover. To describe that film, which, though amusing, is pretty cliché-enforcing, as a male Bridesmaids would be a grave disservice. All of which isn't to say that Bridesmaids is perfect. There are a few places where a gag is allowed to drag on too long, a sequence on a plane that would most likely have landed the protagonist in jail, and a particular scene in a dress shop that may, well, stretch the boundaries of some viewers' tastes (sadly, not mine). But, overall, it's pretty great.

Grade: B+ (+2 on the Leeper Scale)

2011-06-19 Eastleigh cycle ride

2011-06-19 Eastleigh cycle ride, a photo by Dr Yool on Flickr.

Out on a nice, early morning cycle ride today. A somewhat longer one than I'd originally planned (21.6 km), and via a location (Beastly) that I more usually deride than cycle passed. But easy going and taking in a bit more variety than my usual Woolston-to-Hamble route.

Forty Thousand

Forty Thousand (2011-06-16 22.18), a photo by Dr Yool on Flickr.

Another Flickr milestone - 40K views. This time it took 134 days to accumulate 10K views, so it's getting faster (~74 views per day). Though, given that there are always more photographs, one should expect this. If I was being completely (rather than mostly) self-obsessed, I could compare the growth in number of photographs, views per photograph, and total photograph views across time to be sure. But let's not.

Coring with Charlie and Nina

Coring with Charlie and Nina, a set on Flickr.

For about the first time since 1993, I actually did some field work (well, field collection) yesterday.

My student CM is due to head out to sea soon, and will be doing experiments with deep water sediment cores while she's there. So that she's had a bit of practice before getting there, she decided to have a "dry run" with some sediment cores collected locally. So, she persuaded a colleague NR and myself to give her a hand collecting cores from the shoreline of nearby Hamble.

Though it was a bit of a drag lumping the equipment to the sampling site (see map), and certainly a chore tramping (while sinking) over anoxic Hamble mud, it was actually a lot of fun doing the sampling. After a single aborted core, CM got into the swing of it, and before too long we had a full set of 8 cores. I had a go myself at one point, but while I got a good core in my sampling tube, my seal wasn't too good and the whole lot slithered out before I'd sealed it. Next time ...

Anyway, while I certainly don't intend to give up modelling any time soon, it was really good to get back out into the world and do something a little more real. Of course, now tired and covered in blisters from ill-fitting wellies, I'll maybe wait a bit before my next trip out.

The portrait in the attic

I visited BAG today to shoot the breeze about our outing last Friday (see below). While there I gave him a hand to clean and defrag the laptop that will be accompanying him to Oz. He'd never heard of defragging until today, and it showed. The disk map produced by Defraggler of his poor computer's hard-disk was like an electronic version of the Picture Of Dorian Gray. All of his virtual excess was logged in the shocking decrepitude I found. Instead of a few patches of fragged files, there were a few isolated islands of single-chunk files. One file even managed to clock up almost 100,000 fragments. Not that catching sight of the evidence of his shameful binary depravity perturbed BAG at all - freed of the constraints of civilised society down under, I expect he'll get even worse.

Cheerio to a bonzer mate

Cheerio to a bonzer mate, a set on Flickr.

Friday was our first outing to say "cheerio" to our good friend and workmate, BAG. Together with his family, he's soon to depart for our antipodean prison colony, where he'll be taking up a job with the Aussie equivalent of the UK Met. Office, the sinisterly-named "Bureau".

We started out at Southampton's annual beer festival in the Guild Hall, and after a few beers of mixed quality (Perridge Pale a particular high point) headed to the rooftop garden of a nearby pub. After a blistering period of shortwave irradiation, we headed back to BAG's home, where his good lady wife, T, served us a fine Sri Lankan curry. Then, inevitably, the cigars came out. As they can't be imported to Oz, they had to be smoked, and I did my bit, albeit with consequences - a splitting early AM headache that paracetamol took it's good time taking the edge off.

Anyway, more events to cheer BAG on his way will doubtless occur in the next month, so this isn't (quite) the last Flickr will be seeing of him.