Christmas, a summary

Eventually, I found a peaceful moment to bring my recollections of the festive period to paper, ehh, electrons.

I don't understand why many people turn into completely different persons during the advent time, with loads of (often futile) attempts to charm others into the same christmassy mood. Frankly, Christmas had lost most of its magic ever since I found out that present weren’t brought by the Christ-child and – more importantly – that family gatherings usually end up with dispute and drama [1]. Besides that, Christmas shopping is probably the most absurd invention of modern society. You receive stuff you don't need and buy stuff which you’re not appreciated for since a magic, invisible somewhat incarnation of Christ has brought them. Oh we poor fellows, that we have to indoctrinate our children with such BS [2].

But I’d better start at the beginning. This year was slightly different as my girlfriend joined the Mike-clan. However, as we are both working full-time [3] we could only go for the hardcore «everyone wants to fly to bloody Austria» period from the 21st to the 27th of December. Not surprisingly, all direct flights were exorbitantly expensive and my contingency plan was to evade via Munich, where my brother makes a living.

The outbound flight from London was quite enjoyable, as for the first time in years I actually used the high-class of the low-class airlines, AirBerlin. Where the seats are only marginally too short and tight and one is – surprisingly – served food. However, last minute shopping was awaiting me and during the day I was feeling gradually more sick, which culminated in my ultimatum that I’d puke into the next shop, shouldn’t we make our way home. My stomach eventually freed itself of all containing burden during the night - twice.

The only real reason why I still every year look forward to going home over Christmas is the food - loads of delicious food. This year’s «appetiser» was wild boar, which my Dad had shot a couple of days before and turned into an incredible ragout, so tender that I didn’t have to chew, but merely mashed it with my tongue. Apparently, the critter weighted – without its innards – more than 90kg. The «main course» on Christmas Eve consisted of bread, butter, smoked salmon as starters and a whole slowly stewed back of a cow as the big deal. As «dessert» we had the ceremonial fondue on the 25th.

While we comfortably went to Austria from Munich by my brother’s car, the train turned out to be the transport of choice on the way back. So seventy-something Euros poorer and five hours later the Munich airport came into sight [4] and with a total journey time of 12 hours home sweet home had us again. How have I missed my freezing flat with the single glassed windows.

[1] Of course not different this year.
[2] Many parents even go a step further and morph into pediatric sadists: «There! The Christ-child. Didn’t you see it?», «Where?», «Aww, I’m sorry sweetie you just missed it by a second. Maybe next time you’re lucky.»
[3] My request for holiday was answered with a hand-wave symbolising «Why are you asking anyway, just go as you please». It's good to be a scientist!
[4] «Sie steigen in den Hauptbahnhof ein ...»:

The tube delusion

I had a peculiar encounter this morning on the Jubilee line. I luckily conquered a seat and flung out my usual morning reading - this time Dawkin's The God Delusion. Seconds later people on the opposite side of the carriage started smirking and almost couldn't hold their laughter. I started looking around, examining myself (one never knows, there might be toilet paper hanging out of your jeans), and only when I saw what my neighbor passenger was fiercely studying (plenty of many coloured bookmarks), it all made sense - he read a bible.

DNA maxi-preps shan't happen

The day before yesterday I forgot to add ampicillin to the overnight cultures. Yesterday I used LB agar for my supposed broth and was wondering about the block of gel in my flask. Today, well today I'll give it another try. Darn, two embarrasing mistakes within such a short period.

The devil takes the hindmost

Half an hour ago I made a whole pot of coffee and now all is gone without me having a single drop of it... *sniff, bohooooo* I'm such a poor thing.

Sorry, but you're too fat to live here

The British Telegraph dug out an amusing story about a couple and their troubles emigrating to the Kiwis. Way to go, I'm also strictly for less free flight luggage for people with a vastly greater BMI than mine [1].

Quite intruiging are the misconceptions by the couple's doctor.

My doctor laughed at me. He said he’d never seen anything more ridiculous in his whole life. He said not every overweight person is unhealthy or unfit.

What? Every overweight person is unhealthy - fullstop [2].

[1] 19.86 (1.85m, 68kg)
[2] Personal experience (former BMI being 26 three years ago)

I tapped the keg of education!

Mike was awarded a PhD studentship! Success, after all the distress. What a relief!

Arch-linux, not for beginners

I'm a somewhat technical geek and I occasionally like to experiment with diverse operating systems. Windows does most of the jobs anyway, but my computers have aged with pride and even though I stripped most functions off WinXP [1], it gives me headaches when it takes tea-break in the middle of a process [2].

Whilst rumaging through the web, I read that arch-linux can be completely fit to purpose (alternatively gentoo linux is equally good?). I manage to install and configure the kernel and even a graphical user interface (Xfce), but after this point the FAQ and guides become utter rubbish and they only talk in a linux-gibberish speech no life-scientist will bloody ever understand.

So back to Xubuntu, which will hopefully work properly on my dusty Athlon Thunderbird PC, with a mere 256MB RAM.

[1] I can only recomment nlite
[2] Just like Cricket