Look, Mum, New Post!

My mum asked for a post.  And what my mum asks for, she gets!

I’ve been doing experiments like mad, trying to get all the results we need in time to re-submit the paper.  The reviewers liked our work, so they gave us a tighter deadline than the usual for re-submission.  To be honest, I’m a little unclear on the timeline (I’d have said we were already past the deadline, were I asked, but we’re still working, so I guess we’re not).  This will continue for the foreseeable future.  Some experiments are going well.  Some aren’t.

I write.  All the time.  It has ceased even to be a casual distraction; if I’m not working, I’m writing.  Theoretically, food and sleep should fall into that equation as well, but they don’t really do that anymore, because if it’s a choice between half an hour of writing or lunch, I don’t eat lunch; if it’s a choice between fleshing out a character history or sleeping, I’ll stay up.  This is, to most people, not a good thing, but I’d rather have the writing and the friends it’s made me than a few hours’ sleep.

Speaking of new friends, a group of us have gotten together online (mostly writers, a couple of artists, some ‘cheerleaders’) and we hang out together over the Internet every night, working and writing and talking.  My best friends in the world are ones I’ve met this way, through shared interests and shared obsessions, recognizing flashes of ourselves in each other, and so this is a good thing, is an important thing, sleep deprivation be damned.

And, of course, I’m off to the Gallifrey One Doctor Who convention in three weeks’ time.  The plan this year is to spend a night with people I know in San Francisco, road-trip down to the convention in Los Angeles together, stay there until the day after everything ends, then head back up to San Francisco for a day or two before I fly home.  I’ll be on the music panel again (in fact, the entire panel is the same as last year; we communicated in advance that we were very eager to do it together again), and this year, they’re letting us discuss the entirety of the show’s musical history, as opposed to just the newer years.  Here, from the convention’s website:

More Magic of Doctor Who Music – At our 2011 convention we focused on the unique and memorable music Murray Gold has contributed to the series since its return in 2005, but the rich history of Doctor Who music goes back nearly fifty years. We return to the joys of Doctor Who music as we open up the discussion to encompass the classic series, the most memorable pieces and themes it has brought us from 1963 to 2012.

This is going to be a far, far more challenging panel than was last year’s, but we’re all excited, and we have a lot of ideas.  Wish us luck.

Right.

I have posted.

I shall now return to exhaustive DNA sequence analysis.

Adieu.

News of the World

Admittedly, my world is quite small.

Things are pretty cool in it, though.  I mean, it’s back to full-time experimentation now that the comprehensive exam is finally over, so that’s a thing – and hopefully, I can get a couple of constructs in a reasonable amount of time (c’mon, bacteria, give it up, let’s shoot for a month here) and move on from the paper to my main area of research.  I should probably be working harder, but there was a Christmas party for the department today, and door decorating was required (I’d like to announce that our lab won ‘most festive,’ and when I say ‘our lab,’ what I actually mean is me, because I am the only person in our lab), and then there was food, and there were games (like ‘match the Howard Hughes investigator with his or her research’) and, you know, stuff.  At any rate, now everyone’s gone for Christmas and I can dig in and work properly.

I’m house- and dog-sitting again.  The dogs are being wonderfully well-behaved.  I assume they’re planning something.

I’m also writing again.  This is a wonderful thing, and I think I’ve found a couple of worlds I can play in without feeling like it’s a chore.  I was starting to feel that way a little about the writing I was doing before – too many requests, not enough freedom – but working with new material has made things a lot more fun.

Oh! and I went to see a movie for the first time in about three years, which was exciting.  Saw an action film, of all things, but to be fair, I did always love the old ’60s Mission Impossible franchise, and this one happened to have one of my all-time favourite actors in it, so it was worth a shot.  And if you were watching it for my reasons (namely, to see some great characterization and team dynamics), it was fantastic.  (If you were looking for intelligent plot or, you know, skilful storytelling, you were possibly in the wrong theatre.)

Right, well, I’m off, because the house has a piano, and that means I can play the piano (which I may or may not have been doing for the past hour), and I’ve only got a week with it, so, yeah, off to go and take advantage of that now.

Comprehensive Exam: Not Failed

Why the Witch-king of Angmar Is Better Than You

All right, guys, I’m sorry.  It’s been a month; I haven’t posted.  Blame the comprehensive exam.  In another week or so, you’ll get either a celebratory post about having defeated the beast or another week’s silence while I cope with having failed.  We’ll see!  In the meantime, you get… well, this.

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Okay, guys, let’s talk about former Númenóreans.

Specifically, let’s talk about the Lord of the Nazgûl today.  Because this is a fallen man, seduced by power and corruption and the words of Sauron.  And by ‘fallen man,’ what I actually mean is ‘totally hardcore Ringwraith, man, don’t even try to measure up to this guy, he’ll just kick your butt and move on to the next kingdom he feels like vanquishing before second breakfast.’

Right, so, the Witch-king of Angmar, Lord of the Nazgûl and greatest of the Nine.  Origin unknown, name unknown, believed to have been one of the three lords of Númenor, but that’s all kind of irrelevant, because lord of Númenor?  Whatever.  This guy is the Lord of Minas Morgul.  Which, by the way, he created, after conquering the original city that was there (which, founded by Isildur, who temporarily slew Sauron with a half a broken sword and stole the One Ring from him, so, you know, not exactly a pushover there).

So yeah, Witch-king, kind of awesome.  Even if Minas Morgul had been his first victory, which it wasn’t.  Not only was he already Chief of the Ringwraiths, but he’d also already conquered the entirety of Arnor.  And he didn’t just waltz in there with a flail or anything, no, he totally set up a war between the three kingdoms of Arnor, weakening them all in whatever way he wanted, and then, boom, marched in with his armies and killed most of the Dúnedain.  Who were no small measure of awesome themselves, so chalk up one more right there for the Witch-king.  I mean, yeah, sure, maybe he didn’t score the palantír, but it’s only, like, six inches across.  Anyone could lose a rock that size in the middle of a freaking war.

And besides, what does he do when he fails to find the palantír in Arnor?  Oh, yeah, he just goes off to casually conquer Minas Ithil and send their seeing stone to Sauron instead.  Uh-huh.  Hardcore.

Okay, so, Witch-king’s living comfortably in Minas Morgul, Ithilien’s terrified, no one wants to live there, so now what?  Guy gets kind of bored.  Okay, yeah, everyone’s got flaws.  So what does he do?

Maybe he kills the King of Gondor.  And he kills him so hard that there’s never a King in Gondor again.  (Well, until the whole Aragorn thing, but come on, guys, really, that’s kind of an extenuating circumstance.)

Maybe he helps to create the Uruk-hai.  Because, you know, why not?  It probably seemed like a good way to kill an afternoon.  (And, like, a million Halflings, too, because why waste ’em if you’ve got ’em?)

Maybe he destroys Osgiliath.  Kind of all, sod you, Boromir, if I can’t have it, you can’t have it either.  And then he gets tired of Boromir, so he kills him as well.  Yeah, that’s right.  Snap.

And then the whole thing with the One Ring and Sauron and the hunt for the Shire, and, you know, not to steal anyone’s thunder or anything, but the Witch-king?  He tricks Saruman into informing on Gandalf, and then he tricks Gríma Wormtongue into spilling all his secrets.  No, you didn’t mis-read that.  He tricks two of the most silver-tongued villains in the entire epic tale into giving him information, using nothing but his words.  Come on.  You’ve never even heard of anything this hardcore before, and his story isn’t even over yet.

What, you say?  There’s more?  Oh, yeah.  There’s more.  You didn’t think the Witch-king was going to stop right there, did you?  No way.  So the Witch-king now knows Frodo has the ring, so he sends three of the Nazgûl into the Shire, because he figures, seriously, one Halfling, that’s so brain-dead simple it’s impossible to screw up.  Well, that’s the last time he ever delegates anything, because, God knows how, they somehow do manage to blow the whole thing wide open.  So, okay, the Witch-king heads to Weathertop himself.

And Weathertop.  C’mon now.  Okay, so maybe he doesn’t exactly get the jump on them – but look at what it takes for them to get away from him.  An entire freaking swarm of Halflings armed with a Dagger of Westernesse, I mean, really, a weapon designed exclusively for the purpose of harming him, and then they still needed Aragorn and Gandalf and the elves.

And even after that, he’s just like, oh, okay, I guess I’ll keep chasing them, no need to worry about the fact that they have a sword especially forged to kill me, I’ll just break it with my hand here, don’t mind me.

Not to mention that then he led a massive army, took Osgiliath again, like the first time wasn’t enough, man, he doesn’t even want it anymore, it’s just ruins now, why can’t he just go home and, you know, kill the entire dwarven race or something fun?  But he does it anyway, and then besieges Minas Tirith, which is at least interesting until he gets inside, at which point it’s just, like, whatever.  So, next thing!  The Rohirrim!  Let’s go and kill them!

And then, dude, some lady kills him on a technicality, which, I mean, that’s just so not on.

Not that it matters, because if technicalities are reigning supreme here, then let’s talk about the part where it’s very specifically said that the Witch-king’s voice “was never heard again in that age of this world.”  So, basically, as long as we’re finding loopholes, it’s pretty obvious that this awesome sonuvagun is just biding his time.

So yeah.  Chieftain of the Nazgûl.  Lord of Morgul.  The Black Captain.  Totally waiting to show up again one day and just wreak infinite havoc.  I’d tell you guys to be prepared, but let’s face it.  You all know the truth.  There’s no way you could ever be prepared for the Witch-king of Angmar.

Next time: the Mouth of Sauron.  Same bat-time; same bat-channel.

Avengers, Assemble!

Well, this is awesome.

I’m a geek who does geek stuff.  Some of that stuff is ordinary (I watch Joss Whedon shows, read Terry Pratchett, am a huge fan of robotics, have a career in science where I get to wear a lab coat every day).  Some is slightly less ordinary (I give panels on the music of Doctor Who at conventions; I’m writing a book about Doctor Who and the autism spectrum).  All of it is fantastically good fun, and there’s nothing I love more than being a geek.  Really.

I’ve been lucky enough to meet people (almost exclusively online, but oh, well) who share my interests.  There’s a wonderful core group of Doctor Who fans with whom I chat most evenings; I’ve both met and made Sherlock and Sherlock Holmes fans; the tech down the hall is a Discworld nut; Team Paradox welcomed me with open arms.  And if I’ve ever had an interest that I didn’t know was shared, I’ve just sort of quietly enjoyed it on my own.

Well, that was a mistake.

It turns out I have friends who are Marvel fans!  It turns out I have friends who want to be Marvel fans!  I’m not quite sure why the sudden upsurge in comic book interest (most of the movies are old news by now, and The Avengers isn’t out until next May), but suddenly, every time I turn around, another one of my (again, online-only) friends is asking me about real-world parallels in the “Civil War” series or laughing at one of Deadpool‘s wisecracks or asking me for copies of my movies or comics.

This is fantastic.  Or should I say, marvellous?

Any more of you out there?  C’mon, guys.  Come out of the woodwork.  Share the geek love.

Avengers, assemble!

Driving Me Mad

What is?  Well, everything, really.  Not in a bad way, just in a sort of “aaargh, how do so many things fit into so little time?” way.

I’m writing my comprehensive exam now.  Or rather, I’ve been given the go-ahead to write my comprehensive exam, and I am now somewhat uselessly reading through stacks and stacks of papers, understanding little, applying even less, and somehow in about four and a half weeks’ time, this is supposed to turn into a lucid grant application and I am supposed to be the “world expert” on my topic.

Riiight.

I’m also doing my regular writing – fiction to request, for National Novel Writing Month, or just because I feel like it.  The work to request is going slowly (motivation, what happened to you?).  The novel is going slowly (why must you be so controversial and un-enthusing to write?).  The things I just “feel like” are no trouble to write, but are sort of terrible in terms of quality.

(Side note: I’ve finally got a word count widget for NaNoWriMo, so that’s in the right-hand sidebar now.  Feel free to use it to castigate me if I don’t write enough to keep ahead of the daily goals.)

There are distractions everywhere.  I want to spend some time watching key episodes of classic Doctor Who to get a real sense of the music in its natural habitat, as it were; I’d like to have a recent re-watch of some of the major evolutions of the sounds before I talk about it at Gallifrey One.  My former neighbour has gotten me into Supernatural, which… let’s just say, very distracting.  There’s the Avengers, which have suddenly become very popular for some reason, so that’s a thing in the ‘distraction’ column, too.

Anyway.  Yeah.  Distractions.

And my .mp3 player has decided that it is a comedian.  Today, as soon as I was deep in an experiment and couldn’t touch anything with my gloved hands, it decided to play “Uptown Girl.”  On repeat.  Indefinitely.  Ha, ha.  And then I was in an… emphatic discussion about the Avengers (coming out heavily on the side of Tony Stark), so it decided it was going to play me “Iron Man.”

This is my life these days.

You’re Standing on My Scarf

Yesterday was Halloween.  For once, the town celebrated the holiday on the actual day, rather than the Thursday before as they’ve been wont to do in the past.  We had a few trick-or-treaters (not nearly enough; there were perhaps a dozen in the allotted two hours, and the amount of candy we have left over is sinful).  When they were all gone, we went out still wearing our costumes to pick up some food, because we were darned if we’d have put them on for nothing more than the few children who came to our door.

Then (surprise!) we got back to working.

Oh, well.  At least my Fourth Doctor‘s outfit, such as it is so far (still missing a few components) got a feasibility check for Gallifrey One.  It’s lookin’ pretty good!

I’m the Doctor, Not the Monster

Friend 1: You’re just a stroppy Frankenstein!

Me: I am nothing without a Creature.

Friend 2: I now find myself mentally singing “Stroppy Dr. Frankenstein” over and over to the tune of the Wm. Tell Overture.

Me: I don’t care what you sing, Igor, as long as you get [Friend 1] in place before the storm hits. I WILL COMMAND LIFE.

Friend 1: It’s proving wonderfully distracting as [Me] cavorts around the lab with a demonic expression and a rod.

Friend 2: So, average day, then.

Me:

Dear Katy

POKE.

(A proper post with actual news is forthcoming in the next couple of days.  I’m just waiting to hear from… a man.  About a horse.  You know how it goes.  In the meantime, just trust me: this, too, is a very important post.)

Would You Like a Jelly Baby?

Please forgive the posting absence.  To be honest, nothing that is both good and discuss-able has happened since I left Edmonton, and I’d prefer not to write about things that aren’t good, so…

But anyway, that’s no longer true.  Because a fantastic friend of mine has knitted me this:

And, in case you can’t tell, I am utterly thrilled!

Posting of proper entries to resume post-haste.