Musings of a mad muslim scientist

Batman Live

2011-09-04T11:24:00.000-07:00

I went to see Batman Live at the 02 stadium just before it disappears from London.

This was my first time at the 02. It's a large venue, but most of the audience ends up sitting so high up and far away from the stage. The stage itself was reasonably sized, but not as big as we thought it would be. Initially it starts off with lots of models representing the buildings of Gotham City, which are moved out of the way as the show commences.

The storyline briefly covers Batman's origin story, and then focuses on Robin's origin story. We see the Riddler, Two Face, the Penguin and Poison Ivy, with a greater emphasis on Joker, Harley Quinn and Catwoman. This was my first criticism - the latter 3 villains and Robin take up most of the show. Batman himself is left as a bit player, and comes across as rather feeble, getting outsmarted and defeated at several points, hardly an unstoppable vigilante of the night.

My second criticism was the distance between the stage and the seats. I was sat quite far away, so the people looked tiny, and I was in one of the medium distance seats - people sitting further away must have really strained their eyes to see what was going on. Why did they not film what was happening and project onto giant screens, like they do during music concerts? That would have looked awesome.

Thirdly, the fighting looked terrible and amateurish. THey did several mock fights, when really they should have incorporated real martial artists who would have lent it an air of authenticity. The initial fight of Batman vs Catwoman, resulting in them bouncing around in the air, looked daft.

Despite all that, it was not all bad. The Batmobile was very cool, the acrobatics of the club dancers and the circus performers was great, the sound quality was very good, and the use of the giant background screen to set the scene and act as a backdrop was brilliant. The storyline was a little basic, characterisation was left to its barest bones.

Overall, a lot of spectacle and special effects, but so many missed opportunities.

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are dead.

2011-08-21T15:10:00.001-07:00

Who?!

I've never actually seen Hamlet before, but I was vaguely familiar with the plotline. Prince of Denmark is told by the ghost of his late father that he was murdered by the prince's uncle. The same uncle who is now married to the prince's mother and the new King. Prince goes mad, tragedy ensues, bloodbath at the end.

So forgive me for not knowing that Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are, in fact, two characters in that play, with rather minor roles, involving them taking Hamlet to England, where they are supposed to deliver him to the King of England to secretly be executed.

This play, "Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead", was written in the 1960s by Tom Stoppard. It shows us what the two characters get up to during all the time they are not involved in the events of the play, Hamlet. More than that, they act as if they are actual characters in a play brought to life. So when events from Hamlet involve them, they know everything they are supposed to know, how to act, what to say, how to give their lines. As soon as the Shakespearian drama moves on to another scene, they are left behind, bereft of any self knowledge, like puppets with their strings cut. They constantly bemoan their lack of awareness, inability to do anything but follow events as laid down in the play, subject to the comings and goings of the other dramatis personae. So lacking in identity are they that they cannot even remember which one of them is Rosencrantz and which Guildenstern - nor can any of the other Hamlet characters.

The reviewer for the Evening Standard stated that "The play itself will be anathema to many. While lots of Stoppard's jokes still have bite, much of the humour that once struck audiences as dazzlingly original hasn't aged well." Fortunately for me, I have never even heard of it, and so it was perfectly enjoyable for me. A wonderful mix of metatheatre (there is a play within the play, where neither Rosencrantz nor Guildenstern recognise that the play is in fact about them) and existential angst and slapstick. Samuel Barnett and Jamie Parker, from the History Boys, play the leads with great energy, enthusiasm and affection. The play goes on a tad too long (some of the shipboard scenes culminating in a pirate attack could have been cut with no great loss).

I wish I could recommend that you see it - but I saw it on the last day it was showing at the Haymarket Theatre.

Ramadan and weight training

2011-08-21T14:51:00.000-07:00

Ramadan mubarak! I've been too tired and busy to update this recently. The holy month of Ramadan began on August 1st 2011. During this month, muslims fast from dawn 'til dusk, abstaining from any food, drink, medicine, smoking or sex.

My training has been going fairly well up until now - I hit a few personal bests in the last weeks of July. I was not sure what to do during Ramadan. My gym is insanely busy in the evenings which is why I normally train before work. There was no way that I was going to be able to train and then not refuel on food or water until the evening!

Several people on the interweb had suggestions such as Nick Mitchell:
http://www.nickmitchellblog.com/ramadan-nutrition-supplements-exercise/

Unfortunately, his advice is not very useful for me. He suggests eating at 545am and breaking the fast at 730pm. Either he has no clue what he's talking about, or perhaps those are the timings for the USA. In the UK this year, fasting has been starting around 330am and ending close to 9pm. In theory I could train in the gym around 8pm and break fast straight after, but my gym is too busy at that time to get anything meaningful done. Also, I would prefer to be at home, break my fast with my family and perform the sunset Maghrib prayers, than be stuck at the gym.

Similar advice from another US trainer, which is again not applicable because I don't at the moment go to a 24hr gym

http://www.suhaibwebb.com/personaldvlpt/worship/fasting-ramadan/the-ramadan-nutrition-and-workout-plan-for-success-by-rehan-jalali-the-protein-shaikh/

Mehdi off stronglifts seems to think fasting is similar to intermittent fasting, but I'm guessing IF people usually pick their 8 hour feed window to be something convenient like 12-8pm, not 9pm-3am. Honestly, you don't have a clue!

http://stronglifts.com/ramadan-weight-lifting-training-build-muscle-lose-fat/

So my solution? Try to eat as best I can, and train once a week on sunday afternoons. I've noticed about 20% drop in strength already. I'm hoping that's just glycogen depletion and dehydration and not all genuine strength loss. Hopefully I can pick up again in September and not be too far off where I started.

There are threads on bodybuilding.com where several muslims seem to be carrying on training just fine. Maybe because they're mostly American and the fasts are shorter there in the US, or they're students and not working full time, or *whispers* most people on there are roid junkies!

http://forum.bodybuilding.com/showthread.php?t=136878153

In any case, I think for a month it's more important to devote yourself body and soul to God, and come back to the mundane when it's over.

Review of Xmen First Class and Green Lantern films

2011-06-19T16:37:00.001-07:00

WARNING minor spoilers!

X Men First Class.

I didn't really see the need for this film when the trailers came out. We've had two great X men film, a mediocre third to end on, and then the appalling Wolverine prequel (I haven't actually seen it, I'm relying on other people's opinions on that one ;) ). So why another prequel?

I was dragged to see it anyway (I didn't mind too much - with Orange Wednesday 2 for 1). I was pleasantly surprised.

The film starts off in the 1940s, showing us the classic Magneto origins story as a poor Jewish boy struggles with the loss of his family at the hands of the Nazis (that good old staple for villains in genre movies), while we get a somewhat warmer start for Charles Xavier and a delightful Mystique.

Jump maybe 20 years later, and the world is heading towards a Cuban Missile Crisis - but I bet you never knew mutants were involved! Magneto and Professor Xavier are brought together to work with the US government to build a team of mutants who can take on a villain (played by Kevin Bacon with relish) who wants to send the world into nuclear war for his own nefarious reasons. The two friends must create a team of their own mutants and train them for war. Cue some great mutant vs mutant fights, and mutant vs war machine struggles. Nicholas Hoult is nothing special as Beast, and while Jennifer Lawrence and January Jones look stunning, they do not shine in the acting department ("Mutant and proud" - we already did that in Xmen 3). It's left to James Mcavoy and Michael Fassbender to get the best lines and scene stealing moments, and they do well with what they're given.

There ARE some continuity errors between this and the original trilogy (why no mention of Xavier and Mystique's previous close relationship, especially given that Mystique happily poisons Xavier in the first film? How could Xavier and Magneto have found Jean Grey, who would have been too young to mentor during this film? Why does Xavier claim Magneto helped him build Cerebro, when it was in fact someone else who made the original?) but that's of no great issue. Nor is the scene where one mutant switches sides (too many characters to give time for the minor ones to effectively show us why they're willing to work with mass murderers).

What matters is it looks great, the cheesy lines are kept to a minimum and we have great villains, heroes and anti heroes. Recommended.

Green Lantern

I'm a big DC fan but I was even more reluctant to see this than X men. I mean, come on, Ryan Reynolds?! He makes me cringe :(

Nonetheless I went to see this tonight (I did NOT wear the Green Lantern tshirt or ring my friend bought me last year).

AGAIN, pleasantly surprised. We get a nice quick intro into the Green Lantern mythos, are shown the bad guy, and then straight into the mess that is Hal Jordan's life. It doesn't take long for them to establish his reputation for being cocky and irresponsible,all the time living in the shadow of his late father. We're also introduced to the love interest, Carol Ferris, all keeping in line with the comic books. What I liked about this, compared to the ridiculous romance between Thor (in his eponymous film) and Natalie Portman's character, was that Hal Jordan and Carol Ferris clearly have a background, a past, a love that was won and lost - Thor and Jane Foster meet for 2 days and are suddenly willing to die for each other, pfft).

We get amusing time with some familiar comic characters (Tomar Re, Kilowog and of course Sinestro) and not one but TWO villains to deal with. We even get an appearance from Amanda Waller (are DC going to start building up a film continuity, the way Marvel has with SHIELD operatives appearing in all their films? Will Waller be showing up in Batman and SUperman films now?).

Special effects were decent (not sure it was necessary to make the GL costumes CGI), the constructs looked good, some nice conflicts, the villains were not that great though, and the key to defeating the bad guy was a bit mundane. Still, Ryan Reynolds did not annoy me, and even managed to emote once in a while, and there was of course the obligatory set up of a villain for the potential sequel if this film makes enough money. I for one do not understand why it has attracted a lot of negative hype. Worth watching for some light entertainment.

Battlestar Galactica Reimagined - explained.

2011-04-12T16:45:00.001-07:00

Battlestar Galactica was reimagined after the old show from the 70s into something darker and sassier. The writers did not plan everything out from the start, but the story for the most part does hold together. This is a review of the main events and the mythology behind the show, from the miniseries through to The Plan (but does not cover the events of the prequel series, Caprica).

Humans (who technically are not humans but an aliens species) apparently originally evolved on the planet Kobol (at least, that is the earliest history the show tells us about). According to their myths, humans lived with the gods they worshipped, known as the Lords of Kobol, who had names like Zeus or Athena. The cylons claim that the Lords are false gods and that it is blasphemous for humans to worship them rather than the One True God. It is possible the Lords are in fact divine messengers, angels, mistakenly worshipped.

4,000 years before the events of the miniseries, the people of Kobol were arranged in 13 tribes. 12 of them were human, the 13th was made up of cylons. It is not clear whether these cylons were human minds downloaded into cylon bodies, or whether they were truely original artificial intelligences. Either way, conflict grew between the 12 tribes and the 13th, possibly motivated by religion (reference is made to the 13th god being jealous of the other 12). In any case, the 13th tribe was forced to abandon Kobol. They made a long journey through the galaxy, stopping off at the algae planet, where they constructed the Temple of Hope. There, they prayed for guidance, and received visions from the Angels, showing the way to Earth. They found Earth and set up a colony. At this point, one of them must have gone back to Kobol, bringing with them the scrolls of Pythia, describing Earth, and creating the holographic map showing how to get to Earth.

2,000 years after the 13 tribe left, Kobol fell into ruin. The cylons claim the humans of this era engaged in barbaric practices such as human sacrifice. Human myth suggests they fell from grace and were banished by the gods, and that some gods such as Athena committed suicide in despair. There may have been a war or other type of catastrophe. Whatever happened, the 12 tribes had to leave. They went in the opposite direction as the 13 tribe, and eventually found a group of star systems to set up the 12 colonies. Upon arrival, they initially regressed into more primitive societies, until rebuilding their technological base. Often they warred with one another.

Around this time, divine messengers visited five cylons on Earth and warned them that their world was facing disaster. The 13th tribe had figured out how to reproduce biologically like humans, and had abandoned resurrection technology. They had also created their own artificial intelligence slave labour. The slave robots rebelled against their cylon masters, leading to war. Samuel Anders, Tory Foster, Galen Tyrol Saul Tigh and Ellen Tigh worked together to recover the lost resurrection technology. When Earth was wiped out by nuclear holocaust, they died, but they alone were resurrected into new bodies on a ship orbiting Earth. With their planet devastated, they realised they needed to warn their old family about the dangers of conflict with artificial life. They set off to find Kobol again, but got lost. Eventually they found the algae planet with the temple of Hope, renaming it the Temple of the Five. There, they again had visions from the messengers, showing the way back to Kobol. With no jump technology, the journey home took centuries at relativistic speeds. Eventually they got to Kobol, to find it abandoned by the 12 tribes.

By the time they got to the 12 colonies, they discovered they were too late. The 12 tribes had made their own artificial life forms, and these cylon centurion robots had also rebelled against their masters. The war had gone on for decades. The Five survivors of Earth made contact with the centurions and convinced them to abandon the war, in exchange for the Five helping them to evolve (this occured without the 12 colonies ever knowing about the presence of the Five from the 13th tribe).

The Five encouraged the monotheistic belief of the centurions, hoping it would form the basis of a peaceful society. They helped the centurions create the skinjobs - the cylons in human bodies that they themselves had - and gave them resurrection technology. The first model was One aka cavil, who was based upon Ellen Tigh's memories of her father. Cavil helped them make the rest of the Eight. He grew increasingly jealous of Ellen's preference for model Seven, aka Daniel, and sabotaged Daniel's tanks so that the entire line was wiped out.

Increasingly belligerent and frustrated with the Five's fondness for human form, thought and philosophy, and as an atheist unmoved by religious devotion to peace, Cavil killed the Five, and ensured that when they resurrected, they were trapped and reprogrammed with false memories. He then released them at diffferent stages into the 12 colonies to live human lives. He also reprogrammed the rest of the remaining seven cylon models so that they would know of the five but not remember their nature, want to talk of them or find them. He then convinced them that they needed to go to war with humanity and wipe them out, in revenge for humanity's abuses against them before the war, and to ensure they would replace humans as God's children.

The cylons agreed. They infiltrated human society, which remained unaware of the advances the Five had given them. Their Plan meant they were able to disable all human defences, in particular thanks to Caprica Six's seduction of Gaius Baltar allowing her to shut down all human defence computers. The second cylon war was brief, with all 12 colonies wiped out, and the fleet nullified. Victory was assured.

Except for a few coincidences that worked together to entirely undermine their plan. Laura Roslin survived and was able to set up a government. She was rescued by Lee Adama, and brought to Galactica, which remained immune to Cylon computer hacking thanks to its antiquated state and stubborness of William Adama who refused to upgrade to more sophisticated technology. Roslin was able to convince Adama to run instead of fight, and take the last 50,000 survivors with him. The cylons had not planned for this at all, and were caught out.

They were also not prepared for the remarkable coincidences that saved and reunited the brainwashed Five. Tigh and Tyrol were both aboard Galactica. Tory Foster survived the nuclear attack on Caprica and reached Galactica with the refugees. Samuel Anders also survived, and eventually was rescued too. Ellen was saved by one of the Cavils, who wanted her to live long enough to admit she was wrong, and then realised in fact he was wrong. The entire Plan was predicated upon Cavil's desire to make his "parents" hate humans and reject their nature. But it failed - the destruction wreaked upon humanity only made the Five love them more.

Another Cavil aboard Galactica began recruiting the few Cylons they had among the fleet and attempted to sabotage or destroy it. A key player was an Eight, named Sharon "Boomer" Valerie. Unfortunately she grew attached to the humans, and was unable to fully commit to their destruction. Many of the other cylons among the fleet also became intoxicated from being fully immersed in human lives. One of the Simons grew to love the human family he had made, and committed suicide rather than kill them. Cavil's plan was undone by cylon contamination with human feelings. The Twos aka Leoben Conoy, meanwhile became obsessed with a human named Kara Thrace aka Starbuck, believing that there was something special about her. Cavil dismissed this as superstitious nonsense.

Unable to procreate biologically, the cylons attempted to use humans left on the colonies. Their breeding experiments failed. They believed the reason was that they were unable to love. They therefore tricked a soldier named Helo Agathon into falling in love with an Eight named Athena. Unfortunately for the cylons, she grew to love him as well, and betrayed her people to side with Helo. She helped him and Starbuck find the Arrow of Apollo, an artifact needed to unlock the holographic map on Kobol. The fleet coincidentally found Kobol during their search for Earth. Using the arrow, they found enough markers to take them in the right direction.

Meanwhile, on the occupied colonies, Boomer and Caprica Six, both irrevocably changed by their immersion in human society and contaminated with love for humans, realised that the cylon genocide of humanity was flawed. Celebrated as war heroes for their work in disabling human defences, they convinced the cylons that they should end their pursuit of the fleet.

The fleet found a planet that was inhabitable, and under the newly elected president, Baltar, decided to colonise it rather than continue looking for Earth. At first the colony prospered, but over time corruption set in, and the society began to fall apart.

A final cylon agent in the fleet detonated a nuclear explosion, revealing their location. The cylons found them and occupied the planet, now believing that they needed to control and teach the humans to live properly and peacefully. After months of brutal occupation, Galactica was able to lead a rescue mission, getting the humans off the planet and back to searching for Earth. The cylons now believed it was their own destiny to find Earth. Rather than search for their own life, they were now obsessed with taking over the destiny of the humans. They also captured Helo and Athena's baby, Hera, a cylon-human hybrid, and the only child born to a cylon. Ellen Tigh was killed by her husband for collaborating with the cylons. She died, and resurrected on the cylon fleet, regaining all her lost memories. She was kept locked up by Cavil.

Along the way they found a probe left behind by the 13th tribe. Possibly left as a marker on the way to Earth, or by the Five on the way back to Kobol, it was infected with a disease that the current cylons had no immunity to. Helo sabotaged an effort to use it to wipe out the cylons, believing a reciprocal genocide was not right. Athena made sure to take back Hera from the cylons, and brought Caprica Six along as well.

Eventually both fleets made it to the Algae planet. There, the model Three cylon known as D'anna, became obsessed with claiming the Temple of the Five from the humans. She had experienced visions from God regarding Hera and the Five, and believed the Temple would help her discover who the Five were. She was correct, but Cavil, not wanting his work undone, intervened and convinced the cylons to shut down her entire line of cylons, keeping them boxed up in suspension.

A supernova wiped out the star system containing the Temple, by strange coincidence occuring at the time Galactica and the cylons fought over the planet. Galactica was able to use that nova to plot a new course taking them even closer to Earth.

Not long after, Kara Thrace had visions tormenting her about her past, when her mother had abused her. She entered a planetary maelstrom and was apparently killed when her ship was destroyed. In fact, she somehow was transported across the light years to Earth, where she crash landed and died. She then took on a new body and gained a new ship and made her way back to the fleet.

The fleet was ambushed by the cylons inside a nebula. At this point, a strange signal activated the remaining four of the Five in the fleet, letting them know they were cylons, but nothing more. It was linked to a song (from All Along the Watchtower). When the cylon raiders attacked, they made contact with Anders. Realising he was a cylon, their higher consciousness was sparked and they refused to attack the human fleet and risk the five. Cavil was adamant that the Five not be contacted and that the raider ships be reprogrammed by lobotomising their brains. The Four and Five models agreed with him. The Twos, Sixed and Eights disagreed - except for one, Boomer, who was now entirely working with Cavil and willing to betray her fellow model Eights.

This led to civil war, and most of the two, six and eight model cylons were wiped out. They realised the only hope left to them was to ally with the humans, especially since the Five were among the human fleet. They made contact with a resurrected kara Thrace, who brought them back to the fleet. An alliance led to the destruction of cylon resurrection technology and the unboxing of the last survivor of the Three model line, D'anna. She brought with her the knowledge of who the Final Five were from her visions. Eventually a true alliance was made and rebel cylons and humans alike made their way to Earth, using a signal from kara thrace's restored ship and the intuition of the remaining foour of Five.

They found Earth, still devastated from the war that wiped out the original cylon race. This caused a huge uproar in the fleet, with many humans giving way to despair that no hope remained. A civil war broke out, and many humans died. Anders suffered a bullet wound to the head, causing brain damage. This allowed him to recover his lost cylon memories, but eventually led to him entering a coma.

Eventually Adama and Roslin regained control of the fleet. Just in time for Boomer to snatch Hera again and take her back to the Cylons.

By this point. Gaius Baltar proved that Kara had indeed died on Earth but was not a cylon. Thus she had experienced a true divine resurrection. She was plagued by visions, signs and portents linking her to her father and to Hera. Adama initially refused to believe, after the prophecies they followed had led them to a dead Earth. Kara convinced him that there must be a divine plan at work for all these events to be taking place. Adama also realised that the cylons would use hera to achieve biological reproduction to replace the Resurrection technology they had lost.

He therefore sent the fleet on to safety, and took Galactica on a final mission to assault the cylon stronghold, a base known as the Colony, which was constructed around the original ship of the Five, and in close proximity to a black hole. Anders was able to link to the Colony's systems, shutting down their weapons. Boomer too was contaminated with love - for Hera - and saved the young girl from cylon experimentation. She brought her back to her parents, whereupon Athena executed Boomer. Cylon fought rebel cylon once more, and cylons entered Galactica and again captured Hera. At this point, both caprica Six and baltar realised that their own visions were indications of a divine hand at work, and convinced both sides to lay down their weapons. The human fleet would take Hera, and the Five would give the cylons resurrection technology, and all would part ways.

Unfortunately at this point, Galen Tyrol found out that Tory Foster had murdered his wife, and in turn murdered her, thus ending any hope of recovering Resurrection technology and achieving peace. Kara put all her faith in her visions of her father and the Music that activated the Final Five (and was also given to kara by Hera) and used them to sent Galactica to a random location in space, leaving the Cylon Colony to self destruction.

That random location turns out to be our Earth, roughly 148,000 BC, which is inhabited by primitive humans, who are genetically compatible with the humans who evolved from Kobol. The remaining humans and rebel cylons decide they need to leave their previous lives behind, including all the destructive power of technology and modern life, and spread themselves across the planet, eventually interbreeding with the natives. The most successful is Hera, since her DNA is inherited by all modern humans, so that all humans have not only terrestrial DNA but cylon and Kobol human too. The robotic centurions are given the last remaining Cylon ship and freed to explore the galaxy, ending the cycle of war between man and machine. Kara mysteriously disappears - her job was to get the people to Earth, and with that done, her second chance at life is finished. Either she was human and given only a temporary reprieve from death, or she was herself a divine messenger, in human form.

The divine messengers are seen in modern day United States, pondering whether after Kobol, old Earth and the 12 colonies, can this newest iteration survive any better.

My interpretation of the ending is a grim one. "God" wipes out civilisations when they become overly decadant and evil. Kobol, old Earth, the 12 colonies. The cylons and survivors of the colonies are themselves also purified by civil wars, so that only a bare handful of them survive to reach new Earth, with a population too small to sustain itself. They interbreed with the natives and pass on their ideas and DNA. Presumably this is why our modern world looks like theirs, we have inherited their culture through the ages. But there are no records on our world of the Galacticans, so their culture died out. Nothing is left of them. It seems to me like they were used to spark the genetic and cultural evolution of new Earth's natives, nothing more. One question that is often asked is - why did William Adama bother going after Hera? The answer is threefold.

Firstly, he wanted to deny them Hera. After resurrection technology was destroyed, she remained their only hope at finding a clue to biological reproduction. If they found it, they could reproduce, and replenish their numbers, becoming an ongoing and unendable threat to the humans and rebel cylons. Secondly, an attack on the Cylon Colony would greatly weaken Cylon resources. Thirdly, despite his loss of faith in the prophecies after finding old Earth, Kara Thrace managed to convince Adama that something divine really was at work. Her own miraculous resurrection was the strongest proof of all. I think that by believing in that plan and risking their lives for it, the humans and rebel cylons were the only ones allowed to survive - the mainstream cylons were, after all, wiped out, and they were for the most part atheists.

Mass Effect 2 DLC - Arrival

2011-04-10T16:46:00.000-07:00

(Warning - mild spoilers in this article).

If you have an Xbox 360, chances are you have at least heard about Mass Effect. I recently bought the new Downloadable Content (DLC) add on for Mass Effect 2, called Arrival, and thought I would let you know what I thought!

For those unfamiliar with the games, Mass Effect is an action and Roleplaying Game (RPG). Set about 150 years in the future, humans have joined a galactic organisation of aliens called the Citadel. There are 3 alien races who control the ruling Citadel Council, with humans and other aliens as mere members, and a few other races who aren't part of the Citadel at all. The council lives on a space station called the Citadel, which is linked to a network of giant objects in space called Mass Relays. The relays allow travel all over the galaxy. The relays and the Citadel are believed to be leftovers of an extinct advanced alien race.

At the start of Mass Effect, your character, Commander Shepherd has been chosen to become the first human Spectre. Spectres are the creme de la creme of soldiers and secret agents who work directly for the Citadel Council. Your promotion paves the way for humans to become the fourth council race. But then you discover an alien Spectre has gone rogue, allying with evil robots to try and summon an evil race of advanced aliens to destroy the galaxy.

The game is made up of several mandatory main missions and multiple optional side missions that are not part of the main story. Each mission involves your character and two others picked from your squad of 6 aliens and humans. Most missions are to kill all the opponents and reach the target point, but some involve talking to characters, picking dialogue options. Often you can pick nice Paragon or mean Renegade options. The more paragon options you choose, the stronger your moral stance becomes until you are able to talk terrorists into releasing hostages etc. The more renegade options you choose, the more frightening you become so that you can frighten opponents into surrender, for instance.

You can pick what class of character you are, which determines which special abilities you get. The more missions you do, the more experience you get, the stronger your abilities get (and you pick which get stronger to suit your playing style). Soldiers can use all types of weapons and use the strongest armour. Engineers can only use limited weapons and armour, but can use technology to overload enemy shields or sabotage their weapons or hack robots to attack other robots. Biotics can use energy powers to make enemies float helplessly or throw them out of the way or crush their life. You can also mix two classes together to get a mix of abilities.

The storyline is epic. They have put SO much detail in the alien races, their backgrounds, galactic history. What was infuriating was using the Mako tank to drive around planets that had ridiculous mountains that are difficult to drive over. Many of the side missions take place in identical bases or derelict starships. Many opponents (geth husks, thorian creepers, medical experiments) are almost identical in nature. The side missions are tedious, but the main missions are superb in diversity.

There are also some brilliant key decisions to make. At one point, you must try to convince an angry team mate that you are right - or have him killed. At another, you must choose who to save and who to leave to die. At the end, you must make an immense decision on the nature of the Citadel itself.

Mass Effect 2 modified the game by streamlining the abilities, and emphasising different types of protection (shields, armour, barriers, regeneration) that required different powers to overcome. The combat style is different, with improved squad orders, and now you have to pick up and use limited amounts of ammunition (whereas in Mass Effect 1, you had unlimited ammo but weapons shut down if you fired them without a break). The side missions are now unique and different. There are several great downloadable content add-ons.

The story picks up two years after the first game. Your character is recruited by a morally dubious organisation to carry on the fight against the evil aliens from ME1. Now you have to recruit and gain the loyalty of the best of the best to make a team capable of fighting a new foe in their home turf, a virtual suicide mission.

The newest add-on to the game is called Arrival. You can do it in the middle of the game or after the final mission. Admiral Hackett calls you to tell you a human operative has found a Reaper artifact that proves the Reapers are on their way. You have to go rescue the operative, and help her with her mission to stop the imminent arrival of the Reaper invasion.

What's irritating about this mission is that it is a solo mission, so you cannot bring along any of your squad. What I love about ME2 is using combinations of my and my squad's abilities to take down the enemy. This game mostly requires you to fight everyone yourself. The first mission requires that you sneak through the enemy base undetected. There are several varren that you can kill, but take care to not shoot ANYONE else until you find the operative - then you get a new Xbox achievement! From there you have to fight your way out, this time with the operative to help you.

After that, you get to her base, where she has an audacious plan in motion. Unfortunately, you discover things are not going to plan. You then have to take on an entire army by yourself (there's even an achievement for wiping them out). You then have to fight through the base, taking on groups of soldiers at each point. You have one big decision to make, which as usual has a paragon or renegade option, but to be frank, felt rather flat.

I have to say this game was nowhere near as enjoyable or immense as previous DLC for ME2. The first DLC gave you a mercenary, zaeed, and a decent loyalty mission. The second gave you an expert thief, Kasumi, with a wonderful mission requiring a James Bond style infiltration and then a great fight to escape through an army of foes with just you and Kasumi. The third was a great reunion with Liara, and a wonderful mix of locations and two great end bosses (the rogue agent and the Shadow Broker).

Arrival gives you a sneaking mission (kinda dull), fighting off troops to protect the operative (not bad), then taking on the base on your own (ok, but like I said, I really missed directing my squad). There's nothing epic or imaginative about the locations. The moral dilemma was not particularly gripping either for some reason. The operative character just looked weird and flip flopped from dedication to psychosis a little too quickly.

I already knew this DLC had poor reviews but was desperate for more ME2 before ME3 turns up at the end of 2011. I have to warn others though that this really is not worth forking out for.

Review of trip to Berlin, March 2011

2011-03-27T10:29:00.000-07:00

Not updated in quite a while! Been on too many holidays ;)

Thought I would give a summary of a trip to Berlin.

Thursday:

Three of us took an Ryanair flight from London Stansted to Schoenfeld airport. We randomly met a British guy on the flight who happened to be a Segway tour guide for Berlin, who advised that we take the 171 bus (driver sold us a ticket for €3 that lets you use all public transport for the next 2 hours) to Rudow station, and then used the U and S bahn system to get to our destination - Wittenbergplatz. From there we found our hotel - Holiday Inn - which was charging about £25 a night per person for sharing a double room of decent quality with buffet breakfast included. We finished checking in around 11:30pm, by which point we were so hungry but almost everything was closed so opted for vegetarian burgers at McDonalds (€1 a burger!).

The next morning we returned to Wittenbergplatz and bought a 2 day Berlin Welcome card for €16. These cards give you unlimited use of public transport and discounts on various tourist entry fees, and seem to be easy to use - you can get them for different numbers of days for different zones (most tourist stuff is in zones A and B, you won't need zone C except to get back to schonefeld airport). What we did not realise was that the 2 day card did NOT include what we thought it did, which was the free pass to Museum Island. For that, you need to spend about €34 for the 3 day card. You need to validate the card the first time you use it - look for little free standing machines near station entrances where you feed the ticket in to get it stamped in the appropriate square. These cards come with a guide book as well.

We then explored the area, inluding the Kurfurstendamm road, and entered the Story of Berlin museum (getting a 25% discount with our Berlin card). It's a nice overview of Berlin's history but it is a bit overwhelming - there is a little bit TOO much text to read. Unfortunately the tour of the nuclear bunker requires a guide, and the one in English was at 12pm. Since we wanted to get going by 11am, we decided to not hang around for it.

Afterwards we headed for Potsdammer Platz (where my friends paid several € to have their passports stamped with apparently authentic stamps showing they had passed through what used to be west and east berlin) and then to the Holocaust Memorial. We did not enter the museum underground but just saw the outside - the memorial is stark, composed of blocks of stone, almost like a graveyard.

Nearby was the Brandenburg Tor (gate) and the square which is a nice place to take your tourist photos, and where we met our friend who joined us, so now we were 4.

From there, 3 of us attempted to find a mosque for Friday Prayers. Now we DID research where to go before we came to Berlin - unfortunately no one thought to bring that research with them! We did eventually find a new Turkish mosque, right opposite Gorlitzer Bahnhof on the U-bahn, sort of on Wiener Strasse road. They serve food in the basement level (€3.50 for a yummy meatwrap + drink). Sadly we got there a little too late for the Jummu'ah prayers but we did speak to a very friendly man who kept us company while we ate lunch, who apparently learnt to speak English from watching Oprah Winfrey shows.

We had left our non muslim friend to wait at the Topography of Terror, which is not the most imaginatively designed museum - it's basically a very large room with lots of displays, information plaques and photos, but it does tell the very grim story of just how brutal the Nazi regime was and how they methodically and brutally destroyed Jews, gypsies, homosexuals and any other people they decided did not deserve to live along the Master Race.

From there we went past Checkpoint Charlie, the infamous crossing point between the east and west, and skipped the museum (would have been €9 with our Berlin card). We saw AlexanderPlatz (a large public square). Nearby is the impressive TV Tower, the largest structure in Berlin (apparently there is a revolving restaurant at the top).

We then headed for Museum Island, where several large museums are located.

We opted for the biggest and most famous, the Pergamon, named after the main feature taken from the eponymous Greek temple. There are several impressive rebuilt temple structures, and rebuilt walls taken from Babylon. Was v tiring getting through it all. We spent about €12 a ticket since we did NOT have the benefit of the museum card in our Welcome Berlin card.

Exhausted from that, we managed to bump into the man from the Easyjet flight, who suggested a place to eat. We went (I think!) to Frankfurter Tor station and then wandered about along Frankfurter Allee for a while looking for the restaurant he recommended (there are quite a few in the area). Eventually by chance, not his directions, we found it - a decent thai restaurant called Lemongrass which I think is near a side street called Niederbarnimstrasse.

(http://www.tripadvisor.com/ShowUserReviews-g187323-d1343118-r95213435-Lemongrass-Berlin.html).

It was quite reasonable price, tasty food (and suitable for non-meat eaters such as muslims who cant find halal meat, or hindus).

Saturday:

First we went to find the nearby Kaiser Wilhelm cathedral which was destroyed in World War 2 and rebuilt. We couldn't find it - because it is hidden under scaffolding! But what is left is very beautiful, and the replacement is also serene and beautiful inside, if somewhat plain and functional on the outside. The old cathedral contains an iron cross from Coventry, exchanged in partnership to underline how the Germans and British inflicted so much pain and destruction upon one another, and hopefully we will never see that done again.

We went to see the Reichstag, which houses the German parliament the Bundestag, where we queued in the freezing weather for almost half an hour before finding out that unless you book a week in advance to have security checks, you will NOT be allowed in! This is a recent development so wasn't in any online review or guidebook we read :(

Frozen to the bone, we walked to the Brandenburg Tor again, and saw a sign for a vegetarian restaurant which was apparently 600m away. There is a little cluster of restaurants and shops behind the Holocaust Memorial, and behind that is the vegetarian Thai restaurant, Samadhi. Food was very tasty, portions were ok, had a main course and ginger tea (to soothe my throat after standing outside in the freezing cold) for about €15.

After that we wandered around different areas like the Karl Marx forum and the Gendarmenmarkt, and eventually made it to the DDR museum which is near the Berliner Dom cathedral. It's an interactive museum all about East Berlin under soviet rule, and cost about €8 to get in (we didn't realise we could have saved €2 with our Berlin card). There are lots of displays, cabinets, cars to sit in, an interrogation room, touchscreen games etc.

We decided to avoid any more museums after that. For some crazy reason we went all the way to the Olympic stadium, which was creepy as it was pitch black when we go there, and there was a car parked with two guys sitting in it, doing.... nothing, it seemed. We took some pictures and then headed back to town. We went to Savignyplatz station, where there are many restaurants, and opted for Apostles, which serves some rather LARGE pizzas for about €12 each.

Full of food, we went home.

Sunday - a taxi cost us about €35 from central Berlin to Schoenfeld airport around 9am in the morning, took less than 30 minutes. Our flight was delayed, but we arrived in Luton Airport. From there, our prebooked EasyBus ticket (£2 online) got us back to central London, we decided to get off at Baker street to get the tube home.

Overall: Berlin is a nice city, full of friendly and helpful people. I was rather worried as a muslim about where we would eat. We did not spot any halal restaurants other than in the mosque which served a v basic meal, but there were plenty of fish or vegetarian options so it was fine. We managed on a budget of about €15 a meal. In terms of things to do , I would rate it lower than Lisbon or Barcelona or Paris. It didn't help that the weather was absolutely freezing even in early March. The underground U and S Bahn are easy to use, and not too expensive.

How to finish your PhD

2010-12-30T14:50:00.000-08:00

I;ve been busy! I went on holiday at long last to Lisbon, and I revised for my PhD viva, passed it, corrected my thesis and handed it in to complete my PhD!

Here is what I wrote on 43 things for completing my PhD (the only task on there i have actually noted as finished)

I started my PhD in 2004 in a research lab. At the start of my second year, I was gobsmacked to find out my supervisor was leaving to set up a new lab somewhere else in a different city in the UK. This was after he had JUST recruited a new Post Doctoral worker from Australia and a PhD student from Portugal. In fact, when I started, he already knew he was planning to leave, but neglected to inform me.

We were given the options of either moving with him or being left to fend for ourselves. At this point my project was not going well (as is very common for middle of phd) and ever worse, my relationship with my supervisor was poor. I found it difficult to talk to him.
I spoke with the student advisor, who suggested I wait until my midterm before making a decision. The midterm is half way through the phd, where you switch from an MPhil (Masters) to a full PhD program. I passed the midterm viva, and decided I did not want to move with my supervisor. In fact, no one from our lab did. Lab heads do move their labs, and usually at least half the lab moves with them. Unsurprisingly, none of us wanted to go with our supervisor, given his mercurial moods and unpleasant manner.

So I was left looking for somewhere to go. I was told that I could start afresh somewhere else, with new funding, but all my previous work would be discarded and would not count towards the new project. This was quite a shock, but I looked around. Unfortunately there was nowhere available – any lab who really wanted a new student had already filled up their lab space with incoming students for 2006. Luckily, one lab head gave me a place. So i started afresh in September 2006.

The project I was given – generating knockout mice. Now, anyone who works in this field will be able to tell you that it is a LOT of work, and hardly suitable for a PhD student, especially one in a lab which has NO experience in this sort of work. I foolishly agreed to the project, and so began 4 very stressful years. The mouse project did not work, and the second project was equally stressful, although I scraped some results in the end. My thesis was not the most exciting, but somehow I managed to put enough data together to fill it up (there was a bit of barrel scraping in some instances).

Even more fun was the fact that I had 3 years funding for a 4 year project. So I spent the last year relying on savings and my parents. My supervisor did nothing to help me find money. I am now very poor!

My advice?
If you are about to start a PhD – think VERY seriously about it! It really eats into your social life. I have lost count of how many times I didn’t go out with friends or family, how many times I was in the lab all day saturday, sunday and then back to work monday as normal. Also, trust your gut instinct regarding the supervisor. You have to work with him/her for 4 years! Make sure you insist on speaking with people in the lab.

If you are in the middle of the phd – keep your bibliography up to date! And make sure EVERY result you get is written up as if it is going to be in your thesis. You may think its rubbish and never going to see the light of day, but if you get to the end and have nothing exciting, you’ll end up going through rubbish old results just to find stuff to fill the thesis up!

Make sure you don’t get stuck on projects that seem to be going nowhere. If you have tried every alternative and optimised the method, think about where to go next, don’t just keep plodding on and banging your head against the wall. Quite often, supervisors are happy to cling to stupid methods/ideas, you may have to jump to something new which they won’t like, but it is YOUR phd, not theirs, and you;re the one who has to answer for it at the viva.

The viva itself was not that bad, at 3 hours long. I think I was probably quite lucky and got sensible examiners. They did ask a few questions which I couldn’t really answer, despite my best guesses, but I admitted I didn’t really know, and they accepted that.

I got a list of corrections to do, which i did within less than 2 weeks. I then printed my final thesis (in a nice hardback edition) and handed in copies to the lab and the university, and kept one for myself.

You may think you are never going to get through this. The last 2 years of my phd, I thought it was a prison sentence. I was literally counting down the days to freedom. So many times I fantasised about running away, or writing a resignation letter. My secondary supervisor was perfect for offering the moral support and shoulder to cry on that my primary supervisor was never going to give. My family did their bit too. Finishing the phd is a matter of endurance and taking the pain, but don’t let the frustration cloud your judgement. Make sure you discuss your work as often as possible with as many different people as possible (ensuring they aren’t people who might want to steal it) to see if others have interesting insights, or think your ideas are plain nuts :)

Good luck

What an amazing few days

2010-09-27T15:50:00.001-07:00

Firstly, Eid Mubarak! The holy month of Ramadhan ended, and virtually everyone seems to have celebrated Eid-ul-Fitr, the festival of the fast breaking, on the same day (since the Islamic calendar relies on a lunar calendar and on people sighting the new moon, people can disagree on whether the new month has started or not).

On that same day, I decided to go into work and hand in my thesis! I paid extra to have it bound more quickly. They look awesome. I can't express how happy I am to get to this stage. Even if I fail my viva, at least I got here and submitted something!. Now all I have to do is wait for my examiners to read my 200 page thesis before we decide on an examination date so we can meet and they can spend 2-5 hours tearing it to shreds and reducing me to tears. In Ukraine, PhD examinations are in public, with the institute and your friends and family as audience members!

Now that I am a man of leisure, I decided to... go back to work for one last experiment, which gave good results. It was an expression construct I had made, basically a piece of DNA to make cells create a protein they wouldn't normally make. It works, so maybe my lab can use it after I leave in future experiments! Other than that, I have been enjoying myself at last. I ordered a new Xbox 360 slim from the Microsoft store which went missing so I got fed up and got a refund, and got an xbox bundle from HMV instead. They delivered the xbox and game fairly quickly, but still haven't delivered the second game, 3 weeks later. The new xbox is awesome. It is a lot smaller than previous models. It DOES still get rather hot, which is worrying. At least the fan is a lot more quiet. With its impressive 250GB hard drive, I have started saving games to the hard drive, so that the machine doesn't have to work as hard and there is reduced risk of scratching the game disc. So far I have been replaying Mass Effect 2 on Hardcore.

I also attended the Lost Marathon at the Prince Charles Cinema. They decided to show all 120 hours worth of six seasons of the show Lost, back to back. I got there on Monday at 8am, expecting a huge queue of people. The queue consisted of about 10 people waiting forlornly. I was on my own so just struck up conversation with some of them. Nerds are good at making friends with each other :) In the end only about 50 or so people went in. I didn't think I would get in and had only planned to stay a few hours. I nonetheless stayed for 24 hours, which took me through season one and into the first 3 episodes of season two. Seeing Lost on the big screen was incredible. I have never really rewatched any of the episodes, so I had forgotten a lot of season one events. It really struck me just how brutal and harsh their life was on the island! The cinema showed the episodes in 4 hour blocks, with 15 minute breaks. I had no change of clothes, and no sleeping bag. I decided I would go mad if I stayed there longer so I left. I nonetheless got a goody bag, consisting of Season 6 DVD set, a poster, a tshirt and an Artifacts booklet with snippets from the upcoming Encyclopedia. I almost wish I had stayed until The End on Friday morning, but I think I would have become as deranged as Claire by that point.

Ramadhan - half way finished

2010-08-26T17:21:00.001-07:00

Whew. We're now past the halfway mark on the holy month of Ramadhan. Each year, muslims spend a month fasting, abstaining from food, drink, smoking or intake of anything else during the sunlit hours of the day. This year the fasts have roughly been around 3am - 8pm. Tough, but not impossible. It's more the disrupted sleeping routine thats wearing me down than the food and water ban. Trying to finish my phd is not helping matters. Tomorrow is my last day of major lab work. After that, its just writing and rewriting. My thesis is actually taking shape, its unbelievable. I never thought I'd see this day.

THe downside is that so much time at work = no time spent in contemplation. Muslims typically spend much of Ramadhan in prayer, especially at the mosque in extended evening prayers called taraweeh. Unfortunately I've only been twice so far. I have really neglected my spiritual needs, but soon my thesis will be handed in, and I can reclaim my life and make up for it.

iPod Touch apps

2010-08-03T19:03:00.000-07:00

I have to admit, I haven't really taken full advantage of my iPod Touch or my new Android HTC phone. There are so many apps available from iTunes and the Android Store, but most of them seem to be rather useless! In particular for the ipod, many of them work best if internet connectivity is available. Since it's not an iPhone, it only connects when I'm at home.

I have however invested in several apps for the iPod Touch.

1) Sol free. It has several card games based on solitaire. Free Recommended.

2) Civilisation Revolutions. I only played the original Civilisation games occasionally on friends' PCs so I had a passing familiarity with the game. This version generates a random world map, and lets you control various forces to create an empire. Initially you start off with one settler, who founds a city. You began researching technology like pottery, writing, combustion, electronics and atomic energy to allow you to progress. You make granaries, temples, and workshops to help you make soldiers, planes and nuclear weapons to dominate the world. Along the way you can make Wonders of the World for bonuses. You can win in several ways - create the most advanced nation, or wipe out the other AI-controlled nations before they eliminate you. Some of the touchscreen controls can irritate at times, but its an immensely addictive game! Costs £3.99 Recommended.

3) iFitness. A decent workout programme. It contains a wide range of different weight lifting exercises, most of which come with not just pictures and text but short demonstrative video clips as well. You can record your workouts with reps and sets, and monitor your body measurements and weight, all of which are presented in little graphs to show your progress. £1.19 Recommended

4) Stanza. ebook reader. I've only used it to download the free books, which are mostly the classics. So the Brothers Karamazov, or Ulysses, or Art of War, or Jekyll and Hyde. The text is not too difficult to read and is quite handy for the bus or train. free Recommended

5) Prayer times. Gives you times for salaat, direction of Qibla etc. Needs an internet connection to keep up to date. £0.59 Recommended

6) Lux touch. Basically Risk on ipod! It is incredibly addictive (sound effects are annoying, so I play with the sound off). Just like the board game, you are assigned countries randomly (and your soldiers are allocated randomly to those countries). Then you have to wipe out all the AI controlled empires by conquering the world. The more countries you control, the more recruits you get each turn. Each time you conquer a country you get a bonus which cashes in when you have 3 bonuses (this aspect was rather odd, as the bonus can be anywhere from 30-200 soldiers). The 4 AI characters have distinct ways of playing (red is always v methodical, yellow is brash and expends all forces to attack anyone and everyone), but there are odd behaviours (quite often they seem reluctant to entirely eliminate an AI, preferring to leave them at least one country). free Recommended

7) Plants vs zombies. A defence tower game. You have a lawn. Zombies start on one end and attempt to cross to reach your house on the other end. You must put various plants in their way. Pea plants shoot peas to kill zombies, sunflowers generate solar energy to pay for plants, red chilli wipes out all zombies in one direction etc. There are then variations on this - the back garden has a pool which requires lilypads to help your plants float; attacks at night require mushroom plants which can thrive without the sun; attacks via the roof rely on potted plants. There are various types of zombies too - some have helmets for added protection, other can pole vaunt over your defences, while the Ogre zombie just smashes through everything, and dolphin zombies can bypass your defences in pools. Yes, really! Great soundtrack too £1.59 Recommended

8) Air sharing. For sharing files, making your ipod a proper harddrive. Lets you store word pdf and video files, without having to use other apps to view them. So you can view videos that might not be compatible with iTunes, since it connects your ipod directly to your computer wirelessly. £1.79

9) Hearts free. For playing Hearts card game. Addictive and infuriating when you get the queen of spades! Free. Recommended

10) Monkey Island. The original classic touch and point game. You control Guybrush Threepwood. You can get him to talk to characters, pick up objects, and use objects on people or locations. It requires a lot of patience and effort to get the right actions in the right order - quite often defying logic as to how to solve each problem. There is a hint advisor that can help you past rather confusing or tricky parts. The maps are ridiculously tiny - at one point I was stuck and had to resort to online cheating for answers, simply because I hadn't located something on the map as it was so difficult and obscured. £4.99 Recommended

11) Oregon trail. Not nearly as fun as it sounded. You control a family in the 1800s on the US frontier. You have to get from one end of the US to the other, all the while doing tasks like fishing, picking berries or hunting animals (simple touch screen games requiring certain number of items scored under time). It gets v repetitive and boring after a while, and the little facts given out become tiresome. £2.99

12) Spider. Initially I found this remarkably boring, but it soon grew on me. You control a spider which has to eat all the bugs in each room. You have a limited amount of webbing which you can use to spin webs to catch bugs, but catching and eating prey replenishes your spidersilk. If you catch the minimum amount, a portal opens to lead to the next level. If you find all the items and eat everything, you score bonus points. The music track is rather catchy too. £0.59 Recommended

13) Uniwar. Not as fun as it looked. You make robot warriors of different types and have to blow up the opponent's forces before they get you. £0.59

14) Beneath A steel sky. Just like Monkey Island, although the puzzles are a lot more logical and easier to understand how to solve for the most part. Set in a dystopian future, the English accents are rather jarring. Your character is kidnapped from the gypsy life and brought to the city under control of an evil computer intelligence. You must figure out why. Like Monkey island, you have to get your character through the game by talking to characters and picking up and using objects in the right place at the right time. Some of it is funny, some of it actually rather creepy. The original game is rather old, from the 80s. £1.79 Recommended.

Mythology of the X Files - explained.

2010-08-03T08:05:00.000-07:00

Here's another in my series of explaining the most complicated genre shows or films!

Millions, if not billions, of years ago, meterorites (possibly from Mars) crashed onto Earth, bringing an intelligent alien lifeforce with it. The lifeforce existed in the form of a virus called Purity. Its arrival sparked the beginnings of life on Earth. Alien DNA influenced the evolution of terrestrial lifeforms. The virus eventually infected primitive ancestors of humans and transformed them into grey alien beings known as the Colonists. Many of the Colonists abandoned Earth and went off to colonise the galaxy. They encountered a race of green blooded shapeshifters. The Colonists were able to infect many of the shapeshifters with Purity. It did not alter the shapeshifters into colonists, but did put them under the Colonists' control. They went on to infect and control all other forms of life in the galaxy.

Eventually some of them returned to Earth. In their absence, those left behind had died out in the Ice Age, and humans had successfully evolved into a more sophisticated species, taking over the planet. The virus on Earth had gone dormant, hiding underground in oil deposits. The Colonists began to investigate humans, abducting them. They wiped out the Anasazi Indians, who were sold out by their own leaders who hid inside rock formations with abundant sources of magnetite, a mineral whose presence was lethal to the Colonists. It is possible that the Anasazi had an innate immunity to the virus, making them a threat.

In 1947, a UFO visiting Earth was affected by high levels of magnetite in Roswell, New Mexico, and crashed. The Americans studied the crashed vessel, and met with other great powers in secret UN meetings. An international conspiracy was formed to keep the information quiet, to avoid mass panic. Each country created its own conspiracy organisation, responsible for killing any alien found in its territory, and for studying the aliens and the virus. An arms race began mixed with the Cold War, to see who could weaponise the virus into a biological weapon.

US attempts to mix alien and human DNA failed. Import of scientists captured from the Nazis did not improve matters. By the 1970s, the US conspiracy (the Syndicate) had become autonomous, exerting great influence at a national and international level. They realised that while alien UFO technology could be combatted, the alien virus could not. They therefore made contact with the Colonists and offered a deal. They would pave the way for alien invasion, and in return the Syndicate and their families would be left in a privileged position of an alien dominated Earth. Presumably the Colonists did not have the resources to launch an invasion, so they agreed.

The Colonists demanded that each Syndicate member give up a family member as a hostage. CGB Spender, known as the CIgarette Smoking Man, gave up his wife Cassandra. Bill Mulder, who had helped use the Smallpox vaccination programme to create a giant database of human DNA for the cloning projects, picked his daughter. But he refused to actually hand her over. The Colonists therefore abducted Samantha Mulder directly from her home. Fox Mulder later regained the memories of watching her abduction, fuelling his obsession with the paranormal. Whether or not Bill realised one if not both his children were in fact the product of an affair between his wife and Spender is unknown.

As part of the deal, the Colonists gave the Syndicate a frozen, preserved alien shapeshifter embryo, infected with the virus. Combined with Bill Mulder's database, the Syndicate now had pure sources of human and alien DNA. They began experimenting to create a race of alien/human hybrids. These hybrid clones would initially serve to infiltrate key parts of the country, and would paralyse them at the moment of invasion. Their hybrid nature made them immune to infection by the virus. Bees and other delivery methods were engineered to release the virus to cause mass infection at the right time. In this way, the virus would be spread all over the world at key positions, ensuring there would be no time for anyone to react before it was too late. Syndicate members would receive gene therapy to transform themselves into hybrids, ensuring they would gain immunity to Purity.

Bill Mulder opposed these plans, and forced the Syndicate to agree to an additional backup plan. In secret, they studied the hybrids and the virus, to create a vaccine. If the world population could be immunised against Purity, the alien threat would be minimised. The Russians and others were also rushing ahead with vaccination research. The Colonists themselves planned to betray the Syndicate, wanting to not merely infect humans but in fact wipe them out and replace them with freshly gestated Colonists.

In the mid 90s, FBI Special Agent Fox Mulder had discovered the X Files, a section of files full of cases that could not be solved without an understanding of the paranormal. He began to immerse himself in studying them. His superiors worried at his obsession, and Spender, whose job it was to patrol government agencies like the FBI to ensure they did not interfere with the Syndicate, was concerned. Agent Dana Scully was therefore assigned to debunk Mulder's work. Her scientific and medical background were supposed to aid her in showing Mulder's investigative methods were flawed. In fact, the two worked together remarkably well, solving many difficult cases. They also began to stumble upon more and more findings of Syndicate activities. Eventually they got too close. A key member of the Syndicate, Deep Throat, had become ambivalent in his support of the conspiracy, and had given Mulder too much information. He was therefore murdered, and the X Files shut down. When Mulder persisted in X Files related cases, and a reassigned Scully continued to aid and abet him, the Syndicate moved to stop them. They staged an alien abduction and had Scully removed. She was brutally experimented upon and then dumped. She nonetheless recovered. Their superior, Assistant Director Skinner, stood up to the conspiracy forces by reassigning Mulder and Scully to the X Files.

Mulder and Scully began to piece together parts of the puzzle. Along the way, Scully's sister and Mulder's father were murdered by Syndicate agent Alex Krycek. Krycek in fact was a double agent, infiltrating the US Syndicate for the Russian conspiracy. Mulder discovered his father's role in the conspiracy and that he chose Samantha for abduction. The agents discovered Scully had been exposed to the virus and had her ovaries removed, to provide human DNA for hybrid cloning. Scully discovered her hybrid child, Emily, and was able to take her from the Syndicate, only to watch her die as her body broke down as a failed experiment. She also discovered that the experiments had given her cancer. An implant which monitored Scully's body kept the cancer under control, until removed. Many other abductee women who had also removed their implants were found - all of them died from cancer. Mulder was able to find a replacement chip which again suppressed Scully's cancer. Spender, the smoking man, attempted to bribe Mulder into joining the Syndicate, but failed, and then fell out temporarily with the rest of the Syndicate before rejoining them. Mulder encountered hybrid clones of his sister on several occasions, often being tricked into thinking they were the genuine Samantha Mulder.

Events began to come to a head. Krycek was forced to defect from the Russians and rejoined the Syndicate, bringing with him something the Russians made which the Syndicate had failed at - a vaccine for Purity. It was imperfect, effective only at early stages of infection, but it was a start. Rebel shapeshifters, who had escaped infection, began arriving on Earth. They began attacking abductees, attempting to destroy the Syndicate's attempts to create hybrid clones. They made an offer to the Syndicate of an alliance, which the Syndicate fearfully turned down, concerned at a Colonist reprisal.

The Syndicate again briefly shut the X Files down, and then had it put under the control of Spender's son, ensuring their activities would no longer be investigated by the FBI. Mulder and Scully made allies with Gibson Praise, a young boy whose alien derived genes inherited through evolution were in fact turned on, giving him psychic abilities. They also made contact with Spender's wife Cassandra, a repeat abductee and most promising subject of the cloning project. Eventually the Syndicate succeeded in transforming Cassandra into a hybrid. The Syndicate moved forward to contact the Colonists and trigger the invasion, but were outmaneuvered by shapeshifting Rebels. The rebels infiltrated the Syndicate and wiped them out. The smoking man, Kryeck and two others were the only major members to survive. Spender was outraged that his son had betrayed him and joined Mulder's side, and had him taken away as a test subject.

Mulder at one point was subjected to Russian vaccine tests and exposed to the virus. Radiation from an alien artifact reactivated the dormant virus, and began to activate alien genes. Mulder was crippled by psychic abilities to the extent that his brain began to break down. Scully attempted to investigate the artifact, which was actually an alien craft buried in the sands of Africa, and covered with human genome data, scientific equations, and scriptures from different world religions. Unable to comprehend the mix of science and faith, she returned home to find Spender had abducted Mulder. Spender removed parts of Mulder's transformed tissue and grafted it onto himself, to enable Spender to become a true hybrid. Scully was able to find Mulder and save him. She didn't know that Mulder was still in fact dying from a deteriorative brain condition.

Spender's operation failed - the tissue graft began to kill him. He attempted to capture a crashed UFO to rebuilt the Syndicate but was betrayed by Krycek, who had sold out to the aliens. Shapeshifters were sent to abduct any human whose genome was closely related to the aliens' - such as Mulder. All such humans were abducted one by one, and other forms of evidence related to alien activites was removed. Scully was able to save Gibson Praise from being killed by a shapeshifter, and sent him into hiding, but failed to find Mulder. Agents John Doggett and later Monica Reyes were assigned to aid Scully's work on the X files, in particular in finding Mulder.

Abductees were later found dumped at different points on Earth, in near death states. A rebel alien (or possibly a mere hybrid) named Jeremiah Smith worked to heal them to hinder alien plans, but was himself later removed by the aliens. Mulder's body was found at one site, and later buried. Later it was exhumed and found to be still barely alive. Fortunately Scully realised in time that giving the body warmth and care in fact accelerated the progression of infection of the Purity virus they carried. When Krycek betrayed them again and did not hand over the Russian vaccine, Scully resorted to more mundane methods of antiviral agents and blood transfusions. Eventually through much time and effort she was able to clear Mulder's body of the virus. Another abductee, Billy Miles, was not so lucky. Previously, infection with Purity was shown to either put the host in a coma, or possess them. In some cases, the virus could grow a new Colonist, which burst out of the host body. In these cases, abductees who had active alien DNA were modified by the aliens to transform into something new - a supersoldier. Supersoldiers look entirely human except for a bump on their neck. They are immensely strong. Even if decapitated or entirely shredded into pieces, their bodies can eventually rebuild themselves.

The agents realised that the aliens had abandoned the failed Syndicate and had resorted to replacing humans at key positions with Supersoldiers in the government, FBI and the military. They were also experimenting with human ova, and treating water supplies with chemicals to accelerate human mutation to make them more susceptible to transformation into supersoldiers.

Billy Miles was later sent to wipe out remnant Syndicate operations. They were still trying to make hybrids who could fight the aliens and their virus. The hybrids were mostly gross failures, but one worked perfectly, and was implanted in Scully. The aliens discovered this, and panicked. They initially believed the child to be a perfect melding of human and alien conceived in a barren woman, a perfect entity who was proof of God's existence. They moved to kill Scully, but then changed their minds. They now believed the child would in fact ensure their dominance of the Earth, and allowed Scully to raise the child on their behalf, while they moved forward with their plans. An alien cult attempted to abduct the child, to raise him as a messiah, but were stopped when baby William's unearthly powers activated the alien craft they had uncovered, which wiped the cult out.

Spender's son returned, mutilated by experiments his father had subjected him to. He treated baby Willliam with magnetite, rendering the child a mere mortal. Scully then put William Scully up for anonymous adoption, to give him a normal life and ensure the aliens did not attempt to reverse the process.

Mulder meanwhile had left the FBI. He found the main military base housing the new Supersoldier led conspiracy, and discovered nothing had changed. Nine years of fighting the future had not changed the invasion date of 2012. He was caught and put on trial and sentenced to death by a kangaroo court. His allies helped him escape, and Mulder and Scully went on the run, vowing to fight the aliens.

As the years passed, Scully went to work in a hospital, and Mulder stayed with her in hiding. The aliens abandoned their pursuit, deciding neither of them were a real threat at this point, and continuing with their work.

Futurama has returned!

2010-07-24T08:21:00.000-07:00

OK so I'm a bit late to the party! What can I say, I've been busy buried in thesis writing (more of which, later). I LOVED futurama s1-4, but the TV movies aka s5 were a bit lacking to say the least, So it was with great surprise that I heard the series had been renewed for a 6th season.

For those who don't know, Futurama is made by the same people who make The Simpsons. Set a thousand years from now, it follows the exploits of Philip J Fry, a pizza delivery boy who was accidentally (although we know now on purpose) cryogenically frozen in the 20th century and defrosted in the 30th century, where he joined Delivery Express, a delivery company run by his great-great-million times great nephew (who is about 100 years older than Fry, if you can wrap your brain around it). Fry is in love with the one eyed captain, Leela and is best friends with the kleptomaniac alcoholic robot Bender. Although the show never reached anywhere near the success of Simpsons, it can definitely match it in the humour stakes

So how does s6 shape up? I have to say it's been a bit hit and miss.

6.1 Rebirth - The series returns with all the crew dead. Obviously someone needs to fix it. Quite amusing when we get duplicates. Not a bad start 7/10

6.2 In-A-Gadda-Da-Leela. A deathstar like thing is approaching Earth, and Zap Brannigan and Leela must go to fight it. OK getting Zap and Leela together was kinda contrived, Fry doesn't even object to his girlfriend going off with someone who's desperately interested in her. But the subsequent crash into the Garden of Eden is amusing, as is the 50s black and white serial depiction of Zap. The deathstar being a parody of Star Wars and of V'ger from Star Trek was pretty funny too. 7/10

6.3 Attack of the Killer App. People get EyePhones and turn into zombies, while Leela freaks out about a deformity. This was so horribly dated, taking jabs at Apple iPhones and Susan Boyle from X Factor/Pop Idol/Whatever Simon Cowell show. The vomiting/defecating goat was mildly amusing, but that was about it. Yet another plot from Mom? Meh 4/10

6.4 Proposition Infinity. Bender and Amy decide to hook up, which stirs up anti robosexuality hostility. Yawn. This was great with Fry and Lucy Liu a few seasons back. Amy and Bender together was just ridiculous. Again it felt dated as a jab against the US politics surrounding Proposition Eight and gay weddings. Another clunker 5/10

6.5 The Duh-Vinci Code. Fry discovers a secret document showing plans for an invention by Leonardo da Vinci. This triggers a search for the device, leading to the discovery that he built a spaceship to take him back home to his planet of alien super geniuses. The medieval robot got a laugh or two, but the rest of it was pretty mundane. 6/10

6.6 Lethal Inspection. After re enacting war games involving an invasion by Sith Lords, Bender discovers a fault in his mechanism, meaning if he dies he will not, as he supposed, download into a new body (very Battlestar Galactica). Freaking out, he recruits Hermes to find the bureaucrat who certified him as perfect to demand an explanation to his defect. The gags in this episode had me cracking up, possibly with relief that finally the show was going somewhere! The central bureaucrat office is entered by crossing a River Styx, and the offices are all linked together in a giant rubix cube assortment of cubicles. Following that, Bender and Hermes go off on all sorts of madcap adventures. The ending was prob predictable for most but I didn't see it and it actually invoked a little tear. Now THIS is what Futurama was like in s4 before they made the ridiculous decision to cancel! Hopefully it can sustain this and justify its resurrection. 9/10

The French vote to ban burkhas.

2010-07-14T17:22:00.000-07:00

France has a population of 65 million. Maybe 5 million are muslim. A very rough guess quoted in the media says there are maybe 2,000 women wearing burkas in France. Yeah, this is a real good use of legislation, time and money. Never mind french muslim women suffering actual problems like domestic violence, forced genital mutilation, unemployment, acute racism, language difficulties, lack of opportunites, poor health linked to poverty etc etc. Let's just pander to the right wing and get an easy vote across to make it look like we stand for Liberté, égalité, fraternité.

Personally I do not believe they are required or even hinted at being required in Islam, but a ban is really just not very helpful. It will do nothing to aid genuinely downtrodden women, and will just be a rallying point for extremists and the PC brigade.

Tolkien explained - from The Silmarillion to The Hobbit to The Lord of the Rings.

2010-07-14T16:59:00.000-07:00

I actually had a fair few web hits from my summary of Lost (though no comments - c'mon people, I can see you're reading the blog!) so thought I'd add a few more, since I actually quite enjoy writing these (great distraction from thesis writing). This one is about the history of Middle Earth. What I found vaguely frustrating was that a lot of people watching the Lord of the Rings trilogy of films would have no idea that there was a great deal of back history behind the story of which they would be completely unaware.

So here goes a summary of something between 10-20,000 years!

At the beginning of time:

Eru the One creates a race of angelic beings, lead by fifteen powerful entities known as the Valar, the Powers. The mightiest of their number falls from grace, seeking to undermine the Creator's plans, and is later given the name Morgoth, the Great Enemy of the world. He becomes the Prime Spirit of Evil. The Valar and their numerous angelic servants (including such as Gandalf and Saruman) are sent to shape part of the Universe into a world where the Creator's "children", Elves and Men, can act out their destinies. Morgoth corrupts many of the spirits to his side; fire spirits are transformed into demons of shadow and fire, the Balrogs. Sauron is a powerful angel who joins Morgoth to become his most trusted servant.

The First Age:

The Valar shape the world into sea and sky and land. Initially it is a perfect world, with western, eastern and immense central continents. Morgoth and his forces follow them and begin to wreak havok. Because Morgoth's powers are equal to the Valar, he is able to upset everything they do. Over time he puts much of his innate power into corrupting the very fabric of the world, so that everything is rendered imperfect and now capable of being used as least as much for evil as for good. The central continent, Middle Earth, is ravaged by the conflict. Eventually the Valar retreat to the western continent which they fortify. Here they bring about the best of their creation and purify all of the land, calling it Aman, the Blessed and Undying Land. The most marvellous of their works are the Two Living Trees of Light, which create silver and golden light that ennobles any who see it.

The Valar use the power of the Silver Tree to enhance the stars in the sky. This enriched starlight shines down, and awakens the Elves who were placed dormant in the northeast of Middle Earth. Unfortunately, Morgoth finds them and puts fear into many of them, and manages to corrupt some into the first of the Orcs. The Valar eventually find the Elves, and realise Morgoth is poisoning them. Therefore they marshall their forces and wage war. Because Morgoth has put much of his power into the earth, and seeks to rule as a tyrant, he is forced more and more to assume a physical form. Therefore he is caught and unable to flee in spirit form. His great fortress is destroyed, but in their haste the Valar do not decimate his forces, and Sauron is able to lead the retreat to his secondary base in the North west.

The Valar then make a grave mistake and interfere in Elven history by calling them to live in the West. This causes the elves to split into two. Those who refuse are called the Avari, the unwilling, and remain a more primitive people. Those who agree are called the Eldar, the people of the stars. The Eldar are made of up a smaller, medium and a very large tribe. The small and medium tribes reach the northwest shores of Middle Earth quickly, but the third, larger tribe takes its time. Along the journey many of them split off and decide to stay in Middle Earth. Because they never saw the Light of the Trees, they along with the Unwilling are called Dark Elves. Those who made it to Aman are called Light Elves.

The Valar dragged an island from Middle Earth to Aman to transport the first two tribes. The king of the third tribe, Thingol, went missing, so some of his people stayed behind, while the rest chose a new king and also passed to Aman. Eventually the king was found. Thingol had fallen in love with an angel, Melian, who had taken on corporeal form as an Elven woman. She stayed with Thingol as his wife, and they ruled those Eldar in the Northwest. Because of her divine knowledge, those Elves became more advanced than the other dark elves and were called Grey Elves. Eventually they discovered that the Dwarves had also emerged, the creation of one of the Valar, but given souls by Eru as His adopted children.

Morgoth was imprisoned for a long time. During that time, the three tribes of Eldar in Aman prospered, and learnt much from the Valar, and were rendered mighty by the light of the Trees. Feanor was the prince of the second tribe. He made many advances in elven knowledge; he created the Palantiri seeing stones given later to the Numenoreans. His greatest creation were the three jewels called the Silmarils, which captured the blended light of the Two Trees. Any who saw the holy jewels became enamoured of them.

Eventually Morgoth's prison term ended, and because the Valar did not understand the depths of his evil, they believed his pleas for forgiveness. Over time he sowed discontent in Aman, especially among the second tribe. Eventually his grand plans came to fruition. He killed the king of the second tribe, stole the silmarils, destroyed the Two Trees and escaped back to Middle Earth.

Feanor grieved over his father's murder and cursed the Valar for inaction. Poisoned by Morgoth's words and full of innate arrogance, he led a rebellion and summoned most of his people to return to wage war on Morgoth. The Valar had no right to stop them, but also refused to aid their return. Therefore they asked the third tribe, who had learnt the art of sailing and shipbuilding, to help. They refused, so the rebels resorted to force, and ended up killing many of their fellow Elves. For staining Aman with the blood of innocents, the second tribe was cursed by the Valar and doomed to exile. They left and sailed to pursue Morgoth to the Northwest of Middle Earth. By this time Morgoth had returned to his secondary fortress which Sauron had prepared for him. The second tribe made alliance with the grey elves and waged war on Morgoth. Feanor died in the first battle. Their combined power forced Morgoth to hide with his armies, but was not strong enough to break in or retrieve the silmarils. The alliance was strained when the Grey elves discovered their fellow elves of the third tribe had died at the hands of the second tribe.

The Valar meanwhile put enchantments to conceal Aman so none could enter. They attempted to heal the Trees, but without the silmarils they failed. They used the last of the silver tree to make the Moon, and the golden tree to make the Sun. The sunlight was so powerful it put fear in Morgoth, and his orcs refused to walk out during the day. The Sun also had the side effect of accelerating the wearing and ageing in the mortal lands. All the elves in Middle Earth began to feel the passage of time more strongly. The Sun also awakened the dormant humans in the south of Middle Earth. Morgoth was able to leave his fortress one last time to find the first humans, and corrupt them from worship of Eru to fear of the Dark. For this they fell from grace. A minority rebelled against this, and sought out the rumours of Light that the wandering dark elves told them existed in the west. Several human tribes eventually came to the northwest, where they learnt they could never reach Aman. They formed their own kingdoms in alliance with the Light Elves and Grey Elves, which held Morgoth's power in check for centuries.

Thingol and Melian's daughter carried the blood of the divine and of the Elves, and she married a human hero. They alone recovered one of the silmarils from Morgoth. When the human hero died, the Creator intervened for the first time, and allowed them to both live as mortals. Another human prince and elven princess married. From these unions came Earendil and Elwing, who were the parents of Elrond and Elros. Humans are mortal; when they die, their souls escape and move on beyond the world. In the beginning they could rest from life of their own choice, and move onto the next life. But Morgoth taught them to fear death, so now they struggle to live on until they die of old age or disease. The Elves by contrast are bound to the world, and do not age, but remain. In middle earth under the sun, the centuries begin to wear down on them until they fade away. If they are killed through accident or violence then their souls are summoned by the Valar for recorporealisation or rebirth. The halfelven were later given a choice of which racial destiny to choose.

Eventually, through power and cunning, the fraying of the alliance of the Elves, the introduction of evil human tribes, and creation of Dragons, Morgoth smashed the Elven and human kingdoms aside. All of the Northwest fell under his domination. Earendil and Elwing used the power of the Silmaril to pass the enchantments on the western seas and reach Aman itself. There they begged for forgiveness of the Second Tribe, and mercy for the Grey Elves and Humans who had done no wrong. The Valar summoned all their forces and waged a final war. The sheer power of this conflict ruined the entire northwest, but most of the dragons, balrogs and other creatures of Morgoth were wiped out. Morgoth was captured and executed in his corporeal form so that his broken spirit was cast out of the material world. Unfortunately the last two silmarils were lost to the depths of the sea and earth, meaning the paradise of the Two Trees could never be restored. Earendil and his silmaril were set in the sky and later called Earendil's star. Light from this star was later captured in the phial that Galadriel gave to Frodo Baggins during his sojourn in Lorien.

The Second Age:

The Valar forgave the Rebels and invited them home, as well as the Grey Elves, with the exception of Galadriel who refused to repent (although she herself had not committed murder, she did not want to return to live under the Valar's rule). Many Light and Grey elves left for Aman, but many others stayed. Gil Galad was their king. The half elven children were given a choice of which race to belong to. Elrond becomes a powerful Elf, allied to Gil Galad. Elros becomes mortal and king of the humans who were loyal to the Elves. The Valar then make their second grave mistake, by interfering in human history. They transform Elros and his people into the most powerful of humans, enhancing their lifespans. They create an island, Numenor, halfway between Aman and Middle Earth. The elves and angels teach the Numenoreans great knowledge.

In middle earth, Sauron remained as a wandering spirit. He sought to replace his defeated master but lacked his power. He realised he could trick the Elves into helping him. Gil Galad, Elrond and Galadriel all refused to talk to him, even in his disguised state. The grandson of Feanor however did ally with Sauron. He tapped their desire to remain in Middle Earth as the superior race but also enjoy the grace, healing and power they had in Aman. That great community of Light Elves combined their power with Sauron to create 16 Rings of Power, which enhanced the wearer's innate powers. But they were all tainted with Sauron's darkness. Sauron then left, to build his powerbase in Mordor. While he was gone, the Elves made three more rings which were free of his taint, and were made not for war or power but for enhancing rest and defence against the weariness of the passing of time. Sauron put all of his power into making the Master Ring, which could rule the wearers of the other 19 rings. Through them he would conquer the entire Elven nation. It allowed him to see and dominate the minds of his enemies and was a mighty weapon of war. It also ensured all that Sauron wrought with the Ring was impossible to fully destroy. The Elves realised his plan immediately and stopped the use of their rings. Sauron then summoned all forces of evil remaining and waged war. He destroyed the elven nations and captured the 16 rings, but not the last 3. Sauron and the Elves struggled for control of the north of middle earth for years. It was not until the Numenoreans joined the Elves that Sauron was pushed back.

The Numenoreans by this point had become a mighty nation, drunk with power and arrogant beyond belief. They assembled the largest army ever seen and challenged Sauron. Realising that he could not win by force, Sauron gave himself up. It was not long before he bewitched the king of Numenor to become his adviser. Over the years, he corrupted them from within, and incited them to rebel against the Valar, insinuating the Powers' immortality came from living in the immortal lands of Aman, when the truth was that Aman was blessed only by the presence of the Valar. The Numenoreans created a vast armada and invaded Aman. Since they could not act directly against the children of the Creator, the Valar gave up their rule of the world and asked the Creator to intervene. Eru removed Aman from the mortal plane of existence, wiped out the Numenorean invasion force and sank Numenor into the sea. Sauron was caught up in its destruction, his original physical form destroyed. His spirit fled back to Mordor, where with the power of the Ring he rendered himself a new form imitating the original Dark Lord Morgoth. But he lost the power to seduce or bewitch through trickery.

A minority of Numenoreans who stayed loyal to Eru and the Valar were allowed to escape. Their king formed a Northern Kingdom in Middle Earth, their two princes a Southern Kingdom. But it was only a few years before Sauron had reorganised his forces and waged war again. Gil Galad and the Numenoreans made the Last Alliance of Elves and Men, but spent 7 years fighting Sauron's forces. Gil galad, the human king and the younger prince all died. The elder prince managed to cut the Ring off Sauron's hand, causing his physical shell to collapse and his forces to be left in disarray. His armies were defeated and Mordor was ruined.

The Third Age:

The prince took the One Ring, but was ambushed later by fleeing Orcs and died. The ring fell into a river and was lost. Both human kingdoms prospered for a while. The elves withdrew, losing contact with most humans. Unable to do much more than dwell on the past, they used the power of the Three Rings to create refuges where they could live in peace, sheltered from the weariness of the passing of time. Elrond wielded one ring in Rivendell, Galadriel another in Lorien.

Seven Rings had been given to Dwarves, but although their evil nature brought ruin the Rings could not dominate the Dwarves to serve Sauron's will. so he reclaimed some, and the rest were lost. Nine rings were given to various human leaders, three of them Numenoreans. THey proved easy to corrupt. THe rings gave them enhanced life and power but eventually transformed them into the Ringwraiths under Sauron's power. In his absence, they fought the Northern Kingdom which had already self destructed in civil war. An alliance with Elrond's forces was too late to save the Kingdom, but the RIngwraiths were eventually driven off and defeated for a time. The kingdom was gone, but the royal family remained in exile, their people becoming a nomadic group called the Rangers who kept the North safe. Hobbits, descended from a diminutive group of humans, lived in the North in the Shire and eventually forgot the Kingdom.

The Ringwraiths moved south to Mordor, and organised war against the southern kingdom. Skirmishes went on and on, and eventually the king was killed leaving no heirs. THe Kingdom survived under the rule of stewards.

At this point the Valar realised Sauron was still extant and would never be entirely defeated. Wanting to help but not wishing to repeat their mistakes of direct intervention, they decided to send emissaries. THey picked five of their servants to go in the guise of old men, wizards, who could advise the races but not dominate them, nor directly challenge the power of Sauron. The aim was to help the races to help themselves.

Two wizards, the Blue Wizards Pallando and Alatar, went into the eastern realms. Either they were murdered, or they betrayed their mission and set up magic cults , or perhaps they did succeed, and raised rebellions which kept the vast eastern human forces from joining Sauron. Radagast the Brown failed his mission, becoming more interested in the study of the flora and fauna and not doing much to aid in the war. Saruman became a vast force for evil. It was only Gandalf who truly attended to his task and was vital to ending Sauron's threat.

Most of the elves and all the humans did not realise the true nature of the wizards. One elf did, and realised Gandalf was the truest and most noble of them. Therefore he gave Gandalf the last of the pure Three Rings, to enhance Gandalf and give him the power to inspire others. Saruman learnt of this later and was enraged, since he thought as leader of the wizards he himself should have been given a Ring of Power.

At this point an evil force called the Necromancer formed in the forests. The Elves and wizards assumed it was merely a ringwraith, but Gandalf suspected Sauron was returning. Unfortunately by this point, Saruman had become corrupted, wanting to become a power himself. He spent all his time studying Sauron and the Rings, and tried to find out where the One Ring had been lost. Gandalf risked his life to prove the Necromancer was Sauron returned, and eventually Saruman agreed to attacking. Sauron retreated and returned to Mordor and openly declared himself. Saruman used one of the Seeing Stones of Feanor to spy, not realising Sauron had captured one such stone. Saruman, already weakend by his own pettiness and corrupted nature, was an easy target for Sauron to seduce to his side. Sauron did not entirely realise Saruman himself sought to become a new dark lord, either by finding the ring or creating his own Master Ring to destroy and replace Sauron.

No one realised the Ring had been found by a hobbit later called Gollum, who lived for centuries in the mountains, twisted into an evil creature by the taint of the Ring. Gandalf, seeking to revive the power of the dwarves and get a dragon destroyed, took a hobbit named Bilbo on a quest to defeat the dragon. It was his fate to find the ring and take it from Gollum. The dragon was killed and the dwarven kingdom restored, ensuring that if Sauron did return he would not have an ally in the north. Gandalf wondered at the ring Bilbo had. By now not entirely trusting Saruman, Gandalf spent years doing his own research. He eventually figured out the ring was truly the One Ring. By then it had passed onto Bilbo's nephew Frodo.

Sauron also learnt of the ring ,and sent his spies and Ringwraiths to reclaim it. At this point Saruman betrayed Gandalf by imprisoning him, seeking to find and claim the ring himself. Gandalf escaped, and the hobbits got the ring safely to Elrond. A council there decided only by destroying the ring could Sauron be truly defeated.

Unable to take a direct route through the mountains, they went under them via the lost dwarven realm of Moria. There, they encountered a Balrog demon. Gandalf, as an angel, was able to challenge the demon, but the struggle destroyed them both. His mortal shell killed, Gandalf's spirit drifted. At this point Eru intervened directly, resurrecting Gandalf in his mortal body. The experience rendered him more powerful than before, going from grey to Gandalf the White.

Saruman sought to capture the ring but failed. He marshalled the armies of evil men and orcs to cut off the Southern Kingdom from its allies, but aroused the wrath of the Ents, creatures made long ago by the Valar to tend to the forests. Saruman's forces were defeated and his power was destroyed by gandalf, ending his threat. He was later murdered by his own servant, and his spirit was left to roam as a wandering ghost, exiled from Aman for his treachery.

Gandalf and the last remaining descendant of the kings of Numenor came to the southern Kingdom and helped it challenge Sauron. The leader of the ringwraiths was killed, and Sauron's inital invasion force destroyed. The allies then challenged Mordor but were vastly outnumbered by Sauron's second wave of troops. All of this completely distracted Sauron from even comprehending that the allies had no intention of using the Ring as a weapon of war to fight him, but were sneaking it into Mordor to destroy it. Frodo the hobbit bore the burden of the Ring all the way to Mount Doom where it was made, but at the last fell under its power. Gollum at that point recaptured the Ring, but fell into the volcano, destroying himself and the Ring. Sauron's spirit was devastated and sent howling into the wilderness. Everything he had ever built and rebuilt collapsed, the ringwraiths were decimated, and his armies scattered.

Fourth Age:

With the one ring gone, the elves were no longer under threat of Sauron dominating them. But all they had built fell apart, for the Three Rings lost their power when the One was destroyed. The Northern and Southern kingdoms were reunited under their king, and the realms had peace. Most of the remaining Light and Grey Elves chose to leave Middle Earth, and were allowed by the Valar to reach the hidden lands of Aman. Gandalf left, his mission complete. Frodo was allowed to go too, after suffering so many tortures and wounds during his mission which left his life too painful to live. In Aman he could live a peaceful life for and be healed before dying. The elves who stayed in Middle Earth eventually faded away, as did the dwarves, while Humanity expanded to fill the world which fell under the Dominion of Men.

My new phone

2010-07-14T16:43:00.000-07:00

That dreaded time approached, when mobile phone contracts expire and you have to trawl through the latest phones and deals to see what to go for. Some people cannot wait for it, to go and find the latest gadget. Me, I can't stand it. The last time was January 2009, when my current contract expired and I was suddenly bumped onto a £40/month contract with no warning! I just did not have the time or energy to look around so plumped for an awful upgrade to 200 min and 200 texts per month plus a free Samsung Tocco - for £25 a month! The phone was a disaster and I just about survived on the minutes. I got rid of the phone on ebay and went back to my prehistoric Sony Ericcson k800i.

I was resolved to not commit the same mistake this year once my 18 month contract was over. Did a fair bit of research, dumped my old provider 02 when they refused to offer me a decent renewal (after five years of loyalty!) and switched to Orange. I just hope the future really is bright, because I've got a 2 year contract with them. £30 a month for 500min and unlimited texts and internet (in fact 3000 texts and 500Mb).

The phone I got free was the HTC Desire. A geek friend of mine recommended I go for a Google Android style phone, since I had an iPod Touch and did not want to get an iPhone. The Desire is quite flash. It has a touchscreen. You can slip through five main screens - one has the menu button and a giant clock with the weather report; the others vary from email access to favourite numbers and can be customised. The menu button gives you access to all the programs, which you can supplement by downloading new apps from the Google store (I've yet to find any worth getting, but then i don't rate many Apple apps either to be honest).

Sound quality is fair but not superb. THe touchscreen is very responsive, predictive texting is quite good. Battery life is decent, depending on how much of the apps you use (be warned - leaving the wireless internet access switched on is incredibly battery intensive). Internet speeds are pretty good. When the phone starts ringing, the ringtone reduces volume dramatically once it senses you have picked the phone up, which is rather sensible. The text messages took getting used to - it stores them in the form of conversations like gmail does, rather than in inbox and sent boxes, which is rather sensible. It can even read pdf files. Photo and camera quality are ok but not brilliant, it seems to have problems dealing with bright light sources, but maybe I just need to play with the functions and settings more. It can sync your contacts and calendars with your Gmail and download info from facebook, and has a FriendsStream app giving you all the latest facebook and Twitter updates. I haven't really tried the mp3 or radio functions.

All in all a fun flash smartphone. I just hope it is hardy enough to last 2 years. I have already bought a pouch to keep it safe.....

Lost

2010-06-25T19:06:00.001-07:00

It's been over a month since the series ended. I'm still in withdrawal mode :(

It was an amazing series in terms of music and mythology and WTF moments and plot twists. The problem is that a lot of plotlines don't make sense. Head over to the Lostpedia forum
and you'll see the arguments are still raging on. Overall I'd have to give the series 8/10. Series 6 really let it down and the lack of answers to several mysteries left me irritated, but it was still an amazing experience over the last 6 years!

For those wondering what actually happened, this is my very long explanation for the events of the show:

The island contains at least 3 large pockets of electromagnetic energy which have exotic and mystical qualities. In the past, a group of ancient humans found the Island, somehow realised its potential, and tried to release the energy by digging a hole in the cave where the largest EM pocket was. This was catastrophic, and nearly destroyed the island until the breach in the Source Cave was sealed with a stone cork. Enough of the energy slowly leaked out as the Light, which mixed with the island waters and gave the island its magical powers.

At some point, one of these ancients was merged with the power of the island to become its first Protector. The Protector gains certain gifts - they stop ageing, and can alter people's destinies to bring them to the island, or ensure they never reach the island. They can also enforce certain rules that are binding upon people's fate, and have the gift of foresight. All of these abilities have undefined limits.

The first Protector we saw was Mother, who may possibly have also been a Smoke Monster, or had control of one. As she tired of her duties, a ship was wrecked on the island (possibly brought to the island by Mother on purpose). Mother rescued one survivor, a pregnant woman named Claudia. After Claudia gave birth to twins (Jacob and MIB) she was murdered by Mother, who raised the boys as her own. She instigated her own Island Rules to ensure the 2 men could not harm each other. She moulded them to be Candidates as her replacement, but Claudia's ghost spoke to MIB, who was special and had an affinity for the island, and convinced him to go find the other shipwreck survivors. MIB abandoned Mother, but Jacob stayed behind.

MIB used his insight into the island and the cleverness of claudia's people to find the EM pockets on the island, but was unable to find the Source cave since Mother had somehow hidden it from view. He somehow learnt to mix the Light and Water together using a wheel, which he planned to use to teleport off the island. Mother found out, panicked, destroying his device and wiping out his village. She realised MIB would never replace her so had to settle for her 2nd choice, Jacob, who was forced to succeed her. MIB then murdered Mother, who seemed grateful, as if she wanted to die. Jacob was enraged, and tried to harm his brother in revenge by casting him into the Source cave, even though Mother had warned him this was a fate worse than death. Since MIB could not be killed directly by Jacob, his soul was instead transformed in the Smoke Monster, leaving his body behind. The Monster, in addition to being a terrible destructive force, can appear as any dead person, gaining their knowledge and memories, and can scan the thoughts of the living. It also seems to have certain powers over the dead, in some cases resurrecting them, and is linked to a corrupting Sickness that causes irrational behaviour.

Jacob then spent centuries keeping the Monster bound to the island and protecting the Source cave, belieiving that if it was damaged, all life on Earth would die, and that if the Monster escaped the island, it would destroy humanity. The monster continued to believe humans were essentially evil, and was enraged by its prison. Jacob tried to convince the monster was wrong, by bringing others to the island. One group was related to the ancient Egyptians, and built the Temple and Statue, completed the Wheel mechanism, and possibly worshipped the Monster. They either destroyed themselves or were wiped out by the Monster. Jacob brought others, including the Black Rock, but everyone was killed. It was only when a slave, Richard Alpert, joined his side that Jacob had any success, despite the Monster's attempt to use Richard as a tool to kill Jacob. Richard was rendered immortal, and began to construct a society of Others who would prove Jacob was right about humanity.

Jacob realised the Monster would one day figure out a way to kill him, so began to look for his own Candidates. He did not approve of how Mother chose him, so he used the LightHouse to find people who were flawed, and lonely and directionless. He occasionally left the island to touch them so their destinies were altered to bring them to the island; Jacob's touch also prevented his Candidates from committing suicide, and prevented the Monster from being able to directly kill them. One by one they all died by circumstance or by the machinations of the Monster.

Meanwhile, the US army found the island in the 1950s and were prevented from testing a nuclear weapon by the Others. The Dharma Initiative discovered a smaller EM energy pocket in the USA, and constructed the Lamp Post facility to use it to find other EM pockets, leading them to the island. They sent a large team there to investigate, coming into conflict with the Others. They dug into the ground and damaged another EM pocket, which could have destroyed the island. This damage altered the island's energies, making it impossible to conceive and bear children on the island. Dharma was able to build a Hatch to safely release the EM energy in small doses.

By 1989 or 1992, Jacob tired of the Dharma Initiative putting the island at risk, and had them wiped out. Ben Linus and Ethan Rom defected from Dharma to join the Others. Not long after, a French expedition found the island, but was mostly wiped out or Infected with madness by the Monster. The survivor, Danielle Rousseau, gave birth to a daughter, Alex, who was kidnapped by Ben. Since the Others could not reproduce on the island, they were forced to supplement their numbers by kidnapping children or recruiting adults from the rest of the world. Their leader, Charles Widmore, was expelled from leadership of the Others by Ben, for breaking the rules by having children off the island and consorting with non islanders to begin his empire. Widmore became obsessed with returning to the island one day and getting rid of Ben.

Desmond Hume, a man in love with Widmore's daughter Penny, was influenced to land on the island. He replaced the last remaining Dharma member, and began pressing the button in the Hatch which controlled the EM leak from the damage the Dharma had done. In 2004 he neglected his task, just in time to drag down Flight 815. Many of the survivors were Candidates for replacing Jacob. The Monster began to investigate the survivors and formed a plan.

One candidate in particular, John Locke, formed a special bond with the island. Tricked by the Monster into thinking the Hatch was a sham, he tried to break its mechanism, putting the island at risk of detonating. Desmond was forced to take a huge risk and trigger a self destruct, imploding the pocket and absorbing the EM energies. This triggered a series of time flashes, where he drifted into his own past and attempted to prevent his arrival on the island, until prevented by a woman named Eloise Hawking, who wanted to ensure Desmond's timeline remained intact.

The detonation of the Hatch alerted both Penelope and Charles Widmore to the current location of the island. Charles Widmore sent a team on a Freighter to kill everyone on the island and secure it for himself. Many of the Losties attempted to make contact with the Freighter team until they realised the danger they were in, and ended up allying with the Others against them. In the end, the freighter was destroyed, and only a handful of Losties escaped the island and made it back to civilisation. They then lied about their experiences to prevent Widmore or others from further attempts to locate the island or put their friends left behind at risk.

To save the island, Locke attempted to make contact with Jacob. He and Ben were tricked into meeting the Smoke Monster, instead, who had assumed the shape of the deceased Christian Shephard, claiming to speak on Jacob's behalf. The Monster had already claimed Claire who had died in an attack from the Freighter team. The Monster told Locke to move the island using the Wheel he himself had designed. However, Ben turned the wheel first, moving the island, teleporting himself to Tunisia, and causing the Losties to be sent out of synch with time. Neither Claire nor the Others were affected by this.

The time travelling Losties jumped into several time periods. One was 1954, where Locke met Richard Alpert and then vanished, misleading RIchard into believing Locke was predestined to be a special leader of the Others. Another was 2007, where Richard was again mislead into telling Locke he needed to bring the escaped Losties back to the island, and himself needing to die. Finally, in the distant past, the Monster told Locke to turn the wheel again. This caused the time travellers to settle down in one time period - 1974, when Dharma was on the island and in conflict with the Others. Locke was sent to Tunisia in 2007.

Locke was assisted by Charles Widmore in trying get the Losties who had escaped to return to the island, but failed. In despair, he attempted to commit suicide, further motivated by the fact that he thought he had to die to serve the island. Since Candidates cannot commit suicide, fate brought Ben Linus to him in time to save him. However, once Locke let slip some vital information, Ben murdered Locke, no longer needing him.

Ben then used Locke's suicide and other techniques into getting the survivors back together. Jack Shephard's life had fallen apart for several reasons - learning that Claire, left behind on the island, was his half sister; failing to bring up Claire's son Aaron with Kate; believing he had seen his father's ghost; dependency on drugs. Kate had been taking care of Claire's son Aaron, but was threatened by Ben with exposure that she had lied in her court trial and would have Aaron taken away. She realised she needed to go find Claire and bring her back to her son. Hurley was in despair, his gift to see the dead manifesting in full and driving him insane, until a visiting Jacob told him it was a gift not a curse and that he needed to help his friends. Jacob also visited Sayid, potentially saving sayid's life while allowing Sayid's wife to die. Sayid was tricked by Ben into murdering many of Widmore's people but then refused to go to the island. Jacob then went to an old ally, Ilana, and told her she needed to make sure all the remaining Candidates went back to the island and were protected. She ensured Sayid was taken back. Sun went back to find out if her husband Jin was in fact still alive.

Thanks to the information Ben took from Locke before murdering him, they all went to visit Eloise Widmore, who told them the only way back to the island was to replicate Flight 815 using proxies. They attempted to do this, but their attempt was not precise enough. As the island grabbed at the plane to bring it down, Jack, Kate, Hurley and Sayid were sent to 1977 while the rest of the plane was left in 2007.

The time travellers encountered their friends living in Dharma. Sayid attempted to alter history by murdering a teenage Ben, but only wounded him. When Ben was taken to the Others for healing in the Temple, it altered his character, removed his memories of the time travelers, and cemented his relationship with the Others, ensuring history went as it was supposed to. One of the Losties, Daniel Faraday son of Charles Widmore and Eloise Hawking, and an expert in time travel, decided he too would alter history. By using a nuclear bomb left by the US army in the 1950s, he would neutralise the EM energy on the island damaged by Dharma. This would remove the need for the Hatch, meaning Desmond would never cause Flight 815 to crash on the island, negating the entire series of events. He stormed in the Others' camp, demanding to get to the bomb, but was shot by his own mother, Eloise. As he died, he realised his mother had orchestrated his arrival on the island in 2004, knowing full well he would die in the past.

The Eloise of 1977 was alarmed to be told she had murdered her future son, and attempted to help the Losties carry out their plan to change history. In fact, all they did was ensure history went as it always had to. Dharma had already dug into the island's EM pocket, triggering a disastrous Incident. By detonating the nuclear bomb, the Losties ensured the energy was temporarily neutralised. This gave Dharma enough time to construct the Hatch which would then safely control the damaged energies from 1977 until 2004 when Desmond detonated the failsafe. Eloise left the Others, and inherited the journal of her son, using its information and knowledge of the future to ensure the time loop was preserved. In this way the island was kept safe. In 2004 she ensured her son went to the island on the Freighter, so that he would be sent to 1974. By 2007 she had no further knowledge of events and had completed her duty to the island, even though it meant she had sacrificed the life of her son. If she had not, the Losties would not have detonated the bomb, and the Incident would likely have destroyed the island and the world. The bomb also sent the Losties forward in time to 2007.

On the island in 2007, the Monster assumed the shape of John Locke, tricking people into thinking his corpse had been brought back to life. He tricked Ben and Richard into bringing him to Jacob, and incited ben into hating Jacob enough to kill him. Jacob and the Monster were playing their game for the soul of humanity even then, but Jacob failed yet again as Ben murdered him, circumventing Mother's Rules that the Monster could not directly harm Jacob.

The Monster's identity was exposed by Ilana, so it went off to recruit followers. A dying Sayid was recognised as a Candidate by the Others at the Temple who attempted to use the Temple's healing waters to save him. WIth the death of Jacob, the Monster had corrupted the Temple, and resurrected Sayid in a corrupt and Sickened state. Sayid was influenced by the Monster into murdering the Protector of the Temple, allowing the Monster to massacre the Others. He left alive the few who had joined his side, along with the corrupted Claire and Sayid. Eventually Hurley, Jack, Kate, Sun and Sawyer joined with him in attempting to leave the island. Charles Widmore came to the island and did everything he could to frustrate the Monster. He put explosives on the Ajira plane, and kidnapped Jin to use his knowledge from Dharma to find the EM pockets on the island. He also brought Desmond, wanting to use him to manipulate the EM energy. The Monster used subterfuge to eliminate Sun and Jin and wiped out Widmore's team. Widmore revealed he had been contacted by Jacob and convinced into abandoning his own schemes to save the island, but was then murdered by Ben to avenge the murder of Ben's adopted daughter, Alex Rousseau.

Even after his death, Jacob's rules remained in place. The Monster could not harm the candidates directly, nor could it leave the island if any candidates were alive. With sayid dead, claire abandoning him and the remaining Others scattered, the Monster turned to Ben to aid him in finding Desmond and using him to destroy the island. Ben agreed, but was in fact only playing along long enough until he could figure out how to outmaneuvre the indestructible and cunning Monster.

Jacob was able to resurrect himself using his own ashes long enough to talk to his remaining four candidates. He asked them to choose willingly to replace him, unlike the way Mother imposed the job on him. Jack, changed by his experiences and feeling guilt over the wreck of his life, and the deaths of Locke and Juliet, agreed to do the work. He became the new Protector, and Jacob disappeared forever.

Jack and the Monster confronted each other and agreed to go together to the Source Cave with Desmond. Desmond removed the stone Cork, undoing the source and triggering the island to fall apart. At that point, the power of the Island was undone. The Rules keeping the Monster bound to the island fell apart, but the Monster was rendered mortal again. Jack and Kate succeeded in killing the Monster in its mortal form, ending its threat forever. Ben and Hurley agreed to help Jack save the island as the rest of them went to the plane. Kate convinced Claire into coming home to Aaron. Kate would be in trouble for breaking the law in leaving the US, and Claire would have to reveal she had not died 3 years ago, as would Sawyer. Richard presumably used the leftover power and money of the Others to create a life for himself off island. Miles presumably went back to his old life.

Jack went into the Source cave and helped Desmond escape, and then put the stone Cork back, sealing the breach and restoring the Light emanating from the EM source. This saved the island, but lethal exposure to the EM energy and the wounds suffered from fighting the Monster resulted in Jack's death. Before dying, Jack chose Hurley to be the new Protector. Hurley asked Ben to act as his advisor in protecting the island. With no Monster to worry about, Hurley was able to use the island in a very different way to Jacob, to help people. He used the island's influence to allow Desmond to go home to his wife and child.

Over time, each of the remaining characters died. As they all died, they entered a construct they formed with their minds, a false mirror of their previous lives, where they tried to imagine what their lives might have been like under better circumstances without the influence of the island. Some were happier, some were not. Eventually they all found each other and remembered their past lives. As a group they overcame the grief and hurts of their lives, and then moved on into whatever comes after death.

No gym this week :*(

2010-03-02T11:32:00.000-08:00

Gym has been going really well. I'm in the middle of Phase 2 of Eric Cressey's Maximum Strength, getting used to all the new workout styles (front squats, box squats, rack pulls, rotator cuff work, lots of unilateral leg work, cluster sets, speed work).

Unfortunately I managed to hurt my lower back 2 weeks ago, through some rather poor deadlifting technique. It seemed to be ok, but now it seems to be getting sore again. Taking a week off the gym to let it recover. I considered going to the dr, but I don't think they are going to say much other than rest it and take anti inflammatory drugs (of which I might try buying some tomorrow). Really annoying to be out of the gym, hopefully I've learnt my lesson, and I just hope my back heals itself soon. I'm stretching it and using a tennis ball and foam roller for some self myofascial release.

I've been working

2010-03-01T16:31:00.000-08:00

That's my excuse for no updates recently. But the stats say people are still visiting occasionally, so I oughta at least say hi!

I took some time off at Christmas to write up. The only problem is, that I got very little writing done. Partly this was because of writers block. Ask anyone who has done their PhD. It's insanely difficult to get started on your thesis. It just looms over you, like an unborn monolith.

Of course, realising I hadn't as yet finished playing Mass Effect on the XBox 360 had nothing to do with it. This is the first game, not the recent sequel. I actually purchased it over a year ago, but got bored fairly quickly. I decided I ought to give it another shot, especially since I'm too poor to buy any new games at the moment. Once I got into it, I actually really enjoyed it. You control a character named Shepherd (first name, gender and appearance can be chosen at will; there are also quite a few options in picking his/her past history which influences how other characters relate to you). It's a scifi RPG, where you basically play a soldier who has been chosen to represent humanity at a very high level in galactic politics. It's your job to figure out why a highly decorated alien supersoldier has gone AWOL. As you progress through the game, you can pick up allies. Each mission lets you take two such allies along, allowing you to pick which sorts of skills you want to complement your own. You can either follow lots of side plots, or carry through the main mission, which follows a standard plot of uncovering the history of an ancient alien race, wiped out by an even more powerful and ancient alien race. It's still v gripping and exciting. I did find driving the MAKO allterrain vehicle incredibly annoying, and all the bases and derelict ship interiors look identical. The romance subplots were amusing.

Still, I am now finally in the groove of writing my thesis. Of course, I promised my supervisor I would hand in the first three chapters by today - I've only handed in one, half finished the second, not even started the third. Eek!

I'm still working in the lab, so here's a treat for you. This is an important figure from my future thesis. I'm interested in investigating a certain protein, which we shall call X. In order to see how X works, it's useful to know what other proteins X plays with. To do that, I am using antibodies that recognise X, in a reaction called an Immunoprecipitation. Basically, you take cells grown in cell culture labs, break them up to release all their proteins, and then incubate them with your antibody which is stuck to tiny little beads. You then remove the cell proteins and keep the beads. Hopefully the antibody on the beads has grabbed your protein out, along with all other proteins that interact with Protein X. You then spread them out on an acrylamide gel, and use silver to make them visible.

The pic shows in the right hand lane a very dark band representing my protein, and lots of lighter bands, representing potential proteins that work with my protein X.

I refuse to post pics of snow

2010-01-13T17:48:00.000-08:00

The UK has been hit by rather unusual levels of snow the last few weeks. Other countries might scoff at how badly we're coping, but we're just not used to it, and have no money invested in dealing with prolonged snow and ice because it rarely snows at all in most of England.

My poor mother has been practically housebound, not daring to risk a repeat of an incident a few years ago where she slipped on some ice right outside our house and broke her foot, leaving her unable to walk properly for almost 2 months. I must confess, the thought of her falling and breaking her hip has been preying on my mind.

So no pics of snow from me because everyone and their dog has posted it. But here's an unusual sight I passed on the way home - someone decided to string up a load of soft toy puppies on a tree, like a macabre offering to some deity to end the winter freeze.

Death and politics

2010-01-09T12:04:00.000-08:00

For some time now, the small town of Wootton Bassett has paid respect to fallen British soldiers, whose bodies are being returned from battle in Afghanistan and Iraq via the town to a mortuary. Recently, several muslims from a group called Islam4UK decided they wanted to use the town to make their own anti war protest march.

This is what someone had to say about it on one forum:

"I have to say that after listening to his sh.it I've never felt more like picking up a gun and killing some f.ucking muslim c.unts! Mainly the ones that will be with him on his little parade...... then the rest of em.

F.uck em."

Islam4UK is a fringe group which probably has less than 100 members, out of almost 2 million muslims in the UK. Its leader has had his organisations banned one by one for promoting or glorifying terrorism. Nonetheless they have managed to garner immense amounts of media attention.

"Why aren't mainstream muslims speaking up, if they're opposed?" The same, tired old arguments are being wheeled out. They are speaking out - the media just isn't interested because it doesn't make as juicy a story. Oh and look, there's even a facebook group protesting against Islam4UK. That will really show those evil muslims that we mean business.

No right thinking muslim would want to use occasions of grief as an opportunity to make some cheap political point. Most british muslims are against the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, to differing extents and for different reasons. Sadly, our stock has fallen so low, our reputations become so tarnished, that anyone will now believe anything of us, no matter how low or inhuman. Now more than ever, it is incumbent upon every muslim to make that extra effort to reach out to their fellow human beings and remind them we are here and that we are not all filled with hate and nihilistic violence.

The latest conspiracy story is about Google. If you type in "Christianity is" into the Google search box, it starts generating the most common predictable search requests. Yet if you type "Islam is" you get nothing. People are up in arms, claiming that there's a conspiracy to appease those dangerous violent muslims. Google says it's just a programming bug. Which do you think is more plausible? If Google really wanted to deceive people, why not generate options like "Islam is a good religion", rather than deleting the entire predictive text option?

New Year Resolutions

2010-01-04T16:10:00.000-08:00

Ok so they don't have a good press. Plus why pick that date; the Islamic New Year technically started a few weeks ago. Regardless, I'm going to pick this opportunity to make some goals:

1) Get my thesis done on time. That's not a goal really, that's just a matter of survival - September 2010

2) Stick to training even when I'm distracted and stressed at work. More specifically, I want my weight back to go past my previous heaviest (74.5kg) and up towards 80kg. I want to beat my squat and deadlift pb of 95kg and 120kg for reps, respectively, and to get my bench to something almost vaguely respectable, let's say 75kg. I also want to commit to regular stretching and mobility work (Eric cressey kinda stuff).

3) Be organised and efficient! Go to bed earlier, turn the computer off by 22:30, be in bed by 23:00. Get things for the next day ready the night before so I'm not tripping over stuff trying to find them in the morning.

4) Eating enough food every day. Not rushing through breakfast. Getting plenty of water in. Making more of an effort to get a serving or 3 of fruit EVERY day.

5) Start writing more on this blog, even if it's just a training log.

Looking at 2010 with both hope and fear in equal measure

2010-01-04T16:02:00.000-08:00

Well it's crunch time. I have less than 9 months left to submit my PhD thesis. Eek! I'm at home right now writing. Or maybe that should be "writing." I have complete writer's block. My secondary supervisor said a few weeks ago "At least you're not afraid of writing, so that's one issue you won't have to deal with." That's true, but I still HATE thesis writing! I enjoy writing, just not about my own work.

Of course if I enjoy writing so much, why have I neglected this blog? According to Lijit, people are still visiting, so hey! *waves electronically at internet people.*

Training wise, I am currently on a 20 rep squats program, which looks like this:

Squats: 1x20
Dbell Pullover: 1x20
StiffLeg Deadlifts: 1x15
Dips: 2x10
1 Arm Rows (I don't like BORs): 2x10
Abs and core stuff

The idea is to pick a weight you can squat for 10 reps - and do 20 reps. So you do 10 reps, wait a few seconds, then force a few more reps out, start breathing heavy, force few more reps out, start swearing from the pain, and finish the set, all without racking the bar. Since nowadays I normally squat 72.5kgx6, I started at 50kgx20, and have worked up to 70kgx20. I want to get to 72.5kgx20 and then leave it, and finally switch to Eric Cressey again.

All I need to sort out are my eating habits. As in - EAT EAT EAT!

Why can't I do it?

2009-09-29T17:12:00.000-07:00

I've had over a day to start. All I need to do is get some figures together for my 2nd thesis chapter. I have plenty. Yet it took half of Monday and all day Tuesday before I got up, took all the gels and went to the scanner and scanned them. Took maybe 30 minutes. Why am I being hit by super procrastination?! I need to have a meeting with my supervisor on Friday and show him. Someone please hit me with a wet kipper and make me finish this off.

Convictions.

2009-09-17T15:39:00.000-07:00

BBC

Independent

Evening Standard

So three British Muslim males have been found guilty of trying to blow up planes. It's so incredibly depressing, coming right on the anniversary of the 11th September attacks. Why did they do it? What did they think they were going to accomplish?

In court, they have claimed that they were going to merely frighten people, rather than murder them, but that seems a bit far fetched, given the videos they filmed of themselves. They almost sound like gang members, "Don't mess with the muslims"... Yet from fear of being convicted, they lack the ability to proclaim this once again to the jury, and pretend that it's all a big misunderstanding.

One of the convicted men, Sarwar, said he suffered low self-esteem and thought he was "useless," after failing at University. A sad case of a vulnerable person lacking confidence and being taken advantage of?

At least I haven't heard any reactions along the lines of "Why aren't muslims doing more to stop this", as if we are all MI5 agents who can track down terrorists. These people don't go around shouting out their intentions at the local mosque to a baying mob, contrary to what some people obviously believe. Not that I have noticed anyway.

At the same time, we have people from the "English Defence League and Stop the Islamisation of Europe " marching to proclaim that they will not let their beloved England be taken over and turned into a muslim country. Do these people really believe this? I wonder if any of them have even ever spoken to a muslim in this country before. Maybe they are too busy watching the trial of these three young men on TV.

In the last few weeks, an elderly man was beaten to death outside a mosque not far from me. Another man was stabbed at another. Is it just coincidental, or the start of something worse? Difficult to stay optimistic, in times like these.

Half way there

2009-09-05T16:06:00.000-07:00

Just finished the 15th fast of Ramadan 1430H (Sept 2009 AD). The first week or so was incredibly exhausting, the second week has been better. It's been tough this year, having Sehri (breakfast) before 4am, trying to get some sleep, then Iftar (breaking fast) at 8pm, then having dinner (unless I go to the mosque for the additional Taraweeh prayers , where they recite 1/30th of the Qur'an so that the entire Noble book is recited within the month) then trying to get some sleep. Sometimes I haven't bothered sleeping inbetween the end of the day and beginning of the next.

I've been having two toast with butter honey and banana slices for sehri, it's all I can manage in the morning. For iftar usually have a date, some fruit and something fried like a little kebab or samosa. Contrary to what almost everyone asks, no we don't sit there and stuff our faces. If only because you would end up feeling ill anyway.

Definitely losing weight, trousers are a very loose fit at the moment.

To the muslims reading - hope your fasts are going well.

To the non muslims - fancy a challenge? How do you think you'd cope fasting say, 3 days in a row?

Did You Disappoint Your God?

2009-08-26T15:18:00.000-07:00

What's it like when you die?
Do you live on in memories?
If you can, I wanna try
I didn't get nothing done in this life

I need to try
I need to try

I was right from the start
You get a knife in your heart
You want a wife and a car
You want the right to go to war

The Jealous guy gives you the nod
Did you disappoint your God?

Sorry I couldn't be there when you needed me
I barely can hold the pen through the flames that I'm seated in
I wait, but wait don't kill the pain

I was dying for a piece of it
Was crying for release, then it was gone
But I can't die
But I was crying for release
But I was dying for a piece and now it's gone

It's so easy, it's so easy
To give in, to give in
It's so easy, it's so easy
To give in, to give in
It's so easy, it's so easy
(i was dying for a piece of it, was crying for release and now it's gone)
To give in, to give in
It's so easy, it's so easy
(i was dying for a piece of it, was crying for release and now it's gone)
To give in, to give in
It's so easy, it's so easy
(building a dream, building a dream)
To give in, to give in
Building a dream

www.youtube.com/watch?v=abxRNHu88_I

Ramadhan Mubarak!

2009-08-24T14:21:00.000-07:00

Well today was the third day of fasting for Ramadhan, I was speaking to a non Muslim about it on a forum, and he exclaimed that giving up food and drink for the daylight hours for a month was far too difficult, that he couldn't even imagine trying it. Does it really sound that daunting to people? No food or drink for just over 16 hours. Yes it's hard work, but a billion people are managing just fine. Many poor people around the world manage to survive on little food for the entire year.

Why do muslims fast, I've been asked several times. Well the most direct answer would be because God told us to!

O who believe, fasting is decreed for you as it was decreed for those before you; perchance you will guard yourselves The month of Ramadan is the month in which the Quran was sent down, a guidance for the people, and clear verses of guidance and criterion.)[Quran 2:183]

Previous religious communities have fasted, and this tradition is carried on in Islam. Fasting teaches us to be grateful for what we have, and to feel pity for those who go without day after day, and increases our self control. The resulting state of ketosis also induces a more spiritual frame of mind.

Well as usual, the third day has hit me pretty hard, I;m tired and worn out. Tomorrow will prob be bad too. After that, it tends to get easier as you settle into the new routine of less sleep, food and drink.

I haven't quite settled into the more spiritual aspect. So far have only been to the mosque once for the additional taraweeh prayers, during which they recite 1/30th of the Qur'an per night, thus reciting the entire scripture over the month. I am doing the dawn and sunset prayers at the start and end of each fast, but haven't really gotten into the swing of achieving more of the Five daily prayers which are required throughout the year. Let's just say it's a work in progress.

I am missing the gym already. I tried some of the mobility exercises instead from Eric Cressey's Magnificent Mobility DVD. I think I need some serious work on some dynamic stretches.

Today was actually a good day

2009-08-20T15:39:00.001-07:00

I managed to finish on time yesterday AND today, and get a pretty silver stained gel and a nice Western Blot = figure for my thesis. I even have gone out for dinner both days in a row - OMG , a social life! What is my life coming to?

Now if I can only make this the norm rather than the exception. Work and Life in a happy balance.

Training on hiatus

2009-08-20T15:22:00.001-07:00

Since the fasting month of Ramadhan is approaching,I have decided to put training on hold for now. Since the muslim lunar calendar is 11 days shorter than the solar year, the dates for Ramadhan move backwards relative to the common Western calendar, so fasting will be during the long hot days of summer. With that and work pressure, I've decided training would be counter productive. I just hope I don't go stir crazy in the meantime!

I first started thinking about weight lifting when I was about 17 and bought my first issue of the UK edition of Mens Health. Before that, I probably had not really considered worrying about my general bodyshape or physique all that much. That changed. Thankfully I have never become overly concerned or neurotic about it. In those days, MH magazine was of a much better standard than it is now, with better articles on training, and fewer ridiculous claims like "Get ripped in 7 days while eating pizza!"
or the like. I decided to go buy a set of weights with dumbells and barbells from Argos. I didn't even bother thinking about how I was going to get 40kg of weights home. Cue me struggling, dragging it from the shop for 5m, stopping to rest, drag another 5m, rest..... I bumped into a friend who took pity, and called a taxi for me. Used the weights for a while to train in my bedroom, but with no bench, training was limited.

I truly regret not learning more at the time, and wasting the years that followed. While at Uni, I trained only intermittently at the gym, with no real progress, and no clue as to what I was doing. Diet was not even considered at all. At 5'8'', I weighed 57kg.

It went on like that in the years that followed. I did make some progress during 2006, getting my weight up from 57 to 67kg. It wasn't until I signed up to http://www.mansized.co.uk/talk, and read up on training, that I finally started to learn something. In February 2008 I finally moved from machines to more free weights style, and actually saw some real progress. Finding the stronglifts program (http://www.stronglifts.com) made the biggest change, I went from 67 to 75kg. Improving my diet went a ways too.

SInce then, various pressures (usually work) have kept me from going much further. At the moment, my personal bests are

Bench 60kg
Squat 95kg
Deadlift 120kg

I am still learning, and I hope that after Ramadan is over, I can get back into training with purpose anew, and eat, train and sleep properly to achieve my best. There are various programs I want to try out, will probably have a go at Eric Cressey's book Maximum Strength,

Content?

2009-08-10T17:00:00.000-07:00

Thanks to Lijit, I know that some people at least are reading this blog - there are actually a few hits each day (one day had as many as 17 people visit here)!

Based on the title, I would think I should aim my posts to be either about my experiences in the lab or about my views of life as a muslim. But that's incredibly limiting, and makes it sound like those are the only aspects of my life which shape my viewpoint, which is untrue. On the other hand, I don't want to turn this into some rambling never ending monologue about life, the universe and everything.

If you are reading - thoughts?

Identity issues....

2009-07-28T11:41:00.001-07:00

I was talking to someone about potential conflict when you feel split between different worlds. As he explains in his blog http://michael-contemporarymusings.blogspot.com/, he is half English, half Indonesian. Both of my parents are from Pakistan, but I don't really feel much of an affinity for the country. I'm very much a Londoner, born and bred. Waving flags and singing national anthems makes me cringe. If Lord Tebbitt wants to apply his cricket test to me, I'll tell him I don't care if England or Pakistan wins the match, cricket is boring. I'm not pulled between two different worlds because I don't really fit into either. I'm very religious compared to my English friends, but compared to my muslim friends of Pakistani descent, I'm v liberal. I've trained to be a scientist, but don't want to follow that field anymore.

Basically, I feel a bit all over the place. Or maybe I'm just eclectic, and interesting.

"I am large, I contain multitudes" as Whitman would say.

What's Past is Prologue

2009-07-13T17:15:00.001-07:00

An introduction would probably help, wouldn't it?

OK, let's see. I'm 28, London born and bred (I have occasionally ventured beyond the Watford Gap, but to be honest, anything beyond the M25 has the label "Here be dragons" in my mindmap). My parents are from Pakistan. I'm a muslim, reasonably religious with an unpredictable streak of liberalism. I've always wanted to work in the life sciences, and am currently working towards finishing my PhD in Biochemistry.

I like writing (things like this - I do NOT enjoy writing chapters for my PhD thesis). I hope to develop my writing skills, and this blog is, partially at least, in aid of that.

I ought to have picked a better username really - Phoenix is a little too ubiquitous. Still, you can find me on various websites as Phoenix or PhoenixUK or FeenixUK

http://www.mansized.co.uk/members/Phoenix

http://www.last.fm/user/FeenixUK

http://www.youtube.com/user/FeenixUK

http://www.43things.com/person/PhoenixUK

My first post

2009-07-07T18:34:00.000-07:00

This should be something profound, which will really grab readers' attention and retain them as return visitors.

........

I thought the whole blogging phenomenon was pretty much over - I mean, it's so 1997 (I got that date from wiki as the first known example of someone using the phrase as a verb and noun - what did people do PW {pre wikipedia}).

The only blog I've read recently is http://londonpreppy.blogspot.com/ . Give it a read, it's hilarious. I do worry about the writer's mental health ;)

I toyed with the idea of starting my own blog, I mean, I think I have a lot to write about. I'm a fairly unique individual, I must have thoughts that others would be interested in reading. But then everyone thinks that about their own thoughts, so isn't it really arrogant to presume they are worthy of being preserved for posterity in the electronic ether?

Meh.

Was chatting to my friend D about what I want to do in the future. As usual, writing cropped up. "Start a blog," he suggested. So I did.