Nerdstock

Did anyone else watch Nerdstock: Nine Lessons and Carols for Godless People over Christmas? I happened to catch it on BBC4 the other night.

Organised by New Humanist and the Rationalist Association, this sublime, science-celebrating variety show took place at London’s 3000-seater rock venue, the Hammersmith Apollo, where a non-religious crowd were treated to an evening of eminent scientists, musicians and comedians.

The show was hosted by Robin Ince and featured guests including Richard Dawkins, Simon Singh, Ben Goldacre, Brian Cox, Canadian evolutionary rapper Baba Brinkman, and top comedians from Mark Steel to Shappi Khorsandi.

My personal favourite was Mancunian particle physicist Brian Cox, who mesmerised the audience with an awe-inspiring display of cosmological science and openly criticised the UK’s Science and Technology Facilities Council funding body for its latest round of cutbacks.

The festive season might be over but, if you’re of a, let’s say, science-loving, humanist disposition, and haven’t watched it already, I’d recommended you indulge your inner nerd and catch it whilst you can on the BBC iPlayer.

A Daynes’ Family Christmas

In loving memory of the turkey I ate.

Is the end nigh?

“World War 1″ yeilds 152 million results, “World War 2″ an impressive 161 million.
But our winner, with 270 million results, is an impending World War 3.

Racism will not be tolerated!

And neither should typos.

Thanks for your help, TFL

An Ode to the Fiddlers

Here is a little song I wrote about the MPs expenses scandal.

The sound quality’s not ideal, and the washing machine raging in the background sounds less than professional, but other than that I hope you will enjoy.

10 ordinary things I really must start doing

1. Drink water
2. Keep the front door locked
3. Wear a helmet whilst cycling
4. Wear matching underwear
5. Write a shopping list
6. Drink wine
7. Eat vegetables
8. Exercise
9. Clean the windows
10. Water the plants

Royal Rainbows

On a recent visit to the Science Museum, Chi and I stumbled across ‘Social Lite’, a piece of interactive artwork by New York artist Scott Snibbe. It allows you to manipulate shadows to reflect laser beams and create rainbows. This is our video which I dubbed with a cheery little ditty from The Beatles.

New website header

As you may remember from my post back in November 2008, I really disliked the header on my website that came with the WordPress theme I had chosen. Unfortunately, uploading a new header was not as simple as I had imagined it would be because the header is split into three separate image files.

Here’s a reminder of what the site looked like before:

This weekend I spent hours, literally hours, learning my way around Adobe Illustrator.

I then bought an illustration on iStock from a designer called -M-I-S-H-A-, whose illustrative style I love, and used Adobe Illustrator to modify the illustration to fit the header space.

Considering my lack of design skills, I was thoroughly pleased with the result. It still needs a lot of tweaking until I’ll be entirely happy but it’s a vast improvement on the stock-like imagery that was there before.

See my new header here.

On the needle – update

Getting better. Slowly.

Guess you all know what you’re getting for Christmas.