KempoBlog

b3ta again

2008-01-17T15:30:00.001Z

change one letter of a film title, this is without doubt the best website ever b3ta

ColorBunch

2008-01-17T15:10:00.000Z

really liking this site which is a collection of art by Philipp Schilling

no idea why, but...

2008-01-17T14:58:00.000Z

genius via boing²

I cant remember where this came from either... maybe ffffound?

Check out lastnightsparty too!

hats!

2008-01-17T14:46:00.000Z

I cant remember where I found this now, but it is amazing!

And look at all the hats this girl could chose from and she picked the most boring one... -10 points!

Palms Out Sounds

2008-01-10T12:18:00.000Z

I just came across this site, I'm having a look at their remix sunday feature and it looks like just the sort of thing I am after, a zip of all the remixes released on blogs each week, may take alot of leg work out of finding the latest tracks.

Check it out here

More decapitator

2008-01-10T10:47:00.000Z

The decapitator that I posted about the other day was featured on boingboing and they had a link to his flickr profile here you go!

Yes We Can

2008-01-09T11:54:00.000Z

This man is so inspiring! I've seen the McCain, Clinton, Huckabee and Romney speeches from last night and this one knocks them all for six.. even though he didn't win!

Sno-Baller

2008-01-08T12:47:00.001Z

pictures say it better than words...

at boingboing

The Italic Poster

2008-01-08T12:39:00.000Z

ffffound at ffffound

Jef the Giraf Mix 002

2008-01-08T12:20:00.000Z

Okay, this one is a little better, still not great tho :)

Really poppy :| Might try something a bit more minimal to please DJ Roska next time.

Mix 002

Enjoy

Tracklist

Ali Love - Late Night Session (Phones Filter Fromage Dub)
Claude von Stroke - Whistler (Ashton Shuffle Remix)
Faker - This Heart Attack (Grafton Primary Remix)
Digitalism - Pogo (Shinichi Osawa Remix)
Herr Styler - Gite Fuori (Porta Remix)
The Drill - The Drill
nt89 feat. Shooting Stars - You're My Very Special One (Night Facilities Remix)
Young Americans - Cold Act III
Feist - 1, 2, 3, 4 (Van She Tech Remix)
Yelle - Je Veux te Voir
Strip Steve - Fancy Footwork (SleaZy V Edit)
Justice - DVNO (LA Riots Bootleg)
Lillica Libertine - Drug Control
Thomas Anderson - Washing Up (Shinichi Osawa Re-construct)
The L-Bit - Tasty
Booka Shade - In White Rooms (Neo Mix)

The Decapitator

2008-01-08T00:40:00.001Z

A graffiti artist in London has been going around defacing adverts by removing the heads of the models in ads, gruesome but great!

lovely! via Core77

Made in Bunch

2008-01-08T00:30:00.000Z

Design firm Bunch asked lots of their favorite designers to rework their logo for the new year along the theme "Made in Bunch". The original logo is here

and a link to Creative Reviews favorties and the full list are here and here respectively.

more b3ta!

2008-01-07T15:12:00.000Z

edit: so the image isn't animating on this page for some reason so follow the link below...

brilliance by HappyToast at b3ta

Lacoste Stealth Collection January '08 - Missouri 85

2008-01-06T01:09:00.000Z

via high snobiety

Don't really like the look of the black ones but the white with yellow highlights look cool!

Jef the Giraf

2008-01-05T21:35:00.000Z

I have been playing about with Ableton Live recently in my attempts to become and international superstar DJ. Here is my first attempt at putting together a mix, there are some good bits and some really bad bits, but I'm happy with it for a first go. Let me know what you think.

Tracklist

Donovan - Yo
Yelle - A Cause Des Garcons (TEPR Remix)
Bitchee Bitchee Ya Ya Ya - Fuck Friend (Brodinski & Yusek Remix)
Alter Ego - Why Not
Boys Noize - Shine Shine (AC Slater Remix)
Felix Cartal - Vancouver
Chemical Brothers - Electronic Battle Weapon 8
Hot Chip - Ready For The Floor (Soulwax Dub)
LCD Soundsystem - Get Innocuous (Soulwax Edit)
Justice - Phantom Pt. II (Soulwax Nite Version)
Klaxons - Golden Skans (Erol Alkans Ekstra Spektral Extended Vocal Rework)
Soulwax - NY Lipps (Kawazaki Dub)
Riot In Belgium - La Musique (Adam Sky Remix)
Teki Latex - Les Matins de Paris (Surkin Remix)
Soulwax - Miserable Girl (Shinichi Osawa Extra Hard Edit)
Shitdisco - OK (Yusek Remix)
Etienne De Crecy - Funk (The Bloody Beetroots Remix)
Danger - 11h30 (datA Remix)
Daft Punk - Aerodynamic (Ali Horror Buster Remix)

Length - 82:42
Size - 75.72mb

Mix 001

I thought...

2008-01-05T21:19:00.000Z

that I recognised some of the little monster things on the "some velvet mornin" on the previous post by RA909, and I remembered why! It turns out I have a t-shirt designed by him, check it out:

I really love this t-shirt, I got it just before Christmas in a little store in Edinburgh, it's by RA909 for People Like Us and you can see more of it on their site here.

From that site, RA909:
"The inspiration behind this shirt should be obvious... maybe. It’s the creative explosion of me ingesting a lot of 70s 80s newave / punk / funk culture with my ghostie characters making a cameo appearance. I’m a huge fan of color and try to incorporate combinations which wake up the design and show off the detail.
Yeah, so you should definitely buy this shirt - you'll have all the scene kids jealous."

Turns out the RA stands for Ronald Ashburn, his site is here, it looks like he does some DJing too, I am just downloading a mix of his now to see what its like.

More depthcore pics

2008-01-05T20:37:00.000Z

These are some more images I found in various packs on depthcore that I liked:

"race13" by beaucoupzero for vivid

click for bigger

"inner city front" by beaucoupzero, hellocolor for vivid

click for bigger

"some velvet mornin" by RA909 for vivid

click for bigger

"shivering lullaby for kings and queens" by designprimitive for untitled dreams

click for bigger

Okay, so basically I love most of the vivid pack, see it all here.

P.S. something is messed up with the header image, I will try and sort it a.s.ap.

Film reviews

2008-01-05T14:20:00.000Z

The Golden Compass - terrible, insult to the books and the girl that plays Lyra is incredibly annoying!

Cashback - a great surprise, very enjoyable began to get a bit weaker towards the end but full of surprises!

The Bucket List - Harmless comedy with two legends doing hteir thing, worth a watch.

Saturn by Cassini

2008-01-04T12:57:00.000Z

click for bigger

pretty picture from ciclops

Onitsuka Tiger California 78 Green/White

2008-01-04T12:54:00.000Z

mmmm nice

Good advice

2008-01-04T12:33:00.001Z

One Cold Hand

2008-01-04T12:11:00.000Z

one cold hand

a site for single gloves found in Pittsburgh in the States to try and reunite them with their partners. This reminds me of something I saw on boing boing a while ago which was the same thing but for single socks found in a laundromat in San Francisco, here.

Where The Wild Things Are...

2008-01-04T11:58:00.000Z

is being made into a movie, to be directed by Spike Jonze.

imdb

via kitsune noir

Non-conformist Snowman

2008-01-04T11:49:00.000Z

via swissmiss

David Shrigley: 'A few years ago I went to St Moritz in Switzerland. I decided to build a non-conformist snowman. When the art collector who owned the hotel saw it he became very excited that I had created an artwork in the grounds of his hotel. I had to explain that it was not an artwork - it was just a snowman. It’s an easy mistake to make'

A couple of cool articles

2008-01-02T01:35:00.000Z

Glow in the dark paint lasts 12 years...

from treehugger, this stuff would keep the nu-rave crowd happy for the next decade!

Wax recycling candle holder...

also from treehugger, this one is genius and as they say on the site it's one of those "why didn't i think of that" designs, collect the drips of wax from one candle to make a new one!

Terratag

2008-01-02T01:04:00.000Z

hizashi

abunai

kagemusha

Mmmmm I do love terratag t-shirts

due to their crazy javascript website i can't link directly to these t-shirts pages, but check out the whole site here

make sure you check out their uv reactive tees aswell for glow in the dark goodness!

e.g.

roppongi hills

edge.org new year question//what have you changed your mind about, and why?

2008-01-01T16:13:00.000Z

At the end of every year John Brockman from edge.org asks a large range of contributors a question, this years was "What have you changed your mind about, and why?" Richard Dawkins takes the opportunity to highlight the fact that in science, unlike in other spheres such as religion or politics, changing your mind is an accepted, and important, part of life. He uses an anecdote from his great first book, The Selfish Gene, in the first edition of which he disagreed with a theory from Amotz Zahavi but after clever modelling of the problem by Alan Grafen he was forced to change his mind and accept Zahavis theory. His closing statement is great: " Although I was wrong in my scepticism, and I have now changed my mind, I was still right to have been sceptical in the first place! We need our sceptics, and we need our Grafens to go to the trouble of proving them wrong."

Dawkins answer here

I have read a few others

Leon Lederman
Sam Harris
David Bodanis
Clay Shirky
Patrick Bateson

The full list is here

i love this photo

2008-01-01T13:53:00.000Z

icanteachyouhowtodoit

Stefan Lucut

2008-01-01T12:55:00.000Z

following on from that depthcore post, I found the website of the artist of both pieces here. He's a Romanian artist named Stefan Lucut and I really like alot of his work, defintely one worth checking out. Here is another example of his work, this is for another depthcore pack, freestyle III. He also has a t-shirt available from tank theory

click for bigger

b3ta image challenge//extending album art

2008-01-01T12:32:00.000Z

a few b3ta classics in here

edit:
also last weeks literal band names challenge has some great entries

depthcore//empire

2008-01-01T12:16:00.000Z

click for bigger

click for bigger
a couple of really cool images from the depthcore pack empire. I think the dark force lifestyle image would make a great t-shirt!

Giraffes

2007-12-31T13:59:00.001Z

giraffe cake

giraffe bouncy castle

unicycling giraffe in a top hat, walking stick and bow tie with additional cup of tea...

giraffe hat

giraffe taking a piss.

obviously...

communist monuments

2007-12-31T13:39:00.000Z

gigantic communist monuments have always been my favorite type of monuments, brilliant!

boing boing

Irak NY x Adidas RMX Equipment Sport Runner

2007-12-31T12:56:00.000Z

cover your eyes!

via highsnobiety

amazing reebok glow in the dark Tron trainers

2007-12-31T12:11:00.000Z

found at kitsune noir

tecktonik dancing

2007-12-31T12:01:00.000Z

found through kitsune noir

crazy french electro dancers, aparently this is huge in Paris clubs just now, haha

more here and here

firefox extensions

2007-12-30T23:54:00.000Z

first off if you haven't got firefox, what the hell are you doing?!?! get it here NOW! Then pimp it out with these great extensions...

aio sidebar

fantastic little addon that gives you quick access to your bookmarks, history, downloaded files, extensions and themes, page information and a bunch of other stuff, it can toggle using a slimline bar at the screen edge so its only visible when you need it, brilliant, first extension i install if i am setting up firefox.

download statusbar

get rid of theannoying default downloads popup with this great extension, adds a small bar at the bottom of the screen which allows you to keep an eye on downloads while you keep on browsing

downloadhelper

not used this alot but has worked great when i've needed it, allows you to rip audio and video from flash sites like hype machine and youtube etc.

fancy numbered tabs

replaces the close tab icons with numbers so its easier to use ctrl+1,2,3,4 etc to quick switch tabs

favloc

allows you to set up a list of normal locations that you download files to

e.g. i have new downloads, music, films, flat shared drive, so you can sort files into the correct folders before you even begin downloading them!

google notebook

allows you to take clippings of text, pictures, videos etc from websites you visit and compile them into notebooks, really cool stuff!

greasemonkey

allows nice little java extensions to be coded for any website, lots of cool stuff been done to google reader, google mail etc with greasemonkey scripts

mouse gestures

another one i couldnt live with out now,

hold down your right mouse button and with a flick of your wrist navigate back and forth through your history, more complex commands allow complete control of firefox without ever having to lay a hand on the keyboard, nice!

pdf download

allows you to actually control what you do when you start to download a pdf

tabbrowser preferences

gives you much more precise control over how firefox handles tabbed browsing, great stuff!

wellrounded

makes the address and search bars look nicer.

yum yum yubnub

2007-12-30T23:32:00.000Z

this thing is utterly brilliant, it is a command line for the internet for doing searches and things. you can access it through the website yubnub.org, but i never do that, instead i have replaced the default google search bar in firefox with the yubnub search available here

some examples of commands you can use:

g giraffe cake will google for giraffe cake
gim giraffe cake will seach google images for giraffe cake

ls does a seach for yubnub commands, this is extremely useful if you forget the correct prefix or syntax

flk for a flickr search
wp for wikipedia
d for dictionary
t for thesaurus
gmaps for google maps
gno for google notes
gr for google reader
gmail to search your googlemail
hype for the hype machine
gbs for google blog search
mnn for mininova
tpb for the piratebay
ctor for completorrent meta-search
btmon searches bittorrentmonster
tr en fr how you doing will translate how you doing from english into french using google translator... replace en and fr with any languages supported by google
ucc 1000 usd gbp converts $1000 into pounds using the xe.com currency converter... replace usd and gbp with any currencies, a list of them here
amazonuk seaches amazon
ebuk earches ebay.co.uk
fb searches facebook
bbc opens bbc news
yt for youtube
imdb for imdb
lhr for lifehacker
lastfm for last.fm
mycroft to search firefox search bars
ffe to search firefox extensions
kayak to search for flights
b2 for boingboing
en for engadget

many many more available here

Modular T

2007-12-30T22:56:00.000Z

klaxons!

Vice Magazine Tour

2007-12-30T22:52:00.000Z

free tickets here

Metronomy will be djing in Glasgow!

Essential Apps

2007-12-30T22:04:00.000Z

firefox
cant live without it, will post extensions and plugins later!

7zip
for opening zips and rars

vlc
for viewing any videos

myphoneexplorer
for syncing sony ericsson phones with pc

se themes creator
for creating themes for se phones

utorrent
for bittorrent

winamp
for playing music

peerguardian
for protecting yourself from prying eyes

tvants
for watching football also see lsotv and myp2p

sopcast
as above

irfanview
best image viewer around!

++ Ableton Live for DJing, Adobe Photoshop for image manipulation

Music

2007-12-30T21:33:00.000Z

Music Blogs I visit:

BIGSTEREO
Electrorash
Missingtoof.com
nialler9
BOULE à FACETTES
KOKORO JAZZ&CLUB MP3
J'ai la cassette à la maison
[ redthreat ]
PUSHER
DISTORTION DISCO
Disque Primeur™
Beats™ Presents: hot biscuits
The Beeb
fluo kids

all posting great mp3s regularly, enjoy

What a line up... Garorock!

2007-12-30T21:27:00.000Z

garorock looks incredible!

NYE in Ed?

2007-12-30T21:25:00.000Z

The Hive looks like it might be a bit of a laugh! £2 drinks on NYE.. madness! and only £6 entry if you sign up to guest list, comment if you need a guest pass emailed to you

karazee kitsune

2007-12-30T21:13:00.000Z

http://sharebee.com/8bfe7d62
http://sharebee.com/7643b0ed

7zip

how on earth did that get there? out in Feb next year!

CAKE

2007-12-30T21:03:00.000Z

http://www.cakelovesyou.com/

I love the t-shirt under the a on the splash page.

edit: infact here you go

Huf x Starks Crack Laces

2007-12-30T21:01:00.000Z

highsnobiety custom laces, crazy!

Plus41 x So_me = Justich

2007-12-30T21:00:00.002Z

highsnobiety

I demand to see justice again asap!

DQM Holiday '07 New Era Caps

2007-12-30T21:00:00.001Z

highsnobiety

the hat front right is awesome!

Air Jordan 23 Basketball

2007-12-30T20:59:00.001Z

highsnobiety

looks real nice, but prob not too practical for playing with.

Puma Disc Blaze

2007-12-30T20:58:00.001Z

highsnobiety

ice cream shoes, funky

Steal this film

2007-12-30T20:50:00.000Z

recommended viewing, all about p2p networks and the film/music industries:

part 1
part 2

faq

download using
utorrent
play using
vlc

Great idea for a clock...

2007-12-30T20:46:00.000Z

found on core 77 here... it would be fun to try and make one of these, but you would need to have a strong mechamism to move the bit blocking the clockface out.

The Four Horsemen

2007-12-30T20:43:00.000Z

Great videos featuring Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, Christopher Hitchens and Daniel Dennett here

I have read a couple of Dawkins books and am currently reading The Portable Athiest by Hitchens, although its a huge tome and anything but portable, it is proving a great read!

Space Invader x G1950 x Porter

2007-12-30T20:40:00.000Z

From highsnobiety Great looking bag that reminds me of a scarf I found last year here.

Resurecting Blog

2007-12-30T20:35:00.000Z

I am gonna try and resurect this thing and post interesting stuff I find!

Wheeee

Race to Paris 2007

2007-01-26T16:10:00.001Z

Where to start… well I guess with where we started would be sensible. Jenny and I were among the last groups dropped off of our bus in Edinburgh, we got dropped at Musselburgh service station along with another two teams. We were dressed as pirates and had our good ship the Yellow Submarine along with us. Unfortunately after a few minutes the other Edinburgh bus turned up, and with extra teams as they had missed one of their drop off points, so when they arrived there were around 10 teams there trying to get lifts out of a pretty dead petrol station and car park.

After having a look inside the restaurant to see if there were any lifts south we headed out towards the road, we followed it round to the on-ramp for the A1 and dumped our stuff and got our banner out. We waved our swords and thumbs at everything passing us, and unbelievably after only 3 minutes a van pulled in just up the on ramp, we grabbed our bags and sprinted up the verge to where it had stopped. A nice man leaned out his door and told us "we cant take you to Paris but we are heading all the way to Portsmouth so can drop you in London"… Amazing I think you will agree!

So into the back of Andy and Cliffs van we jumped, giggling like kids at our ridiculous good luck. The guys were heading down to visit Andy's daughter in Portsmouth, stopping off in Berwick to pick up a fridge to take down. They were both semi-retired and did some removals in their spare time, Andy was a retired police officer having broken his back in a car smash a few years ago.

Next, we stopped off at Berwick at Cliffs Aunt and Uncles house, a static caravan, and had tea and biscuits and picked up the fridge. Having been in the back of the van we hadn't actually seen Cliff until we stopped there and got out. When we did we got quite a shock, he only had one arm! Don’t know how he changed gear, but his driving had been fine so all was good.

We got dropped off at Toddington services just north of London and had a quick scout around of the car park for anyone heading any further south without luck, so we sneaked into the lorry car park looking for any with their lights on who might just be there for a quick stop. We came across a couple of Hungarian trucks, but the guys couldn’t speak any English. We gesticulated and kept saying Dover to one of the guys. He seemed to want us to split, one of us into each of the lorries. Obviously we weren't having any of that and kept saying we had to travel together, eventually the guy seemed to just give in and unlocked his passenger side door, so in we climbed.

He filled out a bunch of paperwork and then after five minutes we were off. When I say he didn’t speak any English, he really, really didn’t, so we talked at him from time to time and he talked at us from time to time, but we didn’t really find anything out about him other than he was from Debrecen, and he seemed to think we were going to a football game due to our big banner.

When we reached Dover there was a giant queue of lorries stretching a few miles out, but this didn't put our guy off, oh no! He just switched into the no freight lane and bombed it down past hundreds of other lorries until we were within touching distance of the port. It was all going so well until that point… however there were several police officers at the roundabout near the port and they stopped us getting any further down and redirected our driver along another road, presumably it was meant to take us back to the end of the queue, however we started winding our way up the cliffs of Dover! Jenny and I were exchanging worried looks the further along this single lane road we got and eventually the driver reached a dead end and was going to have to reverse back down! At this point we decided to take our chances and we packed up our stuff, thanked our Hungarian friend and headed down towards the port.

We had our first encounter with another team at a petrol station just along from the entrance to the port, a couple who eventually finished second. Three hours were spent traipsing up and down the line of lorries waving our flag and desperately trying to get any passing cars to stop for us. At one point we thought we had a lift as a red lorry slowed down loads, we chased after it but it just kept rolling along a little to fast for us to catch it up! We made a few visits to the arrivals lounge of the port for a rest and some food and warmth, a couple more teams had arrived by this point and we were determined not to let them overtake us, so we headed out for one last try. There was one good corner for pitching your flag in Dover, right at the corner of some traffic lights where any cars that were stopped couldn’t fail to see you. We got to this corner and found it empty, we later found out that the first team we had met in Dover had been picked up by the red lorry that had slowed down earlier, bastards!!! Anyway, we put up our flag and after a few minutes a small truck came and parked right infront of us! While we were getting ready to raise hell with the driver for blocking cars from seeing us, he leaned out his window and asked where we needed a lift to! Lucky we didn’t shout anything at him too loud I suppose.

This guy was called Rich and he owned a small removals company working out of Dover, he was on his way to make a delivery to a place in Southern Paris! Again, amazing good fortune for us, he had a little GPS/TomTom thing, and offered to take us right to the hostel, so we gave him the address, he plugged it in and we were off again. It took a couple of hours to get from where he picked us up, through passport control and onto the ferry. He showed us up to the truckers lounge where we could buy a breakfast and get some drinks, but we both still had some of our packed lunches left so we tucked into them.

Off the ferry in Calais, Rich got going on the road to Paris, a few petrol stations, toll booths and hours later and we were drawing up on Rue de Matre and bidding him farewell. We got into the hostel to find we were the fifth team to arrive, not bad at all.

On the trip between us Jenny and I spent £0.00, no food, drinks, travel, accomodation (or sleep!) and raised around £400. We both had a great time and if I end up in St A again next year I will definitely be taking part again!

The end :)

2006-09-07T19:29:00.000+01:00

Ola

que mas?

once again, I am sorry for the long gap since the last update. Have been having a hectic time and have been too tired to write anything for a while. Thus this will again be a monster of a post, sorry!

So I finished the last post saying we were heading to Toronto I think, we got there kinda late, and ended up having to share a room with another couple of guys, but it was no big problem.

The night we arrived we headed out to find somewhere to get some food, we found a British style pub and I tried another dish new to me, perogies, which is apparently polish, they were cheese wrapped in kinda mashed potato, they were yummy and went down well with a few pints of canadian lager :)

After that we headed back to the hostel and went to the bar they had there, it was a nice cheap place out the back with picnic tables and stuff. We met a couple of Australian guys and drank with them into the wee hours.

The next morning we got up, what we thought was a bright and early, grabbed some brekkie and headed to the CN tower to see if we could scale the biggest spike on the planet, unfortunately when we got there the queues to get up to the top were already ninety minutes long! So we decided to go and try out the other attraction which had been revommended the night before, visiting the toronto islands which lie just offshore in the lake. We took a ferry tour around the islands and we had some great commentary from a Canadian guy with the coolest accent ever.

When we got back onshore we decided we would give the CN towewr another go, but the queues were even longer, so we decided to get on the road to Montreal asap as it was going to be a long drive. Unfortunately we discovered that the car had a flat tyre, so that delayed our departure while we went and put air in it and checked it was all ok.

The best bit of the journey (well the best bit i was awake for, as i did catch up on a bit of sleep on the way :)), was driving along about a 2 mile stretch of highway in the absolute middle of nowhere where it had been decided to test out a machine that draws the lines on the roads. So there were all colours and shapes and sizes of paint blobs all along this road, it was very trippy, maybe you had to be there tho!

We had booked a hostel in Montreal and found it no bother, we stayed in a cute little wooden cabin outside the main hostel which was very nice, if a bit too small. We went out and had a nice dinner on the banks of the river and then found a pub with a terrace out on the street and sat and had a couple of beers, but we were both very tired so we headed to bed pretty early.

The next day we got up and weren't really sure what we wanted to get up to, so we googled and found some stuff that looked good. We visited the Notre Dam cathedral, a cool archeology museum that was all about the history of Montreal and had lots of original remains in the basement that you could go down and see. In the afternoon we took a ferry out to St Helens island which had all sorts of stuff on it, a biosphere, a theme park, lots of big sculptures (unfortunately no gigantic communist monuments in there :( ), and lots of woods to just wander about in, so we took in a bit of that and caught the ferry back a couple of hours later.

We went for dinner at a posh restaurant where we thought there was going to be live jazz, but there was none! :(

I thougroughly enjoyed Canada and would reccomend anyone to visit there!

The next stop was Boston, we got to christines house there in the early afternoon and I lazed about the house while she went and ran errands with her mum. I planned on catching up on sleep but ended up phoning mum and dad and annie :) That evening we headed out for dinner at a Mongolian BBQ place with Christines parents. It was a very funky place where you go around with a bowl picking raw ingredients and sauces and then the chefs are in a circle with a large circular hot plate in the middle, you give them your ingredients and fry them all there for you :) was very yummy :)

After dinner christine gave me a whirlwind tour of downtown Boston, we saw the north end (italian district), colombus park, government centre, the commons (a big park), the public gardens (another park, this time with flowers too!), common avenue (shopping district), the prudential building (tallest building in Boston) and Fenway Park, home of Christines baseball team, the Boston Red Sox. It is a beautiful city and is another place I would like to have been able to spend more time.

So on Friday we got the bus to New York, walked down 42nd St to Times Square from the bus station, it was just like you would imagine... very, very busy :) We had lunch at ESPNzone which was very accurately described to us beforehand as "a sports bar on crack!!". We then went and caught the subway out to Christines friends place in Brooklyn. We had great plans of going back to Manhattan later that night but we were both knackered so we ended up just staying at their flat for a while and then heading out to a nearby bar for a few drinks. Christines friend was turning 21 that night so we bought him lots of drinks at midnight :).

_______________________________

Am currently writing this part at Atlanta airport, on my way back home, we have been delayed a bit due to bad weather in Chicago :( only an hour tho so shouldnt be too bad, and it gives me a chance to catch up on letting you all know what I have been up to.

_______________________________

The next morning it was time to head to Bogota, had to catch two subway trains (v impressed with NY subway, easy to use like London, much better than Chicago) and a bus to get out to the airport all with little sleep and a bad hangover :( Thankfully I made it on time, there was a really nice woman at check in and she told me that she didnt think I had enough time between arriving at Atlanta and heading to Bogota, so she moved me onto a flight that was an hour earlier, very nice of her. Unfortunately the flight I was moved onto was delayed by an hour and a half due to some mechanical problems and ended up leaving even later than my original flight. This meant when I got to Atlanta I had to sprint from one end of the airport to the other, well, from terminal A to the shuttle train and then to my gate in terminal E. I was the last person to check in :) However I think my late arrival contributed to the fact that when I got to Bogota, my bags were missing, so I had no clean clothes and no camera for the first 2 or 3 days!

The first night as soon as I arrived (well after the kerfuffle of registering my lost luggage) pedro was waiting for me outside with a bottle of a colombian spirit called aguardiente which i thought was quite nice, to everones surprise. We headed straight from the airport to his friends birthday party which was lots of drunken fun involving lots more aguardiente, colombian beer (aguilla) and spanish singing. The next day we went out for lunch with lots of pedros family, cousins and aunts etc, it was a really nice restaurant in a nearby town called Chia, the restuarant was called el humero or "the smoke". I had an absoloutely huge steak, never seen anything like it. Before the steak we shared lots of starters and pedros dad took great delight in intorducing me to them all, one was cows intestines fried, with all the grass the cow had eaten still half digested inside :) and another intestinal dish (pig this time i tihnk) which reminded me of black pudding :) they were both ok, but I liked some of the less weird dishes better I think :)

That night we went out again, this time we met up with some of the guys we had met the night before, Raul and Gonzalez, and headed out into the town, we went to a cool bar called prada or something and had some martinis (apparently no one there drinks beeer really, they all have cocktails all the time, was fun to do something so different to my usual stream of beers) a bunch more of Pedros friends joined us at that bar, so in the end there were about 12 of us. I should add how insanely cheap drinks are there, even at this bar which was probably one of the poshest in the city, a huge martini was 2 quid, and beers were 20 pence!!! crazyyyyy :) So after a few drinks we were suitably merry and some pepople wanted to go get food, but it turned out everywhere was closed, we ended up at a petrol station, very reminiscent of St Andrews all night garage :)

On monday i slept in after the fun of the night before, the first thing I did when I was up was to head off to the airport with pedros dad who had organised the picking up of my lost luggage \o/ that went nice and smoothly, we visited the company which he set up and runs after that. It is an electrical engineering firm and it was all very nice :)

That night pedros family all came over to his house and we ate dinner together, more colombian delicacys. I will have to get pedro to send a list of all the things I tried cos I cant remember them, there were so many :) after the meal all the young 'uns (us) played a game which involved a ridicuous amount of dice, something else I will have to ask pedro for is a list of rules, It was fun altough I dont think I was very good, but they have all played this together since they were kids, so I shouldnt feel too bad i suppose :)

Then on tuesday Pedros dad organised a driver to take me around the city, my own personal chauffeur :) We went to a couple of museums, the gold museum and the national museum, both were really nice, the gold museum had an english audio commentary that I could listen to, but the national was all in spanish, and my driver, Carlos, couldnt really speak English, so I had to guess what things were :) there are photos from all this up on my photo website. He also took me for a drive up round the hilsides of one of the larget peaks, monseratte, the views of the city were really nice :)

Yesterday I went with pedro to his old university (Universidad de los Andes) as he was invited to give a talk about the work he had been doing since leaving, at his new uni in texas and at fermi this summer, the campus was beautiful, it was built on the low hillside of monseratte and had little paths going winding off all over the place. Hard to describe it, but I really liked it alot.

In the morning pedro and I took the fernicular railway up to the top of monsesratte, there is a litte church up there and some really rare flowers which i took photo of for dad, the views from up there were amazing, the city is absoloutely huge, got some good photos and bought some touristy items :)

I went for lunch and to a few more museums with Pedros sister Elliana and her friend Lilly, we visited a private collection of art owned by one of the banks in the city, the house of money which had lots of old coins and bank notes and a collection of Botero (famous colombian artist who paints people as being fat) paintings(one was a fat version of the mona lisa which was funny :) ) and sculptures, along with paintings from his own collection.

I went for a wander around the uni campus and then to pedros talk in the afternoon, we went to a bar with some of his friends that had attended his talk and had a few beers before heading back to the uni and climbing up the tallest building there to take some photos of the city at night, which came out quite nicely if i do say so myself

***???***

We had more traditional colombian dishes for dinner last night, one of them seemed like stovies to me :) I got all my bags packed and got an early bed in preperation for an early morning as my first flight was at 9:30. Bought more touristy stuff at the duty free :) that flight was fine but this one has been delayed 2 hours now, hopefully starting to boarad in 10 minutes but it keeps getting put back so we will see :)

I guess thats you all up to date with my happenings and the next contact will probably be saturday morning. cant tell you how much I am looking forwards to getting back

See you soon, Neal :)

***

posting this finished megapost from chicago ohare, should be home in 13 houors or so :)

edit that again, didnt have time in Chicago, and Amsterdam didnt have wireless net, on the flight to Aberedeen now, will post when I get home :p

Mega-post

2006-08-15T14:49:00.000+01:00

Hello folks, sorry its been long time since an update again. Have been busy finishing up at Fermilab and heading off on my road trip, I am currently typing this in the car on the way from Cleveland where we stayed last night to Niagra Falls, and from there we will head to Toronto tonight.

Been having fun the last week, went out into Chicago for a meal with Pedro, Chrisitne and her friend Anna (who I met at Lollapalooza) Went to a really good Chinese Restaurant and our waiter had lived in Perth for two years! :)

On the way back on the train that night I got chatting to a group of American girls and I ended up getting off the train early and going to a bar with them to meet their friends and get some drinks. It was a fun random encounter :)

On Wednesday all the Summer interns cooked a meal for our mentors and the people who organised our trips to Fermi this Summer. Well, I say we all cooked, three of us cooked , I made a nice chicken Tikka Masala which seemed to go down very well, if I do say so myself! We had the meal at Erik Rambergs house (he was the head organiser of the Summer) and he had a pool table in his babsement, I kicked everyones arses \o/

Friday was my last day at work and I didnt really have alot to do so I wandered about taking photos.

On saturday I went skydiving with Vesna, Mauro and Max. It was bloody briliant! :D I got a video taken so you can all see it when I get back. I will definately have to join the Skydiving Soc at uni this year :)

Then on yesterday Christine and I got going on our road trip, we drove for about 7 hours from Chicago to Cleveland and pitched up in a motel there. We went out to a retaurant for dinner and I had lobster for (i think?) the first time it was really tasty :)

This morning we visited the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland, unfortunately they dont let you take photos, but it was a really cool place with lots and lots of memorabillia from british and american bands, I enjoyed it lots.

So now we are on our way to Niagra Falls, will probably get a ride on the maid of the mist, and you never know I might try and find a barrel and go over the falls for a laugh!

The plan from then on is to go to Toronto tonight and find a youth hostel to stay at, go out and find a bar (Chrisitne cant drikn in the states cos she is 20 but the drinking age in Canada is 18 :) ) Tomorrow morning we will head up the CN Tower and then drive to Montreal, spend 2 nights there, hopefully see some music as I hear the scene is good there. Then we will head down to Christines home town of Boston for a day, she is going to come to New York with me for a day then I fly to Bogota from La Guardia in NY. I spend 5 days, I think, in Bogota and then fly back to Chicago, stay with Anna there for one night and then its back home via Amsterdam!

I am looking forwards to getting home very much, but also to my adventures before that. I will try and keep you all up to date and post pictures, check out my photo page even if I havent updated my blog there might be new photos up there!

See you all very soon, Neal :)

(Finally found a starbucks in Toronto, had afun night, on way to Montreal now, see you :))

Lo-lalalala-paloo-zazaza

2006-08-08T01:15:00.000+01:00

Well hello there kids :)

Had a fan-bloody-tastic weekend :D

here are the photos for each of the days

Day 1

Day 2

Day 3

Saturday was ace, but we ( me, pedro, christine and her friend anna) were quite late getting to the park, so i missed nada surf, the go team and built to spill :( Got to see some of Wolfmother who seemed really good but headed over to Gnarls Barkley early to try and get a decent spot which we did and it was good :) Then took a break to go get some food, and headed to The Flaming Lips to get a good spot. They were absoloutely great, I would definately recommend anyone to go and see them if they are playing near-by. Such a fun live show as you can maybe see from the photos :)

We then went and got a chilled out seat pretty far back from Kanye West, who is from Chicago. He got a great reception from the home crowd, lots of fun :)

We went back and crashed at annas house, we watched The Boondock Saints, which was really good!

Sundy was also cool, went into town early and went up Sears Tower, unfortunately it wasnt the clearest day and we couldnt see really far, but it was still impressive and fun!

Then went and got a traditional Chicago Deep Pan Pizza, which was really nice, but took ages to get sereved, so I again missed a band I wanted to see, Hot Chip, but its ok, I have tickets to see them in glasgow in october or something :)

We went over to see a band that anna and christine both wanted to see, The Shins, but they were OMG! TOTALLY RUBBASH!!! So we decided to ditch that and went and saw the second half of Matisyahu, a white, jewish rapper, he was reall surprisingly good :) Then we headed to Queens of the Stone Age, anna and I headed a bit further up leaving Pedro and Christine behind.

They rocked, hard! But 1 hour isn't long enough for them, didn't hear some songs I would've liked to have :( Then we decided to forget about going to see another band and that we would wait for an hour for the Red Hot Chili Peppers to come on the same stage.

They were excellent, wonderful, fan-dabbie-dosie (running out of superlatives), and incredibly I managed to squeeze all the way up to the second row of the crowd, it was crazy-mental-mad. Got kicked in the head my dozens of crowd surfers, but no matter, I would have been up there too if I wasnt in my kilt :) I have impressive battle scars all down my back :)

Well I should go as I have work to be getting on with, cant wait to see everyone when I get back.

Love you all, Neal :)

Lolla Day 1

2006-08-05T07:48:00.000+01:00

Wheee, back from the first day of Lollapalooza it was ace :)

I saw Subways, Aqualung, Eels, Editors, Secret Machines, Raconteurs, a bit of Violent Femmes and Death Cab for Cutie.

Met a random guy in a dons top! spent most of the day with him as we were going to see all the same bands, he was from fife but supports the dons, he lives in milwaukee now, was cool meeting a random stranger :)

will put some photos on picasaweb sometime, maybe not tonight tho it is getting late.!>!!

Neal :D

Oh yeah

2006-08-03T15:39:00.000+01:00

And I booked my flights to Colombia!

so after I finish working here at the end of next week (the 11th is my last day) the plan is to travel with Christine in her car visiting Detroit, Niagra Falls, Toronto, Montreal, Boston and New York. Then fly from NY to Bogota via a stop in Atlanta on the 19th, stay for 5 days with Pedro there, then back from Bogota to Chicago via another stop in Atlanta on the 24th, then my flight back to Aberdeen starts on the 25th in Chicago, stops in Amsterdam, and I arrive in Aberdeen at 10 am on the 26th :)

exciting times :)

Neal

Sorry

2006-08-03T15:17:00.000+01:00

for not updating for a while, this is going to be a boring update too. Just to let you know I have made a gallery of photos online, hopefully it will be a better way to share my photos than posting them all here on my blog.

Heres the address:

http://picasaweb.google.com/nealkemp

laters, Neal :)

Its too late,

2006-07-28T07:30:00.000+01:00

Im too tired, but MUSE rocked my world tonight.. I will post more tomorrow..

Night night! :D

2006-07-28T07:29:00.000+01:00

2006-07-28T07:28:00.000+01:00

2006-07-28T07:27:00.000+01:00

Photos

2006-07-25T03:26:00.000+01:00

Some photos I took after I finished work today :)

Cool sky back at the flats

The power lines at fermi were designed to look like the pi symbol, π

This is some old particle collision chamber or detector or something, I like how they just stick them all around the site like sculptures :)

One of the buildings near where I work, the Geodesic Dome

Congratulations

2006-07-24T03:16:00.000+01:00

to my couisn Lorraine and her new husband Grieger, sorry I couldnt make it, I hope you had a wonderful day! See you when I am back,

Neal :)

Ahhhhhh Mosquitoes

2006-07-23T16:04:00.000+01:00

I was at a BBQ at Vesnas house on Friday night, it was great fun and I got nice and drunk and had a great time in general. Vesna was very nice and said I could crash on their couch. Unfortunately their doors had been open for the whole of the BBQ, so the house was filled with mosquitoes, and with me passed out on the sofa, they all decided I would make a good meal. Here are the results :(

I will ve off to the pharmacy today to follow mums advice and get a bunch of stuff to stop the itchcing.

I need a hug :(

OMGWTFLOL!!!:D

2006-07-17T05:05:00.000+01:00

MUSE have just announced two tour dates in Scotland:

ABERDEEN P&J ARENA - Monday 6th November

GLASGOW SECC - Tuesday 7th November

Numbers:

Aberdeen B/O - 0870 272 6600
Glasgow B/O - 0870 040 4000

Tickets 24hrs 0870 169 0100 & www.gigsinscotland.com
In Person - GLASGOW Tickets Scotland, EDINBURGH Ripping, Tickets Scotland, DUNDEE Grouches and all Ticketmaster Ticket Centres.
ONLINE www.ticketmaster.co.uk

YEAAAHHHHH!!!! :D

hello

2006-07-16T16:38:00.000+01:00

I am in work just now, have had to work sat and sun :(

however I dont have much to do so I have just been surfing the net, and look what I found! A video for one of Muses new songs, Knights of Cydonia, I think its hilarious, check it out :)

http://wired.st-and.ac.uk/~kempy/muse_koc_vid.wmv

enjoy the madness :)

Update-o-rama

2006-07-13T04:59:00.000+01:00

Hi everybody :)

Not been up to much lately, watched the WC final with a bunch of italians at a really cool house. The guy, Gustavo from argentina has a big home theatre in his basement with loads of couches. So around 20 of us crammed down there and watched it, Gustavos wife and some of the Italian ladies did a sterling job of cooking for us while we watched, loads of BBQ stuff and cakes and pasta yum yum yum! and since i was starting to feel drunk already by halftime i scoffed loads to try and make myself feel better :)

After the game lots of us went for a swim at the swimming pool on-site at Fermilab for a couple of hours which was really nice and then Pedro, Vesna and I went to a french BBQ which was rubbish, they were all depressed and speaking in french and not talking to us. :(

work has been busy this week and we are now working shifts which means i have to come in at the weekends i think :o terrible! I may have to stay sober :(

Well I should go to bed, here are some random photos

Night night :)

Pedro and Vesna after the french lost, she was very upset for the rest of the day, haha :)
A nice sunset I captured
Gabriel getting his hair cut in the apartment :)

\o\ heeeyyy /o/ hooooo

2006-07-09T16:48:00.000+01:00

Ciao!

Hope everyone back home is well, I am having lots of fun just now. Work has been invaded by lots of italian people because we are at an important point in testing some equiptment and they are all involved with that stuff. They are all really cool and i can imagine them riding around on scooters with no helmet and a girl on the back, ciao! ;)

Well its the world cup final and I will be going to watch it with all these italians, which should be fun, watching on a projector at someones flat and having a BBQ, am really looking forwards to it, the french girl Vesna will be coming again, so she will be totally outnumbered just like at the brazil game :)

On friday night pedro, gabriel and I headed into Chicago again to meet up with the guys we saw on Monday, we met them at a bar which had a cool offer on, $25 bought you a wristband which gave you free drinks all night, you can imagine the sort of mess i got myself in :)

Next morning we went and had a great breakfast from some diner in downtown chicago, half a melon, french toast, bacon, yum yum yum :) I had a killer headache tho :S

well i better get ready to head to this BBQ, let me know how you are all doing :)

Neal

Good Article

2006-07-05T17:15:00.000+01:00

A small article on why science research is important :)

http://www.fnal.gov/pub/inquiring/matter/whysupport/index.html

Independence Eve Fireworks and other madness

2006-07-05T00:08:00.000+01:00

Woo Fireworks! :)

Hey, I think I have just figured out how to post photos with my blog, if so, I will go back and add photos to my previous entries or something, or do a big post with lots of photos,

rar

/Edit Ok, well i think i have it figured out now, so there is a nice picture of some fireworks that we went to see in Chicago last night (Monday), we headed in on the train after work and headed towards the lake where there was a big food festival called "Taste of Chicago" was being held (its on for like 10 days every summer) and the independence eve one is always the busiest because they also hold a big fireworks display at the lake at night. They estimate that over a million people attend, and i can believe it, the place was jam packed!

We managed to get lost and split up from, each other so it ended up being me, Gabriel and Pedro. It wasnt so bad as it meant we could make decisions more easily! :)

Anyway it was cool, but i ended up using most of my tokens on beer instead of food hehe :P At about 9 we headed towards the lake where there was just a giant mass of people stretching from as far as i could see to the North in downtown, all the way down to the aquarium and observatory far to the south, it was incredible. At 9:30 the fireworks started, and as you can see from my photos they were pretty amazing! They were on for half an hour and I took lots of photos and videos, they were all set to music being played by an orchestra somwhere in the park.

After the fireworks, Pedro phoned up some of his friends who are staying in Chicago who he hasnt seen since he left high school, I was very impressed that we managed to meet up with them in the huge crowds, but we did :)

They offered us a place to stay for the night to save us trying to get the train back to Naperville the same night, so we went and got in some booze and headed to their apartment. It was a super-cool place, right in downtown, on the 39th floor of "Presidential Towers", with a beautiful view of Sears Tower from the windows, which you can see below.

So yeah we got really drunk, and almost went back to the club i was at on friday, crobar to see another famous dj who was playing, Hernan Cattaneo from Argentina. However we decided to stay in and just drink what we had in the apartment, which like i said was plentiful. We danced around to crazy Colombian music lots too.

I dont quite remember how but we did actually end up heading out to a bar at 2am, we stayed for like 15 minutes and then decided we should go back to the apartment, i think we just went to sleep after that.

We got the train back this morning and I have had a dead lazy day, watched the first World Cup semi, Forza Italia, I wanted them to win so that I can find an Italian party on sunday to gatecrash with Lorenzo, so hopefully that will happen now.

Right I am off, hope everyone is well back home, I will maybe add more photos soon,

Neal :)

Hola

2006-07-03T04:46:00.000+01:00

muchachos y muchachas :)

Well again it has been a while since my last update, I have discovered the wonderful world of Skype which means I have spoken to some of you since my last update on here.

Lots of fun stuff since last time, including a great big lightning storm which i had to walk home through, was very exciting, the sky was lighting up ever couple of seconds for a good couple of hours.

I am still playing lots of football which I am really enjoing, and I am actually playing wuite well which is also nice.

I am currently in bed about to go to sleep after I finish with this update for you all. I have had a really hectic weekend, after work on Friday all the Summer interns were invited round to the house of one of the guys who organises the internships for us, he is also head of one of the divisions at fermi. He cooked us all indian tacos, which are a doughy type of taco which we filed with beef chilli veg and all sorts. They were really good. Then I had organised to head into Chicago to go see one of my favorite dance DJs, Armin van Buuren, with some guys from work so I got a lift to one of their houses (Lorenzos) from some French girl i didnt know, Vessna, who also works at fermilab and we headed into Chicago from there.

It was an amazing night, we all danced for hours and hours and got nice and drunk too :)

We all stayed at the other house that night and then got up and watched the England game in the morning (hehe ;)) and had yummy continental breakfast with french bread and cheese and salami etc. then we were invited to go round to a house where loads of brazillians were gathering to watch their game against france
, so Vessna came along and was the only French person amongst about 30 Brazillians all going crazy, it was a fantastic afternoon and i got drunk again :o When i got back to the apartment we went for a swim and jacuzzi and sauna which was cool.

Ok I am too tired, I am going to go to sleep, today we went swimming and then got films out and watched them, not as exciting. 4th of July on tuesday which should be fun, i will let you know!

Neal

ahhhhh im sorry

2006-06-14T16:25:00.000+01:00

well hello there ladies and jellyspoons

i am sorry for the long delay since the last update from americaland :( no excuses i am just lazy

well lets see what have i been up to?

well there are lots of lectures on at the lab all the time and we are encouraged to take time off from working to go to any that we would like to attend. So some that i have recently gone to have been

"Particle Accelerators"
"Energy Focusing Phenomena: From Sonoluminescence To Crystal Fusion"
"Collider Detectors and the LHC"
"Megascience and the Powers and Paradoxes of Pushing Frontiers at Fermilab"

some good some bad but its just cool to go along and listen :)

We also go on a tour around a different part of the site each thursday, so far we have been in the main building and in the accelertor division where the protons are initially accelerated in a straight line before entering successively larger circular beam pipes ( they also exract some of the early beam, fire it at a special target which produces a beam of neutrons, these are then used to treat cancer patients at the neutrn therapy centre on site), and tomorrow we will tour an area where i have been doing some work, the meson test beam area, where the accelerated particles are fired at fixed targets and the resulting mess of particles are studied.

I have also been very active, I have played football three times, twice at a huge game of about 35 people form all over the globe, i.e. mexicans americans russians colombians chileans me! chinese thais indians peruvians, we play tuesdays and thursdays after work, its great fun :) i went to a scottish country dancing thing ( people in america who like to go scottish country dancing seem to be a bit weird :/) and played basketball for the first time in years and i seemed to do pretty well :)

On the subject of basketball, the Miami Heat won the NBA playof finals last night agains the Dallas Mavericks (its best of 7 and they won 4-2 in the series after they had lost the first two games), it was great having everyone gather in on apartment and watch it all together with pizza and beer.

Some more people have turned up late now so i think everyone who is supposed to be here is here now. Ritoban who is from calcutta, peter from stanford and polish dude who i cant remember his name.

So yeah, I am having lots of fun, but missing you all back home!!

Speak again soon, Neal

Muse-ic \o/

2006-06-13T04:21:00.000+01:00

wooohooohohoho!?!? :D:AF:A:D

Muse are going to be playing in Chicago on July 27th ayyaayya :D I have to get a ticket for this!

Also I have bought a ticket to go to the Lollapalooza festival which is being held in Chicago this year on 4th 5th and 6th of August, the line up looks pretty cool. It wont be any substitute for T tho :(

And theres more! Muse's new album has been leaked onto the net, and as bad as I feel, I am currently listening to it, It rocks! :D Cant wait to get my legit copy so, you better send it straight out mum, no sneaky listening to it before you send! :P

Thats all for now :)

Neal

P.S. I was dead lazy yesterday and watched all the sport instead of going back to Chicago :)

P.P.S. I have uploaded some of my photos of our outing to Chicago, click here :)

Woo Yay Houpla

2006-06-13T00:47:00.000+01:00

Thanks Uncle John!!!

I am now posting from home while my batteries suck up that lovely american electricity \o/

So happy I have the internet back.

Time to get the photos I have taken since I got here

Byeeee :)

haha

2006-06-12T20:05:00.000+01:00

i like this :)

http://www.engadget.com/2006/06/12/pretecs-idisk-usb-drives-go-bulletproof/

Neal

Soooo tired...

2006-06-11T07:58:00.000+01:00

Well i just got back home, its 2 in the morning here.

First off sorry for no update in a little bit, i have a big long one that is still in the works where i am going to try and explain some of the stuff i am doing, i will try and finish that and post it soon.

Anyway on with this post... :)

Last night Alberto and I went round to Pedro and Adish's house. We went out and bought a bunch of beers and some vodka and headed back to the apartment. We played some card games, listened to music, discussed some physics and got drunk too :) It was fun. Most of the interns were there for some time, but only us hardcore drinkers stayed up to about 4AM :)

I slept on the floor at their place because there was a rain storm when I was going to leave, but that meant that this morning we all got up at 8AM to watch the world cup together, which was cool. I missed englands goal but saw the rest of that game and the sweeden trinidad game, they were crap games but it was nice to be able to watch it with some people who like football :) (american commentary SUCKS!)

We had all decided to go into Chicago to take a look about and get a meal, we were going to head in at about 4, so I decieded to come back to the flat and have a nap. Unfortunately, for some reason still unkown to me it was decided to go at 2 instead so I had to get up again after about 10 minutes of rest :(

We got the train in from Naperville and when we got there no-one really knew where to go so we just wandered trying to find somewhere to eat, it took us a while but we eventually found a really nice pizzaria. Had a Chicago deep-pan but it was nothing like the deep pans back home, was almost like a flan base with pizza topiings in it, most unusual. but really nice :)

After that we walked to the millenium park, which was really cool, they had big fountains and a giant jelly bean shaped thing with a mirrored surface, i have photos of these which i will share once i get a plug adapter(!!!) for my laptop :)

We then went walking about again and we managed to find the Chicago Blues Festival taking place in a park, it was free entry so we went into that for a while, and then headed out to the lakeshore, which wasnt far away, and round past a yacht club with loads of fancy yachts including one called viagra!?! :)

There is a big peir further round with a feris wheel and amusements there so some of us went up in the wheel and i took more photos which you will see later :P, Chicago has an amazing skyline!

It was starting to get late so we decided the last thing we would do would be to head to one of the really tall buildings which has a restaurant and observation deck up at the top, we were planning on watching sunset from there and then going back to the train station to head home. sadly there was a big queue to even get on the lift up, so we decided not to wait. We then spent an hour trying to find our train station again, Chicagos public transport sucks, its so hard to try and find where things are, there are naff all signposts anywhere! So we ended up missing the train by like 50 seconds and having to wait two hours to get the next one!

Tomorrow I am either going back to Chicago with Anjali on a "photography expedition"with my tripod :) or i am going to watch all the sport thats going to be on, the french open final, three world cup games and the second game of the nba playoff finals :)

You can find out which of these thrilling options i choose in the next update!!! :P

Speak to you all soon, Love Neal :) xxx

w00t w00t

2006-06-07T00:35:00.000+01:00

Second day of work is all done. It was good to fin out what it is I will be doing but i spent most of the day reading in a cubicle on my own, not exactly thrilling :)

I will be helping Simon to analyse results from a couple of CMS test beam runs they did in Janury/February this year. A test beam run is where they set up the particle detectors(Forward Pixels) that they are working on in a tunnel and fire stuff at it to see if it is working properly. In a couple of weeks they will be doing more test runs so that means i get to go down and work in the tunnels, so i have to go for more training soon so that i am allowed down there.

I went across to the silicon detectors(SiDet) unit this morning for a look around and met some guys I will be working with, one if them, Mauro will be taking me down to the test beam tomorrow morning to let me look around.

At lunch there was a lecture by the Head of Fermilab, Pier Oddone which was an overview of all the experiments running at fermilab. It was realy interesting and he seemed a nice guy. Then i grabbed lunch and went back to read more of the stuff Simon has given me.

Well I better save some battery, so I will go.

Neal :)

P.S. thanks to Sara for the link I will check that out.

sdalkfjdsf

2006-06-06T12:50:00.000+01:00

Hello all!

I keep waking up at 6 in the morning, a bit annoying but at least it gives me time to write to y'all and say hello :)

On Sunday I went plug hunting with my flatmates which was again unsuccessful, and we had a look at laptops for Alberto. In the afternoon I went and tried out the pool with Kurt, it was really nice and I got chatting to an Indian guy living at this complex with his daughter,doing computer engineering for some company in Chicago, he seemed really nice. At night all the summer interns who had arrived went into downtown Naperville to get some dinner, trying to find somewhere to suit all 11 of us wasnt easy but we settled on a noodle bar that served all sorts of stuff, i ordered a mac and cheese thinking it would be a cheeseburger but it was macaroni cheese, ate it anyway \o/.

We then went to play poker back at some of the other guys flat, stopped to get some beers on the way, the guy at the checkout said they dont usually accept passports as id, but he let us buy it anyway! Surely if i was going to have fake id i would choose something a bit easier to forge than a uk passport with a us visa in it?!?! :)

I was rubbish at poker, but on the bright side i got mildly drunk..

Woke up early on monday, and we headed off for our first day of work, this consisted of loads of training, started with making sure we all had the right forms allowing us to work, and get paid more importatnly. Then sexual harassment (i almost burst out laughing several times at the little cut scenes in the video they showed us of guys making really dodgy comments :)), a break to take a look around the building and explain some of the stuff going on lead by the organiser of the summer internships, Erik Ramberg, and then back for 3 hours of safety training, wooo!

In the evening some of us went and played football(the proper kind) there was an american, anindian, a colombian, two mexicans and me, quite international eh? I rocked them all, did Scotland proud :) It was way too hot though so i kinda faded towards the end.

Played some more mario kart with they guys at the flat, then went to bed to read some of the blurb about fermilab we were given today, but i fell asleep.

First proper day of work today i suppose, I will be meeting my supervisor for the summer Simon Kwan, and i guess i will find out what it is i will actually be doing :)

Right got to go cos im on Kurts pc and he just got up and prob wants to use it.

Love you all, i will try and get some calling cards and phone people soon its just that everything is really spread out here, but i will, I promise!

Bye, Neal :)

Made it

2006-06-04T02:34:00.000+01:00

Well I am currently sitting in the living room of my apartment with my flatmates, despite the best efforts of my taxi driver who didnt have a clue where he was going. My flatmates Alberto and Gabriel are from Mexico and Kurt is from Massechusets. Been a bloody long day, amazed i am still awake. We went for a quick tour of the Fermilab site this afternoon with the guy who is organsing the Summer internships, Erik Ramberg, which was cool, the place is huge. I need to get some stuff sorted out tomorrow for the induction day on monday, like getting a mobile and a bank account and a social security number.

Having some troubles with getting the net to work in the flat, cant seem to get two computers hooked up at once, so i am currently piggybacking on a wireless network i found, yay, but prob shouldnt use this too much :) So sorry if I m not online very much at the moment.

It still feels weird being away from home, doesnt quite feel like i am here yet. Miss everyone tho especially Annie!

Weel, hopefully we can sort the net out and I can chat to some of you online soon.

Neal :)

Almost time..

2006-06-01T14:42:00.000+01:00

Well it's almost time to leave. I have to check-in at Aberdeen airport at 4:30 on Saturday morning and then I am off to Amsterdam and then I arrive in Chicago 14 hours after checking-in in Aberdeen at noon local time.

I am just trying to get all my packing sorted just now, I seem to have room to spare, which I don't think is a good sign, as I have probably forgotten stuff :(

Right must get back to work, Neal

First Post

2006-05-26T20:32:00.000+01:00

I thought it would be a good idea to set up a blog so that folks back home in Scotland can keep up with how I am getting on when I am on my Summer placement working a the Fermi National Accelerator Lab in Chicago, Illinois, so here it is.

I have recently finished my 4th year exams and will be heading stateside on June 3rd and start work on the 5th for 10 weeks. I am working with Simon Kwan on the Forward Pixels of the Compact Muon Solenoid, which is part of the Large Hadron Collider. This is due to be completed in the Summer of 2007 at CERN, Geneva, Switzerland. After this I have two weeks to travel in the U.S. before my flight back home.

Wiki LHC
Wiki CMS

I am off out tonight to say bye to friends from uni, most of whom have just finished their last degree examinations. So I should get going...

I will try and keep this up to date this Summer.

Neal