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Cheers,

Derek.

But this last fortnight has seen me to the theatre thrice. On the Wednesday before last, a generous friend gifted some complimentary (and rather plum) seats at the matinée of Noël Coward's Private Lives, at the King's Theatre. My previous exposure to Coward was limited to Mr. Bridger in The Italian Job and an obscure Divine Comedy cover from the late nineties. The comedy turned out to be a treat, and it made for a lovely afternoon out.

Fast-forward, then, to last night, when the same friend managed to get us tickets to See How They Run: a somewhat lighter, WW2-set farce. Though it lacked Coward's wit, I must admit that it had me rolling about in my seat, if not the aisles.

So far, so mundane. In fact, it would appear that I've adopted the mien of that irritating, self-satisfied Fast Show for whom everything works out just peachy. Which was nice. Such self-consciousness usually heralds your hero's downfall round these parts. Did he fall asleep on the bus home from the theatre? Perhaps he was run over by a blimp. Well, no, in fact everything is just fine, and you can keep your schadenfreude to yourself.

No, the peculiar part of the story comes while we were in the King's for the second time. You see, near the end of the first act, it is revealed that two of the characters previously acted together in… wait for it… Private Lives! Coincidence, n'est pas? At first, I thought it was a rather tacky advert for the other play on at the theatre (much like they drop the names of people who pay a bit of money into pantomimes these days—"Must dash! I'm off to the Opal Lounge with a bunch of egotistical solicitors!"), but it turns out to be a key point in the plot, and the foundation of much of the silliness that is to follow.

We were chuckling about this during the interval, when I remembered the other play that we had seen in the last week. The student theatre company here at Edinburgh put on a sterling performance of Tom Stoppard's Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead all last week. It was superbly acted and staged, even if I didn't get all of the references (perhaps the first paragraph is true after all). Never one to let an anachronism get in the way of a snappy comment, I suggested, "Wouldn't it be funny if they mentioned Ros and Guil in the third act?" Considering, in hindsight, that it was written more than a decade later, it seems only fair that we settled for Hamlet (the play on which it is itself based) instead.

And, as if to confirm our collective solipsism, in the third act Clive blurts out, "I am the ghost of Hamlet's father!" Since I could accept that non sequitur, I wouldn't have been surprised to see a 30 year-old Indian man walk on at the curtain call….

Cheers,

Derek.

And what difference does being 21 make? I can now drive a bus, stand for election and go into the amusement arcade on Nicolson Street. I can drink alcohol when I finally make it back to the States, and—should I ever feel desperate enough—revisit The Drink in Guildford. But none of these have affected me as much as Saturday, when I had the best night out I've ever had in the company of my friends. I've never liked to name names on here, but I am extremely grateful to everyone who came out on Saturday, for the wonderful gifts and cards, for the excellent company and for all of the surprises. And thank you also to those who wanted to be there but couldn't, who sent their best wishes, and such touching cards and presents. I am truly honoured to have you as friends.

So now that the celebrations have come to an end, I'm still wandering about with a dippy smile on my face, and wondering what I can get away with on my 22nd….

Cheers,

Derek.

Of course, Christmas is about one thing only, and that is presents. Since the days when I was impressed by the latest Lego set, this has meant a certain lack of excitement for the 25th of December. Don't get me wrong—I'm not bemoaning an underprivileged childhood—but my parents showed impressive pragmatism around major gifts: why leave them collecting dust and depreciation in some cupboard, when we could be using them all December? Nowadays, it's more along the lines of a phone call, asking, "Is there anything you want for Christmas? I'm thinking a DVD or maybe a CD. Yeah, it's because I need to spend £20 to get free delivery…." It's such an upbringing that leaves me pathologically unable to buy a surprise gift, and also makes me something of a tight-arse.

Now that everything's come to a close for the year, and with the ironic understanding that nothing significant ever happens in the last week of December, we can also start looking back at 2005 through glasses of whichsoever hue you might choose. Since I'm feeling uncommonly well-fed and sanguine, I'll fetch the rose ones.

My year breaks down rather neatly into three parts. From January to June, I was rounding off my studies at Glasgow, culminating in Graduation, which remains one of the best days of my life (173 days since last slushy blog post/workplace accident). For three months over the summer, I worked on a little research project of my own at the uni, during which I was lucky enough to go to a conference, host a workshop, and meet a lot of interesting people. And, as if I haven't mentioned it already, since September I've been living and studying in Edinburgh.

Ah, Edinburgh, butt of so many sophomoric jokes since before we were old enough to know what a sophomore was. You get fairly good mileage out of being a Glaswegian in Edinburgh, and if I still did Pastry songs, I'd be raiding Sting's canon for certain. (And if I still did cheap innuendo, I'd be raising an arch eyebrow at that last sentence.) But, all joking aside, I was told in complete seriousness—by a person for whom I have the utmost respect, but shall remain nameless (but let's just say he was holding up the bar at the grad ball)—"You won't like it in Edinburgh. The people there are ghastly." This uncharacteristically unsubtle jibe also turned out to be completely incorrect, because, since I've moved there, it's the people I've met who have made the last three months be the time of my life. In keeping with tradition, I shan't name names, but you know who you are.

My eye turns to the clock and suggests that I'd better be wrapping this up: it wouldn't be Christmas without a repeat of Law & Order: Criminal Intent. So all that remains to be said is for me to wish you a Merry Christmas!

Cheers,

Derek.

As I've mentioned before, one of the tenets of an exam period is that success can only be achieved with the adoption of unchecked facial hair. There are no exceptions to this rule, so even if there's a party on, there'll be no shaving. Consider the evidence. It must have been a popular image, since I even deigned to take one myself. And, considering that one of the few Scottish things I have going for me is a genetic predisposition to ginger facial hair, I tagged it with the natural gingerbeard.

Enter Mr. Mark Sephton, entrepreneur, and apparently not a photographer. He commented on my photo, and on the photo of another chap, suggesting that we might like to invest in his recently-developed range of ginger-beard-related apparel.

Now, the damnedest thing is that I really want to buy some of that stuff, but, with shipping, it's still a bit pricey. So come on, Mark, how about a discount voucher? I'm in the market for a new t-shirt….

Cheers,

Derek.

No, the reason I write is that we've recently had a third flatmate take up residence in our bijou Edinburgh apartment. Don't tell our letting agents, though, or they'll use it as an excuse to bump the price up by £300…. I'm afraid I'll have to turn in my air of smug sanitary superiority, because there is a mouse loose about this house.

It comes as a relief that our friend vindicates the media's imagery of Mickey, Jerry and—um—The Brain: he's quite a cute little blighter. In fact, as he ran from the kitchen into his surprisingly obvious semi-circular mousehole, I'm sure he gave an infectious laugh and a twinkle in his eye.

I'm almost willing to overlook the fact that he's shitting all over the carpet, and the probable consequences for application of the five-second rule.

So, for that reason, I invite your suggestions for how we deal with him. In the comments. The more ludicrous the better.

Cheers,

Derek.

Tomorrow marks the first of three exams in the "festive" diet. It's times like this that I'm glad I made a checklist for, well, times like this. The lucky pen and indomitable Thomas the Tank Engine ruler are packed and ready for action. The frankly regrettable exam beard is already underway, though without the old DCS camaraderie, I expect people will just think I'm being a scruffy bastard. The lucky exam trousers disintegrated shortly after the end of finals, so I shall be donning their spiritual airs, which is probably a good thing, because otherwise people would be getting rather too good a look at the lucky underwear. That last gave me something of a heart-flutter earlier today, when they came out the dryer in a state that can only be described as "moist". Faced with the choice between sitting in discomfort tomorrow afternoon or forgoing literally years of tradition, I think my decision to contribute a little bit more to global warming and our electricity bill was entirely merited.

So, to any Edinburgh students who might be reading this and actually have any exams to do, good luck!

Cheers,

Derek.

I can't deny that that has hitherto been the case, but I'm now embroiled in a byzantine schedule of exams and assessment deadlines (four of which conspire to be on the same day: the last day of term). Don't believe me? Then perhaps the following sentence from my Message-Passing Programming report will convince you otherwise:

The result of this does not depend on the shape of the image, and so could lead to the creation of sub-optimal cartesian topologies, especially in the case of particularly oblong images.

Now, you can hardly suggest that I would fake that. Even though "oblong" is an Inherently Funny Word, that must be the single most dull sentence ever written. So you might understand why I felt the need to vent. Onwards!

Cheers,

Derek.

In the bottom left-hand corner of my screen, the sidebar displays a random picture, drawn from the digital photographs on my computer, and from the web (quiet there, in the back). Occasionally, a bad photograph comes up, and I can remove it, safe in the knowledge that it will never again be selected. However, sometimes a photo will appear and I will want to view it full-screen, which is made possible by double-clicking on the thumbnail.

The thing is, I've noticed that some photos appear more often than others, namely the ones which I've chosen to view full-screen. The net effect? I'm more-regularly confronted with the images that I've chosen to view, which, you'd think, would have a positive effect on my state of mind. Maybe that's taking it a bit far.

However, I would be interested in contributions from other Sidebar users on this question. Is what I'm seeing:

• selection bias, due to me only noticing images that I have noticed in the past anyway, or
• a nifty, unobtrusive use of artifical intelligence and probabilistic methods to make my life better?

Cheers,

Derek.

It wasn't always this way, however, as I learned on Wikipedia this morning. In 1939, FDR moved Thanksgiving from the last to the penultimate Thursday in November, in order that shops would begin selling Christmas goods one week earlier, and hence stimulate the moribund Great Depression economy. Two years later, it was moved to the fourth Thursday in a compromise between those in favour of and opposed to the change. I have to admire FDR's chutzpah in this move, and I reckon that, if I ever become Prime Minister, I would be all in favour of moving Christmas should I have forgotten to pick up presents for my wife and kids.

Apparently, Thanksgiving gives you licence to be a bit more schmaltzy than usual. This is a bonus, since the only other opportunity I get to do this is at New Year. And Graduation. And the end of term. And, frankly, countless other times, when, if you take the time to see through the sardonic air, you'll find that I'm just one big pot of sentimentality. There I go again….

So I'm supposed to give thanks, and there's no shortage of things for which I should be grateful. Especially if you consider that I haven't ever recognised this holiday, and consequently have a whole lifetime's worth of gratitude; but particularly in the past year, which has been one of my best on record. A large part of that has been academic, and I suppose I should be thankful for receiving my degree from Glasgow (though it was hardly a gift), as well as thankful to EPSRC for enabling me to move Edinburgh and make my first steps out into the real world.

It is, however, (and not just because they are far more likely to be reading this than the head of a research council) to my friends that I want to give the most thanks. To my old friends in Glasgow, without whom it would have been impossible to endure the trials of a final year at university. And to my new friends in Edinburgh, who have helped make these last three months some of the best times in my life, and reinforced my conviction that moving here was one of the best decisions that I have ever made.

So how will I be marking this occasion, over and above this rather gushy blog post? There will be a traditional, home-cooked, meal for one of the food of my forefathers—chilli con carne—followed by a short parade to Teviot where I will taste some wood-finished whiskies in good company. And if things carry on into the night as they are apt to do, I thoroughly expect to be having a Black Friday.

Cheers,

Derek.