Author: Rory

Here’s a very simple and easy magic trick with very little preparation:

1. Fill a bowl with water.
2. Cover the top with a thin layer of dust, or something similarly light but visible, like pepper.
3. Ask a participant to dip their finger in the centre, which will have no effect.
4. Secretly put a drop of washing up liquid or liquid soap to your finger, and dip it in the bowl. The effect is to drive the dust to the edges of the bowl, away from your finger.

It might be obvious to you how this particular trick works. Liquid soap naturally spreads over the surface of the water, so it pushes the light dust away to the edges.

With a bit of showmanship it’s possible to dress this up into quite a nice illusion.

From a column by Rick Moranis in the New York Times:

I have thirty-nine pairs of golf, tennis, squash, running, walking, hiking, casual and formal shoes, ice skates and rollerblades.

I’m wearing slippers.

He goes on to count TVs, phones, stamps, and dental floss. It’s a short but very entertaining column.

I was going to post a rambling introspection about why I haven’t been blogging much recently despite my abundant free time—in brief: I’m unemployed, waiting for word back from Google about a possible job there; considering other places to apply—but instead I think you’d be more entertained by a link to some Robot Chicken.

Actually, this is more for posterity than anything else since I assume you’ve already seen it.

I want to be a secret agent. Seven thumbs up.

I want to be a magician. Five stars.

Bang! The Complete History of the Universe is a new popular science book about the origins and development of the universe for a lay audience. So far, so, "I’ve read it all before." What’s interesting is the list of authors, which includes legendary glam rock guitar god Brian May—sorry, Dr Brian May—of Queen.

Alternative headlines for this post were: "Prince of the Universe"; "A Kind of Science"; "Radio Telescope Ga-Ga"; and "Brian May Has a Sodding Doctorate in Astrophysics"

I spent last weekend in Chester with a bunch of cultists I met on the Internet. This was a far less alarming situation than it would sound. It’s a nice cult, more keen on tea than kool-aid. Mass (or indeed any) suicide is frowned on.

Apart from the preposterous amount of time it took to get there and back, I had a fantastic time. Note for people travelling to Halloween parties in another country: airports don’t like toy guns in luggage, even checked in. They don’t have a good reason for this, but you won’t win an argument with them over it.

On Friday I flew to Manchester and took the train from there down to Chester. I stopped briefly in Manchester to collect some elements of my Indiana Jones costume from the awesome Sarah. Without her I would have just been dressed as a man in brown trousers. When I reached Chester I checked into the hostel that we had taken over for the weekend, and then got myself off down to the pub to a disconcertingly enthusiastic welcome. There was much rejoicing.

We spent Saturday afternoon in the middle of Chester giving free cakes and sweets to bemused passers-by. Reactions ranged from eagerness through bemusement, confusion, wariness, distrust, and apathy to plain old-fashioned running away.

The ladies in a very expensive looking clothes shop which we went into despite being convinced it was "too posh" for our brand of frivolity turned out to be very enthusiastic about our random act of kindness. Conversely, the grouchy fuckers in the Jesus shop, who we thought were bound to be friendly, turned out to be rude to the point of meanness. Maybe they don’t like pagan rituals like dressing up.

Saturday closed with retiring to a pub. And then another pub. And then a third pub. And then getting thrown out. My theory was that if I went to sleep at all I would be wasting money, so I was among the few remaining at the end of the night.

I took some photos but, just like my vision, most of them were blurry or out of focus. Those that came out well are up on Flickr.

The Last Kiss is Zach Braff’s first movie since last year’s Garden State. This time he neither wrote nor directed, though apparently he did select the soundtrack.

The supporting cast were great. Special shout out to—I have no shame in admitting this—the infeasibly attractive Casey Affleck; far better than his brother. Rachel Bilson is this year’s Natalie Portman (though I preferred last year’s).

I wasn’t as interested in the main story as I was in all of the myriad side-stories. I don’t think the various threads had all that much influence on each other either.

Not a bad film. It certainly has its pluses, and not just in the partial nudity department. But I’m keen to see Braff go back to writing his own material. To be fair, I think it was actually rather good but not at all like the kind of movie I should have been watching today.

I submitted my thesis today. This seems like a notable event, only I can’t think of anything in particular to note about it. There was a very short queue in the central bureaucracy, I guess. That’s rare enough.

Now I play the waiting game…

I can only assume, or perhaps hope, that I’m not the only person who sees entertaining or insightful things on the Web and feels the urge to find the Digg thumbs up icon. I need some sort of indicator of, "I approve of, endorse, and/or was entertained by this content," without having to think up and type a proper comment.