Rita

I know a lot a people who live in Houston, and hurricane Rita is heading straight for them and its looking very bad. As far as I know, they are all getting out of town, I just hope that Houston is far enough inland not too be badly affected.

Off to the icy north.

One of the key people who had been considering the relocation has now got another job, this means that I can probably now name my own price if they want me to go to the other office. So with this in mind, I went in to negotiate but my manager said yes to almost all my demands. He even threw in some extra cash - (how much more could I have gotten?)

Still, since the offer is now reasonable, (about 6 months take home pay spread over a year or so), so I said yes. He looked very relived.

The only snag it that the contract has clause stating that it can be changed at any time - and I couldn't get this removed (take it or leave it), and this is a bit of a worry as it means that I could get screwed. But worse case is that I loose £5k, and this isn't the end of the world. Besides, if I'm still there in 3 months from now, I will have been paid an extra net pay of 6k, so it doesn't look like a major risk to me. Touch wood.

Didn't get the job

After nearly two weeks of waiting, I got the call from the recruitment agent telling me that I did not get the job. The agent said that the company that had interviewed me were very complementary, but felt that I would not be happy doing a job that was well below what they thought that I was capable of. Still at least it wasn't an immeadiate no, so I guess that I must have said all the right things in the interview, and maybe they were worried that I would only use the job as a stop-gap before finding something else more in line with my current job.

What is really pissing me off though is that I now have to decide between redundancy and hope that I can get a job, or taking the relocation package that I've been offered to move to my company's other office.

Still hopeful

The agent phone me this morning, said that what he wanted yesterday was for me to send him an e-mail saying that I was interested in the Development Job that was the lesser of two jobs being offered when I went for the interview. The good news is that they are still interested in me. Hopefully this will seal the deal.

Still no news on the job

Still waiting for news on the job interview. I talked to the agent today and he told me that he would be calling them later on today. That was in the morning, later on I went for a walk to the end of Breen Down, a very exposed headland jutting out into the Bristol Channel. The wind was blowing a gale and just as I reached its highest point, about 300ft up, when the phone rang. Part of me was actually impressed by the wonders on modern technology, to be contactable in such a remote place was indeed amazing, even more so when the person on the other end of the line was the agent. Unfortunately this was actually a case of too much technology, as the howling wind made any phone conversation impossible. I asked hime to ring back later, without realising how late it already was, not suprisingly he didn't ring back. So I wait.

Not a bad day

Today has been an amazing day.

First off, I went for my first job interview in six years, and it unbelievingly it was better than I could have hoped for.

Next, I had a meeting with my boss, who said that I was invaluable, which is nice.

Moving on, England are beaten by Northern Ireland - BRILLIANT - but; (icing on the cake) - 5 minutes before then end I realise that Alan Green (who is from Northern Ireland) is likely to be doing the radio 5 commentary; so I turn the radio on - and he is, fair comment though he was the ultimate professional, nearly.

And to end it all, I find that some guy whose blog I found by random, has just finished a 725 mile run across France. Respect!

Some thoughts on quantum physics.

Quantum physics is weird. Even the great Einstein described some of its consequences as "spooky action at a distance." But to me there is nothing spooky at all, and I'm not some egg head that can do complex maths while standing in a bowl of custard; in fact the last time I studied physics was at school while I was still in my teens.

Some of the predictions (which have been experimentally verified) of quantum physics are entanglement, superposition and teleportation.

In entanglement, two particles separated by effectively infinite distance are connected, such that if something is done to one of them, the other reacts instantly. Not in a few nano-seconds later, but at the same time. Next there is superposition, where all the possible states (which could be infinite) for a particle exist in the same place and at the same time. Finally, teleportation is where a particle moves instantly from one place to another.

It strikes me that all three effects can be easily explained by invoking an extra dimension, and allowing our familiar dimensions to be twisted within that extra dimension such that two points in normal space-time are in fact touching in 5D space-time. Hence in entanglement the two particles are touching each other in 5D space, the distance travelled in teleporting a particle in 4D is 0 in 5D, and superposition is merely the projection of a 5D line onto a 4D space.

I came to this theory while removing a piece of paper that had been pinned to a notice board. In doing so I realised that the pin had formed two holes, some 10 cm apart when the paper was opened out, but with the paper folded, the holes touched. If I were some 3D space-time creature living on the paper, and who was complete unaware of the 3rd spatial dimension, then I would see exactly the same behaviour in my 3D world, as we do in with quantum physics in out 4D world.

Pictures paint a thousand worlds

These pictures show just how big and bad katrina was. They were taken at high altitude and cover much of the area that was hit from west of new orleans to mobile. The ones from Gulfport to Biloxi are particularly awsome.

Katrina

There are two things that stand out in the devastation that is New Orleans. Firstly its the black faces. There are almost no white people seeking help. True the population of New Orleans is dominated by blacks, the us census data gives the population of the city as approximately 60% Black, 30% White & 10 % others, but prehaps the black majority shown on the TV just reflect the inner city population demographics. Maybe the Whites tend to live in the suburbs and either are more likely to have a car (because life in the suburbs is impossible without a car), or maybe they are too far from the center to reach it. As for the inner city dwellers, owning a car is something of a mixed thing, as parking it is likely to be difficult, so their option of fleeing by automobile was much reduced.

The second image is that of a city that is dying. Is this unprecedented in modern times? I can't that of anything like this has happened since the abandonment of Machu Picchu orLeptis Magna. Only time will tell if the city has been killed or if it rebuilds and becomes a New New Orleans.

True other cities have been massively damaged in the past; London (the great fire), San Francisco, Tangshan and Kobe (Earthquake), and Hiroshima, Nagasaki and Dresden (War), are just a few that I could name.

Those that were destroyed by war or fire were rebuilt because the chance of such a major catastrophe hitting them again is almost nil. Those destroyed by earthquake rebuild because either the damage isn't total, or because the damage was down to inadaquate building.

New Orleans strikes me as different. Those levees should have easily withstood the big bad storm that was Katrina, but they failed. They should have withstood the overflow of water from the storm surge, but they broke. At worst no more than a few neighbourhoods should have been affected, but because there were no secondary defences almost the entire city flooded. This was a problem borne out of the failings of the city authorities, and where there is someone to blame, theres a claim. Its the lawyers that may well inflict the killer blow to the big easy.