Freyja's LJ

I need women!

Wed, 11 Mar 2009 15:57:36 GMT

More specifically, women aged 18-30 who are willing spend 5 minutes filling in anonymous online survey about altruism. It asks you to rate how altruistic you think 20 different activities are, and is preliminary work for a new research project. If you fulfil the criteria and can spare a few minutes, I would be very, very grateful for your time :D

The survey is here.

Thanks in advance!

They seek me here...

Thu, 11 Dec 2008 15:46:32 GMT

So according to WikiDot's web stats, the most common phrases that people typed into search engines in order to click through to my wiki is as follows:

pictures of viking knives and spoons
homoerotic painting
revison anova
englisc
strap end bronze viking
freya harrison oxford
molecular genetics problem tutorial
theoden s speech
critical value biology
viking reenactor axe
anglo-saxon women education
banoffee pie best recipe nigella lawson

... and so it goes on with biology, stats, fabric, dead languages and numerous permutations on "homoerotic."

Could this be the basis of a novel personality typing test?

Today I travelled from the ford of the oxen, past the hill of pigs and on to the waters of Sul

Sun, 30 Nov 2008 23:49:09 GMT

I loved these maps, which show literal translations of place names from around the world.

Quick! Use these words before they disappear!

Mon, 13 Oct 2008 19:32:10 GMT

It seems the caudacity of verbiage is apodeictic. The people at Collins want to extuviate twenty-four words from their dictionary in an abstergent attempt to fit in two thousand new ones. Mathematical issues aside, is this a niddering strategy to purge difficult words from the English langugae, or will it act as a roborant?

(Oh dear, did I just write the abstract for a social sciences paper? *cackle*)

http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1847042,00.html

Whatcha readin' for?

Tue, 29 Jul 2008 13:17:20 GMT

Meme from beornwulf_saxon and roseyphoenix

- Look at the list and bold those you have read.
- Italicise those you intend to read.
- Underline the books you love, and strike out the books you read but didn't like.

1. Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2. The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
3. Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4. Harry Potter series - JK Rowling
5. To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6. The Bible
7. Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8. Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
9. His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman (Just the first one. Wasn't too keen on it).
10. Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
11. Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12. Tess of the D'Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13. Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14. Complete Works of Shakespeare
15. Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16. The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17. Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18. Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19. The Time Traveller's Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20. Middlemarch - George Eliot
21. Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22. The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
23. Bleak House - Charles Dickens
~~24. War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy~~
25. The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
26. Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27. Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28. The Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29. Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30. The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31. Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32. David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33. Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
34. Emma - Jane Austen
35. Persuasion - Jane Austen
37. The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38. Captain Corelli's Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39. Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40. Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
41. Animal Farm - George Orwell
42. The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
43. One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44. A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
45. The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46. Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
47. Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48. The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood
49. Lord of the Flies - William Golding
50. Atonement - Ian McEwan
51. Life of Pi - Yann Martel
~~52. Dune - Frank Herbert~~
53. Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54. Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55. A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56. The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57. A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58. Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60. Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61. Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
~~62. Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov~~ (started but didn't want to finish it)
63. The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64. The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65. Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66. On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67. Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68. Bridget Jones' Diary - Helen Fielding
69. Midnight's Children - Salman Rushdie
70. Moby Dick - Herman Melville
71. Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72. Dracula - Bram Stoker
73. The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
74. Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75. Ulysses - James Joyce
76. The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
77. Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78. Germinal - Emile Zola
79. Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80. Possession - AS Byatt
81. A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82. Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83. The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84. The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
~~85. Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert~~
86. A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87. Charlotte's Web - EB White
88. The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89. Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90. The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91. Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92. The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93. The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94. Watership Down - Richard Adams
95. A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96. A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97. The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
99. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
99a. The rest of Roal Dahl's children's books and autobiographies.

Why I'm not answering FaceBook messages

Wed, 09 Jul 2008 13:20:52 GMT

If I seem to be ignoring you, it's because I haven't looked at FaceBook in a very long time (i.e. bloody ages) and probably won't look at it again for the foreseeable future (i.e. bloody ages). And I just remembered that my LJ automatically imports to my FB notes so I can tell everyone that I'm not being antisocial (well, no more than usual), I just don't like FaceBook. So feel free to drop me an email with any news of great import, or just to say hello, as it would be lovely to hear from people without the hassle of FB. I'll definitely reply to emails :D

The Fufumal

Wed, 09 Jul 2008 13:14:54 GMT

New Viking saga discovered: read it and be moved.

Sun, 01 Jun 2008 12:27:19 GMT

I had a lovely day yesterday. ingaborg and Paul took assorted Wychwooders on a mystery trip and I managed to hitch a lift from Bath to accompany then (after mysteriously-stopping trains, annoucements of fatalities, cancellations of all services and Wychwood deciding by popular vote that they loved me enough to make a detour to Bath). We went to loads of places I'd never seen before, like Avebury, Glastonbury Tor, Wells, Stoney Littleton Long Barrow and Nunney castle. The barrow was ace - you could crawl inside for a long way and sit in the little niches (now devoid of any bones). Wells cathedral was also cool as it had a clock from 1390 with lots of ornate dials and mechanised jousting knights that gallop around every quater hour. I also gawped at the amazingness of the embroidery on the altar frontals - I always get inspired by work like that to buy lots of shiny threads, which then sit in my sewing box and never get used.   Also on a fibrous tangent, I collected a large amount of wool from the sheep at Avebury, which will be added to the big bag of fluff that I'm accumulating in readiness for the day I get around to doing some spinning. Such is my rock 'n' roll lifestyle.

In fact, the last week included several nice events. On Thursday I went to meet a couple of guys in Bristol for some fighting - I'd met them once before and had a great time, so I was looking forward to bashing swords with them again. We ended up fighting in some woods behind one of their houses - which doesn't sound particularly exciting but... these woods were on a hill on top of which was an iron-age hill fort and a Roman farm. And it was stormy and raining and atmospheric. Woo!   I also had a very cultured time with frodomorris at the Bath music festival, where we enjoyed singing in the Abbey and west country lewdness with Ere Whacks. I also saw Waterson:Carthy with Lopez during the festival, which was brilliant. Must discover more live music around Bath & Bristol - haven't found anything goth/industrial yet, and I'm missing dancing stupidly to comically violent Euro bands.

In other news: I love King Bladud's pigs! These have been gradually appearing in Bath over the last couple of months and the city is now full of them. They rock! Somewhat linked to that last comment, I discovered that I like bacon. It wasn't quite such an amazing moment as my first post-vegetarianism steak & ale pie, but still... mmmmmmmm...... bacon.   I think I'm now officially a rampant carnivore.

If FaceBook were real

Mon, 05 May 2008 13:05:24 GMT

Real-life FaceBook (video from BBC Three)

Baath, or should it be Baff?

Wed, 16 Apr 2008 18:47:21 GMT

Yes! After a week of waiting, the router arrived and the Lopez and I finally have interwebs in the flat. Hurrah! The flat is lovely and in a most salubrious area of Bath. It is also rather spacious (lots of room for visitors, hint hint) to the extent that it took us three days to discover a walk-in cupboard we never knew we had. Bath is nice, very like Oxford in some ways but with less of a generic city centre. It makes me want to stroll around wearing a bustle and a bodice and leaving calling cards with acquaintances (because people in Regency novels rarely had friends, just acquaintances). Now I just need to hook up with some reenactors (visit to some local Vike chappies pending) and all will be well.

Goodness, what a lot of brackets (or should that be parentheses?)

In other news, the following sign, spotted at the entrance to the ladies' toilets in Bristol airport, made me chuckle:

"In the case of a terminal evacuation, red light will flash."

The mind boggles.

Journey to Niflheim

Sat, 29 Mar 2008 00:14:46 GMT

And so it came to pass that Olaf the Naked and his shoulder-companion Graegham Ragnvaldsson journeyed to the frozen wastes of Niflheim and there did battle with the mighty ice giants. Though armed only with short wooden staffs - for sharp metal edges are of no use in this realm - they channelled the heat of Muspelheim through a magical talisman. The icy crags towered about them, yet they fought bravely, attacking the iron-hard ogres until they yielded and fell to the earth. Even the frozen cliffs fell before their onslaught, the falling boulders melting at the adventurers' feet as they charged again and again with their staffs. Well were they contented with their battle, and they returned to Midgard with many tales.

In short, the freezer has finally been defrosted.

Riddle

Thu, 06 Mar 2008 14:37:53 GMT

fram deop to eorðan ic cam ænextan
fram utgarsecge to grene grunde
widlast widfarend, ic lyfte ymbærndede
ða ic forlet sunhate sæ
feower gesceaftena ic mæne, ond an me sylfum
saga hwæt ic hatte

And the nerdiness continues...

Sat, 19 Jan 2008 14:51:16 GMT

þrie hringa cyngum ælfcynnes heaum
in middangeardes grenholtum heanes to hrofe
seofon sincgiefum dweorgas of dunum
seo foldesbreost forhelest symbelhus stænen
nigon manndryhtnum guþweardum gumcynnes
wyrd sceol gescieran læne lif of licum
ond an thaem deorcan on his sweartan stole
in westnese mordores fæste forbræded
an hring ælce to wealdanne ælce to findenne
an hring ælce to bringenne þeowas in þeostre
in westnesse mordores fæste forbræded

(Version 2.0 with grammatical corrections and a couple of minor changes)

Overheard on the way to work

Mon, 14 Jan 2008 22:50:50 GMT

While passing Magdalen College school...

Irate shouting teacher: "Will you pull your trousers up??? I'VE WARNED YOU!!!"

Anglo-Saxon thingy

Fri, 28 Dec 2007 13:16:48 GMT

I started to do some short pieces based on Maxims. As I'd got a copy of Owen-Crocker's Dress in Anglo Saxon England for Christmas (yay!) I began with such universal truths as

Het sceol on heafode
Socc sceol on fot

And then raised the tone with this:

Ecg sceol scir scinan
Scild sceol stedefaeste standan
Wiga sceol on scildburhe swith ond leafful

I'm here to kill your monnstahhh

Sat, 17 Nov 2007 22:03:50 GMT

So, frodomorris and I went to see the new Beowulf flick the other night. As expected, it was a delightfully silly piece of cinema that had the unexpected bonuses of a little Englisc dialogue and a new dirty song to learn. However, I'm not entirely sure which bits of the film were intentionally comedic and which weren't. Anyway, the story had been developed a little and, without giving the re-interpreted plot away, I actually approved of how this had been done. I also thought that the idea of the revelries at Heorot causing Grendel physical pain was was a good one. What I didn't like was the quality of the computer-generated graphics. On the whole I really don't think it was well done enough to justify making the entire film in this way - it might as well have been animated without motion capture as this really didn't add anything and seems simply to be a gimmick. So, on the whole, if you're in the mood for an evening of gut-spilling amusement, go and see it. If you're after a serious and well-made interpretation of the story, well, you'll probably be disappointed.

Oh, and one last thing... if you value your nipples, then wearing maille against naked skin is a really bad idea. Unless you're a pervert, of course.

Africans "less intelligent", says Watson

Thu, 18 Oct 2007 08:49:39 GMT

What a pleasant man James Watson (yep, the DNA guy) is. We all know he doesn't much like women and gays, but now we can add black people to the list.

BBC story here

A fine example of a robust and well-supported scientific hypothesis, I must say. The Science Museum have cancelled his planned talk, which opens up the perennial debate of whether it's better to deny people like this a platform, or to let them speak and challenge them publically. Personally, I would have had him speak but in a debate with someone who could wipe the floor with him. Showcasing the old race/IQ data would be a good example of how people can skew experiments to 'prove' what they believe is true.

I couldn't settle down to work this afternoon.

Tue, 04 Sep 2007 17:09:53 GMT

So I wrote Olaf Sigurdsson's Saga instead.

Completed scabbard!

Tue, 04 Sep 2007 09:59:47 GMT

Woo!! Here's some pictures:

Aaaaaaaaarrrrrrrrrrrrgggggghhhhhhhh!!!!!!

Fri, 10 Aug 2007 15:32:41 GMT

I set the video to record The Leather Boys on BBC2 last night and watched it today to find out that I'd missed the end. Eep! Now I'll have to find the DVD... reading what happens on Wikiepdia just isn't the same.

Great film though. I thought Dudley Sutton was fantastic as Pete.

Beware of Prince Charles

Wed, 11 Jul 2007 16:15:56 GMT

Year 1981

1. Prince Charles got married.
2. Liverpool crowned soccer Champions of Europe
3. Australia lost the Ashes tournament
4. Pope died.

Year 2005

1. Prince Charles got married.
2. Liverpool crowned soccer Champions of Europe.!
3. Australia lost the Ashes tournament.
4. Pope died.

IN THE FUTURE, IF PRINCE CHARLES DECIDES TO MARRY, SOMEBODY PLEASE WARN THE POPE.

(from http://www.dysan.net/weird/show/602.html )

Wed, 07 Mar 2007 15:20:25 GMT

Had a very nice time at the pub last night, celebrating Dom's birthday. Drunkenness abounded. Chips were consumed. Then frodomorris and I got home to find... SLUGS! Yes, not merely slugs, but SLUGS! In the kitchen! Many! Everywhere! Treading on a slug in socked feet was actually not an unpleasant feeling, and luckily it didn't squish, but stilll...

Snow!

Wed, 24 Jan 2007 10:01:57 GMT

Yay!

Wassailing into 2007

Fri, 12 Jan 2007 14:59:23 GMT

I am the back on internets! And in the lab. I am feeling ambivalent about the latter state of being. The period of the sine-wave of DPhil emotions has decreased to about six hours - one moment I'm feeling happy and productive and looking for JRFs, the next I have no idea what to do. *le sigh* But I do seem to have reached a few conclusions

1) I do actually really enjoy evolutionary biology
2) I'm good at being a scientist
3) I'd quite like to stay in Oxford if something cool is available

And so I have begun to talk to various people about post-doctoral research. Woo!

In other news, I found out today that some of my students Googled me. It does feel very weird to be on t'other side of the fence at times... luckily all the LOTR fics were written using a pseudonym ;)

And so to my new year's resolutions.

1) Learn to drive (at long last)
2) Be less like this
3) Find a JRF/Post doc
4) Plan something exciting to do for a couple of months before starting said JRF or post doc
5) Do lots more fighting and start going to more DAS things (partially dependent on 1) above)
6) Sample the covered market's entire range of pies

Stop press

Tue, 28 Nov 2006 10:15:46 GMT

More news from the sweetener science guy - Stevia + water now = nuclear fission and the solution to the world's energy problems.

Wow.