It's a bit Chile outside. No wait, it's Switzerland.

To describe Geneva using 3 words, i would have to say: cold, expensive, but beautiful. (And as a side note, if you don't understand the title, don't try to it's nothing more than a joke from the trip.) However with a little bit of student living it is very easy to get by on a small budget, as i found out having only such a budget. Nevertheless a pizza and a litre of iced tea for 10CHF tastes just as good as any restaurant meal, although worrying since it came from a shop inbetween a kebab store and a corner shop and the iced tea could not be found anywhere else.

So don't be put off about going to Geneva because bargains can be found (well bargains for Switzerland, normal price for the UK), and it truly is a beautiful place and having a wander round Geneva with no sense of direction but instead a "that looks interesting, let's walk down there" attitude worked out very well with something to be found round every corner, and it's quite hard to get lost since a simple walk downhill to the lake and you've found your bearings once again. And if you just stay by the lake then you'll still be in for some for great views especially around sunset, sitting at the end of the walkway in the middle of the lake.

Enough about Geneva though, since the whole purpose of the trip was to see CERN. For those of you who don't enjoy science then you probably won't understand how exciting it is for one of us science lovers to visit CERN, but believe me it was amazingly awesome. Although for me it wasn't the particle colliders that excited me most but Tim Berners-Lee's computer, which was the original world wide web server, and without i probably wouldn't be writing this now.

But i understand that most people would be more impressed with the actual purpose of CERN which is of course to collide particles in order to understand the fundamental physics of the universe, but it's nice to think that during this quest, one of the most important inventions of the last century occurred and because it was invented at CERN it was free for the public to use, perhaps making it what it is today.  Now most people will know all about the LHC (large hadron collider) but infact there are 6 accelerators and a decelerator, luckily for me as the LHC and many of the other accelerators are currently out of bound, so we were only allowed to see 2 of them (the decelerator and a linear accelerator).

The great thing was that also whilst we were there they were actually accelerating lead ions, although unlike most people think we didn't actually see any particles colliding, just some graphs showing the energy levels of the ions (so not that exciting actually). Though they did get the particles up to about 99.9% of the speed of light, so of course i started to think about the question of how much would a lead ion at that speed hurt? I tried using some equations to find out the force of such particles but they got reasonably complicated and to be honest the only real way to find out is through experimentation, so i'll contact CERN to book a slot with the accelerators, now i just any volunteers so please respond if you want to take part.

All in all then the trip was amazing, and a must do for any fellow geeks. You never know you could be there when they discover the higgs boson, imagine how amazing that would be. Hopefully i'll be able to go back some day as well, maybe as a visit or perhaps to work (doubt it'll be to do with the previous mentioned experiment though).

It's Been a While...

Sorry about not posting for so long, but for various reasons i have been busy over the past few weeks (amazing since i normally have nothing to do). So although this post is the restart after the temporal lapse, it won't be a traditional post and more of a collection of thoughts and things that have happened over the blog's downtime. I will hopefully be able to bring back the regular single-track posts later this week (hopefully), but definitively next week, as i will be in Switzerland this weekend for a trip to CERN! So if all the hype is correct i should have plenty to write about.

Where do we start then? Well i suppose with the most major event in the past few weeks (not the oxford entrance exam or UCAS submission, i'll get to them later), after the complete failure of my computer where not one but both my hard drives failed simultaneously leaving my computer totally befuddled as it tried and tried again to find windows, but alas it was in a dark windowless place. But as they say out with the old, in with the new and so i have brand new computer, shiny and all!

For those tech-nerds out there it's an acer with terabyte of hard disk space and a core i5 processor and soon i shall buy a suitable graphics card to replace the inbuilt one. For those who aren't tech-nerds, it's a shiny black computer with a curved front, and all that mumbo-jumbo i just talked about is the stuff inside, don't strain yourselves trying to figure out what it all means.

The only problem i had with this sudden change is that i was working my way through an extended essay and since for a few days i had no idea whether it would be able to be recovered and so it this state of limbo i took a well earned break, leading to a frantic few days of trying to complete the essay before the deadline. Luckily it was recovered as well as most my other data, which has unfortunately deprived me of the opportunity to have a nice slate-clean start from all the thousands and millions of useless bytes of junk that have accumulated over the years.

Now let me mention the other big event of the past weeks, that is of course the previously mentioned UCAS submission, and subsequent events that followed. To put it simply i'm very glad i've finally managed to rid myself of all this UCAS stuff, now it can be a joyful thing where i can see my university choices roll in (or not as the case has so far turned out to be). And the entrance test (which annoyingly was introduced for the 1st time this year) followed by mock interviews have taken up most of the other time i found.

Right now that 's all i can remember of the last few weeks, but i assure you there was definitively more which i simply just can't recall at the moment. And the next few weeks seem to promise to be just as busy, however again i'm not sure how busy, as i can't recall any of my future events i have planned either. Luckily, with time the way it is, i currently haven't found a problem with solely living in the present, oblivious to both past and future, and frankly it's more fun this way.

Don't Panic

Ever since i decided to make the transition from daily blog into a more conventional blog, I've had many ideas for blog posts, i suppose that's life though. So here i am not just 2 days after saying i wouldn't post daily, and on a 3rd consecutive day of blogging, however i assure you that i will not be posting this weekend, for i seem to be quite busy turning 18 and all. However that's is not why i find myself sitting at my computer writing this, no there are far more important events in the world that have made me dedicate my time. If the events that i speak of have not been made aware to you then you're lucky you found my blog as one is potential world changing whilst the other could pose a serious health risk towards you.

The first event is of course the "fact" that scientists at CERN have found a particle that travels faster than light, i use the word "fact" loosely, as whilst it technically could be called a fact as the evidence is conclusive, for some strange reason the scientist want to make sure that it is or even find the reason why they are wrong. For the benefit of those of you who aren't keen on science and have no idea what this means i'll keep it short. Effectively one of the major scientific principles could potential prove to be totally wrong. Don't Panic, whilst it could have potentially world-changing effects it won't likely effect you, instead it could open the world up to time travel. Yes you heard me, time travel, exciting right (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-15034414).

Whilst i would love to delve deeper into this great discovery and its potential, i have to hurry on to the second story, as i need to go and help at youth group soon (and most likely get hit in the face with a football again, only just recovered from that if you wanted to know). As i said before this could pose a serious risk to your well being, although unless you're sailing around the Pacific at the moment it probably won't. Of course i'm talking about the big chunk of metal currently hurtling down through our atmosphere know as the URAS satellite (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-15034073). Whilst most of it will burn up, hopefully, on its way some quite large chunks could make it down to the surface (over 150kg) and even the smaller chunks could cause injury, or a very nice souvenir. Again, Don't Panic though because the chance of someone getting hit is only 1 in 3200, so sleep easy, unless again you're sleeping on a boat in the pacific because the chance there is higher (p.s. why are you there anyway?).

So that's it for this week of blogging, i'll be back again next week, unless i get hit by a piece of satellite. Or if faster than light travel is found to be true, in that case i might be back again last year.