Out on the Wiley Windy Moors...

... there stand two dry stone walls, facing each other, eighty yards apart. Between them is not heath, but finely cut green grass. For most of their length, the walls are natural stone. Only the central section of each wall is whitewashed.

Haworth West End cricket club possess the highest cricket ground in Yorkshire, and perhaps the most wind-swept cricket ground in the world. Cricket grounds need a sightscreen behind the bowler's arm, so that the red ball is clearly visible to the batsman. On Haworth moor, the white walls serve as a wind-resistant sightscreen. Of course the walls are only about five foot tall, so the sightscreen only really works for very small bowlers.

The pavilion of this cricket ground was the starting point of a fell race yesterday. 279 people lined up to run across Haworth moor and back again, including me and my dad. Running across a moor is similar to running anywhere else. Except every now and again the ground suddenly gives way, and you find yourself with one leg on solid ground, and the other leg knee deep in a mini peat bog. If this happens while tramping uphill or against the wind, you pull your foot out and continue. If this happens going downhill wind-assisted, you either trip and tumble, or come to an emergency stop. I did both a couple of times, and was happy to return to the cricket pavilion with both ankles intact.


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Ultras Bochum 3 - Torpedo Entenhausen 4

This game was postponed due to snow. I therefore dedicate the win to former Blackpool goalkeeper Harry Sharrat, who was booked for making a snowman on his goalline.

Winter has arrived in Bochum, and although there was no snow one week later, the pitch was frozen in one corner. I found this out while trying to turn quickly past a defender. The resulting slip was almost convincing enough to get a penalty. Fortunately I fell on my left knee, which is in much better shape than the right one. And because I fell on ice, the cut wasn't filled with the usual sand and gravel.

This match brought Torpedo Entenhausen an unprecedented (at least in my time) five wins in a row. We thus moved into an unprecedented (at least in my time) fourth place, just in time for the end of the season. The official policy of the team is to play so badly in the first 6 games that we can't get promoted. After that, we are free to win some games. The successful end to the season even brought a goal difference of 0.

Torpedo Entenhausen 8 - Porno Villa 0

I just reread the last entry against SG Sundern, where I wrote

today I managed to land on exactly the same spot just below the knee and reopen the wound.

What I didn't mention is how this happened. There was a goalmouth scramble as the keeper could only block a shot. I pushed past a defender and lunged at the ball. With an injured knee. On a cinder pitch. The resulting wound was quite deep, and had me limping for a good few days. Cycling was also painful, so I sat at home a lot and was bored.

This is part of my problem. I am bored, then start doing something, get completely hooked, start diving around and injuring myself, and am then ill/injured. I then become bored, start doing something...

By this match, which was two weeks ago, I had recovered enough to play against my good friends of Porno Villa. They have made many friends in their first season because of their fair play and occasionally open defense. If there is such a thing as a lucky 8-0 win, this was it. Torpedo took almost all their chances to move to -1 goal difference. I spent the whole of the first half in the submerged half of the pitch, and conceded lots of throw-ins.

Fat Finger Job Application

I've been putting this off, and got depressed today. I went to the Job Centre on Thursday, and was given four jobs to apply for. I managed to write a job application on Friday, and got it corrected by Sunday. I spent the last two days trying to muster up courage to send it off. I kept putting it off, surfing the internet, walking around randomly, standing on stairs, drinking coffee and juggling. I tried to learn lots of juggling tricks with the left hand on the right and the right hand on the left.

By this morning I was depressed and confused. Everyone I met today commented how awful I look. I slept 9 hours, but was worried the whole time and woke up tired. My coordination is bad today, and in the cafe they laughed at my attempts to fill a cup with coffee from a thermos flask, with the saucer getting in the way.

I decided to break out of this depression by doing stuff. I ate lunch, drank a coffee and set about sending off the application. I checked the last job application that I'd sent off, and saw that I'd included my PhD certificate twice. I renamed the file from MCT0025x00001.pdf to something more sensible. All the time I'm fighting with the thoughts "you can't do this job", "your application is useless", "your letter is cringeworthy". I joined the files together, found a plausible email address, wrote a subject, then my finger slipped. Somehow I found the keyboard shortcut for "send", and sent off an email without any body or attachment.

I then sent the real one, and hope that they take pity on me.

Torpedo Entenhausen 3 - SG Sundern 1

Torpedo Entenhausen collected six points in four days to move firmly into the top half of division 2 in Bochum's spare time league. A 2-1 win with 10 players on Friday was followed by a today's win, where we faced only 10 opposing players.

In both games I landed quite hard with my right knee on the cinder pitch. The cut from Friday had just about scabbed over, but today I managed to land on exactly the same spot just below the knee and reopen the wound. The grazes over the upper shin are still scabbed, but have new cuts mixed in with them.

At least I am better off than teammate Stefan, who had blood running down from both his knees, as though he had been subject to a double kneecapping. After he showered, blood was splattered down the tiles of the shower room. Bernd, a veteran of 20 years playing in the Freizeitliga, said that his elbows and knees are covered in tiny scars.

It wasn't by any means a dirty game, even though the opposition had one player sent off. It just lies in the nature of cinder pitches and human flesh. Somethings gotta give, and it usually isn't the pitch.

Taxi Zentrale 1 - Torpedo Entenhausen 2

With three games of the season remaining, Torpedo Entenhausen have accumulated the same number of points as in the whole of last season, and look good for a top-half finish. I dashed back from Erlangen for the fixture, but was a bit tired and hungover. This got me thinking about home advantage in the league, as obviously travelling five hours to a game isn't great preparation.

Now that football has turned into a billion business, this question must be worth millions of said units, and whoever solves it could become rich. It has become an accepted fact that the home team has an advantage, and this is reflected in results in all leagues all over the world.

One reason for home team advantage are the crowds, which can boost players and intimidate the referee, but the Spare Time League in Bochum doesn't have any crowds. It is therefore interesting to see that there is still a distinct home advantage. The two divisions in the league had the total results at the end of the season 2008.

Home Wins Draws Away Wins Home Goals Away Goals
Div 2 91 (50%) 18 (10%) 73 (40%) 515 449
Div 1 84 (46%) 22 (12%) 76 (42%) 531 465

Now that seems that there is definitely a home advantage. This could come from the difficulties in travelling across Bochum to get to an away match, funny kick-off times for away matches (some teams play on a Friday), or the strange surroundings and change to routine of an away fixture.

If one of the world's richest football clubs wanted to, they could conduct experiments with local leagues, all without any crowds. In one league all pitches and changing rooms would be the same, like in roman military camps, but players would have to sort out their travelling arrangements. In another league the pitches would vary, but all teams would be bussed together to the away ground. In a third league the teams would be bussed together and play on identical grounds, but be taken ten times around the ringroad before the match. Surely the costs would be small in comparison to hiring a 30 Million Euros player, and the results potentially of great importance.

Cheers Timo

I am in Erlangen for a quick visit. My PhD Supervisor is going into retirement and holding a goodbye lecture. I just turned up at my old shared flat (the Henke WG) and invited myself in. I keep meaning to give people a bit more notice, but didn't get round to it this time.

I was greeted by a cup of tea, and my ex-flatmate Timo said I could have his room. It has a bed, a computer with internet access and three bottle of beer. The perfect bachelor pad.

Torpedo Entenhausen 5 - Megalomaniacs Herne 3

I've only been blogging victories for Torpedo Entenhausen, as they are much more fun. In reality we are safely in mid-table, far from the disappointment of finishing last (there is no relegation from the second division of the spare time league) and far from the disaster of promotion.

Wemser and Werner, a couple of Torpedo old-timers, returned to the team last week. We played a few matches together when I started almost 2 years ago, and they commented how I have improved my game. I scored one goal, set up two, and ran around a lot before succumbing to cramp in the final minutes. As the substitutes were also knackered, I was told to stand in front of the defence for the final minutes to preserve our precious lead.

I got to select and organise the team for the last two matches, as our captain, organiser and last-ditch defender was on holiday. Those 'wasted' months of playing football manager games were quite useful. Pick your 14 players, send them a text message, choose a formation, learn that the full-back is down with flu, choose another formation. Enter the transfer market by asking Werner to ask his mate whether he fancies a game.

I also got to greet the referee and opposition and win the coin toss by default. While I was winning the coin toss the rest of the team decided which positions to play. I don't think I'm ready for complete control of team affairs yet, and luckily the real captain will be back next week.

Bewerbungsmappe

This is the German word for a folder containing documents for a job application. Apparently there is no equivalent in English, as

In the US, when you apply for a job, you send a one or two-page resume and a letter. You don't send all the other crap unless they ask for it.

I have found all my old 'A' level certificates, and am off to a copy shop to get copies for my Bewerbungsmappe. I'm finding all of this rather tricky. My psychologist reminds me that every new thing will be difficult. Every step towards getting a job is hard, and I find myself blocking myself.

The process of buying a Bewerbungsmappe took about an hour. It started with me writing down what I was going to buy, where I was going to buy it, and when. I planned a cup of coffee and a sticky raisin bun as a reward for a successful purchase. Everything about this mission was carefully planned.

I then walked into the stationary shop, found the shelf with Bewerbungsmappen, and bought three. It took less than a minute. If I had to do it again it would be very easy. A Bewerbungsmappe is just a piece of folded cardboard with a clip inside and "B E W E R B U N G" on the front. Buying one is no more difficult than buying a ring-binder, or a hole puncher.

Juggling in Lüneburg

I really like this photo. I was juggling two clubs in my left hand (the top and bottom one in the picture) while swinging the third club (the middle one) like a cowboy swings a lasso in my right hand. If you time it right, the swinging club doesn't hit the other two clubs as they go up and down. Thanks to Florian B. in Lüneburg for taking the picture, and Philip D. in Bochum for teaching me the trick.

The Ballad of Reading Goal

--Edit 9th Oct -- The Video of the match keeps getting pulled, but the Video of Chris Kamara is much better. Unbelievable Jeff!

I just wanted an excuse to use that oh-so-clever headline. It's quite scary how many google hits suggest that Oscar Wilde wrote a poem about Reading scoring a goal, or about someone reading Goal Magazine (not just any magazine, this one has "big colour pictures"). Even the "I'm feeling lucky" hit for Ballad of Reading Gaol has goal in the URL.

SQL

Select count(men)
from
tblDeadMansChest

> 15 Aaarrrhh!

I have been learning SQL, while teaching the unemployed of Bochum the importance of "International Talk Like a Pirate Day". The tutor has saved the date in his iPhone for next year so that he can spread the word. It's good to know that you're making a difference in the world.

Torpedo Entenhausen 2 - Tote Hosen 0

5-5-3-4-5-3-3-2-2-3-2-1-5-5-8

Guess the next number? The mean value of this sequence is 3.73, the mode appears to be 5, the standard deviation 1.79 (according to this statistics website).

That series is the number of goals conceded by Torpedo Entenhausen this season in the first 15 matches. We have the second worst defensive record in the league with 56 goals. Last season we only conceded 49 goals in 26 games. This is what happens when you put an injured outfield player in goal: miskicked clearances, balls that slip through hands, balls that sail over the goalkeeper as he tries to jump with his injured knees.

Markus, our goalkeeper, was out for half a year with a broken arm. He is now back, and spent the first 30 minutes plucking balls out of the air. After that the opposition gave up shooting on goal. It looked like our firm defence would earn us a 0-0 draw, but we scored two goals in the last seven minutes. I scored the second with a point-blank-range header, after comically failing to tap the ball in with my foot.

Oh yeah, almost forgot, the sequence now reads

5-5-3-4-5-3-3-2-2-3-2-1-5-5-8

and our mean goals conceded per game is down to a slightly more respectable 3.5.

Automation

I just lost it while trying to buy a train ticket from Bochum to Erlangen. I was getting on amicably with the ticket machine until it asked me which route I wanted to take. It gave four options, each with a different price, each consisting of 3 cities I hadn't heard of and one city that I knew, but that wasn't on the way from Bochum to Erlangen. I searched the screen for the button "Just put me on the next fucking train to Nürnberg" or "Automatic route selection using arrival time optimisation" but there wasn't one.

So I decided to go to the ticket office, and tell them to put me on the next fucking train to Nürnberg. The counters were blocked by a couple planning a 3-week rail holiday and an old lady who was being explained what a railway was. I got confused, thinking how annoying other people are, how best to program a ticket-selling machine for people with simple aims who are in a rush, and how I was going to miss my train.

I couldn't keep patient enough to stand in a queue, so I headed back to the machine and selected the most expensive of the four routes, just to be on the safe side. The route was via Dortmund, the train I took went in exactly the opposite direction, but wtf.

(I wrote this rant last weekend. I was going to follow it up, locate the missing cities, draw a map of Germany with the routes on, and make a big post. After careful thought, I decided to get on with more important things and not get so worked up. I also decided that the extra 5 Euros wasn't the end of the world.)

Dead Man 'Cremated'

No, no, no, that's no good at all. Nobody will read that story. Lots of dead men get cremated. Could you have another go at the translation? Run it through Babelfish, maybe? Yes, that's more like at.

TWO undertakers put a rival in a coffin and burned him alive after a business deal went wrong. Erich Winkler, 43, was knocked unconscious then cremated under a false name before his killers scattered his ashes. Michael Schmidt, 52, had argued with Mr Winkler after agreeing to buy his firm but failing to pay. He and partner Friedrich Peters, 53, face trial in Erlangen, Germany.

So say the Sun, admittedly not the most reliable of British newspapers. The Scotsman also reported the same story.

Undertaker 'burnt alive in a coffin'

I'll admit it makes a good tale, and I always like to think that if I was to commit murder I would go for this approach. I'd like to give my victim a sporting chance to wake up, find the saw he keeps hidden in his shoes, cut a hole in the reverse side of the box as it slips into the inferno, and roll away to wreak terrible revenge on my business empire, sleep with my mistresses and kill me.



Sadly the suspect has only been accused of a rather normal murder. According to the Nürnberger Nachrichten, the case presented by the justice authorities is that the victim was killed in the meeting room of the undertakers.

Bei einem Gespräch im April 2007 in Erlangen... soll der Geschäftsmann zusammen mit dem anwesenden Bestatter aus Geiselwind den 43-Jährigen dann noch im Besprechungsraum getötet haben.

(My bold). The case continues, innocent until proven guilty, and all that.

For Gawd's sake get me to the Church on Time

I only left Bochum once in the last 3 months, and that was for a party in Dortmund, which is the next town up the Ruhr. I've got a life in Bochum with a fixed routine. I go the the computer training, juggle, play football, cook, wash up, eat, and generally have a nice quiet life.

I am off to Erlangen this weekend for a wedding. I'm a bit scared of the whole thing, but also a little excited. I found it really hard to work out what I should do when I get to Erlangen, so I concentrated on getting there with a suit in hand. I know where I'll be sleeping tonight, and am pretty confident that I'll be at the church tomorrow afternoon.

Torpedo Entenhausen 8 - Ultras Bochum 5

I've been ill with flu or something over the weekend and am still quite tired, so I was delighted to see that Torpedo Entenhausen had 15 players available for this game. This meant that I could volunteer for bench-warming services. I would like to take credit for the 7-5 goal, where I shouted loudly that our new striker should run towards the goal. He did, and scored, but might have done so without my prompting, as it is the standard thing to do in a football match.

As part of our demoralisation plan, I came on as an "impact substitute" with five minutes left. I slipped and sat on the ball once, wasting valuable seconds. I also drew 3 fouls from the same player within 10 seconds, wasting more valuable seconds and earning him a yellow card. To finish off I distracted the keeper for the 8-5 icing-on-the-cake, as he was beaten at the near post by a fierce shot in the closing darkness.

------------------------------------------

In my computer course I've been learning about IP addresses, sub-networks, and CIDR (Classless Inter-Domain Routing). Thus was I damned to have songs by The Wurzels running through my head all afternoon. I don't see why I should be the only one to suffer. Oo aar, Oo aar.



I was worried that that west country farmer Oo aar could be confused for a pirate's exlamation. I just found out that there is a link between the Wurzel's "Oi drinks Zoider Oo aar Oo aar" and the pirate's "Aaaarrrr". According to Wikipedia

Actor Robert Newton, who portrayed Long John Silver in the 1950 Disney film Treasure Island and then in the 1954 film Long John Silver, is the patron saint of Talk Like A Pirate Day. Newton was a native of Dorset, and it was his native West Country dialect, which he used in his portrayal of Long John Silver and Blackbeard, that has become the standard "pirate accent".

The Mystery of the Fallen Roses

I de-iced the freezer compartment of my fridge over the weekend. To speed up the process, I filled a plastic bottle with hot water, sealed the bottle with a squirty top from a washing-up liquid bottle, and directed the hot jet of water onto the steel lining of the ice compartment. Within an hour, the huge chunks of ice which stopped me shutting the fridge door were falling off into the pool of water at the bottom of the fridge. The key to swift de-icing is that it is not necessary to melt all the ice, just the parts sticking to the metal. I guess the best way would be to pass a large current straight through the metal sheets of the ice compartment. This would also be an effective way of keeping fat kids off the ice cream.

Anyway, I was thoroughly pleased with my efforts, and rewarded myself with a bunch of roses. I didn't have a proper vase, so I took the biggest glass I could find and plonked the roses in. It looked a little wobbly at first, but after I filled it with water it was fine.

Well today I got back home and found the glass broken on the table, and the roses on the floor. I reached for some paper towels to mop up the water, but the floor was dry. After a cursory check that no jilted lover was stood behind me with an axe, I deduced what had happened.

I think the world is divided into two groups of people: Those who understand statics, forces, torques, gravity, evaporation and transpiration; and those who just go and buy a fucking rose-sized vase.

Stains

I fixed the brakes on my bike today, as I was cycling into town and have been reduced to braking by foot for the last week. When I finished, I looked down at my shorts and saw they were covered in tomato sauce from last night's tea. Only a slob would go to town in tomato-stained shorts, I thought, but I couldn't be bothered to change them, as the pockets were full of useful things and I was all ready to go. Then I realised my hands were covered in bicycle grease, and that by wiping the black oily stuff on my shorts I could cover the tomato stains.

So here is my guide to stains. More stains may follow as time and fortune allow.

Tomato-sauce: Glutton, slob, lazy bastard.

Oil: Man, hard worker, knows one end of the spanner from the other, too busy mending stuff to keep changing clothes.

Household Tips

Don't store your dirty clothes outside together with onions when it is raining.

Household experts will already know that onion peel is great for dying things, and can probably imagine the results. Why would anyone want to do this? I moved the onions outside a couple of weeks ago as I was worried that some flies might eat them. On Sunday, I had a great time playing football in the rain. When I got in I made a cup of tea and threw the wet stuff on the balcony, right on top of the onions. It's the "out of sight, out of mind, out of the window" approach to a clean flat.

Thinking about it, it's not really a very good approach. At one point in my previous flat I had a cauliflower on the second floor window sill for over a week. I hoped that birds would eat it, or something, but it just went mouldy and started to smell.

I had a tough weekend, as I didn't feel like tidying, washing, or cleaning. I had to have strong words with myself yesterday to remind me that I need to do these things so that I can play football in the rain. I spent this evening cleaning the flat and sorting out the balcony. Things are looking better.

Random Thoughts

I'm doing some proof-reading. Do I not like "On the one hand, on the other hand" expressions. One the one hand they are padded, inexact and cliched, on the other hand they are still padded, inexact and cliched.

Stop offering me lifts! I actually enjoy going by bicycle, even when it's raining. I get fresh air and exercise, and am mostly free from worrying about petrol prices. On the other hand, if my bicycle has a puncture I might retract this statement and crawl into your car.

On the one hand, you might want to look at this video. On the other hand you might not. If we'd been born with three hands would we use "on the third hand"? Does our physiology limit us to binary thinking?

On the one hand, that's an interesting thought. On the other hand it might be bollocks, and a misrepresention of cause and effect. On the third hand, I could google "on the third hand" and see if someone already wrote a science fiction book about it.

Anyway, that video. I've not laughed so much in ages. Check out the guy in the blue suit.

I bid you to burn.

As part of my psychotherapy, I am trying to limit my perfectionism. I have been juggling with torches a lot recently, and noticed that I become slightly obsessed with doing better and neater tricks.

This perfectionism leads me to learning a new trick quickly, and making it look really nice. The problem is that the good feeling lasts only a few minutes, and then I think of something new and improved. So when I see myself doing takeouts (first trick in the video, those nice long arcs) I think how it would look better if I mixed them with a few reverse takeouts. When I do chops, I notice that my left arm isn't as fast as my right arm. When I carry one torch up and across, I think how much more symmetric it would be if I could do it first with the left hand then with the right hand.

So I made an effort to load this video. It's not perfect (very little is); I drop the clubs a few times, not everything works, but there are some very nice bits which I am proud of. I try to ask myself how I would react if someone else had been juggling in the video, but that's difficult when I know it's me. I just watched it again with squinted eyes so that I could only see the torches and not myself. The torches make some really good patterns in the air, and that must be true no matter who is creating them.

Tales of Great Valor

I've been reading Lord of the Rings. This evening I had a nice game of football, just a turn-up and play affair. The opposition were a bit too ball-hogging, and not too good at shooting on target.

So, as the golden sun set over the western woods, the game moved toward the eastern goal. Thus did their striker the ball smite, that its resting place in the bramble thicket lay. The left-back, clad in long socks and leather shoes was driven back by the sharp spikes of the blackberry bush. The striker strode round the bush, eyeing for the missing leather orb, but was led astray by the sweet taste of blackberries, and searched no longer.

As hopes faded, Mr. Endofphil took it upon himself to find the lost ball. Starting his journey to the western woods, he found the great wooden sword carved by storms past. He took it in his hands, and named it Stick. Weary, without food or drink, and with the weight of Stick slowing down his already tired legs, he returned to the bramble bush. The sight of those fearful spikes which had torn many a mortal leg to shreds roused his anger, and smiting Stick with all his might did he force a way through the bush. The bramble bush was resilient, but as he smote to the left, to the right, and to the floor, the path became clear. He saw the ball and dropped Stick so as to hold the ball tightly. The brambles sensed their chance, and began to rise again, determined to take their toll. As the stalks rose, pushing their spikes into his legs, Mr. Endofphil ran, jumped, and landed safe from the bush. The ball was once more on the Pitch, and Stick may be found by future adventurers.

Datenschutz

Germans get quite worked up about protecting their private details. It might have something to do with bad experiences with the Gestapo and the Stasi.

Sometimes I think that the British ought to be a little more careful. I needed to send a letter to my parents, but had forgotten the house number. Luckily, I could remember the street name and the month they moved in, and by looking it up on nethouseprices I got the house number, as well as the exact date of sale and the price they paid. This is one of many websites in England which make money by telling other people the details of your house purchase.

Any house sale in England is registered with the government land registry. This seems a sensible way of recording what belongs to whom. The fun-lovin' staff of the land registry decided that it would be great if everyone could find out how much the neighbours had paid for their house, and will tell you any sale price for three English pounds. They were undercut by private websites which are funded by advertisements.

So Mr. A sells his house to Mrs B, and lets the government know. Then Mr. C starts a website, gets the government Database and takes money from Mrs. D (who knows Mrs B. from the Womens Institute) to reveal how much Mrs. B is worth. Mr. C then probably gets rich, and lobbies the government to reveal the NHS records, so that Mrs B. can see whether Mrs. C had breast surgery.

So the next time you get a letter from England, take your correspondent's address, put it into that website, note the price, and in your reply mention that they have been ripped off as the neighbours seem to have paid 32 grand less despite their garden being 5 square yards bigger. If you are German, be sure to write at the end of your reply

In ze fatherland, vee hev vays of knowing zees sinks

Difficulties

My programming course is going well. I am learning the language c# and am having no trouble implementing abstract classes, void functions, public and private variables etc. It all makes sense, and I was surprised to see the difficulties that some people in the course have.

Today came the first really difficult thing: booking an appointment for an exam. I have to ring a number which could connect me to anywhere, speak to whoever answers the phone, and book an appointment for a centre I've never been to. For some reason this fills me with dread. I will do this tomorrow morning.

The other hard thing this week has been doing the washing. The weather is warm but humid and each evening it threatens to rain. Having managed to start the machine and remove the washed clothes, I decided to hang them outside, but it thundered and they got very wet. The next time I think I'll just put the dirty laundry on the dryer, throw a handful of soap flakes over it and wait until it gets washed and dried by mother nature.

(I wrote this about 3 weeks ago)

Eternal Postdoc

I have started a training program as a data bank systems developer. I now spend 6 hours a day learning programming techniques in the language c#. The people on the course are all unemployed, but come from a mixture of backgrounds. Some have broken off a computer studies degree, some were working in the IT field and made redundant, and some are unemployed academic types. I'm one of two former particle physicists on the course.

I went to lunch with "Karl", who has spent the last 20 years at the Ruhr-University of Bochum. He studied there, did his PhD there, spent 8 years as a post-doc there, and is now unemployed. I only managed one year as a post-doc, but maybe completely failing to fit in was a blessing. I don't want to suddenly wake up and realise that I'm 37, unemployed, having spent 8 years treading the concrete flagstones of the university. I think the German Chamber of Commerce should give Karl a job as a "Ghost of Postdoc future". He could spook the corridors of university departments showing what will probably happen to students if they never set off into the real world. He could quickly scare them into getting a job far from the university.

On second thoughts, there is no need to pay someone to do this. Every university department I've ever been in had their own version of Karl. Not all are unemployed, some are happy enough, but they all give the air of stagnation.

Hail Mary

I spent Sunday afternoon juggling at the summer festival of the church of St. Mary in Bochum Langendreer. The party was disrupted by the biggest hailstorm that I've ever seen (I may have led quite a sheltered life). At first we thought that God was angry, but convinced ourselves that it was a signal to his flock to drink more caipirinhas. Here is a photo of me juggling a 3-hailstone Mills Mess.

Noughts and Crosses

I am being trained to be a Databank System developer. I don't quite know what this is, or whether I want to be one, but it is better than lying in bed all day. I have been learning to program in C#, and wrote a very nice object-oriented Nought and Crosses program with an omniscient artificial intelligence. Game theorists call this game futile, because it ends up in a draw unless one of the players fucks up. I think that programming it wasn't quite futile, though, as I learnt quite a bit.

Even though I'm learning some useful computer programming things, the most useful thing is re-learning to live. I managed to send two letters yesterday. This used to be easy, but I haven't sent one for ages. I had to find a pen, an envelope, the address, a stamp, the current rate for a letter (still 55 cents), and a postbox. I'd been trying to send it for 10 days, but kept putting it off.

I'm blogging from my flat, and the neighbours are having a loud garden party. I was going to congratulate them on their musical taste (The Wall, Money for Nothing, Spirit in the Sky), but they just started playing Cotton Eye Joe by Rednexx. Now they are on to the Weather Girls (link as seen on b3ta). I know this is going to end as a Schlagerfest. I am going to go out.

Routine

Life is complicated. Suppose you had to describe your day to a men who just fell to earth.

Woke up, got out of bed, dragged a comb across my head, found my way downstairs, filled the kettle, switched it on, found a cup, removed the mould from the cup, located a teabag and the milk which hadn't gone off, drank a cup...

Six months ago it was too complicated for me. I ate in cantines and pizzerias (saves shopping, cooking, and washing up), wore the same clothes for ages or bought new ones (saves washing, drying and putting away). It was easy to describe my day: I slept, sat around for hours on end, and swallowed three meals a day in various cafeterias.

After weeks of psychotherapy, I tried to do more. I wrote down a list of what I wanted to do, and when I wanted to do it. I can now look back at what I did. On the 26th January, for instance, I ate breakfast at home, got money from the ATM, bought food, drank a coffee, read the paper, tidied my room, jogged, showered and shaved. This was a lot for me to do in one day, and a really big improvement. After I'd done something on the list, I had to push myself to do the next thing. Part of me wanted to go give up and go back to bed, but I managed to do everything.

Now I can do these things more easily, because I've been doing them regularly. I eat porridge for breakfast at home every morning, and it's now easy to make. A cup of tea is a welcome break, not a challenge. Washing clothes is tricky, but possible. I still mentally break it down into the steps of starting the machine, waiting 1h, putting the clothes on the dryer, waiting 24h, and putting them away. The hard bit is finding the motivation to continue after each step.
I have got my life in enough order to start a training program in IT systems. I can spend seven hours at the institute and still manage to do the other things. I celebrated yesterday by drinking vodka and trying to catch the hot end of a burning torch with my throat.

p.s I wrote this a couple of weeks ago offline

Torpedo Entenhausen 3 - Taxi Zentrale 2

In his book "Fever Pitch", Nick Horby describes the perfect football match for a fan. Of course it isn't a game where your team wins 5-0 and play like brazil. That is just boring. The perfect match is one where your team win after going behind, one with amazingly bad refereeing decisions, stupid mistakes, fouls, lots of goals and a scene where the TV commentator claims "Nobody wants to see that kind of thing".

This may have been the perfect Freizeitliga game.

1/ We went 2-0 down.
2/ We won 3-2.
3a/ The referee gave us a throw-in, but the opposition took it, and he let them play on!
3b/ The referee blew for a free kick, I played on, and he gave me the advantage!
4/ A Slanging match between the trainer of the opposition and our hattrick hero Sajid.
("Nobody wants to see that kind of thing").
5/ The winning goal arose from a terrible pass in the Taxi-Zentrale defence. It started in the wrong direction, curled even wronger, and stopped by the feet of Sajid, who nonchalently lobbed the ball into the top corner of the goal.

Säumnisgebühr

That funny word in the title would be the German word for a library fine. It literally means something like "Missed deadline Fine". I forgot to return a book and had to pay 3€. The book was "The Long, Dark Tea-Time of the Soul" by Douglas Adams, and I think he would have approved of my disorganisation. Certainly none of his characters would have gone to the terrible effort of returning a book to the library just because they'd finished reading it. I wonder what, normalised to the number of times it has been borrowed, the most overdue book of all time is.

VfL Linden 3 - Torpedo Entenhausen 3

One of the major benefits of being able to touch type is that you can pretend to be the Grandstand vidiprinter. Whenever I post a Torpedo Entenhausen result, I always type the name of the club as quick as I can, and then pause for a second before hitting the number. If you don't know what the Grandstand vidiprinter is, this video may help.



I scored two goals to help Entenhausen grab a point despite lying 2-0 and 3-1 behind. For the first I swung my leg at a mishit shot without looking where I was. The shot caught the goalkeeper wrong-footed and the ball rolled just inside the post. The second was a shot from a narrow angle following a short corner. I still don't quite know how it went in.

Anyway, back to the vidiprinter. Whenever I get bored, I like to type my favourite fantasy results in the vidiprinter style. If you're reading this, my fantasy results probably looks a bit static, so feel free to type your favourite results too. If you haven't learned to touch type yet, now may be the perfect time. Use the following simple format, and don't forget the pauses.

United [mini pause] X - Rovers [longer pause] Y

Forfar 5 - East Fife 4
VfL Linden 3 - Torpedo Entenhausen 4
Sheffield United 0 - Sheffield Wednesday 4

SAD

Some people get sad and depressed in the winter. I like to think that I am above such stereotypes, and last year got depressed in the summer. There were a few reasons for this. I'd been in Bochum for four months, and had realised that my job wasn't going anywhere. My incompetence in moving house was also catching up with me. My belongings were split between Bochum and Erlangen, my post was mostly being sent to the old address and I still couldn't remember my new postcode. I hadn't worked out why there wasn't a recycling skip for tin cans in Bochum and had collected four months of tin cans in my flat. These things were all related to being four months in a new city and not giving a shit about anything, but had nothing to do with summer.

Then came the summer. I played lots of football and drank some beer, but couldn't be bothered to prepare food. The food lay on my shelves and was eaten by fruit flies. I hoped that the spiders that populated the corners of the flat would eat the flies, but they didn't. My flat smelt, but I was too tired and too depressed to do anything about it. I'd look at the rubbish, look at the washing up in the sink, look at the pile of clothes on the floor, decide that it was all too much for me and juggle a bit. I learned some good 3-ball juggling tricks, because I could only ever find three of my balls under all the rubbish.

I was reminded of this last week when I looked into my bottle of white wine vinegar. I was trying to clean the cooking pot I used to burn my hat, and wondered whether vinegar would be any good. The bottle didn't have a top on, so I poured some vinegar out, and found that it was 25% fruit fly by volume.

I had cooked some food with the vinegar last summer, but hadn't put the top back on the bottle. I thought back to last summer and remembered looking at the bottle, looking at the top sat next to it, and thinking how screwing it on was too difficult. The fruit flies took advantage of my sloth, but to excess. They must have gorged on the vinegar, bathed in the vinegar and died in the vinegar, for the vinegar was full of literally hundreds of dead fruit flies. I'm sure that I put a tablespoonful of the fly-infested vinegar into a stir-fry last autumn, which probably wasn't very healthy.

Torpedo Entenhausen 2 - Team USA 2

This week we got to play on the grass pitch. This was a blue moon event, for in the grass pitch importance ranking nothing comes below the second division of the spare-time league. For Torpedo Entenhausen to get to play on grass, the following criteria must be fulfilled.

1/ It has to be dry.
2/ It must have rained within the past 4 days.
3/ The womens hockey team must be on holiday.
4/ The groundsman must be in one of his better moods.
5/ Jupiter can't be in alignment with Saturn, unless it's a month ending in 'r' or it's a leap year.
6/ ...

Playing on grass is a chance for diving headers, sliding tackles, dives and overzealous goal celebrations without tearing holes in your knees. I slipped over once, and sent one of the opposition tumbling with a nicely timed sliding tackle. We went into a 2:1 lead with three minutes remaining, but still didn't win.

The Ashes part II

Pet funeral directors are much more fun than your standard undertaker. The one in Bochum has a window display of its products, so it felt like any other shop and I didn't feel like an idiot going in to buy an urn for the ashes of my PhD hat. Once we'd got past the initial misunderstandings (Hut and Hund, the german words for hat and dog, sound rather similar), the assistent was very helpful. He sold me a nice green urn for 40 Euros and stuck on some slightly tacky letters too.

Just as we were finished, the next customers came in holding their recently deceased dog, Maxi. I was quite surprised by this, and I think that the shopholder was too, but only for a second. There were three of them, and they brought in two living dogs too, maybe to show that they were serious dog people and going through tough times, and maybe to prove that Maxi was atypical and that they were quite capable of keeping most of their dogs alive.

I decided that my cheerfulness of having acquired an urn didn't really fit the scene, so I left, wondering whether anyone has ever walked into a funeral directors with his dead grandma draped over his shoulder.

A Theory of Everything

I had lunch in Cafe Konkret and had a theory of everything explained to me by another regular. Volkhard Radkte has spent the past years developing theories of the development of planets and stars. From what I can understand of his theory, things come into existence in pairs, and suns can be born from planets. He has also developed his own model of the atom.

He presented his ideas to a physics professor at the University, who told him "If your ideas are shown to be true, I will personally recommend you for a Nobel Prize". I think this is a fantastic way of telling someone that you're not entirely convinced of their work.

I tried to read some of his book and asked him if his theory made a prediction that differed from accepted physics, and could be tested in the future. He couldn't tell me one. His work also contained a bit of numerology and some Excel graphs, so I decided I probably wasn't talking to the next Copernicus and concentrated my efforts on the Guardian Crossword.

Anyway, here is his model of the Hydrogen atom. I asked him about it, as I did my PhD on something similar. The accepted model of the Hydrogen Atom includes a proton, which is composed of three quarks, orbited by an electron. He includes all these components, but his model has a rigid arrangement for the quarks and has the electron in a fixed position between the two up quarks.

The Ashes

On Tuesday I was on a 6-2 away win football high. I'd only slept for five hours and my legs were burning all day. I felt up to anything and started cleaning my flat. Lying in a corner were the remains of my PhD hat. I broke it when I first put it on; it was top heavy and fell off my head. Since then I broke the broken glass tube, and a miniature cricket bat and some charred remains representing The Ashes had also fallen off. I was faced with the choice: repair the hat to it's former glory, or burn it and put the ashes in an ornamental urn. I decided that I'd never make it as good as it once was, removed the electrical components and cremated the hat in a large cooking pot.

"It's alright, nobody's died." I tried to put the funeral director at ease and reassure him that I wasn't in grief. "I've cremated a hat and am looking for an urn. It's kind of symbolic." He showed me his collection of urns, but they were all so big that I could have put the whole hat in, which might have been kind of amusing, but I'd already burnt the hat and thought 80 Euros was a lot for a hat box. "They're all a bit big. It was quite a small hat, really," I explained.

I wondered whether the guy who bought the original Ashes urn felt such a pillock.

It's alright, nobody's died. I've cremated a cricket stump and am looking for an urn. It's kind of symolic.

The funeral director recommended that I buy an animal urn, and told me that a shop on the Hattinger Strasse sold them. Looking at the Ashes of my hat, which are being temporarily stored in a freezer bag, I guess a canary or rat sized urn might work.

Megalomaniacs Herne 2 - Torpedo Entenhausen 6

I got a bit fed up of writing how Torpedo Entenhausen kept throwing away leads, so I "forgot" to write posts of our last two defeats. Tonight we did the opposite, and recovered from a 2-0 deficit to win clearly.

The reason for the poor start was only having eight players because we thought the kick-off was at eight and not half past seven. The opposition were considerate and only had nine men at the start, despite correctly adjudging the kick-off time. More tellingly, they never got the full eleven players on the pitch.

I ran a lot, and dribbled so much that people told me to pass the ball earlier. This has never happened to me in my footballing life. I've always been a "hoof it up front" kind of player. The Germans call this Kick and Rush, but I can't find or remember any english person using this phrase. I think they call it the long ball game or direct football.

Tonight I also headed some goal kicks in the right direction. When I first played last year they used to bounce off randomly but mostly backwards. Tonight one of my headers from the centre circle went straight back to our striker, Axel, who stuck it past the keeper for one goal towards his hat-trick.

Sheep on the Line

People in Britain, and especially the press, are always amused and amazed when the railway is obstructed by foreign objects. The good old "X on the line" headline is rolled out. X stands "leaves" in the autumn, but in other seasons can stand for other object. Whatever the obstruction is, it gives cause for mockery of the second-rate railway in Britain. Everyone then agrees that this kind of thing wouldn't happen in civilised countries like Germany.

Well, last night a high-speed train on the Hamburg-Munich line hit a flock of 20 sheep and derailed inside a tunnel. A spokesman for the federal police in Koblenz explained that "It is an everyday event that a deer or a sheep is caught on the line and hit by a train", but that the unusually large number of sheep caused the train to derail. I wonder if there a german phrase, "To follow like sheep?"

This is of course not a new problem. Steam trains used to have a Cowcatcher on the front for such occasions. These have fallen out of fashion, which is a shame. It would be fun to see how far a sheep would be propelled by a 200km/h train fitted with a cowcatcher.

The Irish had another solution: On Irish rural lines one of the duties of the fireman "included pelting coal lumps at sheep on the line."

A rural line in Shropshire took a more relaxed approach.

One day, while travelling along the line, her train, which ran slowly enough at the best of times, juddered to a halt.She leaned out of the window and asked the driver what the problem was.

"Sheep on the line," came the reply.

After a few minutes the train started again, only to grind to a halt after a few hundred yards. "What's up this time," asked our impatient passenger.

"We've caught up the sheep,"

ps. Keen followers of my descent into denglish will like to know that I first wrote a "herd of sheep", but then noticed that it wasn't right. Germans have a herd of sheep, looked after by a sheep-herder. The English have shepherds who watch their flocks.

Lost in Bochum

The only map which I have of Bochum is cheap, small and inaccurate. I came to this conclusion while stood with my bicycle in a muddy field with a muddy dog jumping up my trouser leg. I was looking for the road which, according to my map, connects Prinz-Regent Strasse with Springorumallee. I can report that this road doesn't exist.

While lost, I took a photographs of a partially dismantled railway which, according to my unreliable map, used to connect the east of Bochum to the River Ruhr in the souch via the Opel factory. It made me feel at home.

Bicycle

I have acquired an old bicycle from a juggling friend. I had to spend 11 Euros (a bell in the form of a teapot and a stand to stop it falling over) to make it roadworthy. The bicycle has five gears but no gear lever. I went to a bicycle shop to ask for a new lever, but the guy didn't have one and couldn't order one. He thoughtfully changed the gear from second to third by giving the shifter a pull, and told me to dismount and push it back in if I ever found myself at the bottom of a big hill. He claimed that one-gear bicycles were all the rage this season, but might have been taking the piss.

I feel much better when I cycle than went I get the tram. Cycling requires movement, responsibility and has an element of danger, whereas getting the tram requires sitting around, which I do too much.

Sell yourself

Self-Marketing is the key. Be pro-active. Take the initiative. I'm trying to look for a job and am finding it scary. I'm feeling depressed and about to cry.

I read a book about references today and it got me thinking too much about my last job. I've been better since I left and I've not thought about it at all. The book said I should fight for my right for a good reference, but I don't want to. I want a reference that says "Mr. endofphil came unprepared into the job, was unable to master life's basics such as eating and sleeping, showed a complete lack of interest for anything whatsoever and subsequently spent 6 months staring into space. His only lasting impression was drunkenly juggling lots of mandarines at the christmas party."

I need a job to recover my self esteem, but it's hard to get one when you don't think you can do anything. I will go and see the employment agency tomorrow, explain this, and ask for help.

More on King Franz

Eighteen months after you read it on endofphil, the British press have finally got in on the story.

Ernst Schad 4 - Torpedo Entenhausen 3

No Bundesliga report is complete without a mention of the "Werkself". Literally "factory eleven", it refers to the team of Leverkusen, who are backed by pharmaceutical giants Bayer.

The spare time league of Bochum now has it's own Werkself: Ernst Schad is a leading manufacturar of cogwheels and is based in the neighbouring city of Dortmund. The company proudly claims that it is

Certified by the DNV according to EN ISO 9001:2000

and I'm sure we all know what that means.

The Bochumer Cliche reports:

The factory eleven suffered from teething troubles in the first half, but after a 3-1 half-time deficit they stepped up a gear and had Torpedo on the rack. The 4-3 decider was a typical clutch goal.

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A football related story from the Daily Telegraph, about some posh totty getting a cab to the wrong Stamford Bridge. When I studied in York I cycled to the Yorkshire Stamford Bridge. It was a very nice little village, but could have used a few marauding vikings to add realism to the battle site.


Größere Kartenansicht

Perceptions

I was feeling ever-so-slightly depressed at the weekend. I wasn't unhappy, but was a little tired and dispirited, and most of all I was feeling inadequate.

So when I went juggling in the park on Sunday morning I had the feeling that I wasn't much good at it. The throws that should have gone straight up in the air went a bit to the side, and the crossed throws looked ragged. I could do a trick with my right hand well, but with the left hand it looked all wrong. All in all I seemed to spend much of the time picking up dropped balls.

There were a few kids out with their mum and dad to fly a kite. They were amazed how good I was, and couldn't believe their luck that someone so unbelievably good was juggling in front of them. When the kite was successfully launched (launching a kite is so much more fun than flying it), they turned their hands to juggling two balls. One of them was really good and is well on his way to juggling three balls. This success cheered me, and I realised that I can juggle enough balls to start a minor workshop.

Young children give the best feedback, as they are so bad at fake politeness, lying or hiding their feelings. I know there are other things in which I'm not as useless as I think I am, but sometimes I don't know exactly what they are. Maybe I should be less scared at overestimating myself. What's the worst that can happen?

Schon wieder ein Deja Vu all over again.

I'm back where I was in September 2006: unemployed, looking for a job, and trying to fill out all the necessary forms. I'm trying to do things better this time and not get annoyed as quickly. The most difficult part of becoming officially unemployed is filling out the form which certifies that I had a job. The employment agency gave me six working days to get this form completed, and told me to ring them for a personal appointment by today.

In these six days, I had to take the form from the employment agency to the Personell department of the University, who had to send it to the central administration in Dusseldorf, who had to stamp it and post it back to me. Of course I haven't got it back yet.

I rang the employment agency this morning, but before I could apologise for my slackness and ask for an extension, the man asked whether I had got this particular form. I could tell in the tone of his voice that he knew I hadn't. He knew that it was impossible to do it in six working days. He told me to piss off and ring back when I had the form.

A year ago, I would have finished the post here, annoyed, with Muzak ringing in my ears. Now I will try to think what positive steps I can do...

thinking...

thinking...

I can't influence the speed of German authorities. I can't ban Muzak. I can't decimate the ranks of German beaurocrats to improve their efficiency. I can't redesign all government forms, banning any font less than 10pt and the use of their beloved abbreviations.

All I can do is try to chill out. Say it doesn't matter. Say that one pointless phone call isn't that bad. Appreciate that German beaurocracy always seems to get there in the end.

Here is a reward for getting this far.

edit: I see that the "reward" picture is quite old, and was already featured on Snopes

Snow

I was the only person on the University campus trying to start a snowball fight this morning. As nobody else was in the mood, I settled for throwing snowballs at concrete pillars and juggling a quick 3-Ball Boston mess. I think my relation to snow depends on where I grew up, and how often it snowed there. It is also easier and more fun throwing snowballs if you don't have to go to work.

Kitchen WTF

I looked at my loaf of bread, which was topped by a large fluffy green mass, and wondered how it had turned mouldy so soon. I looked on, and thought that the mouldy mass was too big and too green, lacking the white and brown tints. I then looked more closely and saw it was a lump of fresh Broccoli on top of a fresh loaf of bread.

I managed to buy food for three whole days over Easter, and cooked and ate it too. I may need to rethink my storage system, though.

Muggelangelegenheiten

As you will know, it is possible to make new words in German by stringing other words together. As no hyphen is used to show which the original words were, it is possible to misread the long word. The standard example is Urinstinkt, but I prefer Zugreifen, which can be read either as Zu-greifen (go and grab) or Zug-Reifen (Train Tyres).

So while reading a Harry Potter book in German, I took several seconds to correctly read the word Muggelangelegenheiten. This word, meaning "Muggle Affairs", contains the following possible German phrases which have nothing to do with the real meaning: Mugge, Gel, Elan, Lang, Lange legen, Angel and Gen. The words translate as follows: gig, gel, elan, long, to lay for a long time, fishing, and genetic, which is enough to form the plot summary of a short novel.

Language experts think that constructions such as
Muggel-Angelegenheiten or MuggelAngelegenheiten are ugly. Maybe I should stop reading Harry Potter books and get a job.

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A letter to the editor of the Guardian had me laughing this morning. I think the credit goes back to the Marx Brothers.

Jonathan Powell on Tony Blair (Weekend, March 15): "He would get up at 4 o'clock in the morning and write in his underpants." No wonder it took him a long time to learn how to use a computer.
Bryan Morgan
Worksop, Nottinghamshire

In fact, having looked at the link, the original extended quote is even better

Blair felt he needed to pen his own words - in longhand. "He would get up at 4 o'clock in the morning and write in his underpants, then we'd have to dash downstairs and give it to the Garden Girls [the No 10 secretaries] to type it up... it was complete misery for the rest of us."

Any Chance of a Game?

Following on from Monday's game, where our supporter saved the day by coming out of retirement for 30 minutes, I was intrigued by the plight of Gretna FC. They are rooted to the bottom of the Scottish Premier League and in the hands of administrator David Elliot. The club is in debt, losing money and struggling to put out a team on Saturday. The BBC say that

Just 10 players have indicated that they are willing to face Aberdeen on Saturday as doubts surface over insurance and future payment.

and the administrator is quoted as saying

Failure to play on Saturday would mean we are in breach of league rules and would leave us open to be fined and face other penalties.

The solution is obvious: In the best interests of the club, Mr. Elliot should lose his suit and don his football boots. Surely there is time tomorrow to fill out the necessary forms.

Kezboards

I reread my list of things to help me decide where to live, and I wondered whether to remove the point of "never having to see another kezboard". Surely this is a triviality. Is the transposition of the letters 'y' and 'z', and the goddamn ugly placement of 'ö' onto a homekey really that important? Does it matter that entering a '{' requires the right hand to be bent into an unnatural position. The more I think about it, the more convinced I become that the answer is yes. The German kezboard is a all-time disaster of bad design, and I don't think I can ever adjust to use one.

In my last job, I set the computer to recognize the US English layout and just ignored the symbols on the kezboard. However, when I first turned the computer on, it required a password using the German layout before it changed to English and then needed the password again. Every morning, without fail, I entered the wrong password both times. This put me in a shit mood for the rest of the morning.

I then probably annoyed my colleagues by typing 'ss' instead of 'ß' in important documents. This is why these funny letters are on the kezboard: they are considered important. Typing a document in Word was mental torture, and the text-speak message at the top of the screen only added to my misery.



So either I find a technical solution to this problem, or I get a job in Germany that doesn't need a keyboard, or I move to an Anglo-Saxon country. It is really that important for me. Make me work unpaid overtime, cut my pay, insult my intelligence, but please don't fuck with my coordination. It's like someone switched the cables going to your fingers, so you try to bend your index finger but end up bending the ring finger. It may sound crayz (I did that one on purpose to show that my sense of humour is not completely gone), but I'm making the requirement not to have to use a kezboard a non-negotiable part of my future.

I also want my word processor to permanently display the message "UrSTpDCNT" at the top of the screen.

Dead Trousers 3 - Torpedo Entenhausen 4

Being a supporter of Torpedo Entenhausen is a dangerous business. If the number of fit players drops below 10, anyone with two legs is press-ganged into playing. If the number drops below 8, even the cripples are called into service. So when Axel left to put the kids to bed, having scored the first two goals to leave the match finely poised at 2-2, Horsti was called out of retirement for a match-winning cameo. The decisive moment came as he beat one man, found space to shoot and drew the keeper into a parry. Following up, I scored my customary rebound to give Entenhausen the decisive 4-2 lead.

Torpedo Entenhausen 2 - FC Polterberg 5

It's times like this that playing in orange shirts, green shorts and yellow socks pays off. The groundsman turned the floodlights on only 5 minutes before the 8pm kick-off, so we warmed up by running round in the dark hoping that there were no potholes in the pitch. It was a clear night and, having just avoided bumping into each other, right-midfielder Georg and I took to a bit of star-gazing. We could only identify Orion and the Great Bear, and had an educated guess that the Northern Star was somewhere over the Opel factory.

Georg had been the hero of last season's dramatic comeback against Polterberg, but this time we had little chance, despite going 2-0 up early on.

Make Do and Mend

The pockets of my jeans always seem to be the first thing to go, and for the past few days I've been leaving a trail of small change and Stabilo pens wherever I go. I then bought a needle and thread, and sewed the hole together. I did the right pocket with them on, and the left pocket with them off, and found that it is easier and safer to sew when not wearing them.

This kind of thing goes against the spirit of my generation: if it's broke, or old, or no longer in fashion just throw it out and head to the shops. I found the sewing to be quite therapeutic, despite dropping the needle a couple of times.

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I was listening to the radio this morning, and tried to decipher the words to "Back to Black" by Amy Winehouse which is getting a lot of airplay on WDR 2. I could have sworn she sings

Life is like a pie, and I'm a tiny kidney rolling up the walls inside

An expression of the futility of life and its pastry ceilings using the imagery of old-fashioned british cookery. Sadly these are not the real lyrics. It's probably a good thing that nobody can tell what she's singing about, as "He... kept his dick wet" isn't really what you want to hear over breakfast.

Profile Change

About two years ago, when I started this blog, I wrote in my profile that I was "bitter, pessimistic, depressive, downhearted and confused". I have started a course of psychotherapy and am trying to change all of these things. I still sometimes feel this way, but I'm no longer happy using these words to describe myself.

I feel the Earth move

England was hit by an earthquake this week... England was mildly shaken by an earthquake this week... Small Earthquake in England, not many tea cups rattled. I asked four of my relatives, who all live about 100km from the epicentre (or Ground Zero, Lincolnshire, as I call it), whether the earth moved for them, and two said they slept through it. The others were shaken, but not stirred.

Having used up all the standard earthquake jokes and cliches in the first paragraph, let me tell you that Lincolnshire has a history of earthquakes. In 1185, the cathedral suffered structural damage, and had to be rebuilt. The rebuilt Cathedral was the tallest building in the world for over 200 years, until the central tower was destroyed in a storm.

Further earthquake news: the Saarland (memories of learning the conditions of the Treaty of Versailles for GCSE history come flooding back) was also hit by an earthquake a few days ago. This earthquake was due to mining subsidence. I think the human race should be given more credit for this kind of thing. Bacteria and plants got there first in changing the composition of the atmosphere, Dinosaurs lived ages, got fossilized and stomped around a lot, but we can cause significant earthquakes by digging out the earth from beneath our feet and waiting for the ground to fall, with only the loss of the odd chimney. I visited a mining museum near Essen last year, and the guide said that the Ruhr area had sunk by 30 metres over the last couple of centuries due to mining subsidence. I think this is a much greater achievement than a high building, and as a monument to human endeavour it is less prone to fires, storms and earthquakes.

Using the rather tenuous connection of Chile to earthquakes, here is the legendary Battle of Santiago from the 1962 world cup.

The game you are about to see is the most stupid, appalling, disgusting and disgraceful exhibition of football possibly in the history of the game.

Blue Star Oblomow 5 - Torpedo Entenhausen 1

The new season has started in Bochum's spare time league. I was going to write some excuses for the scoreline, but in truth the opposition were better. We kept trying, though, despite going 2-0 down early on. I hope that next week will see an improvement, and if not that the opposition aren't very good. On a personal note I beat the full back and skipped down the wing a couple of times, which gave me a good feeling.

Antidepression

I just looked at the guardian online, and saw the headline "Prozac does not work, say scientists". The article had a link to the original paper, which was very helpful, as this says something completely different.

First rule of reading scientific papers: just look at the plots, the rest is usually irrelevant. This plot from the paper shows how much patients improved when they were given either an antidepressive drug or a placebo.



Maybe there are too many dots and curvy lines to see what is happening. After squinting my eyes a bit, I have, using the power of MS Paint, reproduced the main features of this plot.



Note the baseline, which the authors felt was unnecessary. Mistake. First rule of drawing plots: add a baseline. Looking at the plot, and looking at the baseline, I drew the following conclusions:

1/ Taking antidepressive drugs improves, on average, the mood of people with all degrees of depression. Woohoo.

2/ For people with mild depression, the same improvement can be made with a placebo. For these people, it is not the active chemical of the antidepressive that is helping them, but the circumstances of being given and taking a "cure". This could lead to a long debate about the ethics and effectiveness of giving patients a placebo cure.

3/ For people with severe depression, the chemicals of the antidepressive work and improve their mood. Woohoo.

So antidepressive drugs have been shown to improve the mood of people with severe depression above the level achieved by a Placebo. Or, as summarised in the Guardian:

Prozac, the bestselling antidepressant taken by 40 million people worldwide, does not work and nor do similar drugs in the same class, according to a major review released today.

This is obviously bullshit, as a second look at those graphs will tell you. More subtle is the mistake made by the authors, who conclude:

The relationship between initial severity and antidepressant efficacy is attributable to decreased responsiveness to placebo among very severely depressed patients, rather than to increased responsiveness to medication.

This is confused thinking. Taking any drug gives potentially a medication effect and a placebo effect. If the total improvement caused by taking the drug stays the same, but the placebo effect diminishes, then the response to medication effect must have increased: the drug works.

Maybe there are other, better, options for some people, but antidepressive drugs do on average have a positive effect for people with severe depression.

Links:

This blog discusses the difference between statistical and clinical significance (the funny green area in the plot), so that I don't have to.

Don Jewett is an emeritus Prof. at the University of California and knows how to use his CAPSLOCK. He takes issue with the conclusions of the paper (link added 28. Feb)

The language log get into the graph-drawing spirit. I like their old-skool noughts and crosses marker styles. They also summarise the press coverage.(link added 1. Mar)

Stream of Consciousness

I am unemployed, unattached, living in a bedsit and will turn 30 this year. These are facts, and I'm not particularly unhappy about them. I am trying to decide where to live. I have four choices: Bochum, Erlangen, Leeds or somewhere completely different.

Bochum

Plus: I live here, and have done for one year. I am good friends with some Bochum jugglers. I am the left winger of Torpedo Entenhausen and have developed a good understanding with the left back and the strikers. I know enough budding footballers to get a kick-about twice a week. I live close to a good ice-cream parlour. It only costs 11 Euros to watch a football game.

Minus: Bochum is "no beauty, and grey from work".

Distance to Leeds: I can be in Leeds within about 3 hours and the flights are cheap.

Erlangen

Plus: I used to live in Erlangen, and am friends with the local jugglers, some of whom even read this blog. Erlangen is a rich town with relatively good job chances. I am good friends with my ex-colleagues, who form the majority of people reading this blog. I grounded an Erlangen cricket club, and could try to reform it. There are lots of beer gardens within cycling distance of the town.

Minus: Erlangen is a small town which I might get bored with after a while.

Distance to Leeds: The flight to England takes a couple of hours and there is no direct flight from Nuremberg to Leeds. Awkward.

Leeds

Plus: Leeds is in England. My parents and sister live not far away. I would be able to write, speak and read the language perfectly, and never have to see another kezboard. I could race my dad up hills and find a cricket club. I could make my mum cook Sunday lunch, or even lend a hand. If I ever get bored I can call myself Klaus-Peter and pretend to be a German exchange student.

Minus: I know only four people there. The football club is owned by Ken Bates.

Distance to Leeds: N/A.

Somewhere Completely Different

Plus: Maybe I'll find something I never new I was missing.

Minus: I know nobody and would find it hard to get going, like I did in Bochum. I think I can rule this out.

Distance to Leeds: Upper limit - Leeds is to be found at -1.5 deg longitude, +53.8 latitude. The other side of the world is somewhere below New Zealand. The nearest landfall would be the bottom of New Zealand, and nearly 100,000 Furlongs away. Lower limit - Negligable compared to upper limit.

New Mission Statement

I am no longer an electrical engineer, and must therefore give up my search. Being an electrical engineer didn't do much for me in any regard. For the record, during the past year the following stood at the top of my blog.

The diary of a soul searching for the answer to the question: do electrical engineers have better sex lives than physicists?

The Perfect Crime

Bochum is just on the edge of the german Carnival scene, which is centred around the Rhine cities of Cologne, Dusseldorf and Mainz, where thousands don their fancy dress and get very drunk. I stayed away from the main events, but juggled at a small Carnival party in Bochum on Saturday; a video may appear soon. The payment was free beer and food, which was quite a good deal.

In Duisburg the perfect crime may have been committed, as reported in the Westdeutsche Allgemeine Zeitung.

A 25-year-old was robbed at gunpoint by two men at the Central Station on Sunday at around 17:30. One robber was dressed as a clown, the other as the Pink Panther. According to the police, they relieved the man of his money. The robbers fled in the direction of Friedrich-Wilhelm Street.

The first robber was described as being 1.85m tall, 25-years-old, with a black goatee beard, a dark complexion, a red clown's wig, a red clown's nose and a white costume with blue and red polka dots. The second robber was described as being 1.80m tall, 25 years old, with short blond hair, square black-framed glasses and dressed in a Pink Panther costume. Any information should be given to the local police.

Reports that the culprits were last seen being pursued through the streets of Duisburg by Batman and Robin remain unconfirmed.

20 Million Cubic Litres

I just sat in a cafe and read the European edition of the guardian, which sadly doesn't have Ben Goldacre's column in it. This week he makes fun of bad usage of numbers and statistics in newspapers. The European edition does, however, have a report on sending music to the stars, with the following excerpt:

Nasa will encrypt the song and beam it into space from its Madrid transmitter on Monday at the start of a 2.5 quadrillion-mile trip (that's 23 zeros for anyone without a large capacity calculator) to Polaris, where it will finally arrive in the year 2439.

The single most useful thing I learned studying physics is that there are almost exactly pi*10^7 seconds in a year. I also learned that the speed of light is almost exactly 3*10^8 m/s. So if you multiply the speed of light with the time of 400 years, there is no way that you're going to get a power of 10 to the 23.

I never learnt what a quadrillion is, as any attemped use usually ends in confusion between the British and American systems, but all these things that end in 'illion' are powers of three. 23 is a prime number, and obviously not a multiple of 3. I worked all of this out in the cafe, but things are a lot easier with a google calculator, which kicks ass, and has room for lots more zeros than needed astronomically.

((2 439 years) - (2 008 years)) * c = 2.53363342 × 10^15 miles

(Rounding to an appropriate level of significance is left as an exercise for the reader)

If all this sounds too mathematical, you can just look up Polaris in Wikipedia, and find out that it is 431 light years from the earth. This means that light will take 431 years to get there, and will arrive in 2439. No miles, no powers of tens to the fifteen, not so much fun.

Let it Bleed

Over Christmas I read the novel "Let it Bleed" by Ian Rankin. This book is one of a series describing Edinburgh detective John Rebus. Rebus mixes personal oblivion with flashes of obsessive brilliance as a detective and disdain for any kind of establishment.

In this book Rebus a mouth ulcer gives him the reason to see a dentist for the first time in years. After pricking the ulcer the dentist gives Rebus further appointments for half-a-dozen or so fillings.

Reading this, I realised that I probably haven't seen a dentist this millennium, so as part of my plan to take better care of myself I made an appointment yesterday. He was able to see me on the same afternoon and made a quick check-up. My teeth are alright but my gums bled when he poked his pokey-thing down beside a tooth. He asked me whether they sometimes bled when I cleaned my teeth, and I suddenly remembered that they did. I had completely forgotten this, and must have learned to repress it. The first time it happened I probably said to myself that I was too busy with work to bother going to the dentist, and after a while I got used to it. We have arranged further appointments to remove low-lying plaque and stop the inflammation of the gums.

For tea I had a cheese and blood sandwich. Lovely.

Unemployment

My contract runs out on Thursday, and I've taken holiday for this week, so I'm free to do what I like. I'm open to any short-term offers, but am not going to get a proper job again until I feel ready. I've decided to concentrate on getting my life in order before I start working again. I need to become generally active whilst eating well and not getting drunk too much.

Today I read the paper, did 4/5 of the crossword, went for a jog and went shopping. This evening I juggled three torches. A man walking past said that his dog found it fascinating. I practised spinning torches round in my hand and learnt to recognise the smell of burning arm hair.

Standing on Stairs

The campus of Bochum university has lots of stairs. It's a concrete monster of several layers covering a large area. Each layer is connected to the others with concrete steps of various designs, and I keep finding myself stood on the top step, or sometimes on the middle step, wondering what to do.

There is a large protest today in Bochum against the closure of the Nokia factory. I hope that the protesters know what they are letting themselves in for. A lesser known event of the Second World War was the winter war between the Soviet Union and Finland.

Clock Watching

Every minute I spend in my office drags me down. I can feel my mood worsen as soon as I wake up on a work day, and by the time I sit at my desk I feel sad and annoyed. I then surf the internet, drink coffee and watch the time slowly go by. This is my favourite clock. It shows the time in America, but has a nice picture of the earth, so I can look out of the window and compare the darkness/light with that on the map. The sun just set over Bochum.

New Year's Equivalent of "Bah, Humbug"

I got a bad cold and spent New Year's Eve in bed. I was awoken by a barrage of fireworks and spent the next three hours listening to bangs and whizzes while trying to get back to sleep. In this time I saw the air fill with fog, so that the tree at the end of the garden became faint and blurred. Eventually I fell asleep.

I was therefore delighted to read that I wasn't the only one to have a bad time. Bochum was covered by a smog so bad that buses stopped their service and taxis only went for special rates: "Sorry mate, I can't even read the meter in this fog". Car drivers often gave up, as described in a comment from kindly citizen Ralf Kelm.

We were stood on the pavement when a woman stopped her car and asked if we knew where we were. She thought she was still on the motorway, but was surprised to see so many houses. The motorway exit was about half a mile away. You could see absolutely nothing. We took her with us for the next five hours. After 7am the visibility improved enough for her to continue her journey.

Now I can't prove that the fog was due to the fireworks, although I suspect it was. Smog, as seen for decades in cities such as London (and probably Bochum and the whole of the Ruhr) was caused by air pollution from houses and factories. The London smog is described here by lost motorcyclist Arthur Musson.

On one occasion, I was motor cycling down Queens road Yardley on my way home from Mary’s, when I realised I was not on the road. I stopped, put my foot down, and found that I was in a field.

A useful measure for air quality is PM10 concentration. PM10s are particles less than 10 micrometres in diameter, and their concentration can be described in micrograms/cubic metre (μg/m³). A typical concentration of these particulates is 30 μg/m³ . During the great London smog of 1952, which killed around 12,000 people, the concentration was estimated to be 4000-14000 μg/m³. The German federal ministry for the environment measured the PM10 concentration over the last-but-one New Year, and found that in a city area the concentration rose to almost 4000 μg/m³ just after midnight, which is the lower estimate for the concentration in the great London smog. Congratulations, fellow citizens, you've created a minor environmental disaster! The ministry's recommendation is that people

limit their personal use of fireworks, or even do without them completely.

Happy New Year!