I’m into my second fortnight of my fitness program, it’s still going pretty well. My diary and some other thoughts follow:

Tuesday Run – Week 2 Podcast, leg more or less recovered after Sunday

Wednesday Run – Week 2 Podcast, plus messing around with the incline settings on the treadmill to do some uphill work.

Thursday Run – Week 3 Podcast

Friday Run – Week 3 Podcast

Sunday Squash – Beat Farquhar 3-1. Did a bit of a run, but gave up due to a stitch. Cycled 2.5k instead. The lesson here is not to eat a huge bowl of porridge before going to the gym.

Tuesday Run – Week 3 Podcast

Wednesday Run – Week 4 Podcast

Thursday Run – Week 4 Podcast

Friday Run – Week 4 Podcast

Week 4 of the couch to 5K podcasts is a bit of a push, but I’m feeling really good about the running. It’s looking like I’ll definitely be able to run the 5K I want to do in March, and depending on how hard I push myself in training I might be able to do it quite comfortably. It’s a charity fun run for the Beatson Pebble Appeal so it’s for a good cause as well. The plan for the next couple of weeks is to keep going pretty much exactly as I am, running 3-5 times a week and playing Squash on Sundays.

I’ve been thinking about my long term fitness goals a bit this week as well – the Gym is trying to get people to come up with 10 goals they want to reach this year, so here are mine:

1. Complete the Couch to 5K Programme (Almost half way there!)
2. Run the 5K in March (almost half way there!)
3. Train up to 10k runs
4. Run a 10K (I believe there’s one in the summer that a friend mentioned to me)
5. Start Climbing Munros again
6. Get a bit more proficient at squash (work in progress)
7. My BMI is at the top end of Normal (around 24.5 according to the calculator I just used), I want to get it down to around 20.
8. Get a bit more serious about Rollerblading, once the weather gets nicer I want to get out for at minimum an hour a week.
9. Detox somewhat. I’ve cut way back on drinking anything other than tea or water, and I’m not drinking alcohol until at least my Birthday in March (maybe longer).
10. I don’t think it’s too crazy to try for a half marathon within the year – as a goal I think it’s possible, albeit optimistically.

Oh, and one last point. If you have any question about this (or anything else really) I now have a Formspring account Here. For those of you who don’t know Formspring is this awesome service which lets people ask you questions anonymously. I think it’s a cool idea, and I’m using it to force myself to think about things in depth.

That said however, I’m doing this at least partly for reasons related to my course – so feel free to have a read if you’re interested.

I am woefully unfit. This won’t come as a surprise to anyone who knows me and in the past I haven’t cared that much. I’m more than fit enough for the relatively easy walking that we do on university field trips, however I’m not satisfied with this level of fitness. I want to go climb Munros; go Skating a lot more and do my summer mapping project in a reasonably good physical condition. So, to achieve this I am finally making an effort to get a little bit healthier.

There are two main steps involved in this and they are:

1. Exercise a MINIMUM of 3 times a week
2. Stop drinking until (at least) my Birthday in March.

Accompanying me on this probably doomed attempt is one of my best friends, Mark, who is chronicling the attempt on his own blog here. We’re doing it for different reasons, but the desired result is the same. We’re calling it Operation Duck Hook, as a bit of Nixon-era Gallows Humour – something that’s a bit silly and over top that most likely won’t get followed through on.

I haven’t decided yet to what extent I’ll chronicle this on here. This is a geology blog first and foremost so I’d rather not overwhelm it. Never-the-less if you don’t hear me talking about it here or on twitter for a few weeks I would appreciate a good kick. So in any event I’ll let you know what I’ve done in my first week:

Sunday Run – Following the First of Robert Ullrey’s Podcasts for Running. I highly recommend these, they’re really inspiring and are helpful if you don’t really know what you’re doing with regards to training (i.e. you’re like me). I ran along the road out towards Renfrew. Light snow cover on the ground, but nothing too slippy. Run felt pretty easy, but it was the first week and I’m not quite couch potato unfit.

Joined the Gym on Monday. The Glasgow University gym is a fantastic deal – £40 for the entire year (which is about what most gyms charge per month!). I figure that since it’s £3.75 a session otherwise I need to go at least 12 times to make it worthwhile. That’s once a week for the rest of term. I want to make it at least two.

Wednesday Run – Planned to play squash, Courts were booked so went for a run instead. Again used Podcasts for running. Overdid it slightly, so back of my legs felt a bit weird for a couple of days.

Saturday Cross-Trainer – A kilometre at a time on my flatmate’s cross-trainer interspersed with breaks to sort out laundry. Did 10k, little bit worried that my dodgy knee may be unhappy with me though. I don’t particularly like the cross-trainer, it isn’t great for cardio (in my opinion) and it hurts my knees, but it’ll do my leg muscles good.

I plan to hit the gym again tomorrow for another session of running along to the podcasts. That will complete my first week of them, and I’ll be ready to move onto week two of the training program. To give myself a target I’m going to aim to do a 5k funrun in March, followed by a 10k in the summer some time.

Let’s see how it goes.

Edit: Week 2 Update (rather than a new post).

Sunday Run – Did the first of Robert Ullrey’s Podcasts for the third time. This completes the first week of running training, so for the next runs I’ll be using week two. Managed 3.5km on the treadmill. Pretty happy with that, I think I’m on track for being able to do the 5k in March. Knees are acting up a little bit though, so going to go easy on them for the next couple of days.

Monday Run – Gym, Did another Week 1 podcast (taking it slow for the sake of the knees).

Wednesday Squash – Squash with Kathie, I mopped the floor with her but it was nice to see that I’ve still got the skills – it’s like riding a bike.

Thursday Run – Week 2 Podcast.

Friday Run – Week 2 Podcast.

Sunday Squash + Run – Most of a week 2 podcast (cut short for time) + 40 minutes of Squash with Mark (3-1 to me). Pulled a muscle in the back of my left leg though, hoping that I haven’t injured myself too badly. Really enjoyed this gym session, managed to push myself quite hard in the squash games. Mark’s a great opponent because we’re pretty much on the same level skillwise, this means I spend a lot of time running around and jumping for shots.

Plan is to do another 3 (or so) runs over the next week as well as playing Squash again next Sunday. Really starting to get into this.

- Finally managed to wrap up the lab work. We’re now at the data interpretation and paper writing stage, which I am almost no help with – as much of it is still well beyond me. Still, expect to see more updates on this if/when the paper is published.

Borders Trip

- Scremerston

- Eildons
In addition to popping down to the coast we also finally climbed the Eildons (after not managing it last time). Unfortunately, from a geological standpoint this wasn’t too exciting as the rock outcrops were very weathered and sparse. Still, it was a nice mornings climb.

The Largest Eildon

The largest Eildon – note the slightly stepped appearance, this is due to compositional differences in the layering of the lacolith.

Path Erosion in Progress

An Iron Age Hill Fort (believe it or not)

Northern Ireland Trip

- I ferried my way across to Northern Ireland to spend a weekend with my friend Mark. We did the usual tourist wander around Belfast and drove up to see the Giant’s Causeway, possibly the most famous geological site in the UK, and a fantastic example of Columnar Jointed Basalt.

And then we went to Bushmills distillery on the way back; which was good, but nowhere near on par with Scottish Whisky.

(sorry about the slightly poorer photo quality – forgot my digital camera, so used my iPhone)

Giant's Causeway

Causeway

Entirely Inappropriate Footwear (and columnar jointing)

As usual, more photos can be seen on my flickr page.

London Trip

- Once again I also made my annual journey down to London for Apple Campus Rep training, probably not supposed to talk too much about this online though. It was good fun though, and I got to meet lots of interesting people. If you’re in a UK Higher Education establishment I’ll once again plug the discount of up to 15% that you can get from Apple here. /shamelessplug

Up Next:

• This Months Accretionary Wedge (if I get it done before deadline).
• A couple of write ups from class field trips (after I’ve done them, and after the deadline for any work based on them).

Our recent trip to Girvan meant driving for at least a couple of hours. And y’all know what that means: new field trip mixtapes.

Geotrip Disc 3: Nerdcore Special

This Disc is comprised of my favourite Nerdcore tracks. Unfortunately everyone else was less of a fan. Went down well at game night though.

Name – Artist
Geekend Freakout – Nursehella
Roommate From Hell [Ice and Fire Mix] – MC Lars feat. MC Chris
Bank Holiday – The Grammar Club
Penny Arcade Theme – MC Frontalot
Nursehellamentary – Nursehella
1337ology – Beefy feat. MC Router
99 Balloon Flights [Badd Spellah Nena Remix] – The Grammar Club
Fett’s Vett – MC Chris
Goth Girls – MC Frontalot
Download This Song – MC Lars feat. Jaret Riddick
The Positronic Pimp – Futuristic Sex Robotz
Hipster Girl – MC Lars
You Can Call Me Beef – Beefy
Hey There Ophelia – MC Lars
Secrets from the Future – MC Frontalot
Arguing on the Internet – Shael Riley
Internet Relationships – MC Lars
Alternate Ending – The Grammar Club
GP – Beefy feat. MC Router

Geotrip Disc 4 :Nostalgia Pop

A disc full of silly summery pop. Great for a sunny afternoon drive.

Name – Artist
All Star – Smash Mouth
Lemonade – Wheatus
Leave Me Alone (I’m Lonely) – P!nk
Teenage Dirtbag – Wheatus
Wild Wild West – Will Smith
Shining Light – Ash
Say it Ain’t So – Weezer
William McGovern – Wheatus
Lazy Eye – Silversun Pickups
My Life Would Suck Without You – Kelly Clarkson
Get the Party Started – P!nk
Lizstomania – Phoenix
Steal My Sunshine – Len
Mmmbop – Hanson
Doctor Jones – Aqua
Brimful of Asha – Cornershop
We Used to be Friends – The Dandy Warhols
Burn Baby Burn – Ash

Next Time: The Metal Disc, The Goth Disc and the Classical Disc.

• Lab Work: I’m still working in the Lab, having just finished my fifth week there. The project is going really well. We’re starting to get mountains of data back from our GC runs. There are two weeks left on the project, most of which will be spent hydrolysing my esters so that we can identify the acids and alcohols present. Then, time and circumstances permitting we’re going to head over to SUERC in East Kilbride to take a look at Stable Carbon isotopes.
• Girvan Trip: Me, Emma and Emma’s mate John went on a short day trip down the coast between Ballantrae and Girvan (will be more on this later).
• Reading: I’ve got a fair bit of reading done, mostly about Zooplankton. But I also got to re-read one of my favourite books: Anathem by Neal Stephenson, and I’m currently cracking my way through The Code Book by Simon Singh.
• Gaming: Somehow we’ve spontaneously formed a new gaming group, which has let me get back into playing RPGs. We’ve had two massive gaming sessions so far; a D&D Scenario run by Chris and a WFRP game run by yours truly. We’re probably going to spin both of these off into full campaigns.
• Various Internet Nonsense: I’ve moved all my RSS feeds from Thunderbird to Google Reader, with broadly positive results. It saves a lot of time reading stuff on my iPhone while on the subway rather than sitting down to catch up on the days events in a oner. I’ve also started using Mendeley today. I haven’t really used the networking aspect of it at all (I think I prefer LinkedIn still at this point), but the desktop application is fantastic for organising the alarmingly large number of papers I need to read. Highly recommend checking it out.

So yeah, that’s what I’ve been up to. A full post on our Girvan excursion will follow in a couple of days, and a wrap up post about working in the lab will appear in a couple of weeks.

So, Disc 1. This is the more upbeat playlist, for waking up in the morning mostly:

Name – Artist
Party Hard – Andrew W.K.
Walkin Out Yo Girlfriend (lobsterdust mash) – Unk vs. Avril Lavigne ft. Toni Basil
Living Dead Girl (Subliminal Seduction Mix) – Rob Zombie
Fight For Your Right – The Beastie Boys
Hit Me With Your Best Shot – Pat Benatar
Lorelei – Styx
Skullcrusher Mountain – Jonathan Coulton
Black Betty – Ram Jam
Hair Of The Dog – Nazareth
D.A.N.C.E. (MSTRKRFT Remix) – Justice
Play With Me [dj John Remix F. Bethzilla] – Beefy
Wake the White Queen – The Crüxshadows
Summer Of ‘69 – Bryan Adams
Not Gonna Get Us - t.A.T.u.
First Night – The Hold Steady
Gravity – The Superjesus
Blue Orchid (High Contrast Remix) – The White Stripes
Wenches & Mead – Alestorm

And Disc 2, the more chilled out CD for the drive home, picking up slightly towards the end again.

Name – Artist
Mary Anning – Artichoke (It’s a fossil hunting trip, this song was essential)
Bored Of Your Love – Meg & Dia
Baby Got Back – Jonathan Coulton
My Freeze Ray – Neil Patrick Harris
Mr. Roboto – Styx
Common People – William Shatner
Friday I’m In Love – The Cure
The Real Damage – Frank Turner
You Don’t Know Me – Ben Folds Feat. Regina Spektor
MMMBop – Hanson
I’m Like A Bird – Nelly Furtado
Layla – Derek & The Dominos
One For The Cutters – The Hold Steady
Poison – Alice Cooper
Hot N Cold – Katy Perry
The Gambler – Kenny Rogers
Carry on Wayward Son – Kansas

So what are your favourite fieldtrip tunes? Leave a comment with suggestions.

Some photos after the jump:

The Evil TaRDiS (and Jono)

The Balamory minibus (and me)

The Weasley Car from Harry Potter

The only thing that could result in sillier photos at this point would be some sort of maritime themed room…

Ahoy mateys!

Hard to... left?

Evidently, classes need to start again soon to stop the procrastination in its tracks.

A comic about Ada Lovelace and Charles Babbage teaming up as quasi-superheroes. Lots of lovely steampunky goodness.

- A Softer World

Photo comic about… well… it’s actually really hard to describe. Each comic is three panels of a photo or photos, captioned with inevitably hilarious text, often darkly amusing. The Overqualified and I Blame the Sea side projects are also well worth checking out.

- Ctrl+Alt+Del

CAD is best described as a gaming comic, although it’s a lot more than that. The characters have developed into a continuing storyline of their own. Went through a rough patch recently, but it’s getting back on form now. The archives are excellent.

- HijiNKS ENSUE

HE is a comic covering broadly geeky matters (typically movies and tv), often in horrifically funny ways. Less continuing storylines than other comics on this list, more one off gags.

- indexed

A comic consisting entirely of venn diagrams and graphs.
It’s actually pretty awesome.

- Overcompensating

These comics are just getting harder to describe. Overcompensating is one of Jeffrey Rowland’s comics. It alternates between political, absurd and self-chronicling. It’s worth a read.

- Penny-Arcade

As if I need to explain what PA is to someone on the internet. Nominally a gaming comic, but covering a wider range of content. The authors generally have their fingers on the pulse of the geekworld.

- PHD Comics

My latest time-wasting discovery. Chronicling the lives of grad students,and their methods of procrastination. If you’re in a university or academia, it’s well worth checking out.

- Questionable Content

The one soap I admit to following. QC chronicles the lives of several twenty something hipsters from Massachusetts.
WARNING: Do NOT start reading this comic unless you have at least a couple of days to spare – you will read the entire archives in 2 or 3 sittings.

- Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal

Always good for an incredibly twisted one-shot gag.

- Save Hiatus

A decent comic parodying obsessive fans of cancelled shows. Hasn’t updated in a couple of months though. Dead?

- Scary Go Round

Awesome comic, set mostly in the UK (which is a nice change – references I get). Featuring several really fun characters having vaguely supernatural adventures.

- See Mike Draw

Another delightfully twisted comic. Not too regular a schedule, but worth subscribing to. I quite like the art as well.

- the rut

Pretty similar to SMD, more twisted humour. Love it.

- Urf

A joint project by the guys behind See Mike Draw and The Rut. The comic takes a look at the fictional world of Urf, and the odd things that happen there.

- User Friendly

Comic about IT workers, great old ones and current events in tech. Been boring me a bit lately though.

- XKCD

You have an internet connection if you’re reading this, so I’m sure you’ve seen xkcd before. If you like science, math, technology or are in any way geeky I highly recommend you check it out.

My initial take on this is one of annoyance; now that being a geek is ‘cool’, the label which we, the oddballs, have defined ourselves by has been appropriated by the mainstream. As Wil Wheaton said:

we know what at least some of those things are, and Cool Kids have teased us for it our whole lives. It feels to me like those same people are now trying to take our culture away from us and make a quick buck off of exploiting it, and us.

What Wil said there about our culture originating from a place where we were outsiders is repeated by Z:

This enduring “geek chic” that the mainstream media has become so fixated upon is key to spreading our message of hope, but it can also prove a destructive element if we lose site of the fact that we are all but defined by some of our most unsavory experiences and inclinations. Whether geek or nerd, we each spent a lengthy season being abused, neglected, isolated. We know what it’s like to be bullied and to be made to feel insignificant. We know what it’s like to be outsiders. But while this pain is certainly not ours alone, it is also a defining force that we must not lose sight of.

This is, to me, what is is to be a geek. Being part of a group of people who’ve passed through rough experiences because of their interests, their attitudes and even their appearances. I’ll be the first to admit that we might have issues with people who’ve never experienced that kind of thing and claim they’re a geek because they use twitter and have a blog.

Yet on the flip side, these things becoming mainstream takes the heat off. We might have a new generation of geeks; who program, or play D&D, or magic, or maybe just love science; and are able to go through high school being respected rather than mocked. However, is that what’s happening lately? I don’t think it is, Science continues to be dismissed and misunderstood by the media and mainstream culture – someone who works as a physicist is still not as ‘cool’ as a football player or actor, yet the actor is a ‘geek’ who uses twitter.

I’ll keep my Nerdcore; my DVDs of genre shows; my slashdot account; my RSS reader filled with geoblogs; my shelves stacked with sci-fi, fantasy, RPG and science textbooks; hell, I’ll keep my glasses. You can even keep sneering at those of us who play D&D. I’ll be happy regardless, because I’m part of a culture where diversity, intelligence and being different is a good thing. I fit in with them because I don’t fit in – and I like it that way. Join in if you like, but don’t claim to be one of us, and dismiss those of us who’re into the weirder bits of our culture at the same time (except for LARPers, even we mock them ;)).