Insanity is A OK.

Well the latest victim has now signed up! Andrew now has a blog, theogeek.blogspot.com. Note that is also not exam time so he may not use the excuse "temporary insanity due to exams" to explain his sudden reversal and establishment of a blog.

Time flies by.

Well it's been a bit since I last posted here fair bit's been going on with uni starting up again. Unfortunately looks like I'll have to do some work this term as I'm taking a lab paper "Biochemical Techniques". Which means lots of lab reports and assignments. It should be an interesting paper though with two especially interesting bits, The Murder Mystery and the Projects.
The Murder Mystery is a non assessed assignment/project thingy, where we attempt to solve a fictional Murder produced by one of our Lecturers.

Here's a brief out line of it.

The deceased was a 20 year old Female flatting with one of her best friends (Female) who is also her ex lover. She was having an affair with her flatmates father a 40+ year old geneticist who's primary area of research is Bioterrorism and is currently married to his second wife a Microbiologist also researching bioterrorism.
The deceased had recently thought she might be pregnant and had mentioned it to her lover.
The deceased was a test tube baby which she new, but cloned by her current lover 20 years ago, from DNA that was claimed to have come from a finger bone of Helen of Troy.
The deceased had been taking Gossiupy an anti nausea Medicine provided by her flatmate (ex lover) who had gotten it from her step mother (her fathers second wife.)
The flatmates mother (the first wife) had died ~20 years previously of the flu at the age of ~30 and had left her considerable fortune to her husband.

And that's just the basic out line.

The second part of the course which will begin in the second term is a 7 week research project into one of the topics provided by various members of the Biochemistry department. The topics I've expressed an interest in doing are.

Switching enzymes on and off: are tyrosine phosphatase's present in plants and fungi
Which will test for the presence of tyrosine kinases (a type of enzyme) in a number of plant and fungal species. Making use of such techniques as ELISA, Western blotting, antibodies for molecular species detection, coupled enzyme assays and the genomics database.

How do parasites invade host cells? - Turgor pressure in a parasitic plant.
Which will involve examining turgor pressure in Cuscuta cells and the effect of hormones on the turgor pressure.

Detecting toxic metals in the environment: fungal growth patterns could provide a new tool
Which involves the use of fractal geometry to examine the shape of colonies of Microbes growing on various agar plates contaminated with toxic metals.

Enzymes of nitrogen nutrition in Old man's beard
Which is studying NO3 assimilation via the NR protein in Old man's beard. Via hydroponic growth of plants, enzyme extraction and assays and quantifying enzyme concs using antibodies.

Hopefully I'll get the first one as it appears to be the most interesting of the ones I choose.


Quick note times I'm most likely to be found hanging round uni with noting to do are.
Monday 1pm.
Tuesday 10-12 and 1pm.
Wednesday @ CU.
Friday 12-1.
Rest of the time I'm usually at home or in lectures or Labs.

The Limitations of God?

After having read the last to post on Reuben's blog I was wondering what are God's limitations (I've thought about this before)?

Does God actually have limitations?
Does he have limitations in his abilities?
Are any “limitations” only really decisions that God has made and decided to abide by?

What do you think?

Thinking about it at various times I've come to think that God does have some “limitations” that result from his very Nature or at least appears to based on our perceptions of his Nature. Most of you probably wouldn't call these “limitations” most likely advantages and I guess many of them are what are things that would seem to be limitations in a human but in God are only advantages.

Any way these are the ones think he may have.

He is can only be truthful and follow his word exactly. He is unable to lie in any form or manner, i.e. he can not conceal “emotions”, shade the truth, tell only part of the truth (might be some exceptions) pretend to be what he is not . He may decide not to revel something but can not easily tell partial truths.

He can not change, his word or mind. Once he says something he will do it.

He is unable to completely force a human to do something he may set things up so that there is only a 1x10^100 or less chance that we will not do what he wants but in the end the final choice is ours, even if it only comes down to the random firing of one neuron or something.

Really most of these are not truly “limitations” for god but would be if applied to a human in the world as it is today.

Any way what do people think?

Does God actually have limitations, can he be limited?

Does he have limitations in his abilities?

Are any “limitations” only really decisions that God has made and decided to abide by?

Blogging.

Just read a rather interesting Story/Article on Blogging at The Register titled "8000 bloggers born every day".
The Stat's mentioned seem a little odd but the Article on the whole is quite interesting.
The Story can be found here.

I can't really imagine that many people get sued over there blogs though it seems rather crazy.

Changes.

Finally managed to regain access to the web space we get with our Internet connection the result being I now have some storage space for images and other stuff. The result being that I'm playing around with what this looks like a bit.

One thing I wouldn't mind some help on people is a better colour for the Site heading something that stands out on the leaf background I'm using and preferablely fits with the rest of the blog. Any suggestions would be welcome.

Any way Uni's back in as most of you know by now, or should know by now :). Which means back to lectures and labs. This semester the only changes to my time table are that Molecular genetics (An interesting paper) has ended and been replaced by "Biochemical Techniques" a full Semester lab paper which should be a lot of fun with the first thing where doing being the annual Murder Mystery. In which one of the lecturers has invented a Murder and story to go with it and we must work out who committed the murder through questioning and the use of Biochemical and forensic techniques should be a lot of fun just hopefully it's a little less dodgy than some of the previous years ones.


Well as usual the spell checker isn't working I really need to work out how I managed to disable it so oo.org instead then.

Thanks & IM

Well this is just to say thanks to Jess for holding the Monty Python evenings at her place for the three nights, alot of fun for all and alot of tickling for a couple of people. On that note I might as well inform you all that Tickling.mp3 has been sent to those who can make best use of it :-).
I'm sure you can all guess who they are. For those who couldn't make it you might want to grab a copy so you can share the fun :).
It can be found here for the moment.

Apart from that though I note some of you use various IM programs. If your interested in adding me to your contacts either send me an email if you know it already or use this (once you've corrected it, hint no " "'s).
"cha 93 at student . canterbury . ac"
I've ICQ, MSN, yahoo and jabber accounts ("Hey who said geek Grh!").

I wonder if it will work this time!

Done & Gone.

Finally they're out of the way the Exam and 2 tests are finished. Thankfully they where all quite nice so now it's one week of holidays and I need things to do. There's a bit of a list at the moment.

* Get to the library for some reading material.
* Watch some Monty Python stuff at Jess's (If I can catch a or 3 there lift).
* Fiddle around with python or Monodevelop and C#.
* Possibly watch around the world in 80 days video's.
* Maybe stick some stuff online here.
* Play some Settlers of Catan, well more accurately Cities and Knights with those who are interested.
* Tidy my Room before mum throws every thing in the bin or on the bed.
* Sleep, eat, read and listen to music.
* Watch Spiderman 2 (would have been today but too much is happening, Any one interested some time next week? Or after church tomorrow?).

That should at least keep me some what busy for the first couple of days.