leicsmac

Little bit gamier, little bit stringier.

You, sir, are a twisted human being.

Masters in Astronautics and Space Engineering. The flight stuff is supposed to teach us practically about dynamic control systems with 6-degrees of freedom (whether in air, or in space).

Got to do one of my two free flights as part of my uni course today, so I went up in this: Was brilliant. Did some decent aerobatics and learned a bit about control surfaces too. Had control for a fair part of the flight too, then the instructor deliberately put us into a downward spiral and told me to pull out of it. Must admit having to put on a parachute at the start did sh*t me up a bit too. But it was great. Provided a welcome distraction from upcoming exams and assignments, and already looking forward to my second flight. Edit: this is an archive photo, by the way - we don't actually have cool military jets at our uni too.

Federer powering away with this now...Murray let losing that first set tightly get to him. Still some work for Lendl to do in that respect. All things considered, not a bad year for Murray though.

Fed takes the first set on a TB. Nothing really between the two of them.

Murray started strong, Fed coming back into it now.

Murray-Federer in the second semi-final just started. Murray with the early break. This is going to be interesting.

Ah right. Well...my twopennyworth is that zero-tolerance approaches work...but only if you are willing to spend gross amounts of money on policing it. Also countries with big borders - either land or sea - will have a lot of trouble preventing smuggling due to the sheer amount of area required to cover. Also from what I can tell most states that carry out a zero-tolerance approach are either politically or religiously conservative anyway, and that belief in the majority of the population helps dissuade drugs from becoming widespread. For me though, the biggest threat to zero-tolerance approaches is the sheer economics of the thing. By the very virtue of its illegality, the drugs trade is insanely valuable, and that money naturally breeds corruption, even amongst the most hardcore conservative governments. To make sure no one profits from drugs in your country, you have to have law enforcement that is next to incorruptible. Again, with small countries this is possible, but bigger ones? So for smaller countries, I think zero-tolerance can work, but for bigger, more populous ones I don't think it can. And for most bigger countries, they instead adopt a half-arsed approach that benefits no one.

Back all square in the second set...sensational point at 0-30 on the Murray serve there.

So your view on this is utterly absolutist then...you will accept no other point of view than your own?

So, so polarising. Incredible. Hilarious too.

Djokovic safely through, Murray probably about to join him. Beating a very disinterested looking Tsonga to a pulp right now.

Foreign policy - spot on. Domestic policy...left just a little bit to be desired IMO. Incidentally, as a microism of society on this site I still find it really amazing how people can view the same person (who did the same actions) in such different ways. I guess some people are just as polarising as Marmite. And that's something of a tribute to the variation of humanity in general. It'd be a fvcking boring world if we were all the same.

Into a decider we go. Nothing between them.

Murray one set up on Nole but a break down in the second...interesting stuff. These two always seem to throw up classics these days.

This. This so many times it's unreal. Absolute scum.

That's interesting stuff, didn't know that. Very odd. Well, I think my point about Murray in the evening SF is still valid, hopefully you'll get to see him play Federer as you want. Expect Murray to make it to the SF's now as I can't see him losing to Tsonga on this surface/format. Mind you, he did go out in highly interesting circumstances in 2009 having won two matches when the Federer-Del P match ended in one of only 3 possible exact scorelines that put him out on percentage of games won.

Saturday, right? Reckon as long as Murray is still involved he'll be in the evening SF...I'd say it's pretty likely he'll be playing Federer, assuming that he loses to Djokovic in the group stage and Djoko tops the group. Otherwise you might get Murray-Del P. Good gritty win for Murray today - traditional slow start but was well on top by the end.

Time to resurrect this thread as the season finale is here - the World Tour Finals in London, beginning today. Top 8 players in the world (sans Nadal who's still broken) are there, and the group format adds a little extra intrigue to the tournament. Group A has Djokovic, Murray, Berdych and Tsonga. Group B has Federer, Del Potro, Ferrer and Tipsarevic. On paper Group A certainly looks like the toughest group, all with players who can beat each other on a given day - more so than Group B, at least. Murray plays Berdych first up today at about 2pm...given the layout of his group he really could do with winning that one, as he wouldn't really fancy having to beat Djoko and Tsonga in straight sets to stand a chance of qualifying for the semi-finals. He's got a losing H2H record v Berdych, but two of those losses were on clay so won't really have much bearing here. Murray's first serve needs to be firing, and he'll need all his on-court guile to negate Berdbrains booming serve and groundstrokes...it all comes down to which Murray shows up, really. Djoko plays Tsonga this evening - this one could be interesting too. Obviously Djoko is the favourite, but if Tsonga turns it on he can make things very difficult for anyone. Group B play their first matches tomorrow.

Of course if Vodafone, Starbucks et al paid their way while continuing to do business in this country a lot of families, middle-class or otherwise, would be able to pay less tax. Or have improved public services - provided terminal bureaucracy didn't get in the way of that, of course.

You still get paid to do a PGCE, but it's pretty strictly dependent on the subject you're going to teach. Science and Maths gets a much bigger bursary than other subjects. If you're into teaching, have you considered teaching English abroad for a year or two? I did two years in South Korea, and it was amazing. It'd look good on your CV and normally you can save a fair amount of wonga because the cost of living is cheaper there. And to keep this on topic...

Busy day - the lecturers here aren't fvcking us about. Most of us are coming from different backgrounds onto this course, and so they're needing to get everyone on the same page as far as the various aspects of space and engineering go. Some of my course mates that have studied some of the stuff we're doing now before say we're taking two weeks to cover topics that took them 3 months first time around (to the same depth). Funky shit. But I'm loving actually having to engage my brain and think about this stuff a lot. The job I had teaching in Korea was brilliant, but it was pretty samey and it was really easy to get bored in your job. This is entirely different.

Yeah, there's some great opportunities about. The commercial space industry here and abroad seems to be one of the few areas that the recession hasn't utterly savaged (fvcking coke snorting silk shirt wearing...and so on) because comms companies and the like are always going to need stuff putting up there and new designs.