New Hair – Tri Coloured (by sarah)

My hair is still a little damp in the photos so it will be slightly lighter and a bit more curly. I think I might stick with this for a while rather than adding the funky colours as I love the way it has turned out - a sort of Cindy Luarper cum Lulu look (if I was thinner and had straight hair that was much shorter!).

Turing Centenary (by sarah)

Alan Turing one of the most important people in the history of the computer would have turned 100 today if he had lived. Though the chances of living to 100 are not great Turing didn't even manage to get as far as he should have.

It is occasionally argued about but it is considered that he committed suicide due to being hounded by the powers that be and given chemicals to subdue his sex drive. The reason for this was that he was Gay and in 40's and 50's being homosexual was not just illegal but thought to be a security risk.

Alan was faced with the choices of chemical castration or prison and exclusion from his work. He chose the chemicals. They had nasty side effects but he seems to have taken his treatment mainly in his stride.

Mr Turing wasn't just a mathematical genius he was a war hero having worked at Bletchley Park during the second world war cracking codes and thus saving at least allied lives. He is most often mentioned in association with the enigma machine.

His contributions to modern computing are huge and he is considered one of the founders of the subject Computer Science.

His achievements are great and yet the first time I heard of him was when I picked up one of Alaric's computing books after our move to Gloucestershire. It is strange that like Ada Lovelace he seems to have fallen through the cracks some what. And worse than that his centenary year is plagued by arguments of how to portray him.

Is it good or bad for those on the autism spectrum to know of him and so on. If he had been alive to day he would have probably been diagnosed with Aspergers syndrom but why is this a problem? Yes that was a facet of his personality but that is all. Use him to show others in the same situation as him that they can achieve by all means but that is not what is happening - I think there needs to be a gear shift in society. After all with the modern world lets face it the Geek shall inherit and that is all geeks, the meek, mild, argumentative, know it alls and the distracteds.

His achievements are his and he should be being portrayed as a founder and hero to everyone and I mean everyone. I will twist Alaric's arm into writing a blog post about Alan's achievements.

We made a Turing Machine Cake and drew the shamefully bad picture at the top of the post.

Solstice (by sarah)

It is Mid Summers Night and it is tipping it down. The rain seems to last forever even though yesterday was lovely. Now I find it really difficult to have energy if the sun is not shining so I decided to make a sun picture to share with everybody and amazingly the baby let me! Though she her self did end up covered in pen and we had a slight altercation over running off with all of mummy's pens.

Thursdays is Alaric's day in Bristol so me and the girls tend to bake stuff and watch films. Today we did bagel burgers and solar cakes complete with sun spots 🙂

Recipes will be on Salaric Cooking soon 🙂

How the Garden Grows (by sarah)

As of yesterday our garden broke even on the amount of money spent on plants, soil and pots, ok so it is a slight cheat as we bought alot of stuff with us and have been given a lot of things and that does not include Mary's apple tree but still I am very happy with this. Especially as everything is in pots and containers!

Above are some of our crops 🙂 At the weekend I bought a lovely rosemary plant for 50 p too 🙂

I love my salad! Recipe is on Salaric Cooking.

Science Show Off with Cheltenham Skeptics In The Pub (by sarah)

Saturday was a hectic manic day with School Fetes, baby throwing up, art gallery stuff and Science Show Off.

Science Show off was part of the fringe science festival and was organised by Skeptics In The Pub. It appears to be a regular event in London and I have even signed up to do a talk in Bristol though the slots where already full 🙁

Anyway here are the photos I took of the event which had me laughing far too much. It was low light levels so the photos are a bit ropey I'm afraid.

This guy had a rainbow that whizzed round - always a winner with me.

This talk even had live music played on a piano by Rob Wix (I think).

This was @ FunSizeSuze talking about pendulums 🙂

This guy gave a talk on why chillies are spicy hot 🙂 Here he is eating a rather hot chilli after which he could be found re-examining his experiment in a sink shaped test tube.

These guys were Domestic Science and had wine and a slide show of how they used noodles as litmus paper to test the acidity/alkali nature of kitchen products. It was quiet funny.

This talk on a brief history of electronics (cor look at that guys valves!) was really interesting and was one that I lernt some new stuff - stuff that is relavent to a young adult sci-fi book I am writing at the moment.

This was the other half of the pendulum talk but focused more on the fear reaction that Suze had had whilst taking part in the flying trapeze when she is petrified of heights!

This talk was on termites which again was not only entertaining - especially as it involved hissing cockroaches - I had been looking at some earlier on Saturday at the School fete along with pygmy hedgehogs. This talk is another one that is going to provide ideas and material for the fiction writing - oh yes!

I didn't manage to get a photo of everyone 🙁 And I need to get better at photography and maybe even get a nice camera that works and doesn't need shaking.

I really enjoyed the show 🙂 I'm also hoping there are going to be more Skeptics In The Pub stuff as I made it too very little this week due to the fall at the beginning :/