The Higgs Field (by sarah)

This is a visual joke or pun about the Higgs field. It is in no way correct. I drew it last night and already this morning my little girl asks 'What's a Higgs Field?' so it's purpose has been served.

A Higgs Field is not the type of field where fluffy lambs play but it is thought to 'birth' the particles of the Boson family. These are sub-atomical particles but they are some of the ones that make up the sub-atomics you learnt at school. The Higgs-Boson particles are thought to be what gives all the other particles mass. Mass is what makes matter all clump together.

Matter is everything, so that is the atoms that make the stars, the atoms that make the Earth, the atoms that make you and me and Jeany and little baby Mary. All of it.

Without the Higgs everything would be wizzing around at the speed of light - they think. This was the idea they came up with 50 years ago, well specifically Peter Higgs did and he was told he was wrong but he kept going even though it is scary to be told you are wrong.

Now I'm still abit hazy on what is a field in this case and what is the particle so you may have to look that up yourself. (on that note guys are we talking probability fields and planck equations here? I'm a bit confused as the field is supposed to permeate the universe?)

The picture came from a friends facebook status were he gave his life sciences view on what had happened yesterday. I liked the imagery of a field giving birth to a particle and then I thought about the fact that yesterdays discovery had taken fifty years but like 3 of hard slog and that became the labour in my mind. Then I thought about the fact that they have found a Higgs-Boson and not the Higgs-Boson* and how annoyed anyone would be to have spent that long in labour and be told it wasn't over yet!

It is a shameless personification of something that can only really be visualised with mind bending maths and it is done as a joke! Honest guys don't shoot me 🙂

p.s. I am not saying that the theoretical part before the collider wasn't hard slog but more that the physical aspect of the experiments fit better with the idea of labour!

Cornbury Sunday 2012 (by sarah)

There are a lot of photos here, just click on any you want to see bigger 🙂 (WARNING lots of CUTE)

Sunday Morning at Cornbury Music Festival loomed large and again I was the first to rise,s o I went to the lovely on site showers and then went and bought Kava Coconut milk from the brilliant site store and began making breakfast and stuff. Jean had instructed me not to run away again as she didn't like me being missing Saturday morning when she woke up!

Though the baby didn't stay over with us again as she is still so chesty she did have a good explore of the campsite 🙂 Whilst her sister decided to roll down the hill in her sleeping bag - this is traditional for camps we are on. Last day come rain or shine she gets to find a hill and roll! This time she was disgruntled as I wouldn't let her go any further and there were spiky plants she was worried she would roll into!

We didn't see the giant rainbow birds again but we did see some Road Rage Grannys ridding their shopping trollies - Jean thinks it might have been the same people just doing a new pretend.

We had a go at Welly Wanging - Alaric almost won me a pair of wellies but the welly skidded half an inch over the line and it had to be the whole welly in the circle 🙁

Mary Mary not quiet a fairy, has lots of flowers you know! She also kept trying to run off with other toddlers which was fine until they got pushy as toddlers do and being small she was being bowled over by babies 3 months her junior!

Alaric really wanted to make a fish as did I but Jean didn't so Al went and made one anyway but just the frame as we didn't want to be taking a gluey drying thing home with us!

I love stilt walkers! This time it was a larger than life Lord who kept trying to join in the Morris Dancing!

Jean has a habit of finding people who will blow bubbles for her - this I found is quadrupled when she has her sister with her!

We still could not find any childrens ear defenders so Jeany did not want to go to near the stages but that didn't stop her and Mary from dancing to the songs!

The girls loved the ribbon maze which Jean had spent large parts of the festival making as she did last year at the festivals!

We liked the Morris Dancers especially as they had girl ones dressed in funky blacks highlighted with different colours and there was a Big Cheese too who actually had a cheese hat 🙂 I had to stop the girls trying to join in, I spotted the symptoms - wiggling and inching forward in the hope mummy and daddy wouldn't notice. But big sticks and stomping feet wouldn't mix well with little girls so I had to be mean!

Mary managed to join in the crafts this year - well painting - with just a little help. Jeany was so excited to be helping Mary to paint!

There was one group of people running the most fantastic kids workshops! This was the Going Native one which Jean loved!

She even made a bow and arrow which she got a bit annoyed with having done actual archery - there was a feather and no knock on the end of the arrow. No arrow rest she could cope with but no knock....

Here is a pic of my family festivaling it 🙂

I ran the sock puppet making so Jean made several - this is her with one of her creations whilst wearing her angry birds hat from Wychwood Festival.

And then after face painting and candyfloss and Jean winning a badge from the Qi elves for her question about recursive acronymes (it was her own question too! I was relieved that it was a different set of people to the ones I'd asked my question off!). It was time to go - with me moaning about a certain Will Young who's lovely voice was mullering once again, one of my favourite songs - warrble warrble - how much warrble? rolls eyes.

Cornbury Festival 2012 (by sarah)

Thursday I was so tired - I had had a bad night of muscle spasms but was very excited about Cornbury music festival and I still had a lot of stuff to pack (like all my workshop stuff!). I ment to post these pics of the new hair before I went but forgot! If you want to see bigger versions of any of the photos just click on them 🙂

We ended up putting our tent up in the twilight and therefore cooking dinner in the dark - but I think Alaric enjoyed the challenge 🙂

I was quiet cold and woke Alaric up quiet early on Friday as I didn't realise exactly how early it was. I had restarted my iron tablets but was still suffering cramps in my leg muscles and stuff and I was bored!

It was quiet wet in contrast to last year when I got sun burnt! Not that Alaric cared it gave him an excuse to wear his cloak. It was interesting with the cloak - at Wychwood people had asked where we had bought it and were excited about it - at Cornbury we got Dickheads being very unoriginal about it. Though looking at the second pic I think the Hogwarts comment was spot on - it was just the sentiment behind it that narked.

We headed out to the Festival before it was actually open to the public so that we could work out were the workshop was going to be etc...

I took photos of funky festival things (as I always do).

These were for the top of the bins and are a funky use of empty bottles and has me thinking of some more upcycled projects 🙂

We had lunch back at the campsite and then headed off to run the first of the weekend workshops 🙂 This year it was Sock Puppets which worked really well.

We then went to the Qi tent were I was expecting cocktails as it said interesting drinks in the programme but alas and alack there were none. But Alaric had fun working on my tea cosy and knitted about ten carbon atoms whilst thinking of a question to ask the 'elves'. I asked 'Where are you most likely to find naturally occuring terrestrial buckminsterfullerene (C60 also known as Bucky Balls). I got a badge for challenging them and then much to my suprise as I hadn't seen anyone else given one - I got a signed photo! I think this was for knowing the answer!

I watched Never the Bride whilst Alaric went to get Jeany from my parents.

Jean of course insisted we head straight to the Alpro stand!

I saw this cool natural lighting on the wicker man so had to take another photo!

We then saw same of Charlotte Church - she was delayed by technical difficulties and was a bit wobbly for the first song but then she was great.

We then found a very tall police man.

Then I got to watch the Waterboys 🙂

Jean and Daddy having a sneaky snack that wasn't camp food I'd bought with us!

We then saw the first rainbow of the weekend 🙂

I was really gutted actually as it was a really faint rainbow and disappeared and I headed off to get Jean some suprise bubbles for the morning but I left the camera behind and lo! Full arch with glorious storm lighting over glowing banners up in the festival grounds. It would have been a stunning photo :/

Photos of Jeany

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 🙂