atm

Grrr, I dont like personal statements. But, unfortunately, theyre kinda important, so I have to so it :@

Helped out at open evening last night, helping with the physics department. Got to play with static electricity for a while which is always fun. The kids seemed quite stunned by my ability to have electricty flowing out of my finger onto a steel tube. Looked quite cool. Afterwards teh physics teacher showed me and James how to create an incredibly effective fuse for our Malteser cannon. Test firing tonight at 1600.

So my quest goes on....

Linux

So yesterday I installed linux (ubuntu 5.4 the hoary hedgehog)on the screwed computer i have...and now it seems to be fine :D

Only problem is adjusting to linux. Im slowly getting used to the concept of bash shells. However my misguided views of linux not crashing drowned this morning after i plugged my guitar in, ran the sound receorder program and....nothing!?

Had a poke with the music options but nothing. oh well. It even crashed when I clicked the record sound button :S

I cant even make nmap work :(

But im sure Ill get it with time.

In other news....HIGHTWISH IN 5 HOURS!!!!!

DRAGONFORCE!!

WOOO!
I saw Dragonforce last night at the Camden Barlfy. It was amasing. I got to shake hands with most of the band and was even singing down the mic at one stage. Managed to steal a set list for at the end of the show. The band played great and Herman was on fire as usual. The support band would have been good, if it hadnt of been for their emo singer :@

The band played all their best songs, Valley of the Dammed, Soldiers of the Wasteland and Heart of a Dragon :D

The journey there was uneventful, but on the way back was talking to some people. One girl said something about banana mountain on the 20th november. Anyone know what this is?

Dragonforce

Oh, and im going to see Nightwish on sunday. WOO!

xstrata cont.

Another thing \ive just noticed when looking at that graph is, Xstrata's share value almost exactly follows that of the sector average, It just rises at the same time.

Any thoughts anyone? [If anyone reads this...]

Xstrata

Xstrate are a mining company based in Switserland. They are listed on the LSE and the Swiss stock exchange. I heard about them 2 years ago while participating in an economics competition at school - we had to invest £100,000 of virtual money into companies. If only that money had been real:



Theyre share value (the red line), has more than doubled over 2 years. The blue line is the mining sector as a whole. As you can see, Xstrata is doing very well.

There success could be due to their acquisition of MIM holdings last year, and their other various acquisitions of late.

The main contributing factor is probably the decrease in the supply natural resources and increasing demand for them from places like china pushing up prices. Xstrata must be making a tidy sum out of this demand!

Taxes

I was taking a look at the bbc (www.bbc.co.uk) website today, and found an interesting graph showing how the amount of tax paid changes over time with the amount the government spends on public transport. According to the first figure, tax paid and government spending in transport used to be equal in 1975, but since then there has been a growing difference, with tax increasing and government spending decreasing. Today, the difference is at £30 billion.



It also shows a set of scales for the US, Germany, France and the UK, giving the ratio of tax to transport spending. Interestingly the US is teh only country with a 1:1 ratio. The other countries, all european, have a greater ratio, of >1:1

The UK has the greatest difference in Europe, with a ratio of 5:1

Just found it interesting....might throw in a bit more analysis later.

Bollocks

The above.

Took this in Denham County park ageees ago. 

UCAS and beyond

Got to start with the whole UCAS application thing soon. At the moment im intending to do a gap year as an actuarie for PWC, and then go do physics with a year in Europe at Bath university.

Went to Thorpe pak yesterday with Charlotte, James and Laura. Charlotte drove :) Was going good until I finished off Charlottes chips and then went on Rush. Those negative G's were not good after the chips, so i decided to sit a while on a bench. Charlotte joined me one ride later as she too was not too good. I slept a little and talked for a few hours then James and Laura met up with us and we went back to Uxbridge where sleep ensued.

The joys of sweat shops

On the way to plymounth and back I was reading a book of short economic essays.
Yeah I know, sad.
But it had some very interesting points about the 'evils' of sweat shops:

1. Their (the labourers) quality of life has increased. They all used to work on farms just growing enough food to last the until the next crop, and sometimes not even that. So surely low paid bad jobs are better than no jobs at all??

2. 1st world countries have the capital and infrastructure to build the sweat shops. This growth in a countries export industries (the t-shirts and nike (yuck) trainers), causes a measurable improvement in the lives of ordinary people. The new industry has to offer higher wages than they make working on their farms, causing people to actually work there.

3. The growth of manufacturing causes a ripple effect thoughout the economy. The pressure on rural land declines, so rural wages increase.

4. As lots of people in the cities are now employed, there is an increase in competition to get more workers into the factories, so wages rise.

These factories are also causing a measurable improvement in countries where the process has been happening for a while. In 1974 Indonesia, more than half of the countries children were malnourished. Now it is a third. These improvements are throughout the pacific rim and bamgledesh.

Its not aid thats inproving thihrd world countries, its Nike.

So much for those anti globalists....

The book was written by Paul Krugman and is entittled "The accidental theorist". Available on penguin.

yeah im in plymouth!

There are loads of chavs here, shame i forgot me shotgun!
Im stayin at me mates luke's house, and we're currently butchering sousages!! tasty.