Wow, this week has just flown by. With the arrival of my postdoc last weekend, my research is really accelerating. Art wants to submit an R01 this June to look at image processing methods for measuring respiratory motion during imaging and therapy, that should be interesting and very helpful for our PET results. I just sent off a seed grant application to look at developing reporter genes to image oxygen concentrations in tissues. I'm very excited about that project (especially since i received several reassurances this week that i would be supported in my efforts to perform biology-oriented research) ... i think it will spark a lot of studies. And Bill and i are beginning to use some software i developed (remember my geometry problem?) to look at the impact of PET on radiotherapy planning. The rollercoaster ride continues.

Chelsea managed a 1-1 draw in their Champions League showdown with the Arse on Wednesday. I didn't even read the live commentary, basically because i was very busy and the nerves of watching the match unfold would've brought my work to a grinding halt. In typical Chelsea vs. Arsenal fashion, we scored first then gave up an equalizer shortly thereafter. Apparently we played a strong match though. The pundits point out that we gave up an away goal (soccer tutorial: two legged encounters are decided first by goal difference, and if that's equal, then by the number of goals scored away from home). However, from the outset i thought that to advance we needed at least a win and a draw from the two matches. We've got our draw, now it's time to throw down at Highbury.

I used a $50 Best Buy gift card to pick up the newly released Splinter Cell: Pandora Tomorrow on Wednesday. As i was diligently creating Veronica and my wedding website (to be released shortly), i didn't get a chance to play it until last night when V and Kevin headed to Popscene. Ooh boy. Picking up right where the brilliance of the first left off. The big news about this installment is the innovative multiplayer game, where you play a cat-and-mouse game as either a spy or a mercenary (ie, hunter). I'm not big into multiplayer (getting my ass kicked at Quake 3 Arena by some 12 year old in Norway wasn't my idea of fun), but this may convince me to get on Xbox Live.

In my continuing musical education, i discovered that Nick Cave's first band The Birthday Party are awesome. I was never much into Nick Cave, but the dark, aggressive sounds of his first musical forays are wonderful. I may have to start at immediately post-TBP Bad Seeds Cave and see where that takes me.

how young are you? how old am i? let's count the rings around my eyes how smart are you? how dumb am i? don't count any of my advice

Wednesday is it ... time for Chelsea to stop gaping in awe at the apparent invincibility of Arsenal, time for us to shake off recent history and prove to the world that north London is not now (nor has it ever been) the footballing center of Europe, time to stop running and hiding when we encounter the first hint of red and white adversity, time for our defense to earn a mystique to rival that of the Highbury back four, time for our expensively collected midfielders to expose the weaknesses of their opposite numbers, time for Hernan Crespo, Adrian Mutu, Eidur Gudjohnsen, and Jimmy Floyd Hasselbaink to show Thierry Henry that Stamford Bridge has its share of lethal strikers. Time to kick some f@$#ing Arse.

Danny came down and spent the night on Friday so he could get to SJ early Saturday morning to scope out the course of an upcoming triathlon. We showed him a proper San Mateo evening by heading downtown to see Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, followed by burritos at Pancho Villa. The film was fantastic. Jim Carrey turns in probably his best dramatic performance yet as Joel Barrish, a self-professed "not that interesting" guy who, after suffering a horrible breakup with Clementine Kruczynski (sexy wild-haired Kate Winslet), decides to have his memories of her erased through a novel procedure offered by Lacuna Corporation. Charlie Kaufman, the author of Being John Malkovich and Adaptation, again delivers a fantastic surreal experience. You can pick apart the film's meaning from a hundred different angles. I was most interested in how they addressed the notion that memories are subjective constructs that may not correspond with historical truth.

On Saturday i picked up my inaugural postdoc Lan at the airport, and drove him to his hotel. I was a bit unsure of what i was going to do with a postdoc, but now i'm more excited about getting my lab generating some results. He brought me two sets of beautiful decorated chopsticks as a gift from Shanghai. On Sunday we had a visit from Chemdry carpet cleaners, who gave our living room the $300 beatdown including odor elimination and stain removal. It looks great now, although Veronica just messaged me to let me know Cobi scratched the hell out of her tumor again. Poor little pup.

Thought i'd put up a few pictures of our poor little puppy. They're fairly low quality shots from my cell phone, but as luck would have it that's the only photographic equipment she'll sit still for. She's in her cat pose in the top image, and just emerging from a bath in the middle one. And she looks so cute curled up in a ball napping in the bottom pic. She's slowing down a bit these days, a little more lethargic, less playful. Dunno how much longer she has. It's been a fun ride.

Veronica and i had a night right out of 1996 on Monday. Thanks to our Popscene/Aaron Axelson connections, we swung tickets for the 100 person Yeah Yeah Yeahs studio session at the Metreon, starting at 7pm. We arrived at 5:30pm and had dinner, just like old times, at the Firewood Cafe. We got in line around 6pm, behind 3 or 4 high school kids. Come 6:45 there were only maybe ten people in line total, making me feel a bit of a tool for standing there for an hour. The kids in front of us were nice enough. We got on the subject of cameras in venues, and i mentioned that Veronica had been forced to check in her phone cam at the Warfield once. They asked us what show that was, and i immediately realized that i would sound like an old fart if i admitted we had been there for the A Mighty Wind tour. Veronica blurted it out though ... damn i felt old. Anyhoo, we got ushered in at 6:50 and sat down in the second row. For a high-energy rock band like the YYY, i thought it a bit odd that there were three stools at the front of the theater (no stage, really). And no drum kit either. Turns out the performance was just Karen O singing and Nick playing a six string acoustic ... more Cat Power than girl power. The drummer got to sit around drinking water. They played "Maps", a excellent cover of Björk's "Hyper-Ballad", and two songs i didn't recognize. Very good, if only twenty minutes long. The mood was tainted a bit by some moron who heckled the band continually. Karen looked uncomfortable enough already (perhaps coerced into this show by their management, an unfortunate side effect of hitting it big?) but this guy was unbearable. Before their last song she finally had security get rid of him. Good riddance.

After that, we headed over to the Fillmore. Earlier in the week, we'd gotten tickets through our friend Greg for the Wired Rave Awards, featuring a set by The Rapture. We whiled away a few minutes in the Boom Boom Room with Noel, Nate, and co. until the venue began letting in people with non-V.I.P. tickets. Inside we immediately ran into Danny and Wired employee Donald, and had a few drinks until the band took the stage. Veronica had seen them once before and not been too impressed, but we both thought they rocked this time. Their second song was a cover of "Dumb Waiters" by the Psychedelic Furs ... i'm unsure if this is a regular Rapture occurence, or if it was a mini-tribute considering the Furs were playing Slim's in SF that night. Veronica suggested trying to hit that show afterwards, but we decided to head home to Cobi. One night, two shows, both free ... not bad, eh?

On Sunday Veronica and i finally made it to see Mama Mia, the ABBA musical. I managed to avoid it in SF and then in Boston, but Veronica finally took charge and bought tix a few months ago. Didn't help that the St. Patrick's Day parade was rolling down Market on Sunday as we were trying to get to the Golden Gate Theater, but we made it. The play was very enjoyable. There's actually a detailed story, it's not simply a parade of ABBA songs. Well, not only a parade of ABBA songs. The plot centers on a Greek bride and her single mother. The daughter is intent on learning who her father is, and invites several candidates to her wedding while trying to keep her mother in the dark. I was particularly pleased that one of the possibilities was a Londoner with season tickets to Chelsea. Go you blues!

It was bad enough when Arsenal knocked Chelsea out of the FA Cup this year. It was worse when they effectively ended our league championship bid by beating us at Stamford Bridge the following week. And now, to complete the teeth-kicking treble, we've drawn the Arse in the quarterfinals of the Champions League. Another two matches against the bastards ... i don't think i'll survive. Best foot forward Ted, c'mon ... if when we beat them, that will be some sweet payback.

V and i met up with Lance at Bottom of the Hill last night to catch Pretty Girls Make Graves, with openers Mahjongg and repeat PGMG supporters The Fuse!. Once again online show schedules screwed me, as we intentionally arrived at 9:30 to miss most of Mahjongg, and instead found they hadn't even gone on yet. They were interesting, for all the wrong reasons. Their first three or four songs suggested they were going for a Rapture, Radio 4 kind of indie dance rock sort of sound. However, they weren't particularly engaging, and moreover they were not cohesive. At all. During one song, i realized that no two of the five band members were in time or in tune. That's pretty impressive, considering all the possible combinations. The Fuse came on next, thankfully not spending an hour to set up this time. And again, they kicked some serious ass. There wasn't as much open aggression with the audience as last time, perhaps because of the raised stage at Bottom. Still an ear-shredding, knock-you-over set. PGMG came on around 11:15. I was fairly disappointed with their last performance at the Cafe Du Nord, but they sounded much better this time round. They've tightened up the live versions of the songs from their latest album The New Romance, which were the weak element of their last gig in SF. There were five or six guys in the crowd that went apes@$t for the whole set. One crowd surfed, fell down, crowd surfed, fell down, then crowd surfed some more. A few girls just behind us got several good kicks in the head. All i could think of was if he surfed over me, i was going to do a number on his testicles as he went by. My one complaint about the band is that the singer appears to think "The Getaway", one of the standouts from their first album, is too dated for them to play now. She was visibly agitated when the rest of the group began playing it during the encore, in response to repeated requests from the audience. A band with two albums cannot start claiming their "older" material is no longer suitable.

Afterwards V and i headed over to Poopscene. I was coerced into attending in order to score some passes to Monday's 100 person studio session by the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, courtesy of Live 105 music director and Popscene founder Aaron Axelson. I even ended up dancing a bit, to Yaz's "Situation" and "Everything Counts" by Depeche Mode. I think it's been three years since i last did that. Usually going to Popscene means camping out at the bar. Aaron kindly added us to the YYY guest list, so we headed home to let the dog in. This morning however my neighbor informed me Cobi was barking continually late last night, probably thinking we were asleep and had forgotten to let her in. He was very nice about it, but it leaves us with a dilemma: leave the dog outside and piss off the neighbors, or keep her in the house and have her pee and bleed everywhere. Veronica may have found a solution ... doggie jams.

Tomorrow Veronica works while i head to Corte Madera for my aunt's surprise 60th birthday party. I don't think i've been to their house for 15 years. Then V and i get to do some serious scrubbing, washing, and tidying in an attempt to get our house back to some semblance of cleanliness.

Vote Wisely Vote Silly The Silly Party Support the Silly Party. The only party that is publicly committed to: * raising prices * destroying industry * causing inflation * ruining the economy A Silly Government would: * raise the school-leaving age to 43 * encourage naughtiness in high places * maintain confidence in British silliness abroad.

This was my daily Flying Circus outtake for Tuesday March 9th, but i could've sworn it was written last week about the Republican party and not sometime in the 70's. Replace "British" with "American" and this could by a flyer for the Bush campaign. If you interpret "raise the school-leaving age to 43" as meaning that kids might as well stay in school well into their forties since there won't be any jobs out there for them. I don't want to place too much stock in Howard Stern's sensationalized rants, but things are getting seriously screwy. People are horrified that Janet Jackson's breast popped out on national television, but they're taking their ten year olds to see Jesus tortured for two hours in The Passion of the Christ. Jimmy Kimmel made a good point: which broadcast standards should we strive for, the censorship of Iraq and Afghanistan or the unrestricted media of Europe? We seem to be tilting towards the former, although Dubya felt obliged enough to send troops to put Iraq back on the "right" track. Riddle me that contradiction.

Howard Stern has put together a pretty compelling argument that he is being forced out because he began criticizing the Bush administration. Now we've got the Republican National Committee warning media outlets not to broadcast anti-Bush commercials. Meanwhile they're using images of September 11 to portray Bush as America's saviour. Against the victim's wishes, mind you. The thing that troubles me the most is that no one will tell us why these things are being censored. Just that it's in our best interests. That sounds a lot like totalitarianism to me. Anyone in Europe need a bioengineer?

la nuit porte conseil et je sais le mal que l'on nous fait le mal que l'on nous fait parfois et mon humeur est down, down, down le monde est bleu comme toi

I've been seriously drained, down, and distracted lately. Cobi has fallen into a nightly ritual of peeing in the same spot on the carpet (while Veronica and i slumber), making it nearly impossible to clean. This morning i awoke and went to give her food and pills, and found that in addition to the nightly urine on the carpet, she'd also scratched the hell out of the tumor on her face, causing it to bleed all over her fur, the rug, and the kitchen. Thank you Nature's Miracle. The cleaner, not the little dog that is making my life so interesting.

Anyhow, in addition to my house devolving towards a slum (i told Veronica this morning that if we had children, Social Services would probably take them away), work has also been tying my brain in knots. Not the research side of it ... i like those kind of knots ... but the political side. For example, how am i supposed to do biological research (involving wet labs with incubators, reagents, glassware, etc etc) in a physics division where research is mostly done sitting in front of a computer? I've got several very good ideas for biological research projects, and could probably get them funded, but there's this little question of "where will the work be done?". One of the biology faculty talked our department chair into funding a postdoc for me to do these experiments. But how am i going to take care of a molecular biology researcher when all i can offer him/her is a desk and a computer? I can't beg, borrow, and steal lab space from collaborators forever. To make matters worse, i've got a radiochemistry postdoc arriving from China in two weeks. What he's going to do, i have no idea. Offhand i can think of several things he could work on, but where he's going to work and with what supplies ... dunno. The amount of work it's going to take to get an imaging research program started in a radiation physics division is beginning to dawn on me. It's not impossible, but the path to take isn't obvious either. It's hard enough being a new faculty member and just figuring out the rules ... now i'm trying to do something for which there aren't any rules. Not even a blueprint.

"Man On The Street" by the Skatalites may be the perfect ska song.

I love Broken Social Scene. No seriously, i love them.

Primal Scream's best album is far and away Vanishing Point. Don't even try to sell me on this Screamadelica bullshit. Especially after seeing "Come Together" in those SBC commercials.

every brother is a star, every sister is a star

First repeat quote in my blog. Happy birthday to me.

Less fatalistic news on the Ted front:

• I'm getting marginally better at World Soccer Winning Eleven 7 International, although it's still no cakewalk. My England squad beat Scotland 3-nil the other day, that was probably my best performance yet. More often i'm scraping out 1-nil or 2-1 victories. Cameroon is my bogey team, they've got my number for some reason. Odd, considering their stats aren't all that great.
• I've gotten some really great music lately ... Low Flying Owls' albums Elixir Vitae and Take the Scenic Route are fab ... i managed to dig up most of Etienne Daho's backcatalog, someone i got into in France in 1989 ... in keeping with San Francisco's annual noise pop festival, i've become entranced by bands like Holiday and the Tyde ... metal still kicks butt.
• Wedding plans are progressing nicely ... Veronica's got a dress and a ring, we've both got wedding bands, and we've locked in the location and hopefully a caterer. We're designing our own invitations, and V and Marcus have made headway on a theme for the decorations.
• Chelsea continue to win unimpressively, but at this point the W is all i care about. We drew nil-nil with VfB Stuttgart in the second leg of our Champions League encounter, but advanced thanks to our 1-nil victory in the first leg. We're now in the final 8, and will find out on Friday who our next opponent will be. Possibilities are Arsenal (egad no ... that would be horrible), Real Madrid (to be the best you've got to beat the best, right?), AC Milan, Monaco, FC Porto, Lyon, and Deportivo La Coruña. No softies in that bunch. Noticeably absent from that list is Manchester United, who were knocked out by a stoppage time goal by Porto. What a shame. Damn shame. Bummer.

When i first saw the video for "I Believe In A Thing Called Love" by The Darkness on M2, i barely paid attention. Now i can't get the song out of my head. They channel Cheap Trick completely ... the damn singer even looks like Robin Zander.

what about the voice of [Justin Hawkins]? how did it get so high? i wonder if he speaks like an ordinary guy "i know him, and he does" and you're my fact-checkin' cuz

Nick Hornby has been a lifelong fan of the evil Arse. I didn't like the novel High Fidelity, the movie version was only decent, and naturally i ground my teeth hearing his stories of growing up living and dying Arsenal in both the book and film versions of Fever Pitch. I haven't read About A Boy, but i must admit both the movie and the excellent soundtrack by Badly Drawn Boy put a lump in my throat.

So i guess i must give props to the North London side for producing one (and only one) thing of note.

Chelsea effectively duplicated their midweek display in Germany in Saturday's match against Manchester City: forced back on our heels for much of the game, but somehow ended up getting a winner while thwarting all of our opponent's far more numerous attacks. This win also gave me bragging rights for the season over City commiserator Gary. We had a small bet on the game. Neither of the wagers were too distasteful for the loser: if Chelsea lost, i had to buy a t-shirt that said "I Love Aaron Axelson" and wear it to Poopscene, whereas Gary's price for City's loss is to get and wear a shirt that says "Robbie Fowler's Cocaine Dealer".

The wager was made on Friday night when Gary came over for a little Mario Kart Double Dash action. And i must admit that Gary, after weeks of practice, is now clearly my better in that department. Of the roughly 35 races, he won about 20, whereas i managed only 12 wins. Speaking of video gaming, my copy of World Soccer Winning Eleven 7 International (they really need to trim some of the fat in the naming department) arrived last week. The game has evolved sufficiently from WE6 that i was unable to pick it up and immediately dominate. I still have to work very hard to win matches, but i realized last night that the game is stepping ever closer to real soccer. Even the mighty Manchester United doesn't win every match 5-nil ... those are the exception rather than the rule. Most matches are hard fought 1-nil, 2-nil, or 2-1 wins, or god forbid nil-nil draws. The genius of the game is the controls work so well that you're not blaming the game for your inability to score. It's a true test of how well you can break down your opponent's defense. I have yet to unlock the ability to transfer players between teams, which i'm working diligently towards seeing as Chelsea's WE7 roster was apparently finalized midway through their spate of acquisitions last summer.

V and i hooked up with Lance on Saturday night to attend one of the Noise Pop Festival shows, the Wrens at Bottom of the Hill. We first however popped into Chai Yo on Polk for some yummy yummy Thai food with Greg and Roo beforehand. We made it to Bottom and had time to grab a drink before the second band, Low Flying Owls, took the stage. I thought they were great. Short description: "Like BRMC, only interesting". And the bass player was dancing up a storm all through the set. The third opener was The Dead Science from Seattle. They played experimental rock, sort of like Mogwai meets Can. Lance and i thought they were pretty good, but Veronica marked them down as 45 minutes of pure boredom. The Wrens finally went on around midnight, and were fantastic. The set included both the simple but powerful melodies of The Meadowlands as well as the more straightforward indie rock of their previous albums Secaucus and Silver. The boys from New Jersey had a great rapport and were as entertaining between songs as during them. We stood just to the right of the stage (where the band enters and exits the stage, if you're familiar with Bottom) ... some of the anxiety of guessing the next song was dimmed for me because i could see the guitarist's multi-effects pedal, which had a digital readout that said things like "Happy Intro" or "She Sends 1". They somehow managed to avoid playing "This Boy Is Exhausted", but that is my only relatively minor complaint about an otherwise great show.

My extensive cleaning efforts seem to be slowly alleviating the smell in our living room. The dog's daily dose of steroids was reduced by 33% last week, so she hasn't had any recent "accidents" (i'll give her the benefit of the doubt and say they were accidents). Cobi had her second chemo treatment today, so i'll see how she's doing tonight. Poor little doggie.