Darn You, Ezra Koenig

Darn you for writing an extremely catchy song. Darn you for writing a song that gets stuck in my head. Darn you for writing a song that I was absentmindedly singing in the same room as my mother. Darn you for putting "Who gives a fuck about an Oxford comma?" in the chorus*.

Darn you, Ezra Koenig!

In other news, Muse are headlining Glastonbury. I am praying to the gods of music, starting now, that my team doesn't get the shift that clashes with their set. Please, please, please, Gods of Music. I am begging here.


* Though, this is still not as embarassing as when I was doing the washing up whilst at work and whilst listening to "Headfirst for Halos" on my MP3, started absentmindedly singing along to the chorus.

Don't ever do this, unless you want to be on the receiving end of some very funny looks and several concerned enquiries about the state of your mental health.

You Know You're A Cyclist When...

...you wake up and you hear rain and your first thought is "Yes! If it's raining that means it's not frosty, so I can cycle in today!"

I know, I'm bonkers.

Sod It, I'm Going Diving

I'm off to the Isle of Bute in March to go do lots of dives and start working towards my Advanced Open Water Certificate.

Yay!

My favourite quote about divers, from the Scubaboard "You Know You're A Scuba Diver When..." thread: "...Someone yells "Shark!" and everyone jumps OFF the boat".

Why You Don't Want Your Lungs To Be Like A Bursting Balloon.

And another post on diving, following on from the last one.

So why might your lungs be like a bursting balloon?

The answer to this is the answer to the question about why the absolute cardinal rule of diving is "Don't ever hold your breath". This might seem like a statement of the obvious, breathing being somewhat important to life. However, there is another reason, not obvious unless you know how scuba gear works.

As stated earlier, the regulator which divers breathe through is a device for delivering breathing gas* at ambient pressure. Thus, if the diver is at 20m deep, they will be breathing air at three atmospheres of pressure (one atmosphere of gas - the Earth's atmosphere - plus 20 m of water = three atmospheres of pressure).

Now, supposing the diver begins to ascend? Obviously, as she moves into shallower water, the pressure on the outside of her ribcage decreases (less deep water = less water pressing down on you). If she is holding her breath, the air on the inside of the ribcage, however, in her lungs, will be at the higher pressure the regulator delivered it at, at the deeper depth, so that she could expand her ribcage to breathe.

It does not take a qualification in physics to work out that this is a bad situation. The higher pressure gas will start to expand inside the lungs. The possible consequences can be seen in this video about Boyle's Law:

If the gas expands too much, part of the lung will rupture, letting air into the bloodstream - arterial gas embolism. Anyone who has ever heard a radiator pipe banging because it has air in will grasp why getting gas bubbles in your bloodstream has potentially fatal consquences for your internal organs.

So why, if there is this potential risk, do thousands of people dive every weekend as routinely as if they were playing a game of Sunday morning football? Because it's an easy injury to avoid. Hence the advice: "Don't ever hold your breath!". If you keep continously breathing from the regulator, the gas inside your lungs is always at the same pressure as the water (or air if you're on the surface) surrounding you.

This is also partly why divers are trained to ascend slowly - it ensures that your breathing keeps pace with the pressure changes during ascent, minimising the risk of lung expansion injuries. (The other reason is to do with not getting the bends, another topic for a later post.)

And thus, the problem can be avoided.

* There's a reason I'm not calling it "air", that's for a future post.

Why Your Ribcage Is Like A Car Door In An Action Movie

A post about diving, this one. I haven't posted on diving for a while, mainly because I haven't been doing any. I intend to do a refresher session in Fenham pool first thing next month, and after that I hope to be back in the sea very soon.

Usual disclaimer: I'm not a trained diving instructor, I'm posting this because I like to talk about diving, DO NOT rely on stuff I post here for your safety whilst diving.

So why is your ribcage like a car door in an action movie? This relates back to a much earlier post where I commented that the foundation stone of diving knowledge is that gas compresses under increased pressure, and expands under decreased pressure. To build on this, we need to know that when Cousteau and Gagnan developed the "aqualung", what they developed was a way to deliver breathing gas on demand to the diver from a portable tank on the diver's back at ambient pressure. In other words, the gas the diver breathes in is at precisely the same pressure as the air (if on the surface) or water (if submerged) surrounding her.

Why is this important? Going back to the car door. If you have ever seen an action movie where the hero and his girlfriend are trapped in a sinking car in the river, you will know that it is not possible (assuming the movie is obeying the laws of physics) for him to open the door until the water has flooded into the car. Why? Because the water on the other side of the door is pressing against the door with more pressure than the air on the inside of the door (water being heavier than air), holding it closed. Not until there are equal amounts of water on both sides of the door can he open the door and swim to safety.

So too with the human ribcage. To expand and contract, the pressure within the lungs must be equal to the pressure outside the ribcage. Normally, at sea level, we breathe air at one atmosphere (i.e. the air pressure is the pressure of the Earth's atmosphere pressing down on us). To submerge beneath the sea, we must breathe air at the same pressure as the pressure of the weight of the water pressing against us. Otherwise, our lungs would simply collapse - only if you were Superman would you be able to expand your ribcage to get air into your lungs.

Water is much heavier than air. As anyone who has done their Open Water basic diving certificate knows, at ten metres deep, the water pressure is equivalent to two atmospheres of air. (10 metres of water. 122,000 metres of air. Mindbending.) Thus, the regulator delivers air at the equivalent of two atmospheres of pressure, meaning that the ribcage can expand and contract with the same ease it does at sea level.

Impressive stuff, is it not?

Now, watch this space for my next post on this topic: Why You Don't Want Your Lungs To Be Like A Bursting Balloon.

Nobody Said It Was Easy

No-one ever said it would be this hard.

Right now I am in two places. contemplating whether to stay or to go (another great song which is stuck in my head...). I truly love Newcastle and all the people I know here. On the other hand, if I am ever going to make a move, to push myself out of my comfort zone and take on a new challenge elsewhere, now is the best time.

This isn't a post with a conclusion, because I don't have one. Except perhaps that if the third decade of my life has taught me anything, it's that life is infinitely changeable, often in ways you didn't expect. Sometimes, it's best to enjoy the good times whilst they happening, but not to try to hang on to them when the world changes again.

So it goes.

I'm taking a weekend to think things through and decide on what to do, to clear out a few things that need clearing out and do a few things that need doing. In other, entirely unrelated news, I'm back on my bike. Cycling a little gingerly due to the presence of a few icy patches here and there, but this week I managed a full week of cycling to and from work, which hasn't happened since last year.

The diving season too will open up soon - it's too cold in the sea for me at present. I don't own or know how to use (yet) a drysuit, and even my semidry 7mm wetsuit with hood, gloves, and boots, ain't warm enough to be going in the North Sea in. Won't be too much longer, though, I hope!

The Urge to Eat Boatloads Of Sugar

It's funny how the mind works. Anyone who knows me knows that things at work ain't so great. Although all hope is far from lost, it's a stressful environment for everyone.

Funnily enough, since this started, I've been plagued with the urge to eat sweet things. No surprise, since the "eat sugar = happy" response is wired into the brain, but it's almost like I'm hallucinating a sweet taste in my mouth, and sweet foods seem to be tasting sweeter. Chocolate for me at the moment is a slightly indecent experience. (You maybe didn't need to know that.)

To any Reading Group members who may be reading this: Yes, I'll replace the mini Snickers in the bag before the next meeting. Satisfied?

Cool Stuff from the Internet

Some more cool Internet stuff:

The 50th Most Loathsome Americans of 2009. Featuring my favourite simile of the week: "The Huffington Post’s health coverage is like a horny chimp with a switch blade: dumb and dangerous".

Cool cupcakes:

Stats Nerd, Meet Internet Dating

I found this on the always good value Guardian Guide "Internet Previews" page. I'm something of a stats nerd whilst at work, being a researcher, and thought this was fascinating. Someone has sat down and crunched the data for the age preferences and messaging habits of men and women on internet dating sites.

The Case for an Older Woman

Fascinating stuff and nice use of charts!

Painkiller Sandwich

Delayed Onset Muscle Soreness is a fucker. I was alright (more or less) the day after the boot camp, but spent today hobbling around going "ow". I resorted to the Painkiller Sandwich, as explained to me by a doctor who was trying to treat my back pain a couple of years ago.

Disclaimer: I'm not a doctor, don't recommend you do this without medical advice, etc., etc.

Take two ibuprofen tablets. Wait two hours, take two paracetamols. Wait two hours, take two ibuprofens. Repeat until you reach the maximum daily dose of each (six pills of each a day if I'm reading the packet instructions right - I'm still here, so we'll assume I am), or the pain goes away.

This way you can get maximum pain relief - and the anti-inflammatory effect of the ibuprofens, which is what I needed - without maxing out the dose of pills. Ibuprofen and paracetamols are processed in different ways by the body. It slightly concerns me that I've lived the sort of life where I need to know this, but so it goes.

Last night I added my own variation on this, which is to skip the final dose of paracetamols and drink half a bottle of rose (wine not the flower) instead. It's not big, it's not pretty and it's not clever, but after the week I've had, it was necessary.

Today I'm feeling better.

Got Shouted At By The Marines

And I paid for the privilege.

How did this come about? I paid £10 to take part in the Help for Heroes Boot Camp at Eldon Leisure. 90 minutes of what was essentially a circuit class with attitude. We were put into eight teams, and eight exercise stations were set up, complete with bellowing Marine instructors straight out of central casting.

You could have put these guys straight into a Hollywood movie: bellowing sadist (who you secretly know would be the guy who braves the mortar fire to drag his wounded comrade back to safety), thoughtful guy trying to prepare his recruits for the reality of going to Helmand Province and killing people ("I look for aggression in my trainees"), bald tattooed older guy, and several rather attractive young instructors who could have stepped off the recruiting posters. Since they were all in sleeveless white T-shirts, camoflage trousers and boots, it certainly made running round the Eldon Leisure Main Hall carrying a stretcher with 40 kilos of water in a more aesthically pleasing experience.

Although by the time I'd lugged a Bergen pack full of water over three wooden vaulting horses, pulled myself over them, then crawled on my hands and knees pushing the pack along the floor, I was too knackered to care.

Possibly I'm just a glutton for punishment, but I really would do it again.

Back Off My Bike Again

Fucking snow and ice.