News and links for late June & early July

I didn’t post links for late June, because at the time I didn’t feel I had enough of them. So this collection covers four weeks. After the links, I share a little of my personal news.

• Let’s start with the 3QD Science Prize winners, seeing as I mentioned the competition last month.
• Good article on Lawrence Bragg, historic Australian figure of science.
• Dramatic video showing how Curiosity will land on Mars.
• Oldest known impact crater, by a billion years, discovered in Greenland.
• Very interesting video on the origin of the Oxford Dictionary.
• A language from Pakistan was recently shown to be Indo-European.
• Sound change: who’s fault is it?
• History of the fork.
• A brief history of Alice in Wonderland. (Containing, I think, a message for modern society.)
• Plans for zombie theme park. In America, obviously.
• Amusing: What does “China” really mean?
• Lovely photograph of aurora over lake.
• Pretty patterns made with magnetic fluid and paint.
• This animal-themed music has a strange kind of charm.
• Elsha drew my attention to this example of a bookmash. Not a very tasteful example, but a bookmash nonetheless.
• I had some fun with the Keep-Calm-O-Matic. So can you.
• At work (for graphic design practice) we recently made use of the exercise online here. My own efforts are here and here. [Original images: 1, 2]

There were eight people altogether at my 35th birthday celebrations in mid June (I’d invited more, but not everyone could make it). Main course was a choice between pizza or Indian food, which I ordered and my parents picked up on their way. We got the wrong pizzas by mistake — apparently we got an order belonging to a Megan, whereas I’d ordered under the name of Morgan  — but nobody minded (and anyway, I had the Indian). Dessert was cheesecake and mulberry jelly provided by my parents. Afterwards we played a card game. I got a couple of gifts including a pair of dragon coffee mugs from my sister:

I recently did a wage assessment at work, which means that for the next three years I’ll be paid in proportion to how well I did. Haven’t got the results back yet.

I caught up with Mum in late June. We did a number of things together, but the main thing was browsing in furniture shops for lounge chairs. I need new ones. Now that I have a better idea of what I want, I’ll go back to the shops sometime with the benefit of hindsight.

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