Avatar as a prologue to war.

One of my thoughts at the end of the film: has he set it for a sequel? Given the penchant Holywood has for franchises, well, that might be too obvious, and given how well it is doing.

One of the core motivators of the plot is the 'New Gold', with its Underzo style name, is so incredibly rare and expensive. Is the big corporation going to let it go at that? The home team, relying on the native fauna as their killer weapon, managed to kick a small battle group/ colony defenders off world. Surely the, I assume, big mining companies are not going to let it go at that...

I decided to write this in response to a post on one of Jennifer Jacquet's science blogs, guilty planet, where she equated the movie to a conservationists dream. Maybe it is, but like too many conservation dreams there is are big question left unanswered. Biggest of all What happens when demand for unobtanium grows? The land has already proven hostile; are any new operations going to bother with a fair agreements, or respect the choices of the rightful owners of the Pandora jungle people.

To get it out of the way: It was fun, and the graphics were amazing. Was it worth the price tag, looks like it.

Refugees and rescue

Persecution has pushed them to the edge now it is time for the comeback. Or at least that might be the goal, eventually. The goodied family has through a series of unfortunate events had to turn to the refuges offered by ornamental aquarists in order to survive. They have to rely now on their benefactors such those benevolent humans from http://www.goodeids.com/, and large aquaria around the world.

My research is being supported and hosted by the St Andrews Aquarium, where they have two species of Goodied breeding successfully.

Introducing the Good guys

I will be developing my research project soon. Nothing finalised yet, but I will probably be working on the behavioural of at least two related species of fish from Mexico. All round nice guys, you can tell from their family name: Goodieds. Like all members of the family the species I will be working on are beset by problems. End of world type problems, the kind maybe we can relate with. Many of them them are already extinct in the wild. They survive as refugees, living on handouts, in aquaria around the world. Will these underdogs of the fish world ever recover from their many perils, and will they survive persecution by one of their greatest enemies?

If all things go well, I will be developing and conducting short behavioural research program asking the question: are juvenile goodieds influenced by invasive alien species, the enemy. Diminutive and pretty, the guppy is nothing less than devastating, they are a legion and their weapon is aggressive sexual behaviour.

I intend to update the blog with updates as per the progress of the research and maybe reveal some of the fascinating, yes fascinating dammit, drama in the lives of the goodeid family as it struggles for existence in an increasingly hostile world.

Should provide some creative release for all the papers I will have to read...

Crocs!

My new profile pic is only temporary. But, I had to stick something new in to replace the Nano Logo. I failed to win Nano, but next year...

This particular picture is an appropriate replacement for several reasons. One of the projects I am working on is the crocodile survey portal*. And as there is no budget to charge regular office hours to I will therefore be working on it in my free time ( A.K.A. my writing time) I feel justified in mentioning it on my personal blog.
The data for the portal was collected as part of Daniela's masters dissertation, and will be up on the web in a few short weeks. The picture, to come around full circle, is the work of Marco- Daniela's other half and great eco and scoio-politically concious artist. Marco was also the man behind the latest Paddington Bear excursion through london.


And while still on the subject of crocs- one of the evenings when I should have been writing I saw a preview showing of
A documentary on the plight of the gharial". A very well produced little documentary, but really depressing - film showing just how precarious life can be for other species sharing the planet with us humans.

Watch it here And please do watch it. Awareness, people, it really is the first step and not to be underestimated.

*The name has not been signed off yet.

Non NaNoWriMo writing

Well not exactly NaNo word count but I finally managed to submit an 'article' to Associated Content. It is an on-line publisher of, well pretty much anything really.
And for Americans at least they pay small amounts for each article that their user base churns out. Sadly living in England I am unable to earn up front payments for content I submit. There is one way non US submitters can earn money: by being popular – you could earn an amazing $1.50 per thousand views. So yeah not exactly a get rich quick scheme and I don’t even foresee getting that lofty target of not quite enough for a coffee, but if you want to read my badly framed argument for aquaria as a way to instil awareness and basic concepts of ecology (or if you just want to help me avoid getting RSI by logging some of those 1000 clicks for me) then:

May I present:
Aquaria as an Introduction to Nature

Ten percent!

I spent the whole day thinking about how much writing I would have to do today to catch up, or even get close to catching up to my daily target. And I kept having to ramp up my estimates as I factored in the kinds of daily output I could expect next week based on last weeks dismal daily word production attempts.

That is right youv'e got it. I spent all day assessing the amount of work I would have to do, and not actually starting any of that work. So how is it all looking?

It is not looking very good. In fact it was looking so bad that I lost hope, and now I can't find her little sister motivation anywhere either.

I did manage to get the words flowing though. Flowing like sewage thick, black, untreated, sewage, clotted with gnarly clumps of hair matted together with chunks of the eviler, more solid, of the two most common human waste products we excrete. I apologise I got carried away there.

I am very close to a thousand words now though and I just wanted to mark my first decent milestone: 5 000 words!

5,000 / 50,000 (10.0%)

I feel sure the last 45 000 words (God writing that number is disheartening) will be much easi.. Oh what the hell, who am I kidding. Back to the white screen (of Death) before I run out of time completely.

Read 'em and weep

5 words last night . Five!

I surprise even myself at this prodigious output.  Jeeze This weekend is going to have to develop extra hours...

I did go to the Cambridge fireworks- my first proper 'Guy Fawkes' night in England. And they were pretty impressive.  I might link a pic or two once a certain someone uploads them.  

The dog ate my notebook....

Well I tried I really did. Managed just under 1000 words last night, which puts me at nearly 2500 words behind. And it is only day 5! This weekend I am going to have to shackle myself to my desk.

Good news I am zeroing in on a title. Not there yet but I do have a title which has the right ideas associated with it and I am going to update the working title from Untitled to something slightly less embarrassing but still fairly generic and 'not quite right'.

Working title: 'Right through the cracks'.

To be referenced in this blog from now on as simply 'The cracks'

I think I could post up a plot synopsis or teaser. But 1. I need to get to work and 2. At less than 10% into the damn thing I don't want to be overly presumptuous.

I would be very interested in hearing from any of you whether the you find the title intruiging. Or not.  And more importantly I would like to hear what you, simply from the title, think the story will be about? What impression does the title give?