I've been thinking about concepts of time and dancng - inspiration has come from listening to Flogging Molly's "Devil's Dance Floor" and attempting/failing to dance a Jig to it. The beat moves too quickly for me to do the foot motions I want to it, at least on a conscious level. I've seen people dance to music that quickly, and I can also presumably do it if I practice a certain set of moves to match that beat, but those would have to be done beyond a completely conscious level. It's interesting how semi-automatic actions have the capability of being more fluent than fully-automatic ones, another example being balancing while riding a bike. In a lot of cases where we learn something to that level, we can actually trace through it while doing it consciously, and memorise it that way - in this case, I would guess we need to do more of a "selection"-type learning where we try things that we can't fully trace, and keep those that fit. It'd be tempting to try it with the music slowed down, but I'm not sure how well that'd work with regards to transferring that knowledge up to full speed - learning some tricks (especially when gravity is involved, like a wheelie on a bike) presumably must happen at some minimum speed and is easier on some level when going more quickly.

Yesterday's soccer went better - my heart behaved reasonably well, and my feet are slowly regaining their toughess. I was amused to be reminded how hard cleats are when I accidentally kicked someone in them, apologised (I don't know if they actually felt it), and got a nice set of marks on my (bare) feet that are still there. All the same, my feet are really too wide for shoes and it's too pleasant to run barefoot in the grass to imagine giving that up, even if it's unwise on several levels. As for skills, I'm probably moderately better than useless - I'm reasonably quick and I can pass the ball to wherever I like. My dribbling skills are very poor though, and I exhaust fairly quickly. Fortunately, these are hyper-casual games with only a few good players :)

My study is finally at the point where I can start scanning people. With luck, I'll manage to get this one done in a month or two. Hurrah!

I didn't mention it, but about a week ago, I got a temporary officemate - a grad student in our lab who doesn't yet have a spot in the grad wing. I'm irritated and territorial about the matter, but he seems to be a decent sort so it's not that bad. It does mean that I'm more inclined to move my work schedule around so I have the office to myself though...

I've concluded that the "Jasmine with Flowers" that I was raving about a few months ago is actually pretty disgusting. :)