Rocks (especially agate)

I had a smashing day up London recently, which involved a visit to the national history museum.
(It also involved walking though Kensington Gardens, and along Oxford street and lots of sun and happy times.)
We went to the mineral section. I've always been a little disappointed in the mineral collection at the N.H.M, it was a nice way of displaying things but it always felt rather empty. Apparently this is because that wasn't really the mineral section, it was just a random extra bit with cool display windows.
The real mineral section is much bigger and much more informative. Now I am going to spend the rest of this post talking about rocks and other things in the red section.
Consider yourself duly warned.

Firstly, did you know that some minerals glow under UV light? Why this is necessary I don't know, because you don't tend to find much UV light in caves, but it does look pretty funky. Other things I found fairly interesting were the different forms of Chalcopyrite (I only know it because I visited a mine in Cornwall, but I didn't know it came in such a solid block.) Also it's not just trees that you can age by their bands, it's actually quite a lot of things. You can age shells and ram horns by them, and probably even more stuff than that.
There was also this rock, and you could count the bands to tell the calendar of the mine it was found it! How crazy is that! 

So I acquired a pretty neat piece of Botswana grey agate and you can really see the layers curving round from a central triangle,especially with the alternating translucent grey and opaque off-white.
I was interested to know why agate looked like this, and in case you did too, here's what Wikipedia has to say:
"In the formation of an ordinary agate, it is probable that waters containing silica in solution—derived, perhaps, from the decomposition of some of the silicates in the lava itself—percolated through the rock and deposited a siliceous coating on the interior of the vapour-vesicles. Variations in the character of the solution or in the conditions of deposition may cause a corresponding variation in the successive layers, so that bands of chalcedony often alternate with layers of crystalline quartz."  


Also I was interested to learn from the museum and Wikipedia that those coloured ring glass slice things are actually agate, and generic geodes are too! Although I think that generic geodes are dyed agate with clear quartz crystals inside.

Except the fossil. That's not agate.

This means that all of these are actually agate, just different varieties and forms. Isn't that exiting!







I would also like to say a very big thanks to my sister for drudging along with me. I'm sorry we didn't find more dinosaurs.

Home, Hats and Happy Times.

Happy times all round guys!
All. Round.
Well for me anyway. Maybe not for you, so not really all round. I've just got enough to feel like it's all round.
So yeah, I'm going home the day after tomorrow and I'm going to see my family, who are some of the most awesome people. I also finally bought Dominion, so I'll be getting an exiting parcel soon and then we can all play it! And talking of exciting parcels, my brother just bought a hat (which came in an exiting parcel) and as a result we ended up talking about hats on the phone for something like an hour. I think posh hats might have some sort of crazy magic instilled in them, because now they seem to make me happy. I'd never really thought much about hats, I knew they were there and they were cool but that was about it. Then I saw this (thanks to my brother) and the prospects of hats will never be the same again.
I also went to 'High Table' which is basically having a nice meal in another halls dining room, but in formal dress. So this involved me wearing a pink flowery dress with some pink flowery tall shoes. Which is slightly unusual, but it was all good fun and I got to meet new people.
I've also been making gingerbread, but my photo editing software refuses to open anymore (it's started happening to more and more programs. Well at least three now.) so I can only use pictures straight from my phone. Anywho, I thought you might like to see.

Ever get this?

I'm a little ill at the moment and last night I was a little bit doing that dreaming while awake thing, which lead me to wonder (this morning) whether anyone else gets that. It's like daydreaming, in that you're awake and imagining the whole thing, and like dreaming in that it feels kindof real at the time, it's generally pretty random and crazy, and you can't just stop (unlike daydreaming).
So your left with being awake, but a sort of super imposed dream at the same time. So at the time it makes perfect sense, but afterwards you realise that it was all pretty much a dream.
 I've only ever had it as a negative dream, I supposed this is because it only ever really happens when I'm ill.
For example, last night I though I was reading MSpaintadventures but starting in the middle. It was really frustrating because I really felt like I was ruining the plot by reading bits I hadn't got to yet, as well as the fact that I wanted to go to sleep anyway, but I couldn't stop. It was only this morning that was aware that I clearly wasn't reading it. I wasn't even thinking of anything definite plot-wise, I just thought I was reading it.
I got off pretty lightly really as things go though, one time I thought I was surrounded by really boring rocks. They were just floating around my head and talking about politics and really boring stuff, but their mumbley words (although not really, like dream words) went straight to your brain. Also one of them was having an affair. Now that was pretty bad.

And then to top it all off, when I did get to sleep I felt really ill in my dreams as well. (It wasn't a bad dream though, just one of those short and rather weird ones. I wasn't exactly a hero either.)

Anyway, does anyone else get this? I've never heard anyone mention it before.

It is now March.

Thought I'd let you guys know that I finally finished my H.C.D comic thing.(click link ← for bigger pic) It's not that great, but it would be a bit low if I didn't put it up here seeming as I've been mentioning it a fair bit as evidence of me actually doing anything.
In real life news not much is happening. Doing work, Bible study is going cool, failing spectacularly at exams. I found someone else who seems to like a lot of the same movies as me, discovered that 'buddy comedys' is actually a film genre (buddy comedies are pretty fun).
Dude life's a crazy thing. Did you know that? It's full of stuff all the time. I think maybe I should hang out in the kitchen a bit more, but I need to print screens some online test shots first. Guy next door ran out of tea, which is pretty sad but I've run out too so there's not much I can do about that. You never know what's Gonna happen next either. Also I think I've been accidentally stealing peoples mugs. I have 4 identical mugs here and I know that at least one of them isn't mine. I don't really know what I'm saying here. Not much really. Life is cool, try your best , generic statement!


Also, why is it that Pi had to be discovered first, but has the hardest background story to write? I know exactly what happens with e, and I'm pretty up to scratch on i so why couldn't they be first? Meh.

Also it's still nostalgia season, but I'ma Gonna try not to waste a load of time watching stuff or anything. OSTs are still cool though. Yes, I did watch the Baratie arc. So Nostalgic, man I can't believe it was that long ago.