In 1965 Richard Feynman, prescient as always, prophesied that science would reach its impasse. “The age in which we live is the age in which we are discovering the fundamental laws of nature, and that day will never come again.” After the great truths are revealed, Feynman continued, “there will be a degeneration of ideas, just like the degeneration that great explorers feel is occurring when tourists begin moving in on a new territory.”

Indeed, by 1970s, the researchers have already mapped out the entire universe, from the microrealm of quarks and electrons to the macrorealm of galaxies and quasars. Physicists have shown that all matter is composed of a few elementary particles ruled by a few basic forces. Scientists have also woven their knowledge into an impressive, albeit incomplete, narrative of how we came to be. The universe exploded into existence 15 billion years ago, give or take five billion years, and is still expanding. Some 4.5 billion years ago, the detritus of a supernova condensed into our solar system. During the next few hundred million years, single-celled organisms bearing an ingenious molecule called DNA emerged on this planet. These primordial microbes gave rise, by means of natural selection, to an extraordinary array of more complex creatures, including Homo sapiens.

 

Everything that could be discovered has been discovered; everything that needed to be explained has been explained; there is nothing left for science to do but to slowly decay or, as Feynman would put it, “degenerate.” Case closed.

No idea why it works, it just does. May have something to do with this but I don’t have Adobe Acrobat on my Mac and the process seemed quite tedious (although it may not be, I have no idea) so I didn’t try it. Worth a try if you are on Windows I guess.

1. Grown my hair out. I never realised how curly my hair is, probably cos it is usually always very short. I’ve got a mini-afro thing going on now and I kinda like it
2. Did a marketing internship at Fujitsu (Malaysia) last summer and I really enjoyed it. It was outside my comfort zone but I guess that’s part of the reason I took it in the first place.
3. Applied for internships for this summer but wasn’t really successful at first. Got rejected by Bloomberg after the worst interview of my life (worst in the sense I’ve never done so badly in an interview) but I managed to get one at Parker Hannifin (UK) for this summer (yay!)
4. Switched to a Mac. Got quite fed-up with my Compaq and I wanted something that is Unix-based but could still perform very well so it was a no-brainer really. Ubuntu was good but I probably spent less time working on it and more time getting it working!!!

No new theme this time cos I’ve been quite busy with the exams but if I find a new one that’s better than the current one I’ll update.

1. First, and probably most importantly, I made it into the University of Bristol to study Computer Science. Not that I had any doubts but still it’s kind of a relief to finally be here.
2. I dumped Windows Vista!!! Not as important or hard to do as the previous one (especially given what a great job Microsoft did with it!) but Compaq (or HP rather) sure as hell didn’t make it easy to switch.
3. I have gone Open Source. After years of putting it off I finally decided, with the help of Vista, to switch over to Ubuntu. Not the best Linux distro out there but hey, it’s a start.
4. I grew a box beard. I’ve been wanting to do this for a while and finally did it last year. It didn’t last very long though. I had to get rid of it before I flew back for Christmas.
5. I went to see Manchester United vs Everton in the English Premier League at Old Trafford with Shaun and GaPs.
6. I took 6 whole months (Nov 2009 – April 2010) off all forms of sport to let my knee heal properly, something which I should have done 2 years ago although I still don’t know what the hell was wrong with it in the first place!
7. I’m 21 years old! Not really an achievement but now I don’t have to worry about age limits for clubs and pubs any more and THAT is something

Not a very impressive list but all relatively important to me. So kudos to everyone who helped me through this year, both family and friends. I couldn’t have done it without you. Here’s to another 21 years of excitement…but hopefully with a lot less drama. I think I have had enough of that to last me a lifetime!!! Oh and of course, to mark another birthday, a new design for the site. Hope you like it!

Mourinho are you listening?
You’d better keep the trophy glistening.
Coz we’ll be back in May
To take it away
Walking in a Fergie wonderland!

To mark my turning another year older (and unfortunately another year bigger as well..literally) I’ve decided to give the blog a little redesign. The design was getting a bit too blue for my liking so I thought something a little brighter this time would be nice. I was going to call this post Joe Jacobs v2.0 but then I realised that I’ve probably redesigned this site about 20 times so version 20 is probably not that far off. So time to come out of your RSS readers guys! Here’s a little glimpse for those of you who are just too lazy