All about me

This is roughly what I look like.

My name is Aidan and I'm a particle physics PhD student at Brunel University and at the moment I'm at Stanford Linear Accelerator Center, doing research into the decay B→τν. You can read about the research I do and the experiment on PhD page. Obviously that means I'm living in the USA at the moment, in sunny Palo Alto.

I was born in Crewe, England in October 1982. I lived there for 18 years, before getting a Masters in Physics at Oxford University. While at Oxford I immersed myself in student welfare provision and the politics that goes along with that, to the extent that I spent year working for the Student Union as the Welfare and Equal Opportunities Officer. It was the most intense, demanding and exciting year of my life, but one year was quite enough. I then went to Brunel University and lived in London for a year, before departing for sunnier climes.

I wish my life was something like Garden State or Eternal Sunshine of a Spotless Mind. I'm generally laid back, optimistic, geeky, into deep thoughts and conversations, opinionated. While I can be stubborn and certainly not a pushover in discussions, I try to see the best in people, give them the benefit of the doubt and share in their joy. My sense of humour often leaves a lot to be desired, and if I make a joke at your expense then take it as a compliment- I only do that to people I admire.

I eat too much fruit and wake up late. I find it much easier to start a new project than to finish an old one. I'll put some things off for week, months or even years for no good reason. Sometimes I mess about with algebra just for fun. I've forgotten too much physics, but never realise this till I try to demonstrate something to someone else. I wish I could draw. Yoga is my token effort towards exercise. I gave up on the gym long ago. My music collection is duplicated, in places triplicated, sometimes even quadruplated and very broken. That's not going to change any time soon. Cooking with oil scares me. I play Doom II in the hardest level with the cheats and respawning monsters to relax. There's something so satisfying about blasting hundreds of nasties with a rocket launcher. I have no idea what to do with the rest of my life. I have RSI in my right wrist from coding, but it comes and goes. I'm actually quite shy and I hardly ever flirt or touch other people, though deep down there's nothing more rewarding than sharing a bed with someone, being so close and vulnerable and just chatting about anything. But relationships aren't high on my list of priorities. It's been a while since I last fell for anyone. I've usually got my camera on me. It's like a part of my body. If I'm lost in thought I'm usually thinking about physics, especially if I'm drawing lines in the air with my finger. I wish I knew how to write more useful and interesting things on this website.

For more useless rantings see my Livejournal. That's where I dump most of the tedium.

I get a bit annoyed when people ask me what I do and I mention coding/website stuff and they roll their eyes. It's a real hobby, dammit, it's useful, fascinating and hard to do well. (I'm the first to point out the problems with my code- my semantics need fixing and there are some inconsistencies with my markup.)

None of these are particularly interesting or insightful:

• Fruit juice: Cranberries
• Number: 6
• City: Oxford, Vegas
• Time of year: The end of summer
• Planet: Venus
• Form of transport: London Underground

I often get asked why I chose to study physics, what's intersting about it, whether I'll make a career out of it and what use it is. Read more...

Palo Alto is one of the strangest places I've ever been to. There's something very creepy, very paranoid and perfect about the town. It's the centre of Silicon Valley and everying is plastic and pristine. Read more...

Because it doesn't belong anywhere else, here's my car. Isn't she beautiful?

My car, on Skyline Blvd.

• Johari
• Nohari