Welcome to home page of Rupert Bright

Cool new visualiser that is due to appear in the new itunes that is launching this week.

Magnetosphere revisited (audio by Tosca) from flight404 on Vimeo.

Such a lovely photo… I am going to try and add a few from the edinburgh festival over the next few weeks

I have made some technical changes to the site this weekend to make it possible for me to add more content over the coming weeks.

You may need to update your bookmarks and you will need to download the updated widget (version 1.3)

Somthing new that I am working on….

I have decided to go all Web 2.0 and make an interactive google map of photos that I have taken in the center of edinburgh that you will be able explore.

I am working on it slowly at the moment. So there are only a few photos at the moment… but give me a few months and there should be a load more.

Post a comment if you want to see somthing that is not there.

http://maps.google.com/maps/ms?ie=UTF&msa=0&msid=100768622529112332117.0004452d24d82ad36378c

Also hopefuly after easter I will be able to bring my remote control webcam upto edinburgh and set it up so you will be able to interactively look out of the window of my flat.

Below is a photo that I like that I took in the grassmarket a few weeks ago. 

Well it’s been a long time…. Sorry about that I have just had so much going on in my life over the last 6 months… what with dissertations, exams, graduation, buying a flat, starting at a new university and clinical medicine. 

Sometimes I get inspired to write a blog entry and I find loads ideas filling my mind but then they go away again. It’s interesting that often to keep ideas that you have had in your mind long enough to act on them is the hardest thing.

Well here I am at Edinburgh University sitting in my flat listing to a new hed kandi CD having had a busy day so I think I will give writing a go…

This morning I went to a workshop entitled “Build a Brain”, it was an attempt to get people to see how science and art can work together to inspire and enable deeper understanding. I built my brain which started off very scientific and logical but then as I got into it I started to be more adventurous. Sometimes you just need to put your mind into in a neutral or a different place.

I certainly feel less artistic now that I am at Edinburgh and working in a hospital all day compared with last year at St Andrews. I don’t know if that is just as a result of not being with arts students all day or that clinical medicine forces you back into a scientific way of thinking and away from the deeper/artistic issues. Probably it’s just me, as I don’t make enough time for it…. However the multiple choice culture of medicine does seem to limit your creative side… which writing essays all day does bring out in you.

I don’t know if you reading this have ever watched the movie “Wit” but it is great for illustrating how the art and science of medicine can work together. “Simple human truths vs. uncompromising scholarly standards”… is one of the key messages that come from the film.

This last weekend I went to visit one of my medical friends who is very creative… When I am with her it make me want to be creative as well. It makes me wonder what makes somebody creative or scientific. When I was at school I used to not be very good at art but then good at science. I think the art teacher used to despair. But then is art something that can be taught? I think that I have come to be more creative as I have got older and it something that I have found for myself. I also have found that writing is now something that I enjoy much more than I used to… when I was at school I hated writing, I could think of nothing worse. I think it often it is the experiences you have in life that make you creative and the environment that you are exposed to.

In my personal life I quite like structure and logic and I get satisfaction from knowing that things are organised and sorted (in a kind of perfectionist way)… but then I also like the excitement of just doing things spontaneously and being a bit more random. I don’t know… at the end of the day I think it is important to just have a good balance.

In concluding I will leave you with this statement that I heard once and I think is true… “Happy people don’t make art”…. What do you think??

Sorry for not posting any updates lately… I have been quite busy with university work as of late. However I intend to make some big catch up posts soon.

Ru

You are standing outside, its just about to rain, sky is grey but its warm, dry and perhaps with a warm breeze. I think that’s my favourite type of weather, its the feeling you get inside, kind of twilight zone! 

Anyhoo, it’s been busy the last few weeks but I feel that I am not getting anywhere. One thing I have succeeded in doing is getting all my personal statements and applications written for university next year. Writing a personal statement this time round was so much easier than when I did UCAS back in 2002… Hopefully that is a good thing as I have done many things over the last few years that have made me a more interesting person? 

I went to visit all my Medic friends from St Andrew the other weekend in Manchester. It was so great to see all of them again and know that they are all getting on well in Manchester. I also got to stay with Bex in her house there. I really would like to get a nice house for next year that I actually really like, as I am fed up with living in places that seem to suit the people I am living with but not me. 

The website for university is coming along very slowly. My computer decided to die on me last weekend so I have been living in the PC Classrooms for the last week! Hopefully I have most of it written now and the basic design done. Now I just need to make it look fab and something that people can actively engage in, almost inspiring in away as that will encourage people to learn.  I think I am starting to get the hang of these journal articles that I am reading for Uni all the time now. It’s hard at first when you have never read them before. There is defiantly a technique to reading them (especially the experiment ones) and not falling asleep in the process!  

I have nearly finished the 6th season of damsons creek that jamima kindly lent to me. The way that they talk like psychologists all the time is quite entertaining. I wonder what it would be like if you could go into a situation and talk like what you are saying has been written by a committee of writers and redrafted about 10 times so that it is word perfect! 

That reminds me of another thing that that always makes me smile. In TV drama shows they always play “situation” music. So when there is some crunch moment there will be dramatic music playing that adds to the effect. I think it would be fun to walk around with a tape player for a day, with sentimental music on, and then switch it on every time a crisis arose! 

Well that’s all for this time, One thing this blog is teaching me is how many things actually happen in just a few weeks, its amazing what you forget as you naturally focus on the big things that happen. 

Ru x  

Well I think that I am due a blog entry after the first three weeks of university… Its been a strange few weeks.. So, firstly I got back upto St Andrews very easily it was a nice trip and I managed to move into retro 10 college street quite easily. The first week (freshers week) was very busy, I helped IT Services with the ResNet registrations and did loads of Bute stuff. I met loads of new people and I still keep seeing them, which is promising. I at the end of the first week I went to the first of the JASME committee meetings in Nottingham, it was strange to leave St Andrews so quickly after I had arrived. I am really enjoying JASME (see link to the side), it’s very interesting and the other medics who are on the committee are really lovely. So I have had quite a few bits of work to get done for that, but I have managed to get most of that done now. I also went to see Diana in Edinburgh on the sunday and have dinner, its so nice to be able to have a relaxed time with friends who you know well. During the second week we started our academic stuff, its very laid back this year and everything is reliant on us doing the work of our own accord… sometimes I find that quite hard! I was actually getting quite bored towards the end of the week, as we had not had much to do. It’s been strange in St Andrews the last few weeks; it’s just the same as ever but with all my medical friends gone and a very different pattern of work. However its starting to feel like its always been this way..  The third week has been much busier and I now have a much clearer vision of what needs to be done and when. We have had our web design courses and Steve Smart is great at teaching us how to use dreamweaver, watch out I may be doing a bit more to this site if I have time! We had a manically busy visiting day at uni on Wednesday, with over 520 applicants, that’s over 1000 people when you factor in parents and grannies! Mike the new ELO is making the visiting days an added stress at the moment as he is new to his job, but hopefully all will be sorted over time. As I write this I have managed to reduce my St Andrews webmail to a sustainable 81 messages in my inbox (I have a love/hate relationship with webmail, its so slow during the day, but so convenient at the same time), have updated my letts pocket diary (yes you read that right, Rupert has a diary) and have a POA (plan of action) for next week. So all in all quite satisfied.  It seems as though the next few weeks will be busy with the website, visiting Manchester and going home for a Cambridge open day. And that’s before I factor in JASME, the ball, Dietary, open days, staff student council and general St Andrews life. Oh and by the by the new iTunes 7 software, not a fan, it crashes when I import CD’s, has downloaded loads of random artwork that does not match the music and is generally just like most apple software for the PC, badly written and has loads of bugs that they patch by releasing a totally new version that takes about 15 mins to install each time and tries to take over your computer. Also while I am on the topic of computers I am really looking forward to the new release of Microsoft Office 2007, it looks great. So I am looking forward to my next blog entry in a few weeks time, maybe even with a link to the website I will have designed by then.