About

My name is Jon, and I’m a physicist working in Germany, although for most of my adult life I lived in London. This isn’t a blog about physics, frankly it’s about whatever I have been thinking about recently. Hopefully you can find something that you like here.

Figure 1: The author (left) bolting down optics in the lab, while being photographed for a moment of fame in Estonian news. Bolts tightened, I’ve run away to fill the internet with my opinions.

I spent the first 18 years of my life in Newcastle-under-Lyme and Stoke-on-Trent, the spiritual home of the pottery industry, the mighty Potters (The Championship’s very own Stoke City FC) and the oatcake. If you are thinking about some dry, crumbly cracker then stop. The Staffordshire oatcake is a marvel- an oatmealy pancake adorned with melted cheese and as many English breakfast pieces as you can find in your fridge. Below is an extra-large example, which can be bought for about £5 from Castle Oatcakes. Castle Oatcakes was once promoted by former World’s Strongest Man Eddie “The Beast” Hall, another large Stoke institution. Conclusion: Oatcakes make you strong. Eat oatcakes.

Figure 2: A mega oatcake mid-cooking. From castleoatcakes.co.uk.

I then moved south, making me a pariah to my Stoke friends and that strange northerner who insists he’s not northern to my London friends. One smart friend suggested southernoatcake.com as a good blog name. I stole it immediately.

Shortly afterwards I ruined the branding by moving to Hamburg. But I paid up front for the web address.

I hope you enjoy reading. If you don’t, I’m sure you will let me know in the comments.

Some Things I Might Blog About

Current affairs (with my usual 2 week delay), history, science, maths, tech, TV, podcasts, books, sports, cycling, product reviews, travel and I will try very hard to one day write a page about art that makes sense.

This is a personal blog. I’m not representing anyone or anything else, or getting paid to write any posts. If you would like to pay me to write a post I can currently only accept used twenties placed in an envelope, but I do take both Sterling and Euro.

Some Internet Things I Like

Webcomics: http://xkcd.com (geeky stuff) and http://existentialcomics.com (philosophical geeky stuff).

Blogs: http://jasmcole.com – my friend Jason’s excellent blog about the maths and physics hiding behind everything and anything.

Podcasts: The Rest is History, The Cycling Podcast and the incomparable Hip Hop Saved My Life.

Miscellaneous: http://www.gizoogle.net/ – for when you want your search results to be written in “gangsta”. Which is always.