A repository of writing by Lachlan Marnoch - short stories, fantasy, science fiction, science fact, and adjacent opinions.
Coming into the research year of my Masters, I was full of uncertainty. If I was either naturally talented or highly motivated - preferably both, as it seems the scientists that surround me are - I knew that I could do it, could become a true scientist. For the previous six months or so I hadn't felt either.
Read MoreI love programming. There is little more satisfying than watching your hard-written program cascade into reality. It's the closest I've ever come to feeling like a god. However, this rarely - perhaps never - happens on the first try. I present the following as an example of the numerous frustrations that can encumber scientific research.
Read MoreMy name is Lachlan Marnoch, and I have just begun a PhD - the degree of a Doctor of Philosophy, an antiquated title from back when philosophy was anything that involved deep thinking about any topic. The specific flavour of thinking which I’ll be doing is on astrophysics. What that means is that I will use physics to try and make sense of information from the night sky. As with my Masters, I’ll be studying fast radio bursts - very brief, very mysterious bursts of radio waves originating from other galaxies. They’re pretty fascinating, and I’ll get to explaining more about them soon.
Read MoreThe culmination of a year’s work, available for your reading pleasure.
Read MoreIf you're around Macquarie Uni, go hunt down a copy of this (featuring yours truly). Guaranteed to make you forget the terror of impending exams. You’ll find me on p.44, with a review/article about the games Night in the Woods, Celeste, and how they portray mental health.
Cover Illustration by Sam van Vliet
*(No liability is accepted for forgotten exams - read at own risk)
You could fit a linear trend to the points on this map, if you wanted, and probably get a pretty good χ2. If you follow that through logically, I must be destined to travel to northern India, Greenland, and the Antarctic Peninsula. Maybe I can go other places where the line wraps back around the Earth.
Read MorePuyo Puyo Tetris is insanity like I've never seen before.
Read MoreI'm really cornering the market on stupid things that nobody asked for.
Read MoreWay back in first year, for an elective about soft mathematics (that wasn't the official description), I wrote an essay about the advantages and disadvantages of adopting further decimal units. I tidied it up a little, and here it is!
Read MoreI've always had mixed feelings about the Sonic games.
Read MoreBecause I've been doing this stupid thing in my notes anyway so why not do something with it.
I was born on September 25, 1994. Like most people I don’t remember that part very well. My parents were renting a place in Bowral, New South Wales, so that was my first home. I also don’t remember that, because we moved away soon after - my only memory of the house is peering out at it from the car when we drove past years later for kicks.
Anyway, my first real house was in Mittagong, Bowral’s twin in the shadow of Mount Alexandra. It was where I had my first pet and my first kiss. It’s also where I stepped in dog poo barefoot trying to avoid a wasp. I cried.
I cried a lot as a kid. I guess I still do - it helps to have a good bawl in the bedsheets every now and then. I’d cry because I lost my hat (an all-too-frequent happening), or if things just didn’t go my way. After we moved to Exeter I cried at my first soccer training when Andrew Frost scored a goal against me even though he was supposed to be on my team. I think, anyway. I might’ve just gotten confused.
A bunch of movies I should probably watch. Suggestions welcome!
Read MoreYesterday, Simon Belmont (of Castlevania fame) was announced for Super Smash Bros. Ultimate. One of Simon’s attacks is holy water. The only possible conclusion to is that, in some way, every character in Smash is an unholy monstrosity that must be vanquished. Here, we try to work out why.
Read MoreHere's a list of books I intend / hope to read someday. Suggestions welcome!
Read MoreAt some point during my undergraduate degree (Bachelor of Science in Astrophysics, with a Bachelor of Arts in Creative Writing) I thought, "wouldn't it be cool if I collected all the physics and maths formulae I've learnt into a notebook?" This became three notebooks, then, when I realised how untidy they were getting, a LaTeX document. In the hope that others might find it useful, I decided to put it up here. Three years after it began, here it is!
Read More