Sci-Ence! Justice Leak!

So today I received confirmation that I’ve got a place studying for a Master’s Degree in Bioinformatics at Exeter University (one of the better universities in the country). I’ll be doing it online, so I’ll still be working full-time.

But that starts in September, and I’d originally planned to do a Master’s in January. So that gives me nine months with more spare time than I thought I had. Some of that will be spent on stuff like teaching myself Perl (both for work and for the course) and being more politically active, but I’m going to *try* two other things, if I can.

One is to record a solo album, entirely by myself. I know absolutely no readers of this blog are remotely interested in my musical activities, but I would be very grateful if any of you know where I could find some MIDI patches containing *GOOD QUALITY* orchestral instrumental samples. I wouldn’t mind paying a reasonable amount, but they’d have to be freely re-usable.

The other thing is to write a book. I’ve been wanting to do this for a while – and in fact I’ve got a half-written draft of a book on the Codex Alimentarius (a multi-national food regulating organisation) that I may finish up – but I’m interested if people reading this would actually buy a book if I wrote it (I figure that if people who are already interested enough in my writing to read this wouldn’t buy it, no-one would) and if so, what kind of book you’d be most interested in from me? Fiction? Non-fiction? And on what subject(s) ?

(Oh, and the Batman posts *are* coming – since the last issue and the most recent FC, they’ve turned into a hugemegamassive RIP/FC thing that’s taking some sorting out…)