December 2009
22 posts
Seasons Greetings
Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year etc
Ice and snow... and ice.
Well due to the recent inclement weather I managed to slip on black ice and fall badly on my left ankle. When I hit the floor I had some nice white flashes and nausea, leading me to believe I had broken something.
As it turns out my ankle was simply sprained, (it has now gone a rather fetching shade of black and purple). I was surprised at the time though as a few bystanders rushed to assist me...
Service
Had a very odd and pleasantly surprising day today.
First I had to arrange a same day courier delivery at work and received excellent service from TNT “Special Services”. The man at the end of the phone actually rang me back when he said he would and kept in contact throughout the delivery. Amazing.
Second I had to sort out my pension with Standard Life. Rang them up and initially...
Waterworld found →
Liquid water? On a planet? Fairly nearby? Wow. I mean, really…. wow. This means that there is a very high chance of finding earth-like worlds out there. Infact this one was found fairly easily, which means either they were very lucky or these things are super common. Now all we need is FTL to get us there!
Dark Matter found? →
More science wow. We may have directly witnessed WIMP’s for the first time. Half a mile beneath the crust and wearing a boiler suit may be worth it for a nobel prize?
Sunlight Glint Confirms Liquid in Titan Lake Zone →
Wow. A blury photo, but this shows a methane lake on Titan.
“Rejection of Commercialism, what a great idea.
Christmas is about being with...”
– Present Sense: village group exports recycled gift idea worldwide | Life and style | guardian.co.uk
Charles Stross: Designing society for posterity →
Charlie Stross talking about designing a social fabric to last 1000 years.
Far left politics and post scarcity idealism
Dont ask…. it’s been a long night and an odd journey through wikipedia. No real conclusion but I dont agree with enough of the UK Respect Party’s manifesto to stump up the £10 joining fee. Perhaps in another 10 years the Parpolity may be a little closer. Although by then the capitalists will be moving onto the moon and asteroid belt and from there where does it end? Zero...
Remember Remember...
…the annual ”lets turn the UK into a war zone” night! My garden is full of rocket sticks, my dogs are shaking in the corner, my 3 year old daughter has just about stopped crying and I need to go and check all my windows for cracks. Yes, another guy falkes night successfully survived! I swear the noise and duration gets louder and longer each and every year. I thought we were in...
Google Chrome OS
Well there was a recent flurry of activity as google released more information about it’s new operating system “Chrome OS”. Basically this “OS” is simply a web browser that is installed on the bare metal with the minimum amount of guff required for networking and drivers. At first I thought “what a load of rubbish, it will never work!” but after thinking...
eBook readers
I’m currently looking at purchasing an ebook reader. After a recent visit to my mothers I’ve re-acquired hundreds upon hundreds of books put into “storage” I had forgotten about, and in fact some of which I have re-purchased not realising I had already purchased books by specific authors I like. After trying to work out WHERE to store all these books (I already have around...
Nuclear batteries
I came across an article on the BBC News website detailing the introduction of tiny nuclear batteries (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/8297934.stm) which got me to thinking how long it would before these would be found in mobile phones and laptops. I can just see Dell’s new unique selling point (after wireless charging) being a battery life of 5 years. I know I would buy one…...
Early Mornings
Well, I was politely woken this morning by my daughter who is nearly 3. She wanted to get up to watch the television. We came downstairs and I left the missus in bed snoring. I’ve come to the conclusion that early mornings are not so bad as long as you don’t mind being in bed at 9pm! We probably have saved a fortune on electricity as it’s rare we need to turn the lights on! This...
Lunatic
I spent an enjoyable hour or 2 tonight with my old friend the moon. Using my ED80 on a vixen portamount and a selection of Televue plossl’s I had forgotten how simple stargazing (or rather moon gazing) can still put a smile on my face. Roll on the dark nights even if the weather is a little nippier now. Global warming has a lot to answer for, but warm nights are not one of them! Brrrrrrr. I...
Astronomy
I’ve added an astronomy section and added a few pages that were originally posts on forums regarding equipment I’d purchased. I’ll add more as and when I have the cash! In the mean time feel free to ask me a question using the comments
Ideas
Well, I’ve been playing with freemind (http://freemind.sourceforge.net) which is an open source implementation of mind mapping, a way of “brainstorming” ideas. It’s surprisingly good to get thoughts and ideas down on “paper” and i recommend it to anyone used to doodling on paper and postit notes to collect ideas. Anyway, i’ve used the software to come up...
Once more into the breach dear friend
I’ve moved my journal to tumblr. Seemed a lot easier to use than google sites given the content.
I’ll cut n paste my posts so far but note the time stamps will be wrong…
