Once upon a lunchtime dreary, while I pondered weak and weary,
Over many a quaint and curious website of lore,
While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a rapping,
As of someone gently tapping, tapping at my keyboard.
`'Tis some visitor,' I muttered, `tweeting at my last post -
Only this, and nothing more.'

UK National Poetry Day

Ok, ok, I know it's rubbish. I challenge you to do better.

I'm a bit confused with the Ig Nobel prizes, I thought their whole purpose was to highlight valuable research which seems a bit silly at first thought. For example, this year's Biology winner demonstrated that "kitchen refuse can be reduced more than 90% in mass by using bacteria extracted from the faeces of giant pandas" which strikes me as being a potentially very useful discovery, and is only amusing if you want to laugh at panda poo (which, of course, is a natural first reaction).

According to their website; "The Ig Nobel Prizes honor achievements that first make people laugh, and then make them think. The prizes are intended to celebrate the unusual, honor the imaginative -- and spur people's interest in science, medicine, and technology."

And yet despite this, some of the prizes seem to be nothing more than jokes at the expense of people who screwed up, notably the Irish police (I'm sure the entire UK population will be laughing at that one) and the Icelandic banks:

Literature: Ireland's police service (An Garda Siochana), for writing and presenting more than fifty traffic tickets to the most frequent driving offender in the country — Prawo Jazdy — whose name in Polish means "Driving License".

Economics: The directors, executives, and auditors of four Icelandic banks — Kaupthing Bank, Landsbanki, Glitnir Bank, and Central Bank of Iceland — for demonstrating that tiny banks can be rapidly transformed into huge banks, and vice versa — and for demonstrating that similar things can be done to an entire national economy.

I'm hoping this year is just a one-off disappointment, and that next year will be a return to form.

When my last laptop died from sudden HD failure, I found myself regretting thinking that owning a big stack of CD's was just as good as a backup of my collection. Basically, I was just being lazy.

Anyhoo, I've been spending a lot of today ripping CD's onto my new machine so that I can play them without constantly swapping stuff discs around, and it's been proving strangely interesting to look at the dates on the albums that I own. It reads like a catalogue of how happy I was in any particular year, peaking in about 98 and crashing quite drastically in 2001. There is a very conspicuous absense of music which was released since I moved to Germany, which I think is a bad sign of my lack of social life over here :-/

I'm up to about 80 hours of music so far, primarily my rock/metal stuff (I haven't even touched the jazz yet). Bizarrely, although I have a fairly constant 1-2 hrs of music from each year throughout the 80's (my oldest album is a "best of Aerosmith" from '80) and a big peak of 5 yrs in 91 including some of my all time favourites, I don't have a single minute of music that was released in 1990.

I'm intrigued by this, so ... what are the good albums from 1990, and why don't I own any of them? (answers on a postcard to...)

I'm currently eagerly awaiting a rant from cuprohastes about the latest iPhone news.

Security experts claim to have discovered a serious flaw that allows hackers to hijack the iPhone via text messages.

Time for some popcorn...

Shamelessly yoinked from rmarsden because if anything deserves to go viral, this does.



For somebody who travels around with as many chargers etc as me, this would be a godsend. Many is the time I've been packing and rued the bulkiness of the UK chargers (or Euro-UK converters) compared to the European equivalents, and this would solidly reverse the situation.

It's not often I see a new design for a piece of domestic equipment and say "fantastic!" ... in fact, this might be the first time ever... but I did. And it is. So watch the vid and let's hope we get to see it in stores soon.

I have just turned thirty, and decided to mark the occasion by spending a week in Prague accompanied by some of the urchins I've come to refer to as friends over the past 3 decades. Apparently, my timing sucks.

The weather here in Germany was quite superb, and I had rather assumed (stupidly without checking) that the weather in Prague would be comparable. So seeing the weather forecast just before packing (rain, rain, rain and some more rain with occasional burst of heavier rain) was a bit of a slap in the face. Still, with good company a bit of water can't ruin a good trip so in went the heavier clothing and all was ready.

I'd never been to Prague before, though it had been somewhat hyped up for me by a lot of people telling me it was "my kind of city" and for a jazz fan with a love of castles it did indeed look quite an idyllic destination. The first couple of days were spent just walking around the city looking at things, generally chilling and soaking up the atmosphere. It was a bit disappointing that the city centre looks almost exactly the same as anywhere else in Western Europe, with the same shops selling the same things, and people looking like they could as easily be walking around Germany as the former Eastern Bloc. That's progress, I suppose.

Once the others had assembled, we headed to the Prague beer festival on the Saturday, hoping to sample some very fine Czech beers and commiserate the onset of age in true British fashion. Sadly, this was not to be, as by lunchtime I was suffering from evil voodoo spell which cramped up my lower abdomen, expelled everything in my stomach and sent me to the hotel bed... for the next day and a half. I emerged on Sunday evening, having missed all the fun, still quite unable to eat or drink anything beyond a few mouthfuls of water.

On the up-side, veriditan tells me the party was good, arioch666 didn't get lost, and I am now 2Kg lighter. It's not a dieting technique I'd recommend though!

The Monday was a bank holiday in Germany, so we'd said goodbye to the Brits (one of whom missed his plane by being a bit blonde) but there was still 4 of us. Rather than spend another day in the city, we opted for a trip out to some of the surrounding villages - a very good decision! We found some lovely places, including a couple of castles (which are closed on Mondays! grr) and very pleasant eateries. Much less touristy and more of a genuine "Czech" feel to it, too. All in all, it could've been a lot worse... but it certainly wasn't the trip I had been expecting!

It's finally come to this. Art has degenerated to the point where stacking boxes like a warehouse is considered the norm, and painting a lifelike picture is considered unusual.

I don't care if they call it Amazing trick paintings to fool everyone it's still a painting of a life scene. That's what a painting is supposed to look like, and the fact people find it hard to spot as "fake" at a glance is just a proof of its quality. I like it, it's a good painting... but it's hardly a "trick".

The media confuse me. They're all running a story today about Teressa Groenewald-Hagerman - an American woman who has apparently killed an elephant using a bow. Killing an elephant is bad enough, but I was disgusted to read in the eMetro that "she fired one arrow to injure the animal before leaving it to die overnight" so I started googling... and you can find the story repeated on Sky news, the telegraph, the Daily Mail, yahoo and many more.

But this happened TWO YEARS AGO. So wtf made them all jump onto the story on the same day now? Considering the 4th most read story of the day on the Telegraph is currently 'Alien skull' spotted on Mars I'm forced to assume it's just a really slow news day. But even so... the same story? Weird.

Wow, I've really fallen off the ball with the whole blogging thing recently, time is whizzing past. It's very frustrating, because there's a huge number of things I've wanted to write about, but never seemed to find a few spare minutes to do so. So my new plan will be to spend a few seconds, leave the window open, and come back again when I have another few spare seconds. Hopefully the end result won't be too disjointed :)

A couple weeks ago, I got a message from a friend who had apparently just checked this blog "expecting to see a rant about Google Streetview" and was so surprised there wasn't one that they contacted me about it. I find that quite amusing, but also a bit weird. I know I tend to rant a lot, and have a habit of attacking government/corporate policies. I have been known to defend civil liberties and take a moral high-ground I'm not really entitled to (but who is?). But Google Streetview? I have absolutely nothing against it.

My own parents are sadly amongst those concerned about it, but personally I just don't get what all the fuss is/was about. Here's a list of "complaints" (you'll notice that there is no mention of the people involved actually complaining) which the Telegraph gave before Streetview was available in the UK based on images from the US.

1. Man walks past adult book store, giving the impression he is a customer


2. Man spotted climbing fence


3. Sunbathers spotted in a state they would not have wished to see on the internet


4. Car crash aftermath spotted by a Google car camera...


5. ... and another one, this car apparently having been driven into a tree


6. Google's cameras record cats sitting in a house window


7. A driver is pulled over by police - and the whole world gets to see

Personally, I don't see a problem with any of these. Sure enough, they could be embarrassing - but they're all things being done in public and for the most part highlight the sensitivities of the UK populace rather than actually being anything bad. If a man walks past an adult store... so what? Hell, even if he's halfway through the door, so what? If he was that worried about people knowing he'd been in there he wouldn't be risking a friend being on the street at the same time by ordering online anyway.

Don't want to be seen sunbathing topless? Then don't do it on your front lawn! Sunbathers are not only photographed all the time, but have their pictures sent around the world on postcards - and it's horrendously hypocritical for the people buying newspapers with photographs of celebs on the beach to complain about google returning the favour. Plus some people quite clearly do want to be seen. It's a fame thing.

Admittedly, Google should instruct their drivers NOT to photograph scenes of accidents etc, but that's an etiquette/protocol issue shared by any and all media photographers.

Of course, the one argument not listed above which might actually have some sense behind it is that it assists burglars in planning robberies. Which it probably does. A bit. But a burglar could just as easily drive down a road taking pictures or video without attracting much attention. If he has a particular house in mind, he could easily take a whole load of pictures from a lot more angles than google provides with a mobile phone without anybody even realising he wasn't simply sending a text message. I grew up in a fairly affluent area, and it wasn't uncommon for white vans to be seen driving around slowly - quite obviously casing houses, but not technically doing anything illegal. The only thing you could do was ensure you had a decent security system/alarm, friendly neighbours and locked doors/windows. Google doesn't change any of that.

The thing a lot of people I've spoken to who oppose it don't seem to get, much like Google Earth incidentally, is that the images are not real time. They're one-off snapshots, not an up to the minute what's happening now of any given place. Further reducing the privacy issues, Google says that 99.9% of faces and number plates are blurred by its automated face recognition technology. They have also proved willing to take down photographs following specific complaints.

On the other side of the coin, which tends to be completely ignored, there have also been cases of streetview spotting crimes in progress.


Try denying that one in court, matey. The streetview drug deal story is probably more amusing though. I can't guarantee anything google has pictured has been used by police, though there are plenty of websites out there which claim they have.

So the news is as grim as ever, with a policeman shot in Northern Ireland and a school shooting in Germany.

Both of these have me rather concerned, and I don't see any point blogging about my outrage at both of them ... but I do want to point out to people the very disturbing trend I see in the frequency with which these school shootings are happening - I've plotted all the dates of such incidents as reported by the BBC here on the right.

For once, I have no idea what we can do about this... but I seriously hope somebody out there does!

Wow, I only just heard they'd made one of my favourite books into a film last year: Dragons of Autumn Twilight

The reviews don't sound so good though :(

I wish the space industry would be a little bit more sensible with its naming schemes. ESA have announced that the second ATV (to be launched next year) will be named after Johannes Kepler (the first was named for Jules Verne). That's a perfectly good name, except for the fact NASA are preparing to launch the Kepler spacecraft as we speak. It's probably unlikely that many people will get confused between the two, but it still irritates me. It's not the first such collision of naming strategies, either.

Kepler (right) has a lot of ET fans very excited, and with good reason...

This is perhaps the golden age of extra-solar planet discovery, with the first planet outside our solar system was detected in 1995 (by measuring the doppler effect of the star's light) and the rate of detection since has been steadily increasing - we've found 340 planets so far, with some 20 systems containing multiple planets.

But so far, we've only really been able to spot the large Jupiter-like gas giant worlds, not terrestrial Earth-like worlds we really want to be walking around on. So far, all but twelve of them have more than ten times the mass of the Earth. This is not because other Earth-like planets aren't out there (I'm fairly sure they are), it's simply due to the limitations in what our equipment can achieve. Enter stage left: Kepler. The Kepler mission "is specifically designed to survey our region of the Milky Way galaxy to discover hundreds of Earth-size and smaller planets in or near the habitable zone and determine how many of the billions of stars in our galaxy have such planets." (NASA)

Johannes Kepler, on the other hand, sounds a lot less interesting. It's the second in a series of "space-tugs" designed to ferry resources up to the International Space Station, but despite this rather humble description is a very notable craft in its own right. I just wish they'd called it something else... the RocketEddy has a nice ring to it >;-)

Of course, if we in Europe ever want to go walking around on those worlds we're hoping Kepler will find, the Johannes Kepler is an important step in the right direction.


Europe's Automated Transfer Vehicle

It's not often I receive an email I feel inclined to make public, but this one certainly fits the bill.

Jan. 28, 2009

J.D. Harrington
NASA Headquarters, Washington

Donna Weaver
Ray Villard
Space Telescope Science Institute, Baltimore

NASA INVITES PUBLIC TO CHOOSE HUBBLE'S NEXT DISCOVERY

WASHINGTON -- NASA is giving everyone the opportunity to use the world's most celebrated telescope to explore the heavens and boldly look where the Hubble Space Telescope has never looked before.

NASA is inviting the public to vote for one of six candidate astronomical objects for Hubble to observe in honor of the International Year of Astronomy. The options, which Hubble has not previously photographed, range from far-flung galaxies to dying stars. Votes can be cast until March 1. Hubble's camera will make a high resolution image revealing new details about the object that receives the most votes. The image will be released during the International Year of Astronomy's "100 Hours of Astronomy" from April 2 to 5.

Space enthusiasts can cast their vote at:
http://YouDecide.Hubblesite.org

Everyone who votes also will be entered into a random drawing to receive one of 100 copies of the Hubble photograph made of the winning celestial body.

NASA also invites teachers and students to participate in an accompanying Hubble Space Telescope classroom collage activity that integrates art, science and language arts. Students in participating classes will select their favorite Hubble images and assemble them in a collage. Students in each class also will choose their favorite object from the image voting contest and write essays about why they made their selections.

The Hubble Space Telescope, launched in 1990, was designed so that it can be repaired in space by astronauts. The next servicing mission to the telescope is targeted to launch on space shuttle Atlantis May 12, 2009. Mission objectives include extending Hubble's operational life by five years, repairing its out-of-commission instruments and enhancing its scientific power. To do so, astronauts will replace gyroscopes and batteries on the telescope, repair the Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph and the Advanced Camera for Surveys and install two new instruments -- the Wide Field Camera 3 and the Cosmic Origins Spectrograph.

For more information about the servicing mission, visit:
http://hubble.nasa.gov/missions/sm4.php

For more information about the Hubble Space Telescope, visit:
http://www.nasa.gov/hubble

Of course, I'd hope people will refrain from voting just for the sake of doing so, but sadly that's unlikely to happen. People want to be winners, and I'm fairly sure people would vote just for the chance of being "on the winning team" but with the added incentive of being entered into a draw for a real prize means NASA will probably be inundated with people clicking completely randomly. Indeed, on first visiting the site you'll see that unless you click on the "show image descriptions" you're invited to vote without even being told what you're voting for actually is. I can't say this is most impressive form of public interaction NASA has taken part in. If you'd like to participate in the voting, and I suggest you do, please watch the video of Dr Summers before voting.

Credits: X-ray: NASA/CXC/CfA/R.Kraft et al.;
Submillimeter: MPIfR/ESO/APEX/A.Weiss et al.;
Optical: ESO/WFI.

Space amazes me, all the time. Sometimes I lose sight of that, when I'm buried in the maths or tedium of day-to-day work life, but then sooner or later I always run across something which reminds me just how fantastic it really is out there, that the Universe is full of wonders. Today's NASA picture of the day (on the right) is one of those things, it's absolutely fantastic.

This picture is of the galaxy Centaurus A (also known as NGC 5128) - a galaxy believed to have a supermassive black hole at the center. The blue jet in the upper left extends for about 13,000 light years away from the center of the galaxy (i.e. from the black hole), and unless I'm mistaken this is what we call a relativistic jet which extracts energy from the vicinity of the black hole. To help give a sense of scale, that means the image is approximately 550,000,000,000,000,000km across. You can see why astronomers don't use km!

I'm not sure if you can technically call this a "photograph", as it was compiled with data from 3 different sources: the APEX telescope, the Chandra X-ray Observatory, and the Wide Field Imager of the Max-Planck/ESO 2.2m telescope. But it's certainly a brilliant picture. You can find/download larger versions (e.g. for wallpapers) from the Chandra mission pages.

The APEX telescope in Chile

APEX, the Atacama Pathfinder Experiment, is a radio telescope with a dish 12m across at Llano Chajnantor in Chile (50km East of San Pedro de Atacama) - part of the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) international astronomy project. The jets and lobes coloured orange in the picture are showing the submillimeter data from APEX. The APEX data shows that material in the jet is travelling at about half the speed of light, 1 billion km/h.

The Chandra X-ray Observatory. (Illustration: CXC/NGST)

Chandra, like Hubble, is a space telescope. It seems to get a lot less publicity than Hubble, or maybe it just captures the public's imagination less, and I think this is mainly because of the type of images it takes - Chandra is the world's most powerful X-ray telescope. It has eight-times greater resolution and is able to detect sources more than 20-times fainter than any previous X-ray telescope. In other words, it doesn't take "normal" optical images, and I suspect the media tends to shy away from such technological voodoo. Originally launched by the Space shuttle in 1999, Chandra's elliptical orbit takes the spacecraft to an altitude of approximately 139,000km - more than a third of the distance to the Moon. We put it up in space because the Earth's atmosphere absorbs the vast majority of X-rays, making them undetectable from telescopes on the ground. The blue jets you can see in the image are x-rays, as seen by Chandra. There is a whole host of Chandra images on Flickr - I think this one of Centaurus A shows the Chandra contribution to the above picture.

Of course, the image wouldn't be anywhere near as easily identifiable to us without the dust lane in the galaxy and background stars - provided here by visible light data from the Wide Field Imager on the Max-Planck/ESO 2.2 m telescope, also located in Chile.

Despite his marketing being unbelievably contradictory*, I think I'd quite like to go and see the illusionist Derren Brown on tour sometime.

Possible dates are:
Sunday 26th April: Nottingham, Royal Concert Hall
Monday 27th April: Nottingham, Royal Concert Hall
Wednesday 29th April: Manchester, The Lowry
Thursday 30th April: Manchester, The Lowry
Tuesday 19th May: Sheffield, City Hall
Wednesday 20th May: Sheffield, City Hall

If anybody's likely to be interested in any of those dates, let me know :)

* From his website:
"He doesn't claim to be a mind-reader, instead he describes his craft as a mixture of magic, suggestion, psychology, misdirection and showmanship."
Which contrasts somewhat with his tour advertising (image on the right). Snarf.