Song of the Day: Lyra – Kate Bush
New Kate Bush song! Lyra from the The Golden Compass soundtrack.
UPDATE: I listened to a lot of Kate Bush songs on the flight back from San Francisco last week. 79 tracks in total 🙂
The frozen north 2
A previous post contained some pictures of frozen northern Canada. These were taken in the northern hemispheres summer. I flew the same route this weekend in winter time. The GPS system in the flight entertainment system is wonderful for tracking the flights progress. I had a look out the windows at the back of the plane when over the Baffin Sea just past the town of Godthab in Greenland. The sea in this area was frozen. However there were huge. long cracks in the ice. I wonder if this is normal for this time of year? If anyone knows drop me an email or post in the comments.
I forgot to take my camera on board with me on this flight, so no pictures of the cracked ice.
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Mini-review: Sennheiser PXC 450 NoiseGard headphones
I picked up a set of Sennheiser PXC 450 NoiseGard headphones a few months ago in East Midlands airport. I’d been looking for a set of comfortable external headphones that I could use on longer flights. I finally got to try them out in anger on a flight to San Francisco on Friday.
They are very good. When you turn them on (they are powered by a small battery) the ambient noise in your surroundings just disappears. There is a very noticeable difference. The audio quality when using them is superb. I was able to hear very subtle background effects and vocals in the music I was listening to on the flight. The noise of the engines and wind were almost completely cancelled when using the headphones. When someone comes to talk to you, cabin staff for example, you just push a button on the right headphone and the music is cut and passthrough microphones allow you to have a normal conversation without taking the headphones off. I still have to get used to this and was constantly taking them off to talk to people.
They fold up flat and reasonably small and come in a nice carry case. This can be attached to a laptop bag handle and carried onto the flight as part of your hand baggage. Highly recommended. One note. If you adjust the volume when in voice passthrough mode it sets the music volume and ambient sound cancelling settings. If you do this you might think that these headphones are crap and don’t cancel external sound at all. I did this a while back by accident. If you have a set and you think they don’t work then this might be the reason. Get the manual out and reset them following the instructions. Then you’ll see they do work and are wonderful.
Warner to go Blu-ray exclusive
Warner have announced that they will go Blu-ray exclusive for High Definition DVD from May 2008. This is good and significant news. Warner have been releasing HD content on both of the rival formats, Blu-ray and HD-DVD, up to now. As such they are one of the main content vendors releasing movies on HD-DVD. Now that they are going Blu-Ray exclusive probably means that the format war is over. Sony’s Blu-ray has won. Good thing to. We don’t need another run of the BetaMax vs. VHS war.
Sure, Universal and Paramount went HD-DVD exclusive last year. They’ll have to switch to Blu-ray as the momentum in sales, even before the Warner announcement, was 3 to 1 in favour of Blu-ray. Granted the sales of High Def DVD’s are still dwarfed by conventional DVDs, but over time as more people get HD TV’s and Blu-ray players this will change. Warner have a huge back catalogue of movies. Having these available on Blu-ray only will be a major advantage to the Blu-ray disc camp. It’s not often you get to identify a technological tipping point when it happens. It’s usually a hindsight thing. The Warner announcement on Blu-ray is a tipping point.
Blu-ray discs are definitely worth getting if available, as I rave about here.
Dune – Audiobook
There is a new audiobook version of Frank Herbert’s fabulous Dune available. I’ve listened to the first 3 hours of the whole 21 hour epic. It’s truly wonderful. Narrated by Simon Vance with a supporting cast providing some of the characters spoken parts. As such it sits somewhere between a narration and a full dramatisation. It’s very good indeed.
Another one gone
So there goes another year 🙂 So what does that actually mean? The Bad Astronomer tells all.
Happy 2008 to everyone!
Asteroid could hit Mars next month
This will be interesting if it happens. The tracking system that looks for asteroids and near-Earth objects that could hit Earth, has found an asteroid that might hit Mars on 30th January 2008. Current data gives the odds of it hitting Mars as 1 in 75. Further measurements will narrow it down. Could provide a nice show and a peak under the surface of Mars due to the crater it would leave. Here’s hoping it does hit. And near one of the Mars rovers. More details at New Scientist.
Update: New data puts the chances of this impacting Mars as 1 in 25, or 4%. Though still small the odds are getting better.
New toy: Roland electronic drum kit
I’ve been toying with the idea of getting a set of electronic drums for a while. For use with EZDrummer Midi samples and also as a form of aerobic exercise. Not sure how good drumming is as a form of exercise, but I’ll find out.
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Yearly check up
I had my yearly check-up after the cancer surgery recently. Nothing weird to report. I have to go for an check-up ultrasound examination in January (I put it off to after the holidays and MacWorld!). Next April 18th it’ll be 5 years to the day since I went to my GP to get it confirmed that I had TC. I already new due to research on TC-NET and other medical sites on the Internet. I looked at my GP visit and subsequent hospital activities as confirmation and plumbing 🙂
I’ll be 44 on Saturday 19th April 2008. I think I’ll arrange a party to celebrate that and the 5 year milestone.
Another big Wii queue
Mark Morford queues on a chilly San Francisco morning for a Nintendo Wii. For his 47 year old sister…
My irony meter just exploded
The Bishop of Wales is whining about atheistic fundamentalism. The money quote –
But he said “virulent, almost irrational” attacks on it were “dangerous” because they refused to allow any contrary viewpoint and also affected the public perception of religion.
Oh, the irony. Has he done any history? Does he know what happened to people who gainsaid the church teaching in the past? Has he heard of Giordano Bruno? Has he heard about the others persecuted in the name of religion?
Us atheists, fundamentalist or not [1], don’t want to burn anyone at the stake or deny them from practising their religion. We might think it is superstitious nonsense but that’s not the point. The point is that some of the religious wish to impose their irrational beliefs on the rest of us. They want to restrict a women’s right to choose what happens to her own body. They want to restrict our choices in medical research. They want to use tax payers money to pay for repairs to churchs when they have huge property portfolios that they could sell to fund the repairs. And so on.
All this whining about christianity being downtrodden looks like the last gasps of a dying organisation to me. The Enlightenment is still working to smoother the last irrational life out of it. The sooner the better.
[1] How can you be fundamentalist about a lack of belief?
Queen Rock Montreal on Blu-ray Disc
Queen Rock Montreal on Blu-ray Disc is unbelievable! The quality of the visuals, and the audio, are brilliant. The concerts were recorded on film originally and not the more conventional video. As a result the transfer to Blu-ray retains the full resolution. This is a must buy if you have a Blu-ray player and a HD TV. It’s worth it for I’m in love with my car on its own. Brilliant camera angles of Roger Taylor singing the song whilst drumming.
Signed up for Amazon Associates program
I’ve just signed up for the Amazon UK Associates Program. In the interests of disclosure please be aware that I will be putting my Associate ID into the links I provide to the Amazon Uk site from the Soapbox. This means that I will get a 5% kick back if anyone follows a link and then buys the linked book, DVD, game etc. If you follow this site you’ll know I link to a lot of books on Amazon. The addition of the Amazon ID, and its potential financial kickback, won’t make any difference to that. There won’t be any more or less links to Amazon. If there are any kickbacks as a result of links then that’ll just be a bonus. Any funds generated will be paid to me in the form of Amazon vouchers to buy more stuff.
Revolution
I’m currently reading The Living Cosmos by Chris Impey. I’m only about 20% into it but so far it’s an excellent book on the subject of astrobiology. It contains and interesting tidbit about the adoption of the work revolution to mean changes, paradigm shifts etc. It stems from Copernicus’ book On the revolutions of the celestial spheres, in which Copernicus outlined the evidence for the fact that the Earth goes around the Sun, and not the other way around. This was such an Earth shaking change in humanities thinking that Revolution came to be used to describe great changes.
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WordPress update…
I’ve just done a complete fresh install of WordPress 2.3.1 here on the Soapbox. Gave it a good scrub and now it’s all shiny. I’ll update the theme over the Christmas holidays. In the interim I’ll just leave this default theme in place.
Update: New theme in place. I like it 🙂
Call it Christmas for christ sake!!
Michael Bywater has a rant on The New Humanist website about atheists not calling Christmas by that name. I agree with him. It’s known as Christmas to everyone and their dog. It’s not a religious festival for very many people that I know. From what I can see it’s not a religious festival anymore in the UK at all. Christmas is a national holiday to eat too much, spend too much and have a good time. Religion has nothing to add.
But we can and should call it Christmas. Lets avoid the so called War on Christmas drivel that gets trotted out and just have a good time over the holidays. Don’t worry about offending anyone. Religious or non-religious.
BTW: this is what a real War of Christmas would look like:
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Song of the Day: Sometime World – Wishbone Ash
This is a bit of a blast from the past. First released in 1972 on the Argus album by Wishbone Ash. The whole album is stunningly good. I could have picked several of the tracks for the Song of the Day, but Sometime World was chosen as it is very, very good indeed. Wishbone Ash were one of the first bands to use 2 lead guitarists. The guitar parts are multi-layered, complex and, most importantly, sound wonderful. Sometime World has a guitar section that reminds me of Lynyrd Skynyrd’s Free Bird . If you liked that you’ll love Sometime World.
My advice? Buy Argus 🙂
Retro telephone
Well sort off. Retro in looks and sounds like a real old phone when it rings. The numbers on the rotary dial are push buttons. See picture below. Quite heavy. Which is good, you can walk away from the phone with the handset and the base stays put. The whole things feels solid. it also gives a nice satisfying clunk when you put the handset back in it’s cradle. This is the 2nd new phone I’ve got recently. The other being an iPhone, which I’ll write about soon.
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BTW: The phone above is available from John Lewis.