Let’s make it a criminal offence to report, or pass on to others for reporting, the location of any member of the UK armed forces whilst on active service. That’d sort out a recent news story and help give a 23 year old bloke that chance to do what he wants.
Australian cricketer Matthew Hayden is being sanctioned by the Australian Cricket Board for calling India’s Harbhajan Singh an obnoxious little weed in a radio interview. He also said he would like to meet the Indian pace bowler Ishant Sharma in the boxing ring 🙂
I think this is class. It’s all part of the civilised war that is cricket. Underneath that nice facade it’s vicious. As it should be. I hope Hayden doesn’t get a ban. He’s a marvellous cricketer who is passionate about the game, as are Singh and Sharma. Just let them get on with it!
Garr Reynolds over at Presentation Zen has some excellent points to make on why inspiration matters.
(1) Never apologize for your enthusiasm, passion, or vision.
(2) Never apologize for being inspired by another human being.
(3) Seek out inspiration (don’t wait for it).
(4) Inspire others by sharing your talents and time.
(5) And no matter what: Don’t let the bozos grind you down, ever.
There are a few projects I’m working on that involve me trying to get people to change the way they do things. I’m treading a fine line between evangelising new technologies, solutions and products and trying not to come over as a zealot, at which point people turn off. The 5 points above provide a good framework for this process. Number 1 is certainly true. I believe passionately in the solutions I’m advocating and won’t apologise for that. I’ve found inspiration on many (too many?) fronts, so Number 3 is covered. Hopefully I’m progressing with number 4. Number 5 is for the times when you don’t think you are making progress. Well worth reading the whole post over at Presentation Zen. Check out Garr’s book as well.
Marvellous! Listen to a snippet on iTMS.
I was watching the weather on BBC yesterday and it struck me that the one thing that I learned in secondary school (K12 for Americans) that I have used the most over the intervening 29 years is the ability to read pressure charts. I’ve probably used this weekly (at least) since learning it in geography class aged 15. Along with the names of the chemical elements, reading weather charts is the only thing that I still use. And I only use the former for naming servers and volumes!
Cool city. The original series of Star Trek is being cleaned up, and some modern ship CGI added, for a new syndication to TV channels. They are using the original prints from the cameras and converting to digital HD. The CGI will be for shots of the Enterprise orbiting planets etc. They are also recording a new digital version of the theme music. Looking forward to seeing the new versions. Star Trek TOS is excellent. Hopefully we’ll get a Blu-ray release in the future. More details and videos over at the Star Trek site. Pictures below of the new CGI Enterprise.
A marvellous instrumental track with a Japanese feel to it. From the wonderful album of the same name by Taken by Trees (aka Victoria Bergsman of Young Folks fame). Preview on iTMS.
Pure genius. Listen to a snippet on iTMS. Then spend the 79p to get the full thing. You won’t regret it! A guitar extravaganza.
This is good. Nice use of QuickTime Player.
Tip of the hat to Bad Astronomy.
I’m not very good at mathematics. I don’t mean standard stuff such as adding, subtracting etc. No, I mean the more abstract stuff like trigonometry, algebra and, especially, calculus. In order to really understand the science behind the current models of the Universe (General Relativity, Quantum Mechanics, String Theory) you need to be able to understand the math. I don’t and I need to rectify that. So I’m going to start taking a series of Open University mathematics courses later this year. The initial courses will be:
After doing those I’ll decide whether to continue with pure mathematics courses or go down the physical sciences route.
Sean Carrol over at Cosmic Variance has a nice post linking to a Nina Simone video on YouTube. Excellent stuff.
All the news outlets are full of stuff about the French bank trader, Jerome Kerviel. The French police are looking for him in relation to fraud. What I don’t understand is how he is supposed to have been fraudulent? The reports say he didn’t get any of the £3.5 Billion he lost on the markets for himself. How is this fraud? Surely it’s just a case of someone being very, very bad at their job. He should be fired. So should the people he reports to in the bank for letting it happen. When does being crap at your job become a police matter? Am I missing something here?
Update: Apparently he is being questioned about “fraudulent recording of banking records”. Which is probably fair enough. Given that the money is the savers and investors and not the banks, employees probably have a duty of care to safeguard it.
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 🙂
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.
Click picture for larger view of map
So there goes another year 🙂 So what does that actually mean? The Bad Astronomer tells all.
Happy 2008 to everyone!
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.
Click Picture for larger view
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.
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.
Click picture for larger view
