Revolution

| | General, Science

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

WordPress update…

| | General

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!!

| | General

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:

War on Christmas Click picture for larger view

Song of the Day: Sometime World – Wishbone Ash

| | General

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

| | General, Technology

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.

Old style phone Click picture for larger view

BTW: The phone above is available from John Lewis.

The Golden Compass

| | Uncategorized

I’ve written about Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials trilogy here before. I liked the ideas, but the books didn’t grab my imagination by the scruff of the neck. The film version of the first book comes out this week: The Golden Compass. Hopefully the books will translate in to good movies. If they expose more people to the ideas then that will be a good thingâ„¢. Mark Morford has written a nice column on the flap the film is causing amongst the “faithful”. Well worth a read.

New job role

| | General, Technology

I’ve just moved into a new role in work. My new title is Technology Consultant. A major part of the job function will be finding, evaluating and introducing new technologies into the company I work for and into our ICT offerings. I’ll also have a team of people working for me. Should be fun. Getting paid to look at new stuff. Obviously there will be more to it than that, but still…

Stem cell research breakthrough?

| | Science

There has been a lot of hoopla and news coverage recently about the results, from teams in Japan and the USA, who used chemical manipulation to produce cells that resemble stem cells. Many groups that oppose the use of embryos in research have proclaimed that the new results mean that there is no longer any valid reasons for using stem cells derived from embryos. They are mistaken for several reasons (ignoring the fact that they opposed the research using embryos anyway).

The results from the latest research do not equate to a medical breakthrough (as some have claimed). What has been published are the results of research on using transcription factors to reprogram skin cells into a state that resemble a stem cell. However both groups used viruses as the vector to introduce the genes to produce the transcription factors into the cells. It’s very unlikely that virally modified cells will be permitted for use in human trials and treatments. So the current research will not be directly translatable into human treatments. More work will be required to find other ways to introduce the transcription factors. Also the fact that the resultant cells resemble stem cells does not mean that they are stem cells. There could be biochemical limitations and side effects that have still to be discovered.

Talk of the end of research using embryonic stem cells is premature. We need to pursue all lines of research, including using embryonic stem cells. Given that many embryos are left over after human fertilisation, and that these will be discarded anyway, then I can’t see what the problem is with using them for research. If we accept the processes that produce the embryos (and we should) then simply discarding the unused ones when they could be used for research is just daft.

All avenues of research need to be kept open and funded in this area. We don’t know which technique will prove to be the best. As Einstein once said:

If we knew what we were doing, it wouldn’t be called research, would it?

To paraphrase. If we knew the best outcome then we could pick the research line that leads to it. But we don’t, so we have to research on all fronts. And that includes using embryonic stem cells and other techniques like nuclear transfer and animal/human hybrid cells. Plus any other techniques that researchers haven’t thought off yet.

OmniFocus

| | General

The Omni Group have announced pricing and a release date for OmniFocus. I’ve been using the beta versions for a while. It’s a very nice application for sorting out the things you need to get done. It can help you implement the Getting Things Done methodology. Well worth checking out if you need an application to help sort your life out and keep track of all the tasks you need to do in work and personal life. The also have a nice movie, that is the first of a series to be posted, to show how to use the application.

Song of the Day: In a Broken Dream – Python Lee Jackson with Rod Stewart

| | General

I haven’t heard this song for ages. Several years, until it came up on random play in iTunes today. I was working from home writing stuff for work with the music as background. I did something I very rarely do these days and just let iTunes play songs at random from the whole library of between 4 & 5 thousand tracks. That’s just under 20 days of music if I let it play through the whole library.

Anyway it threw up In a Broken Dream by Python Lee Jackson with Rod Stewart as guest vocalist. This is a truly wonderful piece of music. The vocals are fantastic. The guitar is blistering. The bass guitar is stunningly good, and the drumming is a perfect rhythmic complement to the whole thing. It’s tracks like this that remind me what a truly wonderful thing music is. Brilliant.

I can’t find it on iTMS to link to it. There is a YouTube video of about 3 minutes 30 seconds of the track. It’s a video of a vinyl copy being played 🙂

It’ll let you get a good feel for the song. I have it on the best Rock Album in the world…ever. Vol 1.

SF Sketchfest

| | General

The SF Sketchfest comedy festival is on in SF from 10th to 27th January. Happy days. I’ll be in San Francisco for 10 of those days. Have to keep an eye on the Sketchfest schedule to see who is performing on the nights I’m there.

Stardust

| | Uncategorized

Saw Stardust last night. It was brilliant. Comic fantasy but targeted towards adults. Well worth seeing. Might go again, or get it on Blu-ray disk when it comes out on HD.

Back on the hoof

| | Technology

Finally started walking for exercise again today. Did 5.46 miles along some recently completed pathways for walkers and cyclists that are being laid along the old Belfast to Comber railway lines in Dundonald/Stormont area. As usual the distance was tracked with the Nike+ and iPod nano combination. Summary as shown on the Nike+ site below.

Summary of 5.46.mile walk Click picture for larger view

Macworld 2008…

| | General

I’ve used my Marriott points and BA AirMiles, as discussed here, to book 10 days in San Francisco in January for Macworld Conference and Expo 2008. Planning on going to a day long Office 2008 launch event on Monday 14th, Steve Jobs keynote and expo hall on Tuesday 15th and then the Mac IT conference for the rest of the week. I’ll be in San Francisco from Friday 11th so will have a weekend before the conference for exploring and getting used to the time difference. I’m going to hire a bike and ride over the Golden Gate bridge to Sausalito for lunch one day. I’ll have 1.5 days after the conference in San Francisco as well, 9 nights in total. Happily I have enough Marriott rewards points banked over the last 2 years to get the hotel for free (apart from local taxes). I’m also flying British Airways Club World both ways using BA Executive Club points to upgrade. Sweet 🙂

Making Money – Terry Pratchett

| | General

Terry Pratchett’s latest book featuring the Moist von Lipwig character who was introduced in the excellent Going Postal . I didn’t think that Making Money was as good as the other recent books in the Discworld series. For one thing it felt a bit short and rushed at the end. Was still a good read though. Looks like Moist will get another starring role in a book about taxes. Allegedly, Terry Pratchett said at a book signing in the USA that it would be called Raising Taxes.

Making Money cover Click Picture for larger view

BTW: I read this on my Sony Reader.

Car choices redux…

| | General, Technology

I wrote previously about choices for a new car when my current leasing contract ends. I had a Honda Civic Hybrid on loan today for a test drive. I love it. It has a 1.4 litre petrol engine but it feels much more like 1.8 litre. It uses electric motors to assist the engine when required, and the batteries get charged when you brake or go downhill. The hybrid feels as responsive as my current 1.8 litre Renault Laguna, plus it’s really nice to drive. Weird getting used to the engine turning off when you stop moving! Going to call the leasing company and find out how much the 1.4 IMA EX version with built in Sat Nav costs.

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