News and events
This is mostly a sort of 'News you might have missed' page. Stories you may not have seen but wouldn't want to miss, so if the things that catch my eye interest you, drop in from time to time, and if you find anything I've missed, please let me know at :-
smivs@smivsonline.co.uk
I will also make posts about what I consider significant or interesting current events, and may even comment on these from time to time.
You can view older items here.
Retro Gadgets
Imagine that you could go back to 1977 and take some modern Tech with you, but it has to blend in with the look and feel of the time. That's what Alex Varanese has done in a series of well crafted and amusing promos for four bits of modern kit, a mobile phone, laptop, games console and MP3 player. If you remember the '70s, you'll really appreciate how well he has captured the look of the time. There is also some priceless prose. Take a look here.
Fancy a Light Sabre?
A company called Wickedlasers has just release what is effectively a Star Wars type lightsabre, and it only costs $200.
The laser is built with a diode from Casio's new mercury-free Green Slim projectors which ironically have a somewhat blue tint. The laser is rated at 1 watt of power, which is enough to set someone on fire!.
There is more, including a picture here .
15/6/2010
Monster visits Santa Monica pier!
Surfers, tourists, and local Los Angelenos alike were stunned yesterday morning by a rather HUGE mystery: the discovery of 15 foot long footprints in the sand at Santa Monica Pier!
A local fisherman was perhaps the only person who caught a glimpse of the creature responsible. "Everything started shaking," he said. "Then I saw this thing. Bigger than any whale...eyes dark and menacing, teeth as big as the poles under the pier here." Police are cautioning people not to panic, and to be careful not to fall into the deep footprints on the beach.
The full story and a picture can be found here .
15/6/2010
UK's new Coalition Government
For the first time in about 70 years the UK has a coalition government, with the Conservatives and Liberal-Democrats joining forces to tackle the financial meltdown, one of the most serious problems of modern times.
The news media have, of course, been reporting this widely, but generally haven't gone into a lot of detail. The new government have released a PDF of their programme which details what they are hoping to do.
You can download the PDF here .
24/5/2010
Distractions
I've not posted anything here since late last year as on top of the Christmas and New Year hiatus, I'm afraid I've been rather distracted re-visiting an element of my past. Years ago me and a couple of friends spent countless hours playing a space-trading game called Elite on an old C64 computer.
Recently I found that this absorbing game has been re-invented and is available for all platforms (Linux, Mac and Windows)under the name of Oolite. You can find it here, but be warned, if you 'get the bug' like I did it will take over your life!
Thankfully, I've made time to put it aside for a while, and put some effort back into this website.
I have been continuing to scour the web for interesting articles and stories, and below are a few I've come accross recently.
Space Shuttle Video
The Shuttle has several cameras attached and there is a really nice compilation of images taken during the launch of a recent mission (STS 129) available here on Vimeo. Well worth a look.
25/1/2010
Art or science? - nuclear reactor schematics.
Wired.com recently featured a collection of cutaway drawings of some nuclear reactors. These were originally a series of wall charts published in issues of Nuclear Engineering International during the 1970s and 1980s.
Since then, the charts have been lovingly collected by Ronald Knief, a nuclear engineer at Sandia National Laboratory.
They are nicely detailed, and as well as being interesting from an engineering and scientific standpoint, they are also visually very appealing, begging the question, is this Art?
25/1/2010
Amazing DIY astronomy images
Amateur astronomer Peter Shah has stunned astronomers around the world with amazing photos of the universe taken from his garden shed. Shah hooked up a telescope in his shed to his home computer, and the results are being compared to images taken by the Hubble Space Telescope.
There is a full report on the Telegraph website, and the full gallery can be found on the Astropix website.
25/1/2010
What's a Mandelbulb?
I asked myself that very question when I heard of this. A mandelbulb is a 3-dimensional mandelbrot set, that's those computer generated images where, no matter how far you zoom in, the geometric shapes continue to develop. Recently, with the aid of some high-powered computers, a team has now published some truly awesome pictures of the first 3-D version, the Mandelbulb, along with a fascinating history. Well worth a look!
23/11/2009
Exoplanet "House of Horrors"
The NASA website is currently hosting a page on some of the more extreme exoplanets (planets outside our Solar System) and the terrifying conditions that a visitor would find there. Scary stuff, and you can read all about them here.
02/11/2009
Happy Hallowe'en!
From 'Boris' the Pumpkin ->
01/11/2009
A planet where it rains pebbles!
COROT-7b is among only a handful of rocky exoplanets (planets outside our solar system). Most are gas supergiants, like Jupiter. However, other than its rocky surface, COROT-7b is far from Earth-like. It is so close to its sun that its orbit is like the Moon around Earth. One face is always pointed towards its sun. That side is thought to have a temperature of over 4,000C.
At that heat, rocks will vaporize. The vaporization of the its surface is why Dr. Bruce Fegley Jr of Washington University in St. Louis (WUSTL) believes the precipitation on COROT-7b is pebbly in nature. "The only atmosphere this object has is produced from vapor arising from hot molten silicates in a lava lake or lava ocean," Fegley says.
Published in The Astrophysical Journal, the study utilized a computer system originally developed in 1986. Though the exact composition of the planet is unknown, running the program with various constraints yielded consistent results: rock showers. "As you go higher the atmosphere gets cooler and eventually you get saturated with different types of 'rock' the way you get saturated with water in the atmosphere of Earth," explains Fegley. "But instead of a water cloud forming and then raining water droplets, you get a 'rock cloud' forming and it starts raining out little pebbles of different types of rock."
06/10/2009
New insight into Jupiter's effect on comets.
"Jupiter's gravity captured a comet in the mid-20th century, holding it in orbit as a temporary moon for 12 years.
The comet, named 147P/Kushida-Muramatsu, is the fifth body known to have been pulled by Jupiter from its orbit around the Sun.
The discovery adds to our understanding of how Jupiter interferes with objects from the 'Hilda group', which are asteroids and comets with orbits related to Jupiter's orbit."
You can read the whole fascinating article at Cosmos Magazine.
14/09/2009
How much is that Dinosaur in the window?
"If you ever dreamed of owning your own dinosaur, now's your chance. Possibly the most impressive natural history auction ever is set to take place Oct. 3 at the Venetian Casino in Las Vegas.
The main event will be Samson, one of the best T. rex skeletons ever found. But there are around 50 lots for sale, including many impressive, museum-quality rarities, all of which will be on display to the public in the weeks preceding the auction."
You can read more and see the pics at Wired.
14/09/2009
New Hubble images
Some remarkable new images taken by the Hubble Space Telescope have just been released. These have been taken using a new imaging device recently fitted during a Shuttle mission. The full gallery can be found at HubbleSite.
Nice old computers
"PC Authority", of Australia, are currently running a nice gallery of photos taken during a visit to the Computer History Museum in California. There is a wide range of ancient computing hardware on display there, both whole computers and parts/components, such as a 25Kg hard drive which can hold up to 4Mb of data! You can view the whole gallery here.
28/08/2009
"Loch Ness Monster" spotted on Google Earth?
It's anyone's guess what it really is, but if you go to Loch Ness on Google Earth and zoom in you will find something very strange at co-ordinates 57 12 51N by 4 34 14W which looks remarkably Giant Squid-like! Is it the Monster? I'll leave you you to decide on that.
28/08/2009
Dancing Goo!
The Guardian (online) has a short piece about Cymatics, the science of the effects of sound waves on liquids and semi-solids. The article includes an amazing video of a blob of 'Dancing Goo'. Well worth a look!
13/08/2009
Discoveries at Saturn
At the moment Saturn is in Equinox, in other words the Sun is edge-on to the rings, and this means that larger objects (larger than the rings which are only a few metres thick) can be seen easily as they cast a shadow accross the rings.
The Cassini probe continues to send back some remarkable images from Saturn, and two new recent discoveries are interesting.
Firstly, a new moon has been discovered in Saturn's B ring, that is probably around 1,300 feet in diameter.
Even more remarkable is a feature which appears to be the result of an object crashing through the rings at an angle. This event has left a trail of ring material projecting above the plane of the rings, and a bright spot which is thought to be debris from the collision.
10/08/2009
Solar Eclipse
Yesterday, a large chunk of Asia was treated to the longest Solar Eclipse for over 100 years. Those, like me, who were frustrated by the very overcast eclipse we had here in the UK a few years ago will be green with envy. There is a splendid selection of photos on Planetfunn.
23/07/2009
"One small step..."
Photo:NASA
40 years ago today mankind set foot on another celestial body for the very first time. This remarkable achievement marks a pinnacle in man's history, in terms of both technology, and man's desire to learn and explore.
Sadly, due to public apathy and political expediency, we have not been back to the Moon since the Apollo missions ended, and although space exploration has continued in other directions, a return to the Moon does seem a little more likely now than it has done for some time.
I personally feel that we must continue developing our space exploration programs, as the whole of mankind will benefit in the longer term in all sorts of ways, not least of which is the fact that Earth itself will not last forever because eventually the Sun will come to the end of it's life. If mankind is not established in space (and beyond our Solar System) at this time, Humanity will cease to exist. But long before then, there are huge benefits to be had from space exploration, such as the boundless mineral resources available in the Asteroid Belt within our own Solar System.
So, today we mark this great achievement, and hopefully can look forward to a more active future in space, and ultimately a brighter and more sustainable future for mankind.
20/07/2009
Strange 'Blob of Goo' floating around Alaska
A huge blob of a weird goo-like substance has been seen floating off Alaska. It is thought to be organic, but so far tests have failed to identify it.
From an article in the Anchorage Daily News:
[ Nobody knows for sure what the gunk is, but Petty Officer 1st Class Terry Hasenauer says the Coast Guard is sure what it is not.
"It's certainly biological," Hasenauer said. "It's definitely not an oil product of any kind. It has no characteristics of an oil, or a hazardous substance, for that matter.
"It's definitely, by the smell and the makeup of it, it's some sort of naturally occurring organic or otherwise marine organism." ]
17/07/2009
Update : 20/07/'09
The Blob has now been identified as an Algal bloom, although the exact type of Algae has yet to be identified, and tests continue to check that it is harmless. You can read more, and see a picture at Time.
Apollo 11 film update
It seems that the lost footage may be lost forever, and the images NASA have released are, in fact, re-mastered versions of the existing film. The 'best' examples were taken and re-mastered by a team that normally restores old Hollywood movies. They are a vast improvement over the indistinct, grainy images we saw at the time, and are well worth a look. You an see them at Guardian.co.uk along with the sad tale of what probably happened to the high-resolution pictures.
17/07/2009
Apollo 11 40th anniversary
40 years ago today, Apollo 11 blasted off for the moon. This was to be the first time that men would land on the moon, and is possibly one of the most historic events of all time. NASA have marked the event by announcing that some 'lost' footage of the event has been discovered and re-mastered.
If, like me, you are old enought to remember these events you might recall the TV footage was of very poor quality (you could barely make out what was happening), so this is welcome news indeed.
The anniversary of the historic 'First Step' on the moon is on Monday 20th July, and I expect to be posting again then.
16/07/2009
Volcano photographed from the ISS
Some spectacular photographs have been released of the eruption of the Sarychev Peak volcano in the Russian Kuril Islands. These pictures were taken from the International Space Station, and give an amazing 'birds eye view' of this event. The pictures can be found on the MailOnline website
04/07/2009
New computer
I've just treated myself to a new computer. My ancient Compaq was getting ever more flaky. The new one is much more powerful, with an Intel core 2 quad chip and 4GB RAM and a 250GB hard drive which is ample for my needs.
Needless to say it's running Ubuntu.
04/07/2009
Migration to Linux
For years I've been using Micro$oft XP as my computer operating system, and getting more and more frustrated by it's shortcomings. I've never really liked Micro$oft anyway. Their products are bloated and flaky, and the company has indulged in some very dubious practices over the years.
So I've dumped XP in favour of Linux as my operating system. I chose the Ubuntu distribution as it is the most user-friendly and 'Windows-like' of the various Linux versions, and frankly, I wish I'd done this a long time ago. It boots up in seconds, seems completely reliable and does everything I want quickly and well.
OK, so I can't get the printer to work (it's an old Lexmark and there's no Linux driver available for it), and getting the webcam running could be a bit of a hassle, but otherwise I'm more than happy.
The on-board email client (Evolution) is very good and quite similar to Outlook. It also came pre-loaded with Firefox, but I've installed my beloved Opera for all my web-browsing needs.
Linux is not for the faint-hearted, and right now is not quite as easy as Windows for the less tech-savvy, but I'm no computer expert, and I've found it very easy to get running, and very easy to get on with. I love it!
08/06/2009
The importance of secure back-ups
You should always back-up important info held on your computer, but this needs to be done in a well thought through way. This point has been well illustrated by the total destruction of the AvSim website by a hacker. AvSim is/was a major site used by the online flight simulator community, and 13 years worth of work and data have been lost following a hack. It seems that AvSim backed up between their two servers, and when both got hacked everything was lost.
A backup will allow you to restore data in the event of loss, such as fire, hardware failure etc, so the advice is, back everything up regularly, preferably to a seperate storage medium that is off-line, and where possible, back up to a remote facility. Most ISPs offer this service now, so things like precious family photos should be backed up safely away from your own computer/home, just in case the worst should happen.
Rest assured, smivsonline is regularly backed up and should survive any forseable problem (bar global destruction).
14/05/2009
Strange 'walking' polymer revealed
Scientists at Tokyo's Waseda University have created a polymer gel that walks under its own chemical power. It stretches and contracts like an Inchworm caterpillar. Have a look at New Scientist for all the Tech and a cool video.
28/04/2009
World's largest Model Rocket set for launch.
"On (Saturday) April 25, 2009, history will be made. At Higgs Farm in Price, Maryland, Steve Eves will enter the history books as the person who flew the largest model rocket in history. The rocket will weigh over 1,600 pounds, it will stand over 36 feet tall and it will be powered by a massive array of nine motors."
The model is a 1/10th scale model of the Saturn V which took Man to the moon in 1969 and on into the 70s. The story behind this endeavour is detailed at rocketryplanet.com and is a fascinating and compelling read on both a technical and Human level.
Update : 26/04/'09
The launch was a resounding success, you'll be pleased to hear. There is a short piece, and video of the launch (quite impressive) at Universe Today.
23/04/2009
St George's Day.
Perhaps today, St George's Day, is a as good a time as any to think about what it is and what it means to be English. Interestingly, I think things are both confused and clarified when you look at
St George himself.
He was a roman soldier from Anatolia, a greek speaking land now part of Turkiye (often incorrectly spelt Turkey by us Brits), so although clearly not English he does reflect the cosmopolitan and multicultural aspects of Britain today.
And somehow he became the patron saint of England (as well as of Aragon, Canada, Catalonia, China, Ethiopia, Georgia, Greece, Montenegro, Palestine, Portugal, Russia, and Serbia, as well as the cities of Amersfoort, Beirut, Ferrara, Freiburg, Genoa, Ljubljana, and Moscow).
But back to England and Englishness, the English are quite an unassuming and indeed self-effacing race, and traditionally 'our' day has not been much celebrated in the past, and this year will be little different, I suppose.
Happy St George's Day!
23/04/2009
Weird Antarctic 'River of Blood' caused by microbes.
Scientists have discovered a community of microbes growing in frigid pools of salty water beneath a glacier in Antarctica. Although there is no light, no oxygen, and extremely cold temperatures the microbes appear to live (indeed, thrive) off a combination of iron and sulphur, according to a new study. The result of that strange metabolism is a brilliant red streak of cascading ice called Blood Falls. You can read more and see the pics at Discovery Channel.
17/04/2009
Breeders create Worlds longest dog.
Pictures have just been released of the World's longest dog, a collie/dachshund cross which is over 2 metres (6ft) long. This is not the product of genetic manipulation, though. She was bred the old-fashioned way, by selective breeding.
The dog , called 'April', weighs in at an awesome 235lb and eats 5 tins of dog food per meal. For more information, call Longdogs Kennels on 01042009.
01/04/2009
Bat-stronaut
It seems that a bat hitched a ride into space on board the shuttle Discovery last Sunday. It had been noted clinging to the external fuel tank some time earlier, and was expected to fly away before launch.
From an article on space.com :-
[ In the hours before Discovery's liftoff, NASA's Final Inspection Team (called the "ICE team") investigated whether the creature would pose a risk to the shuttle if its body impacted the orbiter's sensitive heat shield tiling. Ultimately, NASA officials signed a waiver confirming that the bat was safe to fly with.
"The bat eventually became 'Interim Problem Report 119V-0080' after the ICE team finished their walkdown," the memo said. "Systems Engineering and Integration performed a debris analysis on him and ultimately a Launch Commit Criteria waiver to ICE-01 was written to accept the stowaway."
Officials at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Fla., where Discovery launched from a seaside pad, said the bat's outlook after launch appears grim. ]
Lets, hope it doesn't pick up a nasty infection (see next item)!
18/03/2009
Extra-terrestrial life?
An Indian team have dicovered UV resistant bacteria in the stratosphere which are not found on Earth. Although this is not proof that they are extra-terrestrial, there is a growing body of evidence to suggest that this might be the case. This article from the International Journal of Astrobiology discusses how they may have got there, and speculates on their origins.
18/03/2009
Moving Home
I am moving home, so I may not be doing much to this Blog for a short while. Back soon.
19/02/2009
Obama presidency
Well, the new President is now in place, and seems to be "New Broom-ing" quite well already. This has to be a change for the better, not just for the States but the whole World. No-one can solve all the World's ills, but this man looks able to do a great deal of good, and we must wish him well.
22/01/2009
Scary!
It seems that some of the very first batch of weapons grade Plutonium ever made has been found, buried in a glass jar in a rusty safe! Historically quite interesting, but it does make you hope that disposal/storage of such material is handled a bit more professionally today.
22/01/2009
Sad losses
Two noted actors who I admired have passed away in the last day or so. Patrick McGoohan, best known for his role as "Number 6" in the iconic surreal 60's TV series The Prisoner died on Jan 13th, and Ricardo Montalban (Khan in Star Trek) died yesterday (the 14th). Both actors produced a great body of work and were admired and respected. They will be missed by many of us.
15/01/2009