The Rings around Uranus

No, this headline is not about aging gays, Elton, it's about a relatively rare astronomical observation, but I just couldn't resist writing punnily about it ;-)

Once every 42 (sic!) years, the angle between Uranus and Earth is such that the planet's rings are seen edge on. The rings were only discovered in 1977, and so this is the first opportunity astronomers have had to view the planet w/o the dust and the glare from it's rings.

We might also get to see changes in the structure of the rings (from Voyager 2's 1986 photos). The ten rings are dark (no ice) and much thinner than Saturn's, being at most a few kms wide (with one exception). On Hawaii, the Keck-II ten meter telescope is being used to take photos (also infra-red ones) so we can expect some spectacular pictures in the press soon and perhaps new scientific discoveries :-) So keep an eye on what Imke dePater (University of California at Berkeley) publishes . . .

Apropos new scientific discoveries, the MAGIC gamma-ray telescope team has an astounding (sic!) preprint out, where they were looking for quantum gravity, but saw higher-energy gamma rays from an extragalactic flare arrive 4 minutes later than lower-energy ones! As I interpret this observation, there are three possible reasons:

• The high energy gamma rays were emitted four minutes later, then I'd want to ask why? This is unlikely.
• Space is a dispersive medium! Pulse-spreading caused by dark matter ??
• Einstein's special theory of relativity ( C is a constant) is wrong! Mindblowing!

Place your bets, dear blogreaders, and hold onto your hats. Rien ne va plus!

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Update September 1st, 18:40 CEST : Thanks to bloglurker Hilary (from New Zealand) for sending me what may be possibly the worst gay astronomy joke ever :-
"Gays are not allowed in the telescope dome since two were caught buggering about in there nekkid and hit the eyepieces with their backsides and wrecked 'um. " ;-)

Copyright ^© Stu Savory on 31th August 2007 at 05:11 CEST permalink Comments Email

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854917632 : Your number is up....

H ere you are : I've made up a great geeky game for your evening at the pub; it'll make a change from those inevitable and intractable pub quizzes.

A teacher writes a number in the blackboard, 854917632, and asks what is special about it. After a half-hour's class discussion (loud), mathematical theorising etc, one of the teenagers has an insight and says - correctly - "The digits 1 to 9 are in alphabetical order" . Thus :- Eight,Five,Four,Nine,One,Seven,Six,Three, Two.

But since this was an international boarding school, other numbers soon appeared, written by various children on the board. Here are the first six for you to tackle :-

• 528947631
• 831596742
• 829673451
• 298457631
• 542986731
• 149257638

And now it is your job, dear blogreader, to work out the languages in which these numbers are written alphabetically ;-) You have until monday to send me your attributable answers. If you have some alphabetical number sequences in yet more tongues, please mail them for attributed inclusion here :-)

And for those of you who have problems with numbers, try this :-

Hrabqdweflmnsxigjkopctvyuz ;-)

PS : Liz, can you send me the Welsh number sequence? Wendy, in Cantonese, and Nick, in Greek please?

PPS: Just to keep things easier for you, I've used the English alphabet throughout ;-)

PPPS: US-educated Teen Miss South Carolina should not even bother trying this one ;-)

Copyright ^© Stu Savory on 29th August 2007 at 06:29 CEST permalink Comments Email

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The Story of O

O ne of yesterday's UK headlines read "Camilla pulls out of Diana do". My subconcious insists that a final 'O' is missing from the last word...
Of course if Charles had pulled out, we could have been spared at least one...

On the other side of the pond, we have some good news; Gonzales quit his job.

And here's something useful that american readers of all parties can do today. You will be able to see a total eclipse of the moon, which we cannot see from Yurp. Now, during totality please point your scopes at the moon and count any bright flashes you see on the darkened surface. What you see there are the impacts of lunar meteorites, high-speed impacts - there being no atmosphere to slow them down - and we are still in the tail-end (sic!) of the Swift-Tuttle comet which causes the Perseid shower. By counting them, NASA hopes to be able to estimate the danger to any future lunar colonists (any lunar base will be built below ground to avoid micrometeorites). Remember , even John Carter lived in a cave on Barsoom - this may well be why ;-)

Currently re-reading : The Story of O, classic S/M.

Copyright ^© Stu Savory on 28th August 2007 at 06:28 CEST permalink Comments Email

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Hasibaer's helpful hints

My Beetle-cabrio driving friend Hasibaer has a number of helpful hints for people with flooded cellars, like we were. I've translated his suggestions here because they may be of help to others, so all credit is due to him :-

• Why did you do the back-breaking bucket carrying? You could have just put the pump you already had in the cellar into the 20 liter pail, surely? No, it wouldn't fit easily, but I could have transferred the 20 liters into a bigger bucket and pumped from there. I was just to stressed/stupid to think of that at the time.
• Put anti-break-in glass (e.g. perspex) in the cellar windows and doors. It won't break, letting water surge in through the hole. Good idea, will do.
• Put a 40*50*50 cm sump into the cellar floor for an automatic pump. Good idea if building anew, but it's not a good idea to drill holes into an existing cast-concrete cellar, because cracks could spread and let the ground-water seep in.
• Put a 12volt LED light in each floor, fed from a car-starter kit ( battery fed by a central 230v/12v converter). OK, maybe a torch on each floor would suffice?
• Instead of a generator as you (Stu) suggested, get a 12V -> 230V converter. A 1 KW rating will let you run the pump, the deep-freeze, oil-heating pump and the TV all in parallel. 400 watts will let you run them alternately. Drive the converter from the car battery with the engine running. OK, but with the car NOT in the garage! And that's a much cheaper idea than the generator. And the car's tank is likely to hold more and fresher fuel too. Good idea :-)

Thanks again, Hasi! Anybody else got any good suggestions?

Copyright ^© Stu Savory on 27th August 2007 at 06:27 CEST permalink Comments Email

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Chez moi le deluge :-(

F looded cellar :-(

Bloody hell, a paddling pool I'd neither ordered nor particularly wanted! :-(

The heavy rains at the start of the week culminated in a flash flood coming down the hill behind our house tuesday night after dark. Suddenly the back garden was submerged in several inches of water which swirled around the house blocking its way. Sadly, it was higher than the window-sill to the heating-room in the cellar and it forced open the window and poured into the heating cellar room. Some of it seeped under the door into the room with the washing machine, where - thankfully - a floor-moisture alarm went off. Pheeeeeeeep! Pheeeeeeeep! Pheeeeeeeep! . . .

I tore downstairs and - splish-splash - found the cellar already ankle deep. The dogs chased down excitedly after me. Frieda was able to stop in time but puppy Kosmo flopped into a paddling pool he wasn't expecting. He has discovered he can swim ;-)

Grab the dogs, dry the pup and shut them in the kitchen. Call my local builder to borrow a pump, but it's his answering machine :-( Where the f*ck am I going to get a pump at this time of night? Suddenly I realise I have a pump, it's the circulation-fountain pump in the garden pond. Said pond is muddy, slippery, and weedy and a good foot deeper than usual even though it's overflowing. So there I am, clothes off, standing in the pond in my underwear, getting soggy testicles whilst dismantling the fountain assembly in the dark. A sight for the Gods, to be sure. Good job it was dark.

And cold? I was even prepared to accept that awful penis-enlargement spam then ;-)

Two of the goldfish - swept away - discovered the downside of enduring freedom :-(

Back in the cellar, tearing from room to room unplugging all electrical gear, then - flashlight in mouth - at the circuit-breaker box, turning back on the fuses ONLY for the overhead lights, leaving the wall sockets all off (I may indeed be a daft bugger sometimes, but I'm not shockingly stupid!)

Put a long hose on the pump and drag the far end out into the street. This surprised the neighbours who have fled their houses, probably because I was still only wearing soggy underwear! Ooops! But I think they had enough problems of their own without squawking about indecent exposure! Get the pump running, pumping out the cellar where it's about 6 to 8 inches deep now. Only now do I carefully open the heating-room door and a wall of water surges past me :-( The cellar window makes for a magnificent if unwelcome waterfall :-(

Back upstairs, dry myself off and put on some dry clothes and wellington boots (why didn't I think of them earlier?). Having done what I could, check the neighbours. A dozen or more houses are flooded, some chest deep. Make sure everyone in sous-terrain flats are OK. Meanwhile the village voluntary fire-brigade are out in full force. All pumps manned and going at 110% rated performance. During the night two of their pumps fail, clogged with mud and flotsam it turned out :-(

Midnight, I phone the wife who is in Munich making a TV programme, she resolves to come back on the first morning train. She didn't sleep well and I worked all night.

Meanwhile the flood - a river of water cascading over the garden walls - has diminished. By dawn my own pump is winning the game and gets the cellar water level down to about an inch, the minimum depth it can pump due to its construction. I call the fire-brigade to pump out the rest but even they can't pump shallower than that!

Only now do I think to grab the digicam and take evidence photos for the insurance company. I call them and leave a message, they don't start work until 9 a.m.

About eight a.m. my friend Irina comes to help. Later Sebastian and Stefanie come to help too. Much praise here for the selfless help given by good friends! Thankyou, you three! I drive into town to buy a shallow-water-capable-vacuum-cleaner (BTW: that's one word in German, as you might expect ;-) They are selling like hot-cakes, but I get one. Meanwhile the local builder has dropped one off at my house too and Sebastian even brought his own; good thinking lad! So, with four of us working we get the floor pretty dry after about 6 hours back-breaking work. The equipment is so good it sucks up 20 liters in about 30 seconds. Then you have to stop and empty the 20 liter collecting pail down the sink or toilet. 20 liters weigh 20 kg. So every minute each of us was carting 20 kg to the sink. For 6 hours! Certainly I have back-pain now and the others were grumbling too but carried on valiantly. Thanks again!

But I get to take a break to collect the wife from the station and fill her in on the details. Train passengers stared at me, Mr Wet T-shirt, complete with jeans rolled up around my thighs and sporting green wellies. Needless to say, the sun is shining ;-)

Back home, the insurance man has shown up, ill-equipped in suit and finest leather shoes. So I lend him the wellies and I go ahead barefoot, showing him the damage.

The damage? Two beautiful wooden pine floors soaked (they'll have to be ripped out and replaced), one in the guest-room, one in the cellar study. The sauna should recover. The shoe cupboard I'm not sure? I managed to save all but two carpets (which are at the cleaners now) and all the good furniture I could carry upstairs alone during the night. The insurance should cover 90% of all bar the carpet cleaning.

Where are we now? By string-pulling I finally found a company (Jolmes) who loan out dehumidifiers and now have two running full time in the cellar. Friday the carpenter will tear out the old floor and make an offer for a new one which I'll forward to the insurance company. We're lucky, most of the villagers are not insured against flood damage, thinking flooding too unlikely to be worth the premiums :-( The dogs are vomiting today, I guess they supped some of the 'water' which of course included the run-off from farmer Friedhelm's cattle fields & manure heaps. Chateau Pong 2007 :-(

Gradually life returns to normal, but we'll be sitting in ground-floor rooms crammed with cellar furniture for a month or so I guess :-( The price of global warming. The floodwater even tore holes in the asphalt of the roadways. The river in the valley is swollen and overflowing onto the flood-plains. Goodbye football pitches, goodbye tennis-courts, no sports please, we're waterlogged. But the dams are holding so far.

I'm blogging this from the upstairs computer, so we're still online, letting you share our misery. No commiserations please, just think deeply about global warming, what you can do to prevent/minimise it and flood precautions you could plan. Good luck!

P.S. Some suggestions for house-owners. Prepare yourself a dozen sandbags, enough to block all doors and windows. Buy a pump and attach a 10 meter long 1 to 2 inch hose. Bayonet quick-release fittings recommended. Buy a petrol driven generator in case the electricity fails too. Keep 10 liters of fuel for it in the garage, refreshing them every 3 months or sooner. Buy 2 strong torches and replace the batteries regularly. Practice walking through your house with your eyes shut, so that you can find the circuit-breaker box in the dark. Learn the order of the circuit breakers off by heart. Don't keep your wellies in the cellar (told you I'm daft sometimes). Are your fire and water alarms working? Check regularly. Are your fire-extinguishers current? They age you know. Keep a mobile phone upstairs in case the phone landlines go dead. Make a plan and ensure everyone in the house knows it. Do a practice drill annually. Overkill? No!

Copyright ^© Stu Savory on 24th August 2007 at 06:24 CEST permalink Comments Email

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Gone Bear Hunting

Sitting in the blast pen, earthen walls hide the horizon on three sides. The concrete of the scramble pad reflects the afternoon sun, the runway wavy in the heat. The afternoon goes by slowly, so slowly. The cable from the starter truck is like a black snake dozing in the sun. The man in the starter truck is reading 'Lady Chatterley's Lover', infamous from last winter's trial, hands wandering. Again I check all the instruments and go back to daydreaming in the tiny cockpit.

"Scramble, scramble, Bear at the Orkneys!" screams the radio.

The starter-truck crew explode into action, D.H. Lawrence forgotten. Within seconds the engines are started and spooling up as I close the cockpit hood and pull my straps tight. "Chocks Away!" and I'm rolling, my wingman too, as we are cleared.

Thunder rises as I trigger the afterburners. Brakes released and the Lightning leaps away; a mere 500 yards and I'm at 50 feet, gear coming up and pointing the nose up, far up, in a supersonic climb. The radio grunts distortedly "Single Bear at 39,000 feet, abeam Lerwick, heading 190, speed 500 knots". No problem, I think. Just 45 seconds after take off I'm at 39,000 feet, supercruising for the intercept at over Mach two. The Bear is on the radar now, I arm the Firestreaks. We catch the Bear over the Fair Isles and slow down for a tight turn putting me alongside his cockpit at 500 knots. Wingman is sitting on his tail, a mile or so back. The Firestreak AAM has a range of barely 4 miles at Mach 3. The Bear's tail gunner sensibly leaves his guns pointing up at the empty sky. The pilot waves OK as I signal him to turn away. A crew member takes photos of me. Doubtless the KGB has a dossier. We escort him back north a short way, disarming the Firestreaks. EE Lightning : saddled to a skyrocket!

Fuel getting low, we turn back for Scotland, adrenelin subsiding. 800 miles is a pitifully short combat range. Bear hunting in the sixties. Deja vu in the news today.

The English Electric Lightning was the Royal Air Force's interceptor of the sixties and had a performance superior to many modern day fighters. A french Mirage IIIe has an initial climb rate of 30,000 ft/min, a MiG 21 can manage 36,000 and a Tornado 43,000. The Lightning climbed vertically supersonically at over 50,000 ft/min! It has intercepted a U2 at 88,000 feet altitude! In a 1985 test the Lightning was the only fighter that could catch Concorde in a tail chase. Apart from the small cramped cockpit its only major disadvantage was the short range (800 mi combat , 1300 mile ferry). Last week it was the Eurofighters' turn. A bit slower, a lower ceiling, but even faster climb and twice the range. More expensive too. And still hunting the same old Bear :-(

NB: This is fiction, folks, not autobiographical. But thanks for asking :-)

Copyright ^© Stu Savory on 22nd August 2007 at 01:00 CEST permalink Comments Email

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Religious car stickers I would love to see

Here in Germany those of religious fervour display discrete little symbols on the rear of their cars. That way you know the religions of the overtaken; Mohammedans have a half-moon and Christians an outline of a fish etc etc. In the USA you see sloganised bumpers (fenders). Some I would like to see :-

• Jesus did not own a gun, nor did he vote Republican!
• "Love thy enemy" implies not killing them.
• When I listen to Dubya (who hears God in his head) I thank God I'm an Atheist.
• Jesus was a pacifist (I've actually seen that one).
• Which religion is God? Humanism.
• Intelligent Design Retarded Nonsense! (seen that one too)
• Jesus wasn't white. Nor did he speak only English.
• Got Porsche, that's Rapture enough :-)
• 99% of those who deny Evolution can't define it! (but they're improving ;-)
• Don't believe everything you think.
• Allah has evolved two opposable thumbs. (really subtle that one ;-)
• Am I a Militant Agnostic? I dunno!
• Humankind. Be both.
• Non-judgement day is still very far off.
• My imaginary friend is Jesus.
• Worshipping Waheguru makes me Sikh.
• Jesus didn't teach you to hate gays.
• Zen Jesus.
• I believe in Black Holes on heroin : Masses of Opium. (pace Karl Marx)
• Satanism is really evil! (Duh!)
• Buddhist driver : reborn after every car crash. Just my Karma gets worse ;-)

Actually you hardly ever see any Buddhist stickers, and I've never seen a Jewish one. Probably because the latter aren't allowed to write the name of JHWH, and the former don't have enough room on the car for all nine billion ;-) (pace Arthur C. Clarke ) ;-)

PS: Your additions to this list are welcome.

Copyright ^© Stu Savory on 21st August 2007 at 06:21 CEST permalink Comments Email

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"Seven P’s meme"

Incomprehensibly, Sterling tagged me with this 7P meme, with an apostrophic mistake in its title. So I'm assuming he means the plural and not the genitive singular of P (unless he means me to Piss Of (sic!)). Keep the bold P words, and fill in the rest characteristically about yourself.

Passion - Motorcycling

Purpose - getting my knee down

Pursuit - by 'Fireblade'-Alex

Position - hanging off

Pummeling - V2-vibrations

Progress - at the speed of fight

Personality - competitive

If anyone wants pick up the tag, do so and let me know, then I'll link to you here. Meanwhile, normal service will be resumed here shortly.

Recommended reading : "Eats, Shoots and Leaves" by Lynne Truss, 2003, ISBN 1846680352.

Copyright ^© Stu Savory on 20th August 2007 at 06:20 CEST permalink Comments Email

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Your Feedback and Comments this week

S everal of you commented on the panoramic photos I posted on tuesday.
First off, Suzy asks about the "the curved line in the tiles of your roof". That's an artefact of the Autostitch program, Suzy, where it sews the several contributing photos together. Note to self and other Autostitch users: try to avoid repetitive patterns in the bits of the photos which will later overlap. Then an Irish bloglurker Janet breaks cover to ask "In the village panorama, which is your house Stu?". I've ringed it in red in this version of the panoramic village photo for you Janet. Nearby photographer Horst points me to a local (40 miles away) web-to-big-prints company which can print large photos, including panorama photos. They are called PrintBig he writes; "you FTP them the pix and say what size you want (don't go below 150 dpi) and they send you the (mounted) photos via the postal service". Ta, Horst.

Kim Walker went into some detail : "I have a few suggestions on pretty pictures. First, definitely get a tripod. I have a velbon df-50, cost about that many US dollars and will securely hold my finepix s7000 (held the s9000 until that was stolen). I also sometimes use a cable release for the shutter button, your e900 won't allow that but yes, if you do the delayed shutter, on a sturdy tripod, that should remove the handheld shakies. Also then you can stay with the 100 asa, unless you really like the graininess that comes with higher speeds, same as with film."

Peter Harris (Sarchi) tweaked the midtone contrast for me (which brings out the colour some). Unfortunately this introduced artefacts at the high-contrast horizon :-(

Meanwhile on Wednesday, Red Ronja tried to swat the fly on the screen. Gotcha! ;-)

Bush voter Clay sent me a diatribe from the US after Wednesday's posting, and asks- inter alia - what I would do if I were the US presnit? Well, you asked for it :-

1. immediate exit of all US forces (incl. CIA) from Iraq and Middle East
2. ban guns in the US (i.e. demilitarization of US society), thus decreasing murders
3. rescind the socalled PATRIOT Act irrevocably and restore civil rights to pre-911
4. rescind tax breaks for the rich (people & corporations), put money in health
5. impeach Bush and Cheney and/or put them before a UN warcrime tribunal
6. close Guantanamo Bay, giving all there a fair and public ( & non-military) trial
7. withdraw tax breaks for all religious groups (YOU want a god? YOU pay for Her)
8. introduce universal health care (go see the movie Sicko if you haven't already)
9. withdraw voting machines, or insist on an auditable paper trail
10. resign after calling new elections to let the US steer itself decently again ;-)

YMMV, but this is my top-ten list to measure the US presidential candidates by...

Another US blogreader, Jonathon, read my 'nukulah worries' article and points us to this Sidney Harris cartoon which I dedicate to the LHC nuclear physicists at CERN.

Despite being Welsh, Liz Hinds has good whisky tips for us :- "Husband would put Lagavulin in first place and possibly Bowmore Darkest in 2nd ahead of Laphroaig. The Islays are his favourites too. Have you read Raw Spirit by Iain Banks? He takes a motorbike (I think) ride around Scottish distilleries..." 'Around'? Surely 'between' ;-)

Italian blogreader Luigi says "Thanks for the Biker-Hotel tips in Germany, here's a biker-hotel in the Italian Dolomites, in I-32020 Arabba, it's the Hotel Olympia".

In his blog, Doug Alder is trying to outpun me; Vidi, vici, veni, VD, nice try Doug.

Several mails from Four Dinners reassure us that he is back home and is still his old chirpily blogging self despite a recent heart attack. Look after yourself, 4D !!!

Copyright ^© Stu Savory on 18th August 2007 at 06:18 CEST permalink Comments Email

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All Shook Up

I have been trying to concoct some of the cornier headlines we might expect from the UK gutter press today. Here they are ;-)

• "Royal reveals penis". (Harry?)
• "Real Penis Layovers". (Chelsy moves to UK?)
• "Pelvis nearly arose". (Charles?)
• "Very sore sailplane". (Kent glider crash?)
• "E'en Paris lays lover!" (Hilton 'news'?)
• "Arse-ole-rape vinyls". (Old Elton records?)

But of coarse(sic!) none of these are true. It's just that the typesetter got all shook up when setting the name of the little lad shown in the photo on the left - 30 years dead this very day - and so all these non-headlines are anagrams of Elvis Aaron Presley ;-)

Copyright ^© Stu Savory on 16th August 2007 at 06:16 CEST permalink Comments Email

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Rats deserting sinking ship

In the news yesterday :
Bush advisor Karl Rove to leave the White House end of this month. Well if Bush needs help with anything I guess he can still call him. Or can he? (as shown in the photo on the left?).

Not in the news at all :
The following list shows children of the Bush clan who are eligible for military service, but sure as hell aren't serving in Iran right now (or even ever?)

• Jenna Bush, child of George W. Bush
• Barbara Bush, child of George W. Bush
• George P. Bush, child of Jeb Bush
• Noelle Bush, child of Jeb Bush
• John Ellis Bush Jr., child of Jeb Bush
• Lauren Bush, child of Neil Bush
• Marshall Bush, child of Marvin Bush
• Samuel LeBlond, child of Dorothy Bush Koch
• Ellie LeBlond, child of Dorothy Bush Koch

Clan string-pulling, inherited cowardice or coincidence ? Draw yer own conclusions :-(

Didn't John F. Kennedy once say "Ask not what your country can do for you, but instead ask what you can do for your country" ? Draft the ill-begotten spawn now !!

Copyright ^© Stu Savory on 15th August 2007 at 06:15 CEST permalink Comments Email

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Autostitch : a great piece of freeware

Back in 2004 and 2005 I ran The Skyline Meme wherein people posted panoramic photos of the skylines (near) where they live. In my ever-pervasive ignorance my own photos were just regular photos with the top and bottom cropped off :-( But other people had REAL panoramic photos, even scanning around all 360° :-) But now I've found out how to do this myself & want to share knowhow.

What you do is to take several photos which slightly overlap whilst scanning around your panorama (see sketch on the left). Then you use an almost intuitive piece of freeware called Autostitch, written by the genial Matthew Brown (Ph.D candidate at the University of British Columbia, Canada).

Here is an account of my first staggering steps experiments with Autostitch.
Warning to those of you using dialup modems : these are big pictures, 200 to 500 kilobytes each when you click on the links, so they'll be s..l..o..w.. loading.

My first try used a lousy low-resolution (1.3 megapixel) phone camera with its wide-angle lens (not a good idea) to take this 180° shot from the view at Dieter's Alm.
You'll have to do some horizontal scrolling to see the whole panorama :-)

Having seen the (miserable) result, I realised that I needed to use a better camera (up to 9 megapixels) and, setting the zoom to 'tele', take 8 or 9 shots instead of just 3.

So I climbed up the hill behind our house and took this 120° panorama of our village. Before autostitching the shots together I reset the SW parameters to get a 3860 * 450 pixel resolution (425 kB at 85% jpeg quality) from the seven tele-photos (the slight overlap prevents me getting the full 7*600 =4200 pixels horizontally).

In this third panorama I took 10 shots (=full-circle 360°) in the back garden. The fillip being that I got the wife to sit in each of the garden chairs, loungers etc visible in each shot. So here's the photo (3800*385 = 468 kB at 80% jpeg quality, sufficient for the web) of the sevenfold panoramic clone . Now I've even got my own harem ;-)

Now what doesn't work well?

• Vertical panoramas because you are too close to the subject and leaning back for the top photos, so the bottom one gets excessively distorted.
• Seascapes, probably 'cos it can't find enough (dissimilar) edges to line 'em up?
• Trees or woods on a windy day, 'cos leaves and branches move between pix.
• The sky at night, again probably 'cos it can't find edges to line 'em up, just point sources of stars. If you zoom out, it might be able to identify constellations, I haven't tried that yet.
• Haven't found a copy shop who can print hi-res panoramas 2 yards wide yet :-(

Now all these pix were taken with Tele-zoom and a handheld Finepix E900, albeit each on a bright day. I think I'll use the self-shoot delayed shutter next time, and up the speed from 100 to 400 ASA, so I eliminate/reduce the camera-shake which is limiting the resolution of the pictures in these shots. Or lash out on a panning tripod? Anybody got any more tips for improving the resolution?

All in all, I can recommend Autostitch , it's so simple even I can use it :-)

Copyright ^© Stu Savory on 14th August 2007 at 06:14 CEST permalink Comments Email

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Greats Balls of Fire

Way back when, I was chatting up the pretty blonde girl in the optician's shop where I was buying a cheap pair of binoculars.

"So why don't you come out tonight for a swift tuttle..."

Whap! I got my face slapped hard, before she let me even finish the sentence :-(

Obviously, Blondie didn't know that Swift-Tuttle is a comet whose tail we pass through every August. Dust particles from this tail cause the Perseid meteor shower which peaks tonight. So if my northern-hemisphere readers have clear skies they can look north-east tonight, in the constellation of Perseus, just a bit above Mars, where they should see some great shooting stars (I guess about 2 or 3 per minute). Telescope not needed, the naked eye should be sufficient :-)

I wish you clear and cloudless skies tonight. Enjoy a Swift-Tuttle and make a wish :-)

PS for European readers : did you see the ISS come over last night (22:45 CEST)? Shuttle attached too!

Copyright ^© Stu Savory on 12th August 2007 at 06:12 CEST permalink Comments Email

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The Tonenburg, a motorcyclists-only hotel

Here in Germany we have fine institutions, hotels ONLY for motorcyclists. I'm not sure whether other countries have them too? It means all the guests are like minded, and no other guests are there to complain about a) loud rock music, b) revving of engines by arrivals and departures (and sometimes just for the sheer hell of it), c) Party atmosphere d) campfire cameradie, e) burnouts/donuts...

This particular one, the Tonenburg, is about 60 miles from my place. It is a castle keep, originally built in 1315, and modified over the ensuing ~700 years. It is a UNESCO world cultural heritage building. It was built as a defence post for the 9th century Corvey Abbey nearby; the walls (of the yellow/orange) tower are 7 feet thick. It overlooks the river Weser, the main access route to the abbey then, as there were no roads through the forest at the time. Now there are roads there and no forest :-(

Recently I dropped in there and spent 20 minutes talking to Mrs.Pirone, who (with her husband) runs the place. They are over 70 now and still active bikers. Way to go! Previously they ran another well-known nearby biker hotel - the Villa Löwenherz (= Lionheart) - which they have now passed on to their children to run. She told me a couple of interesting historical details :- The tower was found (after 260 years!) to be too cold and so in 1574 a large fireplace and chimney were added. Darkness continued to reign in the keep (built for defence) until 1721 when windows were added. At the same time the barock doorway was added; until then entrance had been only via a ladder up to the second floor ! A contract dated 17.3.1332 promises that the tower will never be sold by the abbey. She showed me a sketch made in 1674 to settle a border dispute; hardly changed at all, has it? :-)

But it has been done up internally by the Pirones over the last dozen years and now hosts 110 beds, singles and doubles with shower and WC, a dormitry and a campsite, a bar and restaurant, beer-garden, etc etc. So if you are a biker looking for a stopover while transiting Germany, or staying several nights whilst exploring the Weser Hill Country or the Harz mountains etc etc, then you could do worse than stay at the Tonenburg :-) Their website (German only, alas) is www.tonenburg.de :-)

On the iPod, Jethro Tull are playing 'Living in the Past', because Ian Anderson is 60 today. Happy Birthday!

Copyright ^© Stu Savory on 10th August 2007 at 06:10 CEST permalink Comments Email

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Bottom to top, you see :-

• English Bulldog puppy Kosmo, now 4 months old, chewer of chairs :-(
• His (mostly) patient mom, Bulldog Frieda , aged 2 ¼ years, chaser of cats ;-)
• My wife Neli, who writes the Bulldog Blog (in German) and other works,
• Yours truly, for my sins author of this blog and other works.

Copyright ^© Stu Savory on 8th August 2007 at 11:53 CEST permalink Comments Email

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Playing with fire ; then and now...

On this very day back in 1945 the Americans dropped the first atom bomb on the civilian population of Hiroshima, killing over 130,000 and more later as the radiation took its toll. 3 days later a 2^nd A-bomb on Nagasaki.

The Americans wanted to use the world's first atomic bomb (Little Boy = a gun-barrel design) for an actual attack and observe its effect. So they dropped the second atomic bomb because it was a different design (Fat Man = an implosion design) and they wanted to see how it worked in comparison ? Later, weak excuses were made about 'shortening WW2'.

FWIW, the yields were 13 and 21 kilotons respectively.

The barrel design of Little Boy was deemed so simple that they opted not to test it first given the scarcity of its fissile material. However they were not sure that the implosion-type design of Fat Man would work and so did a test first on July 16th 1945 at the Trinity site. The 50 meter crater at the bottom right of this contemporary photo was made by 100 tons of TNT exploded to calibrate the damage effects of the Trinity A-bomb explosion. The Trinity observers set up betting pools on the results of the test. Predictions ranged from zero (not even a N.Korean-type one kiloton fizzle) , via 18 kilotons of TNT (predicted by physicist I. I. Rabi, who won the bet), and via destruction of the state of New Mexico, to ignition of the atmosphere and incineration of the entire planet. Although the incineration of the entire planet had been calculated to be almost impossible, which caused some of the scientists some anxiety, the Amis went ahead with the test anyway "Hey, if it destroys the whole world, there'll be nobody around to blame us, so let's just go ahead!"

Goddamn Cowboys!

Seeing the Trinity explosion, J.Robert Oppenheimer - father of the A-bomb - was sobered enough to quote the Bhagavad Gita "Lo, I am become Death, Destroyer of Worlds"... But that didn't stop the hawks in the military, nothing would have :-(

S ometime in the 1980s I had the opportunity of a ½ hour 1-on-1 talk with the late Edward Teller (the father of the USA's H-Bomb). He and I were both giving lectures at the WEF (World Economic Forum) in Davos, Switzerland. After introducing myself, I teased him "You do realise that this building is a civil-defence H-bomb shelter, going down several stories below ground? The auditorium here on ground level is just the 'cover'-story?" He was over 75 at the time, thorny personality but still a bright guy, so our little talk had something of the nature of a fencing match, because I was still under the aegis of the UK's Official Secrets Act and he still had a US security clearance, similar but less draconic. Two cosmic beings, each pretending to know less^* than the other and teasingly swapping Q & A ;-) I do remember asking him about the run-up to "Ivy Mike" (the first H-bomb), teasing him that his calculations (for the minimal amount of Tritium needed to sustain the fusion reaction) had been wrong (too low). I wanted to learn from him too what reservations and/or fears there had been about the effects of the H-bomb's fusion, if there were any fears of runaway reaction like those mentioned above about the A-bomb. After all, I teased him "You yourself refrained from attending or even getting closer than a continent away from the Ivy Mike test" ;-) However, Teller would not be drawn and indeed snapped back into his usual 'thorny' personality mode "We got 10 Megatons!"

Later I went to watch his presentation; he was the propaganda arm for Reagan's SDI initiative at the time and showed us at Davos lots of slides of underground H-Bomb tests and the minimal craters they had left. I remember his entrance was spectacular. He wore a long black Darth-Vader type cloak and supported himself theatrically on a long strong magician's walking-stave. Imagine Gandalf in black! This accompanied by the thunder of a thermonuclear explosion and slide-show thereof ;-) Needless to say, he didn't attend my lectures there; just as well, they were a lot less spectacular ;-)

And now let's turn to today's variant of Playing with Fire, the LHC at CERN.

The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is a particle accelerator/collider built at CERN, in Switzerland. First firing should be in May 2008. The LHC will be the world's highest energy particle accelerator. It is hoped that the collider will produce the elusive Higgs Boson - often dubbed the God Particle - which could confirm the predictions and 'missing links' in the Standard Model of physics. That's the good news.

The bad news is that the LHC could produce a small black hole :-( Go read about it.
Nothing escapes from the gravitational pull of a black hole, so a black hole inside our only planet would gradually suck in the whole planet. Theoretical models such as Hawking Radiation would seem to imply that the microscopic black hole would evaporate very quickly. So I did the maths and showed that a black hole which survives just one second would weigh 228 tons and contain 5 million megatons of energy to be dissipated in that 1 second; that's a big bang :-( But Hawking Radiation is just a theoretical model. Although the implosion of the entire planet has been calculated to be almost impossible, which causes some scientists^*** (e.g. me) some anxiety, CERN will go ahead with the tests anyway "Hey, if it destroys the whole world, there'll be nobody around to put the blame on us, so let's just go ahead!"

Third time (un)lucky?

Got you^** a bit nervous? Me too! Prometheus: Playing with fire, then and now:-(

^* : Yes, I also have an Honours degree in Physics, but he had designed several H-bombs, so I won ;-)

^** : It's not just me, there's another version here, in The Other Bible.

^*** : A little known conspiracy theory fact ; Einstein (who gave us E=mc²), Oppenheimer AND Teller all have ancestors who came from within a couple of hundred miles of a place in Israel called Armageddon! Worried?

Copyright ^© Stu Savory on 6th August 2007 at 06:06 CEST permalink Comments Email

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Whence the loss of readers? Your feedback...

July 27th I was moaning about the recent drop-off in my readership and asked for any explanations, hints for improvement etc. A whole half-dozen of you could be bothered to answer, so let's hear what those voices have to say :-

Four Dinners (blogging in the UK) said " This could be a problem. Maybe. Not enough psychotic Northerners left to read it? Mirror, Mirror, on the wall . . .

Liz Hinds wrote :- "Perhaps you have been a bit technical/highbrow of late - but I thought that is what most of your readers like. Only 800!!! I'm lucky if I get 30! I don't think you've changed in any significant way." OK, I'll try less highbrow, Liz.

Peter Harris gave two explanations :- "Over the last year I've been reading less and less. This is due to what I hear every day of the week the social network is in free fall what with twitter and facebook taking over our lives. I don't subscribe because I don't have the time (life is short enough) but I've noticed you do less Bush-Bashing. I wonder . ." Can't do much about Facebook/Twitter, but I'll do moron Bush, OK ;-)

Kay suggests it's because I'm a curmudgeon. Now that's a word not in my active vocabulary, so I guessed the etymology as : Coeur - french for heart, and - sticking with the french roots - mechant = vicious, as in evil dog. So I'm evil hearted ? (pout) And you think this puts people off? It didn't stop people voting for Bush/Cheney! But I'll take the hint and try to be less barbative ;-) BTW, did you notice that mechant and merchant are just one letter (R) apart? Hence Shylock, the Evil of Venice p'raps?

Achmed (Egypt) thinks it's because of my "too restrictive" comments policy.

Doug Alder wrote "I've lost half my readership which at its most was about 120 a day including those subscribing to my feed - I guess people were bored with my move - I don't see you doing anything different Stu - have you compared it to last July - maybe it's just summer vacations?" which is similar to what Thomas Hauschild wrote "by looking at the graph on todays entrance in your blog it seems the figures are in accordance to last years at around the same time of year. Diminishing numbers are perfectly normal for this time of year, ( check the figures for the last couple of years ) as this is SUMMER HOLIDAYS almost everywhere in our hemisphere. Loads of outdoor activities as well . . . "

So let's just hope the numbers pick up again after the summer vacations. They were back up to 1000+ yesterday, so that's a good sign (or statistical fluctuation). Let's remember too the insightful but rarely quoted words of Einstein : "Not everything that can be counted counts. And not everything that counts can be counted."

And of course there was Spam :-( Ray Cook, writing from seoalliance.net, claimed "I can get more visitors to your website....". A quick WHOIS showed that seoalliance.net had been registered only nine days previously and a quick visit to their website showed it to be Under Construction. Sorry Ray, thats just too much dilettantism ;-)

Copyright ^© Stu Savory on 3rd August 2007 at 06:03 CEST permalink Comments Email

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Talking with Gods

George W. Bush - worst president the USA has ever had - is always telling us that God talks directly to him, inside his head. I can only conclude that either He mumbles a lot (old men do that) or that the cavernous echoes in Dubya's empty skull are distorting the message a lot, 'cos what gets through is a far cry from what Jesus taught. Except perhaps for those orders Jesus gave in Luke 19:27 :-(

As for Osama, he has a Sure Thing^® going for him, namely Sure 9:5, 1^st sentence:-(

The peaceful Mahatma Gandhi once said "I like your Christ, I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ." And a lot of that is due to God's message being filtered through The One True Church™ - choose one of many - via a heirarchy of paedophilic priests, all with their own agenda, only interested in the laying on of hands - preferably on the smallest choirboy. Did you know that the LA branch of the RC church has to pay 660 million dollars (surely 666?) to the buggered thousands? And did you know the bishop there had insured his whole bishop-prick bishoprick against molestation? Even Michael surely did Neverland a deal like that ;-)

Be that as it may - regular readers will know this is an atheist blog - I don't like intermediaries proselytizing their particular brand of fire-and-brimstone on my doorstep. So when the Dali Lama visited Germany last month we all got the chance to hear the word of God (well, one God anyway) directly. Directly!

Well, almost directly. He preached in Tibetan, so there was a translation needed. Nothing miraculous about talking in many tongues here, let alone telepathetically(sic!) inside W's head.

Turns out the Dalai Lama is a very pleasant old man. Very polite, good sense of humour, a twinkle in his wise old eyes, deferential and just genuinely nice. And none of this strong-arm 'I will avenge' (Deuteronomy 32:19) nonsense of JahWeh's :-)

Many in the audiences (10,000 fitted into the hall daily) seemed entranced by the oriental wisdom he spake, even though some of it was like chinese cookie aphorisms, viz "Avoid fanaticism", "Respect Nature" and "Stop chasing the profits" (at least I think he said 'profits' and not 'prophets' ;-) So yes, religion is still the opium of the masses (quoting Karl Marx). But this particular God is very genuine, I must say :-) After all, you can't find a hermit to teach you hermitting because, of course, that rather spoils the whole idea. Until then, this guy is will tide you esoteric folk over.

So, Mom, he could almost convince you to convert to Buddhism, except the streets around the hall were so full, I'd bet you couldn't find a place to park your Kar, Ma ;-)

Copyright ^© Stu Savory on 1st August 2007 at 06:01 CEST permalink Comments Email

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