2010

December 31st, 2009

So, tomorrow; the future.
Flying cars, food in pill form and holidays on the moon. I can’t wait.

And I’ve managed to keep this thing going for five years, which rather amazes me. This evening will involve Tea and Cake at The Hidden Tea Room.

London Wetland Centre

December 13th, 2009

At a visit to the LWC today, I saw a heron stalk, catch and eat a mouse-thing. Luckily I had the camera.

2009-12-13 at 13-50-18

The Stalking.

2009-12-13 at 13-50-26

The Catch.

2009-12-13 at 13-50-31

The Payoff.

2009-12-13 at 13-50-41

And swallow.

X-rays

November 25th, 2009

Now I have an xray machine to play with at work, I can take photographs of the insides of things. I shall make full use of this. Here’s an old transistor to start with.

Xray image of an old  Mullard OC44 transistor

Image details : Mullard OC44 PNP Germanium transistor, glass envelope. 90kV polychromatic xrays, filtered with 1.5mm Al and 0.2 mm Cu. CsI scintillator, 6 sec exposure.

30ish feet below Holborn

November 7th, 2009

Last night I spent forty-odd minutes thirty-ish feet below Holborn in the Kingsway Tram Tunnel, the reason was because I’d always wondered what was down there. The event that made it possible was Chord an installation art piece by Conrad Shawcross. The art is basically a large rope weaving machine, slowly weaving 300m of multicolored rope. I found the engineering more impressive than the art.

Photography of the piece was discouraged, and I’d forgotten my camera anyway, not that this has stopped photographs appearing on flickr.

Bad joke.

October 11th, 2009

And so it was to be, that after the waters receded, Noah commanded all the animals to “Go forth and multiply.”

The ark quickly emptied, except for two small snakes, who stayed behind.
When Noah asked them why, they replied, “We can’t multiply. We’re adders.”
Noah, being the resourceful man he was, immediately got busy cutting down trees and building a large table with the unfinished lumber therefrom.

And he saw that it was good.
The snakes were overjoyed when Noah picked them up and placed them on it. Noah and the snakes both knew that even adders could multiply on a log table.