has been delayed by the fact something is dying/has died/is under stress in my Powerbook’s LCD. So I can’t type for long before all goes dark.
I hope it is a dodgy wire. I suspect it is the backlight inverter. I really, really hope it isn’t the backlight.
The door bell rang earlier – I answered it to one of the lesser seen neighbours carrying a laptop.
“Hello, I’m Brian from number 18, I wondered if you could do me a favour, Tony says you are good with computers.”
“Hello, Er, Ok. What’s the problem?”
Brian had been using someone else’s WiFi connection and now he couldn’t connect. He’d been told by someone else that the WiFi owner had probably changed the key and he needed to use WEPcrack to get the new key. He didn’t have a clue how to use it, could I help?
I suggested that maybe the key had been changed to keep him out?
“Nah, nah mate, he said I can use it.”
I take a look at the laptop screen and see that the SSID of the access point he is trying to crack is 8bob. This being my WiFi connection. I asked him how long it had been since he was unable to use the WiFi?
“About 3 weeks now”
“Yeah, that’s about right – that’s when I fixed it to stop others using it. Don’t think I can help you really. See you later.”
I upgraded from WEP to WPA about three weeks ago when I noticed the odd connection I couldn’t account for.
“Oh, um, right. oh. er. fookin’ hell. So you can’t help then?”
“No, not really. Can’t help you.”
I think he missed the bit where I said I’d changed it to stop it being used…
He left.
Having just had to suffer several hours of commercial radio due to builders some distance away with a loud radio, I needed to hear some decent music again. So does Bill Hicks…
Bill Hicks at his most passionate – contains language
Embedded video isn’t showing up for some reason, try the link instead.
As I said yesterday, there are rumours that the Higgs particle may have already been spotted at the Tevatron thus rendering LHC at CERN a tad redundant, but what is the Higgs anyway?
Basically the Higgs particle is the last particle predicted by the Standard Model. The Standard Model being the particle physics theory that describes the interactions between all of the particles that make up matter (it doesn’t describe gravitational interaction, but does describe Electromagnetism, the Weak force and the Strong force).
The Standard Model is both wildly successful and rather boring; it explains with great accuracy the result of every particle physics experiment in the last fifty years, yet if true it predicts we are not going to discover very much else. We know the Standard Model is incomplete specifically because it does not include a description of gravity, however it does predict that while not complete, it is ‘good enough’ until you reach close to the Planck energy – around two billion joules per particle (an insane amount of energy).
Interestingness in particle physics scales with energy, typically the more interesting discoveries happen at higher and higher energies; energy scales with accelerator size – using current technology you’d need to build a particle accelerator of galactic proportions to reach the Planck energy.
If however the Higgs particle isn’t discovered at the Tevatron or CERN, then things get interesting. It would show that there must be physics beyond that explained by the Standard Model and for good reasons, this interesting physics must occur at energies closer to current day experiments than the Standard Model would have you think. Hopefully this would point the way towards a better description of the way the universe is constructed.
Not discovering the Higgs could well be one of the most important discoveries of the 21st century.
My entry for Elegantly Dressed Wednesday – John Owers.
This dashing fellow is my claim to fame, my cousin once removed is related by marriage to John’s (step?) brother. Front cover of $RANDOM-TRASHY-CELEB-MAG here I come.
John was a bit part film actor in several 1940s films, his most significant being Scott of the Antarctic in 1948 and Pink String and Sealing Wax in 1946, neither of which I’ve seen in recent times (not since I discovered the family connection anyway).
John, I know very little about you at present but you are dressed in a rather fine suit, so on this Elegantly Dressed Wednesday I will raise a mug of Tea to you and resolve to fill in as much of the biographical information as I can on your IMDB page.
