• transit of venus – live! (well, almost)

    it’s still ongoing, but… The flower is a dog rose from the scrub near the layby, during a cloudy moment this morning around 0630h local time; I am vexed that three aircraft flew through the image of the sun on approach to LHR, but none of them were got on-camera due to it/me being so

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  • Changing the Weather

    James Gosling over at [today.java.net] cites a WiReD article, essentially about apparently crazy science ideas. I have always enjoyed the crackpot wing of science – not the exploitative pseudoscience of the likes of Velikovsky, but instead the more dreamy, fits-the-facts stuff that is the fodder of good Sci-Fi. Creative, surprising, at least semi-plausible, the opposite

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  • Little Brothers Like IP Cameras

    Apparently I am not alone… [www.wired.com] TAIPEI — Big Brother is getting a whole lot of little siblings. New surveillance cameras allow anyone with a broadband internet connection to keep a 24-hour watch on nearly anything from anywhere. Want to monitor your house from the office? Connect one of the cameras to an Ethernet or

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  • Of the world’s 100 largest economic entities…

    …51 are now corporations and 49 are countries. [www.corporations.org] – interesting stuff…

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  • Hic Transit Glorious Venus…

    …or something. For those who are interested and in the UK, the transit of Venus should begin at 0619BST tomorrow, and finish at 1224BST; midpoint is 0822BST-ish; times will vary across the british isles, but only to within a few secconds so it’s not worth documenting here. Some time ago, after a flight back from

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  • sunsets and escapism

    Uffington White Horse Hill, on a saturday evening’s sunset, is a marvellous place to be, relax and chill out. I know this because I’ve done it. Jon and Sarah Katz came to visit over the weekend, having toured London and Paris on an Americans-doing-Europe thing; I fielded them Chez Muffett on saturday morning, and decided

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  • monday amusement

    my colleague simon – the one who is perpetually on his cellphone – was pouring concrete foundations for a stables this weekend, and found his phone missing after his partner had put it safely on the gravel heap… …said telephone is now believed to be buried under one foot of cement.

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  • Welcome to America (unless you’re a writer)

    from [www.neilgaiman.com] comes a pointer to [www.guardian.co.uk] Welcome to America When writer Elena Lappin flew to LA, she dreamed of a sunkissed, laid-back city. But that was before airport officials decided to detain her as a threat to security … Saturday June 5, 2004 The Guardian Somewhere in central Los Angeles, about 20 miles from

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  • Make a RSS Feed of your Member of Parliament

    Courtesy of [www.oblomovka.com] In the mode of [www.stand.org.uk] and [www.faxyourmp.com] comes: [www.theyworkforyou.com] …which essentially appears to be a data-mining effort based around Hansard (the Journal of UK Parliamentary Proceedings) – which will not merely tell you who your MP is (in case you’ve forgotten, based on your postcode) – but also provides a commentary-forum AND

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  • mandatory banknote detection – bwaahahahhaahahahaha

    [observer.guardian.co.uk] Computer and software manufacturers are to be forced to introduce new security measures to make it impossible for their products to be used to copy banknotes. The move, to be drafted into European Union legislation by the year end, follows a surge in counterfeit currency produced using laser printers, home scanners and graphics software.

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  • hope of the states

    I saw the Polyphonic Spree and Mull Historical Sociaty at the Carling Academy in Birmingham last July; it’s with some interest that I find Hope of the States – one of the support bands at that gig, who seemed both terribly good and terribly young – have got a (debut) album out later this month.

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  • Search Engine Queries that have landed here…

    I decided to dig-up the searches which have landed on this weblog in the past couple of months – thinking this was a trivial venture I did a bit of grepping, only to find that the results were infeasibly large for a single blog article. I have therefore posted the results at [www.crypticide.com] for the

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