Krioma.net

Well I thought our armed services were amongst the most humane in the world, guess it turns out that they may not be as good as I expected. Luckily it seems that it was only a one individual in this case and well in the armed forces you expect the occasional psychopath, even so I hope that all the criminal charges that can be brought on him are - of course the person may not be guilty as the pictures that the Mirror have published are not at the best angle which if is the case then the paper should produce a formal apology. I guess we will find out soon once the military investigation is completed. I do find this rather convenient that this emerged just after American troops were found to be doing worse acts. I do not know if it is my cynical side here but it does seem odd on how these pictures were immediately released, I would go as far to even speculate that the USA had something to do with the quick release of this images to soften the blow on how their soldiers are acting. This may be a little extremely but well propaganda and spin is a world we live in so to be cautious and maybe a little far fetched can help.

See: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/3675723.stm for more and the article from the Mirror: http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/allnews/page.cfm?objectid=14199634&method=full&siteid=50143

This is a much less publicised deep field image taken by the Hubble Space telescope but in my opinion as mind blowing, if not more than the other deep fields.

The Andromeda Deep Field
Credit: T. M. Brown (STScI) et al., ESA, NASA

This is a 3day visible light exposure and was taken to investigate the halo of stars around our neighboring galaxy M31 (Andromeda). Not only can be seen the halo of stars around the galaxy but also a rich globular cluster can be seen, not to mention the thousands of galaxies which can be seen in the background. Wow!

I was thinking I have never mentioned on my blog food, well apart from maybe the occasional I am going to eat pizza comment. As you may have guessed from the pictures I have posted I do like my food, I am not ashamed to say I do eat too much, doesn't help when your girlfriend is a great cook - in fact it makes it much worse!

Being a vegetarian as I am you would have thought that I would find it easy to keep my weight down, well think again! There is such a huge diversity in vegetarian cooking and you have to remember that all the fatty things such as cakes and pizza do not have meat in (well some cakes use gelatine and of course no ham on my pizza!) so well nothing in that sense has changed.

Here is one of my favourite breads (more like a cake!): http://elektron.krioma.net/cookery/tsoureki.txt a recipe by Alex. You may think that I am only mentioning it because I have done something wrong - well you would be wrong I really like this bread and would recommend that everyone give it a try. I personally haven't had to make it myself but it seems quite an easy bread to make.

Also coming up soon is the national vegetarian week, 24th - 30th May - so give it a try eat something without meat in, I promise it won't kill you ;-)

I have never really been that interested into observing comets, they have always seemed a little dull. Well my opinion has changed vastly over the last few days. Yesterday I came across an image of Hale-Bop and it made me sit back and go wow and then I remembered observing this how absolutely stunning it seemed in the sky. Then earlier today I came acrossa picture of comet C/2004 F4 which was not the most inspiring but then the wow factor came back when I followed the link to the authors website I came across some even more stunning images. Including this fantastic image:

Well I know what I am doing the next clear night we get! That's right I will be taking Astrosoc's new 4.5" refractor out and doing some observing.

We live in a world of spin and propaganda, we are never going to get away from that, that is just the way society is. I do not like it, I am sure you do not like it. All you can do is just well sit back and take things with a pinch of salt and maybe a little paranoia - no not to the level of putting a metal sheet on your head as this will not stop them from penetrating into your brain (what you need for that is to turn your room into one huge Faraday cage!).

I can deal with spin, always putting the best on things, but well when it comes to falsifying stuff is outrageous. Well it appears from what the military have been suggesting that the Mirror, a dirty tabloid exploiter, has produced fake pictures. Ok they could be unwilling arguing that they are real but actually aren't, but I wouldn't put it past them to know. I have to say from the moment I heard about this and then even seeing the pictures I thought there was something dodgy about it. The pictures seem to perfect and what great timing. It is also not the way British soldiers act - we are the good guys. Ok there might be the occasional psycho but well it is just not the British way.

See this BBC Online article about this: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/3680327.stm

and here is the Mirror's rebuttal to claims.

Well last night was the first chance to see a Total Lunar Eclipse this year, I belive there is another one. Last night was awful the cloud was covered with clouds! Argh. But I believe people around the world got a good view.

Justin McGuire took this picture of the red Moon rising over Canberra, Australia which I have taken off spaceweather.com.

The eclipse on Tuesday night may have been clouded out but it also meant that some beautiful cloudy formations could be seen. I love the shapes and colours clouds can make, the whole sky had a nice red/ brown glow about it and for once it was not the orange sodium glow that I am so used to.

One I told Matt to take look towards the Guild

And here is one taken by Matt looking at the glorious clocktower:

Now the title basically describes my day. It has been a good day and I feel I have made lots of progress especially with the ever scary Interstellar Medium and General Physics. After we went through some past paper questions on these subjects I am now feeling a little more relaxed. I am pleased with my progress.

Today I also booked tickets to go see Ash play at the Birmingham Carling Academy with my mates, Jon (+girlfriend Hannah) and Katherine. It should be as Kat says a "boss" night.

Well after ABOSULTELY NO publicity by the Guild in any way shape or form, well some of the stay affiliated campaigners were out, the result is in:

Ballot Papers Received: 1421
Total Valid Votes: 1417
Yes: 1163 (82%)
No: 254 (18%)

Which is ridiculous, not even quorate!

Now means the Guild will lose about £70,000 by being affiliated to the NUS - waste of money in my opinion. At this rate the beloved (not by all by some JOKE) Guild will be gone within about 2 years.

I would never say that we are the best for levels of hygiene in my house but for students we are pretty good. However it seems that a potato had fallen into a bag in a box underneath our kitchen table and unaware to use had started to form roots. Luckily Katherine broke an egg (well two successively) on the floor and since the box got egg on it we notice the potato - ewww!

Here it is:

I will be making sure from now onwards that no potatoes fall off the table!

Me and Katherine today sat down and watched the Liverpool game at home on pay per view for £8 today not bad especially due to the cracking result. We were well pleased especially since it means that we will finish above the Villa.

With these planets now discovered it increases the total number of identified planets from the transits method to 3.

Here is the proof:

This is the light curve produced from the data notice the central drop in brightness as the stars light is blocked out by the planet.

For more information please see the European Southern Observatory press release: http://www.eso.org/outreach/press-rel/pr-2004/pr-11-04.html

Alex decided to dye her hair tonight using a product that is called "Caca marron" (chestnut poo). It is quite a vile mixture and as its names suggests it does look a little disguising - not me putting it in my hair though so I don't mind! It is a henna-based dye so as Alex says it is actually good for her hair - what ever you do don't get her started on this as she could rant on about this for ages.

Why do I post this, because it has was quite humour watching her sit with this concoction on her head:

I bet I will not be popular for posting that!

Finally I have got it to work - the Krioma.net image gallery. It uses a cgi script written by fuzzymonkey.org. I will post more about it later - I am off to the pub now!

See it here: http://www.krioma.net/cgi-bin/photo/index.cgi

You may have noticed that there is currently not much stuff in the gallery, over time as I put up my old pictures this will grow. I will also when I can be bothered write a comment about each image - unless I just can't!

I am quite pleased with the gallery and the fact that I actually was able to install some perl modules onto my server, this is a first for me - it wasn't as complicated as I thought but still a little annoying. I do prefer that sort of system though to windows installing - at least you know what it is doing.

Well I have the first exam done, only 7 to go! Great.

Today's exam went well I was quite pleased. I even left with 40 minutes to go in a 2 hour exam - not sure if that is a good or a bad thing. All I know is that I wasn't sitting around in that hot and uncomfortable room any longer.

I have done no revision this evening most of it has been spent sat in the OVT drinking beer with Geordie, George, Kat and Louise. Lot's of fun.

Today I had my picture taken for an article in the Mail on Sunday that I am going to be in about the IoP bursaries for students. I felt like a bit of a model/ponce posing for photos in strange angles, was fun though. Well I guess the world now will get to see the mess my desk and computer are, but it is well worth it. I am glad I trimmed my beard a little though at least I sort of looked presentable.

I have gotten my second exam out of the way. I think it went ok, was not too bad. I think I waffled on quite well about nucleosynthesis (don't ask) in a place where I shouldn't have, woops! My heart stopped at the start of the exam when the individuator said that we were only allowed our calculators (it was a sort of open book - well open notes exam), luckily he knew we were allowed even though it didn't say on the exam paper - I think my heart stopped for a minute or two back there.

Not many of us managed to catch a glimpse of last weeks Lunar eclipse but it appears those who did got a spectacular view. Here is one (from the BAA site):.

By Anthony Ayiomamitis, Date: 04-05/05/2004, Time: 21:45 - 01:15 UT+3, Prime focus astrophotography, TeleVue Pronto piggy-packed onto a Celestron 14" SCT with Losmandy G11 GEM. Canon EOS 300d digital camera, Exposures: 1/2000 to 4 sec at ISO 1600, Manual Mode

Wow! what a fantastic set of images, looks fantastic, shame we missed out due to the cloud. More images of this can be found at: http://www.britastro.org/news/items/2004008.html

Well the Mirror have been put in their place, they are liars. I thought they we're and guess what they are. It just from the first image I saw seemed wrong, something was not right. Unfortunately due the these lies the damage has been done, the anti-british backlash has already occurred and unless this news sweeps across Arab televisions stations there is no way this image of British troops will be removed. Yet again our troops have been vindicated in being the "nice guys" - well in comparison to the sick American troops they are. For more see: http://www.cnn.com/2004/WORLD/meast/05/14/iraq.abuse.uk/index.html and http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/3716151.stm.

Well at least the Editor of the Mirror has been fired (maybe he should be out of a cannon): http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/3716151.stm

but I love the fact that they haven't even got it on the front page of their website, great. I just hope they do a big apology on the front page of their paper. Idiots.

First I use the word Mouses and not mice since it is a new word and so does not require the old convention.

Yesterday I tidied up my cupboard and in there was basically a bunch of crap computer parts, lots that I will never use again and some which don't even work. So I got rid of the crap and kept the good stuff or have put it in to use for the Linux box that me and Matt are intending to use to control Astrosoc's Grubb Telescope. I also found some old mouses, and thought I would post a picture and do a quick comparison.

IBM Mouse, 2 button	Blue Vivanco Mouse	Microsoft Optical

Comparison of these:

Same basic design not much has changed the idea of buttons on the top. The way the motion is detected however has changed significantly from the annoying balls, which need constant cleaning, to the slick optical version (which uses doppler shift to be very accurate). Also a thing that has been developed is the wheel button, I don't know where I would be without one, when I use a mouse without one I just can not cope! (apart from on my laptop when I just use the scroll keys without thinking). Now that is really the only major changes in these designs, well it must be a good design then as it seems to do the job well. Many other contenders have come along such as track balls but they have all lost, thank god for that cause some of the designs are dire.

Oh and there are also some funny mouses out there, including this Hamburger one I came across at some point, I didn't buy it but I found it - quite funny - how can you use this!

South Africa get the World Cup. Arsenal go a whole season undefeated, wow!

The first one, South Africa hosting the World Cup in 2010 in great however I would rather it had gone to Tunisia, might have been more of a chance for me to go along. I do think Tunisia / Libya just bid was unfairly disqualified, with FIFA not allowing a joint bid when the last World Cup was a joint offering between South Korea and Japan, argh!

See: http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/football/africa/3716521.stm

As for Arsenal, I am not happy about this but congratulations to a formidable showing this last season - just wait till next year though we will be after you (we being Liverpool). The reason this is so significant is that they are the first team to do this since Preston achieved the feat in 1888/89.

See: http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/football/eng_prem/3696197.stm

At last the article I was interviewed for is in, I am very pleased. I have got my picture in as well. I will scan in the article and post it later as I am currently busy trying to repair the damage I caused to Katherine's computer whist upgrading it!

Well now in Infra-red as well as X-ray, Radio, Optical etc. The Spitzer space telescope is on it's way to becoming yet another one of NASA's great observatories.

Here is the infra-red view of the face on spiral of NGC 300

Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/G. Helou (Caltech)

Ash's latest album was out today and me and Katherine were down to HMV as soon as it was possible (after her exam and going to the pub!). I have to say from the first listen it is great. I already knew how a few of their tracks sounded after listening to them play on the radio recently and their free downloads off live versions off their website - http://www.ash-official.com.

The album is great I can not state this enough. Wow! So far Orpheus is my favourite track but that could have be because I have heard it lots before. If you are an Ash fan or sort of like them then go out and buy this, it is well worth it!

I was going through some photos that I took at Christmas and came across this one:

HEHE! Well I do think she is doing a good impression of the blokey in the background!! This is payback for her posting a picture of me laughing.

I managed to do some revision today but not enough. Instead we did some house hunting, in fact think we have found a place! Then I went to have a quick game of football, instead I ended up playing for 3 hours or so, I managed to score 5 times in our game, I was pleased. Not my best game as I am very unfit, I have decided new house = new fitness regime. We played football at Selly Park, which is a wonderful place, especially in the summer - everyone sat around relaxing in the sunshine. What fun :-)

I am happy we finalized the agreement today which involved me paying a £295 deposit! yikes, by by positive bank balance. It will be ok, the new place is even closer to Uni and more importantly closer to the OVT (the pub for anyone who doesn't know what the OVT is). It is not a bad place, we are already talking about our house warming / Matt's b' day party - I think we are going for a goth / punk theme - time to scare the new neighbours.

I have had a good day, been to two pubs, one in which I didn't pay a penny as my dad bought in the drinks. It has been a good day, shame about the lack of revision, but no I have done some - gonna go do some now if I don't get too distract with the prospect of finally getting Katherine's computer to work.

A team using Chandra data are using new techniques to study the cosmological parameters and to try and answer some of the questions behind the expansion of the Universe. One of these major questions is what is dark energy and how does it affect the expansion of the Universe? Both of these are very profound questions and I will not even attempt to explain them because to be honest in some (or maybe quite a lot) of aspects I don't understand it! Basically though Dark Energy is unknown, but we speculate that for the Universe to be how it is it must exist and that it drives certain terms in the expansion of the Universe.

Credit: NASA/CXC/IoA/S.Allen et al.

The stuff being done with the Chandra data is really interesting because it might lead to a better understanding of how this dark energy evolves with time and might just lead us to a better idea of what the Universe will do in the future, will it continue expanding for infinite amount of time or will there be a big crunch or some other process.

I have to say I am fascinated and would recommend anyone who is interested to read the Chandra press release on this: http://chandra.harvard.edu/photo/2004/darkenergy/

Shaun of the Dead rocks - I just acquired the soundtrack - it is great. I would recommend it to anyone - lots of clips from the film in between the songs.

Oh and I wish I could just go and have a cup of tea whilst all these exams blow over - at the moment I don't know if I am coming or going with lots of equations stuck in my head. All I know is that I managed to finally fix Katherine's computer and I have lots of stuff about gravitational potential models in my head for Dynamics and Evolution of Galaxies.

Why do you find lots of things to do when you are revising? Today instead of working we ended up going to the pub, yesterday I went to town to meet my Dad, we then went the pub and the ended up in the pub after signing our house contract and on Tuesday we went to the pub whilst house hunting - does anyone see a theme!!

I think:

REVISION = GOING THE PUB FOR A SWIFT ONE! (or two or three!)

After doubts of a few people including to name one person in particular Matt I have been able to continue you my new fitness regime. I even didn't eat all the stick of rock my dad gave me - I had one bite and decided that's enough - I am well pleased :-).

The fitness I am talking about is going to play football with Toppa and Jordan, was a good laugh we joined in a game with some people we did not know, I didn't play to well - missed a few good chances and made a few for myself out of nothing - unfortunately I did not score but the people we were playing with were much better than us. Toppa even thought a few of them played for the Uni team. None of us were to out classed just a bit unfit. Was fun though.

Now here is another one for the Alien lovers out there to claim there is intelligent life on Mars:

Credit: Malin Space Science Systems, MOC, MGS, JPL, NASA

First there was the Face on Mars now there is the Brain. I have to say it is quite remarkable that such a pattern would from due to natural phenomenon but it is feasible. Strange though and I can honestly say it does get my sort of Alien's on Mars part of my mind twitching, but as I scientist I will honestly say it is unlikely to be an elaborate pattern done by Aliens, on Mars or otherwise.

The actual explanation behind what caused this is under investigation, I am very interested in what they conclude.

Can anyone answer me this question, why would anyone do this (see below) to their otherwise good looking car?

Ok I can understand making your car look good or go faster but this just looks stupid, the guy who did this must be an idiot with no sense of taste. A wing on a car like that, you must be joking. I have seen one too many cars with this on, all I can say is people please think before you do that!

Anyone recognised this mnemonic? If you do then you know something about Astronomy and can probably tell me what it stands for. OBAFGKMN is the spectral types of stars in order as seen on the Hertzsprung Russell Diagram (don't start me on that I know like 10 different versions for my stellar evolution course!). Well the reason I mention this is because during one of my revision lectures for some reason this came up. The normal mnemonic for this is:

Oh Be A Fine Girl Kiss Me Now

but this gave me and my friends a challenge. We didn't actually come up with anything good, well we came up with a few quite rude ones but I will not mention those and they were not that good either - I wonder if anyone out there has a better one cause that is not very good.

Well I have to say yesterdays exam on Dynamics and Evolution of Galaxies went really well - I am very pleased. I was not so pleased to walk into the Guild to see Manchester United score there first goal as I had missed most of the first half whilst doing the exam.

Today I am studying hard for 5 exams in 6 days - fun! At the moment it is Stellar evolution and lets just say I have had enough of the asymptotic giant branch and Red giants as well. So I decided to have a break and ended up coming across some fantastic space art including this one of a Red Giant:

and quite fitting this one of our galaxy:

I love space art, not the cheesy tacky computer generated stuff but the stuff people have put real effort into, the ones who have looked at an object for hours and managed to capture its essence or imagined how a physical object may look like in a different situation.

Now this is great, I am escaping revision and doing something useful - exercise and having a lot of fun. Again we had a good game, I scored a few goals and still am too afraid of injuring myself or someone else by slide tackling! It will come with time.

As for sport goes today has been a great day, I watch an absolutely fantastic Formula One race, at times some good cricket and then had a kick about. I have to say the F1 today was the best I have seen in a long time, action packed from the start and some fantastic driving between Trulli and Button. All with out Michael Schumacher - I have to say without the Ferrari miles ahead it makes it much more enjoyable.

I have to say one of the most stunning moments of the race was when Sato zipped past Schumacher at the start pushing him out of the racing line - something you don't see to often, absolutely brilliant.

For anyone who is at all interested in Astronomy make sure you observe the transit of Venus it is basically a once in a lifetime opportunity and is occurring on the 8th June. See: http://www.venustransit.co.uk

Today I designed the poster for Astrosoc advertising our events and I am quite please with the title image I came up with:

What a manager, what a fan - shame the last season was not good enough for the board.

I have been thinking for a while now though that his days as a Liverpool manager were over but as recent displays have shown he has still got it in him. It is a shame that the team could not deliver this year, maybe it is a good time for change. He brought us trophy's but not the league - that is not a problem for me as I thinking winning a cup is sometimes more challenging and some of the displays he has gotten out of the team have been wonderful. I do feel though he has spent unwisely of late but all the players have shown potential but just not delivered. All I can say all the best to him in the future.

"Walk on Gerard"

As for replacements goes, I don't want Alan Curbishley or Rafael Benitez - I want Kenny Dalglish back - now there is a legend. (http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/football/teams/l/liverpool/3736375.stm)

See: http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/football/teams/l/liverpool/3734773.stm

Well another one of my better subjects is over, I think it went well. I am quite pleased - now down to the hard revision for tomorrow's exam :-(

As Stellar evolution goes I just read this (http://www.spaceflightnow.com/news/n0405/22creation/) article about the formation of the Sun and the solar system, not full on stellar evolution but just one stage - in our case quite an important one though!

And here is the fascinating diagram that shows the formation of a low mass star:

Credit: NASA/Hubble Space Telescope/Jeff Hester

You might guess the exam went badly! Well it could have been worse, the consensus was that it was hard - this makes me feel a little better. It was in the Great Hall though and I kept hearing this ghostly noise since I was at the front - was just the wind in the corridors around the hall, but it was quite off putting.

Guess what I am up to now, revision for my last 3 exams, fun!

Umm, this girl gets up to some strange things. She made a bag out of used carrier bags and now she is making a hat. OK nothing wrong with that but she is using a product called stiffy to stifen the hat. Now I can come up with hundreds of jokes about this, but the best one I think was left for me to see with her hat this morning:

If you can't see it says "Wet Stiffy Warning" :-)

My two exams went ok today. I thought ISM would be the worse of the two but guess what it was the old quantum mechanics that has given me the problems. I am sure it will all be ok though.

Oh and if you notice my blog looking weird it is because I am integrating it into my whole site so lots of changes afoot!

At last I have got around to what I have been meaning to do for a few months - integrate my site layout / design with my blog. Surprisingly it was not too hard - just had to learn what the variables of Moveable type did then do it. I feel it looks much better and gives me the flexibility with my design that I required.

In little over 2 hours time I will be walking into my last exam of the year! I can't wait for it to be over, but I have to go to hell and back before it is - a two hour general physics paper. This is going to be hard - I bet though it can't be as hard as yesterday's quantum mechanics paper which was absolutely unbelievable.

It's over! My last exam for the year has been and go. It was quite a moment for some of my friends since this was their last EVER exam - kind of scary. I still have one year left - time to bring up the average etc. I am really looking forward to getting into the 4th year - sounds like lots of hard work but also very rewarding. Obviously after the exam we all headed to Joe's (in the Guild) and got quite a few pints into us. Let's just say I was a little pissed and then I even sobered up later at the pub (the OVT)!

As for pain, well I started my exams by falling down the stairs in maths, fortunately not injuring myself at all then. Guess how I finished the exams? By falling down the steps outside my house - not far to fall but I quite badly twisted my ankle but I forced myself in and am on the painkillers. Fun!

Well I just have nothing to do really today, it feels oddly strange. Next week I am gonna be busy preparing for the Venus transit and countless parties and nights out, great fun!

Today though is a different matter, I just put away a whole years work - it felt strange. This year at Uni has gone so damn fast, has been fun and I have made some new friends this year - some who have fast become my closest. Sometimes it feels like I have been at Uni for just five minutes but it also feels like I have known these people for ages, strange.

I have to say I don't see many films which makes me go wow due to the effects, but this one was fantastic! The story itself was good, it was slightly long they did scenes that did not need to be there and was a bit to unrealistic - not the weather (well what happened seems at the extreme side), but I mean how they got out of things. I will stop now I don't want to reveal the plot to anyone - that would be awful. I hate that happening to me. OK verdict - good film, great effects. Would I see it again, yes. Would I say go see it, yes!

Last night was fantastic, the Moon was really bright and wow it was so clear. I went to look for Comet C/2001 Q4 (NEAT), I think I saw it - unfortunately the night sky around Selly Oak is quite bright so was not able to see any structure - will need to go and get a telescope on it I think.

I also played around with Alex's digital camera, I was trying to get a good shot of the Moon but I just couldn't get the exposure fast enough. However I did take this quite cool one with a plant in the foreground - only reason it is visible is because I left the flash on - woops!