Krioma.net

Yeah right, but if you want a fun / odd and damn right weird, read then take a look at: [deepimapact]. Here is a taster which might make you want to read it, btw as a scientist I think this is twaddle and not even good fiction (but thats why you should read it!), "it brings new elements of confirmation of the imminent cometary danger which threatens humanity and describes the conditions of its advent around MAY 25, 2006. " Oh and it is just another way of wasting some time, argh!

Yep thats right, the new IE will be using the same icons as the mozilla ones, respect to mozilla and in a sense to M$ for being sensible for the user at large. [MSDN BLog]

I have the great pleasure of annoucing the Federation of Astronomical Societies Convention 2006. Please see the below poster and the FAS [website]:

For Martin's secret (or not so) birthday celebration we went and looked and ate chocolate!! yay.






Yummy, maybe not!

Take a look at: [Cadbury World Excursion 30/04/06] for more pics.

Lost of funky stuff, fancy dress and some beer... a night out for a birthday had to produce some odd pics...

More here: [Flares_Martin_Bday]

Last night I and Lizzie went to an excellent talk given by Br. Guy Consolmagno SJ on "Why does the Pope have an Astronomer?", it was wonderfully interesting and I am sure he could keep you entertained for a very very long time. If you ever get to hear him speak do it. He always has a professional astronomy background.....

When I first saw these I couldn't believe that they were made out of sand.. but they are!! Take a look here: [Harrison Lake Sand Castles]

Take some quite bunnies and some great films and what have you got? A kickass website.. take a look at [angryalien.com] and watch some really short but rather cool bunny versions of some of the best films ever made! I especially like the King Kong one but the Pulp fiction one is damn funny as well!

I don't know if this is really political but I guess it could be... anyway thanks go to Clive for sending me in this direction: "Hacker fears 'UFO cover-up'".

In 2002, Gary McKinnon was arrested by the UK's national high-tech crime unit, after being accused of hacking into Nasa and the US military computer networks.

If that hasn't gotten your attention then I don't know what would... take a look at this rather interesting [BBC News article]

Worth watching? Probably yes, it is entertaining. Would I watch it again? nope. It is a good film but it also goes on way too long.. I won't say more and spoil it. Some good entertainment but drags on too long.

Interesting read on "Using a Cheap Laser Pointer to preserve your Polar Alignment" [here]. I think this might be a good idea for one of my societies telescopes as it does become a nightly hassle that cuts down on the observation time we get, especially since the clouds roll in quickly here in Brum.

Now that was easy! I was expecting it to take hours but nope, nice and simple. Well it wasn't when I didn't realise that I had to use LPD. On my journey for a bit of advice I came across, [this].

Well the provisional England squad has been annouced..... bit of a shocker. Well I say that but 90% is as expected and there are a few odd balls in the mix, should prove to be interesting to say the least. More [BBC]

Well the title is what the Scotsman.com says (see: [here]). This is sort of what he said but definetely not to that much of an extreme. This was before a talk in Glasgow, a talk I went to last week here in Brum. Anyway if you read the article and had listened to the talk you would have not got that he was being so extreme, he was merely discussing things and not make such bold statements. I don't like creationism, I think it is bollocks but still thats not what he said, well not how it was meant.

*this may be computer generated.... [Newspaper Generator]

It is wonderful Lizzie's birthday, so to poke fun at this great occasion I produced this:

To make one for yourself... use: [elitemrp.net]

A good way of stopping spyware is to have a program that helps you stop stuff being installed, WinPatrol does this. I recently gave it a donwload and along with Spybot I think it is doing a good job... though I hate the fact that I have to use all these, even if they are good, programs just because the OS (in this case bloody M$ windows) is shite. Take a look at reviews and comments (and even download it) on WinPatrol [here]

You can use the [The Dialectizer] to instantly creates parodies of websites... anyway my mate (thanks Geord) sent me the link and it instantly makes this website sound wack! Just take a look at: [this site in jive] (note you go to a holding page first...)

Yep we did, as we walked across to staff house for a swift one last friday we encountered a big big beast:

Thanks to Emma for taking the photo and Al for manipulation... oh and it is on our office wall! lol

Last night was a musical one. Which by the title of this post should be obvious... We went to see [Mohair]. I had problems with the tickets earlier in the day, the hadn't turned up in the post, so I was releaved to see that ticketweb had organised an extra set at the venue. The next issue was that the support had pulled out, which wasn't the biggest of issues for us cause we just went and sat in the local weatherspoons with cheap drinks for a bit. Anyway we went back to the venue to find hardly anyone there, which was a little odd since we have seen Mohair there before and there were lots of people. It did mean that it was a sort of cosy atmosphere and they still played a kick ass set. Lots of fun. Mohair are great fun to see live, they really do give off lots of energy and you really wanna dance when they are playing. At times I was tempted to get a bit of proper swinging going with Lizzie... but I don't think she would have liked me flinging her around the room. The gig was great playing out lots of songs I know and love but some I don't know, so since they now have an album out.... I just brought it (on hmv.co.uk). I'm well looking forward to listening to it. After the gig we went over to try and get some badges (they were free) and so were the stickers. We even got to chat to the keyboardist, if that describes someone on a Hammond Organ(!?). Anyway it was lots of fun, if you can see them, download their samples....

As a Mac laptop user I thought it would be useful that I connected up my creative zen mp3 player, heck cause when I am not listening to music on my laptop and I'm not out home it has to be on my mp3 player. Since lots of the music I download I do on my laptop I have to have a way to connect the two. I, at first, since Apple and Creative are competitors thought this might be difficult. Turns out there is no real support in a sense but then I stumbled across [XNJB] which does the job of connecting and uploading and download tracks nicely. It also allows playlists to be created and does everything I need, wicked. Sorted. So if you are wondering how to do this, do this!

Yay, they did it... oh how they make you sweat! 3-3 and then on pens. It was a remarkable game and credit has to go to West Ham who played like champions as well, in the end it came down to Reina being an excellent penalty keeper. We won, but it was so tight. It was a bit of an odd game with two defensive nightmares letting West Ham take the lead, it was a couple of magical moments that kept us in it. The first, a wonderful volley from Cisse, the second an even better (quite possibly the best goal I have ever seen) volley from Gerrard - breath taking. Some static football occured in injury time but after 63 games this season I don't think the Liverpool players can be moaned at! Job done and done well!! For more take a look at: [BBC Site]

Zap, bye bye, goes that rather annoying application that you just couldn't be arsed to get rid of. Annoyingly Mac OS X doesn't come with an uninstaller (it has the best installer I know of but.. argh!), which isn't the worst thing as you can still remove the applications manully.. but some times you really want to clear out all the shite. So I downloaded and test [AppZapper]. It did the trick nicely and since I had a coupon for it I could get it for $9.99... which is about a fiver, I guess. So what the hell I decided to get it. It is a nice program and gives me the freedom to install any crap I wan't being to immediately delete it if, indeed, it is crap.

According to tesco it is! lol. Well maybe not, but if you look at [the register] you might see what I mean. It looks as if it is a bad search engine that sees DUREX in the description of the tesco brand dark rum

Ummm, I don't want to... but look at the final bid, ouch! [ebay, where else!]... yep thats £103,000 of bollocks! lol.

Wanna know what is going on in Brum, sign up for bmail! To sign up for this regular email service go to [bmail] and fill in the form

This is something I keep meaning to do with my scripts, it is normally not an issue but has become while whilst at Lizzie's the last few days whilst I have been ill. It would have been rather useful to setup a task and let it run without my laptop being connected to the network. I knew there had to be an easy solution and indeed there is ... nohup taskname & ... does the trick! :-) Anyway for more useful info on this... [read from more knowledgable people].

Do you want a linux distribution that looks good and by looks good I mean great! It has that Mac OS X feel to it. I suggest you go get the LiveCD then within 5 minutes you will be enjoying a treat of the this new technology! kororaa is great. I think I may have to install it on my laptop. You can get the LiveCD from [here], go have fun! It's free and doesn't take any knowledge or much effort!

I know this has been around for ages but since I was trying out xgl I though I would go about installing mutliple desktops on my mac, I came across [VirtueDesktops] which does the job nice and simply, lots of fun.. and since I have a tiny 12" laptop will help with my clutter!

Moving one step further from just having multiple desktops, lets do it so you can use another computer to use your mac, with vnc installed: OSXvnc 1.6

I think the first words that came to mind whilst seeing this was cool. The film was pretty good and had some rather artistic effects that worked well. I personally haven't read the da vinci code and have no real intension to do so. Taking it as just a film and not comparing this to how good the book is or whatever I have to say that the film was rather enjoyable. I am sure there will be some people out there who watched it going "no no no no, thats not how it goes in the book". As a film it was good, I was well entertained! :-) [Watch it].

Bit of a sensationalist title, but quite true... the cluster satellites have passed through the magnetosphere of the Earth, pretty cool.

ESA’s Cluster satellites have flown through regions of the Earth’s magnetic field that accelerate electrons to approximately one hundredth the speed of light. The observations present Cluster scientists with their first detection of these events and give them a look at the details of a universal process known as magnetic reconnection.

For more take a look at: [ESA Portal]

Oh no! Time to distract myself with the fun of hapland yet again, this addictive and possibly pretty annoying (cause you have to complete it) game is back! Yet another environment is designed full of strange and odd goings on... to play it you need Flash 8... go and take a look over at [foon.co.uk]