Krioma.net

I have finally completed the rewrite (via an open source design) of the Poynting Physical Society's (PPS) website. I'm pretty proud of the images. Oh and it works best in Firefox, though there isn't much of a different in the display between it and IE. See [www.ppsbham.co.uk]

I and Lizzie have recently decided to go out and cook more, which I am not complaining about. Shame I am lazy and it ends up being me offering help rather than being in charge. Anyway the other day we decided to make some 'fudge' balls following a recipe from [http://vegweb.com]. I have to say though they are titled at fudge balls I am not sure what, if any of it is at all fudge. Still though I really liked the sound of it and we made it anyway. The recipe can be found at: [vegweb.com - fudge balls]. They didn't turn out tasting of fudge but they are quite delicious and taste like a snickers bar! Which is good!

Yes, it was on purpose! For once astronomers were pleased that a spacecraft has made a nice dent in a planetary body! This time it was Smart-1 spectacularly ending its 3 or so year mission. Not a bad way to go out. A flash was noticed by astronomers using the 3.6m [Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope]. At the point of impact the spacecraft was going at 4500 mph! For the pictures of the flash take a look at: [CFHT Image of SMART-1 Impact]

I came across a great guide to installing pretty much anything / setting up anything you could think of in Ubuntu earlier... [ubuntuguide.org]. Now that has saved me a lot of time messing about. A complete (and by complete I mean with every tool I could use in linux) linux installation in under an 1 hour with this and the live install cd, not bad at all!

Did you know that Pluto, which is no longer a planet, has two three moons orbiting it? Charon, Nix and Hydra. I am not sure if I can really call them moons now since Pluto is no longer a planet. I guess the best word for them would be objects and they probably don't deserve to actually have a name. I guess they all form the multiplanetary body of Pluto, since they are all oribiting in the trans-neptunian belt together. Eitherway, the below pages provide some interesting reading:

[Wiki - Nix], [Wiki - Hydra]

Well then part 2.. what to write. I thought that I could write about formation models, but I decided against that for now. I also thought I could introduce you to my research but I decided against that aswelll... on reasons of well lazyness / I am not ready for the world to read how wrong I could be! :-) Anyway I decided that it would be nice if I introduce you to possibly the most famous extrasolar planet, HD 209458b. Not the most delightful of names but say it 20 times and trust me you remember it! This planet is a giant. It orbits a Sun-like star with an orbital distance (how far from the star) of 1/8th of that of Mercury - thats just 7 million km, trust me in astronomy thats a small number. Why is it famous? It was the first transiting planet discovered, a method by your measure the intensity of light drop from the star as the planet passes in front of it (does anyone remember the venus transit? this was a very good example of a closer scale). It was also the first extrasolar planet to have a known atmosphere and the first to have an evaporating hydrogen atmosphere. The later is the reason I am interested in it. My work revolves around studying how close-in-extrasolar-giant-planets (CEGPs) are effected by the host star and how the magnetic effects alter the environment. Anyway enough of that for now.
Using this technique many extrasolar planets have been discovered and it is definetely the future for modern planet searches.

For more on HD209458 b:

[Wiki Article with artists impressions]

[detection paper, ApJ]

I came across this early today, I know it is a bit late but I really think the video (see youtube page for more info on creator) is pretty impressive and really made me think. Though I may not believe all the stuff that is said about the hijackings from official sources it doesn't matter. People died that day and they need to be remembered, the below video is really just about that. No conspiracies just pictures of what happened, as ordinary people saw it. I feel I probably should make a warning that a couple of the images are a little disturbing.

The metro had an article about this the other day but if you didn't see it you can take a look at [Luxuriant Flowing Hair Club for Scientists]... my hair isn't quite that good but give it 6 months and I might be good enough to apply. Lets just say some scientists have an odd sense of humour.. .but it is all fun. Go take a look at some of those hair cuts, damn impressive.

Well yes, it looks like it will be happening - and no it doesn't involve plugging a bunch of the unfinished and delayed PS3 together. It invovles IBM using the chips that were devloped for the PS3 and putting them in the to-be-best supercomputer in the world. See: [redherring.com]

Following on from the most amazing juggling video I had ever seen (see: [old post], here is another one - wow!! You really need sound for this one though:

I was reading Physics World and there a was a little piece pointing out some rather funny science cartoons, so I had to investigate. Take a look at them [here] I think they all are pretty fun but I particularly like the "Physicists from a tough neighbourhood." one.

September 19th be the day that you are supposed to say, arrrrr!! [www.yarr.org.uk] - so my landloving fellows have a few days to perfect it.

I hate quicktime, I normally use other programs but sometimes you need it. I hate the fact that on the mac it will not go to fullscreen.... well there is a simple fix [here]

I thought I would give tabblo ago... I wonder if this will mess up the page / my strict xhtml....

This is my first time using Tabblo so this is as much of a test than anything else.

On this page you will see a few pics that I took in India in August 2006.
... See my Tabblo

I came across a very useful windows backup tool today. It works a bit like rysnc - which is just what I wanted to be honest! It is from 2BrightSparks and is called
SyncBackSE - they have a paid and free version, guess what I went for (the free one!). It does the trick nicely. You can even schedule it easily. If you want the free version see: [here]. It will take about 5 minutes to get into and trust me it might save your life....

Pluto is now known as a dwarf planet and now the Minor Planet Center has assigned it the asteroid number: 134340 reflecting the IAU's decision to strip Pluto (*sorry* 134340) of its planet status.

Yes the stupidly name dwarf planet Xena has been given a make-over and is now to be called, Eris "the goddess of strife and discord". I know I am a bit slow in posting this, been a bit busy with radio data... anyway for more take a look at: [badastronomy.com]

Oh and that means we now have the dwarfs planets as: Ceres, Pluto and Eris...

I hadn't come across this again this year. I have in the past and it is always funny to see that some spammer is sending around emails stating that Mars will be as big as the Moon in the sky. I do think it must be a bunch of astronomers trying to get people to go along to their local society, but I doubt it (oh if you want to go along to your local society go to [fedastro.org.uk] and you will find a big long list! Anyway [badastronomy.com] has a very good article on the big Mars hoax!

A new term, time for the Physics Society committee to pose...

Like the iPod ads? They do look rather cool don't they. Anyway I came across a couple of interesting pages on how to do this. I have attempted to do it myself but my efforts aren't great, if I get some more time I will try and do some better ones that are worthy of posting. Anyway here are some links, the first is a bit more basic [www.photoshopsupport.com] but the second [www.macmerc.com]is a bit more advanced and probably will get the best results.

I just love the comment on this:

"Until we can find an explanation for both of these swollen planets, they remain a great mystery," said co-researcher Dimitar Sasselov.

Anyway for more on this take a look at: [bbc.oc.uk]