Playing Scrabble with Augustus John

Kepler

This is a cracking image from NASA's APOD by Ben Cooper of the recent launch of the Kepler telescope. Kepler will be looking for changes in the brightness of more than a million stars every five hours, searching for "winks" in light that happen when a planet passes in front of its star.

Planet spotting outside the solar system is still in its infancy with only three hundred odd Jupiter sized gas giants on record. What Kepler will do is look for Earth-like planets in the habitable zone around stars where liquid water may exist.

Exciting times indeed.

St Pauls

I caught sight of this today as part of a collection of photos by Jason Hawkes. This picture of St Paul's Cathedral is in a set of aerial pictures of London by night. How he did them, I have no idea. They are stunning though.

Just a quickie...

This avoided my size 10s, the nose and (even more amazingly) the teeth of Huckleberry while said pup was let outside for his night time tinkle. I quickly nipped back outside with the camera and somehow managed to take this.

Doesn't he look green?

Back

Yikes, I managed to miss May completely.

Anyway, I've just about recovered from my week away in Barcelona. It's somewhere I've never been to before and as it seems to be the focus for the artists of northern Spain such as Miro, Picasso and Dali, as well as the architecture of Gaudi, it is somewhere with a lot to offer the modern art buff. Anyway, I managed to take a few pictures and return with most of my possessions (the petty crime rates of the city rival anywhere in Europe).


These are some of the Gaudi designed chimneys above Casa Mila or La Pedrera




The Dragon at Park Guell



Sagrada Familia, the Gaudi designed cathedral that has been "got at".



Montserrat at the foot of the Pyrenees.


When I've had time to go through them all, I'll put a folder up here. In the meantime I'm looking forward to things getting back to as they were. The dog is pleased to be back to normality and the new D&D books are out on Friday. I'll need to make some space on the bookshelves as hopefully I should get them delivered on the day.

Jules Verne

As some of you may know, the Jules Verne space freighter is docked with the International Space Station. This picture has been taken by John Locker with a ground based camera. Jules Verne is the small pod on the far South East of the station. Apparently it's about the size of a double decker and weighs around 15 tonnes.

I would love to take pictures like that. I'm sure it would take some serious equipment to catch something travelling at 17,000 mph. I do have a camera and tripod though, and keep meaning to take pictures of the night sky.

Maybe it's time to start.

Let it snow......

The walking of the puppy continues to be something of a white-knuckle ride. On the whole Huckleberry is fairly well-behaved while he's out, but he wants to be off-lead and short of being route marched for 45 minutes each time we go for a walk, you have to find some way of making it safe. Risks have to be taken though. Sure, Bury is a market town and doesn't have the hazards of a large metropolis, but you're never far from a main road, the fields and parks we have tend to be well used and occupied by other dogs and dog owners. Over the last couple of weeks I seem to have been inducted into an informal group of dog owners who only know each other by their dog's names. Huckleberry seems to enjoy meeting other dogs and owners, so much so that he doesn't return and will choose to follow any dog or owner whilst ignoring me. This is an ongoing problem and one that dog owners always say he will grow out of. Personally I think it's a matter of training. Ah well.....

Anyway, here's Huckleberry with an English Setter called Maz. This morning, Maz's owner caught Huckleberry for me when he decided he didn't want to come home with me at the time I suggested.

Yesterday was the annual East Anglian blizzard. Churchill in Canada seems to be covered in permafrost and populated by Polar Bears and people seem to get on with life. A slight dusting over the Eastern counties causes chaos to both the transport system and public infrastructure. With it being Easter Sunday though I couldn't help but take the above pup out into the midst of the storm. here are some of the photos from the walk through the water meadows near here....

In true East Anglian style, it had all but melted six hours later. Yes he enjoyed it, but I guess he'll have to wait until next year for some more.

Huckthulhu

Fun fun fun now that Daddy took the T-Bird away

This last week has been quite a busy one. The annual baseball draft that works on hourly slots over a ten day period has certainly dominated my online time. Still, Huckleberry is quite needy, but after last week's trip to the vets for his first set of jabs... well it has kind of given me hope that things will get a little bit better soon.  That said, Geraint got his finger out and we went to Bridge last Tuesday. We were royally thumped because we were SO rusty. It might not mean anything to anyone, but when an established partnership forget the exit transfers to 1 No Trump doubled, both get it horribly wrong and to such an extent that you fluke the right response you know you're really ring rusty. Still, it was fun and though H hasn't really allowed me the time to look over my books and system, I do feel that tomorrow (should it happen) should be an improvement. If you ever get the chance to play Bridge, give it a go. It is good fun and it gets you thinking.

Anyway, here's the latest of yet another batch of Huckleberry photos.....

You'd think butter wouldn't melt in his mouth.

Lastly, BURPS was a return to form last week. The new game setting (late Victorian Britain) is a winner with me and the freedom to go off at a tangent with my character (who is still very much a work in progress) was very entertaining. John has promised plot. If he delivers, that will be the first time in nearly five years of gaming with this group.

Anyway, as Dudley Moore once sang: The time has come to say "Goodbye". I really hope I can get some reading done this evening. Fingers crossed!

Blue Christmas

Many years ago; about ten I think, I coveted the Christmas lights on the tree in the Elephant & Castle in Bury. Unlike my multicoloured lights from Homebase or some such place they were a single colour, that colour being blue. If I remember correctly the tree itself was a navy blue colour and was adorned with silver baubles and tinsel. I'm not the artistic type, but even I thought that was pretty cool. I remember hunting for lights just like them, but didn't manage, and kept with the red and gold number with a big red star on top. It looked like the sort of tree that would sit outside CPSU headquarters in Soviet era Gorky, if Christmas trees were allowed that is. All this changed last year when I remember trudging back from the local garden centre with a new tree (green still) but with two new sets of blue lights. They're LEDs, so will probably not need replacing and despite the potentially retina searing radiation are simply the best Christmas lights I have seen EVER! They're certainly worth the loss of eyesight.

With the new decorations (from M&S) and obligatory fairy on top, I happen to think you'll have to go a fair few miles to find a home with a better tree than this one. I did try to take some pictures yesterday, but the strength of the lights just overpowers things to a point where the entire room looks ablaze in a blue fiery glow. Today I took a couple of pictures of the decorations (these are either silvered or transparent) just to demonstrate the lights.

The first one:

This is with other lights on in the room. You can definitely see the blue there.

And the second:

This is taken with no other lights on. This shows what the entire living room looks like just the tree lights on. It's eerie, but fab.

Cool or what?