Paul Davies made this comment during a radio interview, with which I wholeheartedly agree:
…one should abandon infantile beliefs based on Sunday school stories and embrace the scientific path which reveals a universe which is even more wonderful than you can imagine and a source of inspiration.
I bought a first generation iPod Nano more than 2 years ago. I use it every work day (see also http://strangequark.me/2006/08/27/astronomy-science-podcasts/), but the battery has been on the way out over the last few months. In the end it was holding charge for less than an hour, irrespective of charge time, often dying before my walking trip was over.
Getting it replaced through official channels would’ve cost in excess of AUD $100, about a 3rd of the device’s original cost. So instead, I spent AUD $20 on an iPod replacement battery kit from JayCar (I’ve seen them advertised elsewhere on the web too).
It came with the 3.7V Li-ion Polymer battery (400mAh instead of the original 340mAh), two plastic tools to pry the case open, and a brief but effective instruction sheet.
The most painful part was getting the case open. The plastic tools from the kit only get you so far and I pretty much wrecked mine. My wife Karen and I took turns carefully prying open different sections of the case with a small flat blade jeweller’s screwdriver (not suggested by the instruction sheet, but effective nonetheless), in addition to using the plastic tools.
Once the back of the case was off, the battery was easily removed, and I used a fine-tipped soldering iron to remove the three wires from the PCB, and fine solder to connect the new battery’s wires in place before putting the case back together.
I replaced the battery on the weekend and didn’t have to charge it again until 3 days later. Hopefully this will make my Nano last another 2 or 3 years, by which time it will probably be time for an iPod upgrade. It won’t owe me anything by then, that’s for sure.
Now, all I have to do is stop breaking earphones.
Once again, ANZAC Day is here, a day on which we recall those who in far too many cases died fighting someone else’s battle.
My grandfather, James Melville, fought during WWI in Egypt, Gallipoli, and France. He always struck me as a proud, meticulous man. After the war he worked in several jobs, including on trains in outback Australia. As a child I loved his Scottish accent. I wish I had known him better, talked with him more, not seen him as so “other”. I’ve been a pall bearer for two people: my Grandfather and my Mother, who died 16 years apart.
My Great Uncle, Frank Jagger, served in the German army in that same war. I recall a family member years ago remarking that he and my Grandfather may have been fighting in the same area of France during the war. I don’t know if this was actually the case or mere speculation, but it probably happened to some. Uncle Frank stayed with us for a short while in the late 70s. He was a real character. After he returned to Germany, I used to help translate his increasingly German letters to my family. He too is gone now.
The saying goes: “Lest We Forget”. Indeed. But please, Let’s Not Glorify. War is a terrible thing, something I hope my kids never have to experience. As Skyhooks put it so well in the 70s: “Horror movie right there on my TV, shockin’ me right out of my brain.”
Those who romanticise war must not have seen enough death. If you watch a movie like Saving Private Ryan and don’t feel viscerally offended, then the world we’ve constructed has succeeded in numbing you. Anyone who has seen dead people and terrible injury up close and personal (I was a nurse before I was a programmer) understands that War cannot be a clean thing any more than car accidents or cancer. The best way to honour the War Dead is to Just Stop It. Just Get Along. Life’s too short to do otherwise, and as a species we take ourselves way too seriously. We need to get over ourselves and just get on with Living and Learning. There’s no salvation, no Higher Purpose. It’s just Us. Carpe Diem.
Another saying goes: “No Fate But What we Make” (Terminator 2). The only thing we are not free to choose is our freedom to choose (Sartre).
Yeah, we’re stuck with one other and we had better make the best of it. As Carl Sagan said “We make our world significant by the courage of our questions and the depth of our answers.” Providing the answer “War” to any question just doesn’t qualify.
“What is not possible is not to choose.” (Jean-Paul Sartre)
Consider the following:
Either the bible is literally true, and π is represented as the ratio of the two integers 30 and 10, or π is irrational with a value of around 3.1415926. We recently set up new odometers on our bikes. The manual for the device instructs the user to multiply the diameter of the bike’s wheel by 3.14, yielding the wheel’s circumference. So, for a 700 mm wheel, that’s about 2198 mm for a π of 3.14 and 2199 mm for a π of 3.1415926. But what if π is 3? That circumference becomes 2100 mm.
Now, for say 50 revolutions of the wheel:
If π is 3, the wheel traverses almost 5 meters less. So is π 3?
Choose
Read more about the π saga than you probably want to in this Gospel of Reason blog entry and follow-up comments.
“It makes sense to revere the sun and stars, for we are their children.” (Carl Sagan)
Consider the following:
Either the bible is literally true and the world and us (including heavier-than-iron elements) were really created in 6 days, or the universe really is old.
Choose
“What is not possible is not to choose.” (Jean-Paul Sartre)
Last week my little girl (Heather, who is 3 years old) was in hospital for 3 days on intravenous antibiotics and oxygen. My wife (Karen) is a nurse, as I used to be before a career change to software development, and I can tell you that we were both very worried about her. It was Influenza A and a secondary bacterial infection. We have it in our heads in this age of vaccination and antibiotics that people don’t easily die of simple illness. But the young and the old, far too often, still do.
Karen stayed with her throughout the ordeal, while I spent most of that time looking after our son (Nicholas) who had a milder dose of the flu, as did we all. I found leaving them at the hospital to be almost unbearable, perhaps because another goodbye in a hospital, almost 5 years ago, was final: my Mother, who died after failed heart surgery. Two completely different circumstances, but no-one ever said people were logical, not even most of the time, or as Oliver Goldsmith so nicely put it:
Logicians have but ill-defined
As rational the human kind.
Logic they say, belongs to Man,
But let them prove it if they can.
Heather is home with us again, still recovering, but pretty much back to her old self. To have Heather with us again, albeit a little cranky to start with, was a joy that I just cannot describe to you. It was almost as good as having her home for the first time from hospital after her birth, but this time tinged with the sadness and fear of what could-so-easily-have-been.
As if Heather’s ordeal was not enough, she had a visit to the dentist today after Karen noticed some tooth decay; a good thing she noticed this early too! Apparently Heather displayed stoicism beyond her years throughout two fillings, the poor little thing. This despite our (Karen’s mostly) best efforts to give our kids the best chance at dental health.
My PIC C library is now on Sourceforge. I’ve developed and used this library for my own projects in conjunction with the Hi-Tech PICC Lite compiler on and off for a few years now. It’s been sitting on my laptop for personal use, and I thought it was time to make it available for others to use.
Making picclib available is my first experience of Sourceforge, and a fairly pleasant one. The documentation is quite reasonable, although it helps to have some background with Unix, ssh, CVS/Subversion etc. I chose Subversion as I’ve been using it for my own projects for awhile now.
There’s plenty of Sourceforge features yet to explore. I’ll certainly use it for future projects.
I took this image of Comet McNaught from the front of my house on January 23 2007 at about 9:30pm after just having returned from several days in Arkaroola (700 km NE of Adelaide). The orange hue is caused by a streetlight near my house. You can see the striations in the comet’s tail, material left behind as the comet passes through its orbit, away from the Sun. I used a Pentax K100D at ISO 800 for 30 seconds at f 4.5. Some star trailing is evident due to the length of the exposure. After some processing, I’ll also probably post images of the comet I took in Arkaroola.
Here’s a picture that shows the region surrounding the Arkaroola village, along with the village itself. Left of centre you can just spot the white speck of one of the observatory domes, just near the base of a hill that I and a few others spent an hour or so carefully ascending. There’s nothing much else around for many kilometres, but plenty of nature.
Our group was stuck in Arkaroola an extra day due to heavy rains while we were there. Apparently decent rains in that region only occur on average once in 8 years. In any case, it gave us a further chance to explore more of this beautiful part of the Flinders Ranges. It’s a place I’ll want to go back to again.
After first seeing Comet McNaught two nights ago from a beach in Adelaide (Australia) with my son Nicholas, my wife Karen and I had a great view of it tonight from suburban Adelaide (after the kids were in bed) starting at around 8:55 pm, eventually peering through a gap in a neighbour’s fence to see it for as long as possible low on the horizon.
The tail was striking whether to the naked eye or in 7×50 binoculars. One particularly beautiful moment was when the coma emerged from under a thin bank of passing cloud, appearing brighter than before and orange-hued.
Comets Hale-Bopp (1997) and Hyakutake (1996) were impressive, but McNaught is something else, truly deserving of being placed in the Great Comet category.
