558: Space...

Monday night. The sky was clear, the weather was calm and unseasonally clement. Oh, it was, wasn't it. It was, don't you know. What, what. It's a couple of weeks since the rare close alignment of Venus and Jupiter, that I first spotted hanging beautifully over the roof of Aldi. Ahh, the supermarket carpark, between the wonky-wheeled trolleys and the chatty beggars and the honking cars; the natural home of the spotter of astrological phenomena.

Monday night, and the close alignment of Venus and Jupiter has passed. Jupiter remains low in the sky and Venus has risen a few degrees higher, making its gradual getaway, across the solar system and eventually back again. Venus, where the days are longer than the years and the sun rises in the west. Jupiter could now be seen with a new partner in the sky. Our closest celestial body, illuminator of the night, sweeper of tides, major contributor to the conditions on Earth perfect for evolving life.

Monday night and the moon sat close beside Jupiter. A special moon – a crescent moon, illuminated by Earthshine where otherwise it would be blackness. And all I've got is a bog standard digital camera. No special lenses. My position is in the centre of Manchester, at the northwest point of the Blue Banana, the European Megalopolis, where the sky is next to invisible as an indistinct backdrop to street lights and tower blocks.

I photographed the sky from Seymour Park in Old Trafford and got three faint and blurred spots of light. Much less distinct and clear than was seen with just the naked (admittedly spectacled) eye. The photographer of this picture clearly knew much better, and was much better equipped for snapping lunar landscapes:

http://www.jodrellbank.manchester.ac.uk/astronomy/nightsky/nskymar12.html

And here're my little pictures:

494: beep beep beep

The block of flats (it's a terraced house converted into three flats) has a fire alarm system with a fault. For no tangible explained reason it occasionally makes an incessant never ending beep. Or the alarm itself sounding, just a loud beep indicating some mysterious fault. To make it stop you have to input the code and then press the silence button. This doesn't stop the beeping fault, it just shuts it up for a bit. The length of time it shuts up seems to bare no relationship to anything in this universe. Just now the beeping stopped for enough time to allow me to sit down; then it started again. Other times the beeping might stop for hours or days before starting up again.

When the beeping starts it starts at a level just quiet enough to not be heard, but then one moment you notice it's there and you can never unnotice it. Beep beep beep just below the level of conscious hearing; but there it is there it is there it is. Today the beeping shuts off for only seconds at a time. I've just returned from a pointless tussle with that fucking box. I pressed in the code and hit silence. There was silence for a couple of beats and it came right back with the beeping. I repeated this a thousand times and eventually gave up. On my way back up the stairs the hall light, which is on a timer, switched itself off automatically leaving my tumbling and stumbling about in the dark. This house hates me.

Even if the beeping was to stop, it has already burned itself into my brain, meaning that I will hear it forever regardless of whether it sounds or not. I think it's off now, but can't be sure. It's not important, I just had to share.

In other news: I'm reading The Horror in the Museum by H.P. Lovecraft, a book full of 'collaborative' stories by the dark prince of 20^th century horror writing. 'Collaborative' meaning ghost-written by Lovecraft, or originally written by someone else, then rewritten by the master of the weird tale. Like any anthology of Lovecraft their are bizarre flights of fancy lasting a page or three, interspersed with longer stories often taking place within the Cthulhu Mythos. Seems good so far.

Tomorrow is Monday. Night night.

Space Shuttle: The Complete Missions

Last month the Manchester Apollo was host to Uncaged Monkeys, an evening of comedy, science and scepticism.  One of the many highlights of the evening was Adam Rutherford's video tribute to NASA's recently retired Space Shuttles.  Here is that video - full screen, volume up to full:



"NASA's 30-year Space Transportation System (STS) program came to an end on 21st July 2011. The Space Shuttle fleet delivered the Hubble Space Telescope, the International Space Station, and dozens of satellites, space probes, crew and supplies. Two Shuttles were lost: Challenger in 1986 and Columbia in 2003. The touchdown of Atlantis at Kennedy Space Center marked the end of an era, after 135 missions. This video shows all of them in chronological order. http://www.nature.com/spaceshuttle"

(Text from YouTube video description on  Nature Video Channel.)

199: geek code, and more time wasting

Eee by gum; what should I write about?  Don’t really fancy going through lists of ‘things to do before you hit 30’ stuff, and declaring what I have and haven’t done, and what I could or couldn’t do.  It’s not that I don’t think it might be fun, or that adding a few more strings to my bow isn’t a good idea; it’s more that it’s late and even the thought of imagining adventures and sexual escapades makes me want to run for the slippers, and pop a tea cosy on the pot.  The internet has many of these lists.  One of them is here at geeks.co.uk (no, I’ve never heard of it either, and it’s not as good as it sounds).  Top of their list is to have “worked out your Geek Code and use it somewhere, blogs [...] etc”.  I’ve never heard of a Geek Code, and it is indeed a thoroughly pointless way of spending five minutes, but if I have to do it before I hit 30 then do it I must:

-----BEGIN GEEK CODE BLOCK-----

Version: 3.1

GFA/L>S d-(++) s--:-- a- C++ U/P/L/E? W++ U/o/K? w 0? M- V?

PS++ PE Y+ PGP? t+ 5? X+ R-- tv+ b+++ DI? D+ G e++ h- r++ z+

------END GEEK CODE BLOCK------

Ok, one down.  How many more to do?  But I said right at the start of today’s blog that I wasn’t in the mood for ‘...before you’re 30’ lists, and here I’ve gone ahead and babbled on about them.  But while I’m at it, here is another list; I think I’ve done 11 out of 50.  Some perspective might be gained from the fact I had done 12 (possibly 13) out of 30 on the geek list.  Anyway, let’s forget all these stupid lists.  If I need a list (I don’t need lists, but I do like them an awful lot) I should do my own.  Probably counts as a slightly more productive way to spend five minutes than working out your Geek Code.  Fucking hell, geek code; what the hell was I thinking?  At least I won’t have to do that again... unless any of the variables change, and I need to update it...

I wonder if there is any chance I might make it into space at some point over the next year.  Obviously it usually requires a lot of hard work, intelligence, dedication and training, but most of these ‘list’ things are the sort of thing you might accidentally achieve on a drunken night out.  So there is a chance I might pass out after 28 shots of whiskey and wake up on the International Space Station.  And besides; I really, really, really want to do it, and it’s not fair, so please, please, please.  Etcetera.

159: Measuring micro-twitches and lurking in darkness

My public list of blogspot followers shows I have ten acolytes, yet the back end mysteriously states the number at eleven.  This extra follower remains unknown and invisible.  When following a blogspot blog using google you can choose to follow privately, but why would you?  Who is this creepy spy; who are you and what do you want from me!?  A while back I had a wee bit of a laugh at those twats in the Scientology department of the planet Earth’s wide range of oddness.  Those litigious yobbos have a habit of lurking online and bullying the weakest critics and satirists they can find, and it wouldn’t surprise me if they have aimed their weird pseudo-religious intelligence-gathering laser beams through my window and onto my keyboard in order that they may collect my offline keystrokes.  They’ll be watching me through reflective surfaces and decoding my thoughts by measuring micro-twitches in my irises and eyelids.

No, of course not; what childishly silly paranoia!  Day dreams and night terrors, that’s all that is.  My clandestine observer is not that petty international cabal of crappy sci-fi writers and loopy Hollywood wackos.  The Pioneer plaque was a beautifully designed illustration of man, woman, our solar system and its place in the galaxy and some basic information about binary and hydrogen atoms.  It was launched into the depths of space in 1972 and again in ’73.  Its wishful purpose was to communicate some basic information about the nature of humanity and, should it ever be discovered by intelligent advanced extraterrestrial life, perhaps facilitate communication between our species.  It seems more than plausible to me that we are in the process of contact being made, and our advanced alien counterparts have chosen a more contemporary method of harvesting information.

I am among those chosen, as a sample of Earth life, to be monitored in secret.  They may come in peace or they may come to lay waste to our beautiful planet, but either way I am happy to help with one proviso.  I know you are reading this, E.T., and I just want a sign to indicate your answer to this simple question: Has your great alien species come up with anything as inane, vicious and tawdry as the ‘Church of Scientology‘?  If you want my help your answer to that question must be ‘No, of course not; we’re not stupid, you know’.  If that is the case, Vulcan brethren, come down and say hi.  Follow my blog publically and proudly, instead of lurking in darkness of private following.  Bring your advanced logic to cure our species of war, racism, bullying, hate, religion, famine, injustice and Scientology.  Ironically use your Vulcan example to bring humanity to the human species.  And stop watching me in secret, it feels so dirty.

the Pioneer plaque