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Farewell to Blackberry…

Posted in Uncategorized with tags , , , on November 24, 2014 by telescoper

I’m not really a great one for gadgets so I rarely post about technology. I just thought I’d do a quick post because the weekend saw the end of an era. I had been using a Blackberry smartphone for some time, the latest one being a Blackberry Curve, and even did a few posts on here using the WordPress App for Blackberry. I never found that particular bit of software very easy to use, however, so it was strictly for emergencies only (e.g. when stuck on a train). Other than that I got on pretty well with the old thing, except for the fact that there was no easy way to receive my work email from Sussex University on it. That has been a convenient excuse for me to ignore such communications while away from the internet, but recently it’s become clear that I need to be better connected to deal with pressing matters.

Anyway a few weeks ago I got a text message from Vodafone telling me I was due a free upgrade on my contract so I decided to bite the bullet, ditch the Blackberry and acquire an Android phone instead. I’m a bit allergic to those hideously overpriced Apple products, you see, which made an iPhone unthinkable.  On Saturday morning I paid a quick visit to the vodafone store in Cardiff and after a nice chat – mainly about Rugby (Wales were playing the All Blacks later that day) and the recent comet landing – I left with a new Sony Xperia Z2. I feel a bit sorry for turning my back on Blackberry; they really were innovators at one point, but they made some awful business decisions and have been left behind by the competition. Incidentally, the original company Research In Motion (RIM) was doing well enough 15 years ago to endow the PeRIMeter Institute for Theoretical Physics in Waterloo, Ontario, which was one of the reasons for my loyalty to date. The company is now called Blackberry Limited and has recently gone through major restructuring in its struggle for survival.

The Xperia Z2 is a nice phone, with a nice big display, generally very easy to find your way around, and with a lot more apps available than for Blackberry. I’ve got my Sussex email working and got Twitter, Facebook and WordPress installed; the latter is far better on Android than on Blackberry. The only thing I don’t like is the autocorrect/autocomplete, which is wretched, and which  I haven’t yet figured out how to switch off. The other thing is that it’s completely waterproof, but I haven’t taken it into the shower yet.

I feel quite modern for a change – my old Blackberry did make me feel like an old fogey sometimes – but since I’ve now signed up for another two years of contract before my next upgrade, there’s plenty of time for technology to overtake me again.

 

 

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The New Mariner

Posted in Poetry, The Universe and Stuff, Uncategorized with tags , , , , on November 16, 2014 by telescoper

In the silence
that is his chosen medium
of communication and telling
others about it
in words. Is there no way
not to be the sport
of reason? For me now
there is only the God-space
into which I send out
my probes. I had looked forward
to old age as a time
of quietness, a time to draw
my horizons about me,
to watch memories ripening
in the sunlight of a walled garden.
But there is the void
over my head and the distance
within that the tireless signals
come from. An astronaut
on impossible journeys
to the far side of the self
I return with the messages
I cannot decipher, garrulous
about them, worrying the ear
of the passer-by, hot on his way
to the marriage of plain fact with plain fact.

by Ronald Stuart Thomas (1913-2000)

 

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Intermission

Posted in Uncategorized on November 7, 2014 by telescoper

Circumstances have forced me to take a break from blogging for a while. Normal services will be resumed as soon as possible but, for the time being, there will now follow a short intermission.

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MPS Halloween Fundraiser

Posted in Uncategorized with tags , , on October 31, 2014 by telescoper

As previous items on In The Dark have made clear I’m not really a big fan of Halloween. I’m glad to say that the office staff in the School of Mathematical and Physical Sciences at the University of Sussex clearly agree with me and have decided not to dress up for the occasion or anything daft like that:

Halloween

I will, however, point out to all of you in internet land who are charitably disposed that you may nevertheless decide to get into the spirit by making a donation to the MPS Halloween fundraiser, which is on behalf of Chestnut Tree House, the only children’s hospice in Sussex, which cares for 300 children and young adults from 0-19 years of age with progressive life-limiting conditions.

Update: 16.45. But I didn’t have the Salmon Mousse..

reaper

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Physicists and astronomers followed by physicists and astronomers on Twitter

Posted in Uncategorized on October 15, 2014 by telescoper

For those of you interested in this sort of thing, this is the sort of thing you will find interesting…

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More of L’Aquila

Posted in Uncategorized with tags , , on October 12, 2014 by telescoper

At the risk of boring you all with even more pictures of L’Aquila, here are a few more pictures I took with my phone while out and about over the past week.

First, here’s the Gran Sasso Science Institute (GSSI) where our workshop is being held:

IMG-20141010-00423

The following sites can all be found within a few minutes’ walk of the GSSI (which is itself just a few minutes from my hotel). In particular there is the historically important Romanesque church of Santa Maria di Collemaggio which dates back to the 13th Century. The façade looks in good nick, although there is evidence of recent repair. However, the back of the church collapsed completely during the 2009 Earthquake and is currently being rebuilt. There is also cracking and significant bowing of the wall on the left hand side, hence the supporting structures.

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Excursion to Sulmona

Posted in Uncategorized with tags , , on October 11, 2014 by telescoper

I’m here on my own over the weekend so I decided to make the most of the lovely weather (it was a sunny 28° C today) and take a small excursion by train. The railway station at L’Aquila is situated on a branch line so the options from here are limited: up or down. I decided to take the “up” line to the town of Sulmona, which is 61km away by train. The ticket cost a mere €4.80 and though the train was a bit old, it was right on time in both directions. The journey time of an hour each way might seem a bit long, but the journey is through rather mountainous terrain and the service is a slow Regionale stopping service so I didn’t expect it to be a quick journey. On arrival I discovered that the Stazione Centrale is in fact pretty far from central but it was a pleasant walk of about half an hour into the small city centre.

Sulmona is famous for two things. One is that it is the birthplace of the poet Ovid who is  remembered by a fine bronze statue in the Piazza XX Settembre. The other famous thing is the Confetti di Sulmona, sugar-coated almonds coloured in such a way to look like oversized Smarties and presented in various disguises, e.g. as flower petals.

The town itself was almost totally destroyed by an earthquake in 1706. That’s a bit of a theme around these parts. You might think people would get fed up living in a place where natural catastrophes happen so regularly, but apparently not. Anyway, quite aside from the fact that many of the buildings are clearly of late eighteenth or early nineteenth century, which is not the case in L’Aquila, the reconstruction of Sulmona has made it a much airier place: the squares are larger and more open, and the streets wider. While the topography around L’Aquila is complex – the town itself sits on a hill surrounded by numerous local maxima, minima and saddle-points –  Sulmona sits in a broad flat plain on which the first and second derivatives behave in a much more sensible fashion.  I have to say that I have found L’Aquila quite oppressive at times during this visit. I don’t believe in ghosts of course, but there is so much evidence of destruction all around that it definitely has something of a haunted atmosphere. It was good to get away to a town whose wounds have healed.

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A Brain Teaser from SWALEC

Posted in Uncategorized with tags , , on September 8, 2014 by telescoper

As I wend my way Brightonwards after a week in Wales, I thought I’d request your assistance in deciphering part of a letter I received from SWALEC, the company that supplies gas and electricity to my Cardiff residence.

If anyone out there can explain the logic that leads from a credit of £163.54 to an increase in my monthly payment – other than the obvious one that SWALEC are trying it on – I’d be most grateful!

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Pallas’s Cat

Posted in Uncategorized with tags , on August 29, 2014 by telescoper

Too busy for a proper post today as I’ve got a lot to do before going off for a spot of annual leave. I’m therefore resorting to a standard ploy in such situation, posting a video of a cat. The short clip below features no ordinary cat, however. It’s an example of Pallas’s Cat, Otocolobus manul, a wonderful – but sadly endangered – creature which lives wild in the steppes of Central Asia. Here’s a fine specimen captured in a still photograph:

Pallas_Cat

Although it appears very stocky because of its long fur, it’s actually no bigger than an average domestic cat.

The clip is a valuable reminder to us all that even the coolest and most dignified animals on Earth  can be hilarious when placed in an unfamiliar situation. This one has clearly just spotted a camera outside its lair….

 

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COSMIC BLACKBODY ALIVE AND WELL IN MAINSTREAM PHYSICS ESTABLISHMENT

Posted in Uncategorized on August 22, 2014 by telescoper

As an “intellectual poseur” I couldn’t resist reblogging this piece …

dreamheron's avatarThe Dreamheron Chronicles

Just this summer, Professor Amber Miller of Columbia University (appearing at the World Science Festival panel discussion on BICEP2), stated emphatically (and it seems, not required by the context of the discussion) that the cosmic blackbody is intact. Her taxpayer-funded high-tech research in the high frontier is riding on this assumption. (Watch the video from 1:07 to 1:09).

A video released last month by the learned society SPIE and filmed at NASA Goddard pointedly avers that the blackbody is fully intact, with 50 ppm accuracy.

And today this bit of public education from Professor Peter Coles of the University of Sussex (upon holding many consultations with mainstream colleagues at a conference on this very subject in Denmark) states:

The problem – the Achilles Heel of BICEP, so to speak – is that it operates at a single frequency, 150 GHz. That means that it is not possible for this experiment…

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