Paul Smith's Blog

One last thing I wanted to leave you with before I head off to Newport to see Catherine. Phoenix landed successfully last night! Here's the first image of the horizon we've got back. One thing I do have a comment to make quickly about, have you seen what the NASA personnel are wearing? Those silly blue t-shirts that make them look like McWorkers. Honestly NASA, let your people wear a shirt and tie instead of a dumb uniform somebody like Game would come up with, it looks much more professional and it isn't going to get any young people going into engineering or science....

Since Catherine is off having fun without me at the London Expo, I'd thought I'd share a couple of videos I came across on YouTube this week. And my favourite: Rough translation: I brought a MacBook [Air], it crashes often, But at least its thin and fits in an envelope. I don't have an iPhone, But I have a plug for an iPhone. $2500 with the extra drive and software,...

Two days five hours to go until Phoenix lands on Mars, the mission is what NASA have dubbed a quick scout mission, where it'll briefly look into history of water on Mars and any habitability potential in the ice-rich soils near the Martian poles. Phoenix itself will land on Sunday at 23:53:52 (+/- 46 seconds) UT (Monday 00:53:52 BST), as you can see from the drawing above there will be no penny-pinching inflatable beach ball landing for this mission....

According to our mate Kevin Davis I've suffered some kind of "complete meltdown" in response to the defeat in Crewe and Nantwich, while I am flattered at the amount of attention I'm getting from Mr Davis I am somewhat concerned about how it is being twisted. He seems to be under the impression that me calling for a modest increase in the minimum wage, changing how councils are funded, and stopping anymore unwarranted military invasions....

I've recommended AVG Free anti-virus for years (update: I now recommend Security Essentials), I used to run it back when I was using Windows XP. I've still not, after using Windows Vista for two years, got around to actually installing any anti-virus on my main machines. But when my sister got her new laptop, as she had administrative rights I made sure to install some before handing it over. There are other free anti-virus software out there, such as Avast which like AVG Free is licensed just for personal usage....

Things are just going from bad to worse for the government, it would be an immense misreading of the situation for New Labour ministers to dismiss this result as simply mid-term blues. The Prime Minister's relaunch after the disaster of the local elections has proved to be totally ineffective. This result demonstrates the overwhelming anger and contempt in which New Labour is now held by our traditional supporters - John McDonnell MP....

In a move which caught a lot of people off guard Microsoft announced that they'll be providing support for the Open Document Format in Office 2007 Service Pack 2 (due for 1H 2009). I'm not surprised following Microsoft's interoperability pledge a couple of months ago, this makes perfect sense. It sends a clear message to the EU to get off their backs as they're no longer supporting just one ISO standard but two....

Comrade Lee sent in a rather hefty comment on the subject which got me thinking, and although this isn't a direct reply it will cover some thinks he talked about. I had already seen his blog entry on the subject and expected this. :-) I do agree that discussion about lowering the limit at which an abortion can be carried out is not necessarily "bronze-age thinking", however the move to get it lowered was undoubtedly led by religious fundamentalists who want to see it banned....

On Monday the ban on "saviour siblings" was defeated, and research using hybrid embryos can go ahead, today attempts to introduce law requiring a father figure for IVF treatment have been defeated and lastly, the big one which always gets people up in arms, attempts to lower the abortion limit have been defeated. Phew... I'm pleased to see Gordon Brown and Nick Clegg supporting the current 24 week limit. David Cameron, of course and no doubt like most of the Tories supported cutting the current limit to 22 weeks, and some even lower....

For the people hitting my blog in search of a higher resolution image of Saturn and Mars (and Gemini) that featured in June's Sky this Month section of Astronomy magazine here it is: Although the caption Astronomy magazine wrote was inaccurate, the image was taken in 2006 and not 2004.