I've been writing things here for so many years now that I think I start feeling a little, uh,aimless/lacking purpose?, if I don't update it for more than a few days at a time. Unless I am travelling at the tie, I just start getting get the feeling that something is missing.
So, let's rectify that.
* The bad luck with my car: it seemed to have been fixed by a visit to the cheap mechanic (found via my son with the inflammable car) who said it was a faulty ignition coil, which he replaced for relatively little money. The only problem: the car started doing the same thing again on last Friday, barely 3 days after the repair. Either the coil he put in is faulty, or he should have just replaced them all, as someone who knows a lot more about cars told me is the usual practice. Oh well, a telephone call will be made tomorrow.
* I've been really busy at work, but not in a very satisfying way. I have had an unusual string of really annoying people to deal with in the last month or two.
* On the self improvement upside: after the shingles vaccine, I moved to trying the "restricted hours" method of fasting, which I've implemented by just making lunch my first meal of the day. I think that I may still be losing weight, but very slowly now. One thing is certain: this whole fasting thing has made my stomach capacity feel smaller. I can feel surprisingly full for surprisingly long after lunch in particular. I get the feeling that it might be easier to go back to a week of alternative whole day fasts, to drop the further 1 to 2 kg I would like to see go. But we shall see...
* The dog is back to her usual, happy, barky, self.
* The weather bureau says that, after a hot day tomorrow, temperatures will moderate for the rest of the week, and no storms. I am glad.
* As a (relatively) small indulgence, I went looking for the Black Friday sales and found a Lenovo Tablet that comes with a battery powered pen and a matt finish, all for $228. Actually, at The Good Guys, I got it for $218 - because even on their online shopping site it gave the price, but then has a button that was something like "want to get the best price?" which when pressed, automatically dropped $10 off the already cheap sale price.
Do I need another tablet right now? Not really. But I am keen to see how a matt finish one is for reading (and doodling); and I mean, that price...
But let me make one minor gripe: when iPads and tablets first came out, there was a lot of publicity given to their use in making digital art. Remember the videos you might see of, say, someone doing a faux oil portrait on the iPad with their finger? But that use of tablets doesn't attract much attention any more, and I also get the impression that the drawing and painting apps now are actually worse in many ways than the first versions that came out.
I blame Elon Musk. Or one of the other useless tech billionaires.
Anyway, it's not out of its box yet, so I will report further when its opened.
* I have been saving some clips from Bluesky and Twitter to talk about, and my next post might deal with some of them.
* Oh, on a completely unrelated matter, the All Knowing Algorithm of the Mighty Google (Youtube version) brought to my attention a category of product which is very cool: the extraordinarily cheap and easy to use digital mini telescopes that make astrophotography a breeze. And they can cost well under a $1,000.
Have a look at the video below to see how ridiculously easy they make taking photographs of galaxies and nebula. And then bear in mind that this year, we are barely 100 years from even definitively understanding what galaxies are! I've made this point before, but this is a very, very short period of time in which to expect humanity to have fully processed this knowledge of the age and vastness of the universe into its intellectual, philosophical and intellectual framework. As the Smithsonian Magazine site explains:
On a snowy New Year’s afternoon in 1925, on the campus of George Washington University in Washington, D.C., astronomer Henry Norris Russell read a paper submitted by Edwin Hubble.
It would change the universe.
For several decades, astronomers had been debating the nature of spiral nebulae—pinwheel-shape objects twirling across the heavens. One view held that the spirals were clouds of gas and dust that were part of the Milky Way galaxy (then thought to constitute the entire universe), with our solar system at the center. Others argued that spiral nebulae were so-called island universes: separate systems of stars much like the Milky Way. The truth about spiral nebulae would determine whether the universe spanned a few hundred thousand light-years—or millions.
Hubble’s paper provided the best evidence to date of the more expansive view. According to Hubble’s calculations, the only two spirals visible to the naked eye—the Andromeda Nebula (also known as Messier 31) and the Triangulum Nebula (Messier 33)—were more than 900,000 light-years away.
“Finding the scale of the universe and our Milky Way’s place in it was a fundamental challenge,” says Barry Madore, an astronomer at the Carnegie Institution of Washington and the University of Chicago. “Identifying island universes as individual galaxies of enormous size and great distance was a major paradigm shift.”
It wouldn’t be the last time Hubble would shift the paradigm. In 1929, he reported that all but a few galaxies are moving away from us, with more-distant galaxies moving faster than nearby ones. The discovery led to the realization that the universe is expanding, and that it must have had a beginning: the Big Bang. “Hubble is known as a titan in astronomy, especially American astronomy,” says Samantha Thompson, the Phoebe Waterman Haas Astronomy Curator at the National Air and Space Museum. “He was successful at pulling things together and getting us over the big hump of acknowledging two things: the Milky Way is one of many galaxies and the universe is expanding.”
“A hundred years ago, Edwin Hubble started the race to the edge of the universe,” says Ray Villard, news director for the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, which oversees both the Hubble and James Webb space telescopes. “He fired the starting gun, and the past 100 years have been a marathon to go as far across the universe as we can go.”
Can you imagine how Hubble would react to seeing what images people in their backyard can take now?, for not with an expensive bit of kit, but with a device bought for half a weekly paypacket that you can carry around in your pocket????:
I do wonder a bit about the software added colours to the final image, but still...it's extraordinary compared to how much money and effort used to be needed for hobbyist astronomers to come up with similar results. (I used to go to public meetings of the Queensland Astronomical Association sometimes 45 odd years ago, so I have an idea.)
I guess I am rambling now - in the same way I like to about the way people should spend 10 minutes of every day marvelling at the extraordinary technological achievement that is the mobile phone/computer that they carry in their pocket but mainly use to watch cat videos.
Maybe that is what I should do in retirement: be a placard wearing, semi religious zealot begging people to appreciate technology in their pocket.
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