Thursday, May 10, 2007

Note to self

Dear me! Some backsliding! My blog rate seems to have dropped again. I must remedy that, and you know what that means, don’t you? It means daily lumps of content-free nonsense as I hit keys at random and post the result just to say I have.

Nik’s remedy was rather different. She suggested a blog-a-thon. According to her, a blog-a-thon would involve writing five hundred words an hour every hour for twelve hours. I’d write five hundred words, take the rest of the hour off, and then write another five hundred at the start of the next hour - and so on, all the while answering posts. I think she may have bee having a laugh. I can’t even find a clone willing to volunteer for that.

In other news, they’ve found King Herod’s tomb, which is interesting because I wasn’t aware they’d lost it. And scientists have observed a ‘super’ supernova called SN2006gy. It was a massive explosion, a hundred times more energetic that a typical supernova, and was 1000,000 million times brighter than the sun. On the plus side, we can relax, because it was 240 million light years away in another galaxy. However, a Milky Way star called Eta Carinae, just 7500 light years away, look like it’s about to go supernova. If it does, it’s likely we’ll be able to see it alongside the sun in daylight. Which doesn’t happen very often.

Just as long as we don’t all go blind looking at it, thus paving the way for the Triffid conquest of the Earth...

19 comments:

Rob Rath said...

Wasn't that supernova cool?

I'll have to check out King Herod's tomb later, after my thesis is done... which means I should be able to look it up by eight tomorrow morning.

Or rather, it BETTER be done my eight tomorrow morning, or my professor will do something awful to me.

(Sigh) Back to the footnotes...

Anonymous said...

Those Triffids are sneaky buggers aren't they... Supernovas, bad days at the office, carnivals. They'll use any excuse to get their grubby tentacle like limbs in the sweet pie of humanity...

Boom said...

Here's something that I read that was kind of cool. It's a planet that absorbs all starlight and radiates it back out into space as heat. Who would have thunk right?

http://news.yahoo.com/s/space/20070509/sc_space/sizzlingplanetmakessomestarslookcool;_ylt=AmlOIrT8YC9SxbdPLZXuE04DW7oF

Boom said...

...didn't realize the link would look like that. Just triple click to highlight the entire link then copy and paste. If you're interested that is.

Anonymous said...

"An artist's rendition of HD 149026b. It's dense, gassy and a bit of an oddball"

funny, that's often how people have been heard to describe me, too

Jesse said...

King Herod, missing for over two millenia? Yup! Found him!

Jimmy Hoffa, missing since 1975? No idea.

I agree with robert, awesome supernova. When is that due to happen to our sun? Isn't it something like 200 million years or so?

I don't know these things. I should, but I don't. I was a history teacher! History I know! Science, yeah, not so much. . .

Go on, ask me a history question!

Soapy said...

Okay jesse,

At the battle of Quatre Bras what colour underwear was Marshall Ney wearing?

Speaking of stars, sort of, it's my first wedding anniversary in a couple of weeks and, as it's the paper anniversary, I was gonna get the missus a star named after her (you get a kind of certificate, hence paper)knowing my luck though it'll either blow up, as the wife has been known to do, or go out, another of her favorites.

Apropo of nothing much but there you go.

Stay lucky,
Soaps.

Jesse said...

Hah!

Everyone knows Marshall Ney went 'commando,' as was policy in the Armee du Nord!

You'll have to do better than that, soapy!

That battle was a stalemate, wasn't it? Bang, fizzle, fizzle kind of a thing. I seem to remember that it allowed the French to beat up Wellington, or his allies at some other point. Am I right?

Soapy said...

Confound it! A foil worth of my genius, I shall return to challenge you once more...

Oh yeah, whilst not wishing to light a beacon that would suck in Napolionic wargamers from the length and bredth of the interweb I'd just quite like to mention that I think you'll find Wellington was the one who did the butt kicking. In fact he had special boots for just such an occasion. ;>)

And a final note, Brothers of the Snake is excellent and if it taught me anything it's that you should always wear a mask in a land speeder. Nuff said.

Stay lucky,
Soaps.

Anonymous said...

Dan - sorry, I wasn't kidding. I was trying to discover how many comments would come in, between posts.

Who's up for it? Anyone? Come on let's torture a clone today.

Soapy said...

Torture? Sounds good! being a self employed artiste (bum) I can afford to spend all day at the computer chewing the fat with Dan and chums.

Lets do it.

Stay lucky,
Soaps.

Anonymous said...

@ Jesse:

"I agree with robert, awesome supernova. When is that due to happen to our sun? Isn't it something like 200 million years or so?"

More like 4.5 to 5 billion ;)

Jesse said...

Martin,

Sheesh!

200 million.

4-5 billion.

Misplace ONE lousy zero and people get so upset!

Anonymous said...

Huh, well, if you place it like that...

;)

Who put up the question of torturing some clone? Nik? Wassit you? Ah, wouldn't that be a bit... disadvantageous?
Ah, forgot, enough of them, so a single one for disposal... doesn't matter, eh? I think, they're wasting enough usable space.

Toymachine said...

Im with you, Nik!!!

I know when Dan notices me in some way its like "Feth Me! He knows I exist!". Its a nice feeling.

..

.?

Anonymous said...

500 blog words, one an hour, every hours, on the hour, for 12 hours?

Even I could do that....if I had a spare 12 hours and wasn't dead lazy and actually got had lots of people reading my blog.

Be alas, all of the above are somewhat null and void. Though I think people would probably think I was more weird that I already am coz my blog would just contain random observations for nothing for the whole 12 hours.

Plus my parental units would probably get annoyed at all my toing and froing every hour for 12 hours.

Damn, I just can't win.
*pouts*

The BBC said...

I'm with soapy, now if only i could somehow get the day off work (hatches evil masterplan...)

Unknown said...

If it were at the weekend, then sure, I'd enjoy a blog-marathon.

Oh and it'd be awesome to see a star near us go Supernova. Now I just have to wait several thousand years for it to go, then another 7500 til I can see it!

I envy you, soapy.. I'm looking forward to relaxing with a copy of Brothers of the Snake after exams. And the entire Horus Heresy series. And innumerable other books and CDs. Woo.

Speaking of CDs.. What kind of music are we all into? *random topic*

Anonymous said...

Tim - tonight, during R&R (it was good for me too, Dan put his pinny on) we listened to Kate Bush (no really) and Fountains of Wayne.

You guys - are so cool. There are almost enough of you now to get a Dan clone to do the dreaded BLOGATHON (and yes I will shout. I think it's worth shouting about) He's talking about next Sunday 10am to 10pm London time. (Having said that, I wonder how much the R&R has gone to his head, and how much he might regret saying this to me in the glaring light of day tomorrow.)

Everyone - Sign up! Sign up now! Do it!

Dan - BTW your mac laptop is pants.