Category: learning curve

Tuesday Ephemera

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Apparently, this is the third Tuesday ephemera post I’ve done, as you may have noticed from the URL above. Evidently, after the chaos and panic of Mondays (they always seem to surprise people, don’t they?), Tuesdays and Fridays are the days when I unbundle all of the links I’ve collected and collated in my Pocket. Today is no different, as thus, without further ado… Stuff, but with more additional comments than usual:

3 month YouGov polls show folly of campaigning:

ge15

At least, it shows the folly of competitive campaigning. I’m sure that if one party didn’t campaign while the others did, that would make a difference, but given that no-one’s percentages have really done anything very much since mid-January, think of the money, effort and tedium that could have been saved by everyone just not doing anything to woo voters.
Also, it shows the danger of having (really) crap policies – support for UKIP and the Greens having actually dropped as they revealed their plans should they score an unlikely victory.

Local beach clean up yields skull 

The skull is hundreds, perhaps even thousands of years old – the remains of a young adult probably part of a hunter-gatherer community.

Yes. The real surprise was that it wasn’t a more recent murder victim.

This Xilent remix of Ellie Goulding’s Figure 8 is very pretty:

[soundcloud url=”https://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/71479604″ params=”color=ff5500&auto_play=false&hide_related=false&show_comments=true&show_user=true&show_reposts=false” width=”100%” height=”166″ iframe=”true” /]

 

A nice piece on the memories recalled when your childhood home is sold. My parents still live in the same house that I grew up in, so I’ve never really experienced this. Also, it isn’t a massive seven bedroom Yorkshire farmhouse and we didn’t have our wedding reception there, so this is a bit foreign to me as well:

Thirty people slept in the house, with 20 more in tents in the field. Many never made it to a bed, and Mum and Dad reckon that’s the highest number of overnight visitors they have ever had.

How could there actually be any doubt? Were there other occasions when there were “ooh, maybe 49 or 51 – I can’t quite recall”? Or did they previously also own a hotel with 26 double rooms, which may once have been very nearly at full capacity?
But look, this rather bizarre statement shouldn’t detract from what is an otherwise lovely, heartfelt piece.

Finally: Sheffield now and then. Or then and now, depending on how you poke the pictures.

For me, this was interesting not just because I come from Sheffield, but also because firstly, it’s really well done and secondly, just the way that some photos showed massive differences between the old and the new, and some where there were still elements that had been preserved. Sadly, I can’t link to individual photos, but if you have the time and/or inclination the 1945 VE Day crowd outside the City Hall (about a third of the way down) is especially interesting, showing the shrapnel holes from German bombs in the columns, and the patching work still visible today.

On the downside, many of the older photos were taken in the heyday of the city’s industrial past. That’s because that was the thing that made Sheffield special then. That was what was happening, that was the interest. Essentially, that was why the photo was taken – to show that industry, not the green spaces and parks, which didn’t exist back then. The modern day equivalents of those industrial scenes are fairly depressing, in that much of that industry has gone and has been replaced by soulless office buildings or (only arguably worse), nothing at all. It doesn’t help that the present-day photographer seems to have successfully avoided getting any sunshine in any of the photos.

Historical interest 10/10.
Accurate portrayal of modern-day Sheffield: 2/10.

Still. At least it’s not Luton.

Bibbidi-bobbidi-boo

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In the modern, connected world, there’s simply too much information out there for each of us to take in and process individually. Fortunately, there are some people who refuse to take things at face value, and thus take on the task of analysing some of that information for others. It’s a role that I sometimes find myself taking. I’ll now disseminate some of that analysis, with a view to (further) enriching your life. Sadly, it appears that I haven’t been analysing anything very important recently, but you still never know when what you’re about to ignore read might come in handy.

It happened while I was at my daughter’s singing lesson last night. I was listening to the teacher running through the words to a new song for Scoop.
Hang on, I thought as I listened. u wot m8? I’m not about to take that at face value, I thought.

Thus, herewith my analysis of the lyrics to a song from Disney’s 1950 film Cinderella.
Yep, it’s Bibbidi-Bobbidi-Boo, and here it is for those of you at home:

The lyrics are quite difficult for a six year old to grasp, given that they aren’t made up of real words. Of course, any six year old can sing nonsense words, but these ones have to be specific nonsense words and that’s rather more problematic. But also, it really doesn’t help when the nonsense words used in context don’t make any sense either:

Salagadoola, mechicka boola, bibbidi-bobbidi-boo
Put ’em together and what have you got?
Bibbidi-bobbidi-boo

Really? This seems like an awfully poor return on Bibbidi-bobbidi-boo to me.

Basically, you’ve not just put Bibbidi-bobbidi-boo in, you’ve had to add Salagadoola and Mechicka boola to the list as well, and for what? What have you got once you’ve put them together? Yep: Bibbidi-bobbidi-boo.
Where do the Salagadoola and Mechicka boola go to?

Look, we’re told later in the song that Bibbidi-bobbidi-boo is the key requirement for in the job doing process:

The thingmabob that does the job is bibbidi-bobbidi-boo

And so, yes, I suppose we can deduce that Bibbidi-bobbidi-boo is what we’re after, but looking at the top end of the equation, it seems that we had it already, so where does the need for Salagadoola and Mechicka boola come in?
Do they perhaps act as some sort of Bibbidi-bobbidi-boo catalyst? It’s seems unlikely, because if that were the case, Salagadoola and Mechicka boola would also be present at the end of the process as well, by definition.

I’m only asking because a) if they aren’t needed, then we’re obviously wasting a lot of time and effort by putting them into the mixing pot, and b) Mechicka boola is seriously hard to get hold of – Constantia Pick n Pay haven’t had any in for ages now. Gary, the manager, told me that it’s seasonal, and the crops have been decimated by Panama Disease. Or was that bananas?
Either way, it’s a schlep to source, especially if you don’t really need it. Not cheap either, hey?

The other thing about the Bibbidi-bobbidi-boo manufacturing process is the variants you can get if you don’t stop the Salagadoola, Mechicka boola, Bibbidi-bobbidi-boo reaction at the right point. Check out the last line:

Salagadoola mechicka boola bibbidi-bobbidi-boo
Put ’em together and what have you got?
Bibbidi-bobbidi-bibbidi-bobbidi-bibbidi-bobbidi-boo.

Bibbidi-bobbidi-bibbidi-bobbidi-bibbidi-bobbidi-boo?

That’s polymerisation, that is. And while Bibbidi-bobbidi-bibbidi-bobbidi-bibbidi-bobbidi-boo is far more durable than your ordinary monomeric Bibbidi-bobbidi-boo, it’s also far less reactive, presumably meaning that it won’t work anywhere near as well in turning mice into horses, pumpkins into carriages etc. Given that the effects of Bibbidi-bobbidi-boo are already time-sensitive, often wearing off at the stroke of midnight (except of course for the infamous, contradictory glass slipper, which remains unaffected and magical even into the next day), this simply isn’t going to work.

So, you know, be careful not to over do it.

Listen, I hope that I haven’t put you off. It may be expensive and difficult to make, it may have a ludicrously foolish recipe, it may just be absolute nonsense from a successful commercial exploitation of a fairytale some 65 years ago, shared in song format, but if you can get it right, Bibbidi-bobbidi-boo is the bomb.
[Not literally, obviously. I’m certainly not condoning making any of that sort of thing in your kitchen.]

But it worked for old Cinders, didn’t it? Look at her now: killed in a 1997 Paris road accident married to Prince Chaming and living, we’re told, Happily Ever After.
I can’t promise that it’ll do the same for you, but if you do have time this weekend, ifyou can find some Mechicka boola and especially if you can rope in some help from your fairy godmother, it’s surely got to be worth a shot.

Brilliant Hyundai ad

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I’ve always had a bit of a soft spot of the International Space Station. As it happens, I have a bit of soft spot for my Hyundai as well, but that’s not important right now.

What is important is that you watch this amazing Hyundai/International Space Station ad thing. It is, as the title of the post may have mentioned, brilliant.

Pretty cool, ne?

With our extremely connected, information-rich world, it can be tough to make one piece of communication stand out from the rest.

Well yes. But I must mention here that it only really worked because her dad was on the Space Station. It would have been less effective if he worked in, say, for example, a lab in Cape Town.

The project not only highlighted the difficulty in pluralising the word “Genesis”, it also broke the Guinness World Record for “the largest tyre track image,” measuring 59,808,480.26 square feet. Beeg.

More here, including some amazing behind-the-scenes stuff.

Radvertising.

Just where do perytons come from?

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You’ve asked, I’ve asked. Everyone has asked: Just where do perytons come from?

Well, now Petroff et al. are able to tell you. But first – some background:

“Perytons” are millisecond-duration transients of terrestrial origin, whose frequency-swept emission mimics the dispersion of an astrophysical pulse that has propagated through tenuous cold plasma.

Damn that tenuous cold plasma. But, there you go. A peryton is essentially a very short signal detected by a radio telescope, like the Parkes Radio Observatory in New South Wales, Australia. And while we (we radio astronomers, that is) were pretty sure that they were generated on earth, we weren’t sure how. The problem with perytons though, is that they are very similar to Fast Radio Bursts or FRBs. FRBs aren’t generated on earth – so they are of great interest to radio astronomers. It doesn’t help that they may be being masked by perytons.

In their submission to the journal Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics, Petroff et al. claim to have found the source of these pesky perytons at their radio telescope:

Subsequent tests revealed that a peryton can be generated at 1.4 GHz when a microwave oven door is opened prematurely and the telescope is at an appropriate relative angle. Radio emission escaping from microwave ovens during the magnetron shut-down phase neatly explain all of the observed properties of the peryton signals.

u wot m8?

Yep. It was a someone opening the door of a microwave oven on site before the bing that was causing that blip on a screen.

Awkward.

I’ve never really understood the need to open a microwave door prematurely. What are you going to do with the extra 9 seconds you just “saved”? And do you realise that you could have set radio astronomy back by several years as they struggle to work out what just made all their alien invasion alarms go off? No. No, you don’t, because you only think of yourself, don’t you?

Anyway. Whatever, because they’ve sorted it. I wonder who came up with the premature opening of microwave doors hypothesis? Can you imagine being in that meeting?

E.Petroff (for it is she): So, what could be causing these perytons, then?
Scientist 1: Aliens.
Scientist 2: Aliens.
Scientist 3: (eating recently warmed up braai leftovers): No idea, mate.

Anyway – there is a serious side to all of this. Now that they have had a good look at the microwave oven-generated perytons, they have worked out that one of their FRBs – FRB010724, to be exact – wasn’t caused by anyone in their kitchen and did actually come from way out there in outer space. And that’s quite exciting.

UPDATE: And here’s how they discovered this:

Brilliant. (And am I the only one who sees the middle finger in that graph?)

Niche

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Some time ago, we featured the Bollards of London blog on here. Sadly, it seems that that venture has disappeared from the internet. What a load of boll…ards. Presumably, they found them all and there was nothing else to document. But there are still plenty of other niche blogs around, and here’s one:

Pylon of the Month dot org

Yep. Really.

I know electricity is a bit of a sore point around here at the moment, but Pylon of the Month is actually rather addictive. I’m currently back in early 2010, close to beautiful Sheffield, looking at a stunning pylon-related sunset. The site has been going since 2008 and despite being a British based blog, even featured a snap from Somerset West (ugh) to open 2015. There was one from Japan last year as well. Cyprus, Scotland, Greece, Bulgaria, France, Ireland and Sweden are all also represented.
Wow. International.

It isn’t just pylons though. There’s a bit of information about the locality or the reasons behind the author being where he was when the photo was taken. And (perhaps because he’s a physics teacher near Oxford) then there’s educational stuff too. TIL about Stockbridge dampers:

A Stockbridge damper is a tuned mass damper used to suppress wind-induced vibrations on slender structures such as overhead power lines. The dumbbell-shaped device consists of two masses at the ends of a short length of cable or flexible rod, which is clamped at its middle to the main cable. The damper is designed to dissipate the energy of oscillations in the main cable to an acceptable level.

Without which, power lines would be wobbling and failing all over the world. Thank you, George H. Stockbridge, for your surprisingly simple – yet effective – invention. And you’ve all seen them, you just never knew what you were looking at. I love stuff like that.

Anyway, never one to shy away from getting involved in mildly odd stuff (at least on the internet), I’m going to submit a photo wot I took (of a pylon, obvs) to potm.org and see if I can get SA another place on the 2015 board. Watch this space. Or rather watch that space.