Three days to go. COME ON VILLA!!!!!

I have just been reading the BBC news article on the 'Baghdad's batteries'. It’s amazing to think that there were actual batteries used around two thousand years ago. Thinking about what they must have been used for I agree that it must have been some form of electroplating, but as most things discovered years before the underlying scientific principle is written and understood, I always wonder about the key moment in which someone discovers the practical application of it. What situation must have arisen in order for someone to find out that if a set of certain circumstances were met then something unexpected would happen. This is especially true for these batteries, they must of had two metals in some form of either wine or vinegar and observed some form of rudimentary electroplating. Could you imagine how cool that would be to discover this and then begin to experiment until finally you where electroplating gold and silver on to stuff!! There are however a set of people that don’t quite believe that these were batteries. THEN PLEASE TELL ME WHAT ELSE COULD THEY BE?

Good Links
http://www.unmuseum.org/bbattery.htm
http://www.world-mysteries.com/sar_11.htm
http://www.voltaicpower.com/Batteries/historyold.htm

Villa Vs Birmingham 'The Shity' City on Monday. OH GOD!!!!!!

Well NASA engineers have just reported that the Pioneer 10 spacecraft sent its last weak signal to Earth on Jan. 22, 2003 after more than 30 years as reported in yesterdays NASA news. It is crazy to think that after it passed Mars it travelled places that humanity had never been to before and at the last report was 7.6 billion miles away. Info on Pioneer 10

It is a very exciting time being in fusion at the moment what with the US and China being interested in ITER again and now the long awaited UK Government White Paper on Energy being published on the 24th February. It was fairly negative on nuclear energy as a whole but made two very positive mentions of fusion. Hopefully the interest and enthusiasm will carry on!! It also talked quite extensively on alternatives such as solar panels and wind. I actually believe that with more research into making the cheaper amorphous silicon panels, then oneday each house could provide most of their own energy. Below is one of the quotes from the white paper

The UK also participates in nuclear research under the EURATOM programme, primarily on fusion research. In the long term, nuclear fusion could provide power generation from an abundant fuel source with zero carbon emissions and without the problems associated with long-term highly radioactive waste. We are a long way from a commercial power plant, but the technical feasibility of fusion power generation could be demonstrated within 25 years given adequate resources, possibly leading to full-scale power generation within 30 years. The next step towards this is the construction of the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) and the International Fusion Materials Irradiation Facility (IFMIF). The US and China have both signalled their intention to join ITER, an ambitious international research project to harness the potential of fusion energy. The project will involve the UK, US, China, Russia, Japan, Canada and other European nations. We expect ITER to lead, by the middle of this century, to the commercially viable production of clean, safe and renewable energy without the emission of greenhouse gases. The UK has considerable expertise in fusion and a complementary national fusion programme will also be needed to maximise the benefit from this expertise.

I have been reading a lot of articles on blogs by journalists who declare that this media is not well written and would never replace proper articles written in newspapers, journals, magazines etc.

One such article cleverly written by Craig Taylor in The Guardian is called ‘Hello world’. This article shows his journey through the sea of blog’s leading him to believe that ‘a search through the lists of links made it clear that every decent blog was surrounded by 30 dull, pore-exposing close-ups of a life that should have been left offline’. Dean Allen of textism fame describes that there are ‘oceans of banal diary entries and me-too punditry to be crossed before the gems are found’.

Sorry but I thought that the whole point of this was for everyone to have a voice and say whatever they want, whether it is in fact a self indulgent manner or if it is badly written. I actually find it quite annoying that people can have their head so far up their backside. If people want to use this medium as a way of adding diary entries then let them, it’s up to people to either read them or not. I think what I have read recently has certainly changed what I have been writing about, I started with more of a diary and now it’s turned it to more of a commentary about things. I hope I don’t dehumanise this to much as this is why I started this in the first place. I suppose the question is who I am writing to me or you?

Absolutely brilliant article on Microcontentnews called Borg Journalism - We are the Blogs. Journalism will be Assimilated.. It's genius, are we all a part of the blog collective/ hive mind?

I have just read the article by the BBC about whether Google is now too powerful and needs a search engine regulator. The article also explains that Google is getting a constant feed of user profile information about each of us and it refuses to say why it wants this information or to admit whether it makes it available to the US Government. I personally don't believe that any company has the resources to record and organise such a vast amount of data that must be created every second by the millions of us that use their service. I also find it difficult to believe that they have a file of each one of us showing our long term search habits, that’s one big server!!!!! They also mention that the cookie they stick on your PC also gives them info on you. That is also rubbish as the cookie can only give information on the machine and not the user.There is a good website called google-watch where they want to show how Google's monopoly, algorithms, and privacy policies are undermining the Web.
Still want to know what Google want with Pyra, they want the blogger code for some reason????

Life on Europa
Scientist’s at NASA while trying to simulate meteor impacts have discovered that when an object hits ice at speed then a current is produced which is probably caused by the movement of protons as the ice cracks. Europa which is a moon of Jupiter is the most probable site for life in the solar system other than Earth due to the fact it is thought under kilometres of surface ice there is liquid water there, providing the fundamental ingredient of life. The only thing that was missing was a bit of a spark in order to create initial simple organic molecules, and so this new discovery is very exciting!!
Here is the NASA pages for Europa. This site is also good

A guy I used to work with came over from Italy to do some work and we went out with a few other trouble makers last night. He made some nice food including a traditional Sicilian salad of oranges, onion and rocket and then we went out to the cheesiest club in the known universe (well Oxford anyway) called DTM’s. One of the trouble makers (Marta) forced too many tequilas down me and this morning I woke up with the mother of hangovers fortunately modern drugs came to the rescue!! Took a liquid Nurofen and then went to bed again for a couple of hours. Liquid Nurofen gets rid of your hangover and just kinda leaves you numb, I can deal with numb!!! They even have a website

Lost my beard yesterday!! I don't have the adequate tools in order to keep my beard trimmed, so for the past 4 years I have regularly run the gauntlet of trying not to slice half of it of with hair clippers. I have fortunately managed to avoid the situation for the majority of the time but in a rush to get out; I had a wee slippage and had to remove the rest of it as an act of humanity. I am now looking like a 14 year old girl

Got text message from Sheppard. " 9! That's nice. No s**ting on the rug!". Villa just lost 3-0 to bloody charlton. We are rubbish

My mate Sheppard came over last night with his girlfriend (sorry should I say fiancé) we had a few beers and he asked me to be his best man. Of course I will, never saw that coming though!!! I might even have a shave and wear some shoes.

The funniest is that both their parents are meeting each other for the first time today and they are S**Ting it, apparently they are SO different. Shep’s dad smokes like a trooper and dominates a conversation and Kate’s dad used to smoke and is now very anti smoking and doesn’t say much. I had to laugh I asked him to give me a score of how bad it goes 1 being the worst and 10 being only pretty rubbish. Just before Shep left this morning he said if it’s a -10 then his dad has walked into Kate's parents house with a cigarette and S**T on the carpet. I happen to agree, that would be bad!!

I have had an e-mail from work today asking me what my holiday plans are up to the start of November as apparently ‘it is going to be a very busy year’. When I was a student, I couldn’t remember my own name, let alone what I (whoever I was) was up to that day. Now I am expected to know what I will be doing for a year in advance. It’s a good job I have a diary. It gives me all the info I need when I wake up in a morning.

1. Your Name is Dave
2. Breathe

I watched 'The Bourne Identity' last night, it was a fairly good action movie with watzhisname looking fairly hard (he used to look like the sort of scrawny little git you used to take their lunch money off, however now it looks like that would be an inadvisable option). Its starts off with him being found floating in the water with bullets in him, he is rescued and you discover he has amnesia. During the film you find out he is an assassin and although he can’t remember anything, he does however remembers how to defend himself and generally control potentially life threatening situations (i.e. he kicks ass). All I could think about was that it was a good job he remembered the art of warfare and not say, the finer points of cribbage or a wonderful recipe for clam chowder. I don’t how far you could protect yourself with a flush or a steaming bowl chowder. Oh yeah watzhisname = Matt Damon

I don’t often say this but come on you yanks!!!! The stars and stripes and the Chinese (come on China) for that matter are in for ITER. Which if you didn’t know is the next generation of research fusion reactor. OK before non scientists go mad, this is not nuclear fission (fission – bad) this is nuclear fusion (fusion – good, get the difference). There are groups of scientists all around the world trying to recreate the sun and get unlimited energy (sun will burn out, before we will use up the resources, resources being the sea) with no nasty fission products (again fission - bad) or carbon emissions. Actually the only bad thing about it is it’s bloody difficult to do!! Anyway I cut the crap – Obviously some advisor to George doubleYaah has said lets get in to this project or we may have to pay for the technology if it happens to work. I work as a physicist (I know what you are thinking – calm ladies) on the JET project in Oxford the world’s current largest tokomak, but there are some other groovy ones in the US, Japan, Russia and France. The big announcement about US and China working with Europe, Japan, Russia and Canada can be seen here. Look at those countries there, if we can get this fella to work maybe we will all b’nice to each other!!!!

I have not had a cigarette this year and although I am sure the chemical addiction is probably gone I still associate everything to having a cigarette. With a beer, with a cup of tea, after a meal, standing up, sitting down, lying down, etc. I was talking to a work colleague who has quit for thirty years, he says he still thinks about it and actively passive smokes. Does this mean I have all this to look forward to, JOY. Everyone says ‘well, look at the money your saving’ and I’m thinking yeah with that sort of money I could buy cigarettes. QuitSMokingUK and Quit are good sites for this, I suppose.

You know when you get random people phoning you up doing some type of survey, well I just had the maddest survey, they spent ten minutes talking to me about shoes, where I buy them and what shops I go to, I tried to tell the that I was a physicist and the last time I bought a pair of shoes was in 1997, but they where not having any of it. They asked me 'do you know this shop' so I would say 'no', they would then ask 'would you ever consider buying from there' and I would answer I just said I have not heard of the shop but if they sold nice shoes I would probably go there (whatever a nice shoe is). This went on for ages until I started laughing about the absurdity of the phone call, she thought I was taking the piss and muttered something and then hung up. I think that is me out of the raffle. By the way I buy trainers I don't walk around in my bare feet and stuff.

I am finding this whole David Beckham Vs Alex Ferguson really funny. Quite an amusing game available on the web, We are about to go to war, there is some severe stuff happening in the middle east and people starving in Africa and our dear old british tabloids and even some of the broad sheets are talking about poor old David Beckham. Suppose it is another thing those bloody Man Utd lot can moan about. UP THE VILLA

I have been looking at all these blogs and it reminds me off the book I have just read called 'bird song' by Sebatian Faulks, about a character in World War 1 who writes a diary that is read by his great grand daughter 50 years or so later. He probably never wrote it in order for other people to read it (it was actually in code to make it even more difficult), but he probably just wanted to say something to get it off his chest, but still he must of realised he was committing his thoughts to print and that could be read by others. Did Anne Frank want her diary to be read? Of course the main difference now is that maybe no one will read this or maybe every one in the world will.

Trying to design a tattoo for my brother at the moment using Phoenician text. Found an absolute top fella in the ether called Salim from the Center for Phoenician Studies in the US who helped me get it all translated, his website Phoenicia.org is nice!! The web is a mad place what the hell did people do before it!

Cool. Lets get a few things out immediately - PEACE. Can we stop all fighting and be nice to each other, I do not care what race or religion you are, respect each other please. I was impressed with the London Peace Demo on Saturday and hopefully the goverment were listening.

Ok, nice, This is my first blog. Welcome to the Substation23 blog. What I want to do is write down any thoughts or anything I have seen that I think should be mentioned. I suppose I better mention I will probably write the word NICE down a lot as I apparently say it quite a lot. People say that nice actually doesn't really say anything, and it is a bit of a non descript positive feedback, BUT THATS WHY I LIKE IT!!!! Another thing, unfortunately I am an Aston Villa fan so I am bound to whinge on and on and on about them, but as I love them I am allowed to.