PowerShot G9: First Proper Outing

Last Saturday I took the PowerShot G9 out for its first "proper" outing. We were going shopping in Stamford so it seemed like the perfect chance to try shooting out on the streets.

I'm quite pleased with the results.

As I said previously, being small and fast to start up it's perfect for having close to hand (or, in this case, hanging around my neck) for when you see a shot that's worth grabbing. More than once I found myself faced with a shot I just "had" to "have" and the G9 was there and ready without any messing about. If I'd had the EOS 400D with me instead I'd have probably missed the shots (because, given that it's big and bulky in comparison, I tend to keep it in its case when I'm not actually taking a picture).

PowerShot G9: First impressions

As I mentioned late last week, I've acquired a Canon PowerShot G9.

Ever since I got my Canon EOS 400D, and started getting addicted to photography, I've been wanting a compact camera that I could take anywhere (sometimes a dSLR is just too bulky). I also wanted one that had a good range of control (full manual mode right through to an auto-everything "I don't want to have to think" mode), felt solid and, as daft as it sounds, looked good. The G9 seems to fit all of these (the fact that it does raw files too is a bonus).

I won't even bother trying to do anything close to a review, there are plenty of those about, some of them going into great detail. I did, however, want to note my first impressions of it.

I went for a walk around our village last Sunday and took only the G9. The results can be seen over here. I found that the camera handled pretty well. The screen was easy to use in all conditions (shade and direct sunlight), the camera itself felt right in my hands, the buttons and dials are a bit on the small side for my fingers but not impossible to use (and it probably wouldn't be that good a compact camera if it wasn't very compact, right?), program-auto mode seems to cope fairly well with most situations and manual mode is a joy to use (I don't think I'd ever really thought about just how useful a live histogram would be).

Being small it's also very easy to keep to hand and the time from pressing the power button to being in a position to take a shot (assuming I've left it in program-auto) is short enough that it wouldn't be an issue in most cases.

Simply put: so far I'm very happy with it. I feel that it pretty much perfectly fits the requirement I had. It'll be nice to be able to take a camera almost everywhere with me now.

Lust! Redux.

I wanted a Canon PowerShot G9.

Now I've got one.

Insert smiley face here.

First Roll from the Lomo Lubitel 166B

Yesterday I received the results of the first roll put through my Lomo Lubitel 166B (thanks to Tim for processing and scanning the roll) and I'm very pleased with what I see.

Given that the first roll was a bit of a rush job, done to simply test that the camera actually worked and didn't leak light like crazy and so on, I think most of the images have come out really well. There's a couple of them that really stand out for me and both of them were tests of relatively narrow depth of field:

If I can get these sorts of results from a quick test shoot, done close to sunset (so in failing light), without a tripod or cable release, and with no real "plan" for the shoot, I'm rather looking forward to what I can get out of it with an actual "plan".

I'm also thinking that at least one of the above images would look good as a mounted print:

New Toy: Lomo Lubitel 166B

Last Monday I took delivery of my new toy, a Lomo Lubitel 166B:

It's all Tim's fault. A few weeks back he persuaded me to run some film through my Bilora Bella 66 and, after ordering the film and then having a look around at other medium format cameras, and seeing that the 166 is often suggested as a fun entry to medium format photography (not to mention the fact that Tim used to shoot with a Lubitel too), I couldn't resist getting hold of one.

Loss of eBay virginity happened (yes, I really have managed to avoid eBay all these years) and I finally had my new toy:



The test shoot from the Bilora Bella 66 turned out okay too. Thanks go to Tim for processing and scanning the film.

Featured!

Yay! I had this image (taken at Belton House) featured on RedBubble:

Which was nice. :-)

Going RedBubble

I've been using RedBubble for a couple of weeks now and, so far, I'm still impressed. It has some rough edges, I can see some technical problems with the way it works, not nothing terrible and nothing I don't expect to be ironed out at some point in the near future.

More importantly, as a tool for allowing people to acquire prints of some of my photographs, it's already streets ahead of Photobox (who I've been using since the start of the year). Not only does the site look nicer, and not only does it work in a far more sensible way when it comes to presenting images, it's undergoing constant development whereas the "pro album" side of Photobox seems to have become stagnant.

Because of this I've switched the "print available" system on my site to point to the images over on RedBubble. I'm also linking to it from my Lincolnshire photography site and the main source of prints should anybody want one.

RedBubble

The other day a friend created herself an account on RedBubble and then pointed me at it. After a little bit of arm-twisting I created one too.

So far I'm generally impressed. As I thought it would be it's kind of like Flickr but with the added extra of providing facilities for selling cards, prints and t-shirts. For me it's a little like having PhotoBox meet Flickr and cover the UK, OZ and the US while doing so.

Lust!

I want a Canon PowerShot G9.

That's it. I want one.

What I Like

Yesterday I went through all the images in my Flickr account and had a proper look at them in terms of what I like. Flickr is handy for getting to know what other people find interesting from your images (and also which appear interesting amongst everything on Flickr) but deciding what I like from my own work is a totally different matter.

It's over six months now since I got my Canon EOS 400D and I've shot a lot of photographs (I'm not far off having 1,000 400D images online). Many of them are just "snapshots", records of where I've been and what I've done, but some are attempts at creating a photograph just for the sake of creating a photograph. I think I can see improvement. I think I'm slowly getting the hang of using the camera. I think, so far, I'm generally happy with what I've produced.

RAF Waddington Airshow

Last Saturday was the 2007 RAF Waddington airshow. As usual (well, as usual since I moved to Lincolnshire) I went along.

This year was probably the worst year so far due to the awful weather. While there was the odd clear spell it was mostly drizzle with occasional downpours (although nowhere near as bad as I'd been expecting given the forecasts I'd seen).

Annoyingly, because of this, I didn't get to do anywhere near as much photography as I'd have liked. However, I did manage to take some photos.

That said, it could have been worse. Sunday was the better day for the weather but over-night flooding is said to have caused them to cancel the second day.

Experimental Slideshow

More out of curiosity than anything else I've added a new feature to the photography section of my website: a slideshow facility.

It's nothing special, and I wrote it more to get to grips with the code involved than anything else. Note also that the current version doesn't work with Microsoft Internet Explorer due to it missing a facility that latest versions of the other popular browsers have.

It's a little rough around the edges. Doubtless it won't work for everyone and in all setups (and if you have a look and it doesn't work for you I'd be interested to know about it), but it was an amusing way of getting to know a few things about taking a JavaScript/AJAX approach to solving a problem.

Lincolnshire Photography

It's that time again. That time when you've got a domain or two to renew so, while you're on the site, renewing them, you start to play around with other domain names to see what's available.

And, yesterday, I did just that.

I actually even found one that sort of coincided with an idea I've been toying with for a while now, so I registered it and, last night, got things going.

So, to go along with my other photography-related sites: Lincolnshire Photography — a site dedicated to hosting photographs I've taken around Lincolnshire.

It's in the early stages at the moment, I've still got to get a lot of content on it.

More BBC Britain in Pictures

Over the weekend I submitted a few more images to the BBC Britain in Pictures group on Flickr:

Click on image for bigger version








Click on image for bigger version

BBC Britain in Pictures

It seems that the BBC are making use of Flickr in support of their How We Built Britain series. They've recently created a group that you can submit photographs to that feed their Britain in Pictures project.

Thinking that it looked like a fun thing, and thinking that they were using a sensible license policy for the submitted photographs, I've decided to take part.

So far I've added five photographs to the queue and they've all made it onto the BBC site:

Click on images for larger versions

5x5

During a discussion over on Debate Unlimited I was reminded of a little puzzle I used to use as a test problem when getting to know a new development tool or environment. The puzzle is called 5x5.

Many years ago I wrote a version in Clipper (often including it in systems as an easter egg). I also seem to recall writing a version the first (and last) time I had a play with Visual Basic. I've also done versions for the Palm Pilot and for GNU emacs.

Prompted by this, and as a little lunchtime break, I quickly knocked up a web-based version. So, here it is, 5x5 in XHTML and JavaScript. You'll find details on how to play it on that page.

Geeking out with Exif

So I've got a good number of photographs on my website now. And all those photographs have Exif data associated with them. It's all very well showing the data with a photograph, but doesn't it just cry out for having something a little more geeky done with it?

Well, one ruby script later and I've now got a page of pointless data about my photographs.

No, I don't know what it actually tells me either.

Worship God -- It's a good thing

Some time ago I signed this e-petition. While I didn't necessarily agree with all of the wording I did and still do agree with the main thrust of it (we should not be forcing the practice of a specific religion in our schools).

Today I've had an email pointing to the government's response to the petition.

The Government remains committed to the provision of collective worship in schools and recognises its valuable contribution to the spiritual and moral development of pupils.

That's nice. How about giving some idea of how it aids children's "moral development"? And, more to the point, what is this business of "spiritual development"? Shouldn't "moral development" be in some sort of philosophy class?

This is a view which is shared by many parents who still expect their children to understand the meaning of worship whether they hold a faith or not.

Why the need to practice a specific form of worship so as to understand the general idea of worship? Why the need to perform a specific instance of something to understand the class of something?

We believe that it is important that collective worship should provide the opportunity for pupils to worship God as well as to consider spiritual and moral issues and to explore their own beliefs.

(Emphasis is mine). Note that pupils should have the opportunity to worship God? Note that there's no place for deciding what god, or gods? Note that there appears to be no place to consider the idea of there being a god that cares about being worshipped or even wants to be worshipped?

Collective worship can play a valuable role in developing community spirit, promoting a common ethos and shared values.

And the worship of God has what to do with "developing community spirit", promoting a "common ethos" and "shared values"? Aren't shared values where sets overlap?

The Government believes there is sufficient flexibility in the law to allow both Christian and other forms of worship.

Way to avoid the point of the petition!

The Government respects the right of parents to raise their children in accordance with their own faith and this is why parents have the right to withdraw their children from collective worship.

Note how they talk about "faith" but don't mention anything about no-faith? Note also that, despite talking about "common ethos" and "shared values" and "developing community spirit", they're really promoting a "follow this or bugger off" approach?

From September 2007, pupils in school sixth forms will also be able to withdraw themselves from collective worship. The Government believes that for younger pupils, it is appropriate and practical for parents to decide on whether to withdraw. The Government believes this strikes the right balance between the requirements of the law and accommodating the wishes of parents.

In other words, we're going to do everything we can to promote faith and, generally, a particular kind of faith, in a way that's very similar to spamming. It's an opt-out list.

Random Photography

After adding the random observing log viewer to my astronomy site last week I got to thinking that a similar approach might be fun for my photographs.

So, for no other reason that it could be done: View a random photograph.

Growing up in the Universe

Excellent! Finally! Richard Dawkins' 1991 Royal Institution Christmas Lecture will soon be made available on DVD:

Moo!

Not too long back I decided to create a Flickr account, partly out of curiosity and also partly out of a desire to have somewhere to dump pictures that I didn't want to place in the photography section of my site.

Then, just over a week ago, I noticed an advert for Moo. Given that a pack of 100 cards would cost next to nothing I thought I'd give it a go. If nothing else it seemed to make sense to have some cards with contact details in the camera bag on the off chance that you needed to supply someone with those details.

The cards turned up today (just over a week after placing the order — Moo aren't terribly fast) and I'm pretty pleased with them. They're small, clean, simple and come in a handy little plastic box. I'd have said that the images have turned out a little on the dark side but not so much that they're unattractive.

My only real complaint is that Moo is one of those companies/services that tries really hard to be "cute". They interact with you like they're your best mate (the package even included a little delivery card that says "Yay! You're our new best friend" – Ugh!). Like they're amazingly cool. Like using them is the best fun you can have. They're not. They aren't. It isn't. But the product itself is cheap, cheerful, self-designed and pretty handy.

22/7 - ish

Happy Pi day.

IPU vs FSM

IUP vs FSM. Time to choose a side!

Road wash

I thought blessing grit was about as odd as road related things could get but it looks like I was wrong.

Yesterday a special police convoy carrying Maori elders sprayed 10,000 litres of Waikato River water on SH1 and SH2 in a bid to free the spirits of crash victims.

Which has me wondering how they were trapped (or, indeed, what evidence there is for there been "spirits" in the first place).

Dick Waihi, iwi liaison officer for the Counties-Manukau police district, today said the operation had been successful.

I wonder how you measure how many spirits were released?

Photographs by date

I've extended my photography section of my site a little more to include a couple of ways of getting at the photographs by date. The first is a simple calendar approach — click on a date and you get the thumbnails of all the images taken on that date.

The second addition is timeline of my photographs:

This is done with the Timeline library.

Photography challenge: Exit

After a reasonable result with my first DPC entry I decided that I'd have another go. This time around I decided that I'd enter either the Entrance or Exit challenges.

Problem was, I was stuck for something to shoot for either challenge. Anything I could think of either seemed horribly obvious. But, during a walk around the village I live in, I remembered a sign on (what appears to be nothing more than) a fence that had always amused me. It looks like nothing more than a corrugated iron fence but it has the words "Please Keep Gate Clear" painted on it and the area around it is overgrown (suggesting that it probably was used as a gate at some point).

I had my camera with me so I shot it. I rushed it though. The light wasn't that good so I ended up using a pretty slow shutter speed and, given that I was just hand-holding the camera (while shivering in the cold), the whole thing ended up coming out a little too soft.

I ended up with a score of 5.0095/10, placing me 92 out of 138. Worse than my last entry but, as far as I'm concerned, better placed than I expected (or deserved).

My first photography challenge

A couple of weeks ago, on a whim, I decided to enter a challenge over at DPChallenge. The challenge was to pick a song title from this list and create a photograph based on it (note, on the title, not the meaning or the lyrics of the song).

While looking through the list I saw the title Do Not Forget About Us and this image came to mind. I'd photographed that a few days earlier. The rules of a challenge are that you have to shoot the image between 2 specific dates so I waited for the right conditions and went back and shot it.

Voting has now finished for the challenge and my final score was 5.5599 (out of 10). That put me 102^nd out of 215. I'm pretty happy with that. Okay, it's "middle of the road", it's "average photograph", but at least it isn't down near the bottom, at least it doesn't say "you're awful".

I can see this getting to be quite addictive.

Tags and previews

During the last couple of evenings I've done a little more work on the photography section of my site.

The first thing I added was a simple tag cloud for all the photographs. I've filtered out some obvious tags (things like "England" and county names) because they dominated the cloud.

At some point in the future I'll probably do some more work on the tagging system, probably adding the ability to combine tags.

The other thing I've added, which is more of an experiment than anything else, is a simple JavaScript album preview facility using some balloon tooltip code. Now, when viewing the list of available albums, you can hover the mouse cursor over the album link and see a preview of one of the images it contains.

Google Earth

Not to be outdone by Tim, I've added a Google Earth feed for my photographs.

Same issues apply here as apply to Tim's feed: it's still "in development" so anything could change at any time.

Irish Blood, English Heart, Euro Vision

Okay, okay, I know, the Eurovision song contest is crummy, I can't remember the last time I even watched it. However, Rich Daley (who is obviously a raving Eurovision fan <g>) just alerted me to this article on the BBC website.

Morrissey? Doing Eurovision? That would get me watching!

Fear the Pears! Save the Children!

I know it's not nice to laugh at typos, we all make them from time to time (sod's law says I'll make one in this post), but I couldn't help having a giggle at this one:

This puts undue pressure on children to follow pears

found in this petition over at petitions.pm.gov.uk.

Panoramio

Yesterday evening Tim Haynes pointed me in the direction of Panoramio. It's a site that lets you host photographs (nothing new there), tag them (nothing new there either), link them to locations on Earth (again, nothing new there) and view them via a Google Map or via Google Earth (that might not be new but it's a new one on me).

I've never been that interested in the various photograph-hosting sites that are available but there was something about Panoramio that caught my attention. While it does appear to have the odd quirk or two (not to mention the odd bug or two from what I can see, not that any of them are serious issues) the whole thing seems to work really well.

So, while it won't be a replacement to my photograph gallery, I've created an account and have uploaded and located a random selection of images.

The smell of snow

I was born in, and grew up in, York. Somewhere north(ish) of where I lived in York is the British Sugar factory which processes sugar beet. Because of this I always associate the smell of beet being processed with the coming of snow. Even now, even though I don't live in York any more, when it "feels" like it's going to snow I'm certain I can smell beet being processed.

Today, while having a look around DPChallenge, I stumbled on this fantastic long exposure image of the beet factory.

Right now I can smell beet being processed, which makes me feel like it's going to snow.

A New Toy

Christmas brought me a new toy, a Canon EOS 400D. Which is kind of a problem...

I've always enjoyed photography. When I was in my teens I got myself a Zenith SLR and had great fun with it (even if most of the images I took were pretty awful). I also used it for a fair bit of astrophotography (although, annoyingly, between various house moves over the years I seem to have lost all of those slides). A few years back I also acquired a Canon A-1, which has had a fair bit of use, although mostly for family photography.

The thing that tended to put me off doing much beyond taking snapshots is the lack of immediacy and also the lack of a good scanner (thus allowing the posting of images to a website).

Last year I purchased an Olympus FE-115 compact digital camera. The main reason was to have a digital camera for a short holiday in Whitby and Teesdale. I found the immediacy of the format very addictive and started trying to take photographs other than the usual family snapshots. Soon enough I was hooked on the idea of photography again and found myself wishing I had a dSLR.

So, what's the problem? Up until now I've been able to blame the equipment for any problems in any of the photographs I've tried to take, it's easy to say "oh well, it's a compact digital, it's never going to give good results". Now that I've got a dSLR I can't really get away with that excuse...

Still, it's going to be fun, learning photography all over again, getting used to a new way of doing things.

Dusty mixup

This advert seems to be all over the TV at the moment.

Is it really an accident that the "dustballs" have more than a passing resemblance to User Friendly's Dust Puppy?

Dawkins in geek slur shocker

Today's Independent has an amusing Q&A with Richard Dawkins, many of the questions, and answers, had me smiling.

But I've got to take issue with the following:

How did a science geek like you get such an attractive wife? GARY HAMMOND, London

I suggest you go to salon.com, type "The Sexiest Man Living" in the search box and eat your words. But seriously (of course you knew there had to be a "but seriously"), science has an image problem with young people, and phrases like "science geek" don't help. Isn't it a bit like "kraut" or "dago"?

No, geek has an image problem, applying geek to a fan of all things science isn't the problem.

Idiotic vandalism

There's always some idiot who apparently gets enjoyment out of mindless vandalism:

This isn't a one-off either, it's a regular occurrence. Almost as soon as the bins are fished out of the pond and placed back in use they're back in the pond again. You'd think it would get boring after a while.

You can see more pictures of this idiotic vandalism in my photo album.

Holy Grit!

It's that crazy time of year again, when Lincolnshire blesses the grit.

"The gritting lorries are very visible on the county's roads, but their work is often taken for granted," said Dr Saxbee, who wrote the prayer for the ceremonies.

I wonder what he means exactly by "taken for granted"? Do I assume that it will be done? Yes, of course, I do, I pay the taxes required to make it happen and, big surprise, I expect the council to keep up their end of the bargain.

It is the fourth time the blessings have been held.

And, yet, road deaths in Lincolnshire this year are up on last year. Does he really think anyone is listening to him?

New look

I've moved all of my blogs over to the new Blogger beta system and, wanting to have a play with some of the new features, and not wanting currently to disturb my astronomy blog or my weather blog, I've decided to make this one the "test blog" for all the new stuff.

Hence the new template. Don't be surprised to see it change lots over the next week or so as I get to grips with what the new Blogger has to offer.

Far from home

Seen while waiting to be picked up from Grantham station:

Richard Dawkins Foundation Introduction

The introduction video for the Richard Dawkins Foundation for Science and Reason has made its way on to YouTube:

Torchwood

Finally, we're almost there: Torchwood starts this weekend.

Please, please, please... let it be good!

The God Delusion

On Saturday I managed to get hold of a copy of The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins. I'm only a couple of chapters in at the moment and so far it's a good read.

Because of the release of the book he was interviewed by Jeremy Paxman on Newsnight last Friday. I managed to miss it but, as usual, YouTube comes to the rescue:

Note that the interview is also currently available on the BBC website — I've been unable to watch it there today because the stream is very choppy.

Poisoning Pigeons in the Park

Poisoned pigeons fall from sky in Texarkana, via Dvorak Uncensored.

No, I don't have a comment, but it was the perfect excuse to dig out some Tom Lehrer:

Still space rocking

It's well over a month now and I'm still listening to Knights of Cydonia most days — I just can't stop myself.

As a song it's very derivative, kind of obvious, it has simplistic lyrics but, but, but..... it just works.

And it seems to play well live too:

Given the probable average age of their core following I'm probably in the "dad" bracket in relation to them but I'd still really love to see them live...

Why I love the internet

Back in the mid to late 1980s, during my late teens, I was a huge Japan fan. This, of course, involved collecting as much as their output as possible — not just the records but also trying to get hold if promo videos and stuff like that.

Anyone who knows the band will know that they had an early "glam rock" phase that, as the band evolved, they sort of ignored. Videos from that period tended to be quite hard to find, generally only available in some sort of "bootleg" form.

These days, thanks to the net, it's so much easier to find this sort of stuff:

The name's LaForge, Geordi LaForge

I'm not great fan of weblogs that post one quiz result after another (yeah, I know, most online quiz things are stupid but they're often fun too). Normally I wouldn't post one right after another but after seeing a post on the Bad Astronomy weblog I had to have a go at this:

---

You are Geordi LaForge

You work well with others and often fix problems quickly. Your romantic relationships are often bungled.


Click here to take the Star Trek Personality Test.

Geordi LaForge		60%
Will Riker		60%
Spock		59%
Deanna Troi		50%
Jean-Luc Picard		50%
Mr. Scott		45%
Beverly Crusher		45%
James T. Kirk (Captain)		45%
An Expendable Character (Redshirt)		45%
Worf		40%
Data		37%
Chekov		35%
Leonard McCoy (Bones)		30%
Uhura		20%
Mr. Sulu		10%

I'm an emaciated hipster drinking dreams and eating consciousness

Silly quiz time (via Tim): The Famous Leader Test — I took 18 questions and ended up as:

What Famous Leader Are You?
personality tests by similarminds.com

I think I got a better deal than Tim did. ;)

And, if you're wondering about the title of this post, it's a line from Sophisticated Beggar by Roy Harper. It was either that or the other obvious one (well, obvious to me).

Amps to 11, space rock with me!

This week, I'll mostly be listening to Knights of Cydonia by Muse.

Okay, I admit it, I love space rock and that track comes about as close as anyone "new" has come for a long time.

Amps up to 11, here we go again...

OMG! Clowns!

From The BBC:

The Bestival, which takes place on 8, 9 and 10 September near Newport, Isle of Wight, had asked festival-goers to turn up in curly wigs and large shoes.

But organisers decided to shelve the idea after a number of ticket holders said they suffered from Coulrophobia.

Sure, phobias can be terrible things but I can't help wondering what they're going to do when the agoraphobics start to complain... And, wait a moment, it's on the Isle of Wight — pity the poor aquaphobics too...

RAF Waddington Airshow

Had a pretty good day out at the RAF Waddington airshow last Saturday. The content and mix of the display wasn't quite up to the usual quality this year although there were still some outstanding displays (the Typhoon display was the most impressive I've seen yet).

And, of course, the Red Arrows were as amazing as ever. I never get tired of them. Drawing a heart in the sky should be naff but, somehow, when they do it, it isn't.

Top Tip of the Day

Top tip of the day: if you have a ball stuck in a tree, don't try and get it down by throwing a garden rake at it, you'll then have two things stuck in your tree:

I am not a Doctor...

Via The Reg:

Former Doctor Who Christopher Eccleston has been "linked" with the lead role in a remake of The Prisoner, the BBC reports.

I'm a quite a fan of The Prisoner and the idea of Christopher Eccleston playing Number 6 does hold some appeal — although the idea of Sky One doing the remake does give cause for concern.

The Euston Manifesto

The Euston Manifesto seems to be making quite a buzz today. I've had a very quick skim of the document and found much that I agree with and, at first glance, nothing I totally disagreed with. I think I'll be printing this one out and having a good read over the long weekend (it's a holiday weekend in the UK — some sort of pagan festival or other from what I can gather).

If nothing else item 14 caught my attention as it deals with Open Source. Okay, it's bound to annoy the hell out of RMS if he ever reads it but, hey, it's nice to see it get a mention.

Quote of the week

From an article in The Guardian:

Last night, the Royal Society gave a public platform to Steve Jones, the award-winning geneticist and author, to deliver a lecture entitled Why Creationism Is Wrong and Evolution Is Right. Professor Jones said that suggesting that creationism and evolution be given equal weight in education was "to me, rather like starting genetics lectures by discussing the theory that babies are brought by storks."

Daily Mail in Theory Cock-Up Shock

It shouldn't and, to be honest, doesn't surprise me to find out that the hacks over at the Daily Mail don't have the first clue about what a theory actually is when talking about science.

A story there today, Pupils 'confused by science lessons in creationism' gets it very wrong in the wording of a poll associated with the story:

Should creationism be taught as truth or theory?

• It should be truth
• It's all theory

I think that's got to be the most biased set of answers I've ever seen from a poll but, in this case, it would appear that it's more to do with ignorance on the part of the person setting it as opposed to it being down to a deliberate attempt to get the answer they want.

Is it any wonder that the readership of the paper then make comments such as

The fact is nobody knows anything because theories are just thoughts or ideas and nothing more...Monkeys are cute and will never be humans.

Evolution theories change every other week because they haven't a clue really. Remember the big bang?

I really do not see what the Royal Society are getting all steamed up about! They admit that Darwin's theroy is just that - a theory.

And so on, that's just a random sample. Thankfully there are a couple of comments made against that story that actually point out what "theory" actually means.

Further AGAST

It seems that AGAST is now fully up and running. This morning I found a leaflet on the doormat and it also seems that they've got a website up and running — the site contains much of the text that's in the leaflet but nothing else.

Sadly, so far, it seems that they're running the usual sort of FUD campaign that is common to many protest groups. This tends to be a case of preaching to the converted, it seldom seems to convince anyone else. Worse yet, it plays right into the hands of the opposition.

I think the thing that really reduces the usefulness and believability of the site (and the leaflet) is that some bold claims are made (literally, some of them are written in bold) but no source is given for the information. That's a real shame. I can understand space being short on the leaflet but there's no reason for failing to cite sources (and link to them where possible) on a website.

Take the claim that the plans are for "6 of the largest on shore turbines in Britain" for example. Okay, ignoring for a moment why that's actually an issue, where's the evidence, where will they actually be in the wind turbine height league for the Britain? I'd have an easier time believing this and putting it into some useful context if the details were actually given.

Another example: "It is reported that from as far as 2 miles the aerodynamic sound can be heard and felt like the boom boxes teenagers have in their cars". Sounds bad doesn't it? Even more so in Billingborough because there are plenty of those sorts of cars around so many people know what that's like. But, "it is reported" where and who reports this? Is this hearsay evidence, just an anecdote? How do I test the validity of this? Compare this with the BWEA's factsheet on wind turbine noise where they give plenty of values, place them in context and provide you with information as to who did the study so you can follow it up. While I wouldn't expect AGAST to do the same it would make the whole thing appear a little more believable if I know where it had been "reported".

I won't comment on the rest of the content as pretty much every item is presented as a fact with no backing whatsoever. I hope this was a design decision, I hope the intent was to get people thinking about the issues — sadly it doesn't look that way, it looks a little more like an attempt at FUD.

I'm not, by default, opposed to a wind farm on our doorstep; then again I'm not, by default, fully in favour of one either. I've been doing a fair bit of reading up, on and off, and so far I've failed to find very convincing arguments either way (although the balance is slightly in favour of the "pro-" rather than the "anti-" side but only because the "pro-" arguments tend to be more rational).

Get a Life!

I got an email the other day, I don't think I know the author of it. It read:

great site!!

but reckon you need to get out more, perhaps for a byte (?) to eat or something

That was it. If I knew the person it would make sense as a good-natured dig, but as an email that's totally out of the blue from a total stranger...

Leaving aside the obvious problems with the content, and leaving aside the fact that this person talks about my "site" without saying which site they're talking about (my main site, my astronomy site or my weather site?), what I find really odd is the false dichotomy that the email is based on.

It's something I've run into for most of my adult life, and for a large part of my teens too. As well as having the sorts of interests that most people have (eating, drinking, practicing procreation, socialising, shouting at the TV, etc...) I also have a whole bunch of "geeky" interests too. Astronomy and computers have been with me since I was a child, an interest in the weather is a pretty recent development and is still very much in its infancy. What is it about the "geeky" interests that makes people like the author of the email create that dichotomy that says "either you do normal things, or you do geeky things, but you can't do both?"

I've tried to get it a number of times but, mostly, I just can't get there. I can't understand what it is about some people such that when they see you have a passion about something they assume that's the total of you, that's all you do, that you have no life outside of that interest.

Just how insular do you have to be to think like that?

Thin end of the wedge

From this article on the BBC:

Creationist theories about how the world was made are to be debated in GCSE science lessons in mainstream secondary schools in England.

The subject has been included in a new syllabus for biology produced by the OCR exam board, due out in September.

It would appear that the thin end of the wedge is finally going to find itself in mainstream UK classrooms.

Although there are some sensible points raised in the article it's sad to see it start out with the phrase "creationist theories". I think the author of the article needs to go and learn what a theory is.

SciFi Crew Quiz

Saw the quiz over on Matt's blog and couldn't resist. Shame I've never seen this "Serenity" mob.

Serenity (Firefly) 81% Deep Space Nine (Star Trek) 75% Moya (Farscape) 69% Millennium Falcon (Star Wars) 69% SG-1 (Stargate) 56% Nebuchadnezzar (The Matrix) 56% Enterprise D (Star Trek) 56% Galactica (Battlestar: Galactica) 50% Babylon 5 (Babylon 5) 44% Andromeda Ascendant (Andromeda) 38% Bebop (Cowboy Bebop) 25% FBI's X-Files Division (The X-Files) 19% Your Ultimate Sci-Fi Profile II: which sci-fi crew would you best fit in? (pics) created with QuizFarm.com

AGAST

I just happened to read Tim's blog entry regarding wind turbines and then I notice this story over at the Grantham Journal. I went to see the exhibition given by Iberdrola a few weeks back (and actually got interviewed by someone from the Grantham Journal — the quotes that were published weren't a million miles away from what I said, thankfully) and have been waiting to see what happens regarding local opposition. Personally I've got no direct reason to oppose the turbines being built close to Billingborough but I'm more than happy to be convinced of any reasons why I should oppose them. I guess my greatest concern will be how such a development would affect the quality of life for those who live out on the fen itself — I have seen some worrying coverage from people who do have to live with them.

There's been no sign of the leaflet mentioned in the article — it'll be interesting to see what sorts of reasons they give for opposition of the proposed project. I do hope that the reasons given are sound and rational.

Doing the Selfish Time Warp

I got a very curious email from Amazon today:

Dear Amazon.co.uk Customer,

As someone who has purchased books by Richard Dawkins, you might like to know that "The Selfish Gene" will be released soon. You can pre-order your copy for just GBP 7.49 ( 50% off the RRP) by following the link below.

The Selfish Gene
by Richard Dawkins

Release Date:March 16, 2006

List Price: GBP 14.99 Our Price: GBP 7.49 You Save: GBP 7.50 (50%)

A URL was also included that pointed here.

I can't remember how long I've had my copy of TSG but the book itself was first published in 1976.

I guess it's supposed to be some sort of 30th anniversary edition or something but the wording of the email seems plain silly.