Well, new year is almost upon us, I have uploaded my new template, and have found one irritating issue with it, and that is everywhere I've written an apostrophie, it has been replaced with a euro sign. This is only for past posts, and any new posts this appears to be fine. I will slowly go back over my past posts, and amend the ' with a ' and republish them to fix the problem.
Happy New Year. and lets hope its a nice peaceful one !
Saturday, December 31, 2005
Saturday, December 24, 2005
New Template For A New Year.
Hi People.
Today I have been updating my blogs template. I found a nice one on Cazza's blog templates site, and so have been busy beavering away at including all my customised bits and pieces. I have now completed it all, and will be unveiling the new look on January 1st. New year, new me !
At this time of year, a lot of people look back over the past year, not me. I have had some good times and some not so good. So I am going to look forwards to 2006. In the coming year, I intend to try some new things, as I'm always up for a challenge. So in no particular order I will hopefully at some time in 2006 do the following:
1. Smoke a cigar - I don't smoke, and don't like other doing it (I did smoke for a little while when I was 15, but that was kids stuff).
2. Go ice skating, I have done this before, but always end up on my arse. I haven't been for over 10 years, and hopefully my belly will counter balance the weight of my arse.
3. Lose approximately 8lb (4Kg to those on European measures). I have no idea what I weight, so maybe it will need to be a little more.
4. Go nude on the beach in summer. Yes I did that this year, but we were the only people on the beach so it isn't the same.
Today I have been updating my blogs template. I found a nice one on Cazza's blog templates site, and so have been busy beavering away at including all my customised bits and pieces. I have now completed it all, and will be unveiling the new look on January 1st. New year, new me !
At this time of year, a lot of people look back over the past year, not me. I have had some good times and some not so good. So I am going to look forwards to 2006. In the coming year, I intend to try some new things, as I'm always up for a challenge. So in no particular order I will hopefully at some time in 2006 do the following:
1. Smoke a cigar - I don't smoke, and don't like other doing it (I did smoke for a little while when I was 15, but that was kids stuff).
2. Go ice skating, I have done this before, but always end up on my arse. I haven't been for over 10 years, and hopefully my belly will counter balance the weight of my arse.
3. Lose approximately 8lb (4Kg to those on European measures). I have no idea what I weight, so maybe it will need to be a little more.
4. Go nude on the beach in summer. Yes I did that this year, but we were the only people on the beach so it isn't the same.
Wednesday, December 21, 2005
Damn that Engineer - He's so funny !
Well last night, I read the engineers perspective to the wife. Its been about 6 years since I read it last. Well, bugger me, I was halfway through reading it when I started to get the giggles, and as you read the article you will see what I mean, the further you go, the more you laugh. By the time I was almost finished reading the story, I could hardly speak, I was laughing so much, I had tears rolling down my cheeks. One saving grace. I wasn't wearing any mascara.
Have a great festive time who and where-ever you are.
Have a great festive time who and where-ever you are.
Does Santa Clause Exist? - The Engineers Perspective
There are approximately two billion children (persons under 18) in the world. However, since Santa does not visit children of Muslim, Hindu, Jewish or Buddhist religions, this reduces the workload for Christmas night to 15% of the total, or 378 million (according to the Population Reference Bureau). At an average rate of 3.5 children per household, that comes to 108 million homes, assuming there is at least one good child in each.
Santa has about 31 hours of Christmas to work with, thanks to the different time zones and the rotation of the earth, assuming he travels east to west (which seems logical). This works out to 967.7 visits per second. This is to say that for each Christian household with a good child, Santa has around 1/1000th of a second to park the sleigh, hop out, jump down the chimney, fill the stockings, distribute the presents under the tree, eat whatever snacks have been left for him, get back up the chimney, jump into the sleigh and go to the next house. Assuming that each of these 108 million stops is evenly distributed around the earth (which, of course, we know to be false, but will accept for the purposes of our calculations), we are now talking about 0.78 miles per household; a total trip of 75.5 million miles, not counting bathroom stops or breaks. This means Santa's sleigh is moving at 650 miles per second or 3,000 times the speed of sound. For purposes of comparison, the fastest man-made vehicle, the Ulysses space probe, moves at a poky 27.4 miles per second, and a conventional reindeer can run (at best) 15 miles per hour.
The payload of the sleigh adds another interesting element. Assuming that each child gets nothing more than a medium sized Lego set (two pounds), the sleigh is carrying over 500 thousand tons, not counting Santa himself. On land, a conventional reindeer can pull no more than 300 pounds. Even granting that the 'flying' reindeer could pull ten times the normal amount, the job can't be done with eight or even nine of them. Santa would need 360,000 of them. This increases the payload, not counting the weight of the sleigh, another 54,000 tons, or roughly seven times the weight of the Queen Elizabeth II (the ship, not the monarch).
600,000 tons travelling at 650 miles per second creates enormous air resistance, this would heat up the reindeer in the same fashion as a spacecraft re-entering the earth's atmosphere. The lead pair of reindeer would absorb 14.3 quintillion joules of energy per second each. In short, they would burst into flames almost instantaneously, exposing the reindeer behind them and creating deafening sonic booms in their wake. The entire reindeer team would be vaporised within 4.26 thousandths of a second, or right about the time Santa reached the fifth house on his trip. Not that it matters, however, since Santa, as a result of accelerating from a dead stop to 650 mps in .001 seconds, would be subjected to centrifugal forces of 17,500 g's. A 250 pound Santa (which seems ludicrously slim) would be pinned to the back of the sleigh by 4,315,015 pounds of force, instantly crushing his bones and organs and reducing him to, well, a quivering blob of pink goo.
Therefore, if Santa did exist, he's dead now... or let's say he is suffering from one monstrous headache!
Santa has about 31 hours of Christmas to work with, thanks to the different time zones and the rotation of the earth, assuming he travels east to west (which seems logical). This works out to 967.7 visits per second. This is to say that for each Christian household with a good child, Santa has around 1/1000th of a second to park the sleigh, hop out, jump down the chimney, fill the stockings, distribute the presents under the tree, eat whatever snacks have been left for him, get back up the chimney, jump into the sleigh and go to the next house. Assuming that each of these 108 million stops is evenly distributed around the earth (which, of course, we know to be false, but will accept for the purposes of our calculations), we are now talking about 0.78 miles per household; a total trip of 75.5 million miles, not counting bathroom stops or breaks. This means Santa's sleigh is moving at 650 miles per second or 3,000 times the speed of sound. For purposes of comparison, the fastest man-made vehicle, the Ulysses space probe, moves at a poky 27.4 miles per second, and a conventional reindeer can run (at best) 15 miles per hour.
The payload of the sleigh adds another interesting element. Assuming that each child gets nothing more than a medium sized Lego set (two pounds), the sleigh is carrying over 500 thousand tons, not counting Santa himself. On land, a conventional reindeer can pull no more than 300 pounds. Even granting that the 'flying' reindeer could pull ten times the normal amount, the job can't be done with eight or even nine of them. Santa would need 360,000 of them. This increases the payload, not counting the weight of the sleigh, another 54,000 tons, or roughly seven times the weight of the Queen Elizabeth II (the ship, not the monarch).
600,000 tons travelling at 650 miles per second creates enormous air resistance, this would heat up the reindeer in the same fashion as a spacecraft re-entering the earth's atmosphere. The lead pair of reindeer would absorb 14.3 quintillion joules of energy per second each. In short, they would burst into flames almost instantaneously, exposing the reindeer behind them and creating deafening sonic booms in their wake. The entire reindeer team would be vaporised within 4.26 thousandths of a second, or right about the time Santa reached the fifth house on his trip. Not that it matters, however, since Santa, as a result of accelerating from a dead stop to 650 mps in .001 seconds, would be subjected to centrifugal forces of 17,500 g's. A 250 pound Santa (which seems ludicrously slim) would be pinned to the back of the sleigh by 4,315,015 pounds of force, instantly crushing his bones and organs and reducing him to, well, a quivering blob of pink goo.
Therefore, if Santa did exist, he's dead now... or let's say he is suffering from one monstrous headache!
Does Santa Clause Exist? - The Explaination
For those of you who like to continue to believe, I offer the following explanation as a rebuttal to the "Engineer's Perspective"
The secret is that he slows time down for the rest of us, so he can move about freely while most of us are virtually frozen in place. So he can make millions of trips to and from his warehouses to all the kids' homes. He can accomplish this through the use of a little known portion of the general theory of relativity having to do with the relative rotations of electrons at super-cooled temperatures (that's why he has to live at the North Pole, by the way). Santa's elves discovered long ago that when you vibrate super-cooled electrons using loud sounds at a very specific wavelength, they give off special quarks that interact with the neutrinos in the interstellar medium and the aurora borealis (this is, by the way, why Santa has to fly so high in the atmosphere). This causes time to dilate for everyone except Santa and his sleigh (including reindeer), to one billionth of the pace that it normally runs. As it turns out, the specific wavelength of sound that is needed corresponds precisely with the wavelength of the deep bass "HO,HO,HO" which Santa has perfected.
The details of how this works are beyond the scope of this presentation. The reindeer don't actually fly as we normally think of it. Because time is so slowed down around them, they are able to actually attach themselves to clumps of photons that they see moving slowly by. This is, by the way, why they needed Rudolph's bright nose in the classic story. It wasn't just to see; it was also because they needed the light to help them stay aloft. The time dilation factor is the reason why almost no one has actually seen Santa flying by in his sleigh. Clement Moore was able to write his classic poem "A Visit from St. Nick" when an unusual alignments of planets caused the energy from a distant quasar to be focused directly on the grounds surrounding his house in New York at the precise moment when Santa arrived that night back in the 18th century. The energy amplified the time dilation effect that surrounded the sleigh, and expanded it to include the house. For this reason, Moore was able to watch Santa in what he believed was real time. Incidentally, this time dilation effect means that Santa himself spends an incredible amount of his actual time delivering the presents on Christmas Eve. It's not unusual for him to spend years of his own lifetime every Christmas Eve delivering packages. All this effort (plus the energy he expends yelling "HO,HO,HO" every few seconds to maintain the effect) wears him out. Fortunately, Santa pauses every once in a while to rest while delivering presents, and since he spends some of his time with Mrs. Claus he is able to produce descendants. So, each year what you see is a different Santa - the son or grandson of the last year's Santa. That explains why, if you go back to the same department store year after year, Santa sometimes looks a little different (fatter, thinner, glasses, spots of dark hair behind his white beard, etc.) It's really a different Santa every year. In fact, this constant substitution of the new Santa for the old has inspired stories like the comic strip "The Phantom", or the TV show "Lassie,” where they used several generations of look alike dogs. Since I've learned these details, my real concern about Santa has to do with how he will cope in the future when mankind has developed interstellar travel at "relativistic" speeds. No one has ever positively determined whether the time dilation effect he has perfected is cancelled out by the effect of time travel at near light speeds, or whether it is compounded! Obviously, if compounded, he will have no problem travelling all over the galaxy on Christmas Eve (although, obviously, it will take several generations of Santa's to do just one Christmas). If, on the other hand, the effect is cancelled, then Santa would have to actually operate in "real time", which means Christmas would have to be cancelled. I've been working diligently on trying to solve this problem, which explains why I've made so little progress on solving the problems of global warming or world hunger. Anyway, at least for the near future, Santa Claus is definitely coming to town!
The secret is that he slows time down for the rest of us, so he can move about freely while most of us are virtually frozen in place. So he can make millions of trips to and from his warehouses to all the kids' homes. He can accomplish this through the use of a little known portion of the general theory of relativity having to do with the relative rotations of electrons at super-cooled temperatures (that's why he has to live at the North Pole, by the way). Santa's elves discovered long ago that when you vibrate super-cooled electrons using loud sounds at a very specific wavelength, they give off special quarks that interact with the neutrinos in the interstellar medium and the aurora borealis (this is, by the way, why Santa has to fly so high in the atmosphere). This causes time to dilate for everyone except Santa and his sleigh (including reindeer), to one billionth of the pace that it normally runs. As it turns out, the specific wavelength of sound that is needed corresponds precisely with the wavelength of the deep bass "HO,HO,HO" which Santa has perfected.
The details of how this works are beyond the scope of this presentation. The reindeer don't actually fly as we normally think of it. Because time is so slowed down around them, they are able to actually attach themselves to clumps of photons that they see moving slowly by. This is, by the way, why they needed Rudolph's bright nose in the classic story. It wasn't just to see; it was also because they needed the light to help them stay aloft. The time dilation factor is the reason why almost no one has actually seen Santa flying by in his sleigh. Clement Moore was able to write his classic poem "A Visit from St. Nick" when an unusual alignments of planets caused the energy from a distant quasar to be focused directly on the grounds surrounding his house in New York at the precise moment when Santa arrived that night back in the 18th century. The energy amplified the time dilation effect that surrounded the sleigh, and expanded it to include the house. For this reason, Moore was able to watch Santa in what he believed was real time. Incidentally, this time dilation effect means that Santa himself spends an incredible amount of his actual time delivering the presents on Christmas Eve. It's not unusual for him to spend years of his own lifetime every Christmas Eve delivering packages. All this effort (plus the energy he expends yelling "HO,HO,HO" every few seconds to maintain the effect) wears him out. Fortunately, Santa pauses every once in a while to rest while delivering presents, and since he spends some of his time with Mrs. Claus he is able to produce descendants. So, each year what you see is a different Santa - the son or grandson of the last year's Santa. That explains why, if you go back to the same department store year after year, Santa sometimes looks a little different (fatter, thinner, glasses, spots of dark hair behind his white beard, etc.) It's really a different Santa every year. In fact, this constant substitution of the new Santa for the old has inspired stories like the comic strip "The Phantom", or the TV show "Lassie,” where they used several generations of look alike dogs. Since I've learned these details, my real concern about Santa has to do with how he will cope in the future when mankind has developed interstellar travel at "relativistic" speeds. No one has ever positively determined whether the time dilation effect he has perfected is cancelled out by the effect of time travel at near light speeds, or whether it is compounded! Obviously, if compounded, he will have no problem travelling all over the galaxy on Christmas Eve (although, obviously, it will take several generations of Santa's to do just one Christmas). If, on the other hand, the effect is cancelled, then Santa would have to actually operate in "real time", which means Christmas would have to be cancelled. I've been working diligently on trying to solve this problem, which explains why I've made so little progress on solving the problems of global warming or world hunger. Anyway, at least for the near future, Santa Claus is definitely coming to town!
Monday, December 12, 2005
A Day In The Life Of ?
I took a trip abroad last week to see one of my customers The Blooper Troopers. They had recently completed an upgrade after a year testing out the new product. And since then we have released another version which they won't move to for some time yet. During my visit, they complained of so many things that I have spent all day today working on fixing these issues for them or seeing if these issue have been resolved in the NOW available release. Of 21 issues, I can't resolve 3, and two others appear to be genuine bugs, so that's not bad. Perhaps they should have waited for the NOW release, rather than being so hasty, hopefully I will finish my testing on Wednesday.
Also went out with 'She Who Must Be Obeyed' last night (Sunday). Linda works for the UK's largest supermarket, and we had her teams Christmas dinner at a hotel near where we live. We went by cab so I could have a drink or seven. Well knowing I would be meeting her insensitive boss and his female underling, Linda asked that I don't be too obviously fem, which I didn't have a problem with, but I did wear my diamante studded thong, and some very festive earrings of Santa. Oh yes, and I slipped on a little sparkly lippy for added effect. Well we had to start the night on the right footing, and had a very large Bacardi and coke before leaving home, then had another 2 in the bar, followed by a jug of some very unusual cocktail that tasted like pernod in an apple flavoured J2O. You got used to it after the first glass.
We had the meal which was pretty good all round, and played some general knowledge quizzes followed by a music quiz, and then some Karaoke, which I managed to avoid since being tone deaf, would not have been much fun for the other punters. Anyway, the boring old farts we had gone with, all left by 10:00, and yet most of them wouldn't be in work until late of not on shift Monday at all.... We stayed till 11:30, and got our cab home again, which was lucky really as my legs were starting to go, and my eyesight was shot to pieces.
Got up this morning, No hangover, just my tongue was stuck to the roof of my mouth, Yuk.
Oh yeah, did you hear the explosion in Hemel Hempstead Saturday morning, Allegedly it has was heard over 150 miles away. We only live about 35 miles from Hemel, and didn't hear a thing. The oil depot is still burning well today, and is expected to be burning for most of this week. They have closed the M1 motorway again this afternoon as they are expecting some more of the tanks to blow this evening.
Also went out with 'She Who Must Be Obeyed' last night (Sunday). Linda works for the UK's largest supermarket, and we had her teams Christmas dinner at a hotel near where we live. We went by cab so I could have a drink or seven. Well knowing I would be meeting her insensitive boss and his female underling, Linda asked that I don't be too obviously fem, which I didn't have a problem with, but I did wear my diamante studded thong, and some very festive earrings of Santa. Oh yes, and I slipped on a little sparkly lippy for added effect. Well we had to start the night on the right footing, and had a very large Bacardi and coke before leaving home, then had another 2 in the bar, followed by a jug of some very unusual cocktail that tasted like pernod in an apple flavoured J2O. You got used to it after the first glass.
We had the meal which was pretty good all round, and played some general knowledge quizzes followed by a music quiz, and then some Karaoke, which I managed to avoid since being tone deaf, would not have been much fun for the other punters. Anyway, the boring old farts we had gone with, all left by 10:00, and yet most of them wouldn't be in work until late of not on shift Monday at all.... We stayed till 11:30, and got our cab home again, which was lucky really as my legs were starting to go, and my eyesight was shot to pieces.
Got up this morning, No hangover, just my tongue was stuck to the roof of my mouth, Yuk.
Oh yeah, did you hear the explosion in Hemel Hempstead Saturday morning, Allegedly it has was heard over 150 miles away. We only live about 35 miles from Hemel, and didn't hear a thing. The oil depot is still burning well today, and is expected to be burning for most of this week. They have closed the M1 motorway again this afternoon as they are expecting some more of the tanks to blow this evening.
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