Two of my favourite science communicators having a chat. Really good interview, this - much more like a conversation than a set of questions and answers.

I have loads of GPS bike computers and watches. I'm not proud of it, it's just a consequence of having a keen interest in retail therapy, and in gadgets.

Generally speaking I prefer a handlebar-mounted bike computer to track my ride. I just find it easier to glance down to see how many miles I've done. More on those later in the thread.

But my favourite GPS device is the Solar Garmin Instinct watch. It will track for about 40 hours (I did my 200 miler with one and it only used about half the juice). It's light, it's easy to transfer a track to Strava, it has a highly legible display and it's stylish and non-clunky enough to be used as a regular wristwatch.

https://www.garmin.com/en-GB/p/679335/pn/010-02293-09

I'm not a fan of prequels on the whole but this looks like it has so much more of the spirit of Star Trek than Discovery, which I disliked quite a bit.

I'm DJ-ing in a lesbian biker bar in Second Life until midnight UK time - some rock music, but funk and soul as well, and some fusion probably.

You should be able to listen in here if interested:

http://www.jamesgibbon.com/radio/

Very good introduction / overview here:

OS update and snapshot done now.

Some members may remember the old 'Basement' section in TNMS, where adult topics were discussed. Well - we have a similar-themed 'NSFW' board here at BTW now. It's not visible to guests or the membership in general and at the moment it's completely empty, but ping me a message (or reply here if you prefer) and I'll add you to the group that has access.

Thanks!

To be honest I don't really feel guilty about any music that I like, but I do like some tunes that might be considered embarrassing by some.

Here's a belter - a perfect pop tune that's actually very harmonically interesting. The winner of the 1975 Eurovision Song Contest, and the best Eurovision tune ever by far. Even Waterloo can't touch it.


If you've watched the video all the way through and you haven't got a crush on Getty Kaspers, there's something wrong with you. I do include any female readers in that assessment.

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/motorist-fine-cyclists-highway-code-b2064744.html?amp

This has caused a bit of controversy on Internet discussion fora elsewhere. I think it's fair, judging by the video.

I can get annoyed by cyclists when I'm driving sometimes so I have a foot in both camps but this is bang to rights.

Elon Musk has agreed a deal ($44 billion!) to buy Twitter. I'm an occasional user myself and will be interested to see what he's going to do with it. It's not really in his personality to just leave it alone; he will change the platform in some way or other.

Twitter is a pretty simple idea really, I wish I'd thought of it myself. $44 billion. It wasn't that long ago that it wasn't even making a profit.

With the excitement surrounding the 40th anniversary release, I thought it might be apt to discuss Moving Pictures next.

Surely one of the strongest of all their albums and deservedly considered a classic album, not merely in the context of the Rush canon but in all of rock music. But is it their best effort? I don't think so, though I can well understand the appeal. It hits a sort of sweet spot between accessibility and excellence and it's very accomplished.

Anyway - will post more thoughts later when I have time, probably.

https://home.cern/news/news/accelerators/large-hadron-collider-restarts


https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-61149387

Deep underground amidst the Alps, scientists are barely able to contain their excitement.

They whisper about discoveries that would radically alter our understanding of the Universe.

"I've been hunting for the fifth force for as long as I've been a particle physicist," says Dr Sam Harper. "Maybe this is the year".

For the past 20 years, Sam has been trying to find evidence of a fifth force of nature, with gravity, electromagnetism and two nuclear forces being the four that physicists already know about.

He's pinning his hopes on a major revamp of the Large Hadron Collider. It's the world's most advanced particle accelerator - a vast machine that smashes atoms together to break them apart and discover what is inside them.

It's been souped up even further in a three-year upgrade. Its instruments are more sensitive, allowing researchers to study the collision of particles from the inside of atoms in higher definition; its software has been enhanced so that it is able to take data at a rate of 30 million times each second; and its beams are narrower, which greatly increases the number of collisions.

I'm usually a bit sniffy about ITV dramas but since this one is set in my home town, I didn't resist. In 2002, a man named John Darwin perpetrated a life insurance fraud by faking his own death in an apparent canoeing accident off the coast of Seaton Carew, Hartlepool. This has been dramatised as The Thief, His Wife and the Canoe and the first episode was shown tonight.

It's actually very good. Eddie Marsan portrays Darwin as the wilful, irrational and obsessive man that he no doubt is. But the burden of the stress and shame and deceit that his poor wife has to bear after he disappears is the focus of the piece, nicely brought out in an understated performance by Monica Dolan. It's not overwrought or melodramatic; it comes across as a sense of an invasive, melancholy pressure.

Nonetheless there's a strand of dark humour running through the telling of the story. It's well directed and photographed and has a nice cinematic quality.

A couple of nitpicks - the characters all sound like they're from Newcastle rather than Hartlepool and that's most apparent in the pronunciation of words like "apart" for example. But most viewers won't be bothered.

Most of the "Seaton Carew" scenes, including Darwin leaving his house to enter the water with his canoe, are actually filmed at the Headland which is four miles round the other side of the bay, and looks very little like Seaton Carew. There's a nice scene of Darwin sitting at Seaton bus station though, while the police search his house.

Not fond of the ITV practice of showing drama instalments on consecutive nights, but I'll definitely catch the next one.

On the 17th of April 1970, the crew of Apollo 13 splashed down in the South Pacific. It was not known whether the Command Module had escaped damage in the incident which caused their mission to land on the Moon to be abandoned and until the final minutes of the mission, we didn't know whether they would survive re-entry.

Huge credit to the person directing the live coverage from the BBC studio. The tension is palpable and it's captured beautifully here. I remember watching this as a kid, very nervously.

Hi all - would be grateful if you'd keep contentious political comment out of the General Discussion (and other) sections, apologies if it wasn't clear that this was the whole point of setting up the Politics board in the first place. Thanks! Everyone's views are welcome but I feel it's better to keep the more contentious discourse separate.

As you may have noticed, since we have three music-themed boards now, I created a new category, 'Music'. Unfortunately I failed to set the permissions on the Rush and Music (now 'Other Music') boards that I moved into it, which rendered them invisible. Fixed now, apologies.

I've been a Vodka Martini man for many years, but at the moment if I go to a cocktail place I'll usually have a Margarita or an Old Fashioned.

At San Giovanni, which is conveniently on one of my cycling routes, they somehow brand the name of the establishment into the orange peel. It was just about warm enough to drink outside yesterday so I took a pic.

The redoubtable 3rd Gen Echo Dot is presently available for £21.99 from Amazon, at least for Prime members.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Echo-Dot-3rd-Gen-Charcoal/dp/B07PJV3JPR/

The 4th Gen Dot is available for £24.99 which is also a good price of course, although I have both and have never noticed a difference in audio quality or functionality.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B084DWCZXZ/

But both are a big improvement over the 2nd Gen Dot, if you have one of those and are thinking of upgrading.

Some interesting insights about the Envy of None album, and about his guitars.