Google, the Japan earthquake and the tsunami

Congratulations Google !
I have Google as my Home Page and this morning, as usual, I started up the internet and clicked on the first shortcut to start doing what I was going to do.
Double-Take !
As the login screen for my farms appeared I thought to myself, “Did I just see that ?”. A quick click on the Back button confirmed that I had…

My eye had caught the wording in red… “Tsunami Alert”.
I am not in the habit of putting the radio or TV on in the morning so if I were in a remote area likely to be affected by the tsunami I would have had no warning.
I would also have had no warning if my home page were, for example, Altavista or Ask.
If I have one, slight criticism it would be that the words “Tsumani Alert” should be in large letters so that the message is as wide as the text input box, but that’s just being picky.
This is good, responsible use of the internet and Google are to be commended.
Our thoughts and prayers are with all those affected by the earthquake and the tsunami today.

My “Picture of the Year” – already

ISS passing across face of sun during partial solar eclipse

APOD, (Astronomy Picture of the Day), is one of my few daily rituals.

A lifelong interest in things astronomical is kept fed by my daily visits, and some of the pictures are truly amazing.

Today’s warrants special mention because of the planning that went into it, the timing involved (it would have been so easy to miss the opportunity at the last moment), and because of a little bit of artistic luck.

Having planned the taking of the picture so carefully, in the final analysis Thierry Legault was incredibly lucky that the International Space Station is almost perfectly balanced on the picture by the sunspot at the bottom right.

As the ISS took less than a second to pass across the face of the sun Thierry’s efforts deserve such good fortune.

See here for the full size picture and more information.

Blackberrying on the Fife Coastal Path

It’s been a while since I went blackberrying, but Amanda remembered from one of her earlier visits that the coastal path at the top of the village would be worth a visit at this time of year.  Clever girl ! 🙂 There’s nothing like fresh blackberries or a glass of fresh blackberry juice, especially when you’ve done all the hard work yourself.	Amanda blackberrying
Our blackberries

Butterflies and other creatures at Detian Falls

Detian Falls - China/Vietnam Border

One of my little habits when I’m out travelling and I have a camera on me is trying to get some decent shots of the varying wildlife, usually without success.

On Monday we went to Detian Falls on the China/Vietnam border, a trip I had been wanting to do ever since my first visit to China.

There are hundreds of photos that we took that day, some of which I’ll put up in a later post or two, but just for once I managed to get some semi-decent photos of butterflies and dragonfly-like things.

Most of these are cropped from the originals. I have no idea yet what particular species each of them are, I just enjoy taking the snaps.

Click on any of the pictures to see it in a new tab/window.

Photography is like fishing… you should have seen the one(s) that got away !

Sweetie – the marathon running hamster

Sweetie, the Marathon Running Hamster, has helped to raise over £5,000 for Fife Headway. Find out how by visiting her blog !

This blog is getting a hamster infestation

I’m getting a lot of hits on here from people asking questions on search engines such as “how far do hamsters run”, so I thought I’d whap that into google myself and see what happened….

There’s a reference to this blog at position seven out of 641,000.

“Ask” … position five of 91,900 (excluding sponsored links), “Altavista”… eight of 4,510,000.

Fame at last…. Thank you people !!!! 🙂

Close by was a link to this, which had me in stitches…
(although you might want to turn the volume DOWN before you hit “play”)

In 20 years we still haven’t learned our place

A few days ago I joined in a conversation on a Yahoo news item relating to the creation of “Synthia” in a lab by scientist Craig Ventner and his team; you know the story.

I keep telling myself not to comment on Yahoo, for two reasons. Firstly there are so many childish, inane comments posted on (what are occasionally) serious news articles. Secondly, I always seem to end up being attacked by an extreme right-winger (or several) because I have taken a particular moral or ethical stance espousing “thought for others”, while they slam their “gimme, gimme, gimme… the devil take the hindmost… I’m an American… I’m the boss… go screw yourself !” vitriole at all and sundry.

This day was no exception.

Sponsor a long-distance hamster for charity

Sweetie

You can have some fun following the exploits of Amanda’s hamster, Sweetie, and sponsor her on her nightly marathons to help raise funds for Fife Headway. Guess how far she can run in one day ! To read Sweetie’s full story, click here. Update: Sweetie now has her own blog !

The world’s smallest marathon runner – a hamster update

Well Sweetie is quite a surprise !

Her wheel has a “trip meter” on it so that we can see how far she runs, and the results are really surprising us.
Amanda’s previous hamsters, Mr & Mrs, were different breeds to Sweetie. In terms of mass, Mr was about three times her size, and Mrs was huge, about five times as big… the biggest hamster I have ever seen.
Sweetie is minute… but she has just set her own new record on the wheel for a 24 hour period….
Over 9.8 kilometers.. or just over 6 miles for those traditionalists among us !
Incredible that such a small creature can cover such a distance.
Scale that up into human terms and I can’t even begin to imagine what sort of distance that would mean.
How does she do it ?

Update: 3rd May
At 9pm last night the meter showed zero.
At 6:30am another new record ! … 10.06Km (or 6.25 Miles)
So if she were running constantly for all that time (which she wasn’t) it would have been at over 1Km an hour.

Say “Hello Sweetie”

This is Sweetie, Amanda and Lily’s new little hamster… and I do mean little.
Unfortunately Mr. and Mrs. were too much for Amanda to cope with; their personalities (and their size) just didn’t suit her so, unfortunately, back to the shop they went.
Sweetie is much more like the hamsters that Amanda and Lily have had before, so I’m sure that she’ll have a happy little life.
But she is so small !
Amanda is away in Hunan for a few days on one of her “Office Outings”, so it will be interesting when she gets back to find out how well Sweetie has settled in, whether she has discovered her wheel and, if so, how far she has run.
Lovely little Sweetie.
(There you are, Phuong. I said there was a post for you. I think Lily chose the name for her.)