April 29, 2008 at 11:30 am · Filed under F1
The Spanish Grand Prix sounds more interesting than it actually was. It was certainly a race of attrition, giving some of the smaller teams a chance at some points; it was nice to see Mark Webber and Jensen Button finally get a bit of luck. The result was a runaway for Ferrari though, with only the safety cars stopping them sprinting off into the distance.
Kovy’s crash looked really nasty, I was convinced he had at least one broken leg, especially seeing the gaping hole in the front of his pod. It’s a testament to the safety of those cars these days that he came away with just a concussion. He went almost head first into a tyre wall at 140mph, burying the car 3 tyres deep (luckily it was a 4 deep wall otherwise he probably would’ve hit something more solid), and came out with a headache.
In other news, the Max Mosley sex scandal has gone from bad to horrible for Max now that his bestest friend Bernie has joined the chorus calling for his resignation. Only three teams refused to sign Bernie’s letter: Ferrari, Torro Rosso (aka Ferrari Junior) and Williams (Super Aguri didn’t sign either but they’re busy with their own problems).
If Max has any love for motorsport left he needs to realise he’s damaging the sport and walk away. We can all wail and gnash our teeth about the horrible invasion of privacy the man has suffered, but the damage is done. We know what we know, it’s not possible to un-know it. Every time someone talks face to face with Max they will either be smirking at him or looking faintly disgusted. He claims he will attend the Monaco Grand Prix, so I’m looking forward to some of the banners the fans will have on display for him.
April 21, 2008 at 10:36 am · Filed under Travel, Work
I’m back from California, and it looks like I missed the last snowfall of the year. I enjoyed sun and warmth in Anaheim and came back to a warm night in Montreal.
While in Anaheim I walked a lot, went on five rollercoasters at Knotts Berry Farm, walked some more, ate at IHOP twice and at the Rainforest Cafe once, perused lots of Disney merchandise, went to Target, oh and did a bit of work.
The presentation went well. We had about four hundred people in the audience. I got a couple of laughs and some good questions at the end, including people wanting to steal my code (if it were up to me I’d GPL it, but it’s not up to me).
April 11, 2008 at 11:54 am · Filed under Travel, Work
Tomorrow afternoon I’m catching a flight to Orange County, California for 5 days of sun and relaxation work. I’m attending the Sungard Higher Education Summit in Anaheim, where I will be taking part in a presentation in front of up to 1,000 people. Worried? Me? Nah, as the refreshment lady says, it’ll be a piece of cake (only parents with two year old Thomas fans will get that reference). Apart from that nerve-wracking hour, the rest of the time will be spent listening to other people talk about all things university computer system related.
Although I’ve been within spitting distance of the border, I’ve never actually entered California before (I don’t count sitting in LA airport for six hours) so that’s another state to cross of my list even though I doubt I’ll get to see much of it.
April 8, 2008 at 2:16 pm · Filed under Work
I have a new job!
No, I’m not leaving McGill… Today I accepted a new position at McGill as a web developer in the Web Services Group, the team who look after the content of mcgill.ca and are involved in other web initiatives around campus.
It’s a step in a new direction for me. The WSG use mostly open source tools, which I’ve been playing with personally since I first installed linux on an old computer several years ago but I haven’t been able to use in a work setting. I’m stepping away from Oracle, the proprietary RDBMS that I’ve been working with for 20 years, to embrace open source technologies like PHP, Python and PostgreSQL. It looks like there might even be a bit of WordPress thrown into the mix.
I’ve had six good years here on the Finance IT team but I’m really looking forward to something new.
March 29, 2008 at 11:11 am · Filed under Blogging
I was browsing plugins on wordpress.org when suddenly it all looked different. For a second I thought I’d ended up on a different site, but no, it looks like the new look and feel has been implemented to match the upcoming WordPress 2.5 release, which is now showing up on the download page.
It looks great, as do the 2.5 release candidates that I’ve been playing with for a few days. There are some big changes to the admin interface which are mostly good. This blog will be upgraded sometimes this weekend.
March 25, 2008 at 12:49 pm · Filed under Geeky
There are two robots currently on the surface of Mars under the guidance of scientists at NASA. They are both four years old, and have been doing a wonderful job of exploring the red planet and performing research for the scientists back on terra firma. They are both still fully functional and have plenty of “life” still in them.
Sadly, budget cuts means one of these Mars rovers, Spirit, is to be put to sleep and the other will have reduced duties. While the US government spends the amount required to keep this research alive for a year every week in Iraq, NASA are forced to reduce funding. It costs $20 million per year to keep the rovers running, a pitiful amount compared to US defense budgets, but the US government are too busy killing people to be interested in science (unless the science helps with the killing people).
The team are planning an appeal against the cuts; I hope somebody listens.
March 20, 2008 at 10:43 am · Filed under F1
If the 2008 F1 season continues the way it started, we’re in for an exciting few months. Only eight cars were officially classified after the Australian Grand Prix, and two of those didn’t actually finish the race. We don’t expect Melbourne to be a race of attrition but this one definitely was. I think it’s a sign of things to come, especially for the next few races and especially when the four race gearbox rule starts having an effect.
Kimi showed the kinks in his armour last weekend with two very silly errors. Has he become too reliant on the driver aids? Did he forget that he can’t come into corners that fast any more? Or was it just early season rustiness? Time will tell but I expect he’ll sort himself out in the next few races.
The safety car rules almost caught some drivers out this time. I think the rule about closing the pit lane needs to be changed somehow. Barrichello was basically forced to break a rule to get fuel in his car or risk being stranded out on track, all because of a situation that had nothing to do with him. This obviously flustered him and his team, causing a dangerous incident in the pit stop and the running of a red light resulting in Barrichello’s ultimate DQ.
Unlike many races over the past few years, this one actually became more exciting as it progressed. Even though Lewis was off on his own happily winning the race, everyone else was still busy trying to survive and gain a few points. The fight between Alonso and Heiki was great to watch in the final laps and it’s a real shame that Kovaleinan hit the speed limiter in his excitement after taking Fernando.
I’m looking forward to Malaysia, it’ll be another hot one, and there will be six cars running on old engines and gearboxes. It’s going to be a topsy-turvy weekend. Sadly I’ll be in Vermont all weekend but I’m hoping our hosts have a decent sports network…
And talking of TV coverage, I just heard that the BBC are getting F1 back next year, great news for British F1 fans, I’m very envious.
March 14, 2008 at 9:18 am · Filed under F1
The qualifying session for the Australian Grand Prix is tonight at 11 (in this timezone) but the drama has started already. As usual it’s mostly off the track.
We’ve had Bernie being snarky all week, threatening to take F1 out of Australia if they don’t make it a night race. I expect he will get his way in the end, as they already capitulated a bit by moving the start time to three hours later. All he’s interested in is getting his races shown in Europe during prime time, he doesn’t seem to understand that it’s a World Championship and there are plenty of other fans beside the European ones.
The big news from Mclaren is that they sacked Mike Coughlan. Not exactly a shocker; what’s strange to me is why it took so long. The scandal has been raging for almost a year and they waited until the start of the new season to fire him. Supposedly this is due to “legal reasons” but I can’t imagine these teams having employment contracts without some kind of get-out clause.
Things are no less predictable on the track. Kimi took the first practice and Lewis took the second. I think we all know where the battle for the lead will be this year. The midfield fights are going to be where the excitement is though; I hope the TV directors realise that.
March 6, 2008 at 3:17 pm · Filed under Skepticism
McGill’s Mini-Science program is about to start for the second year. This year the lectures will be tackling Ecology, Evolution and Extinction. From the article:
In a few weeks, McGill Mini-Science 2008: Ecology, Evolution and Extinction, will begin a seven-week run, covering everything from the science and polarizing controversy of evolution, to global change and extinction, to sustainability and biodiversity.
I hope they won’t dwell too much on the “controversy”, because as any sensible person knows, there is no controversy.
Though each lecture is tailored to engage, edify and entertain the layperson, the material will not be diluted and oversimplified.
I like the sound of that, dumbed down science is no fun.
“We have the best scientists in the world right here on campus,” Grant said. “What better way to give back to the community than to provide a forum for the exchange of ideas through this kind of outreach?”
I think the first part of that sentence should have “some of” in it, but I get what he’s saying, there are some very very smart people here.
Mini-Science begins on March 26 and will run every Wednesday until May 7. For details, go to http://www.mcgill.ca/science/mini.
March 5, 2008 at 4:20 pm · Filed under F1
The 2008 Formula One season is fast approaching, so it’s time for my season predictions:
- Hamilton will get close again, but he won’t win the WDC
- Maclaren will win the WCC
- Kimi Raikkonen will win the WDC
- Ron Dennis will retire, but not until the end of the season
- Super Aguri F1 will fold or change hands
- Toyota will get their first race win
- Timo Glock will claim that win
- Alonso and Hamilton will continue to slag each other off in the press
- Red Bull will outpace Honda
- Jenson will complain that Red Bull are outpacing Honda and repeat his mantra “We just don’t have the pace”
- Force India will be the surprisingly successful underdog
- Gearboxes won’t last the mandatory four races
- Wet races will be farcical
- James Allen will forget that both Toro Rosso drivers are called Sebastien
- Then he’ll remember and feel the need to explain the situation in detail
- The “spy” scandal will refuse to go away
- Martin Brundle will be asked to explain the lack of traction control during every race
- The Singapore race will be the highlight of the season
March 2, 2008 at 9:33 pm · Filed under Family+Friends
The other evening I was sitting on the couch with the boy, watching Balamory. The conversation went something like this:
Aidan: What are you doing Daddy?
Me: Watching TV, what are you doing?
Aidan: Looking for something.
Me: Oh, what are you looking for?
Aidan: Something on the wall.
Me: On the wall? What on the wall?
Aidan: A big enormous thing.
Me: Ohh, a big enormous thing? What kind of big enormous thing?
Aidan: A blue one.
Me: A blue one? OK.
Aidan: And yellow.
Me: A blue and yellow big enormous thing on the wall?
Aidan:Ya. And pink.
Me: A pink, blue and yellow big enormous thing on the wall?
Aidan: Ya.
Me: Well did you find it?
Aidan: No.
February 29, 2008 at 11:55 am · Filed under Blogging, Skepticism
It’s February 29th today, so I thought, like 90% of bloggers on the planet, I would do a post about leap years.
Those silly people who think our planet is less than 6000 years old also sometimes think that the leap year thing is because science somehow screwed up and we have to fudge the numbers occasionally or that it’s because the Earth’s orbit is speeding up.
In fact, the leap year was refined over many years, starting with the romans who added an extra month every couple of years, basically whenever they felt like it, to keep the seasons in sync. Then Julius came along and realised the seasons were still all messed up, so abolished the extra month concept, replacing it with a slightly longer year of 365 days (it was 355 before) with extra days added to various months. There was also an extra day added every three years to try to keep the seasons lined up, but it wasn’t enough and they drifted again. A few years later the period was changed to four years, and things were better, but not perfect.
It wasn’t until the 1500s that someone realised that things weren’t quite right. It happened to be a Pope, Pope Gregory XIII to be precise. He noticed that if things carried on, Easter would eventually bump into Christmas, and we obviously couldn’t have Jesus being nailed to the cross on the day he was born, so he changed the rules, with the help of Kepler’s astronomical observations.
The Gregorian Calendar has been used ever since, and the leap year calculation remains unchanged. The calculation Gregory implemented is one I’ve used many times in computer programs. A year is a leap year if it’s divisible by 4 but not divisible by 100 except when it’s divisible by 400 (that’s why 2000 was a leap year).
Our year now averages out to be 365.2425 days long which is accurate enough that we’ll only be out by one day after 4000 years.
We need more Popes like Gregory XIII, even though he was a bit of a bastard to the English and Irish.
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