How Far Can You See From Highcliff?

Highcliff is a prominent crag on the northern escarpment of the North York Moors, overlooking Guisborough, the town I grew up in. When I was a child I can remember noticing that, from its top, you can see quite a long way up the North-East coast, and over the years I have often wondered how far, but until recently I had never got round to actually answering this question.   Then, last week I went up Highcliff and took the above photo.

Identifying the distant features in the photo proved surprisingly difficult, mainly because I was initially trying to do it across three 1:50000 scale Ordnance Survey maps laid out on the floor. However, I think I now have it sorted. The long faint bump on the horizon, just to the right of centre, is, I think, Cleadon Hill between Whitburn and South Shields. That is about 55km distant. And the white blobs on the horizon just to to the left of centre are probably large buildings in Sunderland at about 49km. That's the hard part. The rest is easy. In the middle distance, jutting in from the left is the Hartlepool Headland, and in the foreground are the Wilton chemical works (mainly to the left) and the Redcar steel works (mainly to the right).

It may be that the the outline of Cleadon Hill is too small and faint to be visible without optical aid, I will need to check that next time I am up in Highcliff.  However, the white blobs in Sunderland are definitely visible to the unaided eye so the conservative answer to my question would be about 49km.

Possible Mouse-Wheel Scroll Bug in Windows XP

Recently I have noticed that when I roll the mouse-wheel to scroll downwards in Windows XP the window occasionally scrolls upwards.  This is rather annoying as it makes window scrolling visually jerky.  I have seen it when using Firefox and when using Internet Explorer.  I have also seen it on more than one installation of Windows XP.  It would appear to be a bug.

Update on Thu 2007-08-23 by Tristram Brelstaff

I now think this is probably a mouse hardware problem rather than a software bug.  It seems to be getting worse.

Update on Fri 2007-12-28 by Tristram Brelstaff

I eventually fixed this problem by using narrow strips of cardboard to scrape out a large lump of fluff that had accumulated around the axle of the mouse-wheel.  So it was a hardware problem (assuming fluff counts as hardware and not software).

Search Engine 'Cloaking' by Academic Publishers

One of the minor annoyances of using Google to search for scientific papers is the habit of some academic publishers of 'cloaking' their PDF files.  This means that in the search results these files are listed as if they were freely accessible but when you click through you immediately go to a page demanding payment.  You are not even presented with an abstract of the paper so you can judge whether or not you might be interested in its contents.  I would have normally expected Google to have removed such cloaked PDFs from their search results, but it seems as if they have made some deal with the publishers which allows this to continue in return for access to the publisher's papers.  It all seems a bit clumsily done and smacks of deception and spamming.

Well it seems that quite a few proper scientists are sufficiently annoyed by this cloaking to discuss doing something about it.  See The n-Category Cafe, BlogSci, and Science After Sunclipse for more details.

Intellectual Bookshop

I was in Foyles yesterday.  While I was browsing the computing books I overheard the end of a discussion between two shop assistants.  It went something like this:

1st Assistant: "And then he read a bit from Paradise Lost.  It was awful!"

2nd Assistant: "I know.  Have you heard his reading of Under Milk Wood?" 

Here the 2nd Assistant mumbled a few lines in a strong Welsh accent.

1st Assistant: "These poets must have their own idea of how good their voice sounds which differs completely from how it sounds to every one else."

And this was in the computing section.

Train Journey

I travelled back from Guisborough on Thursday.  Caught GNER from Darlington to London Kings Cross, round the Underground to Paddington, then GWR to Reading. 

On the way down we passed through Grantham and, as usual, I looked out for the Isaac Newton Shopping Centre.  The thought of the great man standing in a checkout queue at Sainsbury's always makes me smile.   I wonder if that other famous person from Grantham, Margaret Thatcher, has a more appropriate building named after her?  Maybe an abbatoir? 

The journey went smoothly: an 8 minute delay at Doncaster was converted to 1 minute early at Kings Cross.  We lost about 15 minutes coming out of London but by then we were on the home stetch and I wasn't bothered.  At Darlington I had bought a copy of Spitfire: The Biography by Jonathan Glancey and was three quarters of the way through it before we pulled into Reading.  I will finish it on my next few journeys to and from work.