Timberrrr!

Last night Zoe and I were sitting in the living room when we were startled by a sudden loud metallic scraping noise, like a slow car crash, or someone dragging a full dustbin over concrete.  I jumped up and looked out of the window but it was already dark, and I could see nothing unusual, so I sat down again and forgot all about it.  Until this evening.  Then Zoe pointed out to me this fallen tree around the other side of the flat.  The tree had fallen over the boundary fence and struck the flats on the neighbouring property, leaving a pretty impressive scrape-mark down their wall, and damaging some roof tiles in the process.  

Somehow I completely failed to notice the fallen tree this morning when I left for work, even though I must have walked past just a few metres away from it.  I blame the darkness, and the fact I was in a hurry.  Besides, I am usually on automatic pilot at that time of the morning and it takes quite a lot to distract me from my dash to the railway station.

Update on Sat 2008-01-26 by Tristram Brelstaff

In the light of day it is apparent that the damage is a bit more extensive than I initially though.  As well as the displaced roof tiles, one window has broken glass, another has a broken frame (but the glass still intact), and a section of rainwater down-pipe has been dislodged.

Hanging Stone in the Mist

Hanging Stone is a hill on the northern edge of the North York Moors near Guisborough.  It takes its name from a large block of sandstone that protrudes from its northern end (this appears as the white blob just below the right-hand side of the summit).   I took this photo one morning last summer from Hutton Lane, Guisborough, near the junction with Aldenham Drive, just over the road from one of my old schools.  Not a particularly good picture, I just happen to like the trees in it.

We will Gas them on the Beaches

From a Wikipedia article on the British Anti-Invasion Plans of World War II:

It seems very likely that the British would have used poison gas against troops on beaches. General Brooke, in an annotation to his published war diaries, stated that he "...had every intention of using sprayed mustard gas on the beaches". Mustard gas was manufactured as well as chlorine, phosgene and Paris Green.  Poison gases were stored at key points for use by Bomber Command and in smaller quantities at many more airfields for use against the beaches. Bombers and crop sprayers would spray landing craft and beaches with mustard gas and Paris Green.

General Alan Brooke was in charge of UK Home Forces from July 1940 to December 1941, so his diaries should be pretty authoritative when it comes to the British anti-invasion preparations.  Paris Green is a highly toxic chemical that has been used as a pesticide.

Adblock Plus

There are two types of people who browse the web: those who see adverts on the sites they visit, and those who don't.  The latter use Firefox with the Adblock Plus add-on installed. 

Recently, I was reminded of  how intrusive web advertising is when I had to use someone else's PC.  It is like having an idiot waving to attract your attention all the time.  I even find obnoxious the relatively subtle Google Ads that appear in the side-bar of this blog (especially when they are promoting some creationist pack of lies).

Other Firefox add-ons  I use are Flashblock, which prevents flash animations from running until you click on a button (this filters out a lot of the worst adverts), and the Adblock Filterset.G Updater, which makes sure your Adblock filter list is up-to-date. 

Exciting Mathematics

Last week I heard a government minister on the radio saying that maths lessons should be made more exciting.  Today I read this comment by Elise Conolly to a post at Overcoming Bias:

This reminds me of when I first started learning about topological spaces, and then we added a metric, suddenly all the theorems and lemmas we'd had to prove in fiddly ways with lots of epsilons and deltas in first year analysis were blindingly and beautifully obvious. The sheer glorious interconnectedness was so overwhelming that I very nearly orgasmed in the lecture theatre!
Posted by: Elise Conolly January 10, 2008 at 08:20 PM

"Ah", I thought, "That's what the minister meant."