Cockadobby Hill

From Cockadobby Hi...

uitzicht over NYC

uitzicht over NYC, originally uploaded by RoosjeH.

Nice image and a view that I do not think I have seen before.

Mt. Rainier from Bench Lake

Mt. Rainier from Bench Lake, originally uploaded by Knottyy.

I have trouble thinking that this is a real place, maybe it would be a great place to see with my own eyes.

Laguna Beach Sunset

Laguna Beach Sunset, originally uploaded by Knottyy.

Just found this image, wow love the colours and how the light is on the sand and on the rocks in the foreground

Colours

, originally uploaded by lightpainter.

Never seen a bird this colour before, so all I can say is wow

sundog

sundog, originally uploaded by seawallrunner.

The person who took this picture sure has a good eye.

fog in yaletown

fog in yaletown, originally uploaded by seawallrunner.

Wow never knew fog could look this good great image

lost

lost, originally uploaded by brilliant girl.

Not sure why it should be, but this image has a great mood to it that gets to you just as soon as you see it why? don't know

Williams Audio Challenge 7

So this is the seventh audio challenge in the series, and I must come clean and state here that I do not know how many of these challenges their will be, as I suspect that as time passes that will have ideas that I think will make a good challenge.

This challenge is to create four linked audio programmes of 30 minutes each. the four audio programmes will be called the following;

Spring Equinox

Summer Solstice

Autumn Equinox

Winter Solstice

Each programme should link to each other, each programme should have both fact and trivia and there is nothing to stop the addition of humour if it will help the programme be entertaining and fun for the listener.

I think that this is an easy challenge to complete, as it would require only some basic research, the hard bit is making this series different from all the other programmes that there has been before, all with that most listeners will think that they have heard it before so the core of this challenge is to get the listener interested in what many may think is an over done and stale subject.

Williams Audio Challenge 6

This is a challenge which is here just because, well perhaps some reasons need to be explained first what I mean by this.

As you know if you listen to radio four or other great radio stations in the UK, I can't talk about other parts of the world as I have no information on what audio or radio is like. Anyway what I was going to say was this that sometimes they do an item on cooking and have the cooking done on air live, now it does take some skill to convey to the listener's just what is going on, and most of the time it works very well.

Another very clever use of this sort of thing was when a ventriloquist in a comedy show was on the radio in the 1950's. I think that the dummy was well, very popular even though you knew who was doing the voice of the dummy. But and I think that this is the most important thing is that you could tell by the sound effects and the good use of characterisation just who, when, where and what was going on.

So my challenge is in the same sort of vein as the above two examples in that it is something that is visual,and the challenge is to make that visual item see-able on the radio.

The subject is something that most people take for granted and perhaps do not even give it a second thought unless something dramatic is going on with it.

Do you want me to tell you what it is or have you already worked out what it is yet?

Well, I want at one 30 minute programme in any format on clouds, yes that's what i said clouds. It is a challenge in that some how you have to get over to the listener just what all the different clouds look like and why. You also and this is the sting in the tail, or more correctly the second part of this challenge is that you have to show how the clouds have changed the world in some way or other.

yes I know that this part of the challenge is not a broadcast problem but it is as I want the results of the research that you will have to do brought into the programme and for it to be a part of the programme.

As with all the Williams Audio challenges if you find that one programme is not enough then their is nothing to stop you from doing more programmes or even a series.

At the heart of the programme challenges is getting the challenge produced and broadcast either as a radio broadcast or podcast.

I think that radio or audio needs to get out there and just show that it is a medium that is anywhere, anytime and that it can get into people's heads and expand their minds without them knowing what has been going on until it is too late!

I think and so do a lot of far brighter minds that radio or audio entertainment is a medium will go on to bigger and better things especially now that the ipods generation are used to these items and have or are looking for more than just pop tunes.

Williams Audio Challenge 5

Well here we are with challenge number five, it is to be a 30 minute programme that has to be light hearted in its approach about a subject that so far has not to my knowledge has been tackled on a radio or audio production in any shape or form.

The programme is to present a short history of the mobile telephone ring-tone. It has to start with the very first ring-tones all the way through to today's multi effect multi-voice tones.

There is nothing to stop a bit of history of the mobile telephone from being thrown in at the same time, I suspect that to get a good programme length it will almost be mandatory. But most of the programme content has to be about the ring-tone, how it has effected us now and what may happen in the next few years to it.

This I think is an easy challenge as its just some good solid research with the need for some clever thinking on how best to present the material in a way that does not get repetitive and boring.

Path To The Brow

Path To The Brow, originally uploaded by D-Rom of 71.

This is just a great image of how I like to see some of the UK's better bits, its a sad but true remark that this kind of view will become very rare in the future, as the climate and living pressures will take it out on the counrtyside, or what is left of it.

Mount Mariveles

Mount Mariveles, originally uploaded by Ronald Ibay.

Love the dark blues at the top of this picture and then the dark mist at the bottom.

Vanishing

Vanishing, originally uploaded by lookin glass.

A classic shot I suppose, but it does work and in this image the colours are nice and work to make the picture even better.

Purple gaze

Purple gaze, originally uploaded by NTconcepts.

What a great image I love the colour differance in this picture

Williams Audio Challenge 4

This is the fourth in a series of audio challenges that I have created, as I think audio entertainment is getting just stuck in a rut and it seems to me not prepared to stretch itself in this brave new world of digital media and all its outlets. Any way the forth challenge is to do a programme or a series of programmes on light. I want each programme to be about 30 minutes long.

The programme could be about the nature of light, what it is and what it is not, it could be the science history of light getting into how Newton did work some much on it , what he found out and how it effects us today in everyday life. How and what is new about light and how these findings are going to change the way that we live. It could describe the famous experiments that Newton and others carried out, and this is the challenge bit, just how do you paint a word picture of such experiments?

The programme could be about painters and how the light in various places around the world has had an effect on their paintings e.g St Ives in Cornwall or it could be about how the paints from different times have used the light in their paintings. The programme could be about how modern painters use the light and how they see how the old masters used light.

The idea of just one programme or a series of programmes is part of the challenge, the challenge only asks for it to be a programme on light and that it has to last 30 minutes, it could be that you find so much material that a series is possible, if that's so then go for it!

Bolsover Castle

Bolsover Castle, originally uploaded by katie marsh.

Just like what the clouds are doing in this picture.

Williams Audio Challenge 3

This is the third of the Williams Audio Challenges (WRC), this I think is the easiest one in all of the challenges and so could I suppose be the very first challenge to fall.

Make a 30 minute programme on the two rarest Zoonoses that you could possibly catch in the UK today. the heart of this challenge is deciding what type of programme format to make the show e.g

Light hearted comedy e.g an incompetent doctor/vet practice.

Serious interview type programme e.g a documentary.

In fact the hardest challenge would be to say make a 30 minute comedy with Zoonoses as the theme, may be thinking about it, that is what this challenge should be all about.

As that is now what I want this challenge to be, I do now have the feeling that may be it will not be so easy to do and that the challenge may stand for some time.

Yes, I know, that getting such a programme made let alone getting it broadcast is not going to be easy, but and there are two buts with the first one being that the programme can be broadcast as a podcast instead of a terrestrial broadcast.

The second but is that if it was easy it would not be a challenge would it it?

Do not forget that the 30 minute duration is the minimum, you could I suppose provide a series! which would be good but to do so would be something that is not expected but would be very welcome, as the idea is to stretch the audio/radio world out there and to provide programmes that are not about Ireland or the grim North which appears to have sadly been the trend with commissioning radio these days on the main public broadcast stations, why it has been like this the only things that I can think of are that the money is tight, the people doing the commissioning have either no imagination or a failure of nerve or it could just be down to political correctness. lets hope that I am completely wrong on that last one.

Good News For One's Ears

So it has finally happened and Dirk and crew have finally got their new company up and running, which after more than two years of trying is good going. The new company called Perfectly Normal productions PNP is going to be I think, just a bit like Dirk's old company Audio Movies Ltd but with its broadcasts now aimed at the podcast generation, which is where all the audio action is these days.

From what I have been told and what I think about it all myself, I think that the line up productions is going to be great news for the ear's and minds of those folk who are in the know about just how great audio entertainment of this quality can be.

From what I see there will be new and old material together making a good all round package of items that will appeal to lots of savvy listeners out there, in fact I think we are in for an audio treat.

I suppose it will be interesting in a quiet sort of way to see if any of the WRC's will been done by Dirk Maggs and co. And no I am not going to tell him about the challenges as that would make it all far to easy and anyway the challenges are for anyone who has got the talent and the time to go for these challenges, you do not need for most of them lots of money all you need is great ideas and talent and the imagination to go for it.

So 2007 in audio terms should be great, if we are lucky it could even be a vintage audio year here's hoping.

Williams Audio Challenge 2

This second challenge in the series of audio challenges is one that I have spoken about before in several of my Blogs and also on my website; but I think it is a neat do able challenge, one that does not need any more than three episodes to carry it off and only about 90 minutes tops of airtime or broadcast time.

The present idea is to have three 30 minute audio programmes each will be linked together much like a jigsaw does with references to each of the other shows in the series.

The challenge is that each episode has to have and to follow a theme.

Show one has the theme with X in it, so the next two shows themes should be of no surprise in that they are Y and Z. As I said above each themed show must refer and also reference the other shows in the series.

This challenge does not allow you to just call each show by its theme e.g X show then Y show then Z show.

As this is a challenge one thought that I did have was to link the three shows in time. by this I mean that either show X is the future or present and then each of the other shows follows in the past or present, but I think it stands in getting three themed linked, 30 minute long shows is a big challenge.

There is nothing in the challenge about having a very small cast, there is also nothing to stop the challenge itself being the audio series e.g you could base the shows on the challenge presented in completing the challenge.

Williams Audio Challenge 1

This is the first of several audio challenges that I have for all producers of audio or radio like content, the idea behind each challenge to stretch what is being done in audio entertainment, as I have noticed that over the last few years most radio/audio or broadcast entertainment is becoming mediocre normally because the folks commissioning work are short of imagination, money or have caught political correctness.

The first challenge will be to use the Destiny's Children series written by Stephen Baxter as an audio series which at this time is a series of four books.

Book One

is called Coalescent is a science-fiction novel by Stephen Baxter. It is part one of the Destiny's Children series.

The novel is set in two different time periods: modern Britain, when George Poole finds that he has a previously unknown sister and follows a trail to a mysterious and ancient organisation in Rome (Puissant Order of Holy Mary Queen of Virgins); and the time of Regina, a girl growing up during the ending of Roman rule in Britain, around AD 400.

Book Plot Summary

The book is comprised of four distinct parts. The primary purpose of part one is the introduction of the characters, in ancient Britain and the present. Part two introduces a modern first-person view of the Order in Rome while following Regina's budding legacy centuries before. Part three hosts the clash and resolution of Poole and the Order's realities. Part four is a look eons into Humanity's Expansion into the Universe and provides a conclusion in George Poole's present.

George Poole

George Poole copes with the mid-life crisis of losing his father. He meets Peter McLachlan, an eccentric member of an online free-thinking group called the Slan(t)ers. George Poole uncovers an old picture showing a sister he never knew. Poole also discovers that his father regularly donated large sums of money to an organisation called the "Puissant Order of Holy Mary Queen of Virgins". Combined with a sense of futility in determining his future and encouragement from both his former wife Linda and Peter, Poole decides to uncover the mystery of his missing sister.

Poole leaves England to visit his sister Gina in Florida for information, despite their strained relationship. After spoiling his clever nephews as well as clashing with his distant sister Gina, Poole extracts the contact of a Jesuit priest in Rome and his own retired grandfather in Florida. Poole learns from his grandfather, Lou Casella, that his twin sister was given to the ancient Order when Poole's parents were unexpectedly landed with twins.

Regina

Born into a wealthy mosaic-designing family of 5th-century Roman Britain, seven-year-old Regina is uprooted from her comfortable villa due to her Father's death and the Roman Empire's withdrawal. The Roman Empire loses its strength in Britain as invading Saxons pummel the Great Wall north of Roman settlements to where Regina and her grandfather Aetius relocated. Aetius dies after losing control over his unpaid mutinous soldiers.

Regina seeks refuge with her servant Cartumandua's relatives in Verulamium but is betrayed by Regina's boyfriend Amator who rapes and abandons her. Verulamium burns down, forcing Regina and Cartumandua's family to live off the land in poverty for over sixteen years. Regina kills a roaming Saxon who nearly rapes her daughter, Brica. This event convinces Regina, the leader of their hamlet, to accept the invitation of warlord Artorius (King Arthur) to help restore order to Britain again.

Main Characters

Lucia

In modern Rome, Lucia, a fifteen-year old scribe for the Order, is devastated when she begins to menstruate — unlike any of her friends and colleagues within the Order. Once this is discovered Lucia is initiated into in her new role within the Order. Meanwhile, Lucia falls in love with seventeen-year-old American Daniel Stannard despite what is expected of her. After giving birth following only three months of pregnancy, Lucia never sees her baby again. Emotionally unstable, she runs away with Daniel.

Regina

Back in 5th-century Britain, Regina establishes her life working with Artorius, eventually managing his kingdom's record keeping. Artorius takes Regina as his wife for symbolic and moral reasons. She disdains Artorius' barbaric practices and thirst for conquest. Regina accompanies Artorius to a War Council where she realizes to stay attached with the reckless Artorius would mean certain doom for her progeny. In order to search out her mother, Julia, Regina secures passage to Rome by allowing herself and her daughter to give sexual favours to a wealthy merchant named Ceawlin.

Upon arriving in Rome, Regina contacts Amator, now openly homosexual and a wealthy bakery owner, and demands recompense for abandoning her and her family. Regina re-establishes contact with her mother, Julia, after a cool reunion. Regina joins the Puissant Order of Holy Mary Queen of Virgins, a Christian-adapted faction of the Vestal Virgins located on the Appian Way — an organisation that her family has become intimate with. Regina's leadership revives the ageing Order by converting it into a successful private school. Years later, on the night following her daughter's marriage, the Sack of Rome in 455 by the Vandals occurs. Regina's foresight saves the Order when the women and children are evacuated into the underground Catacombs she had had dug for a sanctuary.

In Regina's twilight years, she establishes important rules precedents for the Order. Unnecessary and unsupportable births are prohibited. A handful of mothers must dedicate their lives to replenishing the Order with births. Before her death in 476 AD, Regina establishes three main rules to govern the Order:

• Sisters matter more than daughters.
• Ignorance is strength.
• Listen to your sisters.

In the centuries following Regina's death, the Order assists the poor, robbed, and injured, gaining donations to its coffers from the occasional assisted person who became wealthy. Another Crypt that developed similarly to the Order is found and plans made for its eradication and occupation. In 1537 the Order survives the pillage of Rome by Antipope Clement VII by sacrificing five of its members to rape and death in order to divert Clement and his men's attention from an entrance to the Crypt.

George Poole

Meanwhile, in the present, George Poole, followed by a nervous Peter McLachlan, has a cool reunion with his lost sister Rosa. Rosa gives George a tour of the Crypt, the Order's secret human cache. Peter speculates with George about evidence of intelligent dark matter life moving through earth. Daniel serendipitously meets with George Poole, who is searching for additional information about the Order. Daniel, George Poole, and Peter take the very pregnant Lucia to a hospital where Peter becomes suspicious of the mysterious Order. The Order promptly retrieves Lucia from the hospital but not before Peter and George learn that most of the Crypt's inhabitants remain prepubescent indefinitely (reproductive suppression).

George Poole convinces his Jesuit priest contact to grant Peter access to ancient Catholic records. George's patriarchal roots are traced to a surveyor named George Pool who came to Rome in 1863. George returns to the Crypt looking for information and finds himself smothered with the familiar smell and contact of those in the Crypt, all of whom share his similar facial features (namely, cloudy grey eyes). His sister Rosa almost persuades him to become assimilated into the Order as a stud but an urgent text message by Peter brings him to his senses.

Peter has a theory explaining the strange peculiarities of the Order. The Order is a family of eusocial humans that evolved from the intense pressures to survive the various conquerings of Rome over the centuries. He cites naked mole rats as an example of eusocial behaviour in mammals. He explains how Regina's three rules result in a "genetic mandate for eusociality." He calls the Order a "human hive" and labels them "Coalescents" — a new kind of human. Peter then suddenly leaves after receiving a text message.

Days later, George learns that Peter has invaded the Crypt and is threatening to set off Semtex plastic explosives in order to expose the Order. Peter and the Slan(t)ers are responsible for the recent bombing of a San Jose research facility investigating quantum gravity technology — under the belief that a higher intelligence would notice the manipulation of space-time and eradicate a possible threat to their superiority. Peter's reasoning in exposing the Crypt is that the Order does not exist for any purpose except for itself. It threatens to destroy humanity as individuals and replace it with mindless drones. Peter Mclachlan then detonates his bombs and dies. George begins the evacuation of the Crypt and the mob of drones emerge hive-like from the crater in the middle of Via Cristoforo Colombo.

Book 2

is called Exultant much of this book is written as large sections of prose explaining theoretical exotic-matter physics. Baxter also sketches the evolution of the Xeelee and an imaginary history of the universe in which life is ubiquitous even under the most extreme conditions.

Book Plot Summary

Exultant is set in Baxter's “Xeelee Sequence” twenty thousand years into the Third Expansion of Mankind, “ a titanic project undertaken by a mankind united by the Doctrines forged by Hama Druz after mankind's near extinction.” The human-supremacist Intirim Coalition of Governance has conquered almost the whole Milky Way all but the alien Xeelee concentrated at the galactic core around a supermassive black hole called Chandra. The mysterious Xeelee are far more advanced but less numerous than the humans, and the war has been at a stalemate for three millenia even though the entire Coalition has been directed toward the war effort and ten billion humans die at the front every year. In a war fought with faster-than-light technology (i.e. time travel), each side has foreknowledge of the other's actions and can develop counter-measures to plans before they are made.

Pirius is a fighter pilot stationed at the front. When a battle turns to disaster for the Coalition forces, he disobeys suicide orders to stand and fight, choosing instead to risk survival. In a desperate gamble to outrun a pursuing Xeelee, Pirius captures a Xeelee fighter for the first time in history. Returning to base via FTL travel, he arrives two years previous to the battle, when his younger self is still a cadet. Rather than being lauded as a hero, both instances of Pirius are court-martialed for disobeying orders.

Commissary Nilis of the Office of Technological Archival and Control, part of the Commission for Historical Truth, defends both the older Pirius (whom he calls “Pirius Blue”) and the younger one (“Pirius Red”) but loses the trial. Pirius Blue is sent to a penal unit at the front as a foot soldier, and Pirius Red is remanded to the custody of Commissary Nilis, who has plans for the fruits of Pirius Blue's battlefield victory. Using the Xeelee fighter and the innovative tactics that saved Pirius Blue, he starts to plan an unheard of assault on the Xeelee's primary stronghold at Chandra itself.

While Nilis and his new team struggle to confront ossified government and military institutions, they try to understand and to develop new and sometimes alien technologies: FTL computers, a gravastar shield to protect them from FTL foreknowledge, and a black hole gun, capable of disrupting a supermassive black hole's event horizon.

Meanwhile, in the course of his new duties to Commissary Nilis, Pirius Red is practically taken on a tour of the Solar system and some of the Coalition's most scandalous secrets, rife with references to events from previous books in the Xeelee sequence.

Finally, Pirius Red and Blue are reluctantly reunited for the assault on Chandra that could end the war, but the black hole hasn't given up all its secrets yet.

Book Three

is called Transcendent it is the third science fiction novel in the Destiny's Children series by Stephen Baxter.

The story alternates between the world of Michael Poole in the year 2047, and Alia, a posthuman girl who lives approximately half a million years in the future.

Engineer Michael Poole is recovering from the death of Morag, his pregnant wife. Poole works as a consultant designing space propulsion systems, and dreams of being able to one day explore the stars. However, there are more pressing matters; humanity faces a serious bottleneck, with the Earth reeling from the anthropogenic effects of global warming; automobile production has all but ceased, except for hydrogen-based mass transit, and air travel is limited to the very rich. Due to climate change, the oceans have become dead zones, with rising sea levels and severe weather displacing millions.

While working in Siberia, Michael's son Tom is injured by an explosion of methane gas from previously frozen hydrates, suddenly released from the now-melting tundra. Michael begins to research whether this is an isolated incident or the beginning of something more serious. With the help of an artificial sentience named Gea, he discovers that a potential release of all such frozen greenhouse gasses could destabilize the environment enough to make the Earth untenable for human habitation, in a repeat of the Permian extinction.

Michael consults members of the Poole family, who come together to work on the problem. Tom, John, and the elderly George (star of Coalescent), reunite, and a maverick geoengineering company funds the project. Michael designs a subsurface refrigeration system that could stabalize the frozen hydrates. Meanwhile, Michael continues to be haunted by visions of his dead wife, apparitions he has been seeing his entire life, even before he first met her. He becomes obsessed with discovering the origin of this phenomenon, and his quest for answers drives a wedge between him and his family. Aunt Rosa Poole (from Coalescent), a Catholic priest and ex-member of the Order, helps Michael research the problem, drawing on her vast knowledge, stemming in small part from her relationship with the Coalescent hive and its historical archives. The rest of the Poole family joins the investigation when Morag appears during a trial test of the engineering project. This time, everyone sees Morag, even observing drones recording the event. After the project is bombed by a terrorist group, Morag goes from being an apparition to reincarnating in physical reality. This frightens everyone, even Michael.

500,000 years in the future, the Nord, a generation ship, sails through the galaxy carrying Alia, a young girl, and her family. As part of a government program called the "Redemption", Alia is obligated to witness the life of Michael Poole, from start to finish. Pressured by her family to leave the ship, Alia becomes a candidate for the Transcendence, a collective group of immortal posthumans who are attempting to evolve into a form of godhood, in effect leaving their humanity behind. After travelling the galaxy and observing several posthuman life forms, Alia travels to Earth to meet the Transcendence. Alia learns the Transcendence is attempting to redeem the past suffering of all humans, first by witnessing every single one as Alia witnessed, then by living as every single human and experiencing everything that they experienced. However, since observing is not seen as sufficient for redemption, the Transcendence ultimately desires to erase all suffering in the past, thereby ensuring that every human that could have existed does so. Lastly, if that is seen as too great a task, the Transcendence is prepared to reach back in time and stop humans from ever existing, thereby "erasing" the suffering that they intend to redeem.

Upset about the goals of the Transcendence, Alia makes her way back to the Nord, only to find that it has been attacked in an attempt to get her to go back and face the Transcendence by a group who believes the Redemption is a mistake. Upon returning to the Transcendence, Alia agrees to find a human who can join the Transcendence long enough to debate the Redemption and help them find the best course of action. To do so, Alia projects herself into the past, to the time of Michael Poole. She appears to him as his dead wife, but changes into her true form, that of a small, hairy primate, a form evolved for low gravity environments.

Alia convinces Michael to face the Transcendence. After an initial period of adjustment, Michael makes contact with the Transcendence. Able to see both sides of the argument, Michael forgives the Transcendence for their meddling, but asks that they stop their efforts. Michael is returned to his own time, where he successfully completes the refrigeration project. The Kuiper anomaly, first introduced in Coalescent, disappears, and is revealed to be related to Alia's connection with Michael, having first appeared in the solar system at the time of Michael's birth. In the far future, the Transcendence collapses and the Witnessing program is shut down.

Book Four

is called Resplendent It is the fourth and final book in Stephen Baxter's Destiny's Children series.

This book is a collection of short stories relating to the previous three books, comprising new works and previously-published stories, including the novellas Reality Dust and Riding the Rock.

These books are hard science fiction with a very large canvas and some very large and complex ideas.

This will be a large and difficult task as the books cover a lot of ground. I don't think that one book can be made into one episode of audio or radio. So either a lot of the contents of each book gets dropped or each book takes 120 minutes of air time each.

So for the four books that works out at 480 minutes or some 8 hours of airtime at an estimated cost of 5K per hour this comes to some 40K which is a large investment and is a 8 week, 1 hour a week broadcast schedule.

The series could be more expensive as it depends on just how many voices are needed for each episode.

The other way to look at this challenge is to decide that it is not for radio broadcast but for a podcast instead. the high production values are still required but there is now unlimited airtime as a podcast. A possible route for paying is the only snag as iTunes and such like do tend to charge a large premium for hosting the files a figure that I have seen said that it was 15% but I do not know if that figure is still correct things may have changed so it might not be true.

This is a big challenge as the Coalescent books are vast in their scope but an Audio Movie would be the only way to do the stories in the series any justice. A film on only one of the books would only be possible if most of the contents of the books was cut or changed in ways that the Author Stephen Baxter would like or want.

Waterland!

Waterland!, originally uploaded by TerData.

This is just a great image that i think would make a great wall print . Just how come I don't have anything like this to look at.

crystal

crystal, originally uploaded by Cyanne.

Great eyes in this pic

laura

laura, originally uploaded by Cyanne.

wow, is what I first said when I saw this image for the very first time. Do not know who it is or any about them.. Except they are good looking.



P.S
I have just been told that this woman is a bloke, but looking like this who cares its a great image.

Bed

Bed, originally uploaded by SoniaV.

I like the facial expression in this photo that the model has. I have since found out that the model is not a woman, but who cares its still a great image.

Wijk aan Zee

Wijk aan Zee, originally uploaded by TerData.

Do not know where this is in the world but what I do like about this picture is the bright orange read of the sand against the sky

un peu plus tard

un peu plus tard, originally uploaded by =m.b.

Not to sure what the french words are saying, but this photo is one that I do not think needs much to be said as you can see what it is all about.

Propping at the bar

Propping at the bar, originally uploaded by Elsalionne.

Another test post of an image that is not too bad on the eye I suppose.

waiting

waiting, originally uploaded by Haily.

It's a nice image I don't know the lady in the picture, but there is a look in her eyes that to me says I have lived an intresting life and I enjoy what I do.

Just seen a comment from the lady in the picture, I think its the first comment I have ever had on this Blog, now that was a first not sure if I will ever be the same again....well I was right about the life this lady has lead

Flickr

This is a test post from , a fancy photo sharing thing.

Blogger broke

Well upgraded this account to the new blogger beta and now can't post the pics I like from flicker....why?

Updates and all that

The update has happened the only bad thing about it all is that I have lost my template that I have had for sometime, and to make matter worse I don't remember where I got it from.

The good news is that all is working as it used to. The only thing that I have yet to work out is how to get the flicer picture posting thing working, as that is something I found to easy to use.

May be I will start taking here about the other internet projects that I have been doing and so on.

eg DMP the wiki on Dirk Maggs that has been going for sometime now in one form or another, last look it had over 422 pages and its not yet half done, to be honest I have rather left it alone, I have updated the wiki software to 1.82 which is good.

Updates

This site has now been updated by Goole to there new blogger beta, which is how most of there free software tends to be labled, why this is so I don't know any way loads of new things for me to try out, hey I might even post more...nah doubt it too.

Not Yet

Not Yet, originally uploaded by Tidy TTT.

This is a great image wish I had my camera

DSC_0542

DSC_0542, originally uploaded by davew1.

Winter bit that I took a photo of when at Winkworth, just tried to see if it would resize

A room with a view

A room with a view, originally uploaded by =mb.

This is just a great picture, as I said on the flicer website I wish that i had been there with my camera as I am sure with such a good sunset I might get at least one great picture.

Monument Valley

Monument Valley, originally uploaded by /joseph/.

This is a place I would love to go if ever I get the chance

DSC_0576

DSC_0576, originally uploaded by davew1.

From Winkworth

The last One

The last One, originally uploaded by davew1.

He looked rather sad maybe he knew that the clocks had moved again for wintertime.

old-england

old-england, originally uploaded by Fib.

This is a picture that makes me glad to live in England, and thats some thing that does not happen very often these days.

Donna & Charlene

FT

Wellington statue

This is the famous Wellington Statue that is on the top of Round Hill in Aldershot 

Donna

So an old picture of Donna but one that I like a lot. 

Famous People in Periodic Table History

• This is really the last part of the book, some of it is not very detailed mainly because I have not found very much information on the people mentioned and also because it would make sense to leave something for a later version of this book if I ever do another one. I do have an idea for a new book but if I told you it here you might not want this book anymore.

• The idea here is to give a little information out some of the people who have made discoveries in the field of chemistry.

• The short biographies are not intended to be in any great depth just enough to give the reader a general outline to the person and his or her discoveries.

Sir Humphry Davy

• The English chemist Sir Humphry Davy, born on 17th. December 1778, died on 29th. May 1829, invented the safety lamp for miners and was the first to apply electrical current to isolate alkali metals and alkaline earth metals. After receiving a grammar school education, he was apprenticed to a surgeon and began medical studies, turning to chemistry in 1797. He attracted the attention of Thomas Beddoes, who appointed him to the Pneumatic Institution to study the physiological effects of new gases.

• In 1800, Davy published a description of the effects of nitrous oxide and an account of his nearly fatal inhalation of water gas, a mixture of Hydrogen and Carbon Monoxide. In 1801 he was appointed to the then newly established Royal Institution as lecturer, and in 1802 he was advanced to professor.

• Davy's chemical lectures and demonstrations were brilliantly presented and became a fashionable social event. He also lectured and wrote a book on agricultural chemistry and presented the first systematic geology course offered in England. His first Bakerian Lecture won a prize from Napoleon, even though France and England were at war.

• Davy used electrolysis to obtain elemental Potassium and Sodium in 1807 and Calcium, Strontium, Barium, and Magnesium in 1808. He obtained Boron simultaneously with Joseph Gay-Lussac. He also showed that Oxygen could not be obtained from the substance known as Oxymuriatic acid and proved the substance to be an element, which he named Chlorine.

• This explanation refuted Antoine Lavoisiers oxygen theory of acids. Much of Davy's later research involved making new compounds of Chlorine with Nitrogen, Phosphorus, and Oxygen. In 1812 he was knighted, gave a good-bye lecture to his fellow members of the Royal Institution, and married a rich widow.

• He resigned from the Royal Institution in 1813 and traveled on the continent with his wife and young Michael Faraday. Davy returned to London to study flames, and during this time invented what came to be called the Davy safety lamp. He became a baronet in 1818.

Dmitry Ivanovich Mendeleyev

• The Russian chemist Dmitry Ivanovich Mendeleyev, born on 8 February 1834, died on 2 February 1907, formulated the periodic table, one of the most useful and important generalizations of chemistry and of all science.

• The fourteenth and last child of Ivan Pavlovich Mendeleyev, a teacher of Russian literature, and Maria Dmitrievna Kornileva, who came from a Siberian merchant family, Mendeleyev was born in Tobolsk, Siberia (which is now called Tyumen Oblast). He enrolled (in 1850) in the Faculty of Physics and Mathematics of the Main Pedagogical Institute in Saint Petersburg, from which he graduated with a brilliant record in 1855. He taught (1855-1856) at the Odessa lyceum, where he continued work on the relationships between the crystal forms and the chemical composition of substances.

• In addition to his theoretical research, the application of science to industry and economics remained one of his primary concerns. He then worked (1859-1860) at the University of Heidelberg, where he first collaborated with Robert Bunsen and studied capillary phenomena and the deviations of gases and vapours from the ideal gas laws. In 1860, Mendeleyev discovered the concept of critical temperature and attended the first International Chemical Congress at Karlsruhe, where Stanislao Cannizzaro's views on atomic weights planted the seeds for the concept of the periodic table.

• Mendeleyev served as professor of chemistry at the Saint Petersburg Technological Institute (1864-1866) and at the University of Saint Petersburg (1867-1890), a post that he resigned in protest against the bureaucratic treatment of student petitions for reform. Because he found no suitable text for his students, he wrote his own Principles of Chemistry (1868-1871), which appeared in eight Russian, three English (the last, in 1905, reprinted in 1969), and several French and German editions. The systematisation of ideas required for this book led Mendeleyev to formulate the periodic law in March 1869.

• The law organised the chemical elements known at the time according to their atomic weights and predicted the existence of more elements.

• In subsequent years Mendeleyev refined and modified his law, which was received with considerable scepticism. After Paul Emile Lecoq de Boisbaudran, Lars Fredrik Nilson, and Clemens Winkler discovered the elements Gallium (1875), Scandium (1879), and Germanium (1886), respectively whose existence was predicted by Mendeleyev in 1871 the periodic law was universally accepted Mendeleyev became famous and was showered with honours.

• He was sent (1876) by the Russian government to study petroleum production in the United States. His interests later turned to commercial matters concerned with the national economy. Mendeleyev also worked on the liquefaction of gases the expansion of liquids a theory of solutions a theory of the inorganic origin of petroleum the chemistry of coal Russian weights and measures and the universal ether. He helped found the Russian Chemical Society in 1868. In 1906, a few months before his death, he missed winning the Nobel Prize for chemistry by one vote.

Marie and Pierre Curie

• Pierre and Marie Curie are best known for their pioneering work in the study of Radioactivity, which led to their discovery in 1898 of the elements Radium and Polonium. Marie Curie, born Maria Sklodowska in Warsaw, Poland, on 7th Nov 1867, died 3rd July 1934, spent many impoverished years as a teacher and governess before she joined her sister Bronia in Paris in order to study mathematics and physics at the Sorbonne, earning degrees in both subjects in 1893 and 1894. In the spring of the latter year she met the physicist Pierre Curie. They married a year later, and Marie subsequently gave birth to two daughters, Irene (1897) and Eve (1904).

• Pierre Curie, born 15th May 1859, died 19th April 1906, obtained his doctorate in the year of his marriage, but he had already distinguished himself in the study of the properties of crystals. He discovered the phenomenon of Piezoelectricity, whereby changes in the volume of certain crystals excite small electric potentials. Along with work on crystal symmetry Pierre Curie studied the magnetic properties of materials and constructed a torsion balance with a tolerance of 0.01 mg. He discovered that the magnetic susceptibility of paramagnetic materials is inversely proportional to the absolute temperature (Weiss-Curie's law) and that there exists a critical temperature above which the magnetic properties disappear.

• Since 1882, Pierre had headed the laboratory at the Ecole de Physique et de Chimie Industrielle in Paris, and it was here that both Marie and Pierre conTinued to work after their marriage. For her doctoral thesis, Madame Curie decided to study the mysterious radiation that had been discovered in 1896 by Henri Becquerel. With the aid of an electrometer built by Pierre and Jacques, Marie measured the strength of the radiation emitted from uranium compounds and found it proportional to the Uranium content, constant over a long period of time, and uninfluenced by external conditions. She detected a similar immutable radiation in the compounds of Thorium. While checking these results, she made the unexpected discovery that Uranium pitchblende and the mineral chalcolite emitted about four times as much radiation as could be expected from their Uranium content. In 1898 she therefore drew the revolutionary conclusion that pitchblende contains a small amount of an unknown radiating element.

• Pierre Curie immediately understood the importance of this supposition and joined his wife's work. In the course of their research over the next year, they discovered two new spontaneously radiating elements, which they named Polonium (after Marie's native country Poland) and Radium. A third element, Actinium, was discovered by their colleague Andre Debierne. They now began the tedious and monumental task of isolating these elements so that their chemical properties could be determined.

• In 1903, Marie Curie obtained her doctorate for a thesis on radioactive substances, and with her husband and Henri Becquerel she won the Nobel Prize for physics for the joint discovery of radioactivity. The financial aspect of this prize finally relieved the Curies of material hardship. The following year Pierre was appointed professor at the Sorbonne, and Marie became his assistant. She was deeply affected when Pierre died after being struck by a truck on a Paris street. She overcame this blow only by putting all her energy into the scientific work that they had begun together. The Sorbonne provided the opportunity by offering her the post that Pierre had held of lecturer and head of the laboratory. She thus became the first female lecturer at the Sorbonne, and in 1908 she was appointed professor. For the isolation of pure Radium, Marie Curie received a second Nobel Prize in 1911, this time for chemistry.

• During World War I, Madame Curie dedicated herself entirely to the development of the use of X-rays in medicine. In 1918 she took upon herself the direction of the scientific department of the Radium Institute, which she had planned with her husband, and where her daughter Irene Joliot-Curie worked with her husband Frederic Joliot. Marie's research for the rest of her life was dedicated to the chemistry of radioactive materials and their medical applications. She frequently lectured abroad, and she labored to establish international scholarships for scientists. Her death, on July 4, 1934, of leukemia was undoubtedly caused by prolonged exposure to radiation.

• The work of Marie and Pierre Curie, which by its nature dealt with changes in the atomic nucleus, led the way toward the modern understanding of the atom as an entity that can be split to release enormous energy.

John Dalton

• The English teacher, chemist, and physicist John Dalton, born on 6th September 1766 and died on 27th July 1844, is best known for developing the ancient concept of Atoms into a scientific theory that has become a foundation of modern chemistry. He considered himself primarily a teacher and earned his living by teaching and lecturing until 1833, when he was awarded an annual civil pension. A self-taught experimenter, he devised simple but effective apparatus for his well-planned tests. Although authors have emphasised the crudeness of his results, many of his data are remarkably accurate.

• Throughout his life Dalton was interested in the Earth's atmosphere, and he recorded more than 200,000 atmospheric observations in his notebooks. These observations led Dalton to study gases, and from the results of his experiments he was able to formulate his atomic theory. In a book on meteorology, he concluded that the aurora borealis is a magnetic phenomenon; he also explained the condensation of dew and gave a table of vapour pressures of water at various temperatures. Dalton was the first to publish the generalisation that all gases initially at the same temperature expand equally on going to the same higher temperature. His law of partial pressures was included in a paper in 1803 on gas solubility’s.

• Dalton's atomic theory was expressed in public lectures in 1803, and later in his New System of Chemical Philosophy in 1808. Many scientists, including William Higgins, had considered matter to be made of atoms, but Dalton provided a model from which definite predictions could be made.

• This theory incorporated additional features that have since been discarded, but the realisation that each atom has a characteristic mass and that atoms of elements are unchanged in chemical processes has served chemists to the present day.

Enrico Fermi

• The Italian physicist Enrico Fermi, was born on the 29th September 1901, and died on the 28th November 1954 he is best known as a central figure in the Manhattan project to build the first Atomic bomb.

• Fermi received his doctorate from the University of Pisa in 1922. After working under Max Born at Gottingen and Paul Ehrenfest at Leiden, he returned to Italy in 1926 and became professor of theoretical physics at the University of Rome. In 1938, on the eve of World War II, he escaped to the United States.

• Fermi's early work on the statistical distribution of elementary particles led him to divide these atomic constituents into two groups, known as fermions and bosons, depending on their spin characteristics. This division is now accepted as standard.

• His subsequent work on radioactivity and atomic structure involved experiments on the production of artificial radioactivity by bombarding matter with neutrons, for which he received the 1938 Nobel Prize for physics. In collaboration with other eminent scientists, Fermi experimented with nuclear fission at Columbia University.

• This work culminated in the first sustained nuclear reaction, on 2nd December 1942, at the University of Chicago. Further work at Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory led to the construction of the Atomic bomb. After the war, Fermi accepted a post at the newly established Institute for Nuclear Studies at the University of Chicago and continued his work in the field of neutron physics.

Glenn T Seaborg

• The American chemist Glenn Theodore Seaborg, born Ishpeming, Mich, 19th April 1912, shared the 1951 Nobel Prize for chemistry with Edwin McMillan for his participation in the discovery of most of the transuranium elements. Seaborg received his Ph.D. in 1937 from the University of California at Berkeley, where he remained and did his early work on the isotopes of common elements.

• He later worked with McMillan, who isolated in 1940 Neptunium with the atomic number 93, the first element beyond Uranium. Seaborg and his associates later isolated the next transuranium element, Plutonium. They also found a Plutonium isotope, Pu 239, which promised to yield more fission energy than Uranium.

• In 1942, Seaborg moved from Berkeley to the University of Chicago to find ways of producing Plutonium for the atomic-bomb project. His group discovered (1944) two new elements, Americium (95) and Curium (96) these discoveries helped to confirm Seaborg's hypothesis that the transuranium elements resembled each other and so formed a transition series the Actinide series similar to the Lanthanide series of rare earths.

• In 1946 he returned to Berkeley, and during the next 12 years he and his collaborators discovered six more transuranium elements Berkelium (97) in 1949, Californium (98) in 1950, Einsteinium (99) in 1952, Fermium (100) in 1953, Mendelevium (101) in 1955, and Nobelium (102) in 1958.

• The discovery of these elements was made possible by new particle accelerators that allowed heavy ions to be used as projectiles. Seaborg was named in 1958 chancellor of the Berkeley campus in 1961 he became the first scientist to be chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission, the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory in 1971, where he co-discovered in 1974 element 106.

Robert Boyle

• The English natural philosopher and chemist Robert Boyle, was born on the 25th January, 1627, and died on the 30th December 1691, made important contributions to experimental chemistry and is known for his ideal-gas law, subsequently termed Boyle's law.

• Boyle was born into an affluent English aristocratic family and received a conventional gentleman's education.

• He became interested in medicine and the new science of Galileo and studied chemistry.

• Boyle was a founder and an influential fellow of the royal society, was continuously active in scientific affairs, and wrote prolifically on science, philosophy, and theology.

• Boyle's earliest publication was on the physical properties of air, from which he derived his law that the volume of a given amount of a gas varies inversely with pressure.

• His work in chemistry was aimed at establishing it as a rational theoretical science on the basis of a mechanistic theory of matter.

• Boyle was a skillful experimenter who insisted that experimentation was an essential part of scientific proof, an approach that influenced Sir Isaac Newton and the methodology of many later scientists.

Antoine Laurent Lavoisier

• The French chemist Antoine Laurent Lavoisier, was born on 26th August 1743, died on the 8th. May 1794, was the founder of modern chemistry. Although he discovered no new substances and devised few new preparations, he described his experiments and synthesised chemical knowledge in his revolutionary textbook Elements of Chemistry in 1789 with the English translation in 1790. In this textbook he presented a new system of chemistry that was based on an essentially modern concept of chemical elements and that made extensive use of the conservation of mass in chemical reactions. Formerly chemical theory had been based on either three or four elements, and negative mass was considered a possibility by some chemists.

• Lavoisier demonstrated experimentally that Oxygen gas in the air is involved in combustion, calcination (rusting), and respiration, thus disproving Georg stahl's phlogiston theory. The basic principles of the new nomenclature devised in collaboration with Claude Louis berthollet, Antoine de fourcroy, and Guyton de Morveau, are still used. Among Lavoisier's major mistakes were the exaggerated importance he ascribed to the role of Oxygen in acids and the inclusion of a weightless "heat substance" in his list of chemical elements.

• Lavoisier's interest in science was developed during his education 1754-1761 at the College Mazarin, where he studied mathematics, astronomy, chemistry, and botany, and during a period 1761-1764 of legal studies (which was a family tradition). When he listened to lectures on geology by Jean Etienne Guettard (1715-1786) and on chemistry by Guillaume Francois Rouelle (1703-1770), both members of the Academie Royale des Sciences. Lavoisier then worked for Guettard for 3 years, collecting details for a geologic map of France and participating in a geological survey in 1767 of Alsace and Lorraine.

• His first paper in 1764 on chemistry dealt with the properties of gypsum and the settling of plaster of Paris. Another early essay, on the problem of lighting the streets of cities and large towns, was awarded a Gold medal by the king of France.

• Lavoisier was elected to the Academy of Sciences in 1768, the same year that he entered the Ferme Generale, a private firm that collected certain taxes for the government. He served between 1775 and 1791 on the Royal Gunpowder Administration and became a director of the Discount Bank and an administrator of the national treasury. During the period of the French Revolution Lavoisier served as an alternate deputy for the nobility he had inherited a purchased title from his father in 1775 at the meeting of the Estates General published reports on the state of French finances and on French agricultural resources. Drafted with others a scheme for reforming the French educational system and participated with other Academy members in establishing the metric system of weights and measures. Nevertheless, Lavoisier, a moderate constitutionalist, was subjected to attacks by radicals, such as Jean Paul Marat, and his involvement with the unpopular Ferme Generale led to his execution by guillotine during the Reign of Terror.

Jons Jakob Berzelius

• The Swedish chemist Jons Jakob Berzelius, was born on the 20th August 1779, died on the 7th August 1848.

• Jons was one of the dominant figures in chemistry during the first half of the 19th century.

• His textbook, his system of chemical symbols, his dualistic electrochemical theory, his yearly review of chemical progress from 1821 to 1848, and his compilation of the first reasonably accurate atomic weight table, made him the ultimate chemical authority of his times.

• He introduced the use of filter paper into analytical chemistry and discovered several elements including Selenium in 1818, Silicon in about 1824, and Thorium in 1829.

• He introduced many terms used in chemistry today; his increasingly entrenched scientific conservatism in later life impeded progress, however.

David Alter

• The American physician, inventor, and physicist David Alter was Born on 3rd. December 1807 and died on 18th. September1881, pointed out in 1854 and also in 1855 that each chemical element has a characteristic spectrum and that the elements present in astronomical bodies could be ascertained through spectral analysis.

• In this he anticipated the work of Gustav Kirchhoff and Robert Bunsen, who, in 1859, put spectroscopy on a firm scientific foundation.

Antoine Henri Becquerel

• The French physicist Antoine Henri Becquerel was on born 15th. December 1852 and died on 25th. August 1908, he is known for his discovery of radioactivity in 1896, for which he shared the 1903 Nobel Prize for physics with Marie and Pierre Curie.

• Among a variety of luminescent crystals, Becquerel found that only those containing Uranium emitted radiation naturally.

• This significant discovery opened the way to nuclear physics. He subsequently discovered that the radiations of Radium comprise electrons, and he was the first to supply experimental evidence of the phenomenon of radioactive transformation.

• He was elected to the Academy of Sciences in 1889 and appointed professor of physics at the Museum of Natural History in 1892 and the Ecole Polytechnique in 1895.

Frederick Soddy

• The British physicist Frederick Soddy was born on 2nd. September 1877 and died on 22nd. September 1956, received in 1921 the Nobel Prize for chemistry for the conception of isotopes and the displacement law of radioactive change.

• With Ernest Rutherford he developed the disintegration theory of radioactivity, which explained radioactivity as the decay of atoms to form other elements.

• Soddy proposed the isotope concept that atoms could have the same chemical identity but different atomic weights.

• His displacement law of radioactive change suggests that an element emitting an alpha particle becomes a new element with a lower atomic number, whereas emission of a beta particle raises the element's atomic number.

Theodore William Richards

• The American chemist Theodore William Richards, born in Germantown, Pa. on the 31st January. 1868, died on 2nd. April 1928, was recognised during his lifetime as the leading authority in atomic-weight determinations.

• A Harvard University graduate, he served as full professor at Harvard from 1901 to 1928. Using superior gravimetric methods and applying physicochemical principles, he determined the atomic weights of a large number of elements with an accuracy never surpassed.

• His detection of the varying atomic weight of lead in 1913 coincided with the discovery of isotopes by Frederick Soddy.

• Richards was awarded the 1914 Nobel Prize for chemistry for his work.

Francis William Aston

• The English physicist and chemist Francis William Aston, was born on 1st. September 1877, and died on 20th. November 1945, discovered in 1919 that stable elements of low atomic weight are mixtures of isotopes.

• Using a mass spectrograph, which he developed while working with Sir Joseph John Thomson in Cambridge, and for which he received the 1922 Nobel Prize for chemistry.

• Aston also found that the masses of most atoms could be expressed as whole numbers when compared with Oxygen (Which has a mass of 16).

• With a more accurate spectrograph, however, Aston detected in 1927 a slight deviation from this whole-number rule.

• By graphing an index of the deviation also called the packing fraction against the closest whole-number mass of an element, Aston derived important information concerning its structure and stability.

William Ramsay

• William Ramsay was born in 1852 and died in 1916

• British chemist, born in Glasgow, Scotland professor Bristol University 1880-87, University of London 1887-1913.

• William Ramsay was the discoverer of Helium, Neon, Krypton, Xenon which are all inert gases.

• Co-discoverer of argon; research in radioactivity led to new theory of transmutation of elements; knighted 1902

• He received in 1904 the Nobel Prize for chemistry.

Morris William Travers

• Travers was born in 1872 and died in 1961.

• Travers was an English chemist, born in London.

• Travers was a co-discoverer with William Ramsay of Neon, Krypton, and Xenon and was an authority on glass technology.

Gustav Robert Kirchhoff

• Born 1824 died in 1887

• German physicist, born in Konigsberg, East Prussia (now Kaliningrad, Russia)

• Developed spectrum analysis and discovered cesium and Rubidium with Bunsen

• Explained the Fraunhofer lines; professor of physics at Heidelberg 1854-1874, at Berlin in 1874-1887

Joseph Norman Lockyer

• Born 1836 died in 1920

• British astronomer and physicist, born in Rugby, England

• Lockyer was a Pioneer in application of the spectroscope to sun and stars.

• Explained sunspots between 1870 and 1905 and conducted eight British expeditions for observing total solar eclipses.

Pierre Jules-Cesar Janssen

• Born 1824 died in 1907

• French astronomer, born in Paris France

• Discoverer of Helium in the Sun.

• Founded and directed an observatory on Mont Blanc 1893.