#

this is an experiment- my other post about gamma rays has had an enormous amount of hits.

If you want to know about gamma rays go find my other post on them =]

What does it mean though?

1)  We won’t be on earth by then-we’ll be on OGLE-2005-BLG-390Lb

2) Even if we are still living on Earth it won’t matter because the Moon is moving away from us so we’ll all be dead by then.

My rebuttal:

1)No we won’t-firstly because this newly discovered planet is around 21,000 light years away….so if we could travel the speed of light we’d need to sustain ourselves for 20,000 years in order to survive long enough to get there. 2012 is just under 3 years away, so we have that long to prepare ourselves for that..secondly the temperature of the planet is thought to be around -220C.

To top it off nicely: there is a chance that what is thought to be its Red Dwarf star could be a black hole.

2) It is true that the moon is getting further away from the earth, but only a few centimeters per year, and so won’t have any noticeable effect in a long time, and definitely not before 2012.

The most common of these tests is the CAPTCHA test-where users are asked to enter characters as they appear in a box on their screen. programmers of spam bots have been able to overcome these tests of recent though and the designers of CAPTCHAs have upped the ante. The letters are blurred, the colours clash aggressively on the eye and the font size is often unreadable. I am confident that anyone who has registered for a facebook account, started a betfair problem or run a wordpress blog will share in a sense of frustration on seeing the box containing a jumble of letters often overlapping. It usually takes about three goes to enter the letters correctly, and leaves the user thinking that perhaps their human brain isn’t perceptive enough to pass this test designed to fool a basic computer programme. But as it seems now it is not the computer user who is becoming more dim-witted, but the spam bots that are becoming more intelligent (in an artificial way of course). On the New Scientist website there is a story about hackers developing their spam bots to new levels to clear the hurdles set by the companies designing the security tests. The site also made the link between this sort of menial task and the development of artificial intelligence as mentioned before. I understand that for a computer to solve this sort of problem independently is artificial intelligence on some sort of level- but I don’t think that spammers will ultimately be essential in the development of AI. Maybe the person who came up with this link had a particular hatred for spam, and wanted to shed a positive light on the evil spammers (which they would hate) “ha, you may be able to spam my website-but you’re solving AI problems for free”.

Making full use of the problem solving abilities of the spammers is high on the agenda of a few powerful internet moguls- researchers from Google will be presenting a new type of security test at the  International World Wide Web Conference (WWW2009) in Madrid this week. The test involves rotating images the correct way up to prove you aren’t a spam robot- no doubt they won’t be pictures of tress or cars, but more likely obscure cloud formations and star consolations-the upwards direction of each image being ambiguous and taking a fair bit of real intelligence to establish. With this sort of high-tech security test penis-enlarging emails are a thing of the past. I’ll have to google to find my supplies then.

I’ve done a few phone interviews in the studio now, and have arranged some interviews over the phone for the next few days. I’ve been writing cues and stories for the website, as well as editing audio from vox’s and interviews for bulletins and editing full length versions for the website. 

It’s a great buzz having something I’ve written read out on the bulletins or being put up on the website, and the working Journalist at the station is a great help in giving me feedback on everything I write.

I’m well tired though and the part of my brain that makes words come out is dead.

Laser fusion could potentially put an end to all energy problems and provide a sustainable source of clean energy.

Laser fusion is where a small amount of hydrogen is exposed to extreme conditions and the hydrogen atoms fuse together, giving off large amounts of energy.

Scientists are gearing up to start experiments in laser fusion in early 2010 at the National Ignition Facility in California. The first experiment to be carried out is to have a huge laser fired into a gold can the size of a rubber on the end of a pencil, which will contain the hydrogen. The laser being fired at the Hydrogen will reach 500 terrawatts in a fraction of a second, and be directed onto the Hydrogen through two holes on either side of the can. The reaction caused when the Hydrogen reaches  over a million degrees in a billionth of a second is the same as the process occurring inside our sun and other stars. The amount of energy produced by the laster is more than the energy produced by the whole of the USA at any one time. So unless the results are fruit-full, it seems an awful waste of energy..

So after a suitable amount of blank space to build anticipation I can tell you that Conor Oberst’s new album has leaked. I would hope that anyone reading who didn’t already know that has now opened a new tab and started searching for the download. 

I haven’t listened to the album yet, but in much the same way as I approach the topic of my birthday, I am anxiously holding back my excitement about listening to it. Conors first Mystic Valley band album was good, very good indeed-but it was no Bright Eyes. And after having been told by a friend that there are rumours on the internet (where else?) of Bright Eyes not playing anymore live shows, I am concerned that Mystic Valley band will be the only source of Oberst material. And the company of the Mystic Valley band doesn’t seem to be contributing well to the side of Conor us die hard Bright Eyes fans like to see-he now looks happy, has a beard and wears cowboy boots as the friend who spoke of the rumour pointed out. He even used the word sellout .  At the risk of sounding sadistic and wishing bad things on people, I think that what Conor really needs is  another relapse, perhaps someone with a big of money could be him a gram or two of cocaine? Or maybe go to one of his gigs and crush a few pills into his beer? Just a thought…..

Ok so I watched the first Zeitgeist about 4 months ago give or take, and was largely unimpressed. The facts Alex Jones points to are convincing yes, though as a piece of Journalism it couldn’t be any less balanced. The Government are evil, money is evil and religion causes nothing but hurt and restriction. According to the film I mean. This last point in particular I have always been very scathing on-if I don’t like milk in my tea, it doesn’t mean I should go around convincing other people that having milk in your tea is wrong, and that my preference or belief is correct over theirs. Faith is a personal thing and I have no time for anyone who tries in any way to enforce their personal beliefs on religion on others. So I was slightly taken aback when the first 20 or so minutes of zeitgeist was a whitewash slating of all religions. After moving on past this section though I got along quite well with it, and found the terrifying (possible) coincidences in government policies sighted by Jones intriguing, and was also fascinated with the 9/11 part of the documentary. So after a long long time of watching the documentary and being brainwashed into a left wing political standing I was expecting some sort of solution. What do we do!?!? I thought-there must be some sort of solution to be offered by the omniscient Alex Jones! Right? No. The power of love will overcome or some other sort of vague notion was the Jerry Springer style final thought. So with a bitter taste of dissatisfaction left in my mouth I returned to my life and became accustomed to capitalism and generally being a mass consumer. My new found left wing policies would soon be forgotten after buying a new iPod or something. 

So when my housemate started raving on about a new Zeitgeist I was reluctant to watch it to say the very least. the very very least. I was so critical of the newly titled ‘propaganda brainwashing info wars bullshit’ that it was borderline horrid. I felt a tension in the room when I walked into a conversation on the film. Everyone knew what I thought about it and no one cared anymore. 

So it went on this way for a few weeks, but yesterday I watched it (or three quarters of it-I had work) and up until part 8/14 on youtube I was a changed man. Jones seems to have backed up his claims this time and the scaremongering is even more effective for it.However, as I said just now I became disillusioned at around halfway through the documentary, when a doctor (pseudo-doctor perhaps? what are his qualifications? who does he work for?-Jones speaks of how it’s absurd that no one questions where money comes from-where do his ‘experts’ come from??) started talking about ‘The Venus Project’. Now this is where I want to be very clear- I do not necessarily believe that this is a cult-I am merely saying that there is a definite possibility that all of the scare tactics and fear stirred up by the two films could have been to ready people to look for somewhere to turn to for a solution, and to make them more susceptible to recruitment techniques used by the possible cult. As I said before I don’t think it is a cult, in fact I hope that it is not, and that it genuinely is an attempt to better the world and make technology readily available to everyone and to share out equally the world’s resources. I’m just wary that’s all. But yeah before I pass final judgement on whether or not it is a cult I will have to watch the rest of the documentary and then read more about the project on their website. Either way though I think anyone who is aware of their surroundings in the slightest or anyone who is interested in current affairs or conspiracy theories should check both Zeitgeists out, their very enthralling and keep you hooked, if not slightly paranoid. 

The part about the economic hit men was particularly good (are they the basis for John Cusack’s character in War inc.?)

I really want to master the art of premiere pro. Filing and editing the football packages will undoubtedly help me on my way to this new level of mastery, though I am begining to become frustrated at the level of technology that is available at student budget. It is clear as everyone knows that the technology/computing market is being held back so as to maximise profit at each stage of development before reaching the fastest computer for the lowest price. My current laptop simply can’t handle premier pro, and I despise sitting in the multimedia centre for any length of time on my own, especially when film+cinema technology students insist on playing soul-ja boy through the computer speakers. And so for purely selfish reasons I truly wish that I could buy a decent laptop, capable of handling all adobe programmes for a reasonable price. Another concern of mine is for the time when we do all graduate, and we are plumeted into a situation where we have no editing software, let alone hardware capable of running said software. And so I have come to the conclusion that I need to start organising a setup where I can edit from home. First off I started looking at tape decks like the ones in the MMC, and discovered that £1000 is cheap for one which plays only mini dv tapes (which is all I need it to play, but it would be nice to have some extra features even if I never use them). So that was scratched as shrot of blowing my whole loan on that there is no way of getting a tape deck. Second option was to steal one from the MMC, but I quickly remembered that theyre bolted to the desks. So I went about researching other ways of importing from tape to PC/Mac and it turns out that you can use the camera itself as a deck, and connect it to the computer using a firewire cable, which costs around 90p on ebay. So celebrations ensue as I realise that yes, if I can manage to aquire a compute capable of running adobe products, then I will be able to edit from home!

So, I have phone my mum and told her to download premiere pro trial onto her mac., and if it works I will be borrowing the mac for an extended period of time. (she has a laptop anyway)