Lost In a Book

I was, as usual, reading on the train to work this morning.  (This book if you're interested.) I was dragged rudely back to reality by an unpleasantly cold draft drifting across my legs.  Looking up to find out where it came from, I was surprised to discover that the train was at Waterloo and everyone else had already got off.  Good job it's winter or I might have ended up going back the way I came.

Mnemonic Fail

Like many people I sometimes forget people's names.  Particularly if they are names I've never heard before or I've never seen them written down.  There are a couple of people at my fencing club who's names I just kept forgetting, week after week.  After the third or fourth time it becomes a little embarrassing to ask them what their name is yet again.  So, I decided to use a mnemonic technique where I tried to remember their name by associating it with something unusual that was quite like the sound.  Unfortunately, there are now two people at my fencing club who I know for a fact are not called Arachnid and Camel. 

It is of course entirely possible that my lack of success with this technique was caused by me remembering it wrong.  Oh the irony.

I Am The Law

The End Of The Word Is Nigh

But interestingly only if the word is "anigh" which is so archaic as to be almost not a word anymore.  I suppose you could say the end of "nigh" is also "nigh" but that's cheating as far as I'm concerned since it's also the start and the middle and saying "The End of the Word and also the start and middle of the Word is Nigh, because the Word is in fact Nigh" doesn't quite have the same ring to it.

In case you're wondering, I saw a typo on a website, it should have been World of course, but it did set me thinking - off the top of my head I couldn't think of any words ending in nigh at all.  Even a bit of light Googling only turned up one, although it is used in Lord of the Rings apparently so technically it is still in use, even if I have no recollection of it at all.

Carry on.

I'd Like My Toast...

...3 1/2 colour please.

Spotted the Station!

I've been subscribing to NASA's "Spot the Station" mailing list ever since I was gazing out of the window and thought I may well have seen it go over.  I did look it up at shortly after on the excellent ISS Tracker site and was moderately convinced it was indeed the ISS, however it travels so fast relative to the Earth that unless you know the precise time you saw it, you may as well not bother.  Even being out by as little as a few minutes can mean it was actually somewhere over Africa instead and what you saw was a plane (or some kind of UFO*.)  So I decided to take a more proactive approach and actively look for it going over.  Annoyingly though after months of getting emails from NASA telling me it would be going over at stupid o'clock in the morning or suffering the usual British astronomy curse of thick clouds when it was traversing at a more civilised hour, I still hadn't managed to catch even a glimpse of it.  Last week though everything fell into place when I got this:

SpotTheStation! Time: Thu Jan 17 7:26 AM, Visible: 3 min, Max Height: 70 degrees, Appears: W, Disappears: WNWSpotTheStation! Time: Thu Jan 17 7:26 AM, Visible: 3 min, Max Height: 70 degrees, Appears: W, Disappears: WNW

I was actually awake (because after getting up for astronomical events on spec many times and seeing a dark sky I've given up on just hoping the sky will be clear and setting an alarm) and although there was some cloud, it was patchy enough that I could see at least some of the sky some of the time.  It was quite impressive too, a bright star racing across the sky.  

I've not had an amazing success rate, but I am hoping to see it a few more times in the coming year.

* In the literal sense that it is Unidentified, not an alien space craft.

Don't Eat It!

I was helping my little girl make a snowman in the back garden, when she came running up to me very excitedly with a spade in her hand. "I've found some yellow snow for the snowman!" She exclaimed.

I carefully took the spade out of her hand and disposed of the offending material. No idea where it came from. Not sure I want to know.