An Age of Magic

New roof up and going.

Finally. After almost a whole year we have our new roof on the kitchen and no longer have to empty buckets after a rainy night. I have to say that the builders certainly worked fast too; the day after they completed the work we had a very heavy snowfall which would have been a disaster had the roof not been fixed.

There was one hiatus when the guys had to go seeking electrical supplies as they also had to replace two large fluoro light fittings but they said it would take them five days to complete and they were bang on target. We are still to get the other last part of the work done and that is an insurance job so it remains to be seen if that can be completed in equal efficiency. Nevertheless, the xmas dinner went off well enough using just a convection/ microwave – but it will be lovely to have a proper cooker going once again.

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Ready, aim, fire!

Earth could be in peril from a large asteroid and a spacecraft may be needed to knock it off its path, the head of Russia’s space agency claimed today. Anatoly Perminov said the space agency will soon hold a meeting to assess a mission to Apophis, in a bid to stave off the end of the world. He told Golos Rossii radio that it would invite Nasa, the European Space Agency, the Chinese space agency and others to join the project once it is finalised.

The news may come as something of a surprise to the U.S space agency, who down-scaled the threat of the 885ft rock hitting Earth in 2029 from one in 37 to virtually non existent. Nasa predicts the asteroid will peacefully pass us by, coming no nearer than 18,000miles away. There is a tiny possibility that Apophis could hit Earth in 2035 however, although again the odds of this happening have been lowered from 1 in 45,000 to 1 in 250,000.

Scientists have long theorised about asteroid deflection strategies. Some have proposed sending a probe to circle around a dangerous asteroid to gradually change its trajectory. Others suggested sending a spacecraft to collide with the asteroid and alter its momentum, or using nuclear weapons to hit it.

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My new computer santa brought me!

Santa brought me a new laptop in my xmas stocking – such a thoughtful guy he is. Actually I was thinking about getting a new updated version in the coming year but a few hints dropped here and there seemed to do the job nicely. I don’t often get results when I drop hints but it worked in this case!

I have been busy doing all the things you do when setting up a new PC – important things like effective online backup and transferring my old data to this new machine. So far so good and I am having to get used to Vista – I was using Ubuntu before and quite liked it so I might run with the both options this time.

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