Off Topic The "That's interesting"/geek thread

So onto [2] Cabin luggage:

I have yet to find a piece of cabin luggage for (say) a European city break or business trip that has been designed by an actual user, addressing the practical and functional needs, as well as being robust, secure and (let’s face it, it’s a factor) stylish.

Capacity-wise, of course, we are all constrained by the size regulations imposed by the airlines, so you would expect all manufacturers to have nailed that particular aspect. Let’s take that as a given.

There are a few stylish ones about. I personally favour the hardcase, mini-suitcase type solution over the fabric/hold-all style. I do like an extendable handle and a wheel or two, but most designers can’t seem to get past building the casing for the handle and wheels inside the case, thus compromising on the inner capacity. I’d have thought it possible to overcome this quite easily, but have yet to see a product that does properly.

My biggest bugbear, however, is the lack of practicality. Most travellers (I’ll wager) do not want to fill their pockets with their passport, wallet, coins, keys, boarding passes, phones, reading material (for the flight) etc., but will need to be able to easily access these things during check-in, security, passport control or during the flight.

With a suitcase-type item, this means the palaver of unzipping the whole case somewhere. What is needed is a reasonably secure side-pocket type storage vessel or two that doesn’t compromise the overall look of the product. It also needs to be of a sufficient size to store that ghastly polythene bag we need to carry our toothbrush, Anusol and Viagra in because of course we now have to show the world our bathroom habits before boarding a flight too.

I’d welcome suggestions as to what you believe constitutes the ideal cabin bag, please.

To compensate I am currently embarrassing myself with one of these babies:

 

Another subject dear to my heart, and one with which I have spent decades struggling with and trying different combinations.

I actively hate (not a word I use lightly) the on board scrum as people try to wedge their roll on mini suitcases into the overhead bins. How some of them are allowed on in the first place is beyond me. So when travelling for work, with a small suitcase (I just got a pretty cheap one from Debenhams, brightly coloured so easily identifiable, all functions ok and has a travel security approved lock ie the security people can open it) I check the bag in and wait for it on the carousel. My time is not valuable, if it’s work. Added advantage of not mucking around with liquids, as they are checked in. I carry on a bag/briefcase (preferred model battered soft leather, but it disintegrated) with the stuff I want to play with, documents etc. And put it under the seat in front of me. Those lap top back packs are practical, but really not appropriate for a man of my bearing and maturity.

On internal US flights you can drop your little suitcase at the gate and pick it up at the gate when you get off, which is great, though loads of people still try to cram an oversized bag into an unfeasibly small space for some reason and delay everyone as their bag has to be taken off the flight and put in the hold.

When paying for myself, on a cheap airline which charges for checked bags, I join the scrum because I am mean, but often cough up the extra for a seat of my choice and early boarding to ease the pain. I like the look of those leather weekend bags (which do have handy pockets) soft enough to wedge into a small space, but they don’t have wheels, might be a pain to lug around.

What the **** is that thing in the picture?

 

Mont Blanc make a nice case arrangement where there is an attache type case that fits onto the handle of their flight case. It seems well made but will probably cost in excess of a grand which is a lot for what it is. I have a Porsche design flightcase which has a nice front opening part. It was a gift some years ago and is still in good serviceable condition. I suspect they still make something similar. I think Tumi make some good stuff too.

 

Do we all get an invite? Which one of you will be the bride?

 

This could be an interesting event to follow for all aged fans of Lost in Space, Space 1999 and Star Trek

https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-45363130

Hayabusa-2: Japan sets date for spacecraft's asteroid touchdown

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Image copyrightJAXA, UNI TOKYO & COLLABORATORS
Image captionHayabusa-2 arrived at the asteroid 162173 Ryugu in June
The Japanese space agency has set dates for its historic plan to explore the surface of an asteroid with robots.

The Hayabusa-2 spacecraft reached the asteroid Ryugu in June this year after a three-and-a-half-year journey to the spinning top-shaped space rock.

Officials have picked days in September and October for the deployment of separate robotic landing craft from the Hayabusa-2 "mothership".

The robots will be despatched to separate locations on the asteroid.

If all goes well, Hayabusa-2 will be the first spacecraft to successfully deploy landers to gather data from the surface of an asteroid.

The 1km-wide space rock known formally as 162173 Ryugu belongs to a particularly primitive type of asteroid, and is therefore a relic left over from the early days of our Solar System. Studying it could shed light on the origin and evolution of our own planet.

Hayabusa-2 was launched from the Tanegashima Launch Center in far southern Japan on 3 December 2014. It has been carrying several science instrument payloads for release on to the surface of its target, Ryugu.

On 21 September, it will despatch the first of these piggybacked packages. A 3.3kg container known as Minerva II-1, which is mounted on the spacecraft, will deploy two robots known as Rover 1A and Rover 1B.

The 1kg "rovers" will actually move by hopping under the asteroid's low gravity. Each one contains a motor-powered internal mass that rotates to generate force, propelling the robot across the surface.

The rovers are equipped with wide-angle and stereo cameras to send back pictures from Ryugu.

Then, on 3 October, the mothership will deploy a lander called Mascot, which has been developed by the German Aerospace Center (DLR) in conjunction with the French Space Agency (CNES).

There is much more to read in the link. Have fun!

 

The article mentions the NASA "OSIRIS-REx" mission to Bennu, which is a local asteroid.

The key dates are:
- launched: 2016
- landing on Bennu: 2018
- return to Earth: 2023

But take a look at the wealth of data on the NASA website for the mission - it is worth it!

https://www.nasa.gov/osiris-rex

 

If you get fed up of the R's, you can always sign up to go to the "Lunar Outpost" or even Mars.

This is a great site to navigate:
ps://www.nasa.gov/topics/moon-to-mars/lunar-outpost

An intesting video of the Orion spacecraft:
ps://www.nasa.gov/topics/moon-to-mars/lunar-outpost

Plus this is latest news report from Mars:

 

It’s a sort of manbag holster thing. Better than a bumbag. Quite handy but could be better designed in terms of the materials used. Not everyone’s cup of char, but I found very useful on our holidays this year for easy access to boarding passes, passports, tucking your phone & bling away for the security scanners etc.

 

Beware of more extreme weather patterns this winter and next year..

New El Niño weather event likely this winter says WMO

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-45471409

 

I'm a bit of a map-geek - used to do a lot of hillwalking and climbing in my younger years so found this interesting....


UK’s worst-selling map: The empty landscape charted by OS440
Golden eagles, leaping salmon and the rugged beauty of Scotland’s Glen Cassley appear to leave tourists cold – they’re missing a treat

Robin McKie Observer science correspondent

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A single Scots pine grows from a boulder standing in the middle of Achness waterfall in Glen Cassley in the Highlands. It is a striking sight. Isolated in the fiercely flowing river Cassley, the tree towers above a long stretch of rocks swept by torrents of water. Salmon leap upriver in summer while golden eagles swoop overhead. It is an image of Scotland at its glorious, scenic best and would be expected to attract tourists in their droves. But in Glen Cassley, 50 miles north of Inverness, visitors are conspicuous by their absence.

Indeed, according to the Ordnance Survey, its map of Glen Cassley is the least purchased item in the entire OS Explorer map series. “Getting up there is only for the more hardy of us, perhaps, but it is still not clear why the map should be so unpopular,” said Nick Giles, the managing director of Ordnance Survey Consumer.

The Ordnance Survey now sells 1.7m paper maps a year (an increase on previous years) but is coy about sales of individual maps “for reasons of commercial sensitivity”. However, it recently revealed that its most popular map – Explorer OL17 of Snowdonia and Conwy Valley – sells about 180 times more copies than its worst seller, Explorer map 440: Glen Cassley and Glen Oykel. In other words, for every person who uses a map to explore the waterfalls and moorland of these two glens, there are 180 who would rather make the most of the crags and tracks of Snowdonia.

Certainly some of this disparity can be blamed on remoteness. Glasgow is more than 200 miles to the south. Nevertheless, the area still seems curiously unloved even closer to home.

Inverness tourism office had stackloads of local Explorer maps during my visit – with one exception, map 440. Similarly, the WH Smith nearby also had shelves groaning with cartographic offerings but only one of Glen Cassley. This may not be the map that time forgot, but it is not far off.

“Essentially we are dealing with the least populated place in Britain,” said Dave Robertson, an OS surveyor for the Highlands. “There are a few dozen houses inside the land covered by map 440 but many of these are only sporadically inhabited holiday homes or shooting lodges.”

Robertson estimates that there are fewer than a couple of hundred people living in the 826 square kilometres covered by map 440. “By contrast, there are other OS Explorer maps which cover areas with millions of inhabitants,” he added. “Essentially the Glen Cassley area is an empty zone.”

It is Robertson’s job to update OS maps when new roads are built, mobile phone masts put up, houses constructed or wind farms erected on hill tops.

Mapping these features was once a laborious process involving theodolites and other instruments but has been transformed by digital technology. Now Robertson uses a two-metre pole – known as a Global Navigation Satellite System receiver – that is fitted with GPS sensors. They can pick up a combination of US, Russian and Chinese satellite signals that allow him to pinpoint his position on Earth’s surface with centimetre accuracy.

“You follow the line of the road or track you that are mapping and the GPS receivers marks your route on your laptop. Then you record what the surface is made of – grass, or tarmac, or soil.” All that information is recorded and is then used to generate a new map of the area. It is a constant business even in the Highlands. Or at least in most parts.

“The one exception to all that activity is Glen Cassley,” said Robertson. “I have very little to do there. It doesn’t change and nothing much happens there to require new mapping.” That lack of activity and isolation gives the area its grand, bleak beauty. There are no villages within its borders, and only a handful of farms, a couple of hotels, and a few roads, nearly all of them single track. By contrast, there are acres of blanket bog covered with blaeberries (bilberries), heather, bog cotton, tormentil and an exotic range of fungi including the purple amethyst deceiver.

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Robin McKie, right, with Dave Robertson of the Ordnance Survey in Glen Cassley. Photograph: Robin McKie for the Observer
Some of Scotland’s finest fishing rivers cut through this boggy land and there are stunning waterfalls and salmon leaps. Bird life includes buzzards, stonechats and an occasional golden eagle.

On my visit last week, Dave Robertson and I strolled through these wonders that were only intermittently blighted by rain or midges. We met only one set of fellow walkers – who looked aghast when I explained that I would be writing about the region. “Please don’t let everyone else know about this place,” they pleaded.

In fact, the Ordnance Survey says it is very keen to get more and more people to know about lost national treasures such as Glen Cassley. At the end of this month, on Sunday 30 September, the OS will be promoting National GetOutside Day when it hopes to get as many as a million people to take trips, walk and enjoy the outdoors. Thousands of routes around Britain will be promoted in the process.

“Once people realise what is on offer in places like Glen Cassley, they could make a lot of difference,” said Giles. “Certainly, it would be good if we could get Glen Cassley off the bottom of this year’s sales charts though that would only mean we would have to try to do the same for the current second bottom selling map – Peterhead and Fraserburgh – next year. And that might be harder.”

Lost and found
The origin of the Ordnance Survey can be traced to the government’s decision to map the Highlands in the wake of the Jacobite rebellion. British troops, in pursuit of the defeated rebels, found they had no proper maps to help them locate their enemies. So the government launched a mapping exercise that produced the first detailed maps of the Highlands and later the rest of the country.

Today the OS has two main series of British maps: the Landranger with red covers and the Explorer with orange covers. The latter are scaled 1:25,000, in which 4cm represent 1 km. Landranger maps at 1:50,000 scale have less detail but more coverage on a single sheet.

The top 10 most popular Explorer maps all cover areas of England and Wales. The 10 least popular all cover areas of Scotland.

The top three are:
OL17 Snowdonia and Conwy Valley.

OL7 the Lake District, South Eastern section.

OL24 the Peak District.

The three least popular are:
OS440 Glen Cassley and Glen Oykel.

OS427 Peterhead and Fraserburgh.

OS333 Kilmarnock and Irvine.

 

A very intersting thread.

There was a brief video about the sun about which I have long had a fascination.
The huge numbers are hard for us to comprehend. I'll just share three aspects.

The mass of the sun is estimated at about 2 x10 to power 30 as opposed to the mass of the earth at approx 6 x 10 to power 24. So the sun has the mass equivalent of approx 333 000 earths.

Every second, the sun 'burns' 600 million tons of hydrogen in nuclear fusion to form helium. That's 4 million tons of matter converted every second which is 2100 billion tons every year!

Every second, the sun emits the energy equivalent of 100 billion 1 megaton hydrogen bombs. Little Boy that levelled Hiroshima was considerably less than 1 megaton.

So next time you're enjoying the rays and working on the tan, take a moment to wonder at the marvel of the sun without which earth would be a frozen wasteland.

 

Technology

BBC solves World Cup streaming delay

• 7 hours ago

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Image copyrightREUTERS
Image captionLive streams of the World Cup online were delayed
The BBC says it has worked out how to eliminate "streaming lag", which causes live TV to be delayed by several seconds when watched online.

Many online viewers of football's World Cup in the summer heard neighbours cheering goals they had not yet seen happen, because the online stream was a few seconds behind the TV broadcast.

BBC Research & Development said it has now managed to "eliminate" the delay.

However, its software is not ready to be rolled out to the public yet.

Live TV watched online is often behind by several seconds because it takes longer to reliably send video over the internet than to broadcast it.

The issue has also affected Amazon's broadcast of the US Open tennis tournament. Analysts say the online stream was often up to 45 seconds behind the TV broadcast.

When video is streamed online it is broken up into small packets, which are reassembled by the recipient's device.

If each segment is very short, processing them becomes inefficient. However, if they are too long, there is more of a delay between the TV broadcast and online stream.

The BBC said it found ways to create smaller segments that can be passed through the system more quickly. It said viewers of the resulting online streams would see action "at the same time as they would see it if they were watching on TV".

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Image copyrightREUTERS
Image captionFrance went on to win the World Cup in 2018
"With sport, it's irritating if you're watching something that is 20 or 40 seconds behind live TV," said Jake Bickerton, technology editor at the industry magazine Broadcast.

"The BBC also did trials at the World Cup streaming 4K [ultra high-definition] HDR content. Not only was there a delay, but consumers had to have really good broadband at home.

"It isn't going to be simple to get something compressed to a point where it can get to viewers at home through broadband very quickly. If the BBC is able to reduce latency, then it's a great thing going forward."

The innovation will be on show at the International Broadcasting Convention, which starts on Thursday in the Netherlands.

However, the BBC said it would need the co-operation of the whole broadcasting industry to get the system up and running.

It suggested the technology may be available by the time of the next World Cup in 2022.

 

I hope they do it for the television game at the end of October

 

ICESat: Space laser to get unprecedented view of Earth's ice

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-45523524

 

Watched this on BBC durimg the week - really interesting...

The Day the Dinosaurs Died: www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b08r3xhf via @bbciplayer

The Day the Dinosaurs Died investigates the greatest vanishing act in the history of our planet - the sudden disappearance of the dinosaurs 66 million years ago.

Experts suspect that the dinosaurs were wiped outafter a city-sized asteroid smashed into the Gulf of Mexico causing a huge crater. But until now, they haven't had any proof. In a world first, evolutionary biologist Ben Garrod joins a multimillion-pound drilling expedition into the exact spot the asteroid hit to get hard evidence of the link. The team overcomes huge obstacles as it attempts to drill 1,500 metres beneath sea level to pull up rock from the Chicxulub crater.

Meanwhile, paleopathologist Professor Alice Roberts travels the globe meeting top scientists and gaining exclusive access to a mass fossil graveyard in New Jersey - believed to date from the same time the asteroid hit. Alice also treks by horseback across the remote plains of Patagonia, to see if the effects of the asteroid impact could have wiped out dinosaurs across the world - almost immediately.

Alice and Ben's investigations reveal startling new evidence of a link between the asteroid and the death of the dinosaurs, presenting a vivid picture of the most dramatic 24 hours in our planet's history. They illustrate what happened in the seconds and hours after the impact, revealing that had the huge asteroid struck the Earth a moment earlier, or later, the destruction might not have been total for the dinosaurs. And if they still roamed the world, we humans may never have come to rule the planet.

 

Anyone for a 13,000 year old pint?

'World's oldest brewery' found in cave in Israel, say researchers

• 15 September 2018

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Image copyrightDANI NADEL/AFP/GETTY
Image captionArchaeologists were looking for evidence of plant foods when they discovered the alcohol traces
Researchers say they have found the world's oldest brewery, with residue of 13,000-year-old beer, in a prehistoric cave near Haifa in Israel.

The discovery was made while they were studying a burial site for semi-nomadic hunter-gatherers.

Brewing beer was thought to go back 5,000 years, but the latest discovery may turn beer history on its head.

The findings also suggest beer was not necessarily a side product of making bread as previously thought.

The researchers say they cannot tell which came first, and in October's issue of the Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports, they suggest the beer was brewed for ritual feasts to honour the dead.

"This accounts for the oldest record of man-made alcohol in the world," Li Liu, a Stanford University professor who led the research team, told Stanford News.

• Oldest evidence of bread discovered
• Cheese discovered in Ancient Egypt tomb
• Prehistoric Europeans spiced food

Ms Liu said they were looking for clues into what plant foods the Natufian people - who lived between the Paleolithic and Neolithic periods - were eating, and during the search they discovered the traces of a wheat-and-barley-based alcohol.

The traces analysed were found in stone mortars - up to 60cm (24in) deep - carved into the cave floor, used for storing, pounding and cooking different species of plants, including oats, legumes and bast fibres, such as flax.

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Image copyrightDANI NADEL/AFP
Image captionBedrock mortars were found at Raqefet cave in the Carmel Mountains, northern Israel
The ancient brew, which was more porridge or gruel-like, is thought to have looked quite unlike what we know as beer today.

The research team has managed to recreate the ancient brew to compare it with the residue they found.

This involved first germinating the grain to produce malt, then heating the mash and fermenting it with wild yeast, the study said.

The ancient booze was fermented but probably weaker than modern beer.

 

Weaker than modern beer
So it's Budweiser then

 

I would love to make this journey. To be honest, to see the spherical earth from orbit would be enough for me. However,to have the opportunity to orbit the moon itself must be an amazing experience.

Elon Musk unveils first tourist for SpaceX 'Moon loop'.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-45550755

 

I don't understand how some random fashion bloke can get to go to the moon. Surely an astronaut is a highly trained, ex fighter pilot etc etc. Even assuming this fella is 'just' a passenger, there must be some serious training required. Just all a bit weird.

 

It seems that the commercialisation of space is ongoing and "space tourism" is fast becomming a reality.

I have not yet analysed or studied (ok - "googled") the envisaged "space-craft", but from the artists sketch it seems it may be a recyclable "shuttle-type" craft which will probably be launched by reusable propulsion rockets. It will be a very different set-up from the massive Saturn V rockets of the Apollo programme. The activity of this "astronaut" will be confined to being a a simple "passanger" as on a plane.

I am sure that it will become a reality. The only question is 'when" and it may be sooner than we expect.