When I heard that the road outside our house was going to be closed for a go-kart race, I was picturing loads of very noisy karts snarling past. Frankly, I was congratulating myself that it was due to finish at 7pm. One year the regular rally went on until midnight, and the noise drove me crazy. But this was great – motorless karts rolling down the hill, some cheap and…
Happy 30th birthday to the Observatory
Happy 30th birthday to the Observatory at the Roque de Los Muchachos! The official inauguration was in 1985, attended by the royalty from Denmark, Holland, Spain, Sweden and the United Kingdom, and heads of state of Germany and Ireland. At that time there were only six telescopes on La Palma; now there are 17 of them. To celebrate, the Canarian Astrophysics Institute has a free exhibition in Santa Cruz…
My Amazon author’s page
I was preparing a non-fiction query, and one of my writing friends said I ought to include my Amazon author page. So I went to get the link and realised that it was ridiculously out of date. So that was the next half hour or so taken care of while I updated it. In the process, I got a lovely surprise. I finally have some reviews. There’s one for “The…
The science of eclipses
In the early hours of September 28th there will be a particularly spectacular lunar eclipse when the moon will be 10% closer to the Earth and larger than usual – a super moon, in fact. A lunar eclipse happens when the Sun, Earth and Moon are in a straight line, so that the moon passes through the Earth’s shadow. If you were standing on the moon when this happened, you’d…
Thirsty Ravens
After tour guiding yesterday I went up to the Roque hoping for a chat with the ravens. They turned up all right, but they didn’t seem as interested as usual in the biscuits on offer. It turned out that they were really thirsty. I was rather surprised, because birds have such good kidneys that they need very little water. In any case, there’s a water tap with a little pool…
Starting writing again
August was so busy that I had to stop writing, and then I had to catch up with housework (at least sorta kinda catch up) before my son’s birthday party. But now most of the really urgent stuff has been done, and I can start work on the novel again. And in a burst of unusually nice timing, I have some information I can use. I realised a while ago…