I just didn't expect it to be so big

This has been doing the rounds but, in case you've not seen it, there is a full screen version of XKCD's recent epic Click and Drag comic XKCD 1110 in a zoomable version - visualization created by dividuum. It saves a fair amount of clicking and dragging and let's you seek out all the hidden bits in the sky and tunnels (and works especially well on an iPad). I just didn't expect it to be so big
There is also a recent interview with XKCD creator, Randall Munroe, in The Atlantic, which is worth a read.

h/t WEIT.

Good-bye, polar bears :o(

For the past couple of years, I have been using this image of a polar bear riding a small iceberg to illustrate climate change in the talk I give to a local(ish) school about studying biological sciences at University - it's just one of the important areas to which biological sciences graduates can contribute. Sadly, according to a Guardian article earlier this week, it is an image that might go out of date sooner than I thought.

The title of the article says it all, really: "Arctic expert predicts final collapse of sea ice within four years".

As the expert in question (Prof Peter Wadhams of Cambridge University) is quoted to suggest in the article, surely it is time to start throwing everything at this problem, including the kitchen sink of geoengineering. With a catastrophe of this magnitude so close, it is hard to see how such attempts could possibly make things worse.

Google Sea View

The Google Maps Street View Collections are pretty cool (and just plain pretty!) and well worth an explore whenever you have a few moments to kill. (Armchair tourism at its best.) The new Ocean Collection is particularly impressive because you can wander around underwater! As reported in the Guardian Science Section "Google Maps' virtual diving brings the Great Barrier Reef into view":

Millions of people will be able to take a virtual dive on the Great Barrier Reef via Google Maps on Wednesday as part of a pioneering underwater scientific expedition.

The Catlin Seaview Survey will allow internet users to share the discoveries of scientists who are using new technology to study the composition and health of the Great Barrier Reef.

I like!

Amazing photos In Focus at The Atlantic

This Sri Lankan bovid "adorned with frogs" is just one of the 50 photos selected by Alan Taylor for The Atlantic from entries for the National Geographic Photo Contest 2012:

"Once again, National Geographic is holding its annual photo contest, with the deadline for submissions coming up on November 30. Beginning on September 1, the society started gathering and presenting galleries of submissions, encouraging readers to vote for them as well. National Geographic was kind enough to let me choose among its entries from 2012 for display here on In Focus. Gathered below are 50 images from the three categories of People, Places, and Nature, with captions written by the individual photographers."

Definitely worth a look!

h/t WEIT.

Apocalyptically loving Slash

When I bought my MacBook and received an iTunes voucher with it, I am not ashamed to say that the first thing I bought with it was the most recent offering from that most excellent of British rockers, Slash. I've previously endorsed Ain't Life Grand from when he was part of Slash's Snakepit and, I must admit, I am a general fan of his. Not everything that came out of the Snakepit, or Velvet Revolver (or Guns 'n' Roses for that matter) is fantastic but every album I own has some gems on it.

Apocalyptic Love raises the bar and has now solidly cemented itself as one of my favourite albums - certainly of the year and probably of all time. It's a grower too, which is always a good sign. If you like Slash at his best, go buy it! Now!

University of Southampton builds world's first Raspberry Pi supercomputer

It's a bit of a busy time of year, so blogging is on the back burner for a bit (and I'm accumulating half-written posts for later!) but this was just so weird and fun that I had to write a quick post. If you haven't heard of a raspberry pi computer before, you can find out all about them here. Basically, they are a very small, very cheap ($25) "credit-card sized computer that plugs into your TV and a keyboard".



According to the FAQ:

It’s a capable little PC which can be used for many of the things that your desktop PC does, like spreadsheets, word-processing and games. It also plays high-definition video. We want to see it being used by kids all over the world to learn programming.

Well, Prof Simon Cox (and colleagues) of the University of Southampton decided to go one better and used a bunch of them to teach his kid how to build a supercomputer! You can read about it on the Computational Modelling Group website.



What can it do? Well, according to Prof Cox:

“The first test we ran – well obviously we calculated Pi on the Raspberry Pi using MPI, which is a well-known first test for any new supercomputer.”

I suspect it can do a bit more than that: the 64 processor system has 1Tb of memory! Not bad for £2500 (plus switches and, possibly, lego).

Surely it's time to have more disabled presenters on TV?

So, the Paralympics has drawn to a close and, apart from the occasional annoying advert break, Channel 4 have done a pretty good job. The Channel 4 broadcasting team have been particularly good, I thought, with a good mix of familiar faces and less familiar disabled presenters.

For me, Alex Brooker and Danny Crates were particularly good - the former for general entertainment on The Last Leg and the latter for his boundless enthusiasm during the track and field events. (I really liked the American dude in the wheelchair too but I can't find his name on the Channel 4 site and my memory for names is shocking! [Update: I have committed the cardinal sin. His name is Jeff Adams and he is Canadian. Sorry Jeff!])

I thought Jimmy Carr made a very honest and inciteful comment during his appearance on The Last Leg. He said something to the effect that it had taken him two or three days of watching the games before he really saw past the disabilities and just the sport. I felt something a bit similar with the presenters too. I don't see that many disabled people in day to day life and so at first I found my attention drawn to Danny's missing arm, or Alex Brooker's "hand issues" but, after a couple of days, all I saw was really great presenters making entertaining TV.

There's been a lot of talk about how to carry forward the momentum from these Paralympics and part of the solution seems quite simple to me: put more disabled people on TV. Not because they're disabled - because they're great TV presenters. If Claire Balding, Jonathan Edwards and Iwan Thomas can co-present sport for disabled athletes, then there's no reason why Danny Crates and Ade Adepitan cannot co-present sport for able-bodied athletes. And The Last Leg team of Adam Hill, Alex Brooker and Josh Widdicombe are welcome on my screen any time!