Another story with increasing noise is that the whole coronavirus outbreak is caused by, or exacerbated by the 5G rollout. One comment I've seen from someone responding to the burning down of a 5G mast in Birmingham, is that "people are scared". Firstly I can't believe that people are stupid enough to think that coronavirus is caused by 5G, and secondly burning something down because you're afraid of it is not an excuse to do it, let alone ctreating necessary to to the emergency services that have to deal with such wanton acts of idiocy. I do wonder about some people's mindset but then this could quickly lead into a conversation about flat earth, moon landings and vaccines and the like, so I'm not going any further with this. By the way, I've enabled comments on the blog, so if you're one of my very few readers, please feel free to comment about this or anything else I post, but please keep it civil. Comments that I deem inappropriate or offensive will be removed!
The big clear/declutter/tidy/clean continues at Chez Stats, but not without some painful consequences. I was tidying up the garage (again) today, and was moving some chairs we're storing in there when I inadvertently nudged my golf trolley which was hanging on a hook. It fell off right onto my thumb. Luckily I don't think anyone was within hearing distance as I ran out a string of expletives for about 2 minutes before running it under some cold water and strapping some ice to it for half an hour. Believe me, it was worse than the photo below shows.
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| Don't drop a golf trolley on your thumb. It bloody hurts! |
Finally yesterday, I spent some time looking at the night sky. I've been fascinated by space since for as long as I can remember. A couple of years ago my wife bought me a proper telescope which has been opened up a whole new vista. I've seen Jupiters moons (which you can also see with a pair of binoculars), Saturn's rings, the Andromeda galaxy, the nebula in Orion's sword and aliens. Ok, I made the last one up. I also follow a few people on Twitter who are big space geeks - the main one being @VirtualAstro who keeps people abreast of all that's happening in the night sky including International Space Station (ISS) passes. Last night I was particularly looking at Venus, always bright, but currently exceptionally so, which is in the west in early evening. Last night it was "in conjunction" with the Pleiades Cluster, a small (from earth) but bright cluster of stars also knows as the Seven Sisters or Messier 45 (m45). In conjunction in this context means when to objects in the night sky are in close proximity. Yesterday and for one night only, it looked like Venus was plonked right in Pleiades - a phenomenon that only happens once every 8 years. They'll be close tonight if you look up, but not as close as last night. Despite my long fascination with space and photography, apart from capturing ISS passes I've never really tried astrophotography. Last night I attempted to capture the Venus/Pleiades conjunction after seeing an excellent shot by someone on Twitter. Following their guidance, I managed it - not brilliant but passable, but that's more than likely down to the quality of my camera kit. Here is the result, plus a shot of my kit last night.
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| My camera and 'scope setup in my garden |
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| Venus & the Pleiades Cluster (Seven Sisters/M45) |
I'm toying with the idea of changing the title of this blog - it was originally called "The Lentil" for a very good reason explained in one of my first posts way back in 2004, but I suspect the page is usually found by people looking for lentil recipes. Perhaps now's the time to make it more current and personal? I quite like the sound of "The Grumpy Old Git".... any other ideas?
Until tomorrow.. keep safe: #stayhomesavelives
1 comment:
I wasn’t sure about “Grumpy old git” but on reflection, I suppose one out of three isn’t bad! ��
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