help

as many of the astro guys will be aware, rob and i just took delivery of some new, beautiful macs. i haven't been able to switch mine on yet because of a plug cock up. in the meantime i have been trying to think of a name for the machine. i am working on an apple theme (get it?). my laptop is called braeburn, and i want to find a decent apple variety to name the desktop. i'd be interested in your thoughts.

my short list at the moment is:

Criterion
Earliblaze
Firmgold
Foxwelp
Hawkeye Delicious
Knobbed Russet
Pink Lady
Maidens Blush
Novamac
Razor Russet
Seek-no-further
Transcendent Crab

what do you think? I like the very last one. don't know why.

that'll bring tears to your eyes

john has just got some new contact lenses (i don't think they sent him the 8-ball novelty one he ordered). it got me thinking about a painful torture device - chilli coated contact lenses. ouch!

self organised criticality

the other day john was playing with the sugar in the coffee room - trying to smooth the sugar into a critical slope against the side of the bowl. it reminded me of my condensed matter course. it was one of my favourite courses - very interesting and well taught. one of the things we looked at was self organised criticality. in the case of the pile of sugar, this describes the processes which force the slope to have some critical angle. you notice that there are little landslides that occur to make this happen. amazingly, this can all be described physically - and has applications in a variety of fields, in particularly earthquakes. here is a link to the site of my lecturer.

take a look at his other stuff as well.

please hammer, don't blog them

i don't believe it -- mc hammer has his own blog on blogspot: http://mchammer.blogspot.com/