Categories
Blog Technology Thoughts

Never have so many people understood so little about so much…

What inspired you as a child ?

A child today hopefully seeing the exploits of Elon Musk and Space-X launching and recovering rockets with showmanship seldom demonstrated by serious rocket scientists may have their interest  sparked in science and technology?

Personally my love of technology came yes from rocket science, but also crucially from growing up during a golden age of science broadcasting in the 1970’s when well informed specialist correspondents were on our TV screens it seemed every day.
Reginald Turnill, Patrick Moore and Raymond Baxter had both huge experience and knowledge in the fields of aviation and astronautics but were also great story tellers explaining often complex issues without the dumbing down so common today.

Reg Turnhill
Raymond Baxter in the backseat of the Harrier piloted by the great John Farley.

For me however the greatest of this generations was James Burke. Watch here his truly breathtaking live commentary of the Apollo 13  re-entry – a masterclass in explaining what is happening to the viewer during an incredibility tense few minutes.

I was too young to really remember Apollo 13 however in 1978 James Burke wrote and presented his seminal series Connections to try and explain how technology had come to play such an important part in society, in the first episode of the series he paraphrased Churchill to make the point as relevant today as it was then…

Never have so many people understood so little about so much…

I loved this series, Burke does a masterful job linking technological developments over 10,000 years to explain the modern world – imagine my joy on finding that the series had be re-released last year and is available on Amazon.

Let me show you why I am so gushing in my praise of James Burke…

Watch below perhaps the greatest “piece to camera” every filmed from Episode 8 of the series, here James Burke explains the connection between the invention of the thermos flask and landing on the moon.

Make sure you watch to the very end !

Eat your heart out Brian Cox !

Categories
Technology

A Martian afternoon with Brian

IMG_2360.JPG

OK not Mars but the Airbus Defence and Space factory in Stevenage, where for testing rovers they have build a “Mars Yard”.  The about of effort that goes into space engineering I still find astonishing, the yard is lit using lights that match the spectrum of light on the surface of Mars and the sand matches the cohesion and granularity found on Mars.

Spent the afternoon with my friend Brian the Mars rover, So marvellously British that.. an autonomous robot called Brian !

Categories
Research Technology Thoughts

App Engine for Academics

As the geospatial world moves every closer to the mainstream IT, the potential of “Cloud” based technology to share mapping data and provide distributed processing for spatial analysis is increasing relevant to academics and researchers working in higher education.

Yesterday Google announced a programme to allow academics use of Google App Engine for their research projects. App Engine is the service used by Google for building and hosting web applications and offers fast development and deployment, simple administration and built-in scalability.

This new award programme will support up to 15 projects by providing App Engine credits in the amount of $60,000 to each project for one year. In its first year, the program is launched in a limited number of countries, including the UK.

See the RFP for details.

Written and submitted from home (51.425N, 0.331W)