Monthly Archive for February, 2009

Nuclear Nightmare API

Published on February 26, 2009 in Bizarre Internet, Internet, Musings, Nostalgia, Old Science and War. 0 Comments

The Google Maps API seems to be popping up more and more lately. It powers mapping on a lot of interesting and varied websites. I’ve seen it in use on everything from the website of the GSPC to the Scottish Road Works Register site that I mentioned a while back.

These applications don’t stray too far from the bread and butter mapping of the main Google maps website. They’re useful and very user friendly, but they lack a certain degree of imagination.

Not so this mapping applet by an Australian company called Carlos Labs. They’ve actually taken the Google maps API and used it to illustrate the destructive area of effect of various nuclear weapons ranging from the 15kiloton Little Boy to the infamous 50 megaton Tsar Bomba. It even includes the option to drop a hypothetical asteroid on top of any location on earth. I spotted a link to it via digg, to http://bldgblog.blogspot.com/. It’s an architecture and desgin blog that’s actually very interesting in itself with a lot of unusual bulding design ideas. I suggest you take a look even if architecture isn’t your bag.

Where was I? Oh yeah. The BOMBS.

The display may only show concentric rings of destruction but it’s still interesting, and a little frightening, to see how much of your home town or city would be reduced to radioactive slag.

Interestingly this website might finally settle an argument that I had with some of my mates at primary school. You see it was back during the real Gulf War when Britain and America invaded Iraq to liberate the Kuwaiti oil from Saddam Hussein and his band of merry men. The war took place towards the end of 1990 so that would probably put me in primary six at the time. I was slowly taking an interest in the news and newspapers and they were full of discussions about the capability of Saddam’s military. This made it’s way into the playground as we played Iraqi’s Vs The SAS all through lunchtime and playtime (we were allowed to call it playtime back then, but I’m guessing that’s probably not politically correct anymore).

One of the kids brought in a big double page, full colour spread from one newspaper, the Daily Record I think, and it showed Iraqi scud missile launchers and discussed the potential threat from Saddam’s collection of nuclear, bacteriological and chemical weapons (feel free to laugh up your hindsight laden sleeve at this point everyone). Everyone should take note that back in those more innocent times we didn’t call them weapons of mass destruction, and we most defiantly didn’t trivialise them with their modern sound bite WMD designation either.

Now this was a lot of information for a bunch of ten year olds, and in those days of course we couldn’t just log onto Wikipedia and check out the facts about Scud missiles. Naturally our fertile imaginations ran wild as we worked out what would happen to our small Ayrshire village if Saddam pushed THE BUTTON and sent a nuke loaded scud into the middle of Glasgow.

I can still remember the arguments to this day, but strangely nobody argued, or even bothered to find out, if a Scud could reach Glasgow from Iraqi. We were more concerned about what would happen when it did. Some people argued that a nuke would blow Scotland to pieces leaving only a huge hole that quickly flooded with the sea. Others thought that only the middle of Glasgow would get it, and everywhere else would be ok.

I decided to use the applet to try it out:

First up we have the impact of a small tactical nuclear device: Little Boy which was dropped on Hiroshima at the end of WWII. This weighs in at 15kiloton of TNT and is probably equivalent to any nuclear device that Iraq could have realistically produced.

15kt

As you can see the destruction is mainly confined to the centre of Glasgow. No effect on Ayrshire at this point other than having to listen to some folk from Clydebank complaining about the delay that the explosion has caused to their Giro’s being paid.

Next up we have a larger device: a Chinese made DF-31 which is about the standard for an intercontinental ballistic missile warhead at 150 kilotons.

140kt

As you can see the area of destruction is much wider. The centre of Glasgow has been almost completely destroyed and the direct blast effects reach out as far as Giffnock, Partick and Easterhouse. Again no effect on Ayrshire beyond a sudden high wind, bright flash and a rumbling bang in the distance.

Last and by no means least we have the effects of the Tsar Bomba. The largest nuclear weapon ever detonated on Earth. At 50 Megatons it is several orders of magnitude larger than the previously mentioned weapons.

50mt

As you can see the area of effect is huge: The entire of Glasgow, right out to the suburbs, has been entirely destroyed. The nuclear flash followed by huge blast and pressure waves levels most of Renfrewshire, North Ayrshire and Lanarkshire and effects can been seen as far away as Livingston or Edinburgh itself. I think you could safely say that the Central Belt would be a total write off. As for my wee village, it’s hidden underneath the map button at the bottom right of the picture, but it would be just on the trailing edge of the outermost blast ring. I think quite a few people would have gotten a thousand year sun tan off such a bomb.

Thankfully Saddam didn’t have any nuclear weapons (stop laughing at the back of the class), nor did he have the means to attack Glasgow, but if he did I think my wee backwater home town would have been safe enough from him.

Right now though my current flat would have been vaporised in every single one of those explosions so nobody piss off anyone with a big bomb ok?

Snip Snap I Was having a Cra…

Published on February 25, 2009 in City Living, Flat and Whiiiit!?. 0 Comments

In an outstanding show of idiot power I’ve managed to snap the flushing handle on my toilet. I didn’t even press the thing that hard either; it just broke off as pressed it to flush the toilet. I hope this whole flat isn’t plotting to come down around my ears.

brokehaun2

brokehaun

No I have no idea why I thought this worth a blog post. I must be strapped for material…

All I Ask Is A Tall… Whit?

Published on February 24, 2009 in Glasgow and Musings. 0 Comments

I spotted this while I was out and about today in search of my infamous lunchtime rolls:

brokenship

I’m not sure how anyone managed to hit the sign to make it bend at that angle. Surely anything turning out of the junction behind where I took the photo would miss it entirely, and anything coming around the road towards it would have to have been driven by a complete eijit to manage to mount the verge and whack into it.

Funny thing is the sign pointed in the wrong direction to begin with, and it’s now a short, hunchback sign pointing the wrong way to a tall ship.

True or False Boaby

Published on February 24, 2009 in Musings, New Science, News and Politics. 0 Comments

I see from the BBC news that a team from Pittsburgh University have published a study indicating a possible link between teenage sexual activity and music. Having only the BBC’s journalistic discussion of the report to go on it’s difficult to interpret how the study was conducted. The people behind it refused to divulge to the BBC exactly what they considered to be “explicit and aggressively sexual lyrics” but I assume they weren’t talking about No Limit by 2Unlimited.

In essence the study indicates that teenagers who regularly listen to music with sexually aggressive and explicit lyrics are more likely to have sex. The BBC article mentions that they split their 711 subjects up depending upon how often they listened to music. Regular listeners indulged in anything over about eighteen hours a week and those classed as “not often” were about three hours or less a week. The survey discovered that about 45% of those classed as regular listeners had had sex, but only 21% of the infrequent listeners.

The BBC doesn’t however mention how many people fall into each category. I imagine if you think back to your teenage years you, and just about everyone you know will fall into the regular listener category.

The BBC article also seems to confuse the findings of the survey. On the one hand it refers explicitly to the idea that listening to sexually aggressive music contributes to teenagers being more inclined to have sex, but on the other hand it generalises the findings into listen to lots of music = sex, listen to not a lot = not sex. I seriously doubt that this is the underlying hypothesis for the study. It seems more likely that the question is: do heavily sexualised lyrics make it more likely that a teenager will have sex?

I’m sure that the subject and findings of this study are interesting from an abstract point of view, but there are such things as coincidence in this world. All this report will really achieve is giving the crazy American left wing Christians more ammunition to attack people’s right to freedom and self-determination.

Hey teacher. Leave those kids alone.

On a side note I conducted my own independent survey that found a link between sex and breathing. Amazingly 99.7% of people who have had sex also admit to breathing at least once in the past six months. The remaining 0.3% could not be reached for comment and their partners are still being sought by the police…

Anchors Away!

Published on February 23, 2009 in Holidays. 1 Comment

I’ve been feeling a bit run down lately so I’ve decided to take a cheeky wee pirate holiday to get myself back on the straight and narrow.  I think I’ll do a bit of bike riding and maybe swab the decks inside the flat.

Not exactly the world’s most exciting things to do, but it’ll be good to shut off the old brain for a bit.

Ghostbusters is it? Ah’ll give ye GHOSTBUSTERS!

Published on February 23, 2009 in Dreams, Musings and Whiiiit!?. 1 Comment

I had an odd dream last night, and I’m not entirely sure how to interpret it.  El Kat is often bemused by the fact that I tend to have very dynamic dreams; I very rarely dream of peaceful images or a slow moving visions of another world. Though to be perfectly honest, I rarely remember any of my dreams as it is. The common thread in the one’s that I do remember is action, and I’m almost always running away or taking the fight to whatever is in the dream.

Last night’s sojourn into my subconscious mind was one of the latter, but I think it’s would be key to note that a lot of it was set in places from the past. This might be important, or it might just be a red herring, but it’s something to keep in the back of your mind while you read my story.

The dream began with me and a few of the night staff from my old BT job sitting around in a room at my old university halls of residence. There were a few famous faces in there, and several more that I knew but can’t even remember their names now.

I’m fairly certain it wasn’t my room either as the door was in the wrong place and I didn’t recognise any of the stuff. We were all playing the old Star Wars RPG from West End Games which is possibly based on real events while I was at university. My character, and me personally, were taking a lot of flak for charging into things half cocked. I took it in good humour as my RPG characters were infamous for being like that anyway.

As the night wore on and my character survived several near misses I glanced up at the clock. I don’t know what time it said, but I knew it was time to leave. I mentioned this to the others and they all agreed. We packed up our gear and left the room and, in television travel style, we’re teleported away across the city past by random landmarks that are nowhere near each other. At last we passed the Grand Ole Opry at Paisley Road Toll which is two miles or so away from the halls I stayed in. Finally the scene shifts again. I’ve lost the others and I’m trudging up a set of spiral stairs inside an unfamiliar tenement close.

Just to make the scene easier to visualise I’ve made a map:

steps

As I said, I was trudging up the stairs and arrived at the point marked with a 1 and something draws my attention to the middle of three doors (marked with a 2) on the landing. I take a look and I see that there’s flashing lights and noise coming form a two inch gap underneath the door. It looks a bit like this picture below (gap highlighted in red):

door

I walk a bit further up the stairs and I see some jackboots stomping around behind the door. Odd I think to myself, I though that was a cleaner’s cupboard not a flat. Then the person wearing the jackboots lies down on the floor and peers out from under the door. He waves what looks like a Ghostbusters’s PKE meter around the gap and shouts something unintelligible to someone behind him.  I shake my head and assume that it must be a student fancy dress party. Then I walk up the stairs and into my flat which is cunningly marked with a 3 on the map.

Then it all gets a bit fast and crazy. I go into my bedroom, and the doors fly open on my wardrobe. Naturally I’m a bit surprised by this odd effect and head over to investigate, but before I can a huge blast of wind from inside the wardrobe fires all my clothes out all over the room. I watch as the items of clothing settle all around the room and growl at the wardrobe.

“Right that’s it you bastards,” I growl at the cupboard.

Then I charge into the thing fists raised and ready to dish out some thumping haymakers to whatever is inside. Unfortunately I don’t know what’s inside the wardrobe, or even if I managed to lamp any mischievous spirits as I woke up in mid charge.

Interestingly though this is about the fifth or so dream that I’ve had in recent memory where spirits or unearthly forces have pissed me off and I’ve taken the fight to them. I assume any long tem readers will remember the infamous “haunted wooden surfer statue dream” from a while back.  (Sorry no link as it predates this incarnation of the blog.) No doubt the presence of powerful and mischievous spirits will have some subconscious importance, but I’m hoping that my constant attempts to battle them rather than running off screaming means that I have a positive spin on these forces.

Zora Co Polski

Published on February 22, 2009 in City Living, Glasgow and Shopping. 1 Comment

Half a decade ago a man, who shall remain nameless, took out a loan with the dual purposes of paying off his mounting debts and establishing a degree of financial security so that he could escape a dead end job.  Unfortunately his plan backfired when the money cried out “spend me on TEH COMPU-TAE UPGRADEZ CHAMONE!”

Unable to tolerate being ordered around by his filthy lucre the man made his way to the famous FINNIESTON COMPUTER ZONE. His quest was a simple one: to find and purchase electronic bits and pieces to satiate the deadly upgrade monkey demon king that lived in his airing cupboard. Finally our intrepid hero discovered an obscure new computer shop called Zora Computers on Argyle Street.

This of course leads me onto the actual point of the story. Zora Computers, like so many who have tried to compete with Priceless Computing, has gone to that great computer bit drawer in the sky. The shop has lain empty for months, upon months, but all of a sudden a change has come upon it:

polski

That’s right: it’s turned into a Polish grocer, and not just any Polish grocer: Najtanszy Polski Sklep Spozywczy. Now I don’t read or speak any Polish, but Google does and it reliably informs me that Zora computers is now “Polish Cheapest Grocery Store”. I don’t recall Finnieston having a vast Polish community. In my experience it’s mainly students and middle class professionals more than anything else. Still at least it’s one less closed and shuttered shop on that stretch.

A dziwne, czajnik ryb i nie pomyłka.

HUT HUT HUT!!

Published on February 20, 2009 in Advertising, Glasgow and Pictures. 0 Comments

I spotted this classic piece of graffiti on the way to work. Not only does it display the classic cartoon “cock and balls” growing out of the kid’s chest but the artist has even gone as far as to add a cartoon bogey, pencil moustache, goatee and a huge monobrow to complete the picture.

hut

What amuses me the most though is the fact that this kid embodies exactly every aspect of what a stereotypical Glaswegian looks like in my mind’s eye. He’s got the round pudding face, the square specs and the expectantly optimistic look on his face when a take-away is on the cards. Not only that, but he bears a striking resemblance to Tam Cowan or maybe Ford Kiernan both of whom physically embody a stereotypical Glaswegian.

Just before anyone points it out I do know that Tam Cowan comes from Motherwell, but to me he’ll always be an honourary Glasgow boy to me.

Wreck Site

Published on February 20, 2009 in History, Internet and News. 1 Comment

I was reading lately about the discovery of the wreck of a WWI era French warship called the Danton. This pre-dreadnaught battleship was sunk in the Mediterranean by a German submarine during the First World War and has lain undiscovered at the bottom of the sea ever since.

Wrecks and more especially film footage taken of the wrecks has always fascinated me. So much so that I actually went on a date to the IMAX cinema to see James Cameron’s Ghosts of the Abyss a film he made during one of his many trips to the famous wreck of the RMS Titanic. Needless to say the date wasn’t particularly successful, but watching footage of what is effectively a huge rusting tomb on a six story cinema screen isn’t exactly the height of romance.  With hindsight maybe I should have gone to see Bulletproof Monk or How to Lose a Guy in Ten Days instead.

Today I discovered a new website: http://www.wrecksite.eu/ that details the position, history and condition of hundreds upon hundreds of sunken wrecks. The detail available on the site about many of the lost ships is phenomenal and it’s amazing to think about exactly how many lost and forgotten vessels are lying lost, forgotten and unseen underneath the world’s seas.

The Underage Boaby Storm In A Teacup

Published on February 16, 2009 in News, People Be Fools and Politics. 0 Comments

I’m totally and utterly bemused by the ongoing saga revolving around the birth of a baby to thirteen year old Alfie Patten and his fifteen year old girlfriend Chantelle Steadman. Apparently Alfie somehow managed to impregnate her during a night of underage passion organised with the full knowledge of Chantelle’s mother.

I smell bullshit.

I will be deeply surprised if Alfie’s underdeveloped pre-pubescent spermatozoa got within a hundred miles of Chantelle’s fallopian tubes. By all accounts she is what El Kat describes as: very friendly. Her mother it seems was completely unworried and may even have encouraged Chantelle to have boys sleeping over. As a result there’s already two or three other teenagers coming out of the works claiming that they slept with Chantelle around the time of the baby’s conception.  I have to question if they would have been so quick to come out of the woodwork if the Sun Newspaper wasn’t paying in cash for every little thing related to the story.

I’d like to claim I’m morally indignant about this entire situation, but the simple fact is that humans, like all animals, are specifically designed to reproduce. That’s their, and our, underlying Raison d’entre: eat, grow, survive and reproduce. It’s a powerful compulsion that can, will and has overridden even the most stalwart and noble of minds at one time in their life. It might seem crass, but if the equipment is in place and operating correctly, as it seems to be in this case, who are any of us to interfere?

To be honest I couldn’t care less about either of these two underage boaby merchants. It you want to hear the tune you’ve got pay the piper. Even if in this case the piper is a tiny creature that the pair of them created.

I’m more concerned about their poor wee wean who will be starting the school at the same time his father is leaving.

Just imagine the scene: the wee baby gets into a rammy and threatens to get her dad onto her tormentors, but she can’t because he’s stuck in double English until lunchtime.