Scientific Artist

Just finished reading “From Byfleet to the Bush” the Autobiography of Jacqueline Pearce (Servalan in Blake’s 7).

Thought it might be an interesting read as I was totally besotted with Servalan during the showing of the original series – and a good read it was.

The only observation I would like to make is that for someone who purports to be frigid – you sure seem to have had a lot of sex Jacqueline (just me being jealous )

I just put my new car Tax disc in about 10-minutes ago, £265 for the next twelve months which I thought was a little steep.  But on replacing the disc I saw that I had simply left the last few years worth of discs in the holder.  Got a bit of a shock when I looked through them – this is how it reads:

2010 – £215.00

2011 – £235.00

2012 – £245.00

2013 – £250.00

2014 – £260.00

2015 – £265.00

So in 5 years I’ve seen a £50 increase in a £215.00 start value which looks like in excess of a 23% increase to me.  Someone’s having a laugh I reckon – not me though

Gives me goosebumps all over and resets my neurons.  How does he do it?

Just been told I got today’s Earth Science Picture of the Day (EPOD) http://epod.usra.edu/

Took a look, and yep, sure enough, my favourite insect – the Morpho Rhetenor butterfly which kindly provided me with the Patent design for a new type of Photonic Crystal

Thank you Jim at EPOD for continuing to publish my work.

On Thin Ice: A woman’s journey to the North Pole – by Matty L. McNair

An utterly superb read, but who the hell is Matty McNair and how did I come across her?  Answer – Top Gear!!

Recall the race to the North Pole episode where Clarkson and Clown took a Batmobile across the terrain and the Hamster (accompanied by a woman) took a dog sled?  Well that (super)woman was Matty.  Hard to forget those scenes where she was kite skiing the white stuff.  Incredible program – and an incredible book.  It’s more than a little humbling to see a woman who is far tougher and more adventurous than you are as a man

http://www.ted.com/talks/jk_rowling_the_fringe_benefits_of_failure

Find a quiet 20-minutes to sit down and absorb these words.

First the positive.  90 pages of the new book completed, estimated total 250 pages.

Now the negative.  All my (5) observatory computers are XP-based machines as there are still plenty of astronomy bits running on ancient software.  As you know Microsoft no longer supports XP, this is apparently no problem for the 4 Intel machines – but a big problem for the Athlon which has now kindly locked me out.  Thank you very much Microsoft – like I need these unnecessary problems on top of trying to maintain a parallel imaging array.

This is a possible front cover for the new photography book I am currently writing:

Cybele, with Bluebonnets – just read it!

I had discussions with a book publisher yesterday to see how he felt about a “photography book” project I have been mulling over for around 2 or 3 years now.  I am pleased to say that he thought it was a good idea, so now the hard graft begins of putting it all together.  This is a “specialist” book, so it’s not about going out and taking snaps with your new DSLR, it includes Deep-Sky imaging, photomicroscopy, macrophotography, high-speed photography, pinhole camera photography, special effects photography like “Little Planet” images, and there is even an Appendix on Computer Generated Imagery.  I estimate this to be around 250 pages long, coffee-table book size (in landscape format) and printed to an extremely high quality to bring out the best in the images.  Current estimate for draft completion – around September/October this year.  We’re off!!