Staying on a 'spacey' theme...

... for a moment, astronomers (who are clearly enjoying their time in the media spotlight at the moment) have discovered a new 'puffy' planet. BBC News. HAT-P-1 orbits a pair of stars 450 light-years away in the constellation Lacerta and, though it's radius is about 1.4 times that of Jupiter, is apparently only half the density of Jupiter making it just one-qaurter the density of water. It'd float if you could find a big enough bath.

Here she is.



(floaty floaty)

Eris

Pretty apt name don't you think. BBC News.

There's been a surprising amount of interest in this story and I for one and very interested in changes to our understanding of our Solar system. Regardless of whether you think it's an outrage, a necessary alteration or you frankly couldn't give a monkey's nuts on a hairdryer, you can't deny the fact that it's sparked people's interest and created a debate and that's always good.
You see the discovery of Eris and her moon Dysnomia (named after the Greek Goddess of discord and her daughter the spirit of lawlessness) and their positioning further away from the Sun than Pluto, has meant that the International Astronomical Union (IAU) has had to reasess it's method of classification. Eris is larger than Pluto by anything between 70 - 700km and so a new classification of 'dwarf planets' has been introduced with includes Eris, Pluto and Ceres the largest asteroid in our Solar System in orbit between Mars & Jupiter.
Here's a handy diagram.



Exciting huh?

After the stupidity

of people yesterday with their moronic revenge attacks on stingrays comes a news story that actually makes sense and might just be a step in the right direction. BBC News.

I hope this isn't true.

Dear God this has to be a joke. BBC News. If it isn't (which it isn't) then these people really are the worst kind of human. It's sad that Irwin died but for this to happen is just plain dum and shows just how stupid people can be.

Honda Zoomer and the man with the robot leg

Outside the Real Patisserie just now was one of those brilliant Honda Zoomer things. Whilst coveting said bike a smiley be-helmeted chap wandered out of a shop and clambered aboard. It was pretty busy immediately outside the Patisserie and the bloke was drawing a few looks from the milling folk. I smiled at him and asked the obvious question, “Where did you get that mate?” and pointed toward the bike. As I looked down however I realised to my horror that I was actually pointing at his robot leg. He had a robot leg, seriously. The left leg of his military-style trousers were tied around a thin steel Terminator-esque false leg, it was nuts. Anyhow, the bloke obviously realised I wasn’t very, very forward in my nosiness and rightly assumed I was enquiring after the Zoomer. “I got it direct from Honda.” He said with a smile as he rode off. If you don’t know what a Zoomer is here’s a picture of the girl from ‘PopWorld’ on T4 with one.

My favourite films

A while back over on my daily blog I compiled a list of my 22 favourite albums, 22 ‘cos I simply couldn’t keep it down to 20 let alone 10, you can see it here. And now I’ve knocked up a list of my 20 favourite films. Here they are in no particular order and please don’t judge me.

Rear Window (The way Al explains our hero’s predicament in the first 30 seconds is brilliant.)
Alien (One of the first truly scary films I ever saw.)
The Big Lebowski (I got hooked on White Russians because of this film)
Shaun of the Dead (The finest of RomZomCom.)
Sexy Beast (‘cos of Ray’s opening soliloquy and Ghandi being truly abhorrent.)
Monty Python & the Holy Grail (“I fart in your general direction silly Arthur King.”)
The Ipcress file (Caine at his best & better than Bond.)
Brazil (Bobby DeNiro as a renegade plumber – inspired.)
Taxi (Crazy ass French film with a pimped up taxi.)
Batman Begins (Exactly how the previous films should’ve been.)
The Time Machine (George Pal’s outstanding ‘60s version not the ropey Hollywoodised Guy Pearce & Smantha Mumba one.)
Star Wars Episode V - The Empire Strikes Back (The best storyline, it had snow and introduced the AT-AT.)
Ravenous (Hardly anyone has seen this but I assure you it’s worth tracking down. Basically it’s about cannibalism and an American outpost around the time of the civil war and it stars Guy Pearce, Robert Carlyle and the bloke who was Ed Rooney in Ferris Beuler.)
The Exorcist (When I saw the infamous ‘spider-walk’ scene in the unedited version I very nearly cried it was so damn scary.)
Akira (For it’s all round graphical beauty and inexplicable plot.)
Withnail & I (“How can it be so cold in here? It’s like Greenland in here.” “Monty you terrible cunt!” “I feel like a pg has shat in my head.” Etc. Etc. Ad nauseam.
As Good as it Gets (A girly love film that I don’t feel even slightly girly watching.)
Get Carter (Caine being even better than in The Ipcress File.)
North by Northwest (If there’s finer drunk acting than Mr. Grant does in this film elsewhere on celluloid then I’ll eat my hat.)
The Italian Job (Caine being better than in The Ipcress File but not as good as in Get Carter. Oh and “This car belongs to the Pakistani ambassador.”)
Transformers The Movie (Wait a minute. They’re cars you say and they turn into robots you say. And it's got an '80s rock soundtrack? This I gotta see!)

Test the livingroom

On Saturday Beth I planned to make pizzas but it ended up going a bit pear-shaped as, for some reason I can't quite work out, the dough didn't rise. To make matters worse I'd invited all and sundry round to sample my glorious wares. Thankfully only Sophie took me up on the offer so it wasn't quite such a disaster. We ordered some in and settled down to watch trash TV, something I pretty much never do but Beth was ecstatic as she never gets a chance to. (Am I a cruel uncaring boyfriend? Should I let my lovely watch Sharron bleedin' Osbourne and Simon Cowell being shit to shit people on national TV?). Anyhow, once the eye-popping, brain-mulching, soul-destroying embarrasment that is 'X-Factor' was over we found ourselves glued to Anne Robinson (scary huh?) and BBC's 'Test the Nation'. It was brilliant! Imagine my surprise when I racked up an IQ of 115and I wasn't all that surprised that Beth beat me and got 117, she's a smart lass. Sophie whuped both our asses though with an impressive 122. What made things all the better was that Brighton beat London with the Brighton average coming in at 113. Cool huh?

The best of moods.

Today I’ve awoken in the most incredibly good mood. Sure I have no decent work on at the moment and therefore no money and I’m finding it difficult to rustle up the energy to make a start on the minor jobs I do have to do, I’m lacking the impetus necessary to plough on with my journalism course, Beth is unwell so I’ve been relegated from the role of house-husband to nursemaid which in turn makes it difficult to concentrate on anything other than the many DVDs that she’s catching up on without retiring to the bedroom only to be called upon to fetch some orange juice, plump her pillows or provide her with a steady stream of Lemsip, but despite all this I’m very, very happy today. To celebrate I’m just taking the lovely (but ill & snotty) Beth out of a spot of beautifully fresh Brighton air and a wonderful bacon sarnie. Now where’s that invalid chair?

Rain

I’ve just come back from a brief trip down to the video shop to get, well – a video and man is it raining out there. I’m drenched despite having a brolly. On the way there a bloke ran past with his young daughter, they were laughing and shouting at one another and generally gambolling about enjoying having got caught in the downpour. She looked like it could have been the best fun she’d had so far this week. I wonder when the last time was that I had so much fun pratting about in the rain.

Tax avoision

I’d decided over the weekend that today was to be my tax day so naturally I set about finding plenty of things that I absolutely ‘had’ to do other than my tax. I did the laundry and the washing up. I balled all my socks and folded my pants. I listened to a couple of albums I’d downloaded recently (Terry Callier’s new effort ‘Timepeace’ being one) and gave them my full attention. I had tea with a friend of Beth’s and acted as her secretary, made a few calls, looked at a few websites and found out about parking in certain areas of Brighton. I had a poo. I took a whole heap of books off the bookshelf, stacked ‘em neatly on the floor and then put them back in a slightly different order. I spoke to my Ma on the phone. I spoke to Beth on the phone. I eat some crisps and a scotch egg. I deleted all the redundant contacts from my mobile and I sat down to look at the box of receipts that represent my tax.
Naturally I drunk an awful lot of tea throughout. It was actually kind of fun.

Why I love living in Brighton (Part one)

This morning I popped down to 'Snax in the City', a rather silly named café on Western Road where a lovely friendly lady serves great sausage sarnies. Whilst chatting to her about stealing sachets of mustard from pubs and my desire to have an allotment, a bloke came in and joined in our conversation. Folks down here are so chatty and friendly, I love it. I also learnt something from all this (apart from the fact that the café owner steals condiment sachets)and that's that the scene from Only Fools & Horses where Del-boy fakes the discovery of a source of pure spring water in their allotment was actually filmed, not in Peckham, but down the road just outside of Lewes. This bloke's dad used to watch 'em filming out of the window. Cool huh?