The Journal of the Browncoat Cat

So, it appears that Wales is not the only Celtic Nation to be afflicted with Mickey Mouse Place Names. From Thursday, the Isle of Skye will officially cease to exist. The Highland District Council had decreed that to shake of the “slave name” and increase the Island’s Gaelic standing, henceforth it will be known as Eilean a’ Cheo (pronounced Ellen-ur-cheeyak).  The local tourist industry and local Gaelic speakers are horrified by this nonsense. The problem is this is this is a load of politically correct claptrap.  The Ilse of Skye is an Anglicized version of the Gaelic name An t-Eilean Sgitheanach, (pronounced Un Tellen Sky-taynach).  Eilean a’ Cheo is the poetic name for the island, not the one used in everyday conversation by the 40% of Islanders who actually speak Gaelic.

This is Politcal Correctness gone bonkers.

Astronomers at the European Southern Observatory (Eso) in Chile have found evidence that the star Gliese 851, which is located in the 20.5 light years away in the constellation Libra, has a third planet orbiting it.

Scientists searching for so called Exoplanets outside the Solar System use indirect methods for ascertaining if there is something orbiting a star. This is because they do not yet possess space based telescopes capable of seeing anything beyond the glare of the stars they are looking at. The main methods are:

• The Transit Method looks at the pattern a star’s luminescence. If it increases and decreases in a regular pattern that indicates that something is passing infront of it on a regular basis, such as a planet.



• Astrometry looks for any apparent movement in a Star. A star with planets would not sit at the centre of a solar system. It would orbit around the common centre of gravity it shared with the planets.  As this common centre of gravity would be within the star, it appears to wobble.
• Radial Velocity, which looks at the changes in the spectrum light from a star produces. If something is causing the star to wobble, its spectrum changes as a result of a Doppler shift.
• Changes in the Gravitational Micro lensing effect of a star and examination of the disc around a star are also used in this search for Exoplanets.

The astronomers at Eso knew about a pair of very large jovian planets, one at a sensible distance from the star, whilst the other was a Hot Jupiter orbiting much closer to the star than would normally be expected. However, further analysis of the data suggests that there is a rocky terrestrial planet, roughly 1.5 times the mass of the Earth somewhere between these two jovian planets. They also estimate that this rocky planet Gliese 581c lies within the region of the this system where liquid water should exist, the so-called Habitable Zone.

The problem is though, that the maths indicates that this terrestrial planet orbits the sun once every 14 days, and it is much closer to its parent star than the Earth is. Although because Gliese 581 is a third of the size of the Sun, this would not be a problem. The image to the left from the BBC News web page covering this story shows Earth and this planet in comparion to one another.

If the findings are correct, and humanity has discovered the first rocky terrestrial planet out there, then the possibility of there being more Earth like planets out there, and those planets having life on them increases dramatically. All we need now is for someone to come up with a practical warp drive so we can go and visit them.

I woke up on Monday morning with a bit of a headache and feeling as if I had been punched in the stomach. I got out of bed and showered, shaved, dressed and made my way to work, feeling decidedly under the weather. Despite the fact that it was a lovely warm day, I was shivering in the library. Margaret, the Branch Librarian, said I looked dreadful, and by 10.30am I was feeling like death warmed over. So I excused myself, and went home.

So for the past few days I have been at home, feeling sorry for myself. Each day I have feeling marginally better. If you can imagine the picture of a chain of primates, starting with an ape and going through all the various hominids until it arrives at modern man, at time of writing 7pm on Thursday evening, I am currently at the Cro-Magnon stage, one step up from Neanderthal and one step down from Homo Sapiens.

When I installed Ubuntu on my new PC, I did so with version 6.10, aka the Edgy Eft. That version had been released in October, 2006, and worked perfectly for me.

Last Thursday saw the release of the latest version of Ubuntu, 7.04 aka Feisty Fawn. Being a bit of a nerd, I had to upgrade as soon as the new version became available. However, I really did not feel like doing a complete re-installation on my computer, so when I read that all I needed to do was type in a comand in the Terminal, I thought I would give it a go. This is not a mistake I will be making again in a hurry. Whilst everything appeared to go smoothly, I don’t know what Beta version of the upgrade I got, but it really screwed up my system. So, out came the 6.10 installation disc, and I found myself doing a re-installation, but of an earlier version of Ubuntu. Next time I will wait for the Upgrade Manager to tell me that the upgrade is officially available.

On Friday afternoon, I decided to try again. This time, I clicked on the button that had appeared on the Upgrade Manager. Once again, the installation seemed to go smoothly, it took just over an hour to download all the packages, and another 30 minutes to install it.

I know it seems trivial, but before you start on a major upgrade, remember to back-up any data that is vital to you. If the upgrade goes down the shoots and you lose something important, you really have nobody to blame but yourself.

A little bit of research solved the problem of being unable to mount Data CDs. Now everything is everything is rosy with the Feisty Fawn.

Another great daily strip from Paul Gadzikowski’s Arthur, King of Time and Space web comic. Click on the Thumbnail image below to see it in all its glory.

So, according to a silly quiz recommended by the Show Me Sci-Fi web log I equate to one of the greatest Science Fiction writers of all time:

I am: Isaac Asimov One of the most prolific writers in history, on any imaginable subject. Cared little for art but created lasting and memorable tales.

Which science fiction writer are you?

I knew something like this would turn up on YouTube sooner or later:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NsacaJ3HLzA]

As created by doctorwholoverkenny

I knew something like this would turn up on YouTube sooner or later:

As created by doctorwholoverkenny

For some reason, since upgrading to Ubuntu 7.04, I have been unable to read CDROMs on my PC. Every time I put a data CD in the tray and try to read it the message below pops up:

I hope that I am not the only person that this particular problem is affecting, and that it will have a quick fix. I know that Ubuntu is a community developed distribution of Linux, and that there are places to report bugs to. I just don’t know where.

The time has come for me to renovate my garden. Having finished the building work inside my house, it is now time to start doing the building work than is needed outside. A nice raised patio at the top of my garden, at the back of my house with some nice garden furniture. A small lawn with a path and flowerbeds on either side and finally a small paved area down by the garage. Also, the boundary walls between me and my neighbours need some attention.

I have a few nice plants already in the garden, left over from the previous owners. There are three healthy lilacs (Syringa vulgaris), all eight foot talk, and very verdant. They are the reason that I decided to call house Gardd Lelog, which is Welsh for Lilac Garden. The lilacs are on a southerly facing wall at the bottom of the garden, down by the garage and have really deep purple flowers in June and July (although they have flowered already this year). I want to add a couple more to the line up, maybe with lighter flowers for variety. Against the opposite wall is a Whitsun Rose (Viburnum opulus) the European Cranberry that produces lovely white pom-pom shaped flowers at the end of May, hence the name. There used to be a couple of trees, but they were chopped down four years ago, and I have been growing a Japanese Flowering Cherry (Prunus amanogawa) sapling in a large tub. This has to go into the soil this year at the latest, right at the heart of the garden. It is so pot bound at the moment that I cannot see it growing much taller than that.

The biggest problem in bottom of the garden is the stumps of old trees. The old Flowering Cherry, which was huge by the end of its life has left an humungous stump and really think roots that probably extend under the garage. It has to go, as it takes up half of what I want to be a paved area down at that end of the garden.

I have been inspired to do some sktching of what I am hoping to achieve. So I must be in a serious mood about doing something in the garden.

This is a thumbnail image of what the bck of my house currently looks like. As you can see, a lot of work is needed.  At some point in the hopefully not to distant future, I will be able to put a thumbnail photo of what the patio finally looks like.