nik newark

A New Model Of Climate Change

A couple of weeks ago, David Cameron decided to say “vote blue, go green” or somesuch. Emporer Menzies Campbell then decided to make some sort of green statement, and tell the world that he was selling his Jaguar XJS. And then Gordon “Gordon” Brown told the world that he was very green indeed, as he remembered to unplug his mobile phone charger when his phone wasn't actually being charged. It is the little things, said Gordon, that make the difference, especially when everyone does it.

Which brings me to the BBC's Climate Change modelling screensaver. Whenever you aren't using your computer, the screensaver takes over, and runs a series of complex mathematical tasks, to model climate change. Apparently, the complex mathematical tasks are so complex, and so mathematical, that your computer may start to run very hot, and the fans may start to run very noisily (or so the FAQ says).
Hmm. Have we found the real culprit behind global warming?
There are over 150,000 people in the UK running this screensaver, whose computers will now be running flat out for much of the day. Rather than idling, each CPU is using (say) 100W, and its fans are now running at full blast. That's an awful lot of extra power used. And whereas the idle temperature of each CPU might be ~35 degrees, the “series of complex mathematical tasks” temperature is more like ~65 degrees. So, that's 30 degrees, for each of the 150,000 computers in the UK which are running the screensaver. Here's the maths bit…

30 degrees x 150,000 = 4,500,000 degrees. That is four and a half million degrees. To compare, the outer layer of the sun is only 6000 degrees, so this is 750 times hotter
than the surface of the sun.

So, why aren't we all burning up? The answer can be found in geometry.

The sun is a circle, and there are 360 degrees in a circle. So, dividing our temperature by 360 degrees:-

4,500,000 degrees / 360 degrees = 12,500 degrees, which is only about twice as hot as the sun. Now we are getting closer to the truth. The sun is extremely big, far bigger than 150,000 processors. It is also very far away, unlike processors (a recent study hypothesized that on the UK mainland, you are never more than 3 metres from a processor, which suggests that processors have many of the same characteristics as rats). Even when the appropriate multipliers are applied (maths too complicated to show here), we would still expect a temperature change in excess of 1100 degrees. So why don't we see this in every day life?

The answer lies in the cooling power of the Moon. But that is a discussion for another day.

Bibliography
The Moon's Temperature at l =2.77cm
Moon disc temperature as a function of phase at 1700 MHz
Moon Landings Faked!

Bawu & Strings

One of my favourite CDs of the year to date has been The Perfumed Grass by Juta.
Juta are playing a couple of gigs over the next fortnight, and promise to be playing some numbers from their forthcoming CD (which I hear is going to be even better than the first one). If you go, and your experience is marred by a toddler singing the words “pebble pebble pebble”, then it means that I'm there too, and we couldn't find a babysitter…

Frost Theatre

We've had Coldplay (and how disappointed we were in everything after the first 5 songs of their first album). We've had Snow Patrol (and how disappointed we were in everything that wasn't their big single, you know, the one that you kept humming last year). We've had Ice Games (but you are not cool enough to have heard of them). So now comes (as promised some months ago) Frost Theatre, with their song Gravity Down.
You may feel this song is somewhat derivative, that you've heard its ilk before. That wouldn't bother Martin Christophers and his band of merry middleclass minstrels one jot. Oh no. They are too busy getting jiggy with Hollywood stars, and producing fruitily named offspring (Like Martin Christophers' daughter Passion Fruit Paltry-Christophers) and having curly hair*
Oh anyway, enough.
This months recommended listening: “Morph The Cat” by Donald Fagen, “Freedom Fields” by Seth Lakeman, and “Silent Scream” by The Knife.

*Ordinarily when you are creating a pastiche of someone, you concentrate on their unique or distinctive attributes. You can see that I'm having some difficulty with Coldplay.

Register with TypeKey!

I am writing this under duress; Tosha is throwing grapes at me, saying “stop playing around with stylesheets and actually write something! You are stalling! You have nothing to write about!”.

Not true.

I could of course write about Nappygate, but I couldn't possibly compete with the superb literary style of Alex Mott (I must say that I am ANGRY though)

So, instead, I'll write about TypeKey. I've added TypeKey to the comments section, which is an attempt to foil purveyors of made-up tinned meat products. If you want to leave a comment, you now have two choices:-
1) Register with TypeKey (free, takes seconds, allows you to leave comments on other TypeKey enabled sites), and then leave your comments. (TypeKey puts a biscuit on your machine, so you don't need to keep reauthenticating. If you don't like biscuits, you can optionally use a Jaffa Cake instead).
2) Tell TypeKey to sod off, and then comment anyway. The drawback is that I, the all powerful God of the site, need to approve your comment before it appears on the site. I'm a busy chap, so this may not be for several months.
3) Tell me to sod off, by email.
4) Do something more constructive than comment on blogs
5) Throw grapes at me

The choice is yours.

OK, take THAT, Johnny Spambot!

Tosha, this evening: “I hate people who start blogs, and then kind of fizzle out and never update them”
Me: “Er…”

So, yes, that'll be me. I've been delinquent in my blog updates. I have sinned. (I did once write a Guest Blog on Kittenhead http://www.kittenhead.co.uk/2006_03_01_archive.html, plus post an unauthorised picture of a Dalek, so I've not been entirely dormant. But I shall do better.

Anyway, comments are now back online, (though you need to sign in to TypeKey if you want to get your comments appearing automatically; otherwise, you've got to wait for me to go through and check that you aren't peddling filth, or texas hold-em.