Doctor Who Experience

I had a great afternoon at the Doctor Who Experience in the Olympia, London.

The first part is an interactive adventure. I won’t spoil the details for you, but it is great fun to be guided through the story by the Doctor. Especially as he made a comment that apparently was directed directly at me; I will be sure to check for feathers the next time I fly the TARDIS! The adventure is, of course, aimed at children, but the feeling of being inside the TARDIS is very well done, as is the space battle that takes place on board another ship.

After the adventure is the exhibition. This has a range of exhibits from classic and new Who, including a recreation of Doctors Five and Ten’s TARDIS console rooms.

The shop has a range of merchandise, some of which is exclusive. They also have special offers available to WiFi-equipped smartphones; you can grab a barcode that they scan at the checkout. I got myself a ΘΣ Φ ΓΥΔϟ t-shirt!

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I was briefly trapped in the Pandorica, but thankfully managed to escape with some Timey-Wimey jiggery-pokery.

The slide rule that launched a thousand planes

While I’m in a slide rule mood, I’d like to mention that I have my grandfather’s slide rule. He used it during World War II while he was working on the steam catapult, which is used on aircraft carriers to launch planes from the short decks.

The old slide rule is sitting next to an iPad running Wolfram Alpha. I like to use my grandad’s rule from time to time. I think he would’ve found it amusing that it’s still being used in the 21st century, doing calculations for an interstellar probe!

Pocket slide rule

Some time ago I posted a picture of a big Electronic Technician’s slide rule that I picked up in Albuquerque, NM.

This is the other slide rule that I picked up at the same time. It is much smaller, and comes in a neat leather pouch with a belt hook. Every trendy geek should wear one!

The other Icarus question

Image via Wikipedia

Some time ago I tackled the reason for the name of Project Icarus, the project I’m working on to create a theoretical design of an interstellar probe. I’m amazed that every time an article appears someone comments “They should have done some research into the name. Icarus fell into the sea!”, as if they have some special niche knowledge of mythology that we silly engineers clearly lack. Oh well, gotta laugh!

But the other question I get asked a lot is a much better one, though harder to answer. The question is “Why do you put so much time into working on Project Icarus when you’re not being paid for it?”

It’s a good question, and I don’t have an obvious answer for it.

It’s not because I think that somehow I’m helping to develop the first interstellar probe. It would be nice to think so, but realistically it’s unlikely that the first probe that’s actually built will follow the Icarus design. A long time will have passed between the delivery of the final Icarus design report and the commencement of work on a real probe. I would guess that we won’t see such a probe launched until at least 2100 – and 2200 is a more realistic date. Technology will have moved on by then, and the designers of the day will have their own ideas – probably much better ones! I’ll be happy to watch the launch of whatever craft they come up with.

I think it’s much more plausible that Icarus will feed into a next generation of design work, in the same way that Icarus is based on the Daedalus design of the 1970s. Perhaps in the 2040s another team will come along, dust off the old Icarus studies and ask themselves “How can we do this better?” That’s a nice thought. Perhaps in the 2070s yet another team will come along, and they might come up with a design that makes people say “Hey, you know, we could actually build this now.”

But ultimately, I enjoy working on the project for its own sake. It’s a very interesting problem, with some horrific constraints which make the engineering required very difficult. I’m trying to get an insight into what the solution might look like. By working through a full design, we get a much better feel for the possible solutions, so we can get a better idea of when humanity might be able to launch such a craft, and what problems we’ll need to solve on the way. It also gives us some data on what it is possible for a civilization to do, which feeds into questions about the capabilities of any extra-terrestrial societies out there (if there are any).

Of course, if you ask other team members, you’ll probably get totally different answers!

iOS: Semi-transparent + Semi-transparent = Nearly opaque

There’s a useful UI element in iOS that displays status information in a semi-transparent popup. It’s great for transient activities, for which the popup only needs to stay up for a second or less. Just enough for the user to see what’s happening, without needing to do anything to dismiss the popup.

What it’s not so great for is situations where the activity can take a long time to complete. For example, in the official Twitter app, saving a link to ReadItLater or InstaPaper displays a “Saving URL…” message.

The problem here is that depending on the speed of the network connection and the responsiveness of the server, this message can remain displayed for many seconds. Or indeed many many seconds, i.e. a minute. It can make reading anything else very difficult until the message goes away.

It’s even worse if you try to save another link while the first message is still displayed. Now the two semi-transparent popups are added together, making a more opaque popup.

This is even harder to see through!

Please, only use this element if the message is truly transient – and quickly transient.

ITV’s biggest mistake

The biggest mistake ITV ever made (apart from buying friendsreunited) was removing the regional identities at the beginning of the programs.

Mature wisdom

Robert Heinlein‘s character Lazarus Long said

It’s amazing how much “mature wisdom” resembles being too tired.

I am realising the truth of this more and more with every year that passes!

 

Salisbury Cathedral – light installations

Salisbury Cathedral (like the fleet) is currently lit up. Instead of fairy lamps, with gorgeous installations by Bruce Munro. The Light Shower hangs from the ceiling inside the building, and the Water-Towers are constructed in the cloister.

Hotel room sign extravaganza

I recently stayed at the Wessex Royale Hotel, in Dorchester. It’s a lovely hotel, with great rooms and a good restaurant. One thing that amused me, however, was the number of signs in the room. There seems to be a sign for everything you might possibly want to know!

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But as I said, it’s a very nice hotel.

Monkey World

Another visit to Monkey World – Ape Rescue Centre. I’ve been many, many times, but on this occasion there were hardly any other people around (it was early in the day, and the schools were not on holiday), so viewing conditions for all the apes and monkeys were excellent.