Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy

one of the best i've classified!

Ain’t referring to Douglas Adams’ classic. This one’s for real. A team of scientists have devised a project which calls internet users to help astrophysicists classify a few of the innumerable galaxies for’em. The team admits that the project titled, ‘Galaxy Zoo’, is inspired, amongst a few, by successful NASA project, ‘Stardust@home’, which invited the public to help sort through the dust grains obtained from a mission to a comet.
They are luring in people by stating, “…One advantage is that you get to see parts of space that have never been seen before. These images were taken by a robotic telescope and processed automatically, so the odds are that when you log on, that first galaxy you see will be one that no human has seen before.”
So, enough said??...Start hitchhiking; I’ve already cleared the test, thank you! But seems like won’t be able to meet Zaphod Beeblerox. I got stuck first due to some runtime error and now the image of the galaxy won’t load. Talk about rotten luck!
Can you guess how many galaxies I’m gonna classify??
42! (wink)

www.galaxyzoo.org

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/6289474.stm

Apple of my i

I say, BBC’s longest running radio show Desert Island Discs (which also holds the Guinness world record) is outdated, at least it’s concept is! Not withstanding and overlooking the advent of Sony’s walkman and CDman, this newest technological gem casts a retro shadow over the show.
I am talking about the new apple of my eye, iPod! Apple’s and Job’s latest heart -throbbing device which has swept a lousy techno geek like me off his feet!
It’s the first inseparable possession of mine (after the glamorous first grade computer text book which I wouldn’t let go).
Master of a mammoth memory of 30 Gb, it’s exactly 3/4th of my home p.c.’s disk space, yet not even 1/100th of its size. Music on the go! Joe satriani all the time! What more can I ask for? (other than a Joe Satch signatured elec.guitar, an Enzo Ferrari, a chartered plane of my own…. oops!)
I mean I’m pretty much satisfied with my laid back life right now. So even if I am a castaway on this BBC’s desert island, I don’t have to pick 8 of my favourite records( and with audio books on the pod, I don’t even have to bother about my favourite books on the deserted island!)…..I got’em all on the apple of my i!

P.S.: Given my iPod, I don’t even have to bother to pick an inanimate luxury too! Man, how compact this device is!!

http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/factual/desertislanddiscs.shtml

View d'ensemble

It’s a wonderland up there; yeah! If it’s a cloudy morning, with white cotton balls of clouds everywhere…you wouldn’t know if you are 30,000 feet above the tallest human being or the tallest constructed monument.( could have said Everest but I don’t wanna do the math!) It’s like flying in a euphoric dream (at least I felt it; my fellow passengers were either engaged with their gastric juices functionality or rummaging through stale airline magazines). How can you not go gaga over such scenic beauty, that too, somewhere in the sky. How can one not feel the anxiety upon having the closest encounter with the gigantic colony of white and grey clouds in mushroom and what not shapes! I could have classified’em into stratus and cumulus for a keen listener and observer had there been someone forcing his nose through the window as I practically was doing.
For me it was like a tour through an automobile factory, where I can get a close look how the machine is made from scratch. Clouds of varied shapes and sizes, with sunlight filtering through the lighter ones was a soul-gripping sight. But the chart topper was a sight I can never forget. With sun shining directly in front of me, I could see the lithosphere below me. But in a distant land down south, I could distinctly see clouds showering and getting relieved! In a nutshell, I was witnessing sun, land, clouds and rain simultaneously thousands of feet above and going at about 200 meters per second- 20 times faster than the fastest man (19.58 to be precise) and 1500 times the highest pole vault jumper!(1489.573 to be exact) This made me realize the importance of a digital camera at hand.
I was so up close, I could sense the condensed water droplets sticking together to give rise to the weird shapes. I wanted to measure their density, reflectivity and various other physical properties; I had a craving to conduct all the scientific experiments so that I could unravel everything about cloud formation. But alas! I ain’t a nephologist.
They were the best one and half hours I’ve ever spent anywhere (a 90 minutes formula one grand prix comes pretty close!). Better than a lousy tour through a museum or a planetarium. I had hummed all the way Bryan Adams, “…we can watch the world go by, up on cloud number nine.”
I was literally on the cloud number nine!

Adios King Henry...

Pires came and went; so did Bergkamp, Reyes and Anelka. But no other exit will mar the Gunners as Henry’s. Come Tevez, Anelka or not, they don’t have enough payload to lift Arsenal as Henry and Wenger have done since the last decade. Henry’s no. 14 jersey was almost a replay of Cruyff’s for Barca.
“..Henry, you have a legacy to carry on. You are the Cruyff in another era, the new No 14, in a newer time, one with newer demands. But the football remains the same.” But it won’t be the same for the Gunners again. Arsenal was synonymous with Thierry Henry and Arsene Wenger. With Henry gone and Wenger set to leave a year hence, the Gunners’ arsenal is as good as expired and rotten; at least seemingly so.
How the experience of Hleb, Gilberto and Lehmann and young blood of Van P., Fabregas and Walcott bring the spark back at Emirates will be interesting to see!