Archive for October, 2006

Hubble’s new lease on life

Tuesday, October 31st, 2006

Good news for anyone interested in the nature and content of our universe: NASA has reversed course and decided to repair the Hubble Space telescope. For many with an interest in astronomy, the idea that this fine instrument would be allowed to fall out of orbit seemed quite mad.
The refit, which should take place in [...]

Tiger tip: save time with a smart folder

Tuesday, October 31st, 2006

One tip for people using Mac OS X Tiger: you can use a smart folder to speed up finding things you are working on. Here’s how:

Let my packets go!

Tuesday, October 31st, 2006

Why is wireless networking so dodgy right now? I am not talking about typing 400 character messages into your phone with your thumbs, but about accessing something really useful with a device not physically connected to a computer network.
Not to sound like Margaret Thatcher, but a big part of the answer is government regulation. Back [...]

Fish presentation tonight

Monday, October 30th, 2006

My fisheries presentation in Wadham is in a few hours. For those who are not going, but who are interested in EU fisheries policy in West Africa, you can have a look at the following:
My PowerPoint slides (1.8mb)
My speaking notes (79kb)
The page on my wiki relating to this (includes PDF versions of the above).
Wish me [...]

WordPress 2.0.5 upgrade

Monday, October 30th, 2006

The blog has been upgraded to WordPress 2.0.5: Ronan. This is an incremental upgrade, so I do not anticipate any major issues. So many people are doing this upgrade today that the instructions page for upgrades on the WordPress Codex cannot be accessed. Good thing I remember the drill from last time.
Plugins will be coming [...]

Timeline: the next 250 days

Sunday, October 29th, 2006

Tomorrow begins another busy week. I need to finish preparing my presentation on West African fisheries for the Wadham Research Forum tomorrow night. While I appreciate the chance to proselytize a bit on this important subject, I am somewhat nervous about being the only grad student presenting to a clutch of dons; hopefully, none will [...]