A lesson in marmalade making will come as a boon…
First slice the orange over a bowl with a spoon.
Collect the juice! but leave the pith behind.
Put flesh, the juice and pips in a mixer and grind;
When smooth, then push the purée through sieve into pan.
Now scoop the pith from the shells as much as you can.
Then slice the rind to strips as thin as a match,
And add them to sieved flesh (mix all into one big mishmash).
Add lemon and water, and simmer until the rind’s soft;
It takes an hour or two, as often as not.
On low heat, add sugar and stir ’til the sugar’s dissolved,
And bring to the boil, skimming the froth to a bowl.
Take samples to fridge; when jellied, the conserve’s at par!
Then extract, and pour into clean and cool jars.
Making Marmalade
27 01 2010Comments : 4 Comments »
Categories : stuff
Interstellar Communications
10 01 2010My article on interstellar communications has been published on the Project Icarus blog.
This is my first public article for Icarus. I joined the team a few weeks ago, working primarily on the communication systems.
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Tags: bis, icarus, interstellar, tzf
Categories : comms, science & technology, space
Report on Project Icarus Symposium
9 11 2009My report on the recent Project Icarus Symposium has been published on Centauri Dreams.
Project Icarus is a study being carried out by the Tau Zero Foundation and the British Interplanetary Society to update the original Project Daedalus design from the 1970s with the benefit of 30 years’ advance in science and technology.
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Tags: bis, interstellar, space, spacecraft, tzf
Categories : Uncategorized
Frontiers of Propulsion Science
27 05 2009Marc Millis and Eric Davis of the Tau Zero Foundation have released Frontiers of Propulsion Science, a compilation of emerging science relevant to interstellar propulsion technologies.
While decades of science fiction have accustomed us to the idea that the human race is destined to live on in distant solar systems, the harsh reality is that travel to the stars is really very very hard. Ridiculously hard. Even the closest stars to the sun are so far away that it would take thousands of years for a small probe to arrive using our current propulsion systems. Our technology is not even remotely close to being able to send humans on such a voyage.
But should we let our present limitations bind our conception of what is possible? Can we establish the limits of what physics will allow, even if the engineering challenges are beyond daunting at this stage? And having sketched out the theoretically plausible, can we work out a plan of action for tackling these problems both experimentally and theoretically so we can, in the near term, make progress toward our goals? Read the rest of this entry »
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Tags: interstellar, rockets, space, spacecraft, starship, warp
Categories : science & technology, space
Hands-on RFID for Makers
10 03 2009Tom Igoe and Brian Jepson ran a great RFID workshop at ETech 2009.
As the description on the page says:
Ever wanted to get a real understanding of how RFID works? In this workshop, you’ll learn about the different classes of RFID devices. We’ll discuss what RFID can and can’t do, what devices are already on the market, and what kinds of future applications are possible. Then, using your own RFID reader and an Arduino microcontroller, you’ll learn how to move data from the tag to the screen to the database. You’ll learn how to read to and write from tags, and how creative thinking about RFID reader antennas can lead to all new devices.
And that’s exactly what we did. Read the rest of this entry »
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Tags: arduino, etech, rfid
Categories : computers, electronics, science & technology
Python and the Stephen Fry compo
24 01 2009The legendary Stephen Fry recently announced a competition on his twitter feed to celebrate his 50,000th follower:
L=50 in Roman. The best tweet containing exactly 50 Ls will win. All tweets to contain the tag #L and none to exceed 140 character limit SF
Well, this sounded like fun! I decided to have a go. Read the rest of this entry »
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Categories : computers, stuff
Incase Power Slider for iPhone 3G
15 01 2009The Incase Power Slider for iPhone 3G brings a huge boost to the runtime of the iPhone. However, it’s not a perfect solution. Both Incase and Apple need to do some fixin’.
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Categories : computers, everyday carry
SETI@Home on Dell XPS m1330 running Ubuntu with CUDA
31 12 2008SETI@Home can now take advantage of CUDA, the parallel processing engine at the heart of NVIDIA GPUs. This means that the GPU’s computations are added to those of the normal CPUs, resulting in faster processing of computation units, which is very handy for churning through the challenging Astropulse calculations.
I now have SETI@Home running on Ubuntu on my Dell XPS m1330. It’s not particularly difficult to set up, but if you want to try it yourself you may find these steps useful. Read the rest of this entry »
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Categories : computers, science & technology
Why I switched from Windows Mobile to iPhone
20 12 2008I’ve been using Windows Mobile PDAs and phones, for many years now, ever since Palm let me down with one of their ‘enhancements’. I have now switched to the iPhone. I’ll explain here what led me to change. Read the rest of this entry »
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Tags: iphone, windows mobile
Categories : computers, everyday carry
Amateur rocketry
10 12 2008Phil Charlesworth of the UK Rocketry Association (UKRA) delivered a fascinating – and entertaining – IET Christmas lecture at the University of Bath UK.
He brought several rockets with him, ranging from models that were the size of your hand, to examples that were taller than an adult, along with various parts that are used in the construction and powering of real rockets.
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Tags: amateur, education, rockets
Categories : science & technology, space
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