Nostalgia

In this case, nostalgia for an atmosphere - or ambience - I suppose you'd call it, that was before my time, but always seems to hold a certain resonance for me.



An excerpt from the 1941 British film "Dangerous Moonlight" starring Anton Wallbrook as a Polish concert pianist/fighter pilot. This is the first time I have seen any of this famous film and I hope to be able to find a DVD copy. The film is not famous for itself (it is a typical wartime raise-your-spirits effort, and sentimental to boot by all accounts) but for the excellent music composed by Richard Addinsell (who was also writer/accompanist to British institution, Joyce Grenfell).

The music is "The Warsaw Concerto": lasting just over eight minutes it is a little romantic gem and for me always strongly redolent of the "dark days of the Second World War." It is said that originally the producers of the film approached Sergei Rachmaninov for permission to use his famous Second Piano Concerto in the film, but he responded "Nyet." Happily Addinsell's creativity more than filled the gap.

Here is the original soundtrack version which I hope you will enjoy.



Until the next time

Yet More iPhone Bollocks!!

Could this be the ultimate iPhone accessory?

A diamond-studded leather case to protect your iPhone, price, $14,990.00; that is about 500 times the cost of the iPhone itself.

As some wag commented on the Gizmodo article that reported this particular piece of grossness, on the principle of "big ants have little ants/on their backs to bite 'em/little ants have smaller ants/ and so ad infinitum", one presumably buys a $234,000 case to protect the $15,000 one.

I expect they'll sell some: I heard this morning on the radio, that apparently EIGHT people bought the stupid "I am rich" non-functioning software that I reported on here so it would seem that we have not yet reached the bottom.

And to quote the eminently-quotable Phineas T. Barnum once again: "Nobody ever lost money under-estimating the taste of the public."

Until the next time.

More on the iPhone "Bling Thing"

Silicon Alley Insider reports that the silly $1000 non-functioning gadget designed by Armin Heinrich, no longer appears on the list of available applications for the iPhone.

The article asks: "Did anyone buy it?"

Well, Valleywag.com inform us that indeed at least one person did; read about it here.

As Phineas T. Barnum famously remarked "There's a sucker born every minute."

Until the next time

More iPhone Bollocks

Here you are: if you have an iPhone you can cough up $999.99 to get a "work of art" that tells everyone you are rich.

I don't have any problem with the concept of riches; what gives me a pain in the arse is the absolute lack of taste of so many of the people who have money.

"Lifestyle"... pass the sick-bag. Gold bath-taps and identity bracelet anybody?

Story from Techcrunch here.

Until the next time.

Bicycle Strangeness - More Sunday Silliness

Despite being a keen cyclist as a teenager, I have no interest now, despite all the green credentials etc.; I have been put off somewhat anyway by the rise of the Militant Cyclist - I expect you know what I mean.

However from other times comes the following video which shows some really quite bizarre variants on cycles and cycling. It appears to be in Czech and since a number of the clips date from 1942 and '43 they are interesting historically for of course at that time Czechoslovakia as it then was, was occupied by the Third Reich.

Until the next time

Particle Article

CERN from the air. The large ring is 27km in circumference

and shows the outline of the old Large Electron and
Positron Collider

Straddling the border between France and Switzerland lies the massive establishment known as CERN, the European Centre for Nuclear Research. Within a week or two, a vast experiment will begin, involving the operation of the Large Hadron Collider a particle accelerator all of 27km in length. Using magnets constructed to use super-conducting materials, which will be maintained at -271.25°C, or if you like, 1.75°K, protons will be accelerated to energies of seven trillion electron volts and then smashed together. The aim is to simulate conditions that prevailed a few micro-seconds after the Big Bang and to discover new particles including the elusive Higgs Boson.

If all the above is a little on the dry side for you, there are some stunning photographs of the colossal works going on at CERN. How about precision welding via a mirror?

The pictures above and many more all with interesting captions, may be found at the Boston Globe.

Finally those who wish to understand better the physics behind all this, may benefit from a bit of RAP from Alpinekat, a science writer who works at CERN...




Until the next time