William M. Connolley
stoat
Posts by this author
July 23, 2008
Wireless scales! Your weight beamed to your mobile! See here.
Now we just need to work out what to call it.
The wire is just the power cord to the scales, of course, not connecting the scales to the phone :-)
July 22, 2008
Then you may like gmane.comp.security.full-disclosure/62146 (hat-tip: PW).
Or be up to date: pwnie-awards.org/2008/ Ooooh.. wordpress.
Stoat: the obscure blog. Or at least, I try.
July 22, 2008
So: we took 1/2 a length off tabs 8 on the start, but they held us long enough to get robs 6, who were by all accounts rather slow. tabs 8 did a poor job of clearing the river so after 40 strokes we ended up jammed behind them. City 4?5? cruised past several lengths down, and appeared to be…
July 22, 2008
As the price of oil has soared, so has that of coal. Both are demand-led. This is a very strong hint from the market that calls to phase out coal in the near future are doomed. Since CCS makes no commercial sense in the absence of meaningful CO2 limits, that too is doomed.
Just thought you ought to…
July 22, 2008
My first post at NextGen is now up.
More excitingly, tonight is the first of the bumps. Go Chesterton 2!
July 21, 2008
...we'll be watching you. Bluetooth, that is. At least according to the rather over-hyped Bluetooth is watching: secret study gives Bath a flavour of Big Brother. I don't have a lot of sympathy. If you go around shouting out "Hello my name is Eric Fertang" then you shouldn't complain if people…
July 20, 2008
Prefix: you may have read the leaks about this in the Grauniad: "Channel 4 to be censured over controversial climate film" seems a fair comment on the fairness ruling. But are they right about the accuracy aspect? That will need another post. Meanwhile, thanks to Dave Rado for pushing all this, and…
July 18, 2008
Eat your hearts out real scientists :-) See here. I think its hung off a trip in the icebreaker that QS got; see his blog I get to say Bets have already been laid on whether this summer's ice loss will be more than last year's. William Connolley, a software engineer who used to model sea-ice…
July 17, 2008
Or so says Gordy. The grauniad has a special supplement on Climate Change. I guess they aren't taking it too seriously, because I spent quite a time digging through their web site before I found it. I rather liked Monbiot Porrit's piece but for the moment I'm going to look at what Broon said.
First…
July 17, 2008
Good post by RP Jr here. James "on holiday" Annan should take note :-).
July 17, 2008
A meme I heard somewhere - I forget where. Likely suspects are welcome to remind me and get credited. The version I didn't see but have just found is by Scott Butki (thats one of those American names like "Peentangler" that sound so funny to us old folks). Anyway, where was I? Oh yes - that one…
July 10, 2008
Seed has a new blog up, http://scienceblogs.com/energy/, and one of them is me. Atmoz isn't very happy about us all selling out (its sponsored by Shell). I can't speak for anyone else, but while I'm not going to disclose the fees, its only because you'd laugh rather than go green with envy :-(
I…
July 10, 2008
As an antidote to recent postings, I shall point out that wiki is also fun. There must be a site devoted to inspired wikipedia vandalism. But I don't know where it is. In the meantime, you can make do with my own modest contribution (and I forgot this one, thanks M), or (thanks to Paul) this…
July 9, 2008
The G8 have spoken: We seek to share with all Parties to the UNFCCC the vision of, and together with them to consider and adopt in the UNFCCC negotiations, the goal of achieving at least 50% reduction of global emissions by 2050, recognizing that this global challenge can only be met by a global…
July 9, 2008
Cycling back through the rain of the english summer, I was turning over in my mind who knew what in our firmware group, and thought of one person who had "aboriginal" knowledge. And immeadiately thought that the word is now perjorative, most clearly when reduced to "abo" by the Strines. But what I…
July 8, 2008
Lawrence Solomon seems to have a bee in his bonnet about wikipedia. He really should be writing about the exciting ongoing arbcomm case; but presumably thats too complex for him and would actually require some thinking or research. Instead, having called me Next to Al Gore, William Connolley may be…
July 5, 2008
Its a paper in Science, by R. S. W. van de Wal et al. I've only read the abstract, by I was rather struck by how easy it is to misinterpret the title, given that the abstract continues ...Over a longer period of 17 years, annual ice velocities have decreased slightly, which suggests that the…
July 2, 2008
Gosh, you wait for one piece of insanity and then two come along at once. But this time its personal. So those interested in wiki's inards can wade through the gore at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration#Wheelwar regarding User:Giano_II. If you need a user guide to the…
June 29, 2008
The story so far: arbitrator User:FT2 posted a bizarre Arbcomm decision in which a user was, apparently, tried and sentenced in secret. Unsurprisingly, outrage ensued. One other arb then repudiated the judgement, and said it was done "without the approval or prior knowledge of the Committee as a…
June 28, 2008
Since RC has posted on the sea ice, maybe its a good time for an update.
From http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/ we have
So its clearly going to be a close run thing. At the moment the trend line favours the good guys (that is to say, me, if you're in doubt :-) but not by much.
mt called me a "…
June 18, 2008
So, I was down the pub (the Castle) and after a few pints the conversation turned to religion, and the assertion that England (joint with some other country we couldn't name; I went for Iceland, Andy for Denmark) was the most godless in the world (in some unclear sense involving religious belief)…
June 17, 2008
Chesterton came 3rd in the X-Press head though I don't think thats very useful for seeding crews for the City bumps in July. 9:42 is a passable time, on the right side of 10 mins, though a long way short of City's 8:59. But the boat was full of subs (like me) so will hopefully go faster once the…
June 16, 2008
As Atmoz noted, its a bit of a slow season, but via Deltoid comes probably the most stupid ever explanation for GW: yes, its the microwave radiation from satellites warming us up. This is blindingly obviously nonsense, but John Mashey provides some numbers if you're in any doubt.
Mind you, the…
June 12, 2008
So, nothing new there you may well say.
My morning paper tells me that Broon has won a pointless victory over the bizarre 42-day-detention stuff. He had to buy off the Ulstermen to do this, and the Lords will veto it, and he is only doing it for cheap popularity, and he will fail, and it will all…
June 9, 2008
Lawrence Solomon was kind enough to popularise my name. So its time to return the favour, and ask, "who is he"? And indeed, what is "Energy Probe"?
If you read the wiki entry on EP only a few hours ago, you would have found that Energy Probe is a Canadian non-governmental organization which…
June 8, 2008
Don't worry, fuel hasn't gone up that much. No, this one is about food. For quite some time now, ever since I've been doing it, certainly more than a year, our weekly family-of-4 shopping bill at Waitrose has been £100, give or take about £20, depending on how much booze or other exceptional…
June 5, 2008
Its Jim Hansens plan (or is it copied from someone else? who cares) and its pushed again here. The idea: carbon tax, to be returned diurect to the public. As he sez: Principles must be crystal clear and adhered to rigorously. A tax on coal, oil and gas is simple. It can be collected at the first…
June 2, 2008
...as the famous sage replied. He wasn't talking about the Thompson et al. stuff, but he could have been. RP Jr appears determined to prove me right and is in danger of saltating the carcharhiniforme (ho ho).
Meanwhile, in an abrupt U-turn, James "maverick" Annan is toeing the party line,…
June 1, 2008
£75 is how much it cost to fill up our C5 a few days ago; with diesel at 1.29 per litre, you could work out our tank size, if you were bored.
Current fuel prices are clearly causing some pain, or at least some squealing, all around the world (as Maribo notes, "we are approaching the elastic part…