Me and myself in Elite

During one of my space travels in Elite, I was very surprised to find myself: a NPC pilot called 'rpardo' aboard a Lakon 'Type 9 Heavy' freighter in the AZ Cancri system.

Luckily, the NPC was 'clean'. Otherwise, I would have been forced to destroy him and perhaps the spatio-temporal structure had been damaged!

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A very very long month

Well, wargaming was frozen due to the cold, but January is over and I hope the flu season has also gone!
Watch this space!

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Voyager probes found in 'Elite: Dangerous'

I'm taking these holidays to play 'Elite Dangerous' (sorry, no wargaming at Christmas).
Below is a sample of the "realism" of the game: a close encounter of a gamer (unluckily not me!) with the Voyager 1 and 2 probes in the outskirts of the Solar system.

Voyager 1



Voyager 2

Remember that the Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 twin probes, were launched 37 years ago (September 1977) and are still flying.

Watch this space!

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Happy New Year 2015!

Happy wargaming!

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Merry Christmas from ALKAID

Happy wargaming!

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Elite Dangerous launching

Today, December 16, 2014, is the first day of Elite Dangerous 1.0. See the official Trailer (best in full screen mode) and enjoy!

The galaxy is waiting!

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Visiting Sol in Elite Dangerous

The launching of Elite Dangerous is scheduled on 16 december and meanwhile the proccess of design and testing continues.
You can see below a view of Galileo station orbiting Mars

and a view of ALKAID the home star of ALKAID EDICIONES

Right on, Commander!

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Elite Dangerous. Beta 3 launchig

Frontier Developments follows its planned launchig Schedule for Elite Dangerous, and the beta 3 version has been released at October 28.
The upgrade includes more stars and the introduction of minig as a new activity in addition to the more usual of trader, pirate, mercenary and discoverer.
You can see below some screen-shots of my last activities in the Elite Universe.

A Coriolis station

A police spaceship watching near an orbital

Landing into a rich and luxurious spacial station

A new model spatial station

Right on, commander!

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150,000 visitors!

Today, this blog has reached the 150,000 visitors!
We started in April 16, 2007, reaching the first 50,000 in July 13, 2010 and the 100,000 in May 29, 2012.

He (or she) come from Italy. Now for the 200,000!

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30th anniversary of the first ELITE

The 30th anniversary of the BBC Elite, the first released versión of this game, was celebrated on 20th September. There is a small BBC machine emulator available on the Elite Dangerous site (only for Elite Dangerous buyers, sorry!), to play it.
Watch below the Elite Dangerous commemorative video

And below a Youtube video from the Commodore-64 versión, the mine!

I still remember the trepidation of the game.... and the veeeeeeeeery looooog loading times with the old cassette storage unit of the Commodore 64!

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Elite Dangerous Beta has arrived!

Elite Dangerous Beta 1 has been released (see this post).

I am fighting the 'Solar Fluke' in the Eranin System

Visit the Elite Dangerous site if you interested in this re-born space trading/fighting game.

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Busy with real work

I am very busy with real-world work, but I'm still here, waiting to go back with recharged energy.

Wait for me!

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11-M: Ten years....

March 11th 2004... 11-M... ten years after the terrorist train bombing at Madrid...
We don't forget...

If I were more pretty

and a bit smarter

If I were special,

Off a magazine cover

I would have the strength

to cross the train

and ask you who you are.

You sit in the front

and you don’t even imagine

that only for you

my best skirt am I wearing.

and as I see you yawn

that crystal panel

my eyes well up.

Suddenly, you see me

I watch you and you sigh,

As I close my eyes,

you turn back silently,

I hardly breathe,

I feel so small

and I begin to tremble.

And thus days go by,

from Monday to Friday,

as the flying swallows

of the poem of Becquer,

from station to station

we sit there, you and I

and so passes the silence.

Suddenly, you see me

I watch you and you sigh,

As I close my eyes,

you turn back silently,

I hardly breathe,

I feel so small

and I begin to tremble.

And then sudden, it happens,

and my lips wake up

pronouncing your name

in a stuttering voice,

You’re probably thinking

“Such a foolish girl!”

and I want to die.

But then the time stops,

You approach to me,
you whisper…

“I do not know you,

But I already miss you.

You know, every morning

I skip the direct route

and board this train”

And now, we are arriving

and my life is changing.

Such a special day

this eleventh of March.

You take my hand,

we enter a tunnel

that turns off the light.

With the help of my hands,

I find your face

I kiss you on the lips

I become very brave

you say that you love me,

and I grant you

the last beat of my heart...

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A Hybrid Solar Eclipse at Valladolid (Spain)

Today, November 3, 2013, we have had a hybrid Solar eclipse partially visible from Spain. As everyone knows a solar eclipse occurs when the Moon passes between the Sun and Earth, and the Moon fully or partially blocks ("occults") the Sun. This can happen only at new moon, when the Sun and the Moon are in conjunction as seen from Earth in an alignment referred to as syzygy (a straight line configuration of three celestial bodies). In a total eclipse, the disk of the Sun is fully obscured by the Moon. In partial and annular eclipses only part of the Sun is obscured. A hybrid eclipse (also called annular/total eclipse) shifts between a total and annular eclipse: at certain points on the surface of Earth it appears as a total eclipse, whereas at other points it appears as annular. Hybrid eclipses are comparatively rare.

From the charts and the animation above, you can see that this eclipse was predicted as being only marginal in Spain, as shown in the below scheme (taken from here)

However, I have taken some photographies of this celestial event and one of them allows to watch the eclipse. See the series below:

The 'big' picture

The central zone (real size pixels)

The central zone enlarged

Idem in black and white

The 'big' picture was taken with a normal digital camera using as filters two 3.5" floppy diskettes and an oportune cloud, that have originated these artificial colours. The other images have been made with the help of Photoshop. The edge of the Moon can be seen down right on the surface of the Sun. The picture looks like the above diagram, but the area bitten by the Moon is smaller because Valladolid is at a higher latitude than Madrid.

So, no expensive cameras, no lenses, no telescope... but I have watched a Solar Eclipse 'under Windows'!

And now for the nostalgic amongst you: Bonnie Tyler's Total Eclipse of the Heart

 

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The 2013 Ig Nobel Prize Winners

Improbable Research is research that makes people laugh and then think.
Improbable Research is also the name of an organization that collects improbable research. Their goal is to make people laugh, then make them think. They also want to spur the people's curiosity, and to raise the question: How do you decide what's important and what's not, and what's real and what's not — in science and everywhere else?
They are the administers of the Ig Nobel Prizes. See below the 2013 winners announced and awarded on September 12, 2013.

MEDICINE PRIZE: Masateru Uchiyama [JAPAN], Xiangyuan Jin [CHINA, JAPAN], Qi Zhang [JAPAN], Toshihito Hirai [JAPAN], Atsushi Amano [JAPAN], Hisashi Bashuda [JAPAN] and Masanori Niimi [JAPAN, UK], for assessing the effect of listening to opera, on heart transplant patients who are mice.
REFERENCE: "Auditory stimulation of opera music induced prolongation of murine cardiac allograft survival and maintained generation of regulatory CD4+CD25+ cells," Masateru Uchiyama, Xiangyuan Jin, Qi Zhang, Toshihito Hirai, Atsushi Amano, Hisashi Bashuda and Masanori Niimi, Journal of Cardiothoracic Surgery, vol. 7, no. 26, epub. March 23, 2012.
ATTENDING THE CEREMONY: Masateru Uchiyama, Xiangyuan Jin, Masanori Niimi

PSYCHOLOGY PRIZE: Laurent Bègue [FRANCE], Brad Bushman [USA, UK, the NETHERLANDS, POLAND], Oulmann Zerhouni [FRANCE], Baptiste Subra [FRANCE], and Medhi Ourabah [FRANCE], for confirming, by experiment, that people who think they are drunk also think they are attractive.
REFERENCE: "'Beauty Is in the Eye of the Beer Holder': People Who Think They Are Drunk Also Think They Are Attractive," Laurent Bègue, Brad J. Bushman, Oulmann Zerhouni, Baptiste Subra, Medhi Ourabah, British Journal of Psychology, epub May 15, 2012.
ATTENDING THE CEREMONY: Brad Bushman, Laurent Bègue, Medhi Ourabah

JOINT PRIZE IN BIOLOGY AND ASTRONOMY: Marie Dacke [SWEDEN, AUSTRALIA], Emily Baird [SWEDEN, AUSTRALIA, GERMANY], Marcus Byrne [SOUTH AFRICA, UK], Clarke Scholtz [SOUTH AFRICA], and Eric Warrant [SWEDEN, AUSTRALIA, GERMANY], for discovering that when dung beetles get lost, they can navigate their way home by looking at the Milky Way.
REFERENCE: "Dung Beetles Use the Milky Way for Orientation," Marie Dacke, Emily Baird, Marcus Byrne, Clarke H. Scholtz, Eric J. Warrant, Current Biology, epub January 24, 2013. The authors, at Lund University, Sweden, the University of Witwatersrand, South Africa, and the University of Pretoria
ATTENDING THE CEREMONY: Marie Dacke, Emily Baird, Marcus Byrne, Eric Warrant

SAFETY ENGINEERING PRIZE: The late Gustano Pizzo [USA], for inventing an electro-mechanical system to trap airplane hijackers — the system drops a hijacker through trap doors, seals him into a package, then drops the encapsulated hijacker through the airplane's specially-installed bomb bay doors, whence he parachutes to earth, where police, having been alerted by radio, await his arrival. US Patent #3811643, Gustano A. Pizzo, "anti hijacking system for aircraft", May 21, 1972.

PHYSICS PRIZE: Alberto Minetti [ITALY, UK, DENMARK, SWITZERLAND], Yuri Ivanenko [ITALY, RUSSIA, FRANCE], Germana Cappellini [ITALY], Nadia Dominici [ITALY, SWITZERLAND], and Francesco Lacquaniti [ITALY], for discovering that some people would be physically capable of running across the surface of a pond — if those people and that pond were on the moon.
REFERENCE: "Humans Running in Place on Water at Simulated Reduced Gravity," Alberto E. Minetti, Yuri P. Ivanenko, Germana Cappellini, Nadia Dominici, Francesco Lacquaniti, PLoS ONE, vol. 7, no. 7, 2012, e37300.
ATTENDING THE CEREMONY: Alberto Minetti and Yuri Ivanenko

The full ceremony video

CHEMISTRY PRIZE: Shinsuke Imai [JAPAN], Nobuaki Tsuge [JAPAN], Muneaki Tomotake [JAPAN], Yoshiaki Nagatome [JAPAN], Toshiyuki Nagata [JAPAN, GERMANY], and Hidehiko Kumgai [JAPAN], for discovering that the biochemical process by which onions make people cry is even more complicated than scientists previously realized.
REFERENCE: "Plant Biochemistry: An Onion Enzyme that Makes the Eyes Water," S. Imai, N. Tsuge, M. Tomotake, Y. Nagatome, H. Sawada, T. Nagata and H. Kumagai, Nature, vol. 419, no. 6908, October 2002, p. 685.
ATTENDING THE CEREMONY: All six co-authors.

ARCHAEOLOGY PRIZE: Brian Crandall [USA] and Peter Stahl [CANADA, USA], for parboiling a dead shrew, and then swallowing the shrew without chewing, and then carefully examining everything excreted during subsequent days — all so they could see which bones would dissolve inside the human digestive system, and which bones would not.
REFERENCE: "Human Digestive Effects on a Micromammalian Skeleton," Peter W. Stahl and Brian D. Crandall, Journal of Archaeological Science, vol. 22, November 1995, pp. 789–97.
ATTENDING THE CEREMONY: Brian Crandall

PEACE PRIZE: Alexander Lukashenko, president of Belarus, for making it illegal to applaud in public, AND to the Belarus State Police, for arresting a one-armed man for applauding.

PROBABILITY PRIZE: Bert Tolkamp [UK, the NETHERLANDS], Marie Haskell [UK], Fritha Langford [UK, CANADA], David Roberts [UK], and Colin Morgan [UK], for making two related discoveries: First, that the longer a cow has been lying down, the more likely that cow will soon stand up; and Second, that once a cow stands up, you cannot easily predict how soon that cow will lie down again.
REFERENCE: "Are Cows More Likely to Lie Down the Longer They Stand?" Bert J. Tolkamp, Marie J. Haskell, Fritha M. Langford, David J. Roberts, Colin A. Morgan, Applied Animal Behaviour Science, vol. 124, nos. 1-2, 2010, pp. 1–10.
ATTENDING THE CEREMONY: Bert Tolkamp

PUBLIC HEALTH PRIZE: Kasian Bhanganada, Tu Chayavatana, Chumporn Pongnumkul, Anunt Tonmukayakul, Piyasakol Sakolsatayadorn, Krit Komaratal, and Henry Wilde, for the medical techniques described in their report "Surgical Management of an Epidemic of Penile Amputations in Siam" — techniques which they recommend, except in cases where the amputated penis had been partially eaten by a duck. [THAILAND]
REFERENCE: "Surgical Management of an Epidemic of Penile Amputations in Siam," by Kasian Bhanganada, Tu Chayavatana, Chumporn Pongnumkul, Anunt Tonmukayakul, Piyasakol Sakolsatayadorn, Krit Komaratal, and Henry Wilde, American Journal of Surgery, 1983, no. 146, pp. 376-382.
ATTENDING THE CEREMONY: Nobel laureate Eric Maskin read aloud the acceptance speech sent by the winners.

See more at Improbable Research site and enjoy it!

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Break time

Still summer. Enjoy this old song!

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Off topics: ELITE Dangerous

Elite was one of the first computer games I played, back in the 80's, on my Commodore 64 home computer. In Elite you were a trader flying from planet to planet, carrying goods, fighting the pirates, and using the profits to upgrade your spaceship. Even I reached the 'Archangel' grade, reserved to commanders achieving the destruction of a space station in a system invaded by the Thargoids (the bad guys of the game). When I changed my Commodore 64 for a more 'serious' PC clone, I played Frontier Elite II and its sequel Frontier: First Encounters, although really was my son Sergio who actually played these last two versions!

Elte screens in the 80's. Crude but effective graphics!

After many legal problems, the game go away from scene, substituted by 'state of the art' games, but it still remains as one of the best computer games ever. Some freeware and shareware versions can be still found in internet, and after an inconcluded open-code Elite 4 project, David Braben (one of the initial Elite designers) has launched a new project, financed through crowfounding, named Elite: Dangerous, to be released in 2014. See below a game teaser.

I am waiting for the final releasing!

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Spanish train crash

What can I say? It is very sad huge loss of so many lives in a tragedy of such a level. Unfortunately in Galicia is not the first time that we live an unprecedented tragedy, Prestige oil spill in 2002, summer forest fires of 2006 and now this horrible train accident with at least, 78 killed and 130 injured.

I can only offer condolences to all the families of the dead, wish the best to all injured survivors and recover as soon as possible and all my support and encouragement to the people of Galicia.

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11M. In memoriam

If I were more pretty

and a bit smarter

If I were special,

Off a magazine cover

I would have the strength

to cross the train

and ask you who you are.

You sit in the front

and you don’t even imagine

that only for you

my best skirt am I wearing.

and as I see you yawn

that crystal panel

my eyes well up.

Suddenly, you see me

I watch you and you sigh,

As I close my eyes,

you turn back silently,

I hardly breathe,

I feel so small

and I begin to tremble.

And thus days go by,

from Monday to Friday,

as the flying swallows

of the poem of Becquer,

from station to station

we sit there, you and I

and so passes the silence.

Suddenly, you see me

I watch you and you sigh,

As I close my eyes,

you turn back silently,

I hardly breathe,

I feel so small

and I begin to tremble.

And then sudden, it happens,

and my lips wake up

pronouncing your name

in a stuttering voice,

You’re probably thinking

“Such a foolish girl!”

and I want to die.

But then the time stops,

You approach to me,
you whisper…

“I do not know you,

But I already miss you.

You know, every morning

I skip the direct route

and board this train”

And now, we are arriving

and my life is changing.

Such a special day

this eleventh of March.

You take my hand,

we enter a tunnel

that turns off the light.

With the help of my hands,

I find your face

I kiss you on the lips

I become very brave

you say that you love me,

and I grant you

the last beat of my heart...

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A happy day!

Yesterday was a great day for my family: My daughter Tania received her Ph.D. in Environmental Sciences from the University of Salamanca. Her thesis work deals with pollution topics: "Recovery of trace element polluted soils by stabilization phytotechnologies" and has been carried out at the CEBAS-CSIC Research Institute at Murcia (Spain).
Chance has made that she reached her degree on the same day that me, March 1st, but with a thirty-three years difference!

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