August 2009 Archives

Iron Maiden's guitarist Adrian Smith has caught a massive fish.

He currently holds the honour for bagging the biggest catch this season - the fish clocked in at an impressive 7 pounds and 14 ounces.

Smith made this revelation in the latest issue of Angler's Mail, where he also talked his habit for taking worms on tour.

"I get to fish a lot of wild and wonderful places on tour," he explained. "We used to keep worms in containers under the tourbus and in summer they would get a bit savoury. I also remember a maggot scare in a very plush hotel in Amsterdam when I was fishing in the canal there. They're certainly not on the room service menu."

Via: Planet Rock's website (via NME.com, via Angler's Mail - I think this is the first time I've referenced a reference's source's source. Or something.)

I thought this might be handy for some people!

BBC Radio 5 live and sports extra have comprehensive coverage of the 2009 Formula 1 season with live commentary of every race plus coverage of all the practice and qualifying sessions, plus expert analysis before and after each race weekend.

The commentary team is led by David Croft alongside new signing Formula 1 driver Anthony Davidson, providing a driver's perspective to events, and pit lane reporter Holly Samos, with all the news and reaction as it happens.

As well as all the action on the track, on the Friday before every race David, Anthony and Holly present 5 live Formula 1 on 5 live sport previewing all the weekend's action. The coverage doesn't stop there; the Chequered Flag podcast will be available for download every Monday after race weekend with expert analysis of the latest race and the big issues from the circuit.

And you can now get F1 on your favourite social network with our F1 widget which can be embedded wherever you want it. It features the Chequered Flag podcast, the latest news from BBC Sport and schedule details for F1 on BBC Radio.

Via: BBC Radio 5 Live

Possibly the best way to learn about circuits and circuit diagrams... through sweets!

Genius.

My last entry discussed how Google's search homepage has been used to celebrate many significant events throughout history - very worthwhile if you ask me.

However, Google Maps is also very useful. Most trips I make to places I don't know are planned out on Google Maps first, either using satellite images, or maps or a combination of both.

Google Maps was recently put to great use by Rachel Young. She spent 15 hours trying to find all 26 letters of the alphabet on the British Isles. Here are her results.

Via: Telegraph.co.uk

I am a huge fan of Google. They are doing an increasing amount of things to improve the internet and using technology to its fullest, something that can only be good. Yes, there are those who think that they are diversifying a little too much, but I disagree. Everything they do, they do to the highest standard.

Anyway, I'm writing primarily about their search engine having constantly been in awe of the things they think of to do.

I'm not talking about it being the most used search engine online (figures from December 2008, the most recent I can find, show that 62.9% of the 8,000,000,000 searches surveyed were done through Google compared to 16.8% done through Yahoo! and 9.8% done using MSN/Windows Live Search [source]), I'm thinking about the creativity put into celebrating significant events through their logo.

If you've never been to Google when there's been a celebration of a world event, or a scientist's birthday or even valentine's day, then you've missed out on a little slice of personalisation. For as long as I can remember, Google have been altering their logo to reflect those sort of things, with a seeming emphasis on the world of science. I've managed to find copies of some of the images via, appropriately enough, a Google search and reproduce them for you here. Not all of these would necessarily have been shown at all the Google home pages - for instance there is one from India and China below.

14th March 2003 - Albert Einstein's birthday

15th January 2004 - Spirit on Mars

3rd February 2004 - Gaston Julia's birthday

8th June 2004 - Venus transit

13th March 2006 - Percival Lowell's birthday

16th May 2008 - First laser

6th June 2008 - Diego Velazquez's birthday

7th July 2008 - Mark Chagall's birthday

21st November 2008 - Rene Magritte's birthday

12th February 2009 - Charles Darwin's 200th birthday

17th May 2009 - Igor Stravinsky's birthday

20th June 2009 - Apollo 11 Lunar landing anniversary

10th July 2009 - Nikola Tesla's birthday

22nd July 2009 - Longest solar eclipse in India and China

23rd July 2009 - Comic-Con 2009

12th August 2009 - Perseid meteor shower

Via: Google Logos Collection, Telegraph.co.uk, Google.co.uk

As you must know by now, I am a huge follower of Formula One. I started watching the sport in the black year of 1994 during which Ayrton Senna and Roland Ratzenberger died. The injuries caused to them forced the sport to introduce various safety measures over a period of time, the overall shape, styling and safety of the cars now are a world away from how they were 15 years ago, as you can see below. Focus especially on the area around the cockpit and the driver's head.

However, despite all the safety improvements, accidents can still happen. Henry Surtees was killed a few weeks ago when he was hit on the head by a stray wheel from an accident, and Felipe Massa was injured when a spring left Rubens Barrichello's car ahead of him on the circuit. This BBC video excellently explains what happened and shows just how far the sport has come.

Freak accidents will always happen in Formula One, and in any motor sport. The key thing is what is taken away from them, what is learnt. The sport took many lessons from 1994, let's hope it can learn from these two incidents.