canspice.org

I’ve uploaded photos from the 2006 Canadian Grand Prix to my flickr space. The view we had wasn’t bad — we could see cars as they entered the braking zone for turn 1 until they rocketed out of turn 2.

Before the race we sampled the insanity that is Crescent Street, where they block off the street to set up exhibits for Formula 1 fans.

There wasn’t much action during practice, but Juan Pablo Montoya had a good romp across the grass. We also got to see the lifting capabilities of trucks as they hauled away Giorgio Mondini’s sick Midland.

The Renaults had new livery depicting an ancient Malay weapon called a keris, which is believed to be endowed with mystical powers, capable of eliminating rivals and protecting its bearer.

There were, of course, a lot of Ferrari fans cheering on Michael Schumacher and Felipe Massa.

During lap 2, Nico Rosberg and Juan Pablo Montoya came together. Alas, at turn 3, out of our view, but they were pretty close in turn 2…

Once the race was done, fans stormed the track by pulling up the chain-link fencing and clambering over the tire walls. We did too, and made it down the front straight to watch the champagne fly.

Good times!

Frederik M. J. Vestre just wrote saying that he’s implemented Audioscrobbler XML data mining using my last.fm info with PHP code as a jumping-off point. If you’ve been itching to get your last.fm information on your website, but it was in one of those pesky feeds that was only delivered in XML, then go check out his code!

One hundred and seventy-five years ago, James Clerk Maxwell was born in Edinburgh. He is known most for developing the Maxwell Equations, four equations that link electricity and magnetism and, at the same time, calculate the speed of light. He also worked in kinetic theory, coming up with the Maxwell distribution of molecular speeds in a gas.

Some of Maxwell’s lesser-known investigations include his discovery that colour photographs could be made using red, green, and blue filters. He also did work on colour blindness, and proved that Saturn’s rings were neither solid nor liquid, instead being made up of numerous solid particles.

Maxwell is considered the most influential scientist of the nineteenth century. Albert Einstein described Maxwell’s work as the “most profound and the most fruitful that physics has experienced since the time of Newton.”

His name lives on through the CGS unit of magnetic flux, the Maxwell. The only feature on Venus named after a male is named after him — Maxwell Montes, a mountain range. The largest sub-millimetre telescope in the world, the James Clerk Maxwell Telescope, is named after him, as are buildings at the University of Edinburgh, King’s College London, and the University of Stafford.

We here at the Joint Astronomy Centre (we operate the JCMT) are celebrating with a barbeque at lunch today.

Happy Birthday to James Clerk Maxwell!

There’s not much to say about the 2006 British Grand Prix. Fernando Alonso won from pole. Mark Webber, Ralf Schumacher, and Scott Speed all exited in a first lap incident. Jenson Button’s car exploded under him. Other than that, it was a pretty boring race.

Of course, there could have been a little more excitement had it not been for the typically shoddy commentary from Ralph Sheheen and Derek Daly. A tip, Derek: blocking is illegal in Formula One. You’re allowed to make one move to block, and if you make another, you get penalized. Stop going on about how blocking is ruining Formula One. Jesus.

And for the love of God would someone at CBS take away Daly’s magic pen? I don’t need to be shown where the left-side front tire is. Anybody with an IQ over 75 can figure that one out for themselves. I guess that American stations are used to televising NASCAR and the 75+ IQ demographic isn’t their target audience, but still.

How about telling us in and out laptimes so that we might have some kind of inkling where drivers are going to come out? When Michael Schumacher was in on his final pitstop it would have been really nice to know what the differential was between him and Kimi Raikkonen, but no, we get some rabble about the Ferrari pit crew. Part of F1 commentary is commentating on what you don’t see on the screen. Tell us what we can’t figure out for ourselves!

One small consolation is that this is the last race this season that will be covered by CBS.

The next race up is the 2006 Canadian Grand Prix in Montreal, Quebec. I won’t be watching this one on TV because I’ll be at the race. Grandstand 12, right at the Senna Corner, we’ll be there. Hope it’s a good one!