SHED MONTHLY

To Our Children's Children's Children

2011-11-26T12:00:00.001Z

There has been talk for years about 'messages from outer space'. They've been at the heart of many a science fiction plot and, reasonably enough, are a natural extension of a belief that somewhere out there is life that has evolved to the point where those other 'beings' ask themselves the same question as we have been asking: "Is there anyone else out there?"

We've been sending messages out into the universe for thousands of years - initially without realising it and more recently deliberately with a view to showing any potential recipients the stage to which we ourselves have evolved. The changes to our atmosphere, energy emissions, land use and unnatural shapes formed are just a few would have indicated that there is someone on Planet Earth, or whatever name our world is given, alive and well and living here. If our alien observers missed those then some of our more focused efforts may have, or might one day, get noticed.

Until today, though, I hadn't been aware of our actually having received any messages. Yes, there have been rumours galore but no-one with any official standing has confirmed that we might have done in any public arena. So I was astonished to read a post on Google+ from someone called Daryl Kuzyk referring to a release by the National Security Agency titled Key To The Extraterrestrial Messages and written by Dr Howard Campaigne, a mathematician and cryptology specialist who has been working in the field of interpreting code since the Second World War and who seems to be someone who talks sense, even if it is pretty complicated sense.

It appears that Key To The Extraterrestrial Messages was published in 2004 but was only actually made public after a request under Freedom Of Information legislation in April this year. Quite why this did not make big news or, at least, appear on my radar screen, a few months ago I don't know. It may be simply because the article itself is not easy reading and, of course, the very fact that it has been released and is Unclassified tends to diminish its importance in the eyes of those who might have been inclined to tell the world about it, being more impressed, perhaps, by articles or recordings smuggled out of meetings and documents with Top Secret stamped all over them, especially those with black rectangle redaction on every page.

Or it could just be this, NSA telling us: "OK, folks, we have had something that appears to be communication from somewhere other than Planet Earth. It might be something someone here has sent out that has found its way back to us but our experts reckon it is from an alien source. Not much more we can say, really. Our chap Campaigne has done his best to make some sense of it and we've published what he says for those of you who have trouble sleeping at night to read. No big deal. No green monsters about to invade. No chance of seeing anyone or any thing in our lifetimes or, for that matter, in our children's children's children's lifetimes either so here you are, have a look."

If you're interested, here's the document itself and an article about it in more detail.

Earth | Time Lapse View From Space

2011-11-14T12:59:00.001Z

Earth | Time Lapse View from Space, Fly Over | NASA, ISS from Michael König on Vimeo.

Time lapse sequences of photographs taken with a special low-light 4K-camera by the crew of expedition 28 & 29 onboard the International Space Station from August to October, 2011. All credit goes to them.

Things I found in an old box

2011-08-30T01:01:00.001+01:00

Caesar ipse!

2011-08-25T00:18:00.000+01:00

Here the late Mr Jarry, my Latin master at St Albans School, appears to be instructing Brooker in the art of declension. An excellent and inspiring master but the extraordinary thing about this picture, apart from being both wonderfully focused and actually having being taken anyway at huge risk of detention or worse (remember - this is 1966, no small digital snaps!) it has captured the single chalk Caesar on the board. It was traditional in Jarry's classes, to cough, splutter or generally make noise whenever that name was uttered or written. On the rare occasion of a Caesar ipse being uttered then there would be a veritable eruption of noise, much to Jarry's bemusement. I like to think he never caught on.

The Monkees and others: 1966-67 Sheet music

2011-08-08T18:56:00.002+01:00

Just found a bundle of sheet music from 1966/7. I bought these before I had anything to play records on! Couldn't actually play anything at the time either :)

Deleted 'Lost' scene? Barry??!

2011-07-24T00:06:00.001+01:00

Pete's Oak Gazebo

2011-07-21T20:13:00.002+01:00

More news and developments on my In The Village blog.

Stanley Kubrick's Boxes

2011-07-16T23:06:00.001+01:00

Stanley Kubrick's Boxes from FILM GEEK on Vimeo.

Cartoon by Matti

2011-04-26T20:21:00.000+01:00

Matti is 9 and is usually glued to a computer screen on an American teen tv show. Give him a whiteboard, though, and he happily spends hours drawing. The results aren't usually that interesting but this week he produced this wonderful story which makes me seem sort of real geek and has some weird spelling but is great for all that. Love the line "And did you really have to change?"

I am slightly worried about appearing to have fallen in love with a computer but I guess the amount of time I spend with one it may seem that way at times. I must get out more.

Lost! draws to a close

2010-05-21T11:19:00.002+01:00

This amazingly series is about to end after what seems like a lifetime. Of all the theories I have read and re-read, one stands out. It doesn't attempt to deal with Jacob, MIB but what it does do is satisfy my mind regarding timelines. And that's good enough for me, as well as being really interesting.

I include it in full, as published on Lostpedia, here:

World Line Theory in Minkowski Spacetime

We live in a four-dimensional world, with each individual occupying a specific time and space. For example, right now you are sitting right here reading your computer screen. In an hour you might be out in the yard. In two hours from now, you might be out grocery shopping. You can plot these points in a timeline from A to B to C. You’ll note that your own timeline remains constant and is measured in hours.

Conveniently on Earth, time runs at approximately the same speed so that all of our timelines are fixed. Right now you are at your computer while your friend Steve is watching the game at his house. An hour from now you are in the yard while Steve is washing his car. And two hours from now you bump into Steve at the grocery store. You can chat about your days and say how funny it is that Steve was watching the game while you were at the computer. This would be called “simultaneity” and would be fairly accurate since both timelines are fixed, even if your places in space are not.

But what if your places in time were not fixed either? For example, what if Steve went out to wash his car 45 minutes from now instead of an hour from now, but you still meet up two hours from now. However – and this is the crucial part – it still seems like an hour from now to Steve that he washes his car. His timeline of ABC is still measured in hours, just like yours, but when you compare the two timelines side-by-side, the points do not necessarily match up. This is called relativity of simultaneity.

Now imagine a longer time line with points A,B,C,D,E,F,G,H. You can get some pretty funky things happening, as shown in the graph below.

From Steve’s perspective, point B on your timeline takes longer than an hour to reach, point C less than an hour from that point, and so on.

In this example, we see that both Point A and Point H align. It is not too difficult now to envision that you might actually meet up with Steve at Point G in your timeline, but somewhere between Point G and Point H in his.

One way that you would be able to measure this time difference is through the use of clocks. If you checked the time when you met at the grocery store at Point G in your timeline, your watch would say 7:00pm, whereas Steve’s watch may say 7:31pm.

Another assumption that we are working under is that distance between two points in space is constant. That is, your house is the same distance from Steve’s house at all points along the timeline, and both houses are the same distance from the grocery store at all times. However if relative distance is constantly changing as well, we move into some very mind-blowing territory – especially if you take into consideration that it still seems like the exact same distance to each person traveling it.

All of this would seem quite odd, unless you were familiar with world lines within a Minkowski spacetime. Both your timeline and that of Steve’s in this example can be considered a world line, a fairly linear line through an ever-moving time and space. This very phenomenon may be happening to us right now, but again because we are all on Earth, our world lines are the same. Time and space remain relatively (which in this case means exactly) constant.

Under this theory, I propose that in the LOST universe, the Island is somehow on a different world line. Therefore, time and space are moving along a very different trajectory.

This would explain what is happening during Daniel Faraday’s experiment. Daniel talks to Regina, setting up Point A in both their timelines. Both assume that they are still physically separated by 40 km, and that their timelines are moving at the same rate.

However since time and space are constantly moving relative to each other, this is not the case. In Regina’s timeline, the payload reaches the beacon in about 10 seconds. We know that this is not the case along Daniel’s timeline (though we don’t know exactly how much time has passed).

The explanation is that the rocket must travel between these two world lines from Point A in world line 1 to Point B in world line 2 through both time and space. During the rocket’s trip, both time and distance diverge between the freighter and the beacon. The timelines are also moving at different relative speeds. So not only does the rocket arrive at a different relative time, but also at a different point along the timeline. That explains why it takes the rocket longer to reach the beacon than it should, and why the two clocks are different.

It is important to note here too that the distance from the perspective of the rocket is still 40km, which is why it couldn’t run out of fuel (and why Daniel is not worried about the helicopter running out of fuel when he realizes what is happening). Again, distance is relative between two world lines, but needs to be constant in terms of an object traveling between two points.

A good visual representation of this phenomenon is found under the description of the Lorentz transformations in Wikipedia here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lorentz_transformations (scroll down to the moving image on the right side).

Now although the two world lines are acting independently of each other, they may be moving roughly parallel. It is even possible that they are not acting independently at all, but that there is an algorithm that can exactly predict the coordinates of time, space and distance in one world line based on coordinates of the other world line. That is why Daniel tells Frank it is important to keep the same bearing, since following a different bearing might put him in a different time or place. As we see from the rocket, this would likely only be a matter of minutes or hours since the two world lines are so close to each other. But the possibility exists that following a different bearing could place him in a wildly different spacetime.

So where’s the literary proof in this theory? If we assume that the producers are trying to tell us something based on names, then the name Minkowski automatically points to Minkowski spacetime, a theory in physics used to explain Einstein’s theory of special relativity. This uses Lorentz transformations to predict that time is relative (called time dilation). From this we get the concept of world lines, which plots time and space along a linear line in Minkowski spacetime. But, due to special relativity, two world lines may have much different paths. Therefore, we can never assume that a point on one world line is the same as a point on another world line the (Relativity_of_simultaneity).

A similar idea describing the different passages of time (and obviously place) is also put forward in C.S. Lewis’s Narnia series – and now we have a character named Charlotte Staples Lewis.

Interestingly, Lorentz transformations are also used in electromagnetic theory, which is described using Maxwell’s equations (note the introduction of the Maxwell Group in the most recent ARG). In turn, this is connected to the work of Michael Faraday.

Finally, the producers have basically stated that time does not work the same way on the Island, so obviously there is something going on. This theory explains Daniel’s experiment and holds true to everything we know so far.

This has to be the best music search / play tool so far!

2009-04-07T22:38:00.004+01:00

I thought LastFM and MixTurtle were good but Spotify is amazing. So quick. A small download and you need to register but the free version has only modest advertising. Create playlists and you may agree that this is truly excellent and maybe the shape of how we listen to music in the future.

All I need now is a portable version.

Find and browse music

2009-04-03T17:09:00.003+01:00

Nice site where you can play a full-length track. Good range of artists and quick search facility. There's a video and radio area too. LastFM has been around a while now and gathered some truly great resources.

Also worth a look is SEEQPOD which seems a little slower but allows iPOD integration and links to a whole lot more stuff you may like.

Don't miss Johnnie Walker 9pm Saturdays

2009-02-13T19:26:00.002Z

A great idea - Johnnie Walker takes to the pirate airwaves again in this well-produced and realistic two hour delight. With jingles and extracts from his amazing library of recordings and snippets of information it sounds like the real thing and you just know he's enjoying himself.

I loved the 'breaking news' that a new station was to be launched with DJ Simon Dee in 1964, named after John F Kennedy's daughter, followed, of course, by The Fortunes' track which he suggested might be a suitable theme song for the new station.

All the news and excerpts are from the period and it makes listening to the radio fun again.

Previous week's show available on BBC's iPlayer and if you get hold of Total Recorder you can record it too for a few quid.

Or Are We Dancer?

2008-11-24T02:05:00.001Z

Human by The Killers

More The Killers music on iLike

So Much For Mary ~ Jon

2008-11-14T17:42:00.004Z

A big thank you to someone who sent me this picture of not just any old disc but a Radio Station Copy! Amazing. Don' t you just love the internet! I have yet to contact them - yatrecords - and this only just scraped through the filters to reach my inbox, having no message and just the heading JON which, luckily, struck a chord for me before being whisked off into a spam folder.

I see names that could be well-known at that time in the industry but who could also be no-one in particular. C Andrews gets the credit - is this Chris Andrews? Richard Mills and Peter Eden are names I recognise from Deram days with Bill Fay.

Kenny Everett's first show on the beeb

2007-09-30T12:07:00.000+01:00

A treat for jingle fans today as BBC Radio 2 replays The Kenny Everett Show from 11 to 1 today. Who else could get away with starting their very first BBC show with the word "oops" after a Capital Radio plug?!

All the original tracks, competitions, observations of those tiny things that people miss (like all the bums in a Four Tops record), comparison of old and new versions and odd timechecks are there and remind you of just how knowledgeable and brilliant he was.

If you missed it the Listen Again feature available on the Radio 2 site will give you another chance. Record it and you'll be able to cheer yourself up at any time. Total Recorder will do the job simply - not free now but the tiny licence fee is well worth paying.

The Kenny Everett Show was first broadcast on Radio 2 in 1981 and it is good to see its inclusion in the 40th anniversary fayre despite being 27. Lots more during the day too. The Oldies Project have stopped the Fab 40 shows but are still streaming tracks from the shows of 40 years ago on Radio London, Big L, and will be running new chart shows again in 2008.

This is their new Sunday programme:
11 AM (UK) - Back from a watery grave Two hours of songs from the Radio London playlist that did not chart on the Fab 40.
01 PM (UK) - 40 years ago
Two hours of new UK releases and hits from exactly that week, 40 years ago
Check The Playlist for both shows.

14 August 1967: When the music died

2007-08-13T09:08:00.000+01:00

A few disc jockeys on tiny ships like these brought exciting new music to teenagers in the 1960s and had a huge influence on a generation. In those days, for radio read BBC. Home Service, the Third Programme and the Light Programme. These were the sort of thing your parents listened to, and then only occasionally. The contrast between them and the bright, unscripted and free ranging output of the pirates like Radio London and Radio Caroline was remarkable. These were programmes that you would choose to listen to from start to finish. Jingles, adverts and entertaining intros from djs who played what they liked and knew about what they played. You could hear tracks from the American charts months before they'd ever get played on the BBC. You'd hear tracks that may never reach a Top 40 at all.

You got the feeling that no-one was making much money from the stations, that the individual djs were broadcasting from small boxes aboard an old boat some distance off the coast with little by way of home comforts for their several weeks at a time out there. They cared for the music and shared it with people like me.

The Labour government of the day hounded them and this brought yet another dimension to the huge divide between the generations. Your parents might mumble occasionally about some legislation but seemed always to go along with it. Not so the pirates and we realised that it was OK to object to government, that ministers had views but they weren't necessarily right. I was genuinely surprised that anyone should have been so offended by the pirate stations as to draw up legislation specifically to ban them. I have never believed that they interfered with other transmissions nor that it would not have been possible to permit them to broadcast under some approved licence. But no, on this day 40 years ago, Kenny Everett played the Beatles' A Day In The Life at the end of a brilliant three hour show on Radio London. I shall never forget the incredibly emotional moment as the track's crescendo faded, the needle scratched and bumped to the centre of the disc, a small click as it lifted then another click as the transmitters were shut down.

Radio Caroline bravely carried on with Johnnie Walker carrying the pirate banner high for a few more years but the killing of Radio London, Big L, my best friend and companion, was unforgiveable. I shall never forget.

Stone fish

2007-08-13T09:02:00.000+01:00

That PP4 Poem

2007-08-13T00:39:00.000+01:00

4 US

As I waddled round my field one night
I couldn't believe my eyes
Men with poles - what a sight
And a banner proclaiming a prize

With all the strength that they could muster
Their erections stood tall and proud
While Maggie went round with her duster
Muttering "Messy lot, this crowd."

The sign said knock twice for Sarah
But which one - one or two?
As the night wore on the knockings were rarer
They just grabbed one and said "You'll do!"

Imagine my shock when the pig arrived
Completely nude and headless
With a prong sticking out his backside
And scorch marks all over his chest

Piggy was sliced up and plattered
For a queue that stretched a mile
And they all just stood there and nattered
About the weather in single file

The Chairman showed us his organ
And bare feet tapped out the time
All thought of embarrassment forgone
Passers-by asked should they throw him a dime?

In the food tent the saladeers scurried
And laid out their wares in smart dishes
Rob looked decidely worried
He'd two loaves . . . but was short of five fishes

Penny and Sue remained calm, of course,
Everything under control
In its right place was every sauce,
Folded napkin and shiny fruit bowl.

Smoke rose from Andrew's fag and the fire
A grin spread on Adrian's face
Rob brandished his rod of desire
As if about to set fire to the place.

Selling tickets and counting the money
At the gate sat Chris with no shoes,
Crying out "That's ten quid, honey,
Go help yourself to some booze"

Darkness fell and a strange noise grew
Older people wished they'd gone
But the rest were pleased to listen to
Tom - and his band played on.

The crowd sure seemed pretty hale
And some were notably hearty
And apart from an occasional wail
It was an amazing Fourth Paddock Party.

So Much For Mary

2007-06-10T17:11:00.000+01:00

I've finally got it. "So Much For Mary" by Jon. Made Number 40 this week on the Radio London chart on 11 June 1967. And that's when I last heard it, a teenager in Kings Langley, dancing around the lawn to tunes from a transistor radio. This track just got me and I loved it but it was so seldom played that I doubt if I heard it more than three or four times. A simple, classic Sixties sound, nice young American vocal. Just great. I searched for it several years ago and that's what brought me to the Oldies Project as it was the one and only result that came up as an entry in their BigL Fab Forty charts they'd published.

Prior to that I might have been forgiven for thinking that I'd imagined the whole thing. I'd looked in record catalogues, listings, everywhere without any luck. But not only was it there but the Oldies Project actually play the whole Fab Forty show 40 years on. The original show, minus adverts. How on earth they do that I don't know - I think it's been a matter of collecting everyone's tapes from those days and rebuilding the programme. But that meant if I waited until June 2007 I'd get the actual song too. Amazing. It was a 'climber' a couple of weeks ago but it was one of those weekends when I was running this way and that and completely forgot to do the recording. This week I was much better organised to the point that, if necessary, I'd have bolted the doors and refused to move until I had it!

To record from an internet stream I used Total Recorder's device which works a dream. I had to buy the cost option for the laptop to get rid of the annoying bleep they now put in every 30 secs or so on the free version. I had the free version (with no bleeps) on my PC but as the internet connection to that isn't as strong as to my laptop I wasn't going to take any chances.

I've now extracted the track from the whole programme (which had some other great memories too) and will be putting it on my main site shortly so will make a link to it for anyone who wants to hear it. After next week, when it'll be in the chart show again at 23, that'll be it. It dropped out of the charts (possibly because it wasn't actually released over here and radio London just had an airtime publicity copy from the States) and that was that.

So I feel absolutely brilliant now. That was one of my life's ambitions - now fulfilled. Few readers will understand and most will think I'm just plain silly but there you go. I know what it feels like and that takes some doing these days.

The traffic lights turn blue tomorrow

2007-05-13T13:20:00.000+01:00

Returning to the village after a year and a half's absence may give me a chance to catch up with news on the shed front. If you'll forgive a slight change of theme, thought I'd use this site to add some items of interest on the pirate radio scene. Well, sheds are where you do things you want to without being disturbed and the one thing that I really didn't want was my parents asking whether I wanted any tea whilst I was trying to keep the transistor on the BigL station to catch the latest track or Kenny Everett jingle. So I spent a great deal of time in dad's greenhouse with the radio and what looked like homework.

Late night reveller

2005-12-29T02:08:00.000Z

Amazing what lengths some will go to in order to keep the Volvo bright and shiny.

Pink

2005-12-29T02:01:00.000Z

"How on earth did you get that colour? And the pink background is amazing but I don't think my dad'll go for that in the living room."

Conversation

2005-12-29T01:54:00.000Z

"I know . . . it's quite amazing, isn't it. I was just telling my neighbour the same thing the other day. Quite mild for the time of year. Fancy a cup of tea? No? Oh, beer. I'll see what I can find. Anyway, can't stop chatting like this - shopping to do, you know, and all that . . ."

Sheds on the move at Paddock Party

2005-08-24T23:05:00.000+01:00

Life-like replicas of people's homes were arranged around the paddock in preparation for the 2nd Party In The Paddock. Adrian, a member of the erection team, has a massive one lurking behind the fence.

Shed in desperate need of manly attention!

2005-08-06T14:28:00.000+01:00

The tenousness of some shed links appears to be bothering some so here's something abolutely pertinent, right and yet disastrously wrong. This shed clearly lacks a man's touch. I mean , where are the pots of screws, the nails to hang things on, the spare bits of wood, the paint brushes? Coloured plastic of virtually any sort should be banned from gardens throughout England anyway in my view so I suppose putting them in a shed has some merit.

But still . . . something has to be done about this.

2005-04-03T12:10:00.000+01:00

Some of the contents of an unsecured shed in the village managed to escape recently but were caught looking decidedly knackered after a few hours on the run.

2005-04-03T12:05:00.000+01:00

A couple of old stone sheds spotted in the village. Also note that, due to the owner of the white-painted house continually washing his car on the road, contractors have been unable to complete the resurfacing job for several years.

2005-04-03T11:48:00.000+01:00

Protected by fencing and sheep with Bluetooth wireless devices, this was the closest I could get to this hilltop shed.

2005-02-26T21:00:00.000Z

Going . . .

2005-02-26T20:59:00.000Z

Going . . .

2005-02-26T20:58:00.000Z

Gone!!

2005-02-23T11:40:00.000Z

Many thanks to our Northern reader from somewhere over Lancashire last wednesday. "I had an Out of Africa film type moment as I flew low over the pine forests of north Lancashire - three and a half hours of flying - great time but froze my nuts off!" he adds. Nice aerial view of several sheds in a triangular field.

2005-02-22T21:35:00.000Z

T1GRX and a glimpse of a young shed

2005-02-22T21:33:00.000Z

This man really should have a shed! (How can anyone wash a car in a blizzard without one?)

2005-02-22T21:29:00.000Z

Shed appears to disappear in blizzard

2005-02-22T21:28:00.000Z

Snow shed on shed in snow

2005-02-21T20:57:00.000Z

Rare glimpse of undisturbed green stuff on timbers in the wilds of Cambridgeshire.

2005-02-21T20:55:00.000Z

Through the fence, darkly. the Pinckard shed lurks.

Cat on Cold Shed Roof

2005-02-21T20:31:00.000Z

6:30am. Freezing. Big black cat lands on the roof of the shed without any warning and frightens the pants off a sparrow. Now, you might think that no self-respecting sparrow would be wearing pants, and particularly not in that shade of mauve at this time of year but there you go. Big Black cat didn't stick around long, though, - always wondered where the expression 'stick around' comes from as it doesn't bear terribly close examination - as the roof of this particular shed appeared to be rather on the chilly side.

6:31am. Pinckard emerges from shed clutching an electric drill. Apart from wondering why on earth he's in there at that time of the morning, I'm intrigued as to the use to which he's been putting his high speed bit.