drplokta

This (not entirely SFW) video of Gary Kasparov being attacked by a remote-control flying penis has been linked everywhere today, but what I want to know is what dougs was doing sitting behind the table in Moscow with the other dignitaries during the attack.

Mixed news, I fear. Apparently eight eggs were laid with one lost soon afterwards (which we knew). Five have hatched, but three of the cygnets have died. One more egg has been lost, and one has still not hatched, so it must be looking pretty dubious now. So we may only have two live cygnets from eight eggs, assuming that they both survive from now on.

We finally have cygnets -- I think three have hatched and four are about to hatch.

( Cute cygnet photo behind the cut. )

This (gacked from Slashdot) is an astonishing story, if true. The first element discovered (as opposed to created, or found in nature after first having been created) since 1939. And they think it has atomic number 122 and a half-life of over 100 million years. Poul Anderson was right all along.

I just realised that there's probably an entire generation of first year undergraduates out there who think that they're the class of 2010, not the class of 2007.

I was clearly deluded in this post, as we got a good look at the eggs a couple of hours ago, and they're still eggs. But I was expecting there to be five of them, and there were seven, so she must have carried on laying for a few days longer than we thought, and the hatching will be correspondingly later.

No cygnets yet (due to hatch any day now), but add Chiffchaff (not seen last year), Peacock (the butterfly, not the bird), Small White, Blackcap, Willow Warbler & Swallow.

( And here are some more photos of the local waterfowl )

In January this year, Apple agreed that within six months it would revise its pricing on iTunes to bring the UK price of 79p per track more into line with the Eurozone price of 99 cents -- when the original complaints were made, the Eurozone price was around 70p, so 79p was over 10% more expensive. Apple have now done it, three months early, and without changing their pricing at all -- 99 Euro cents are currently worth 78.9p.

Tube strike is cancelled.