Are you ready for the world’s oldest optical illusion? This begs the question that they didn’t exist before Man was around to see them, which in Europe’s case seems to be around 1.2 million years as the tooth of one such individual was found at the Atapuerca site in Spain this week. This ancient 25 year-old lived in Burgos and maybe holidayed nearby in my favourite resort, San Sebastian. He probably started a timeshare business…

Back to the optical illusion our ancient Spaniard would have seen. The moon. You must have noticed how the full moon ofen seems HUGE when rising or setting. Well surprise surprise, the moon is actually the same size whether it is overhead or just above the horizon. I’m not referring to that other nonsense red-herring, the alleged magnifying effect of the atmosphere – it doesn’t happen! The varying apparent size is an illusion created by your mind. You are used to the perspective of objects on the horizon being ‘smaller’ than the same objects when overhead – eg clouds, airplanes and birds. So you think the moon looks bigger. According to an article in space.com here you can test this hypothesis by taking a photo at moonrise and overhead, or sellotape a rolled paper, compare with the eraser on a pencil end, and so forth. The article also refers to the variations in the moons position due to its orbit.

It seems to me that when I see the full moon on the horizon that I see the craters more clearly as if they are enlarged so maybe the moon is enlarged but only by my brain – there must be a little magnifying lens and a screen in my head. Overhead, of course, the moon is much brighter – almost hurts, and yet it reflects much less sunlight than the Earth does from the moon. I love other facts about the moon, such as it is moving away from the Earth at an annual rate of 3.8 cm, which is why the Earth is slowing its axis rotation. One day the moon’s outward momentum will be equal to the gravity pull by the Earth, then the latter will pull it back — and it won’t stop.

Do we have another moon? Yes, and I don’t mean the Space Station and hundreds of artificial satelites. In 1999 another 3 miles diameter rock was found to be orbiting Earth. I think the United Nations should hurry up and put its flag on it before a real estate company, or MacDonalds does!

Hey, I’ve finished writing my science fiction 86,000 word novel, Exit, Pursued by a Bee. Does anyone want to read it? Please form a queue in my inbox. Publishers have preemptive priority…

In my exuberance I explained to my wife aspects of the plot of my just about to be completed science fiction book, Exit, pursued..  that I thought were unusual. She patiently listened for a while before saying: You are completely mad…

It’s a strange contradictory feeling coming to the end of writing any book. A mix of euphoria and anticlimax. When I say finished – this refers only to the first draft. About 80% has gone through the thrashing and threshing of the Orbiters critique group of the British Science Fiction Association so most of the grammar, tense, POV and other aspects are OK but I’ll be putting it aside for a couple of months or so before re-reading it and – as Stephen King says in his On Writing, the next draft = previous draft – 10%

No matter how much plot outlining you do for a science fiction novel there’s always some factual aspect that hits you mid-sentence, and I love it. So my heroine in her spaceship far away needed to know the time on Earth. Easy, you say, she has a clock on the wall synchronised to – ah, but to what time on Earth, the time at Mission Control in Houston, Texas? I thought simple, just google what time they use on shuttles and the Space Station. After 30 minutes of my own time, I had to give up. It’s amazing how much information there is on the web and yet not that easy to find unless you know the right question. NASA sites including those dedicated to the International Space Station didn’t help. I did find out that Shuttles have their own time zones based on EMT (Elapsed Mission Time) but not the ISS and by extension the time future missions away from Earth are likely to use. 

Luckily, I have a writer friend, Maria Ayres, who works at the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) in Maryland website. The complex looks after the Hubble Telescope. What a fantastic place to work – I am green with envy. She meets astronauts and sees Hubble images every day. I bet everyone working there are levitated in their one personal orbits! Maria often gets me answers to tricky space questions, and as she has writing aspirations too, she is on my wavelength, so to speak. So I fire off the timezone question to her. She directs it to Denise, Lead of the Operation & Planning Branch of the OED (not sure what OED is – probably not a Hubble branch of the Oxford English Dictionary – Maria? Ah, she came through with Operations and Engineering Department!) and she whizzes back the answer GMT. Hooray! She confirms each shuttle mission are on their own EMT and the ISS is on GMT, which is the same as UTC.  UTC is Coordinated Universal Time and is the atomic clock equivalent of GMT varying only minutely during leap seconds for example. The French wanted TUC (temps universel coordonné)  and UTC is a compromise. Denise confirms that all astronomical clocks are set to UTC including the desktop computers at the Hubble Space Telescope operations. Excellent. 

It reminds me when I taught Geography at Queens Park High School, Chester I always had my watch set to GMT and so UTC because I had a Dartcom weather satellite set up on a computer in the corner of my classroom so kids could watch live downloads of weather images – very cool.  So thanks Denise and Maria in Maryland! You’ll receive copies of my Exit novel once a wise publisher snaps it up! 

How am I supposed to think of new science fiction ideas when the rain effectively prevents me from charging up the hills and long tours? It’s rained every day for two weeks, which is refreshing and reduces air pollution and pollen counts – yippee – except that wet roads = bike slipping, reduced visibility for car drivers to see me, and uncomfortable bike clothes. Oh well, if it wasn’t raining I’d probably find myself on one of the 10 most dangerous roads in Britain. Data released today tell us which they are and I discover that I’ve ridden my bike on 6 of them!!!!! The A54 from Congleton to Buxton is a high level twisting road in the Pennines. I’ve cycled it both directions a few times to reach the Youth Hostel in Buxton. I suppose I must have been lucky or skillful in timing my cycling to avoid the commuting rush hour and nighttime, both of which are the dangerous times. It didn’t occur to me it was so dangerous or I might have had to keep looking behind me for those mad drivers!

At least all this rain has given me time to add extra thousands of words to my science fiction novel Exit, pursued by a bee. I might keep that title after all, at least as a working title. As Neil Marr commented to me with regard to titles for his BeWrite Books published books, if a title matches another book, play or film then searches for one can throw up the others in mutual benefit – swings and roundabouts. The only concern is that it sounds a bit too comical for a serious-ish book. Owen Handford suggests that since the main theme concerns time decoherences then that could be in the title. Well it would make it unique! In one scene a character sings ‘Singing the decoherence blues’, so that could be the title – except it too is rather comical. Funny how some book titles come really easily and others refuse to emerge.

I started hearing ringing sounds that weren’t there about 6 years ago. Because my job in teaching and as  a computer systems manager involved being deluged by electronic noises I couldn’t be entirely convinced my tinnitus wasn’t computers – even from the network at home – until I stood on top of Cadir Idris in Snowdonia with no one around me for miles and the nearest town even more miles. Then in between sheep bleating and a twittering red kite – oh good a buzzard chased it away – (damn both. I don’t understand why so many humans go all soft at preserving those evil killers and breed them even more to attack our mammalian cousins, field mice and bunny rabbits – I thought family should come first!) and far enough from a babbling brook, I realised I heard a persistent A flat. And I still do. More interestingly in recent years my tinnitus must have got bored with the plaintive A flat and added a twittering bird call – more goldfinch than budgie thank goodness. I don’t mind the bird twitters, it can be quite restful when I’ve a minute of relaxing to do. Sadly, though, another sound wheedles its way in – a distant burglar alarm. You know the kind a house alarm has when a spider intercepts the Infrared beam and sets it off for the neighbours to enjoy all week while the owners holiday in ignorance in Tenerife.  So now there is a house being burgled permanently in my head. It’s not too obtrusive at the moment – goldfinches win the volume control battle. I’m only hoping the next tinnitus orchestral trick isn’t going to be police sirens on their way to arrest the burglars…

I find the best way to deal with my tinnitus is have music playing – almost any kind of music but especially the louder Wagner and Beethoven, but even the more subtle Last Four Songs by Richard Strauss can send me into tinnitus ignoring rapture. I also enjoy some soul, jazz and even pop songs when cleverly orchestrated or beautifully sung. I’ve been watching the Glastonbury Festival this weekend and enjoyed the enigmatic Amy Winehouse with her soul jazz pieces, and Arctic Monkeys. I’ve also been studying the TV footage watching out for hands above the mud. My son, Robert, is there and he’s bound to be waving to me!

Back to my tinnitus, I’ve used tinnitus in another way in my Left Luggage sci fi sequel, as a means of communication. It’s rather one-sided. The crazed Italian doctor, Antonio, realizes that the aliens have been attempting to communicate with him for years and that was what his tinnitus really was! So maybe there are aliens orbitting Earth trying to communicate with me. Burglar alarm, goldfinches and a piano playing A flat – there must be a message in there somehow? Aliens, please send a postcard. it’d be a lot clearer.

Reading through headlines in astronomy magazines and associated websites such as Space.com I was struck by a headline that indicated some exoplanets (planets not of our solar system) are meandering sun-less through space. What a wonderful concept for science fiction although stories already exist where colonised moons and asteroids have drifted in space. Energy source would be a particular problem for humans on such sunless planets but it tugs at the imagination.

So the latest shuttle mission is about to end. A mostly successful job done to boost the power supply on the International Space Station. Ironically, the success of the new solar panels led to more than the usual power and consequently electronic noise that led to the failure of the computers on board. Those computers had important tasks such as ISS navigation and maintenance of the Oxygen creation from water. Luckily the ISS wasn’t supposed to go anywhere special and there are 90 days of oxygen left!  It reminds me of an old car I used to have. When one component went wrong and was replaced by a better new part, a nearby tired lump gave up the ghost – and so it went on.

The short sequel story to my Escaping Reality humour thriller has been published by Magpies Nest publishing in the anthology, Northern Lights, edited by Gladys Hobosn and Bob Taylor. More details later, but I can tell you they’ve done a fine job!

Remember my hard sci fi story, The Judgement Rock? It’s the one with serious intent but humorous content, or was that the other way round? An asteroid thief has to argue with his sentient spacesuit in order to survive. After much lacerations and taking good advice from editor and artist, Stephanie, at Neo-Opsis magazine, I’ve honed the end, tarted up the middle and polished the beginning. I failed to take Stephanie’s other excellent advice to put the story away for a while before re-reading it, but I read it out loud – again, and after my neighbour stopped banging on the wall I was content with it. The first magazine I sent it to wanted it for their lead story! So thanks, Stephanie, and also to Screaming Dreams. Steve, the editor at Screaming Dreams is looking for more hard sci fi to balance up the dark fantasy and horror stories he already has. Check out the website too – very cool.

There was I believing I’d hit on an original title for my work in progress, a science fiction using time dependent decoherences and ancient alien spheres emerging from the Earth. I’d called it Exit, pursued by a bee.  This is an alliterative corruption based on a stage direction in Shakespeare’s The Winter’s Tale – Exit, pursued by a bear.  In my story the spheres are the ones that exit – from Earth. They are followed by a spaceship called Apoidea – bees.  But googling I found a stage play has already used Exit, pursued by a bee, so I’m seeking another name. It might not be entirely necessary but I’ve been getting these sneaking feelings that maybe it was too much a comic title. Perhaps just Exit, pursued…  would be more appropriate.

Of course if the nearly completed novel was snapped up by a canny publisher they have the prerogative to change the title so whatever I do remains only a working title. But if anyone wants to assist in brainstorming a new title then storm ahead!

Further to my note yesterday about how fascinating I find the NASA cam videos even though they appear to show nothing for looooooong periods and then something beautiful unfolds, Gareth adds a link to one of his favourites here. (Select the Right Aft Solid Rocket Booster Video) I love it. As you’d know NASA have had an accident or two with foam, tiles, and other glitches and so litter the space vehicles with cams. What genius thought to add one to the unmanned solid fuel rocket booster? It appears to rotate slowly once detached from the shuttle and then fall to Earth, recording every moment. I thought it might burn up in the atmosphere but it’s one of the large boosters that is recyclable so a chute is deployed and we see the entry into the ocean. As Gareth said, put on your music and enjoy. — I can see Gary Hicks sitting back listening to Pink Floyd while watching this NASA video and chilling… et moi!

I suppose it is like watching paint dry for some folk, but I love experiencing a warm feeling in my middle when watching NASA multimedia of the latest International Space Station developments. The ISS has had new solar panel arrays deployed to boost its power in readiness for a big expansion in later missions. This video shows yesterday’s deployment.  The measured voices of CapCom at mission control and the astronauts are a lesson to all of us. There they are handling millions of dollars worth of equipment in a precarious environment and they sound just like relaxed chess players. If you need to relax (some would say – fall asleep, but not me) then watch it and take it easy in the knowledge that great things are developing out there.

 I’ve just returned from cycling rural lanes to do some grocery shopping. En route I was intercepted at a junction by a peleton of 50+ riders, mostly of retirement age, all waving and helloing. I had to be very careful not to lose balance. They swept me along a hundred yards or so the wrong way for me. I couldn’t do a U turn without knocking some of them over and had to wait to nip into a farmyard! The cheery greetings by cyclists in rural areas, and of hikers, is an interesting phenomenon. It’s good to see bon homie, a virtual handshake for sharing experiences. However, if you do the same in a crowded high street or shopping mall, men in blue would grab you and hand you over to men in white! People are strange creatures.