Hook Head

Originally uploaded by jbwan.

A great structure – A Juliet tower to be exact, atypical of lighthouses across the globe. Hook head is a stronghold as well as a warning beacon.

Before this weekend I had been to Hook Head lighthouse in Co. Wexford tonnes of times as a kid. Up until recently however (approx. 6 years), you were not permitted access to the building. Yesterday that changed for me and I took a guided tour of the lighthouse with a fantastic tour guide who was great craic altogether. The lighthouse itself has over 800 years of history including monks who kept fires burning to alert ships to danger right up to the modern day 1000 Watt bulb rotating on a bed of mercury and controlled from a remote station elsewhere in the country. That’s one kilowatt, roughly 14c per hour to keep sailors from the rocks, pretty good value for money. But I digress slightly, what I didn’t know until yesterday is that every single lighthouse in the world is unique through a contrived combination of features and there is even a lighthouse directory as such. Each lighthouse has different colouring for a start, some have different numbers of bands and some have none. Secondly the interval between foghorn blasts is different also, the Hook lighthouse sounds twice every 45 seconds. Lastly the flash of the light is different also. Seemingly by combining these three features and the directory of lighthouses it is possible to tell where you are in the world without a GPS or sextant. Amazing! I like finding out stuff like this.

With tongue firmly in cheek, a piece of humour from the good folk at the Reg. Just why have Al-Qaeda been so quiet about the launch of the iPhone when everyone else is raving on about it? source: The Register

Now that Steorn have gone and done a nice big bellyflop in the pool of science it’s time to examine another zero-point effect. Flock zero point 9 to be exact. Now Paul Watson installed it recently and he doesn’t appear to like it much. I have to say that I’ve been a big fan of Flock for a while now since Tom Raftery suggested it to me in a presentation he was giving some time back. While comments from Paul suggest that the latest version of Flock is slow and clunky I really have to say that I haven’t noticed it behaving that way. Perhaps because my MacBook is just slightly more shiny and new than Paul’s. I’m normally not a fan of fancy graphics and integrated nonsense, give me HiFi separates any day but there’s just something about Flock that really appeals to me. I suppose that I’ll really need a few more days to assess the effect of the latest Flock but so far, so good.

Blogged with Flock

Steorn demo update: I’m sure that this will be rectified soon but I’m a little disappointed to say the least having clicked on the link to the video that I thought would open my eyes to Orbo. The result however was a rather underwhelming “Directory listing denied” error. Oh well…

Thanks to Brian W for providing me with this link. Those magnificent men with their perpetual motion machines are out and about again. The Steorn crew, Ireland’s answer to an engery crisis that nobody cares about, are set to demo their groundbreaking “free energy” technology Orbo in London today and to be followed by a webcast from 1800 GMT. It’s been a year since I first looked at these guys and I have to say that my level of intrigue has not yet dipped. Tune in! source: Free Energy Truth