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Richy's Random Ramblings

News: Space Shuttle Columbia Breaks Up

February 1, 2003
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[Image of the shuttle debris]Coverage continued in next post

I know I said I’ll be taking a blogging holiday, but waking up with the news that the Space Shuttle Columbia has broken up on re-entry with the loss of 7 lives still comes to as a shock. It was built in 1978 and was first flown in 1981 (I’ve heard it rumored that this was supposedly the Columbia’s last mission)

I’m watching the BBC News feed at the moment, but it appears that the shuttle lost contact with NASA Florida’s space centre around an hour before it was due to land, and then 15 minutes before it was due to land at 1416 GMT debris was spotted and it seems the shuttle has disintegrated. Earlier indications report that it has not exploded, but NASA has declared a state of emergency and President Bush is returning to the White House to make a statement. It possible that there was a heat-shield failure.

It is extremely unlikely that there are any survivors of mission STS 107 as the shuttle broke up travelling at over 12,500 mph (20,000 kph – around 18 times the speed of sound) over 200,000ft above Texas as it was gliding in to land. Your thoughts please for the families of Commander Rick Husband, Pilot William McCool, Kalpana Chawla, Laurel Clark, David Brown, Michael Anderson and the first Israel in space – Ilan Ramon. This was the 113th flight in the program’s 22 years and Columbia’s 28th flight – the last major incident which caused loss of life was the space shuttle Challenger exploding just after lift-off on Jan 28th 1986 (when another seven crew members lost their lives).

More coverage from ABC News, ITV News, MSNBC and many other news organisations – news reports are being gathering in this new ODP category. There are images taken from the mission available at the BBC News site – looking at those pictures helps you realise that there were, in fact, human beings in the shuttle and that they probably were burnt alive and suffered suffication during the last few minutes of their lives.

There is also a good timeline which illustrates what happened when.

Other blog entries: Quinn Macdonalds, Tampa Tantrum, Gamer’s Nook, Bill Egible, Boing Boing, Stupidevilbastard, Jason Defillippo, About D@mn Time, No Prerequisite, Carisenda, Mr. Mist’s Blog, Mouse Musings, From The Orient, Spinneyhead.

17:11: Flags are now flying at half mast at the NASA launch site as it is officially announced the shuttle is “gone”. Kennedy Space Center workers have been told that all work has been cancelled for this weekend. Only essential personnel should report for their duties. Operatives at the Space Center have already started to put folders, printouts and other information into boxes for later data analysis to hopefully find out what went wrong – I’m hearing that the shuttle came in for re-entry at too steep an angle which burnt through the heat shield (and the resulting radioactivity caused by this would have probably caused the last garbled communications from Columbia at 2pm GMT/UTC).

Picture (c) BBC News
Originally posted: 15:58. Updated: 16:16, 16:48, 17:11, 17:32
Coverage continued in next post

Blogging: 300th Post

January 31, 2003
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[300th Blog Post!]Yippeee! Post 300 AND the “end of month” summary time: what a co-incidence!

Ok, ok – for the past few weeks, I’ve been blogging like made to try and make the two correspond – and it seems to have had a side affect of launching “Guess That Movie” which I’m “spinning off” onto it’s new website when I get time. In fact, to give myself time to do all that coding (database design is mocked up, some of the data is imported, and a brief website design has been completed) – I’m going to be “absent from blog land” until Monday.

Yep – no more posts from me after this one until sometime Monday (3rd February) morning.

Oddly enough, when I passed the 200th blog entry mark it was snowing – and as I’m just passing the 300th mark now – it’s decided to snow again!

Anyway – on with the stats.

Continue ReadingBlogging: 300th Post

Joke: The Lion, The Witch and The Hunter

January 31, 2003
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[Lion]A big-game hunter went on safari with his wife and mother-in-law. One evening, while still deep in the jungle, the wife awoke to find her mother gone. Rushing to her husband, she insisted on them both trying to find her mother.

The hunter picked up his rifle, took a swig of whisky, and started to look for her. In a clearing not far from the camp, they came upon a chilling sight: the mother-in-law was backed up against a thick, impenetrable bush, and a large male lion stood facing her.

The wife cried, “What are we going to do?”

“Nothing,” said the husband.

“The lion got himself into this mess. Let him get himself out of it!”

Guess That Movie: Scores So Far II

January 31, 2003
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[Guess That Movie Images 10 to 18]Well, that’s another 9 images guessed at – the last one was the George Clooney/Quentin Tarantino “From Dusk Till Dawn” [Order from Amazon.co.uk] movie – to be specific (hey why not? 🙂 ), it’s from around then end of the 4th minute where Danny the store clerk (played by Cristos) is trying to convince Seth and Richard Gecko (George and Quentin respectively) that he wasn’t trying to signal for help whilst the cop – Earl McGraw (Michael Parks) was in the lavatory.

So, what’s all that done to the scores? Well, poor Kymberlie must be getting a bit neurotic as she’s been at the bottom of the scoring fish bowl for a while now (with 20 points) and has been beaten by new comer “Dr G” with 60 points (which he/she got on round 17 – Event Horizon). At 100 points, we have andersja, Toby and KHD.

Bom, bom, bomm, bom bom, bom, bum (that’s meant to be the count down music from “Top Of The Pops” – try and imagine the rest of this paragraph being said by Sir Jimmy Saville). At number three, we have Super Beastmaster with 280 points *jangle jangle*, and moving up slightly to number 2 is LD with his smashing 380 points: and how’s about that then? – but this week’s number one is Ph33r_m3 with “490 points is extremely close to the Prize” surprise hit.

Yep, Ph33r_m3 has just missed the £5 Amazon gift-voucher by 10 points! Ha ha! But, Guess That Movie IS continuing (I’ll probably have a certain Mr. Tarantino after me if I ended it now) and I’m going to keep everything the way it is… Apart from (you knew something was coming didn’t you?) – there will NOT be another Guess That Movie until Monday morning.

Basically, I’m coming close to my 300th blog entry mark, it’s Friday night and it’s the end of the month – all good reasons for me to have the weekend off. But Guess That Movie will be returning bright and early on Monday the 3rd of February – so start swotting up now!

For now, I’ll be seeing you!

Snippet: Great Poll!

January 31, 2003
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*snippet* Whilst linking to the two news articles for my previous entry, I noticed that at the bottom of the Leicester Mercury’s article about the fire there was the following poll question:

Take it – or leave it!
The newly-published Bain report suggests a raise of around 11% for firefighters, linked to heavy modernisation.
Should they take this or hang in for more?

The options? “Yes” or “No”.

So do you select “Yes they should take this” or “No they should take this” or “Yes they should hang in for more” or “No they should hang in for more”?

The votes at this point are 63% for “Yes” and 36% for “No” – do these people actually know what they have voted for – cause I ain’t got a clue!