So I went out in the miserable August weather last night for a bit of a throw. Warm up the arm before the UK Ultimate Association Nationals this weekend. However, getting my head and arm around a Discwing® driver should probably been left until after the tournament. Golf discs are weird, they don’t fly straight for one. The technique is foreign compared to the more familiar Ultimate style.
Whereas Ultimate is still my number one sport, discgolf is another that I’m keen to take up. I quite like throwing things at things, though I’m pretty naff at darts. On this note, I would quite like one of those Powerballs, which use an enclosed dymo to work arm strength.
Planetary geologists are claiming that the IAU’s vote, that has demoted Pluto and friends from planet status to mere dwarfs, was hijacked by the dynamicists, astronomers who are more interested in motion and gravitational effects of celestial bodies. In my post last week at the start of the IAU’s 10day General Assembly in Prague, I predicted that they were “lacking the balls to demote pluto“. It seems that they heard me and it all kicked off. At the end of a heated 10days we find ourselves throwing out the old science textbooks.
Mike Brown seemed happy with Pluto’s demotion. “Eight is enough,” he told the Associated Press, jokingly adding: “I may go down in history as the guy who killed Pluto.” - BBC News
BUT it isn’t the end of anything. Pluto, surely has the gravity to attract a great band of loyal followers if not much else, is appealing the decision. This new ruling and definition is far from set in stone. The number of voters on the final day in prague was only 10% of the Assembly and a meagre 4% of Astronomers beyond that.
Word on the street is that you can buy bumper stickers saying “Honk if Pluto is still a planet!”
For all you bloggers and website runners out there you should check out Crazy Egg. I have just set it up for my website and over time it collects all the clicks on a designated page. With that data it will then produce a heatmap* (when I have a decent image I’ll try and put it up) of how people use your page.
The idea is that you can test designs and layouts etc in order to optimise your site towards reader usage. Whereas the financial incentive would be to trace the effectiveness of advertisements I’m more interested in seeing if anyone does navigate beyond my frontpage, apart from my lovely loyal commentators, and then, if appropriate, implement some changes.
*The heatmap is more commonly used to display eye-tracking over a page… now that would be clever.