Ed and Maddie walk the country

Ed and his Springer Spaniel, Maddie, are walking from John o' Groats to Lands End in support of the Cystic Fibrosis Trust. It will take 40 days to complete the walk, and the duo will cover somewhere in the region of 1,100 miles, walking 20 to 30 miles a day. I'm sure they'll see some stunning sights along the way, though it will be a very arduous journey. Please give generously, if you can, to support Ed and Maddie, and their noble cause.

Siderophobia II

Seeing that it was an exceptionally clear night, I took the camera out into the back garden. I had to wait about a minute for each shot to be exposed and saved. Biggy clattered into the tripod during one minute-long exposure which wrote that one off. Some of the stars are a little blurry when you look closely. I think that may be due to the earth's rotation.

The bright one in the middle is mars

It was strange listening to all the suburban night sounds, like kettles boiling, bins being taken out, whilst waiting for light to finally arrive at my lens from millions of light years away.

Okay so it's not exactly the Hubble deep field, but I turned the sensitivity up high on this one, and it brought out a lot of stars that were invisible to the naked eye.

Siderophobia

We played in The Queen's Arms pub quiz and won last night. One of the questions was to guess what 'siderophobia' meant. Jack accurately proposed that it was the fear of stars. As Wikipedia explains:

A sidereal day is approximately 23 hours, 56 minutes, 4.091 seconds (23.93447 hours or 0.99726957 SI days), corresponding to the time it takes for the Earth to complete one rotation relative to the vernal equinox.

Fair enough, but I thought it a strange thing to be afraid of... until I looked out my window just now at the night. Does no one else find it terrifying that we're spinning around on a lump of rock just about large enough to make itself spherical in an impartial vacuum where the lights keep going out with arguably no instructions except those we've cobbled together ourselves, passing the time however best we can? Maybe it's not so ridiculous to be afraid of the stars.

At least the multiverse might be measurable.

Distant Signal - St Paul's Square promo shot

A huge thank you to everyone who came to last night's Distant Signal gig. It was great to see you all. We had an incredible time, and enjoyed playing alongside some top notch bands: Jewels, Killing Fields of Ontario and Loutish Lover. We took this shot after the soundcheck. Some dude was shouting at his girlfriend over by the church (out of shot on the left), which detracted slightly from a very peaceful atmosphere in a nice part of Brum. The Actress & Bishop has definitely become our favourite venue.

Afterwards Paul, Dave, Scott and I swapped St Paul's Square for Red Square and partook of a few drinks. All in all, a very good night. I'll be adding more photos from the gig photographer and Charlotte's camera soon.

All hail Bingu, The Devourer