25 October 2009 (Sunday) - The Day After

Having the clocks going back an hour last night gave me an extra hour in bed before the church bell up the road started its infernal clanging. The household’s womenfolk set off to London reasonably early, giving me the morning to fiddle around. I managed to change the blog slide show to feature an album of photos from yesterday’s AstroBash. The blog slide show is a strange thing. Having uploaded an album of photos to it, there is then an interval of about twelve hours before the photos become available to use. Annoying…

I’ve been thinking about yesterday’s Astrobash. Now I’m no longer the treasurer, I don’t have access to the finances. But weighing my estimates the cost of the raffle prizes and the hall hire, and other miscellaneous expenses against how many raffle tickets were sold and how many paying punters turned up, I’m of the opinion that the event financially probably broke even. (I’d be interested to find out if I am right in this guesstimate). Having said that, the event wasn’t about making money. It was initially suggested a year ago, and was intended to be a fun event as just one of many events organised nationally for the International Year of Astronomy. As things turned out, there were precious few IYA events locally this year. AstroBash was the only one within many miles that I’d heard of, and even allowing for the weather, I think the day was a resounding success. I hope we organise something similar for next year.

Now my talk on Mars is over and done with, I’m feeling at a bit of a lose end. I see that the astro club program of talks for next year is still to be announced. I wonder if I could do another presentation. After all, yesterday I was described as “something of an institution in the club”, and I have found some eminently blaggable PowerPoint presentations about the planet Saturn on Cornell University’s website. I say “blaggable” – I have no qualms of conscience in using such presentations. I can’t help but feel that if people didn’t want their presentations to be used, they wouldn’t put them on the Internet.

Talking of blagging other people’s work, I found this today. Look at the video about half way down the page. And click on it, to go to the original video on You-Tube. Do you recognise who made that video?

I got a message that there was a newer version of my anti virus available. Seeing as I’m a bit of a cheapskate when it comes to anti virus software and use the free version, something for nothing is always a good thing. But (as always) the upgrade, whilst simple enough in theory, took an hour to actually do.

And then to Maidstone to visit my god-daughter and her family. We had a brill time, and an excellent bit of scoff. We don’t see them anywhere near enough. Must go back soon…