Category: CERN
Mini review: “Project Hail Mary” by Andy Weir (audiobook edition)
I enjoyed The Martian a lot – both the book and the film – but this is better. The ideas are great, the science is convincing (to my untrained ear), the humour dry and the plot is expertly paced.
The narration of the main character is pitch-perfect. The success rate with other accents varies, but I would recommend the audiobook over reading the book. This is an excellent example of where the use of sound can enhance the story telling experience.
If you are a fan of science fiction, especially hard science fiction, I recommend this book without hesitation. You are in for a treat.
• Spare Cycles: Mini review: “The Martian” by Andy Weir (audiobook version)
My first website is now back online, hosted on Amazon Web Services (AWS)
To celebrate the 20th anniversary of my original website from 1997 I have re-published it for all to see.
This site has moved home a few times over the years. It was originally hosted at CERN when I was working my first proper job and then on Google Drive.
Now I have it hosted on Amazon Web Services (for less than 60p a month).
Enjoy!
• Andre says: Make yourself at home!
• AWS: Hosting a Static Website on Amazon S3
My first website – now back online…!
A while ago I came across a backup of the files that made up my very first website from 1997, when I was working at CERN. I had been inspired to learn some HTML for a couple of reasons:
1) I was working at the birthplace of the World Wide Web
2) I had some time to kill on the night shift.
So I fired up Netscape Communicator 4 and started experimenting. I was very proud of my creation at the time, although to be honest I thought there was a little more of it.
The site has had a couple of homes over the years, from cern.ch to Geocities, but each time the host provider either reclaimed the space or closed down.
Now Google has a way of hosting a (simple) website from Google Drive, which you will have if you have a Google account. It’s pretty straight forward and perfect for this use case (and free…)
• Lifehacker: Host Web Pages on Google Drive
The LHC and it’s “mini Big Bang”
…the collisions obtained were able to generate the highest temperatures and densities ever produced in an experiment.
“This process took place in a safe, controlled environment, generating incredibly hot and dense sub-atomic fireballs with temperatures of over ten trillion degrees, a million times hotter than the centre of the Sun.
“At these temperatures even protons and neutrons, which make up the nuclei of atoms, melt resulting in a hot dense soup of quarks and gluons known as a quark-gluon plasma.”
Cool.
• BBC: Large Hadron Collider (LHC) generates a ‘mini-Big Bang’
Spare Cycles 