And time began seriously to pass
when walking the dog i stepped on a few snails by accident. it was dark and its raining so there were heaps of them out on the footpath.
the snails here look a lot like the ones in the Netherlands, so i thought, they must all come from a similar place and have (very) slowly populated the whole world (or so the book of knowledge tells me )
how slowly ? how long would it be for a land-snail (population, i assume an individual snail might not make it in his lifetime) to go around the world ?
there’s a few different references on snails pace, but 1 mm/sec seems to be the most common one.
1 mm/s = 3.6 meter/hour for say 8 hours a night = 28.8 m/day = 10.5 km/year.
so it would take them 3816 years to do a lap of the world (40.075 km at the equator).
4000 years doesn’t seem that bad
energy theft
battery technology is improving very fast at the moment, i just read about the new lithium-ion combination with carbon nano-structures and air-batteries that promise a 10 fold improvement on current capacity.
(http://www.ubergizmo.com/2012/04/ibm-develops-air-breathing-batteries/ )
in a couple of years i can imagine a ‘current affair’ report that follows somebody from work to home to ‘out’ them as stealing electricity from work.
almost everyone has a phone charger at work, but i can imagine a suitcase full of batteries (and an apple for lunch) being used for some heavy duty energy transport.
so currently laptops have li-ion batteries at about 50W/h.. you’d fit about 20 of those in a big suitcase = 1 KW/h .. the new air breathing batteries will have a 15 fold increase in energy density = 15 KW/h in a suitcase.
at A$ 0.18 a KW/h at top tariff.. well.. i guess not a ‘current affair’ material yet… “man steals A$2.70 a day”
it’s only a matter of time.. and you heard it here first.
early bells
an early surf down at bells. first trial of the new board. about 3 foot and offshore slowly moving westerly. saw a seal when paddling out. roh, dave and me.
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fleminton photowalk
went for a wander around flemington this sunday.
snatches on saturday
looked at st. andrews, but snatches ended up being much (much ) better (yappa !). 4 foot sets, clean, quiet and consistent. didn’t get a photo, so here’s swellnet’s one of st. andrews. there was a dead seal on the beach with it’s head bitten off by ‘something’ . brrrr. benny, roh, lee, phil and tom
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Melbourne, Australia, seen from the ISS at night
Melbourne, Australia, at night taken by ESA astronaut André Kuipers from the International Space Station with the NightPod camera aid.
Cameras mounted on NightPod track the movement of Earth as it flies under the Space Station. Night-time photographs are less blurred and captured in higher detail.
For more information on André’s mission to the ISS, and to see many more of his fantastic images, please visit: www.esa.int/SPECIALS/PromISSe/index.html
Credits: ESA/NASA
promises
we haven’t had much luck the last couple of weeks. the banks haven’t been great and this time the tide was very low with not very clean swell. we looked at kilcunda and williamsons, then decided to have some breakfast.. looked at woolamai and because everyone was desperate for a surf walked down to magiclands and went for a paddle.. it promised nothing and delivered… (nothing). anyway had a body surf in the shore break afterwards and the water is still beautiful. the usual suspects: roh, dave, lee and tom
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woolamai
checked kilcunda, woolies, forrest caves and ended up surfing woolamai. about 3 ft and a bit of fun. lee, roh, dave and tom
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