Ian Robinson’s Soapbox

…to be able to do this: God that’s good. I love the look to camera at the end Here is the original song from Queen II. I’m at the very early stages of learning chords and stuff on piano. IF I ever get to the stage where I can play Nevermore like this guy I’ll [...]

I accepted a BSc Open from the Open University yesterday. I’m working towards a BSc (Hons) Molecular Science and will complete that next year by doing: S343 Inorganic Chemistry SXR343 Transition Metal Chemistry SXM390 Frontiers of Chemistry But the points I have, including some courses I’m not using for the Molecular Science degree, means i [...]

Queen made a lot of videos. I still like the one for Somebody to Love the most I think. It’s simply the 4 of them in a studio, inter-cut with concert footage. So the most important thing, i.e. the music itself, doesn’t have to compete with over ambitious visuals or story. You can watch a [...]

Open University course results time! I got mine yesterday. Passed the 2 courses I submitted work for. Didn’t pass the one I didn’t submit for. Funny that I had to ignore one of the courses due to work stuff taking my time. I got a pass (91%) in the 10 point course S197: How the [...]

Chris Pirillo has an answer. Or 3…

Yeah!. New artist. New Music. Mika is going to be huge. Dodgy Holiday is very good. The performance of the song Grace Kelly on Later with Jools Holland is very good as well. Available as a QuickTime file at the Mika MySpace Music site. He has a very broad vocal range. The control is better [...]

I wrote previously that I was testing MacJounal as a replacement for ecto as a blog tool and SOHO Notes as a personal journal app. Whilst MacJounal has some nice touches, and does have a nice Mac interface, I’ve reverted to ecto and SOHO Notes for the two tasks respectively. I really missed being able [...]

I’ve posted here about Peter F. Hamilton’s excellent Commonwealth Saga before. Just finished it again. Still very good. Some of the story lines (like the time spent by Ozzie, Orion and Tochee on the Silfen paths) can drag a bit. There is a new trilogy set in the same Universe but 1500 years after the [...]

Good grief. What a blunder. I was playing a 12 minute game of chess against a human opponent on playchess.com and got to the following position – I was playing white and it was my move. I had about 3 minutes on my clock and my opponent had about 1.5 minutes. So no time pressure. [...]

This is pretty cool. The Viking landers that landed on Mars in 1976 have been photographed by the HiRISE camera onboard the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. Large images available from here. Here is a sample. Grab the big versions for more detail.

Yikes. Looks like it might be a bit windy over the British Isles this weekend. The picture below is the Atlantic pressure chart for Sunday 3rd at noon. I love sitting in a nice warm house listening to the wind howling. It’s certainly better than being out in it. I remember being out out fishing [...]