The Man with No Time

The summer blockbuster deluge continues with another superhero movie. This time it's the latest in the X-Men set of films, and the second one to focus on one of its most popular characters - Wolverine. The first standalone, "X-Men Origins: Wolverine" was an average film with some interesting but poorly executed ideas. Does "The Wolverine" rise above it to match "First Class" or "X2", or is it more of the same? The poster for this film is very, very cool. (Credit: thewolverinemovie.com)

It's been a long time since I had the opportunity to go to a decent gig. Almost five years in fact; the last one was Feeder at the Warwick University Student's Union in 2008! St Andrews isn't exactly blessed with decent opportunities, and I never knew what was going on in Dundee. Edinburgh and Glasgow weren't even worth looking at until I had a car. But now I do, and several months ago my friend at work asked if I fancied going to see "We Are Scientists" in Glasgow. It seemed like ages away but gradually snuck up on us, and yesterday the two of us made the trip across Scotland to go see the band. We Are Scientists on stage at the Oran Mor, Glasgow. It was an awesome gig. (Credit: David Brown)

Today I took part in the second of two Convergence of Cyriss release events for Warmachine. Like the first one it was sadly rather poorly attended (even more so this time around in fact, with only five of us), but fun in spite of that. A couple of last minute drops owing to real life issues contributed to the low turnout, and sadly took care of our two potential Convergence players, so it was fight to the death between Trollbloods, Pirates, Cryx, Cryx, and, errrr, Cryx! Actually it could have been all Cryx all the time, but the Pressganger had some Trollbloods with him and one of the local players popped home to get an alternative when he arrived to find so many undead players. 

I've just got back to St Andrews after a quick mid-summer family holiday. We didn't go anywhere particularly exciting, just to Center Parcs like we did last year. It was really enjoyable, and very relaxing all in all, although my brother and Mum might disagree! We're in the middle of a bit of a heat wave here in the UK at the moment, and so we didn't cram as much in to our visit as we have done in the past. A quick game of bowling on the Friday night, some Badminton Saturday and Monday, a quick go on the driving simulator for Dad, my brother and I, a pedalo on the lake, some American pool, and quick swim (it was really, really nice to get back in the pool and swim some lengths) were pretty much it. We did get in a few boardgames though, and I finally got to try out Battlestar Galactica, which is everything I was led to believe and more. The big event of the weekend was the spa evening that my brother, myself, and our girlfriends went to. I'd never been...

One of the staple television shows of my early childhood was "Power Rangers". I remember watching the original "Mighty Morphin" series right up through "Power Rangers in Space". I even watched "Lightspeed Rescue", "Time Force", and "Ninja Storm" before I fell out of touch. I think that's where my love of giant robots started. I then moved on to Mecha-based anime, with "Big-O" and the various "Gundam" series getting me hooked. Giant monsters also started with Power Rangers, and I have a curious soft spot for the mid-90s Godzilla film that everyone else seems to think is rubbish. There's something about giant fighting robots piloted by plucky heroes taking on giant monsters (or other robots) that's inherently cool in my mind. So you can imagine how excited I was when I first heard about "Pacific Rim". The fact that it was being directed by Guillermo del Toro was even better; I'...

Yesterday I travelled down to Worlds at War in Livingston for the first of two Convergence of Cyriss release events for Warmachine that I'll be attending. It was great to break out the Warmachine models again, and I had a lot of fun.

Some astronomy news today that I thought was too cool not to share. Astronomers have, for the first time, determined the colour of an exoplanet ! (I've linked to the free PDF preprint there, as the journal article itself is behind a paywall here ) Using the Hubble Space Telescope, a group led by astronomers from the University of Oxford observed secondary eclipses of the exoplanet HD189733. A secondary eclipse if the opposite of a transit event: the planet passes behind the star, leasing to a slight dimming of the total light from the system. In this case though, the group were observing the light that was reflected from the planet's atmosphere. Generally this is mixed in with light being given out by the planet thanks to its high temperature, but at the short wavelengths used for this work these 'thermal' effects are minimal, so the only light is the reflected starlight.  I'm very excited by this piece of science. A blue planet, with clouds made of part...

The summer blockbuster season is in full swing, and it's looking like another good year for geek films. We've already had a swathe of sci-fi and superhero films (not all of which I managed to see unfortunately), and the next few weeks see several more hitting the big screens. So lets take a look at the latest one, and review "Man of Steel" As I think I've mentioned before on this blog, my childhood superheroes of choice were Spiderman and the X-Men. Both are Marvel properties, and as I've grown older I've tended to prefer Batman to Superman as far as the DC stable goes. That's not down to the Dark Knight trilogy either, but to the excellent cartoon series that Batman has had over the years, mainly the original Animated Series and Batman of the Future. However, I do remember watching "The New Adventures of Superman" with my Mum. "It's not an S. On my planet it means hope." The new logo looks very cool indeed, and has ...

This week has been a busy one for astronomy here in St Andrews. Not because of any goings on at work, but because there's been a big conference in town! Several hundred astronomers descended on our little corner of Fife for the Royal Astronomical Society's National Astronomy Meeting (NAM). The 2013 edition (dubbed 'St NAMdrews' by some witty folk) finished off yesterday, and it's been an enjoyable week.

Today was a said day. I've spent the weekend packing up all of my stuff, and today I moved out of the house that I've lived in for the last three years.