SpaceX Launch

With the retirement of the space shuttle, the ISS is being resupplied by Russia and now a first launch by a commercial rocket company SpaceX.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-18165913

So the start of a new era of commercial space flight, it clearly has been coming for several years - and maybe manned flight is not so far away. The question of what NASA concentrates on, pure research and exploration - private industry can concentrate on lucrative satellite and low earth orbit applications. The launch seems to be a joint partnership with NASA - who are presumably providing the launch control.

Hodgson first game

Well England managed a victory away against Norway for the first time since Alf Ramsey was England manager!

But a laboured victory, England made it look like hard work against Norway who were nimble and well organised.

So not a good sign for Euro 2012, England drift to 14-1 in the markets.

Of course it is only a friendly and it was a win - but it does make you worry about stronger opposition to come. The thing about the Euros is it is nothing but strong opposition, no easy group games to build confidence in.

Facebook IPO

So it has finally happened a floation on the stock market for $38 dollars a share around $100 bn in market capitalisation. You can now have your own piece of the social media company.

I think the companies frank admission that they have yet to move advertising from the PC platform to mobile (where most users access the site from) probably tells all you need to know about their future. In business terms this means they are already yesterdays company. No doubt extremely popular with users, but unless you put adverts in front of them the "free" bit of the social network will not sustain the business.

I think Zuckerberg and Sandberg know this, so the IPO is probably the height of the company. It is still an amazing story of a business grown from its initial venture capital to this point where they have found enough banks to back a floation and presumably found enough people to initially buy the shares. What was it P T Barnum said about the birth rate of suckers - it's clearly true!

As always it is a crying shame that so many talented people are spending their lives working out how to make users click on an advert to drive revenue growth. Maybe we now know what kills off all civilisations, an increasing obsession with trivia rather than true innovation.

The financial press I have read have all said this is not one for your pension fund!

Film: Michael Clayton directed by Tony Gilroy

An interesting film that portrays a soulless legal firm that is looking to settle a long running lawsuit and stop substantial damages being awarded to people affected by a companies product.

George Clooney plays Michael Clayton a legal "fixer" or janitor as he puts it, who gets to do all the dirty work and arranging that makes such companies tick. In the film there is not much evidence of what his special talents are, but you get a feel that he is has a long held position in the firm doing this role.

On the case the legal firm is looking to close, Clayton is asked to try and stop the legal genius behind the case from going off the rails and exposing the fact the firm knows full well that the companies product was dangerous. He starts to do this but then becomes increasingly disillusioned when he discovers what is going on. In the end he turns on the legal firm and captures evidence that would mean the case would collapse.

A good film and does a good job of describing both the corporate soulless face of typical big American companies and employees, and the behind the scenes reality and shady dealings that go on from day to day.

Carriers back to VSTOL

Well the U turn on the strike aircraft has been U turned. We are back to the VSTOL variant of the F35, which means less payload, less range, less strike capability. Actually we might not be able to operate in hot environments!

It gets us two things some cost savings (which I think you can immediately write off as there will be further cost overruns), and maybe a faster delivery.

Meanwhile our Navy pilots are training in America to keep skills alive, in the current day F-18. Why don't we structure the contract to have these from day one on the carrier and only buy into F35 when America has got it working!

At this rate we are going to end up with an expensive BaE carrier, with no inter-operability with the US - with which we can draw up to some danger spot and pretend to launch stealth aircraft from!

As always Lewis Page has a good analysis of the self interested parties involved in this kind of decision making:

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/05/10/f35_u_turn_idiocy/

Small Change Results

Here are the results of my cashing in, I weighed the coins to get an idea comparing to a nominal weight of £1 to get the value.

Coin	£1 grams	Weight	Estimate £/coins	Actual £/coins
1p/2p	350	3571	10.20 / 714	9.93 / 657
5p	68	740	10.85 / 217	11.55 / 231
10p	65	1880	28.90 / 289	28.50 / 287
20p	25	1349	54.00 / 270	53.60 / 268

I estimated that the 1p/2p were split 40:60 but it was much nearer 50:50

Optical Media

The death of optical media cannot be that far away, maybe 5 years before it is gone completely?

I am old enough to remember the introduction of the CD, and you could not think of a time where the CD would feel like an LP record did then.

Within a couple of years I think we'll see USB boot only to install computers. The last bastion will be the retail DVD markets and 5 years maybe does seem a little short for that. If film downloads take off though I think that will see their fate sealed.

In some ways it is sad, another piece of mechanical perfection disappearing and making computers that little less diverse and solid state only. In a similar way hard drives, which probably have a slightly longer life span will one day be replaced with solid state devices.

Small Change Crisis

I am not very efficient with small change, and it has built up in the last couple of year.

I did some weighing up and worked out things had got out of hand and it was time to try and cash it in somewhere

I had seen people using CoinStar machines, and knew about the 8% processing charge, but it also turns out that they return vouchers redeemable in store.

But then I was in Natwest and they paying in machines now take coins - and probably have done for a few years maybe. Also paid into your account with no transaction charge.

This was the way I went for, it works pretty well - and now I can solve my loose change crisis.

Roy Hodgson England Manager

A surprise appointment, and a bit of a snub for peoples favourite Harry Redknapp. The FA have gone their own way and by taking on Hodgson have opted for a football man with wide experience of managing - but with little domestic success.

He definitely would not have been on the shortlist of most fans - but then there are not many candidates, it has become a very limited market.

I hope he does well, he is no showman - but wouldn't it be great to see an England side that can defend, work hard in midfield, and score goals on the break?

Space Shuttle Retirement

Some interesting photos of the Space Shuttles as they transit to go into museum retirement:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-17749899 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-17874273