How fast things change.

Just a week ago the word Tsunami was linked in the public mind with the Boxing day disaster. Now it is far more likely to be remembered as the word that led to a wholesale rethink of energy policy. Yet another unplanned for high impact ultra low probability occurrence has done just that, occurred. Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, Macondo, and Fukushima. It seems that we don't want to learn. It's hard to have a plan B for a 9.0 magnitude earthquake offshore and a massive tsunami wiping out reactor backup systems, so we didn't. So, 3 reactors are probably melting, one is hot and all three will never work again.

By the way the Chinese are still going to build their planned 155 reactors....

New computer, new post

After 5 years of use my old macbook pro has finally reached the point of no return on a cost benefit basis as its screen has gone walkabout again.

So, greetings to the new macbook pro. 17" screen again and not all pretty and shiny but matt and ready to go for photo editing after only a smidgeon of colour correction. After the 17" screen and the similar size, almost everything else is different. Quad core processor, heaps of ram, and a video processor that once would have graced a laptop as the main processor and been feted in the nerdy magazines, probably not that many years ago. But, the piece de resistance is the the thunderbolt port. mega-times faster than USB 2.0 and multiple times faster than firewire 800.Finally, HD video editing may be a real time activity rather than a ho-hum I wonder how long it will take to render that - shall I have supper, a drink, a bath, go to bed and have breakfast the next day before checking or is that premature?

I just love techno toys....