2017 - a year in review

That is it for me in 2017 - another busy but very interesting year. 

One hurricane, two papers published, a big two day conference successfully hosted, joined a new COST action, helped propose a third, one new paper under review, two in prep, two national newspaper articles, two completed reports for OSi change detection project and accompanying modules, a SCSI research project completed.

Two pieces of big news coming in the new year; one relating to the NUIM MSc in GIS and Remote Sensing and another to my future prospects - a change of venue. 

Happy Christmas and New Year to all readers.

Newgrange - #Solstice2017 Live Stream

2017 is the first year that the Winter Solstice in Newgrange is available to watch live online. Livestream is available here. No luck today - the 20th - as cloud has covered the whole area. Note: the weather lets you down for most time dependant events in Ireland, like meteor showers, BBQs, whale watching, fishing,camping, walking, hanging out the washing, etc. but you learn to not get your hopes up in Ireland, bring rain-gear and then be pleasantly surprised.

Yet I will try the last, I have another chance tomorrow (and if the 20th is a possible, then again the 22nd I'm assuming?). 

Character-building I suppose...

I saw a familiar archaeo-astronomer face being interviewed - Prof Frank Prendergast ex-DIT Head of School and also got an idea for a nice holiday trip, Boyne Boats, a guided tour paddling the Boyne in a Currach through Battle of the Boyne territory and other stone age regions..

Christmas Gifts and Geo

Yes, they do exist!

I'm normally about 3 years ahead with Christmas presents and have boxes of them ready for emergencies but this year is a disaster. I have nothing bought for most people. Having said that I did come across two excellent Christmas gifts which are Geo related - one is a 3D print of lunar topography with an LED nitelight in the centre - different illumination settings - very cool.

The other is one for next year with a bit of luck.

LEGO allow people to submit ideas for a vote to see how popular it is. They also have subtle subliminal tricks to see how popular the model might be by asking "how many of these would you buy" and "how much would you be willing to pay"....Well one of the front runners is a LEGO model of a Galileo GNSS satellite. Very cool - i'll be buying about 50 of these. I actually followed through with this, registered AND voted for it - that is how serious I am...vote here

Purgatorio de S. Patricio

A beautiful old map available here for browsing - billed as 'the largest early world map' in this post. 60 sheet maps digitised and joined into one. The mapmaker has an interesting outlook on Northern Ireland, must have been moonlighting as one of T. May's Phase 1 BREXIT negotiators.

Drones and Birdstrike

Birdstrike is a major issue for airlines, it can cause serious damage to planes and even lead to loss of life. I have heard it suggested a number of times that drones could be a tool used to scare off birds near centres of aviation traffic. Link here for a nice video and an awesome looking drone from the NYTimes demonstrating just that.