Mr Mist’s Blog

The newly-founded Brawn GP F1 team – raised from the ashes of Honda – was taken by Button and Barrichello to first and second places in the Melbourne circuit. Button led the race from the off, and drove the new car well and without incident to the finish. He wasn’t severly challenged at any point – given a combination of tactics, car and expert driving – until the last few laps of the race, when Kubica and Vettel were closing fast thanks to good tyre choice on their part. So then – luckily or unluckily depending on your perspective – those two crashed and took each other out, leaving the Brawn pair to drive out the race under the safety car.

So a fairly eventful start to the season really. Hamilton, who started last on the grid, eventually came in 3rd after Trulli was hit with a time penalty for overtaking under the safety car.

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One of the protests this week is Earth Hour, where citizens of the world are asked to turn off their lights for an hour at 8:30pm local time. Earth Hour is about global warming. Today it does not feel very warm here, I must say.

Another protest today is a march from Embankment to Hyde Park in London ahead of the G20 summit this week. I think this is the first of a few marches, over the coming week. I expect we will see some events on the news about at least one of these marches, as it is inevitable that protesters will get penned in by police at some point, which is where things spark off. Keep a sharp eye out if you’re about that there London this week.

Also this weekend sees the start of the new F1 season. Australian Grand Prix qualifying has already taken place, and Button is at the front of the pack, in the Brawn GP (ex-Honda) car. Last season’s champion, Lewis Hamilton, starts at the back of the grid after having a gearbox replaced. Though even before the replacement, his times were not exactly spectacular. In fact, looking at the running, it could be an interesting race, because the normal order of things is pretty mixed up.

In tea-related news, they are now saying that drinking very hot tea is linked to oesophageal cancer. I do not appreciate this news. Not because I drink especially hot tea, but because tea is meant to be healthy, and it irks me to hear anything contrary to the healthy tea image.

Plugin work is still ongoing. Unfortunately I have picked the wrong time to try to finish it, having been on call for work for the last 2 weeks, I’ve not been that inclined to do more computery stuff when I get home.

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Canon have announced the launch (due in May) of the 500D Digital SLR camera. This looks like a tasty bit of camera. It has Full HD movie capability, with a 15MP sensor, live view, and all the other gubbins. In fact, you have to question where the 50D sits with this beast out there. (The 50D does offer some extras such as a pentaprism, 6fps shooting and magnesium alloy construction, but doesn’t offer the video or ISO improvements.) DP Review have a fairly extensive preview of the camera here. This camera certainly widens-out Canon’s entry-range of digital SLRs. This is a very impressive looking model. I’ll be interested to see when reviews appear of the full production version if the image quality is up there, as we are cramming a lot of megapixels on the sensor now.

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So what have we had this week? I’m still working on my new plugin, so I won’t be ready to release that just yet unless I really get a crack on. But as we all know 90% of IT projects come in late and overbuget so this is no exception.

In baby news, we Brits apparently feel pressured to buy expensive baby-related equipment in order to show off to our peers. We also prefer to dress our babies in clothes that match our own. HMM. I don’t really get that one. I certainly won’t be doing that. I’ll be dressing our baby up like a baby. Who knows why you would go and create a “minimi” as that just seems odd to me. Where’s the fun in that? Clothes-wise you should be putting baby into onesies and then as soon as baby has grown out of onesies you should be experimenting with every possible odd clothes combination possible. Oh yes.

In Google news, some folk have asked for images to be removed from the Google Street View service, citing an invasion of privacy. I honestly do not understand this mentality. Personally I’d think it was great if I appeared on a Street View scene. Unlikely at the moment as my area is just outside street view’s circle, but, still, surely it’s a piece of history, why not be recorded in it? It almost seems like some paranoia to me.

Oh, there was an about-turn on new F1 rules giving the championship to the driver with the most wins. Turns out there was some objection from the teams, and their existing rules mean that everyone already entered for a season has to agree on any rule changes. So it’s old style this year but all change for next time. So we can expect. Apparently.

Finally, ridiculous holiday complaints lists 20 complaints that were apparently lodged by actual, living, supposedly sane people. Including such gems as “The beach was too sandy”.

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Patricia Hewitt the ex-Health Secretary has put forward a motion for MPs to debate a change to the law that would allow people to legally take others abroad to die.

The motion is not expected to succeed. I think that’s unfortunate. We need European cohesion on this subject, because at the moment we’re in the utterly absurd situation that you cannot have a legally assissted suicide here in the UK, but you can if you travel abroad to Switzerland. So for some reason the price of a plane ticket makes the difference.

Then we have the further problem that technically anyone helping out by taking, say, a loved one to a foreign country to die, could then face prosecution back here. Yet the CPS have brought no such prosecutrions. Hewitt’s motion would sort this out, and yet sadly it is doomed to fail under the nonsense spouted by the anti-Euthanesea crowd. So unfortunately it looks like we still will not get any clarity over this, and people finding themselves in this position in the future will continue to have to take a legally hazy chance to help out their loved ones.

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