I have had a couple of months between blogs. Not that I didn't know what to write about, it's just that I seemed to have too many things to do at once. Not to mention a lot of stress…whoops did I just mention that?
However I did find bit of time for leisure. My art group was running through September and October plus we had a small exhibition, so I was kept busy painting and helping organise things. We are going to have a much bigger exhibition at Christmas time, and so I am looking forward to that. I shall be displaying around a dozen paintings. We are holding the exhibition in a hotel. Our stand will be in an annex between two restaurants, so our work should be seen by quite a few people.
I treated myself to Neil Diamond's latest CD "Dreams". Another scaled down mainly acoustic album of some of his favourite songs written by other people. I particularly loved "Ain't no Sunshine" written by Bill Withers and previously recorded by Michael Jackson and the Jackson Five. I also loved Neil's rendition of Leslie Duncan's "Love Song", a previous version by Elton John. There's also a fine rendition of "Midnight Train to Georgia".
I read some great books too. I enjoyed reading one of Dean Koontz's early novels "Shattered". Packed with suspense. A real page turner. Then I read "The Ghost" by Robert Harris, a political satire on the Blair years, although the disclaimer says the usual…"This is a work of fiction……any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental"…Hmmmm
I enjoyed it, but I didn't think it was as good as some of Harris's other works.
Then I read the wonderful, haunting "A Quiet Belief in Angels" by R.J. Ellory. One of the best novels I have ever read. Having dark undertones of death and a serial child killer who commits terrible gruesome murders; I never-the-less found it to be untimely a celebration of life. Of love. Of survival. Of triumph over adversity. Yes, of belief. An amazing book by an amazing author.
And through all of this I continue to classify Hubble Deep Space galaxies for Galaxy Zoo; the Citizen Science project that is part of Zooniverse. There is a lot of work, a lot to learn and there are a lot of strange objects out there waiting to find a home on our databases. It's looking through time and space…looking back through time and space and seeing the most incredible sights and phenomena. The early stages of the universe, the birth of galaxies and stars. The distances, dimensions and numbers are too vast to comprehend. It's all mind-blowing stuff!!
And that's not all. As the images are initially photographed and 'sorted' by Hubble's computer, I am the first human being ever to see most of the galaxies I classify. I am looking at something no-one has ever seen before. Quite humbling really.
Zooniverse has a few projects currently running. There is Moon Zoo, Galaxy Mergers, Supernova Zoo and there is also a fascinating project tracking Solar Storms. The collected data is then used to help astronauts in space.
And a new project is the wonderful "Old Weather". We are given the charts from ships that have sailed in a bygone era; at the beginning of the last century and during the First World War for example. We record the ship's charted weather conditions onto a computer data base. It is to be used to help forecast future weather patterns around the globe. Also the day to day activities of the old ships are charted, and so we transfer those onto the computer data base too, for historians to study.
I am currently on HMS Invincible. She was torpedoed and sunk at the Battle of Jutland in 1916.
And that's not all! I saw an article in a medical journal suggesting that a "Lesion Zoo' maybe in the offing!! Something to look forward to.
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