I know yesterday was Earth day but everyday should be Earth day.
Credit: NASA
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Monday is back again… Happy Monday bloggies. Over here in the UK we we’re enjoying some hot weather for a change, it was more like June than April, it was very welcome. What’s been happening on Planet Simon this week?
There was no Great Galactic Service Station last week (again (groan)), I hope to continue that this week. I’m struggling with time a bit these days, mainly becasue apart from time I have nothing to write on at home.
There’s been another part to the Geeky guide to WordPress
Another part of the Geeky Guide to WordPress series went out last week as normal. With some (hopefully) useful notes on Sharing Posts on Social Media. I keep finding that as I write these that I’m thinking and learning about points I hadn’t thought of before and bloggies are coming back at me with things they didn’t know.
What are your thoughts? Anything that you’ve seen in these posts that you’ve learned?
The Solar System Exploration exploration series visited Venus again. I think the newangle with the planet profile graphics are adding that extra visual impact. Let me know what you think, there’s loads more to come and any thoughts always welcome.
As I mentioned last week I had been out exploring over the weekend. I had the pleasure of going to the Lake District for the weekend. I wrote a bit about this on escribble and how the Lakes seem to be a Look back in time.
universe of possibility saw some action too with 12 Science Fiction Rules for Life
As a little extra yesterday, for Earth Day I posted this great image from NASA with Carl Sagan’s quote about Earth being the beach to the cosmos.
Work is continuing with keeping Planet Simon fresh and easy to use, more content is on the way all I need is time (haha) so keep watching and if this is your first time to Planet Simon why not follow and keep up to date with all the fun?
If you’re on Twitter make sure you follow @BlogBashChat and join us all for a blogging chat on the first Sunday of every month 7pm British time. It’s a great little thing that’s growing and you get to find out more about blogging and Bloggers! The last chat was yesterday and there will be another one next month!
What have you guys been up to?
Keep smiling and blogging!
Simon 🙂
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Today is Earth day! Happy Earth Day 2018! Now more than ever we as the inhabitants of spaceship Earth need to think about how in our every day we need to look after ever aspect of this planet and everything that lives on it.
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Despite the fact I’m a massive sci-fi fan I rarely get to see the films actually when they come out. This was definitely the case with Even Horizon, which I’ve recently seen after its release over 20 years ago.
First of all this film disagreed with me greatly becasue despite being a supposedly science fiction movie this was definitely a horror movie set in space. I’m not a great fan of horror, in fact I don’t like it at all. However films like Alien and all that I can kind of take. This is didn’t. It was gore for the sake of gore and that really sums this film up.
The premise and film concept is sciency enough, a spacecraft developed with a revolutionary time / space drive disappeared years before around the orbit of Neptune on its way to travel to the nearest star system. Nothing is heard from it until it’s re-appears around Neptune. The only communication from it is a garbled message of evil shrieks.
A rescue team is sent including Sam Neils creator of the spacecraft. The result is harrowing and bloody with problems faced from the start. As it turns out the Event Horizon had travelled to another hellish dimension in it’s mission and had become ‘alive’ and evil. Making it’s crew kill themselves and pull their eyeballs out.
What I didn’t like about this film was almost everything. The film creators get nearly everything wrong. The scale of the spacecraft on the outside is huge, yet inside is much smaller. I found this really annoying.
The other annoying thing I found was the message received. In this it was discovered was a message (isn’t there always) and this message was in Latin. This was mis understood to mean something else but only realised once everything had gone tits up. Let me make this point clear – If you are going to deliver a clear message why send it in an obscure way? Why?!? What you say is this:
“For fucks sake don’t come here, blow up this spaceship. Seriously!”
That’s how you send a warning.
Then there was the stupid scene where the rescue team are approaching the ship in the middle of one of Neptune’s storms. Only able to see it from metres away, it was about as tense as… well it wasn’t. It was shit. If the Event Horizon was that close to Neptune it’s not in orbit, it would be dragged down and destroyed. They wouldn’t have found it. BUt this visibility wasn’t a problem for one of the team to find when they blown out into space when their own spacecraft was destroyed.
Then we get onto this ‘dimension of chaos’ that the original mission allegedly visited and this made them all pull their eyeballs out and kill each other and all that kind of thing. What utter crap! Existence has to have balance to exist or it annihilates itself.
The special effects weren’t great either, I know this was the 90’s but even for the time it was cheap.
Lastly, who designs a ship so depressing and evil looking inside and out, maybe this is really why the crew killed themselves really, nothing to do with other dimensions.
What I liked about this film. The concept of the time space drive, things going wrong and then the mystery around it. The film makes could have done far, far better. The design of the drive was pretty cool too.
LIke I said not much, I was hoping for better with some of the big names in this film.
I really wanted to like this film, I had toyed with the idea of watching it for years, with Laurence and Sam and Joely in it I was hoping this would have been a lot better. But just as in the film the crew should never have entered onto Event Horizon – neither should I have.
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If anyone needs to see why we should live in peace, put down our weapons and work towards common goals that befit all mankind regardless of race, colour, gender or religion, then this perspective should really help:
Credit to NASA, taken from their Tumblr page
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Moving in the right direction this time, away from the Sun our next major object in the solar system is Venus.
Venus is one of the four rocky planets in the solar system, it is the second planet away from the Sun and is the closest planet in size to the Earth. Venus has orbits the Sun once every 224 days and it rotates on it’s axis one every 243 days. The rotation period is the longest of any planet in the solar system and it rotates in the opposite direction of any other planet. Venus was named after the Roman God of love and beauty, this is perhaps becasue it is the second brightest natural object in the night sky (the brightest being the moon).
Venus, Earth size comparison (Image from Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Venus,_Earth_size_comparison.jpg)
Just like Mercury, Venus orbits the sun within the orbit of the Earth is tis only visible at either dawn or dusk. It’s also possible to see crescent phases on these planets (if viewing it through a powerful telescope) as you might see them on the moon.
Gustav Holst wrote a suite of classical music pieces on the planets. This was the piece that he wrote for Venus – the bringer of peace. As with all the pieces from Holst the music has a meaning back to the roots of the mythical God they’re named after. In this case as Venus is the God of love, love brings peace.
There hasn’t been a great deal going on with Venus of late. Various probes have been sent to Venus over the years. The Russians sent the Venera probes between 1964 and 1981 in order to gather data from Venus. Because of the thick atmosphere it had been speculated many years ago that Venus could harbour a rich, warm and paradise like ecosystem. The Venera probes quickly dispelled this, showing Venus to be a rocky world, the probes didn’t last long under the intense atmospheric pressure before being crushed.
More recently ESA had sent the Venus Express probe to find out more about the Planet. During it’s time the probe sent back data telling us that Venus is volcanically active and in it’s final plunge recorded average temperatures at the polles of -157°C, colder than anywhere on Earth!
This goes to show, that distance from the Sun isn’t necessarily a guide to planetary temperatures.
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/06/150618122106.htm
I hope you’re enjoying this series, as always I look forwar to any feedback.
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As I’ve been doing this blogging thing a little while now and it seemed a good idea to pass on a few of the things that I’ve learned over the five years that I’ve been doing this. In easy and often geeky steps you’ll be taken through the steps and point out the pitfalls of taking your blog seed and growing it into something really amazing.
Sharing your posts on Social Media is a really easy way to give your posts greater visibility and get other looking at your blog. The old fashioned way would be to get the link from your blog site and paste it into a post, but there’s a way where every post can go to any or all of your social media sites.
Going back to the my sites page of your blog select sharing. Something like this should now be in front of you:
The free WordPress domain offers these social media sharing options, to activate a sharing option select the connect button and then sign into the social media account. With Facebook things can happen a little differently. Where there’s a group or groups set up in that account when the sign in has been completed the option of posting to the main site or any of the groups is given.
Every post can be customised so not all social media accounts have to be used every time but it’s there if needed.
Where sharing to other social media sites is required or some kind of posting schedule is wanted there are some options. If post scheduling or recycling is needed then there’s a number of other sites than can do this. If a free option is being sought then there will be some kind of limitations. Each of the sites will vary – here’s a list of the popular options:
These will give access to schedule and re-cycle posts that can help promote your blog and it’s content. They’re normally time consuming to setup but save work in the long run. What is often helpful is finding how to get the shortlink to a post. The way to do this is to select admin on the ‘My Sites’ page (at the bottom).
Select posts, then navigate the desired post and select the ‘Get Shortlink’ button:
This can be copied and pasted into any site or .CSV file (useful to know about this for post recycling).
Apart from this, for Pinterest, StumbleUpon and and others it’s the old fashioned sharing button. This is unless a self hosted and paid site is being used, where there are more options and if the business option is being used then there are plugins available.
This can be simplified when using a web browser by having the extensions for the social media sites installed, posting then only takes a moment – just make sure the boss isn’t looking if you’re doing this at work!
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I did… I’ve seen them coming back! I also tried to push them all out at once!
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Hi there bloggies, another monday is here and another week of upcoming challenges and opportunities.
Last week was a week away from work and off on My travels for a couple of days at the end of the week. There will be more about this on escribble this week so make sure you follow and keep an eye out for the post. If you’re following me on Instagram (link below) then you have a clue already…
There was no Great Galactic Service Station last week, I hope to continue that this week. but I made sure I kept the posts coming – don’t say I don’t spoil you guys!
There’s been another part to the Geeky guide to WordPress
Last week I covered Security and Backup it’s something we don’t often think about but blogs do get hacked, content is lost and that sort of thing would make any blogger have a heart attack.
What I’m finding interesting is that bloggers are telling me that either didn’t know about some of the feature’s highlighted in this series of posts or snippets of information that’s news bloggies new and not so new. I’m loving this feedback it means that this is useful and it gives me an idea of what bloggies need. So if there is something you want to say – let me know 🙂
The Solar System Exploration was on it’s second part last week, moving slightly away from the Sun to the scorching Mercury. I’ve updated this series and added sleek new graphics to the posts to help them stand out and have something interesting to use with the likes of Pinterest.
There was also some activity from universe of possibility one of the aspects I’m concentrating on is concepts in Sci-Fi and I looked at the the classic Sci-Fi giants like Star Wars and Star Trek and wonder if they’ve run out of ideas.
I also shared a moving and really good (it has to be said) short video montage of Obi Wan’s story.
Work is continuing with keeping Planet Simon fresh and easy to use, more content is on the way all I need is time (haha) so keep watching and if this is your first time to Planet Simon why not follow and keep up to date with all the fun?
If you’re on Twitter make sure you follow @BlogBashChat and join us all for a blogging chat on the first Sunday of every month 7pm British time. It’s a great little thing that’s growing and you get to find out more about blogging and Bloggers! The last chat was yesterday and there will be another one next month!
What have you guys been up to?
Keep smiling and blogging!
Simon 🙂
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Mercury is the closest planet to the sun, it’s surface is very similar to the moon, rocky and cratered but with the difference that it’s surface temperature ranges from 430°C to – 180°C. Mercury orbits the sun every 88 days and completes two rotations for every three orbits around the sun – making a day on Mercury 176 days long.
Becasue Mecury (This applies to Venus too) orbits the sun within the orbit of the Earth is tis only visible at either dawn or dusk. It’s also possible to see cresent phases on these planets (if viewing ith through a powerful telescope) as you might see them on the moon. This again is something that is unique to the two innermost planets. The outer most planets may show slight signs or phases at extremes of their orbit in relation to the Earth, but the signs aren’t significant.
Gustav Holst wrote a suite of classical music pieces on the planets. This was the piece that he wrote for Mercury – the messenger. Probably so called becasue it rounds the sun in it’s swift 88 days.
The messenger probe that was launched in 2004 carried out extensive study of Mercury and despite it’s searnly hot surface there is evidence of water ice in Mercury’s permanently shadowed craters. This shows that at some point there must have been an atmosphere on Mercury at some point and could prove to be a useful fuel and oxygen resource.
The Messenger probe also managed to map 100% of the surface of Mercury, this completed the 40% / 45% mapping that was carried out by Mariner 10 in 1975. What does all this mean? It tells us about Mercury’s past where it probably had an atmosphere and it’s future? Who knows? But water is fuel and a valuable resource in space.
The Messenger mission ended on April the 30th 2015 when it deorbited and crashed into the surface of Mercury
Credit for link information and images – NASA
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