Posts by Harvey Trowell

Nude lady recreates Star Wars tauntaun scene in dead horse

I agree on both counts.

First, that it was clearly Luke's lightsaber and not Han's, and getting that fact wrong is the most offensive part of the article. Also that it was out of character for Han to use the lightsaber after saying "Hokey religions and ancient weapons are no match for a good blaster at your side, kid." in episode four. Needs must, I guess. After all, it would have got messy if he tried to blast his way in.

As for other use by non-Jedi, I fear you have overlooked the Sith (particularly General Grievous who presumably buys his in bulk) and the interesting case of R2D2 using Luke's as a buttplug for the first half hour of Jedi...

Porsche finds top gear with BlackBerry design

Nice subheadline!

Shame about the phone.

Viz Profanisaurus

I am shocked, horrified, outraged, and appalled.

Gibraltar, a famous Spanish rock? I think not.

Apple cofounder Steve Jobs is dead at 56

Godspeed You Black Turtlenecked Emperor

May you rest in peace.

9/11: The day we lost our privacy and power

It may, irreversibility, have changed the way we think.

Nice work, mister sub-ed. Way to draw the reader into a great article.

Galaxy Tab 7.7 pulled from IFA after new Apple moves

@Apple's tablet Waterloo

Mornington Crescent

Amateur balloonists hit record 40,575m above East Anglia

I am

I am, although I've only been a couple of times. I don't live in Darlinghurst but frequently visit the Local after watching the rugby (Go Tahs!) at the football ground, and called in after the ashes test too. That was a great day. I went with my dad who was out visiting. Cook and Bell piled up ridiculous scores, Mitchell Johnson was roundly abused by the army, and after the VB Gold on offer in the ground, you can imagine how good it felt retiring to the roof terrace of the Local to mull it all over. Good times.

Have you visited The Local Taphouse in St Kilda?

We have one in Darlinghurst and it's awesome, something I forgot to mention in my earlier ramble.

http://thelocal.com.au/MEL/

Take it from a Pom in exile in Sydney

I've given the matter some attention and the beer here really isn't that bad. Sure, if you take your beer seriously you wouldn't drink the VB, the Carlton or the Tooheys any more than you'd have a Carling or a wifebeater back home. There are decent options though.

As already mentioned by the balloonanautist, Coopers make a couple (I like the green one, called Pale Ale but isn't, more of a cloudy live light ale, think Summer Lightning) and if it's a crisp lager you're after, Bluetongue, which is probably rare outside Sydney as it's brewed in the Hunter Valley, is deliciously hoppy and bitter (although still a class apart from the multitude of Bavarian Beer Cafes around town offering litres of Stiegl, Paulaner, Spaten and so on, it does a good job and is affordable by the case).

For real ales, if you put the effort in and visit the likes of the Admiral Nelson in the Rocks or the Red Oak brewery in the CBD there are some excellent beers to be found (the Organic Pale Ale in the latter is a personal favourite).

On the subject of Fosters, whilst you don't often see the lager on tap here in Sydney, their Fat Yak, which is a bit like Sierra Nevada Pale Ale, is popping up more often and is very quaffable and something a revelation considering who makes it.

It's a bit different outside of Sydney, I grant you. Tasmania does better than Queensland and Victoria in my experience and I haven't spent enough time out west to form an opinion, but you can be sure that when I do I'll be sure to bore you with it. Cheers.

Oh yes, big well done to Mr Balloonanautist for getting the record and also for getting your live tracking to work so well. Good luck with the next one.

LOHAN team buried under ballockets

Keep it simple, stupid.

Impressed though I am at the ambition of some of the submissions, I can't say they all look a doddle to implement.

With that in mind, I propose a somewhat prosaic waste pipe and curtain track based design.

This assembly would hang, nay, dangle, beneath a single balloon in an inverted T, with the main payload forming the base. A piece of rigid plastic waste pipe of say 32mm diameter would ascend vertically towards the balloon, with the tether at the top end, and with a piece of curtain track curving out and away from the riser, braced for rigidity, terminating at such an angle that a rocket-propelled vehicle leaving said track would clear the swollen balloon.

That angle would obviously depend on how big the balloon gets and how far below the balloon the launch assembly hangs. As already mentioned, the further below the balloon you start, the closer to vertical you can get and still clear it.

Vulture II would sit vertically atop the main payload until launch, in her track and ready to go, and upon reaching altitude she would simply ignite, run the rail and shoot up past the balloon and away.

To my thinking, the known unknown is to what extent the whole assembly would be tilted off vertical as the accelerating V2 rocket (ooh, that's unfortunate, isn't it?) transits the curve. I reckon that could be tested using an appropriately weighted firework with the assembly hanging off a lamp post though. That's assuming the SPB is prepared to spend time launching fireworks along curtain rails attached to waste pipes hanging off a lamp post, of course. I quite understand that as serious journalists you may not wish to get paid for such nonsense.

Looking at Screwfix.com, you'd be out ₤1.85 for a 3m length of 32mm pipe, and ₤7.65 for a curtain track with fittings, and that's before glue, so I grant you it's not cheap. With no moving parts other than the obvious, and no split-second timing required, it just might work though...

I have emailed Lester an appropriately simple schematic of something I like to call the Neatly Implemented Plastic Parabolic Launch Enabler.

Paris, because we don't have one for Lindsay yet.

Vote now for the juiciest LOHAN backronym

Low orbit it is!

What's the saying... Nobody ever went broke underestimating the something of the commentard something?

Now. To the lab please. And hence to low orbit. And beyond!

So, LOHAN: What's it to be?

SO, LOHAN: is a somewhat lazy anagram of Han Solo.

More pertinently though... C'mon Lester, this eRag is all about the science (well, mostly all) and you're going with Low Orbit for reasons of hype and/or backronymic convenience? Why not call it Lightspeed Over Hispania Accomplished Nonchalantly while you're making claims? Won't somebody think of the pedants?

If you've already composed a fistful of smutty puns and LOHAN it must be (although as a gentleman, I remain fond of the none-more-blonde Playmonaut Audaciously Rockooned Into Space but hey, series of disappointments and all that, we move on...) I beseach you to replace this Low Orbit fallacy with Launch Of in the name of accuracy.

And another thing... it's a small spaceplane, not a map reading dude, so how about calling it a Nanoplane? Launch Of High Altitude Nanoplane seems to describe the project fairly well.

/Grumble. Good luck with the project, whatever it's called.

El Reg to unleash rocket-powered spaceplane

OK, final effort.

Playmonaut Audaciously Rockooned Into Space

Let's give the old girl another outing. After all, if it ain't broke...

Actually... on second thoughts...

...I prefer obviate. To Obviate Ordinariness. Yeah. Catchy.

Beer because it's almost Friday lunchtime where I am.

The man who came up with PARIS in the first place returns with, wait for it...

Playmonaut Audaciously Rocketed Into Space To Overcome Ordinariness

So, something of a failure of imagination there... Perhaps you would rather be known as the

Rocket Assisted Playmonaut Into Space Team

Or whatever.

NAME that DONKEY: Bella bests Barbarella

I prefer...

Cong Jr.

I would really prefer Kong Jr., but not if it means waiting another 8 years...

Dam Busters dog dubbed 'Digger'

This Fry chap is clearly having a giraffe.

Or at least, when tasked with selecting a name without any possible racial associations, he could perhaps have done better than Digger, as in spade, had he wanted to. No accident there, I think.

Verity Stob and the super subjunction

Au contraire, Frankie

In fact the first several hundred version releases were labelled using a bizarre legacy system, the origins of which remain shrouded in the mists of time, ending around the time of the Crusades with DCLXVI. Numbering systems based on stoats, goats and groats followed, later incorporating fractions and becoming increasingly unwieldy until version stoat with groat over double goat was thankfully redesignated version 1.0 with the arrival of decimalisation in February 1971. The first point version came later the same year when Slade hit number one with Coz I Luv You and 2.0 was defiantly announced in 1984 to celebrate the non-arrival of Newspeak. That's what I learnt at school last week anyway.

Reg hack applauds asinine augmentation

Betty

If you call her Betty, when Betty calls Aladdin, she can call him Al.

Buffy

The samphire slayer.

Bugs then?

Or Berigan? Maybe not Berigan.

null

Or perhaps Bee, in a nod to the modatrix Herself?

The law is an ass.

Congratulations on the new arrival!

Bertha - Because she isn't very big.

Big Ears - Because Noddy won't pay the ransom.

Billie - The filly. Isn't she a filly before she's a jenny?

Bob - Beast of burden.

Bobby - A girlier variant of Bob. Also see title.

PARIS concocts commemorative cocktail

Title

Blue Movie

One Flight in PARIS

Wings over Curacao

Dave

Hadron Collider switches to heavy ions, tinfoilers wet pants again

Far be it from me to diss anyone's sister, but...

Physics whizz though she may be, she gets 1 out of 3 for apostrophe usage. Anyway, nuff pedantry, let's get down to more important matters. This sister of yours, is she hot? Look good in a lab coat? How would you describe her morals? Loose? Variable? Negotiable maybe? Enquiring minds need to know.

PARIS HAS LANDED!!! Epic supra-atmos flight ends

So what are we hoping for?

Vulture 1 released but the GPS failed and it's lost forever.

or...

Vulture 1 is found stuck up a tree attached to main payload, is knocked down with a big stick and flies again next month/gets sold on eBay/gets donated to the Smithsonian.

Place yer bets... either way the 1 looks a good shout right now.

Drunken employee pops cap in server

You got served.

A photo of the box after the regrettabledrunkenmidnightweapondischarge would have been nice, I feel.

Paris, because she enjoys a regrettabledrunkenmidnightweapondischarge as much as the next box.

Elon Musk plans new Mars rockets bigger than Saturn Vs

And what's in the tanks?

Vin Diesel.

Sorry.

RIM answers Apple iPad with...The BlackPad*

More lame suggestions...

If...

"the RIM tablet will... offer WiFi and Bluetooth, and give you the option of tapping the interwebs through the company's BlackBerry handsets"

Then...

How about calling it the CloudBerry? That's a thing, that is.

Or. How about putting Gordon Brown and Naomi Campbell in the launch ads and calling it the ChuckBerry? My ding-a-ling, my ding-a-ling...

And I'm spent...

Gulf spill to annihilate all earthlings, says seer

Nothing we can do about it?

I disagree. Surely if we know a methane bubble is coming we can set it alight with a Zippo? I saw something similar at school once. The underwater element is new though, and should be researched. Quick, everyone, to the bathtubs...

Motorola punts mega huge Droid phone

Quite

Evidently Mr Myslewski is blessed with a generous significant other. What other explanation could there be for his belief that five inches is mega huge?

Key Star Trek tri-corder boffinry breakthrough

This Ever Changing World In Which We're Livin'

One can only hope said small and powerful magnet is small and powerful enough to fit inside a wristwatch, allowing it to be surreptitiously deployed in the lowering of the zip of a lady's dress behind her back in a hands-free plausibly deniable fashion. Then we will truly be living in the future.

Heathrow security man cops perv scanner eyeful

Laker?

Surely this Laker dude is just trying to live up to Sir Fred by cheapening air travel for all concerned? Good on him, I say, and huzzah.

Hardware biggest cause of HDD failure, says Freecom

What up.

FYI & FWIW, my 1TB Freecom external drive contains the same small-cached variant of the Green that WD use in the MyBook, only in a nicely machined piece of aluminium.

Game developer's lost electric buggy FOUND ON MOON

Apropos Lazarus

The New Scientist ran a story a couple of weeks ago suggesting that earlier reports of Spirit's death may be exaggerated. Nasa got it moving again and it may yet come out of hibernation in October and trundle on.

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn18596-mars-rover-spirit-could-rise-again.html

Did the Reg run the story? I can't find it in the Space section, and I do like to get all my non-terrestrial motor vehicle news in the same place, so what gives?

US plans crewless automated ghost-frigates

I'm no naval strategist, but...

What if, upon making your way out of port, you make Roboatcop follow you past a couple of chaps in a civvie trawler who accidentally drop a few tonnes of fishing nets in the way of the props?

Propulsive overmatch my arse. Global, months long deployments with no underway human maintenance my elbow.

Supersonic stealth jumpjet in first hover-system flight test

Which one's the stealth plane?

Probably being dim here, but is it the stubby fella with the flashy decals and toilet lid on top*, or the one that engages a cloaking device 29 seconds into the footage and blinks out of view?

*Only kidding, any fool can see that's a berth for an astromech droid.

Paris, because the yanks have uploaded footage to youtube showing an expensive bird with undercarriage down and flaps open doing vertical-thrust ops.

Paramount prepares to scale Dune

Dune universe?

Or Duniverse?

Paris, because she likes a well crafted portmanteau.

V-22 Osprey, stealth jumpjet 'need refrigerated landing pads'

I have a cunning plan...

How about using telescopic or swinging booms to dangle aircraft over the side of the ship where the deck melters can be fired at will and reversing the process for landings? Something similar was possible with biplanes and dirigibles in the 1930s, and we haven't gone that far backwards since then, have we? Thinking about it, the Osprey might be better suited to perching atop a boom rather than dangling off it, what with the rotors and all. All that dangling about does seem like a faff though, so I propose a new breed of carrier. You lease yourself a couple of container ships or tankers from these ghost fleets we keep hearing about, put a couple of nice big hatches in the deck, and stick your concrete landing pad in the hull below those, using the rest of the space as your hangers and armouries and what have you. Hey presto, you've made yourself an el cheapo aircraft carrier in disguise like the double hard stealth ninja death from above tight northern bastard you are. Pays for itself the first time you see the look on Jonny pirate's face as he pulls alongside and your jumpjet peeks back out over the yard rail giving it the yoohoo.

Muse eye Bond theme

Nobody Does It Better

Muse are good, but have dairy tendencies. Radiohead for me please.

NASA works on robo-podcab scheme

@ Kevin6

"If you look at the artist rendition where do the un-used pods get stored?

if they are at the station till used how can other people get off or leave for that matter?"

The drop-off point's right there at bottom left, Eric, but remember there are no stupid questions, just stupid people.

Boffins render full HD million-point animated hologram

@ Stvn Knx

Sck n ths.

Hijacking iPhones and other smart devices using SMS

I'm impressed

"Miller's discovery is the result of an aggressive fuzzing endeavor he and fellow researcher Collin Mulliner carried out over the past few months and laid out during a talk at the Black Hat security conference in Las Vegas."

You have to admire their stamina if nowt else. My own fuzzing endeavours usually only last until closing time and are rarely aggressive. This session sounds curiously reminiscent of Fear and Loathing. Hats off, gentlemen, hats off.

El Reg to launch space paper plane

A backronym?

Paper Aeroplane Released Into Space

Sony W-series Walkman MP3 player

Looks a bit daft, that.

However their NWZ-B135 at £25 for 2GB is a good USB rechargable drag and drop player which sounds decent with a good pair of phones and has a small but perfectly functional OLED screen and an equalizer, great value. Advert ends, rant begins...

And another thing, why oh why oh (spells yoyo) why does the Register house style for reviews insist on using a regal "we" when an "I" would make the reviewer sound significantly less stupid? The following passage gives the impression that the writer has delusions of grandeur or is in the bizarre habit of sharing a pair of headphones for three-legged jogging excursions and flights:

"The longest we wore the player for was a little over three hours while on a flight and at the end we were pleasantly free of any sort of earache.

To see how well the player stayed in position in day-to-day use we took it on a quick jog up and down Regent Street early one morning. Not only did it not shake loose during our run but it even stayed firmly in place when we tripped over a curb edge and ended up face down on the pavement in a tangle of limbs and expletives. The things we do in the name of a comprehensive product test..."

Then again, if the editors were concerned about the reviewer sounding stupid, the kind thing to do would have been to chop out the shagging gag.

Send old Shuttles to Mars, says Scotty ashes prang man

Scuttle the shuttle?

Great idea, but let's lash on a few Concordes to be pimp and that Vulcan so we're tooled up. All volunteers must be able to look good in a cowboy hat and enjoy Aerosmith. I guess Tommy Lee Jones, Clint and Bruce are at the front of the queue, and the Governator might be useful for his local knowledge. Those three-titted Martian ladies ain't gonna find themselves. One thing wrong with the plan is the parachutes. Approaching Pavonis Mons by Balloon is instrumental.

Tron sequel already in production

It's been done

Forget Tron, where's Ender's Game already? Hollywood my arse.