The eclipse will begin on Monday morning (May 21st) as the sun rises. The eclipse will then pass over the international date line which will allow the yanks to see the end of the eclipse on the evening of the 20th. Yes that’s correct as it passes over the date line!

I hope to get some good shots as the sun rises and the moon moves into place to give us a nice ring of fire. Hopefully, I will be able to use my 18x optical zoom to be able to zoom in and see some activity on the sun. I have been practising this morning with the shutter speed as the sun rose this morning.

The eclipse should last 5 minutes (NASA claims) but I would assume that would depend where you were on the earth.

I already have everything setup on my roof so that I have a clear view of the horizon when the sun comes up tomorrow morning. By 8am I should have the photos uploaded to this post, so make sure you check back.

Updates

03:30 – The sun is due to rise at 05:27, but that is the time it rises above the horizon. I should be able to see rays before it rises as I did yesterday, but today the sun will be partially eclipsed when it rises, so it will be interesting to see how it looks.

When the sun rises at 05:27:09, it will be eclipsed by the moon 29.9%, increasing to a max of 61.3% at 05:58:32.

Time for a quick nap so I can be up again in an hour.

Earthquake details:

Location: 9.964°N, 123.246°E
Depth: 20 km (12.4 miles)
Distances: 72 km (44 miles) N of Dumaguete, Negros, Philippines
74 km (45 miles) WNW of Tagbilaran, Bohol, Philippines
80 km (49 miles) WSW of Cebu, Cebu, Philippines
569 km (353 miles) SSE of MANILA, Philippines

Tsunami details:

The image below shows the max expected wave height according to the latest computer models

This will not reach Manila and it does not seem that it will leave the Cebu region with any destructive power as it will only effect the two islands that it is between.

A few days later, we bought a strawberry cake and here are some of the photos of it. YUM! It tastes as good as it looks!

It’s Christmas eve and 29C outside, with large grey clouds in the sky and a heavy cold that gripped me yesterday. If it wasn’t for the temperature outside, it would be just like Christmas back home.

I still find it weird going outside at Christmas time with just shorts and a t-shirt on. In the uk, I would be wrapped up in jeans, a shirt, jumper and coat at least.

Last night, I spent just short of 24 hours in bed. I simply passed out due to my cold and stayed there until I felt well enough to get up.

When I woke up, Ian was here cooking for the family. It is Filipino tradition to have two large meals, one on Christmas eve and one on Christmas day. These are called Noche Buena which is a feast on Christmas eve and a Christmas day lunch.

I am pleased at the feedback I have received from interested parties with statements like “your business has fantastic and well documented stats” and “you show extreme professionalism”.

So far, it looks like I will be getting somewhere around $50,000. Sadly, this is less than the standard estimate due to the stupid financial crisis. However, my business is one of the only that is making more money month on month, so I may get more than that.

I have received many offers of jobs and projects from many of the parties interested in purchasing my business, but do not have enough funds available to play hard ball with the other bidders.

Believe me, hammering out a deal and subsequent contract is stressful, time consuming and tiring. My days for the last month or so have gone like this; Get up, check e-mails, begin work, go to bed.

Once the business is sold, contacts signed and the money is in my hands, I will begin the most stressful period of my life. I will be creating new businesses and products which will form my primary income. This will involve throwing an awful lot of money at ideas I have had, using my expertise and knowledge to turn them into viable income streams. The stress comes from the fact that if it does not work, I am screwed and will have little money left and no income streams!

While I have no doubt I can do this and that my ideas will work, it is still stressful none the less.

Who would have thought that just a few years ago, I was playing in a punk band and now, I am selling my business and creating new businesses? After over three years of working every single day, being on call 24/7 and dealing with thousands of customers, I need a break. Once I get my new businesses setup, I hope to take a holiday on the beach and do absolutely nothing for one week. And I do mean nothing. I want a resort with a personal waiter who knows what Wild Turkey is!

The only solution was to be put under for the operation, but for that I needed clearance from two doctors. After a few months, and a lot of hassle, I had the clearance. I went to the dentist who checked me over one last time, giving me an xray and a checkup. It was worse than we both thought. Initially, we had thought there would need to be one extraction and two teeth filled, but it seems that there are three extractions and no less than twelve teeth that need fillings! FUCK!

As I sit here writing this, a heavy storm is lashing rain at my window, lightening flashing and thunder so loud it is shaking the windows and doors. Tomorrow at 10am I will be at the dentists being put under for the operation. I can not eat or drink anything from 5am.

Tomorrow, I will be having three wisdom teeth extracted and a few teeth filled.

No, I am not looking forward to it, but once it is over, I will not have the pain coming from my teeth any longer.

Cleared one drive for it. Should be a breeze.

Will post photos once it’s complete. So you will either see a lovely Open Suse desktop on my laptop, or you will see the laptop in pieces on the floor!

As with most linux distributions, it is completely free to use. There are many variations of Linux as well as many variations for each distribution.

If you are moving straight from something like xp or windows 7, I would suggest Ubuntu. If you know your way around a computer and feel a bit more technical, I would suggest Open Suse or Mandriva, but to be honest, it all depends what you want it to do.

Look again at that dot. That’s here. That’s home. That’s us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every “superstar,” every “supreme leader,” every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there–on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.

The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds.

Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.

The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment the Earth is where we make our stand.

It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we’ve ever known.

– Carl Sagan (Co-founder of The Planetary Society), Pale Blue Dot, 1994

Taken from the story located here.

I wanted to post this because it is a prime example.

At the time, I was working online and looked outside at the heavy rain. I thought of the UK and just wanted to be in bed with the duvet over me. I made the following status on facebook.

I continued working. Ian did not see my facebook status, but just two minutes later she also looked outside at the heavy rain and made the following Tweet on Twitter.

This is exactly why I am so happy with Ian. We both think the same thing and sure enough, shortly after these updates, we were in bed under the duvet.

God damn it you bitch, why do you have to make me fall in love with you so much? Hell, do not change a thing. I am falling all the time for you and I love it.

Beyond Perfection (google results found here)

Beyond Beautiful (google results found here)

Beyond Love (yahoo results found here)

I love you baby xxx