Beasley's Place

Many of us were disappointed about the lack of visibility of the recent Venus transit due to the low cloud and early time of the event.

However I came across this interesting image of the transit and the International Space station in one shot.

I’ve also added the montage of images that I took of the last Venus Transit back in June of 2004 using a small telescope in my back garden.

We had a much better time frame then and obviously better weather that allowed me to get a near full transit recorded.


Not bad for the equipment I had at the time.

Now not only do you have to have your own twin pack of alcohol breathalysers with you, but it is now illegal to have the Speed Camera detection option active in your own SatNav. See this Telegraph article for more info about this and other motoring relating issues across the European countries.

Make sure the alcohol breathalyser test kit is an approved version by the French Authorities – as not everyone available in UK. You can find them at AlcoSense, Amazon and a number of other outlet if you search the Internet. These will be required to be carried by 1st July.

Make sure you know how to turn off the ‘Speed Camera’ detection in your SatNav before you get into France, I found two places in my SatNav that I had to un-tick’ to make sure that it was completely disabled. Check the documentation now as it better than getting as fine when in France.

Bonne journee!

More figures for April and May from my BT Infinity Broadband connection. All seems to be working well, with a slight drop in May, due I think to some engineering work going on around this location. But still very stable.

The March BT Infinity download figures maintained a steady count of around 29MB.

Keep it going.

Despite many local objections and a public enquiry (download see report here) ignoring them, a Communications Mast is finally to be erected inside of Redhatch Copse. In fact, according to a letter from Reading University’s Public Relations (there’s a joke) work is due to start this very week!

And so it begins!

Just received notification from Wokingham Borough Council of the date for the Public Enquiry concerning the erection of the Communications Mast associated with the Sibly Hall development. The opening public meeting is scheduled for 10am on 6th March 2012 at the Wokingham Borough Council offices in Wokingham.

You can also download a copy of it from here.

I’ve just received the February issue of the University of Reading’s Community newsletter, where the new Vice-Chancellor, Sir David Bell discusses his role at the University having moved there from the Department of Education.

I was interested in one of Sir David’s quotes…

“I take very seriously our responsibility to be a good neighbour and the need for us to work closely with other local agencies and organisations.”

I don’t think the residents living around the edge of the proposed development of Sibly Hall would think that the University is being a good neighbour, would you?

If you would like to contact the University of Reading’s Community Relations Manager, Ann Westgarth to pass on what you think about them being a good neighbour, you can do that by emailing her at a.westgarth[@]reading.ac.uk ([ ]’s inserted by me to stop spammers using the email address direct from this blog post).

As the SNP and UK Government sides sat down to talks about Independence for Scotland, I was drawn to this piece in the UK’s Huffington Post.

With it’s short review about some of what has made a United Kingdom of Great Britain successful in the past, it proves again that we are better together than separate. Yes there have been differences between the members of the United Kingdom and I think it right for each region to have more self-governing powers through their own local Assemblies, but as the article suggests, we are stronger together than apart.

It’s unfortunate that Alex Salmond’s agenda appears to be more about kicking the Westminster Government than any overall benefits independence will bring for the Scottish people – despite his well crafted rhetoric. I think it is time that we need to look at the bigger picture in an increasingly uncertain world and without wanting to too sound over the top; as the article puts it…

“We, the British people, are greater than the sum of our parts. Let us fight, wherever we are, for our shared national home.”

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