Author: Chris Jefferies

I live in the west of England, worked in IT, and previously in biological science.

Knightstone Causeway

The largest boat you can see is the Steep Holm Ferry. It makes return trips out to Steep Holm island with a stay of ten to twelve hours, and basically it’s the only way to get there unless you have your own seaworthy vessel.

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Image 132 – What’s in an image? Sometimes quite a lot, more than meets the eye. I’m posting an image every day or so.

Click to enlarge

The beach in the photo is at Weston-super-Mare. Beyond it is Knightstone Harbour with boats high and dry because the tide is partly out. And beyond the harbour and the causeway you can see the buildings including Dr Fox’s Tearoom, Knightstone baths, Stones Cafe, and Knightstone Opera House. When we’re in Weston, Donna and I sometimes enjoy breakfast at Stones.

Originally it must have been a sandbank jutting out towards the Severn Estuary, perhaps with a backbone of exposed rock. Today it’s been built up and would barely be recognisable to the local people of two hundred years ago.

The largest boat you can see is the Steep Holm Ferry. It makes return trips out to Steep Holm island with a stay of ten to twelve hours, and basically it’s the only way to get there unless you have your own seaworthy vessel. The water here can’t make up its mind whether it’s the River Severn estuary or the North Somerset coast. It’s sixteen or so kilometres wide, in terms of weather and water conditions it can be treacherous.

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Supersonic flight

A smaller development and test version is already flying and has just made its first supersonic flight. This is the Boom XB-1.

Image: Wikimedia

Science and technology – 2

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History

Most people know that Concorde was a joint UK/France development that resulted in a commercial supersonic passenger plane. It was technically successful and carried passengers across the Atlantic from 1976 until 2003, but for several reasons it was never commercially successful. There was also a Soviet version, the Tupolev Tu-144 that crashed spectacularly at the Paris Airshow in 1973.

But today, both Concorde and the Tu-144 are history.

Present development

Not so many readers will be aware of a commercial project to design and build a new supersonic passenger plane, or that a smaller development and test version is already flying and has just made its first supersonic flight. This is the Boom XB-1, specifically designed to cause less noise and, amusingly considering the company’s name, less transonic boom audible from the ground.

So far the project is going well; the test-flight program is well underway with promising results so far. The full-size airliner (Overture) would be substantially smaller than Concorde and carry fewer passengers, but if successful in service a larger model might be considered.

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If you enjoyed this or found it useful, please like, comment, and share below. (If you don’t see those links, click the article’s title above the main photo and they will appear.) Send a link to friends who might enjoy the article or benefit from it – Thanks! My material is free to reuse (see conditions), but a coffee is always welcome and encourages me to write more often!

Breakfast

Seeds are a good source of protein, healthy fats, fibre, vitamins, and minerals, helping to lower the risks of heart disease, stroke and cancer.

Today I’ll tell you about my breakfast – what I eat, when, and why. If you want to know more, read on…

What’s in it?

The bowl above was my breakfast today and it’s quite typical. Here’s what it contains:

  • First thing into the bowl is always a helping of my own oat-based breakfast mix. I’ll give you the recipe later in case you’d like to try it.
  • Next I add plenty of milk. Oats absorb water and swell so it’s good to provide enough liquid to support that. Usually I use oat milk, but sometimes semi-skimmed dairy milk or a mix of the two.
  • Fruit next. This time I chopped a small banana and added some grapes. Other favourites include blueberries, pear, and segments of satsuma.
  • The final ingredient is a helping of kefir over the fruit (similar to a thin yogurt).
Why those ingredients?

My base mix contains oats, dried fruit, seeds, and nuts. Oats help to control cholesterol, help with blood sugar levels, and support gut health. Dried fruit is a good source of fiber, vitamins, minerals, and antioxidants and may reduce the risk of heart disease and stroke. Seeds are a good source of protein, healthy fats, fibre, vitamins, and minerals, helping to lower the risks of heart disease, stroke and cancer. Nuts have similar benefits to seeds.

Milk is good, especially dairy milk, but oat milk is probably better for the planet. And kefir contains a range of microorganisms that are good for gut health.

Timing

I try to eat breakfast no earlier than 10:30 every morning, often later. I restrict my eating time each day, fasting from 20:30 in the evening until breakfast, so fasting for twelve hours or longer. This is called intermittent fasting, and it gives the gut microbes the time they need to clean up the gut before facing the next day’s meals. There are a number of benefits, perhaps including increased longevity.

Recipe for my base breakfast mix
  • 380 g of fruit and nut mix (I use Grapetree Luxury Fruit and Nut Mix*)
  • 60 g mixed seeds
  • 90 g granola (I use Bio & Me Super Seedy & Nutty*)
  • 800 g rolled oats (Ideally use organic oats as they are free of glyphosate residues)

This makes enough for a large container and lasts me for some time.

*It doesn’t matter which companies you buy from, of course; just try to avoid anything ultra-processed and with plenty of different healthy ingredients.

Final thoughts

This is just the pattern I normally follow for breakfast, but it’s important to be flexible about both what I eat and when. If it’s convenient to eat earlier I’m relaxed about breaking my intermittent fasting. If going on a journey, I might eat at 08:00 instead of 10:30. Sometimes Donna I and might have breakfast in town and I’ll choose a full English or whatever I want. And that’s OK, it’s a normal pattern, not an unbreakable commitment.

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If you enjoyed this or found it useful, please like, comment, and share below. (If you don’t see those links, click the article’s title above the main photo and they will appear.) Send a link to friends who might enjoy the article or benefit from it – Thanks! My material is free to reuse (see conditions), but a coffee is always welcome and encourages me to write more often!

Being hacked

The flurry of ‘your password has been changed’ announcements grew and grew, and was then joined by texts and emails telling me I could gain access to my account again using this or that six-digit key.

I was hacked! I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised, but I’m usually quite careful and it’s the first time it’s happened to me. The hacker(s) seemed mostly to be interested in websites that might give them access to money in some shape or form. An understandable motive. You don’t want to be hacked, it’s taken several days of hard effort to drag myself clear, and although the activity has dropped to a very low level now, it might still be too soon to feel completely safe.

Here’s what happened as far as I can tell.

I was browsing around on Patreon, noting the range of people running businesses, charitable sites, enthusiast groups, news and comment on specialist topics and so forth.

I spotted one site offering advice on the digital currency market, an idea that has always intrigued me. And somehow I managed to click through to links to sign up – mistakenly imagining they were just for more information. I soon got a charge on my PayPal account, quite a large charge that I couldn’t at first identify except that it came from Patreon. When I understood that to be the case I went into my Patreon account and discovered (to my horror) that I was now a member of the advice site I thought I’d been browsing.

It didn’t take long to unsubscribe myself, and apart from a second, much smaller, Patreon payment through PayPal, that seemed to be the end of the matter. But then further payments appeared, but each one was rolled back by Patreon to my PayPal account, presumably because I was no longer a member of the account and there was some lag in the process.

After that (and I don’t know whether there’s a connection between what had already happened and what happened next) I began to receive password change announcements from a range of sites I use. PayPal was the first so I contacted them and they refunded a payment I’d queried because they judged it to be fraudulent. But the flurry of ‘your password has been changed’ announcements grew and grew, and was then joined by texts and emails telling me I could gain access to my account again using this or that six-digit key.

At that point I became very suspicious. Why were these access key messages coming to me? Someone had put false passwords into some of my sites and then used the ‘I forgot my password option’. But they hadn’t been able to login. They knew my email address (often the username) and so did the website, so the access key came to me. But if I was to enter one of them, the site would let the hacker in – not me. This happened with PayPal, Patreon, Buy Me A Coffee, Microsoft, Etsy and several more.

I’ve had a bit of a fright, lost some money (not catastrophically, but annoyingly) and have had to spend a lot of time getting everything straightened out. The flow of emails and texts has diminished now, just one or two this evening. If I have a week or two without any sign of activity I shall heave a big sigh of relief.

I’ve been through all the passwords in my password manager, removing sites that I never use or are no longer available, changing all reused passwords, and making sure all that remain are strong (long, random, containing both upper and lower case, numerals, and special characters). The password manager generates and stores these for me and can log me in automatically on most sites.

I’m looking forward to relaxing again in time, but for the moment I’m still being vigilant.

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Useful? Interesting?

If you enjoyed this or found it useful, please like, comment, and share below. (If you don’t see those links, click the article’s title above the main photo and they will appear.) Send a link to friends who might enjoy the article or benefit from it – Thanks! My material is free to reuse (see conditions), but a coffee is always welcome and encourages me to write more often!

Comet G3 (Atlas)

[This] image featured in NASA’s Astronomy Picture of the Day for 25th January 2025. Visit the website and have a browse around, there are so many fine images here!

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Image 131 – What’s in an image? Sometimes quite a lot, more than meets the eye. I’m posting an image every day or so.

Enlarge
(NASA)

This might be the most striking photo you’ll ever see of a comet. OK, I dare say there will be better images out there, but this one is still pretty amazing.

The image featured in NASA’s Astronomy Picture of the Day for 25th January 2025. Visit the website and have a browse around, there are so many fine images here!

If you look closely (click the thumbnail and expand it as far as it will go) you’ll see plenty of stars in the image, too. Of course, they are way, way in the background far beyond the Solar System whereas the comet is right here inside the system along with the Sun, Planets, Moon, me and you.

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Useful? Interesting?

If you enjoyed this or found it useful, please like, comment, and share below. (If you don’t see those links, click the article’s title above the main photo and they will appear.) Send a link to friends who might enjoy the article or benefit from it – Thanks! My material is free to reuse (see conditions), but a coffee is always welcome and encourages me to write more often!