I always seem to remember a few days after... but the 22nd of this December marked the three year anniversary since I had tiny neodymium magnets implanted into the middle and ring fingers of my left hand in my attempt to explore and develop a new type of human-machine interface for my masters degree work.

Unlike the previous years which were uneventful, this year, a few months ago, I developed some discomfort and slight pain in my ring finger when I accidently applied too much sharp pressure on the area and upset the implant. It was the first time in three years that I had any sort of trouble from the implant. Luckily the internal wounds healed in a few days and the pain subsided. Below is an X-ray image of the implant I got done a few months ago and it looks like it is still safely tucked in where it was originally placed!

At the beginning of this year, I had set out to develop a smaller, less intrusive version of the external interface I had developed earlier with the goal of exploring the effects of wearing the interface for an extended period of time - 24 hours a day 7 days a week for 3 months. I did get around to hacking up a tiny interface package that I can wear as a ring on my finger. Sadly, for too many excuses and what not, I didn't get around to actually getting on with that bit of research.

So, here's to me actually getting on with wearing the new interface for three months beginning 2012. Fingers crossed!

There has been an interesting meet-up for techies every Saturday for the past several weeks. The meet-ups were a brilliant initiative of the great guys at Limopalm with support from Leaf Technology (thanks guys!). The meet-ups usually loosely center around a topic chosen beforehand and are organised and publicized on Facebook. The last meet-up, on 10th December was on the topic "Discussing Web Development Issues" while previous meet-ups have discussed things ranging from software development methodologies to noSQL databases.

Anyway, at the very first meetup, I took the opportunity of having a bunch of developers in one room to propose something I've had in mind for quite a while - a Hackathon event in the Maldives. Everyone seems to be interested in seeing what they can come up with in such an event. The current ideas are to hold the event sometime in February 2012, away from Male' in a mostly isolated place, where the participating individuals or teams will be given 24-48 hours to work on their project. Winners will be chosen from among different categories - commercial-related, community-related, public vote etc. Nothing is set in stone yet and discussions are ongoing at the meet-ups and on the Hackathon group on Facebook.

Today is a Saturday and there will be a meet-up at 5pm at Leaf Technology (M. Chaandhaneege, 4th floor). Today's meetup will be specifically on discussing and planning the hackathon event. If you are in the computer/software industry and are interested, drop-in!

There will be a total Lunar eclipse that will be visible in the Maldives taking place tomorrow, 10 December 2011. The eclipse starts at 4:34 PM, reaches mid eclipse at 7:32 PM and ends at 10:30 PM. The total phase begins at 7:06 PM and ends at 7:57 PM, which allows us to catch the eclipse not long after the sunsets at 5:54 PM.

This eclipse is reported to be not central - meaning the Moon does not pass through the center of the Earth's shadow. Hence, there will be a nice gradient visible on the Moon, with one side appearing darker and the opposite side lighter even during the total phase.

Maldives will not be seeing another Lunar eclipse until 28 November 2012, when a penumbral eclipse occurs starting at 5:15 PM. The next earliest total Lunar eclipse visible in the Maldives occurs 8 October 2014.

The astronomy community has been abuzz lately with the discovery of a supernova, dubbed SN2011fe, in the Pinwheel spiral galaxy. This is the 136th supernova discovered this year but what makes this particular supernova special is that this one is the closest of its kind discovered since 1986 and astronomers believe it was discovered just hours after it went supernova. It also presents an exciting opportunity for the public as it is visible with the aid of binoculars or a small telescope!

The supernova was discovered by the Palomar Transient Factory survey for supernovas on 24th August. The supernova was located to the Pinwheel Galaxy (M101) in the easily identifiable constellation Ursa Major (a.k.a. Great Bear), and has been brightening since discovery. It is expected to reach peak brightness on 9th September.

The fact that the supernova was located to the Pinwheel Galaxy which is about 21 million light years away, means that this event actually took place 21 million years ago! It is only now that light from the event has completed its long journey and is reaching us here on Earth.

Observing

If you have a good set of binoculars or a telescope, you can attempt to view the supernova yourself. For Maldives, the Pinwheel Galaxy is currently located very low on the horizon at sunset and sinks below the horizon around 9pm.

If you have a computerised telescope, get it to locate the Messier object M101 for you. Or you can use your choice of stargazing application on a smartphone or tablet device to locate the Pinwheel galaxy.

If you don't have either of those, locate the "handle" of the Big Dipper asterism in Ursa Major and extend an imaginary line from the last two stars to form an equilateral triangle - you should find yourself looking at the Pinwheel Galaxy and the supernova SN2011fe as a bright point.

What is a Supernova?

A supernova is the violent explosion of star, which results in a burst of radiation that could outshine the star's host galaxy and could radiate as much energy as our Sun emits in its entire lifespan. The SN2011fe supernova is classed as a Type 1a supernova, which is thought to occur when a white dwarf star starts to siphon off material from a nearby star and accretes enough material, increasing temperature and density, that nuclear fusion is triggered. Supernovae happen all the time and astronomers have observed many a supernovae over the years but there is still much to be understood about them.

Since my last post here about two months ago, I had almost forgotten I even had this blog running. Life's been a bit hectic lately, so much so that I wasn't even aware when my blog, the much used online Radheef and other sites hosted on our server all went down several days for a few days. It was only when a few people alerted me to the fact that I came to be aware of an issue with our nameserver resolution. The problem has now been fixed and all the sites are back up and running - apologies for any inconvenience.

I just watched the documentary film "Sri Lanka's Killing fields", Channel 4's investigation into the civil war and the alleged crimes against humanity in Sri Lanka. The conflict in Sri Lanka (which lies just ~700 km from the Maldives), between the majority-Sinhalese Sri Lankan government and the separatist Tamil Tigers began in 1983 and cessation of hostilities was finally declared in 2009. By all accounts, the final several months of the war was intense and produced heavy casualty. The Channel 4 film shows highly highly disturbing footage and pictures of brutal, cold murder and abuse - by both the Sri Lankan army and the rebels. Is the cost of current "peace" in Sri Lanka morally justifiable? The full film is available on Youtube, which I've linked to below.

To put the war into better perspective, it might be helpful to compare it with the Palestine-Israel conflict which is more familiar and evokes louder, more vehement reactions and emotions in Maldivians. The conflict in Sri Lanka resulted in 80,000-100,000 deaths (conservative estimate according to many) in the period 1983-2009, while the Palestine-Israel conflict has resulted in 14,500 deaths in the period 1948-2009. That translates to 3076 deaths/year in Sri Lanka versus 237 deaths/year in Palestine-Israel! By no means do I wish to suggest that the lesser number discounts the killings or belittles the suffering in the Palestine-Israel conflict but I do wish to communicate the scale and the gravity of the situation that was in Sri Lanka...

I am left feeling more misanthropic than ever.

Maldivian Association for the Advancement of Science has a public viewing event organised for the upcoming total lunar eclipse taking place on 15th June. Bring your telescopes and cameras and join in observing the event. MAAS will have telescopes setup for those who don't own one.

For more details on this eclipse, please refer to my earlier post.

Time: Wednesday, 15th June at 22:00 - Thursday, 16th June at 01:30
Location: Artificial beach, the stage area behind the restaurant Mr. Chico's.

See you there!