Happy Good Friday (if that's not an oxymoron). I should have had a standing order paid today, but my bank has kindly allowed the computer the day off as it is a bank holiday. They also give the computer the weekend off, so it doesn't get too tired. And guess what? Monday is a bank holiday too. So the standing order due today will actually be paid on Tuesday. Welcome to the world of 365 days a year, 24/7 electronic banking. And the banks tell us they are listening to customers. Arggh!

Have you ever had the urge to slip someone a Mickey Finn? Well, don't. It's not just illegal, it's dangerous too. But if you had given in, the chances are you would have used chloral hydrate, the subject of my latest podcast for the Royal Society of Chemistry. Hurry along to the RSC compounds site to discover more about Mickey himself - or if you've five minutes to spare now, click to to have a listen to my podcast on chloral hydrate .

There's one thing about Top Gear that irritates me. No, not that - I actually enjoy all those things that usually irritate people about Top Gear . Even Jeremy Clarkson . What gets on my nerves is something that the show shares with Arnold Schwarzenegger when he was Governor of California. They think that using hydrogen to power cars is a good thing. I have always found this extremely dubious - and I am glad to say my view is backed up by the interesting and authoritative book I've just reviewed, Project Sunshine . On a shallow level (come on - Top Gear, Arnie??) hydrogen fuelled cars make sense. Hydrogen is an effective fuel and when it burns all you get is water. No nasty carbon dioxide. But hydrogen is also a real nightmare to handle. Firstly, as a gas it takes up a lot more room than petrol. Around six times as much at a practical compression. So for any particular tank size, you will have 1/6th the range. It is also wildly inflammable, would need to be stored at hig...

I don't get to read a huge amount of fiction any more, which is why it is particularly enjoyable when I do. At the moment I'm drifting back towards science fiction, which I had abandoned for quite a while, and had an enjoyable weekend with Richard Sutton's Home . I thought to start with this was going to be a typical 'stranded in space/revert to savages' type novel, but in fact Home is much more about what it is to be human, and what it would be like to be dependent on a largely superior race. As someone brought up on Star Trek , I thought Sutton's humanoid and interbreeding aliens were very reminiscent of the Star Trek humanoid universe, complete with its explanation of early shared origins - and I don't say this as a bad thing. Home is a gentle, enjoyable read. If anything it could have done with a bit more menace, but because a lot of it is about inner exploration (I was slightly reminded of Heinlein's early inward looking phase, before he got ...

One of the joys of having Netflix is being able to revisit old series and enjoy them again, and I've been working through Jonathan Creek, which despite sometimes being extremely irritating in its implausibility is, nonetheless, highly entertaining. However there is one flaw in its approach that is all too common in detective and problem solving stories - and it happened again in the Challenger TV movie about Richard Feynman the other day. In a typical Creek episode, our hero will be trying to work out the solution to the locked room mystery, or whatever the problem is, and suddenly he will see something, or his sidekick will mention something, that sets off a flashbulb of inspiration. In the Challenger story, the Creek moment involved some cryptic reference to Ivory Soap (or some such US product), which made Feynman's Yorkshire wife (who had probably never heard of it) instantly spout some advertising slogan, which then triggered Feynman's imagination. As with the Creek...

Generally speaking, a book either exists or it doesn't. But I am in the strange state of having a book that exists in a shadowy world that is neither real nor imaginary. Just as Aristotle considered infinity to be a potential state that both existed and didn't exist, it seems I have a potential book with my name on it. It's almost a quantum book, in a state of superposition. It's called Exploring the Weather and it was a follow-up to my illustrated book Exploring the Universe . So far, so straightforward. You can see the cover here (and, yes, the title font is too small) - and if you take a look on Amazon.co.uk they claim to have some copies in stock. But here's the thing. Two weeks before the book came out, the publisher, Vivays,  went into liquidation. I have received a single advanced copy, but nothing else. I believe that the first print run was produced, but have no idea who has it, what will happen to it, what will happen to the rights and when and if I wi...

Like a lot of people who studied physics I hold Richard Feynman in great regard and put him up with the likes of Newton and Einstein. If you haven't come across Feynman, he was one of the lead theoreticians developing the atomic bomb in the Manhattan Project, went on to get a Nobel Prize for his work on Quantum Electrodynamics - the hugely successful theory of how light and matter interact - developed the approach and diagrams that were crucial to vast swathes of quantum theory and, towards the end of his life, became a bit of a celebrity because of his role in the enquiry into the Challenger shuttle disaster. This is of interest now because the BBC has recently shown a drama-documentary, Challenger , on Feynman's role in that enquiry. If you hurry (and are UK based) you can still catch it on BBC iPlayer . Feynman was, effectively, the only truly independent person on the commission, and where the rest seemed largely inclined to try to minimise any negative impact on NASA, ...

Like a lot of people running small businesses or who are self employed, I've always struggled with accounting software. Frankly it's too complicated. By far. It's designed for accountants, not human beings. When I first set up my own business I did look at the accounting software on offer, but it had two big problems. Not only would I have to get a finance degree to understand it, frankly it was from the dark ages. I have always provided invoices electronically, first to computing magazines, who not surprisingly were early adopters, and more recently to pretty well everyone. Yet the accounting packages I looked at insisted on working on paper. Groan. So I wrote my own system in Microsoft's Access database. It did the job, and was very much tailored to my business, but it got creaky over the years, not helped by the fact that I never successfully managed to update it for more recent versions of Access, so I had to keep a copy of a circa 1997 version around to make my...

There are some businesses that have an unusual problem. They sell commodities that have a value up to a certain point in time, but that value drops to zero after that moment. A classic example is an airline's inventory. The value of an airline seat drops to zero at the moment the check-in closes. The realization of this simple fact changed the way airlines sold seats in the 1980s and 1990s, pumping up revenue significantly. How does this knowledge make you money? Because with the right systems, as time runs out, you can sell off the seat that won't go at full price much cheaper and provided you cover the incremental costs of carrying the passenger, then you are still making extra profit. I bring this up, because it struck me there was a new, more interesting possibility that could easily be made available to push up profits even further. I was buying a railway ticket online and, as you can see, the system generously offered to bump me up to first class for a suitable extra bi...

It's not exactly news that school league tables have their problems, but I have rarely seen a better example of 'Lies, damned lies and statistics' at work than in the recently published secondary school league tables. Two observations I made - there was not a single school in Swindon in the comprehensives top 100 , and my old school, Manchester Grammar School only came 65th in the independent schools . Now the facts are that there are some very good comprehensives in Swindon, and that MGS is without doubt one of the top handful of independent schools in the country. So what went wrong? In Dice World , my new book on randomness and probability, out next month, I point out that we are very good at reading meanings into numbers that just aren't there. In the case of these tables there is a totally bizarre assumption being made that the average number of points achieved at A level is somehow the same thing as relative merit of the school. But why would it be? I don'...

Here's a card I had (much) earlier... Business cards are very useful things, even if you have to be a little careful with your etiquette when handing out and receiving them in the Far East. But in some ways they are a bit of a pain - because they don't naturally interface to our electronic world. For many years I have been typing the information from business cards into my computer and then discarding them. (See what I did there? Dis card ing.) But that, frankly, is tedious and there should be something better when we walk around with camera-loaded smartphones. Sure enough, there is - but in a strangely hybrid fashion. There have been scanners, and more recently apps for your phone to do OCR and automatically read the text on them, for a while, but they have always been a bit hit and miss, particularly as the formats of business cards can be wild and wonderful. But I've just put an app on my phone that is as close to perfect as you can get. You have to be a member o...

When I first got an iPhone that supported the Siri voice-controlled assistant, I thought it was a bit of a gimmick. I did the usual stuff of asking it 'What is the answer to the ultimate question of life, the universe and everything?' and other silly questions. And then for a long time I didn't touch it. Which was a shame, because I have discovered it is really useful. The thing is that I often think of something I need to do or remember while I'm out walking. It's one of the reasons I like walking the dog or going to the post office - I get my best ideas in the process. The natural thing to do is to stick something in my diary, or make a note... but it's a bit slow and fiddly on the move, especially if you've only one hand free. With Siri it's a piece of cake. In fact for quite a lot of entries, like the one I made to demonstrate the feature for this blog post, it's quicker to use Siri than it is to do it by hand, even if you are sitting at your d...

Business is rather dependent on the flow of cash, moving easily from place to place. Self evident truth. And none more so than with a self employed business, like an author.* So why do some businesses make it so hard to enable that cash to do the rounds? Once upon a time, customers would have had to turn up with a literal bag of cash (or possibly a chicken to barter with). This isn't very convenient. I've never seen face-to-face many of the people who pay me money. They insist on living in inconvenient places like London and New York. So someone had the clever idea of writing a promissory note that would be accepted by a bank as evidence of the wish to transfer virtual cash. A cheque. (Sorry, US folks, this is one case where your Ben Franklin et al simplified spelling goes horribly wrong. Calling it a 'check' doesn't work, because 'check' already means something else.) This could just be slipped in the post. Simples. However, just as vinyl was replaced...

Where's Sherlock Holmes when you need him? For I have become aware of a case that I am sure he would regard as a three pipe problem. Consider this, dear reader, consider this.  Facebook allows you to set up closed or 'private' groups - handy to hang out with friends for a chat about work or whatever you like. I belong to one with a number of online friends, and like all such groups, joining is by invitation - you can't see any details from the outside. Yesterday one of the members was contacted on Facebook, by someone called Laurindo Jones, asking about the group by name. He seemed to have joined Facebook for the sole purpose, as he had only signed up 1 hour before. Around five others in the same group got friend requests from him within a matter of hours... then, as one of them was trying to find out more about 'Laurindo', the Facebook account was suddenly deleted. Most scarily of all, one of us got an email from him to a personal email address not connecte...

As editor of the www.popularscience.co.uk website I get a lot of requests to review books. And generally speaking, as long it's a book on a vaguely interesting subject (as opposed to The Impact of Victorian Mill Buildings on the Lifecycle of the Lesser Spotted Tit Warbler)  and from a respectable publisher, I am very happy to add a book to the review pile. Things are, however, a little more fuzzy when it comes to self-published books. My default response is 'No, thanks,' but I will make an exception if it's a really intriguing sounding book, or one that could well have been published by a serious publisher. If I didn't have some kind of filter, we would be inundated with self-published detritus as well as the occasional gem, and I simply don't have the person power to wade through, sieving for gold. I'd like to briefly contrast two self-published books I have reviewed, one of which went down very well, and the other that didn't to show what is nee...

A recent piece on the BBC's news website has left by stunned by the number of ways it managed to irritate me. How did it irritate me? Let me count the ways: The title tells us that Fun and games 'can save the planet' - I'm already cringing. It is clear to anyone with half a brain cell that fun and games cannot undo the environmental mess we're in, and as I keep saying to the point of being boring, there is no question of saving the planet. The planet is not at risk. It can shrug off anything we can do to it in a few million years - no time at all for something 4.5 billion years old. What we are concerned with is saving human civilisation. In then tells us that  A project has been launched to see whether games can help increase people's interest in environmental issues.  - whoopie do. I'm thrilled. It sounds like the sort of study that may well come back with the answer 'Yes' after its 12 month period. But if it does, it will be a matter of fo...

I recently read these comments from someone who works in a computer support department about a hapless computer user: Unfortunately I've dealt with enough of these types of customer service issues to know with almost abolute [sic] certainty, that the customer in question here is your typical ignorant arsehole.  He will have been the kind who in general doesn't listen to simple instructions, has no clue how to operate a computer, and will have installed a million browser toolbars, 6 unintended antivirus programs, and every peice [sic] of crapware available on the internet within minutes of plugging the dam [sic] thing in.  He then phones some poor hapless call centre support bod, and shouts for fifteen minutes demanding a brand new computer.  This all too typical genus [sic] is incapable of learning, because he/she refuses to accept just how useless they are at using a computer (never actually reading a message that pops up on the screen before clicking wildly in ...

The interview that started it all I recently had the privilege of interviewing Nobel Prize winner Steven Weinberg for the Observer . One of the commenters for the online version remarked 'If only the world took more interest in Physics Nobel Laureates and less interest in celebrity lives/murders or royal baby bumps.' Ah, so true. And I couldn't help thinking what a science version of the celebrity gossip magazine Heat - perhaps called Thermodynamics!  - would be like. I think, in all fairness to our favourite scientists, it would be rather dull. The commenter was making the point that scientists are more worthy than celebrities because they have actually done something amazing, rather than just being known for being known. However, if you turn this around, you can see there's a fatal flaw in the reasoning that would condemn Thermodynamics! before it got off the ground. Because, on the whole, we don't know scientists. It's not that they don't hav...

Last night one of my daughters asked if I'd been on University Challenge. I said 'No,' but ironically within minutes I was receiving phone calls to tell me that I had been. Sort of. Somewhat bizarrely I was the subject of a question on this venerable BBC quiz show. Take a look: Slightly shocked does not come close to describing it. Gobsmacked was closer. I must admit I wish that two out of three of the books listed weren't amongst my more obscure titles. And it would have been fun if the team had got the answer right. Even so, it's rather a nice feeling...

If this is the expectation, don't bother Last week I received a rather strange phone call. 'Is that the popular science website?' a female Scottish voice asked. I don't get phone calls for www.popularscience.co.uk so I rather hesitantly said 'Yes.' 'Do I need a degree to write popular science books?' came the reply. The conversation went on this vein for about 5 minutes. Inevitably afterwards I thought of a key question I should have asked her - 'Why do you want to write popular science books?' But I didn't. My caller was a member of her local astronomical society, but had no qualifications. So what is the answer? Is enthusiasm enough? My reply had to be rather vague. It was a definite maybe. If you are going to write a book about heavy duty physics, I suspect a degree is the minimum qualification to have a reasonable chance of getting the message right. If, however, you are going to write a book about the joys of stargazing, then it...

My latest podcast for the Royal Society of Chemistry takes a trip into your eyes and the remarkable compounds - opsins - that give you the ability to see. Probably the best known of the opsins is rhodopsin. The 'rhod' part of the name, spelled R-H-O-D, comes from a Latin root meaning 'rosy', reflecting rhodopsin's purplish-red coloration - it is sometimes called 'visual purple.' However the name is doubly apt, because rhodopsin is found in a particular type of cell in animal retinas - the rod. But there's plenty more to find out, so hurry along to the  RSC compounds site  - or if you've five minutes to spare now,  click to to have a listen to my podcast on opsins .