purplecat

B. may (or may not) feature in a new two-part BBC series, Secrets of the Jurassic Dinosaurs. The first episode will be on BBC 2 (and iPlayer) on Sunday at 8pm: details here.

I believe, when filming, he had both forgotten his shaver and fallen over and cut open his head so he may not look quite his normal self if he has made it into the programme and not merely ended up on the cutting room floor.

I got this recipe off the internet as a carrot-based recipe. Our opinion was that it had promise but was too carroty (and too ricey). This is the modified version which just got enthusiastically hoovered up by B (though if he hadn't given up on counting calories for the day I suspect he wouldn't have eaten it all - for those interested in such things I reckon it works out as around 120 calories per 100g).

( Picture under the cut )

Serves 2 as a main.

1 tbsp cumin seeds
200g carrots, sliced
200g parsnips, sliced
100g turnip, sliced
1 onion, finely chopped
1 tin chickpeas, drained
1 tbsp olive oil
125ml vegetable stock
1 tbsp lemon juice
1/3-1/2 cup dried rice
1/4 cup sunflower seeds
30g feta cheese, crumbled or chopped as your cheese allows
Pepper to season

1. Preheat oven to 190 degrees C.
2. Grind the cumin seeds to a powder (toast first if you feel keen)
3. Combine the sliced vegetables, onion, chickpeas, olive oil and cumin in a roasting dish. Stir to coat everything with cumin and oil.
4. Pour over the stock and lemon juice, cover with tin foil, and bake in the oven for 30 minutes.
5. If using a rice cooker, put the rice on to cook around now, otherwise start cooking the rice after about 25 minutes.
6. Remove foil and return to the oven for about 10-15 minutes.
7. Remove from the oven, toss in the rice, sunflower seeds and feta cheese. Season with pepper.

In other news. The NuWho rewatch is suspended until NLSS Child feels up to Blink. She has seen bits of this in the Internet and a few years ago it led to a whole "I can't take showers because of falling statuary" panic, made the more bizarre because we own no statues, let alone any in the bathroom. She has agreed to watch it on a weekend morning (it having been made clear that not washing isn't an option), but I'm away this weekend so it may have to wait until next weekend.

Meanwhile, she has to read a number of different sorts of book for school, and has selected The Hitch-hikers Guide to the Galaxy as her humour book (a choice endorsed by her teacher). This has led to a certain amount of defensiveness on tame layman's part. He is currently forcibly playing her the radio series on the grounds it is superior and she should listen to it before reading the book.

I was discussing the other day, I think with some of the Primeval folk, how almost every city built on or near sandstone (and in some cases some rather less likely rock) seems to have had a positive honeycomb of tunnels burrowed out underneath it by the resourceful inhabitants.

When we moved to Nottingham we went on the tourist trail around Nottingham's Cave system (The Western Caves which you entered via a shopping centre). These had been used as air raid shelters during WWII but went back a lot further than that and included a medieval tannery among other things. I was interested therefore when wellinghall forwarded me a link to the Nottingham Caves Survey which is attempting to create 3D maps of all the tunnels under the city. They're doing this using a 3D laser scanner which just shows how technology has moved on. I recall B. publishing an article (Sellers WI, Chamberlain AT. Echoing the Bats. Discovering Archaeology. 1999 2:94-96.) just after we were married on mapping cave systems using ultrasound and the images he produced then are very reminisicent of the modern laser scanner images, only less detailed.

( Some piccies under the Cut )

This entry was originally posted at http://purplecat.dreamwidth.org/34676.html.

B. spent quite a bit of time last year filming a TV series with Phil Manning. It's Phil's series but B. is playing sidekick in, we think, a couple of episodes (one on dinosaur locomotion and one on size). I gather it was pitched as "Top Gear meets Dinosaurs" and is an attempt to break away from the talking heads style of a lot of recent documentaries. It's going to be showing on National Geographic Wild channel, starting on Tuesday (3rd Feb) at 8pm. We don't get National Geographic Channel but I thought I'd flag the fact up for anyone out there who does. No idea whether B. will appear in the first episode or not.

This is a publicity page for the series

This entry was originally posted at http://purplecat.dreamwidth.org/33453.html.

Article in the Daily Mail (oh! the embarrassment)

As far as I can work out, one of B's postdoc's took a video of a walking Gorilla as part of a project on modelling locomotion. B. then showed it to some people making a documentary on Bigfoot who asked if they could use it. B said they needed to ask the zoo for permission first (the original permission for filming was for scientific use only). The zoo asked if they could use it too and put it on their YouTube feed where it suddenly became surprisingly popular and attracted the attention of such prestigious publications (*ahem*) as the Daily Mail.

B. is happy anyway, Daily Mail notwithstanding.

This entry was originally posted at http://purplecat.dreamwidth.org/32982.html.

B is currently in the badlands hunting dinosaurs. As usual this is Phil Manning's fault. It transpires that Phil is on a year long Sabbatical hunting dinosaurs and is, in fact, keeping a blog about it. B does not feature much, but is mentioned. I'm passing the link along since I suspect at least a couple of my flist will be interested in Phil's adventures.

This entry was originally posted at http://purplecat.dreamwidth.org/15193.html.

Achilles tendon is key to evolution of human running

B. didn't even know this was going to appear. He'd actually assumed they had decided not to run the story, given the sudden cessation of all communication, but presumably they just stopped talking to him once they decided they had enough to write something.

This entry was originally posted at http://purplecat.dreamwidth.org/4555.html.

3D modelling recreates dinosaur running

B is interested by the rather different places this story is finding its way into (compared to the T. Rex story), and by it's much slower build. The T. Rex story was huge but had pretty much run its course after 24 hours. This one, while much smaller, continues to be picked up by places and is finding it's way into a few High Performance Computing/Supercomputer outlets which the T. Rex story didn't.

A University of Manchester Press Release in which B. demonstrates that Hadrosaurs moved fastest by hopping like a kangaroo, but would probably have injured themselves doing so. He would be the first to point out that the results come with a lot of caveats, small sample size being one.

This is unlikely to be as big as T. Rex chasing down and eating David Beckham story, but he's been contacted by both the Manchester Evening News and the Telegraph.

Newsnight tonight, apparently. Something to do with a fossil - she says vaguely.

EDIT: or not, as it transpires. Though I think they are still running the item - only with an American.