• The Author – Bart Busschots

  

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There are a lot of articles on the net. Only a subset of those actually obey the rules of grammar, of those, an even smaller subset are actually well written, and of those, an even a smaller subset could be described as ‘riveting’. Today I had the pleasure of reading one of these rare articles. Be warned though, it’s long, but IMO well worth the effort to read. That article is ‘The Pedal-to-the-Metal, Totally Illegal, Cross-Country Sprint for Glory‘ and is about the Cannon Ball Run.

I recently watched a documentary about the events of 9-11 which looked at a group of people you never hear talked about any more. I remember them because these people did get mentioned in some early live broadcasts as that terrible day’s events were begining to un-fold. However, in the hours and days that followed they were mentioned less and less. And now, over five years on, they are almost never mentioned at all. They seem to have been wiped from our collective memories of that day and to mention them has almost become a taboo, particularly within America. I am talking about ‘the jumpers’, those people who were trapped above the impact zone of both towers with no hope what-so-ever of escape who appear to have taken their destiny into their own hands, and jumped. The documentary was called “The Falling Man” or something like that, and it was all about a picture of one of these people snapped by a photographer which was given that caption. That one picture came to represent all those who appear to have jumped. The falling man became their icon.

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I think my brother’s wedding is a good enough excuse to indulge in a rare personal post. Last Friday was the big day for Koen & Pam. Although the weather was on par for this terrible summer we still had a great day. The mass was very well done by Fr. Paul, it was the perfect balance between seriousness and fun and full of nice thoughtful touches. I’m not a fan of organized religion but credit where credit is due, it really was a great service. The rest of the day also went very well and all the speeches went down well. I hope Pam & Koen enjoyed their day and that they’re having a great time now on their honeymoon. Since I had the honor of being a groom’s man I couldn’t take any pictures myself but the better half was good enough to take a few. You can see the results here.

The Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling has been notoriously tight lipped while she was writing the Potter Books. She said very little and when she did answer questions she always chose her answers very carefully. Now that the final Potter book is out we are getting to see a new more open JKR. She now seems happy to share what ever other information she has about Harry and his world with an eager public.

WARNING – the remainder of this post contains Harry Potter 7 spoilers!

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Well, it’s over. The Seventh Book is out and I’ve finished reading it. This post contains my initial reactions and a rundown of how many of my predictions from almost two years ago came to pass. To protect people who haven’t read the book yet from spoilers I won’t be putting anything else here in the preview, you’ll have to read the article itself to see more.

[tags]Harry Potter, Deathly Hallows[/tags]

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I’ve had a whole series of potter articles in the back of my brain for the last few months and I just haven’t gotten them out. Now with the book officially only two days away and a leaked copy doing the rounds on the internet I guess those posts are just not going to be. Two friends of mine now have a copy of the leaked book and both are convinced it is genuine. So, it would seem that the time for predictions is over and the time to watch out for spoilers has begun. I have to say I just don’t get the mentality of those people who think it’s fun or clever to ruin the book for the fans. Yesterday a supposedly sensible and educated chap ruined the book for a good friend of mine by posting spoilers on Mikado (our college bulleting board system). I have to say I was not impressed. What kind of sicko takes pleasure from causing others pain? Surely someone with a personality like that needs help? Anyhow, I’m being very very careful about what I read and what sites I visit for the next few days but before I vanish into hiding I just want to list the important un-answered questions from the first six books as I see them (in order):

1. What were Snape & Dumbledore arguing about in the forest when Hagrid over-heard them? – Theories that Dumbledore ordered Snape to kill him hinge on this
2. On who’s orders Snape to betray Emaline Vance? We know Snape gave Voldemort information that led to her murder, was that a solo-run by Snape or was it on Dumbledore’s orders? This would give us insight into which side Snape is really on.
3. What did Dumbledore’s little gleam of triumph at the news that Voldemort used Harry’s blood to return to power mean?
4. Who is R.A.B.?

It’s been an eventful half week. Having gone about two years without feeling the need to post a single personal post now I’m writing a second one in less than a week! The first one was a difficult post to write. Mind you, writing it was very therapeutic so I’m glad I bit the bullet and did it. This one however isn’t hard to write at all, quite the opposite in fact. The short version is that myself and my partner are back together, and back stronger than we were before. In fact, we are now technically engaged.

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I’ve always said I wouldn’t blog about personal things but this is my blog so I can break my own rules when I think it’s the right thing to do. I see this blog as a tool, and right now I need a tool to save me having to repeatedly re-tell something that it will hurt me a lot to have to keep repeating. Myself and my partner of over three years have parted ways. I’m pretty devastated, to put it mildly. In my mind I had been planning our life together and really thought this one was for the long haul. Now there’s a very large hole in my life that’s going to take some time to build a bridge over. Right now I’m still very numb and have lost interest in all the things I used to do and care about. I don’t feel in the humor for working on www.IrishAstronomy.org and blogging is not really something I think I’ll be in the humor for for a while. I’m working on a lot of posts at the moment but I just don’t see myself having the energy to finish them just now. Somehow, not having someone to share my daily life and minor triumphs with makes everything seem rather pointless. I’m also going to have a lot of very unpleasant and difficult practical tasks to do to un-tangle our very inter-twined lives, joint bank accounts to close, a room with our stuff to separate, both of us being total nerds, a joint server to separate out and that kind of thing. I think that will be enough to keep me ‘entertained’ for a while anyhow, after that’s all done I’ll probably be able to start getting back to a normal life and settling in to being single again.

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Sorry about the half hour of down time just now. PHP5 didn’t play nice when I tried to upgrade it. Anyhow, all back to normal now and safely running the latest and safest PHP, Apache and MySQL. Only lost most of my hair 🙂

To those of you who don’t get the BBC Top Gear is car program that has been going for decades now which has become known for doing outrageous stunts with cars. This week they’ve just raised the bar a million miles by trying to launch a car (a Reliant Robin) into space!

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