Another week of lockdown and we carry on living our rather monastic life! Corona infection rate is worryingly high, as are deaths and hospital ICU numbers of patients. The new variant appears to be the reason for this second pandemic; apparently it is more transmissible and also more pathogenic, i.e. you get sicker.
The vaccination programme continues but is taking a long time due to problems due to getting (obtaining/delivering?) supplies to the place of injection.
It has been a week with a lot going on. Ellie was 6 years old on January 20th. There was another event in USA taking place the same day in Washington D.C.
Ellie on her 6th birthday... in her party dress. That is her default wardrobe choice!
I was very impressed with Amanda Gorman The Young Poet Laureate delivering her 5 minute recitation at the Presidential Inauguration. Marvellous use of language ... and as The Guardian newspaper said, "She stole the show."We keep our spirits up by having a family quiz every Sunday. We cater for all ages.
Alastair sent me the joke: Why does the Norwegian Navy use barcodes on all their ships?
It’s so that when they get back to port they can Scandinavian.
(This viking ship image is something I created for Harriet who has been learning about the Vikings.)
I have spent some time composing a couple of quizzes. I learned a lot!
Having learned about latitude and longitude at school I did not know about 2 interesting places on the globe. They are to do with the lat and long co-ordinates. The first one is Null Point which is not an actual place but it is the intersection of where zero degrees 0 ° latitude and zero degrees 0 ° longitude intersect, as above, showing off the coast of Africa.
Why have this? The reason is that when addresses are added to a map, a program called a geocoder translates the physical address into its geographic coordinates, which allows the location to be easily mapped. But sometimes due to human typos, bad data or even bugs in the geocoder itself, the geocoding program fails to run correctly and the output of the program becomes “0,0”—or no information. For example, while taking a photo with your smartphone camera.
Null Island
And the second place I found which, again, is simply a reference point on the globe is Point Nemo. I have been following the Vendée Globe race since early November. About 4 weeks ago the first of the yachts passed Point Nemo or ('Nemo Island') and are now safely around Cape Horn and within 5 days of finishing at Les Sables d’Olonne on the west coast of France (Bay of Biscay).
Point Nemo
In the Southern Hemisphere. It is the place in the ocean that is farthest from land (more than 1,000 miles).
It is also a space equipment dumping ground.
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