You can tell I was going to be a palaeontologist...

Something from my misspent youth this time. As kids my siblings and myself hit upon the great idea of producing a calendar as a Christmas present for our grandparents, quite probably because it was cheap. Basically we decided on a theme and then got drawing (in pencil first, then inking in later so that our dad could photocopy it at work). I suspect I had a pretty big hand in picking the 1994 theme (see below), the fact that Jurassic Park came out in 1993 was surely a coincidence. Anyway, as this resurfaced recently I thought I'd scan it in and post it here for posterity.

The front cover Pretty sure I've just copied these from JP merchandise:

January Pfft! This is clearly a Deinonychus...:

February We even ripped off the JP typeface for the months:

March An interesting mutant:

April Proof that randomly including Dimetrodon in dinosaur books does confuse kids:

May Apparently Toyota landcruisers were always associated with dinosaurs...:

June Obviously I didn't have great editorial control:

July Well it is the party month:

August Here we erect a new species:

September A reconstruction worthy of Waterhouse:

October Are those feathers?:

November Nice to see our notes section got used:

December It's all been building up to this:

Changing the size and colour of placemarks in Google Earth

In follow up to my previous post I have now found out how to change the size and colour of my placemarks. The trick here is to create a "style" of placemark right at the top of the file. Again, this is pretty simple when you get down to it. This time you need to post a little bit of code at the top of the file, just after the <Document> tag:

<Style id="normalPlacemark">
  <IconStyle>
    <color>ffffff00</color>
    <scale>5</scale>
  </IconStyle>
</Style>

The id part of the opening <style> tag is important as it gives each style a name that we can then refer to later for each individual placemark. This allows the user to create different styles of placemark that can be used together in the same file (rather like CSS does for HTML). Colour (<color>) and size (<scale>) are then defined as elements of the <IconStyle> tag. Colours are in a hexadecimal format:

The range of values for any one color is 0 to 255 (00 to ff). For alpha, 00 is fully transparent and ff is fully opaque. The order of expression is aabbggrr, where aa=alpha (00 to ff); bb=blue (00 to ff); gg=green (00 to ff); rr=red (00 to ff). For example, if you want to apply a blue color with 50 percent opacity to an overlay, you would specify the following: 7fff0000, where alpha=0x7f, blue=0xff, green=0x00, and red=0x00.

Whereas scale is just a number.

Now we just need to make an addition to our <placemark> tag to state that we want to use this style:

<Placemark>
  <name>110_671B</name>
  <styleUrl>#normalPlacemark</styleUrl>
  <Point>
    <coordinates>-58.73,15.52,-1622</coordinates>
  </Point>
</Placemark>

So now I am able to plot my holes as giant green pushpins:

Unfortunately it is not easy to modify the colours of the pushpin icon as it has a yellow overlay to it and I have yet to work out if there is an easier way to colour placemarks exactly as I want. This will have to wait until next time.

---

Update:

OK, this last bit has been solved by someone who asked to be referred to as "my clever volcanologist friend." Basically a white pushpin needs to be called in the <style> tag like this:

<Style id="normalPlacemark">
  <IconStyle>
    <color>ffffff00</color>
    <scale>5</scale>
    <Icon>
      <href>http://maps.google.com/mapfiles/kml/pushpin/wht-pushpin.png</href>
    </Icon>
  </IconStyle>
</Style>

Multiple placemarks in Google Earth

In my current job I am producing a database of fossil occurrences from the North Atlantic deep sea record and one of the fields in the data base is latitude-longitude for each of the IODP holes included. For a while now I've been wanting to export this data to a KML file (Google Earth's HTML-like file format). At first I figured this would be easy. I created an SQL query in Access to get my data out as a comma-delimited file which I then import into R. All I need to do is create a table of unique lat-long occurrences (holes) and their names then format them in the KML-style. However, I came up against a bit of a snag.

The first part is easy. Just set the header of the file to:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<kml xmlns="http://www.opengis.net/kml/2.2">

The footer to:

</kml>

Then each hole is entered as a Placemark using the following syntax:

  <Placemark>
    <name>Hole name</name>
    <Point>
      <coordinates>-122.0822035425683,37.42228990140251,0</coordinates>
    </Point>
  </Placemark>

Where the coordinates are longitude, latitude and altitude respectively.

Simple.

But once you import the whole file into Google Earth it only shows the first point (hole) and skips all the others. Google's own code site wasn't much use on this, and the few forum's I looked at seemed to be missing a proper answer to this problem. In the end I figured out that all that needs to be done is wrap the placemarks in a simple

<Document></Document>

tag.

Lesson learned, and shared.

(Image and original code below.)

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<kml xmlns="http://www.opengis.net/kml/2.2">
<Document>
  <Placemark><name>110_671B</name><Point><coordinates>-58.73,15.52,-1622</coordinates></Point></Placemark>
  <Placemark><name>110_672A</name><Point><coordinates>-58.6,15.5,-1581</coordinates></Point></Placemark>
  <Placemark><name>110_673B</name><Point><coordinates>-58.64,15.53,-1875</coordinates></Point></Placemark>
  <Placemark><name>110_674A</name><Point><coordinates>-58.9,15.5,-2003</coordinates></Point></Placemark>
  <Placemark><name>110_676A</name><Point><coordinates>-58.7,15.53,-1494</coordinates></Point></Placemark>
  <Placemark><name>149_897A</name><Point><coordinates>-12.47,40.83,-5320</coordinates></Point></Placemark>
  <Placemark><name>149_899B</name><Point><coordinates>-12.26,40.77,-5291</coordinates></Point></Placemark>
  <Placemark><name>149_900A</name><Point><coordinates>-11.6,40.68,-5037</coordinates></Point></Placemark>
  <Placemark><name>149_901A</name><Point><coordinates>-11.05,40.67,-4719</coordinates></Point></Placemark>
  <Placemark><name>152_914A</name><Point><coordinates>-39.72,63.46,-533</coordinates></Point></Placemark>
  <Placemark><name>152_919A</name><Point><coordinates>-37.46,62.67,-2088</coordinates></Point></Placemark>
  <Placemark><name>157_950A</name><Point><coordinates>-25.6,31.15,-5438</coordinates></Point></Placemark>
  <Placemark><name>157_951A</name><Point><coordinates>-24.87,32.03,-5437</coordinates></Point></Placemark>
  <Placemark><name>157_952A</name><Point><coordinates>-24.5,30.79,-5432</coordinates></Point></Placemark>
  <Placemark><name>159_959A</name><Point><coordinates>-2.73,3.62,-2091</coordinates></Point></Placemark>
  <Placemark><name>159_960A</name><Point><coordinates>-2.73,3.58,-2048</coordinates></Point></Placemark>
  <Placemark><name>159_961A</name><Point><coordinates>-3.05,3.44,-3292</coordinates></Point></Placemark>
  <Placemark><name>159_962B</name><Point><coordinates>-3.18,3.25,-4637</coordinates></Point></Placemark>
  <Placemark><name>160_966F</name><Point><coordinates>32.7,33.79,-923</coordinates></Point></Placemark>
  <Placemark><name>101_627B</name><Point><coordinates>-78.29,27.63,-1026</coordinates></Point></Placemark>
  <Placemark><name>160_967E</name><Point><coordinates>32.72,34.06,-2553</coordinates></Point></Placemark>
  <Placemark><name>160_969B</name><Point><coordinates>24.88,33.84,-2202</coordinates></Point></Placemark>
  <Placemark><name>164_994C</name><Point><coordinates>-75.54,31.78,-2799</coordinates></Point></Placemark>
  <Placemark><name>165_998A</name><Point><coordinates>-82.93,19.48,-3180</coordinates></Point></Placemark>
  <Placemark><name>101_628A</name><Point><coordinates>-78.3,27.5,-964</coordinates></Point></Placemark>
  <Placemark><name>105_646B</name><Point><coordinates>-48.36,58.2,-3106</coordinates></Point></Placemark>
  <Placemark><name>101_635B</name><Point><coordinates>-77.3,25.4,-3081</coordinates></Point></Placemark>
  <Placemark><name>103_637A</name><Point><coordinates>-12.9,42.1,-1243</coordinates></Point></Placemark>
  <Placemark><name>101_626C</name><Point><coordinates>-79.54,25.6,-844</coordinates></Point></Placemark>
  <Placemark><name>149_898A</name><Point><coordinates>-12.12,40.68,-5279</coordinates></Point></Placemark>
  <Placemark><name>103_638B</name><Point><coordinates>-12.19,42.15,-1890</coordinates></Point></Placemark>
  <Placemark><name>103_639A</name><Point><coordinates>-12.24,42.14,-1829</coordinates></Point></Placemark>
  <Placemark><name>103_640A</name><Point><coordinates>-12.5,42,-1363</coordinates></Point></Placemark>
  <Placemark><name>103_641A</name><Point><coordinates>-12.18,42.15,-1918</coordinates></Point></Placemark>
  <Placemark><name>104_642B</name><Point><coordinates>2.92,67.22,-1283</coordinates></Point></Placemark>
  <Placemark><name>104_643A</name><Point><coordinates>1,67.7,-2769</coordinates></Point></Placemark>
  <Placemark><name>104_644A</name><Point><coordinates>4.57,66.67,-1215</coordinates></Point></Placemark>
  <Placemark><name>107_651A</name><Point><coordinates>12.8,40.2,-2974</coordinates></Point></Placemark>
  <Placemark><name>107_652A</name><Point><coordinates>12.1,40.4,-3094</coordinates></Point></Placemark>
  <Placemark><name>107_653A</name><Point><coordinates>11.44,40.26,-2821</coordinates></Point></Placemark>
  <Placemark><name>107_654A</name><Point><coordinates>10.7,40.6,-2209</coordinates></Point></Placemark>
  <Placemark><name>107_655A</name><Point><coordinates>12.46,40.17,-3234</coordinates></Point></Placemark>
  <Placemark><name>108_657A</name><Point><coordinates>-20.94,21.33,-2332</coordinates></Point></Placemark>
  <Placemark><name>108_658A</name><Point><coordinates>-18.58,20.74,-2264</coordinates></Point></Placemark>
  <Placemark><name>108_659B</name><Point><coordinates>-21.02,18.07,-3073</coordinates></Point></Placemark>
  <Placemark><name>108_660A</name><Point><coordinates>-19.24,10.01,-2221</coordinates></Point></Placemark>
  <Placemark><name>108_661A</name><Point><coordinates>-19.38,9.44,-2541</coordinates></Point></Placemark>
  <Placemark><name>108_662A</name><Point><coordinates>-11.73,-1.39,-2740</coordinates></Point></Placemark>
  <Placemark><name>108_663A</name><Point><coordinates>-11.87,-1.19,-2856</coordinates></Point></Placemark>
  <Placemark><name>108_664B</name><Point><coordinates>-23.22,0.1,-2747</coordinates></Point></Placemark>
  <Placemark><name>108_665A</name><Point><coordinates>-19.66,2.95,-1813</coordinates></Point></Placemark>
  <Placemark><name>108_666A</name><Point><coordinates>-20.2,3.5,-2037</coordinates></Point></Placemark>
  <Placemark><name>108_667A</name><Point><coordinates>-21.91,4.56,-3029</coordinates></Point></Placemark>
  <Placemark><name>108_668A</name><Point><coordinates>-20.92,4.76,-2690</coordinates></Point></Placemark>
  <Placemark><name>108_668B</name><Point><coordinates>-20.9,4.8,-2693</coordinates></Point></Placemark>
  <Placemark><name>174A_1071A</name><Point><coordinates>-72.72,39.38,-88</coordinates></Point></Placemark>
  <Placemark><name>174A_1072A</name><Point><coordinates>-72.69,39.36,-98</coordinates></Point></Placemark>
  <Placemark><name>174A_1073A</name><Point><coordinates>-72.27,39.22,-639</coordinates></Point></Placemark>
  <Placemark><name>1_1</name><Point><coordinates>-92.18,25.85,-2827</coordinates></Point></Placemark>
  <Placemark><name>1_2</name><Point><coordinates>-92.05,23.04,-3572</coordinates></Point></Placemark>
  <Placemark><name>1_3</name><Point><coordinates>-92.04,23.03,-3747</coordinates></Point></Placemark>
  <Placemark><name>1_4</name><Point><coordinates>-73.79,24.47,-5319</coordinates></Point></Placemark>
  <Placemark><name>1_5</name><Point><coordinates>-73.64,24.72,-5354</coordinates></Point></Placemark>
  <Placemark><name>1_6A</name><Point><coordinates>-67.64,30.83,-5124</coordinates></Point></Placemark>
  <Placemark><name>1_7</name><Point><coordinates>-68.29,30.13,-5182</coordinates></Point></Placemark>
  <Placemark><name>4_25</name><Point><coordinates>-39.24,-0.51,-1916</coordinates></Point></Placemark>
  <Placemark><name>4_26A</name><Point><coordinates>-44.04,10.89,-5169</coordinates></Point></Placemark>
  <Placemark><name>4_27</name><Point><coordinates>-56.87,15.85,-5251</coordinates></Point></Placemark>
  <Placemark><name>4_28</name><Point><coordinates>-65.62,20.58,-5251</coordinates></Point></Placemark>
  <Placemark><name>105_647A</name><Point><coordinates>-45.26,53.33,-2695</coordinates></Point></Placemark>
  <Placemark><name>11_100</name><Point><coordinates>-73.79,24.68,-5325</coordinates></Point></Placemark>
  <Placemark><name>11_101A</name><Point><coordinates>-74.43,25.19,-4868</coordinates></Point></Placemark>
  <Placemark><name>13_125</name><Point><coordinates>20.42,34.62,-2782</coordinates></Point></Placemark>
  <Placemark><name>14_137</name><Point><coordinates>-27.06,25.92,-5361</coordinates></Point></Placemark>
  <Placemark><name>14_141</name><Point><coordinates>-23.99,19.41,-4148</coordinates></Point></Placemark>
  <Placemark><name>150_905A</name><Point><coordinates>-72.28,38.61,-2698</coordinates></Point></Placemark>
  <Placemark><name>151_910A</name><Point><coordinates>6.59,80.26,-556</coordinates></Point></Placemark>
  <Placemark><name>151_911A</name><Point><coordinates>8.22,80.47,-902</coordinates></Point></Placemark>
  <Placemark><name>152_915A</name><Point><coordinates>-39.78,63.47,-533</coordinates></Point></Placemark>
  <Placemark><name>152_918A</name><Point><coordinates>-38.63,63.09,-1869</coordinates></Point></Placemark>
  <Placemark><name>38_338</name><Point><coordinates>5.38,67.78,-1297</coordinates></Point></Placemark>
  <Placemark><name>39_354</name><Point><coordinates>-44.19,5.89,-4045</coordinates></Point></Placemark>
  <Placemark><name>41_367</name><Point><coordinates>-20.04,12.48,-4748</coordinates></Point></Placemark>
  <Placemark><name>41_370</name><Point><coordinates>-10.77,32.83,-4214</coordinates></Point></Placemark>
  <Placemark><name>44_390A</name><Point><coordinates>-76.11,30.14,-2665</coordinates></Point></Placemark>
  <Placemark><name>47_398D</name><Point><coordinates>-10.71,40.96,-3910</coordinates></Point></Placemark>
  <Placemark><name>49_407</name><Point><coordinates>-30.57,63.93,-2472</coordinates></Point></Placemark>
  <Placemark><name>49_408</name><Point><coordinates>-28.91,63.37,-1624</coordinates></Point></Placemark>
  <Placemark><name>49_410</name><Point><coordinates>-29.47,45.5,-2975</coordinates></Point></Placemark>
  <Placemark><name>76_534A</name><Point><coordinates>-75.38,28.34,-4971</coordinates></Point></Placemark>
  <Placemark><name>77_537</name><Point><coordinates>-85.46,23.93,-3123</coordinates></Point></Placemark>
  <Placemark><name>77_538A</name><Point><coordinates>-85.16,23.84,-2742</coordinates></Point></Placemark>
  <Placemark><name>77_540</name><Point><coordinates>-84.37,23.82,-2926</coordinates></Point></Placemark>
  <Placemark><name>79_545</name><Point><coordinates>-9.36,33.66,-3142</coordinates></Point></Placemark>
  <Placemark><name>79_547A</name><Point><coordinates>-9.34,33.78,-3938</coordinates></Point></Placemark>
  <Placemark><name>80_548</name><Point><coordinates>-12.16,48.91,-1251</coordinates></Point></Placemark>
  <Placemark><name>80_549A</name><Point><coordinates>-13.09,49.08,-2513</coordinates></Point></Placemark>
  <Placemark><name>82_558</name><Point><coordinates>-37.34,37.77,-3754</coordinates></Point></Placemark>
  <Placemark><name>82_563</name><Point><coordinates>-43.76,33.64,-3786</coordinates></Point></Placemark>
  <Placemark><name>93_603</name><Point><coordinates>-70.02,35.49,-4633</coordinates></Point></Placemark>
  <Placemark><name>93_603C</name><Point><coordinates>-70.03,35.49,-4633</coordinates></Point></Placemark>
  <Placemark><name>93_605</name><Point><coordinates>-72.6,38.74,-2194</coordinates></Point></Placemark>
  <Placemark><name>94_606</name><Point><coordinates>-35.49,37.33,-3007</coordinates></Point></Placemark>
  <Placemark><name>94_607</name><Point><coordinates>-32.95,41,-3427</coordinates></Point></Placemark>
  <Placemark><name>94_608</name><Point><coordinates>-23.08,42.83,-3526</coordinates></Point></Placemark>
  <Placemark><name>94_609</name><Point><coordinates>-24.23,49.87,-3884</coordinates></Point></Placemark>
  <Placemark><name>94_610</name><Point><coordinates>-18.88,53.22,-2417</coordinates></Point></Placemark>
  <Placemark><name>95_612</name><Point><coordinates>-72.77,38.82,-1386</coordinates></Point></Placemark>
  <Placemark><name>210_1276A</name><Point><coordinates>-44.78,45.4,-4549</coordinates></Point></Placemark>
  <Placemark><name>173_1067A</name><Point><coordinates>-11.59,40.68,-5021</coordinates></Point></Placemark>
  <Placemark><name>2_8A</name><Point><coordinates>-67.55,35.38,-5184</coordinates></Point></Placemark>
  <Placemark><name>2_9</name><Point><coordinates>-59.19,32.77,-4973</coordinates></Point></Placemark>
  <Placemark><name>2_10</name><Point><coordinates>-52.21,32.86,-4712</coordinates></Point></Placemark>
  <Placemark><name>2_11</name><Point><coordinates>-44.74,29.94,-3571</coordinates></Point></Placemark>
  <Placemark><name>2_12C</name><Point><coordinates>-26,19.69,-4557</coordinates></Point></Placemark>
  <Placemark><name>173_1068A</name><Point><coordinates>-11.61,40.68,-5044</coordinates></Point></Placemark>
  <Placemark><name>3_13</name><Point><coordinates>-18.22,6.04,-4585</coordinates></Point></Placemark>
  <Placemark><name>4_23</name><Point><coordinates>-31.04,-6.14,-5079</coordinates></Point></Placemark>
  <Placemark><name>4_24</name><Point><coordinates>-30.89,-6.27,-5148</coordinates></Point></Placemark>
  <Placemark><name>4_29</name><Point><coordinates>-69.32,14.78,-4247</coordinates></Point></Placemark>
  <Placemark><name>4_30</name><Point><coordinates>-63.38,12.88,-1218</coordinates></Point></Placemark>
  <Placemark><name>4_31</name><Point><coordinates>-72.02,14.94,-3369</coordinates></Point></Placemark>
  <Placemark><name>173_1069A</name><Point><coordinates>-11.77,40.72,-5075</coordinates></Point></Placemark>
  <Placemark><name>101_631A</name><Point><coordinates>-75.7,23.6,-1092</coordinates></Point></Placemark>
  <Placemark><name>101_632A</name><Point><coordinates>-75.4,23.8,-1997</coordinates></Point></Placemark>
  <Placemark><name>101_633A</name><Point><coordinates>-75.6,23.7,-1679</coordinates></Point></Placemark>
  <Placemark><name>151_908A</name><Point><coordinates>1.36,78.38,-1274</coordinates></Point></Placemark>
  <Placemark><name>151_909A</name><Point><coordinates>3.07,78.58,-2519</coordinates></Point></Placemark>
  <Placemark><name>151_912A</name><Point><coordinates>5.45,79.95,-1037</coordinates></Point></Placemark>
  <Placemark><name>151_913A</name><Point><coordinates>6.94,75.48,-3319</coordinates></Point></Placemark>
  <Placemark><name>152_916A</name><Point><coordinates>-39.8,63.48,-514</coordinates></Point></Placemark>
  <Placemark><name>154_925A</name><Point><coordinates>-43.48,4.2,-3042</coordinates></Point></Placemark>
  <Placemark><name>154_929E</name><Point><coordinates>-43.74,5.97,-4356</coordinates></Point></Placemark>
  <Placemark><name>157_953A</name><Point><coordinates>-15.14,28.65,-3578</coordinates></Point></Placemark>
  <Placemark><name>157_954B</name><Point><coordinates>-15.53,28.43,-3485</coordinates></Point></Placemark>
</Document>
</kml>

For your procrastinating pleasure

Here's what I've been wasting my internet time on this past few weeks.

Photography

I've always wanted to know how to photograph fireworks, especially when you can get results like this awesome picture.

Animals

I tend to come across lots of dinosaur stuff, including useful pointers on why you really should keep your T. rex off crack, a case of some dinosaur revisionism and this, frankly confusing, t-shirt. I also find this simple joke quite amusing.

Entertainment

If you haven't already come across it, I really like the idea of this wedding entrance. Some more creativity comes into play in a performance of 80's classic Africa and finally there was this darkly comic animated feature, Billy's balloon. I also recommend checking out the art of this guy.

Science

First up is this cool toilet paper experiment. That nice chap Bill Gates has also purchased and made freely available these Richard Feynman lectures. Then you can make friends with your glands.

Humour

Despite being a throwback to the early part of the internet age animated gifs still seem to be going strong, my favourite being this one. One wonders what the elephant makes of it. I enjoyed several of these workplace training videos. Ten is probably the funniest, number four is just wrong (who says such things?) and two is perhaps painfully true. However, I found this collection of 1950's propaganda to be more disturbing than funny. For those with a non-PC sense of humour this garage door opener should appeal, although I much preferred the Wayne's World echoing twist to this fast food folk song. Finally this "remix" of an NWA classic is just awesome.

Geekdom

One of the joys of this internet age is that the powerbase of the world is shifting ever more towards the geeks of this world. I found this short talk by the guy who brought you captcha (you'll know what it is when you see it) to be really interesting. Although this vision of the future of dating may be less encouraging. Finally, this really appealed to my sense of humour.

What I did at NAPC

1) Wrote my talk at the last minute.
Always a great idea. It's not like I ran over and had to be booted off stage. Worst of all I realised later that I must have been completely oblivious to my two-minute warning. Still, apparently it came across OK.

2) Saw some of my heroes speak.
Including Ken Miller and Sean Carroll, both of whose popular science books I have read as well as Michael Donoghue (whose contributions to evolution have been truly diverse), Steven Stanley (father of macroevolution) and Phil Gingerich (of fractal rates of evolution fame) - all legends.

3) Became addicted to shuffleboard.
A bit like a dry version of curling, but without the brushes. I exclusively play the doubles version and it turns out I have a penchant for the violent 'kamikaze'-type shots.

4) Got my ass whupped at basketball.
It seemed like such a good idea. I mean, how good can a bunch of palaeontologists be at sport? Weren't we all the geeks at school who hated physical education? Anyway, I entered myself and a couple of friends in the 3-on-3 tournament under the name "The Bristol Deciders" (retrospectively the Chickencows would have been better). It seemed victory would be ours when at one stage we were the only team to enter, but as it turned out there was one other - not enough for a tournament. Instead we played a pick up game with such luminaries as Arnie Miller, Mike Foote, Tom Baumiller and Shanan Peters involved. It's safe to say against the average American I am atrocious at basketball.

5) Visited the Creation Museum.
This was a truly bizarre experience. Some 80 palaeontologists, including Arnie Miller, Mike Foote, Christine Janis and myself boarded a couple of school buses for the short drive into Kentucky. I got photographed by the Cincinnati Enquirer, Akron something-or-other and the New York Times. In the end the story made both the New York Times and Bucyrus Telegraph Forum, but the highlight has to be the back of my head appearing in this article, justifying my claim to be the back of the head of palaeontology. It's a shame I'd already gotten my business cards done.

6) Enjoyed a mini PBDB summer course reunion.
It was the first time I had seen three folks from the PBDB summer course in two years and we even squeezed in a reunion photo. All of our instructors were also at the conference and it was good to see them again (and have them remember my name).

7) Learned how to play bocce ball.
Not as fun as shuffleboard, and Bristol taking on Berkeley ended disastrously. Still bocce ball was good fun.

Bits and bobs

Here are a few more things I've found whilst stumbling.

From http://www.vivapixel.com/:

From http://farleftside.com/:

From http://www.birdandmoon.com/:

Dinosaur supertree - now zoomable!

I just got an email from Mike Klymkowsky with a link to an online, zoomable version of the dinosaur supertree. A preview is shown below. To see the site yourself click here (the link to the dinosaur tree is on the left hand bar). It's cool to see other people making use of it, especially as we couldn't fit this figure into the actual paper.