Tormorrow, the world's largest machine and most extravagant experiement will be 'switched on'.

There's lots of information about CERN and the LHC, a lot of it is full particle physics that's beyond most mortals.  So what's it all about.  This pretty much sums it up:

 

If you want some more detailed information, there's this PDF from the good people at CERN.

I mentioned inappropriate sponsorships in a post a while back, but I think they've all been trumped by a caption on the good old BBC website. 

It's the unfortunate story of the businessman in Shropshire who is believed to have killed his family and set fire to his house before killing himself. 

I'm sure whoever added the caption didn't do it intentionally.  They couldn't have, could they?  Not at the BBC, surely?

Edit (6 Sept): 

To view the original caption on the article, you're going to have to click on the image above. 

The BBC have obviously discovered their mistake, and someone's probably getting a bit of a roasting now…

Google has launched its own web browser - Chrome.

Having downloaded it (and writing this post on it, although the editor doesn't seem to be working 100%), I must say that it's pretty good - and I'm sure it'll only get better.

I won't go into detail about all the features  - you can read them here -  and read an overview behind Google's thinking here.

I'm not going to kick Firefox into touch yet, I love the personalisation that is provided through the add-ons - but there are definitely a lot of advantages to Chrome:

• It's very, very stable.  If a website in a tab 'goes bad', it doesn't affect the other tabs, and the whole browser doesn't crash.
• It's very quick.  Pages seem to load very quickly.
• The interface is very clean and intuitive.  It also has some features that I haven't seen before, but as a lot of the code behind Chrome is also found in Safari, I expect it isn't all brand new.

I expect it's going to get better and better - and as it's also open source, I expect Firefox to adopt a lot of the features and functionality that has been developed for Chrome.

Team GB did pretty well in the cycling at the velodrome in Beijing.

Great Britain = 12 medals, 7 of them gold.

Rest of the World = 14 medals, 3 of them gold. 

Now, that's not a bad result at all. 

It just shows that with the facilities, the funding, a professional approach, backed up with the will to win, Great Britain can compete with the rest of the world.  A great result from the team, and my particular favourite was Vicky Pendleton.  No idea why…

I'm sure a similar approach in athletics would see us do a lot better in the track and field events.  Maybe not anywhere near quite as dominant as we've been in the cycling, but we could definitely improve our medal haul in the athletics.

It's down to a focus on doing everything right, and leaving nothing to chance.  As it was termed, the benefit from the "aggregate of marginal gains".

This article on the BBC website explains it well:  How GB cycling went from tragic to magic.

The reason for creating this Top 5 five is the amount of memories, arguments, laughter and tears that this particular subject has generated in the office over the past couple of days. So rather than let it cool off and fade away I thought I’d capture it here for posterity.

Below – my top 5 TV shows from my youth – with links to theme tune vids (I hope these bring back some memories):

1. Chorlton and the Wheelies
2. Jamie and the Magic Torch
3. Bod
4. Rhubarb and Custard
5. Ivor the Engine

They're my Top 5 - what are yours?

EEK GBP: £0.05

On one of the forums I'm on, someone posted about a 100 push-up training programme that spans 6 weeks.  The idea behind it is that at the end of the 6 weeks, you'll be able to do 100 push-ups.

When I was doing karate in my teens, we used to do 60 push-ups during training, and I remember finding them a struggle.  So I was interested to see how quickly a 12-stone weekling could get to the point where 100 push-ups was achievable.

The training programme is broken down into 6 weeks, and each week into 3 days.  You start off doing a test to see how many push-ups you can do before you start the programme.  This determines the number of repetitions you do as you progress.  The whole programme can be downloaded and printed off from the site.

Anyway, I managed 30 push-ups in my initial test, and according to the programme, that's not a bad starting point. 

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We haven't had a top 5 for ages - so here's my top 5 mathematical symbols (number 4 is divide - I couldn't find the exact symbol so I had to improvise):

1.  +
2.  x
3.  -
4.  '/.
5.  =

The beauty of mathematics means - that in addition to getting a range of my favourite symbols in this list - if I run through the list in order using the functions and the order of numbers - I get the answer: 1.

Doesn't come any more elegant than that. So this has to be the top ranking order of symbols! Doesn't it?