Welcome

Welcome to our family website, a look into the lives of the Walker-Smith family, well thats the idea

To find out more about us read the whoweare page, to find out more about this site have a look at the colophon... hmm which doesn't yet exist

This site as it stands at present looks excellent on Mac, with Sarari, Netscape7.1, and Mozilla Firebird0.7, and now IE. If it looks bad in your browser, either buy a Mac or upgrade to the latest browsers!

This is a work in progress, I hope to turn the whole site over to this look and feel over the next few days, so this site may not be working 100%, esp in those pesky window browsers.

Want to send a virtual card?

Why not use 3-cards a new service brought to you from walkersmith.net

Reviewed

• book: James Bond in the Man with a Red Tattoo, Raymond Benson
• Hybrids, Robert J Sawyer
• Havana, Stephen Hunter
• The Fall of Hyperion, Dan Simmons
• Eternal sunshine of a spotless mind
• Hyperion, Dan Simmons
• Cloud of Sparrows, Takashi Matsuoka
• The Teeth of the Tiger, Tom Clancy
• The Last Samurai
• Time's Eye, Arthur C. Clarke and Stephen Baxter
• Ilium, Dan Simmons
• Closing Time: The Sequel to Catch-22, Joseph Heller
• Film: Just Married
• book: Darwinia, Robert Charles Wilson
• book: Bios, Robert Charles Wilson
• book: Imperial Earth, Arthur C. Clarke
• book: A Severed Head, Iris Murdoch
• book: James Bond in the Man with a Red Tattoo, Raymond Benson
• book: Red Thunder, by John Varley
• Film: Kill Bill
• book: Quicksilver, by Neal Stephenson
• book: Colony, by Rob Grant
• book: Chronoliths, by Robert Charles Wilson
• Film: 28 days later
• Film: Lara Croft Tomb Raider: The Cradle of Life
• book: Pale Horse Coming, Stephen Hunter
• Films: three good ones
• book: Catch-22, Joseph Heller
• book: Humans, Robert J Sawyer
• book: The Da Vinci Code, Dan Brown
• Film: Terminator 3
• book: Blue Horizon, by Wilber Smith
• book: Evolution, by Stephen Baxter
• book: The Physics of Consciousness
• Matrix Reloaded: Theory

Words

• minutia
• Perfidy
• Necromancer
• ephemeral
• bete noire
• etymology
• heliopause
• agitprop
• entr'acte
• allegory
• ameliorate

Recent Entries

• We're Londoners
• book: James Bond in the Man with a Red Tattoo, Raymond Benson
• Indy at six… months
• Its a bit unnerving...
• Hybrids, Robert J Sawyer
• Havana, Stephen Hunter
• The Jimny, bought July 1999 – sold June 2004
• Hmm Apple Juice
• Options
• The Fall of Hyperion, Dan Simmons
• Uncle Toms Fotos
• My many faces
• Mass Destruction
• Being left by ...
• minutia
• Daddy, where have you been all this time?
• Eternal sunshine of a spotless mind
• Certified Geek
• Green Delight
• Perfidy

Archives

• August 2004 (1)
• July 2004 (2)
• June 2004 (7)
• May 2004 (7)
• April 2004 (5)
• March 2004 (9)
• February 2004 (17)
• January 2004 (24)
• December 2003 (21)
• November 2003 (15)
• October 2003 (20)
• September 2003 (25)
• August 2003 (15)
• July 2003 (32)
• June 2003 (51)
• May 2003 (12)

Back on the stick of rock

Work started again today, I spend the next eight days up here in Paranal, the site of the world?s largest telescopes. The altitude here is 2600m; the humidity sometimes cannot be reliably measured, as it?s too dry. Weather conditions hardly vary; we have on the whole blue skies nearly everyday. If there is a change day to day then it is the wind. Today is mildly windy one. Most of these aspects of this place make it one of the world?s best locations to do Astronomy, our raison d'Ítre. Here as promised is a photo of three of the worlds largest single mirror telescopes.

The small one in the background is the aptly named VST, which stands for Very Small Telescope. It stands, dwarfed amongst its four larger cousins of the VLT, the Very Large Telescopes.