This is excellent. Just to prove that Looby isn’t the only good thing to come out of Lancaster these days, Lancaster University are working on a system to allow growers to determine when their plants need water, using a system of cameras.

Conventional and thermal camera imaging systems on an irrigation boom would be passed over the crops at regular intervals collecting information about how much water each plant needed. The data would be fed into an irrigation system which would then robotically deliver a precise, targeted amount water to each plant, according to demand.

via We make money not art

Changing to Linux has been a good experience, mostly. Some hiccups along the way, but nothing too scary.

I deleted my windows partition last Monday when I realised that Doom3 was the only reason I still had it there. Then I fired up Amarok and the deal was sealed. Lyrics, links to Wikipedia, dynamic playlist generation….I could go on but I’m boring you already.

I love it, as much as a good Gene Krupa drum solo.

Jim Smithson has kindly pointed out a page of research that investigates the John Condon story. In a previous post, I claimed that the youngest soldier in the first World War was John Condon from Waterford, Ireland who was supposed to have been killed in Ypres aged 13. This was based on various sources on information, but there are doubts about John’s age at the time of his death.

As Jim points out, there are lots of graves of extremely young soldiers – 15 and 16 years old, all too young to have died in a mans war.