Moving continent is a great source for procrastination: filling boxes, emptying boxes, rearrangements and reorganizations galore. Another pair of transatlantic flights (this time to the IEEE Photovoltaics Specialist Conference in Philadelphia) will provide the internet-free time I need.
Wolfram Alpha is a strange one. Nice for graphing whatever function comes into your mind, but it gets confused a little too often for its own good. The comparing compounds feature is fun, and I imagine it would be quite useful for a synthetic chemist. I could see it morphing into a chemistry version of Top Trumps; a potential tool for hooking ten year olds into the magic of the periodic table.
In other developments, last week the head of Shell’s renewable energy wing stepped down. This is probably not too surprising considering that Shell recently announced their abandonment of research and development of solar and wind power. Not satisfied with pillaging the Irish coast line while charging plenty for it, a company that pulled in $26 billion of profit last year cannot afford to spend a little on harnessing our most abundant energy sources. I really hope I live to see the complete collapse of oil companies.
Finally, the last episode in Season Two of Breaking Bad is on tonight. An incredibly intense twelve episodes so far. It does of course have some lighter moments, such as how to make a DIY Faradic battery using acid and loose change to kick-start a dead van in a desert, but overall, this is definitely the best show on TV right right now.