The Universe’s second season is again, excellent. You can think of this second set of documentaries as a more in-depth follow up to the first year. Topics include dark matter, the constellations, gravity and space colonization. (Is it an Americanism or a mistake that lead them to title one episode ‘nebulas’ and not ‘nebulae’?).

The great thing about The Universe is that it targets the age group most disconnected from science. As a group, older teenagers are looking away from science and school isn’t doing enough to keep them interested. Documentaries like this engage people at home and lead them out into museums, lectures and libraries.

You could go and buy this show on Amazon, or directly from The History Channel - or you could win a copy! I have one sealed copy of The Universe Season Two to give away. More than 14 hours of spacey goodness on 5 DVDs in a rather fetching metal case.

How do you win it? Simple really - you have to sign up to Twitter and start following Orbiting Frog. Shameless ploy to get more Twitter followers? Yes… and no. Twitter is becoming quite the hub of astronomy chat and news. At the recent .Astronomy Conference, it became obvious that Twitter, and services like it, were going to be very important in astronomy in the next few years.

So on October 31st, I will pick a random follower on Twitter (no space probes allowed!). They will be sent this great DVD collection, but more importantly they, and possibly many others, will have joined the conversation.

To sign up to Twitter, visit http://twitter.com and once you have start following me (http://twitter.com/orbitingfrog). If you already follow me on Twitter, you are automatically entered - how easy was that?

While you’re on Twitter you might want to take a look at several more users that may be of interest:

• Carnival of Space
• WETI
• Planck
• Astronomy Picture of the Day
• The Jodcast
• International Year of Astronomy
• The Mars Rovers
• Mars Phoenix Lander
• .Astronomy Conference

Also there are many fellow astronomy bloggers on Twitter:

• Space Disco
• Chris Lintott
• The Daily ACK
• Will Gater
• Star Stryder
• Astronomy Blog
• Bad Astronomy

If I’m missing anyone, please comment to add your Twitter feed. Good luck to those entering, and happy Twittering.

With all of this in mind I think its time to admit that I cannot post as often on this blog. I will have to scale back a bit and so to prevent the blog from becoming filled with other material I have turned off the Skynote and Digg integration. These automated posts were great when I was blogging once a day, but now feel more like blog spam.

I will also be changing the blog’s design during October to match the new, slower pace and to emphasize the many projects I am also working on. I intend to make the Google Sky and Google Earth materials open source (oh no, I’ll have to comment my code) and to drop some new scripts down here for you to try.

All in all I think I have to take some good advice and make this site more about quality than quantity. Less blogging what has already been blogged and more on the stuff that’s new and directly from my brain to the server.

If you can join us over at .Astronomy this week (ustream worked yesterday…) then we’d love to have you. Other than that, I’ll see you in a couple of weeks via good ol’ Orbiting Frog.

Orbiting Frog has been growing and changing for as long as it has been around. Every now and again, it’s good to take stock and get some thoughts from people who read the blog. Now that there actually are people reading it, this process is much easier!

I’d like to hear your thoughts on the things you like and dislike about Orbiting Frog and any changes or modifications you’d like to see. This could include anything from the way the blog looks and feels to the topics covered or the regularity of updates.

Good, bad or ugly - don’t worry I can take it, although I will delete needless cruelty and profanity! Please leave your thoughts either in the comments below, via Twitter or via email.

You can also buy a similar design on a t-shirt from the Orbiting Frog Shop. Available in sizes for women, men and kids in many colours. Prices start at $18 (£9) for kids and $20 (£10) for adults, international delivery available. There is the design you see above and also a black and white, vertical option.

A new (experimental) blog, covering all aspects of NAM this year is ready to start updating tomorrow, with the kick-off of the conference. NAM Blog is being run and edited by Chris Lintott, Stuart Lowe and myself (although I’m acting from afar). Head over there now to have a look and if its already Monday when you read this, you may even start to see some news from NAM2008.

NAM Blog can be found at http://orbitingfrog.com/nam/

APOD does carry some awesome images, like the one shown in this post. But, like a lot of people, I check APOD almost every day and as such I don’t think it warrants digging.
Thank you, rant over.

Well what do you know, as soon as I make myself a wavelength slider for Google Sky, Google go ahead and pass me by by releasing the much anticipated web version of Google Sky complete with wavelength sliders. I still like my little mashup but I look forward to playing with (and taking apart) their new application as well.

Check it out: http://www.google.com/sky/

My experimentation with Google Earth and Google Sky has led to several items being created. In Google Earth, the ISS Locator, 100 Brightest Satellites Tracker and the Advanced Any Satellite Tracker have all been very popular and downloaded a combined 5,600 times already. In Google Sky my SCUBA data layer has now been access over 1,500 times and for some reason has inspired several emails - thanks for those! There is also last year’s IRAS 100 Micron all sky coverage for Google Sky which I had forgotten all about.

The LookUp iPhone and iPod Touch app has also been popular. Apple featured it as a Staff Pick and it hung around in the Top 10 for some time. It is now accessed about 2,000 times a day and a recent TUAW bump has kept it visible on the Apple web apps site.

The week of the lunar eclipse led me to post a video on what would be seen. I hosted the video on YouTube to reduce server load and was quite surprised however when it became one of the top videos of the week. You can have quite laugh reading the comments on the YouTube page. No one seemed to grasp that it was made on a computer and several accuse me of tricking them.

The Orbiting Frog Shop launched not too long ago and has been selling lots of t-shirts. More designs will appear all the time so keep your eyes peeled, and if anyone spots one in the wild, I’d love to hear about it.
I have now joined the crew at the Carnival of Space by hosting the 40th edition. The Carnival is a great place to pick up new RSS feeds and bloggers.

Finally I’d just like to thank everyone for taking such an interest. Thanks for all the emails and for actually reading the blog. Now I’m off to create a real blog post (i.e. not about myself) before having some lovely Swiss lunch. Yum.

To kick off the store there are some great designs including my favourite ‘Sizes of the Planets’ t-shirt which shows the relative sizes of all the planets in the Solar System (including Dwarves). You can also purchase these as coasters.

Also featuring in the store are the first 3 in a series of t-shirts displaying the wavelength of the colour you’re wearing. There are more planned but for now we have ‘It’s not easy being 510nm‘, ‘Nothing rhymes with 590nm‘ and ‘Feeling 475nm‘.

All are available in men’s and women’s sizes and in a wide range of colours (although obviously the wavelength items only feature certain… well wavelengths). Just browse around the store to see the various options.

More items will be featured here on the blog, once in a while, as they are added to the store. I have no intention of filling my blog with ads for my own shop, but this is a nice way to make something back from the website, and it’s fun.

I hope you’ll enjoy wearing some of the geekiest items around.

(All prices are in US Dollars, meaning that whilst delivery takes a little longer, users in the UK can take advantage of current exchange rates.)

I seem to have been ‘Bad Astronomered‘. My statistics also show that the offending page was Phil’s Thursday posting titled Travisty of Astronomy, but no link to my site can be found there. Though a mysterious reference to a ‘bad link’ from Phil in the comments suggests that maybe I had been placed in error and then (like a weed) removed.

Thanks for the brief flurry, Phil. I really must get some ads put up in case this happens again. I also note that several of the unsuspecting guests went on to read a post or two: welcome, if you’re still reading.

For ease of use, Westie also allows you to browse your files in Westieflow, which shows you thumbnail images of all your files as if they have been chewed up and torn apart. You can also use QuickBark to try and access these files without leaving the Finder. When you do this, the documents will run away from you playfully, getting more and more torn up as they do so.

Westie also lets you use Spaces to do several things at once. So let’s say you’re browsing the web and preparing a photo album in iPhoto at the same time. You can put each of these activities into a different workspace. When you do, Westie will put itself into a third space where it will growl and wiggle, alerting you to much needed attention in that space. The fourth space is always reserved entirely for Westie where it can tug on your virtual trouser leg and ask to be let in/out of the Finder window.

The improved DVD player in Westie allows you to watch movies like never before. If any of your movies happen to feature dogs, cats or other animals Westie will flash up handy messages like ‘hey, there’s a dog on screen’ and ‘hey, look at that - a dog!’.

The new stacks feature in Westie lets piles of documents sit in your dock. You can even make Smart Stacks for movies and downloaded files. For your convenience, Westie has placed a ‘Walk’ stack in your dock. Whenever you even go near the Walk stack with your mouse, Westie will make your mac vibrate and bleep. It will use the new in-built motion sensor to show you where the front door is and begin preparing to eject any disks that are currently loaded. (This will also happen if you type walk into any document; or even if you play any songs with words that sound like the world walk, including talk, squark and work).

Finally, Westie now has Boot Camp built in, which means you can start-up your Mac in Shih-Tzu, Spaniel or even Collie*.

Westie is available pretty much anywhere, in various levels of naughty, cheeky and loveable. Don’t worry about training. Westie will train you how to use it within a few weeks of installing.

Have fun!

*Spaniel is great for games in the first couple of years but then really slows down and needs upgrading. Shih-Tzu is really more of a compact OS that can often be run from a memory stick (it doesn’t require much memory). If you really wanna get some work done, go for the Collie option.