The Royal Astronomical Society has a vacancy for a Librarian, to run one of the best astronomy collections in the world http://bit.ly/RASlib

Greek economy trapped by Ptolemaic system with Germany at the centre, and fudges like epicycles and equants http://on.ft.com/AA28lC

Financial Times Feb 22 page 12 publishes a short letter by me on the Ptolemaic model of the solar system http://on.ft.com/AA28lC

I'm off to pay for a super Holland-America Line cruise on Ryndam: Norway Fjords. Wow!

Taxing times. Just received five Notices of Coding from Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs. The Coalition Govt needs the money!

Went to Salon des Vins, independent producers, in Nice today Came away with 48 bottles Alsace Rhone Burgundy Jura Bordeaux C'est La France

Why are there so few photographs in public domain of Edwin Hubble. The pipe smoker at the Palomar Schmidt seems to be ubiquitous

Nose to grindstone harvesting pix for our astronomy book on Origin of Structure in the Universe (Princeton UP 2012). http://bit.ly/TOTast

All aboard for our RAS Guest lecturing on astronomy Queen Mary 2, Nov 20-27. Must do planetarium training before then! http://bit.ly/TOTast

Got a parking ticket 17 euros today for not parking rental car in a marked space in a municipal car park. This is very unFrench!

Energy security: France at 1900 on 7 Feb record load on electricity 100+ Gw supplied no blackout no sun no wind no nonsense Vive la France!

Missed my flight due to enormous delay at security

Lots of snow overnight in Cambridge. Got up really early and cleared 25 cm from my drive, and successfully set off in good time for London Stansted airport. Arrived in terminal just over 2 hours before flight. When straight to security to find an immense queue being supervised by heavily arms antiterrorist police. They were great at scaring the inevitable cheats and loud mouthed pax. Anyway it took us 1 hour and 45 minutes to get to the departure gate, by which time our flight had gone. First time for me of missing a flight. It cost 100 pounds to book the same flight for tomorrow and another 100 pounds to deal with the consequences like getting back home for the night. I do not think the Spanish owners of the British Airport Authority are very good. But to be fair, as one should be, the reason for the massive delay was that a lot of airport staff were unable to reach the airport at 0530 this morning because of the snow. I am filing under "life's little challenges".

Missed flight STN 5Feb security delay 1hr40mins No end of easyJet pax affected Ryanair cancelled flights with lots of no shows

Editorial work today: on behalf of St Edmund's College drafting Loyal Address to the Queen congrats Diamond Jubilee