Happy World Metrology Day everyone! The international system of units is now redefined. Isn't this exciting? Are you excited ‘cause I'm excited? I've never been so excited... The new kilogram starts today. Well maybe the precise way in which we measure the weight of coffee doesn’t send everyone over the moon, but for those of us working in instrumentation and metrology, this is exciting.

Read More

Once upon a time, in the magical land of Equestria…

As has been widely commented, the mention of Celestia’s “ones-versary” in Horse Play provides a unique reference point to fix the Equestrian calendar. We now know Twilight’s school was up and running 1111 years after Celestia first raised the sun. We could question whether Pinkie Pie is a reliable source, but taken at face value it sets the scale of Equestrian history.

Read More

I have always found the way in which ponies manage the environment of Equestria to be a fascinating idea to play around with in my stories, such as Time on Their Hooves. But the more I think about it, the more relevant this fantasy world seems to be to our own…

Read More

The candlestick used by Starswirl the Bearded to light the way when he was exploring the caverns of Maretania. Before it was destroyed by an irresponsible draconequus, who should never be let near any such important artefacts. There’s a story here…

This is a post for any fellow museum nerds.

Read More

I have now uploaded some 3600 words of Author’s Notes to Time on Their Hooves, spread across the seven chapters, to provide further details on the science, history and other random references to real world trivia which were woven into this story, from Zero Longitude to Atomic Clocks.

Read More

The last week has been the biannual temporal anomaly when the time difference between Europe and America is one hour different than usual due the fact that the clocks go back a week earlier on this side of the Atlantic. Which leads to no end of confusion and missed telephone meetings for everyone working in international collaborations. Is it really beyond the competence of the authorities to agree a common date for the time change? I guess Daylight Saving Time has such a long history of

Read More

I have now uploaded the final chapter of Time on Their Hooves, so this story is now ‘Complete’. Yay! That said, I am not yet finished with it as I still want to add some authors notes – for example I need to say some more about atomic clocks – so expect some more blog posts tagged to this story in coming weeks.

Read More

I've just published Chapter 4 of Time on Their Hooves. I would like to apologise that it has taken me so long to do this. I really thought I would have finished this by now, but unfortunately I've had to deal with all sorts of complicated problems at work over the last six months, and it seemed whenever I found the

Read More

The next chapter of Time on Their Hooves is now out. Continuing this saga of timekeeping in Equestria.

Read More