When I was a kid I used to play with Star Wars action figures. I’d imagine battles and stories and play them out with my range of characters (and being a kid and therefore inherently evil the bad guys would usually win). Anyway, my parents used to have a large chest freezer and some days I’d take my Han Solo character and freeze him in ice – pretending it was like the carbonite in The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi.

Being a nerdy young lad I wanted to try and re-create that authentic look so tried freezing him in Coke – which is black like the carbonite from the film. Sadly rather than the jet black effect it pretty much ended up looking like regular ice with a bit of slush on the surface. Lesson learned – don’t waste Coke by freezing it, just drink the stuff.

I once froze him submerged in a glass jam jar just for fun. Unfortunately I then discovered the interesting fact that when water freezes it expands as the jam jar had cracked into several pieces in the freezer. (I didn’t mention this to my parents). Lesson learned.

In the end I found that if I put him in a shallow plastic container on his back (a small Tupperware would do) then I could recreate the Return of the Jedi frozen Han Solo look after a few hours in the freezer. I could then carry on playing and act out a rescue scene where the villains let him think he’s getting away and kill him at the last minute (because the bad guys always win).

Anyway, I froze him quite a number of times, thawed him out in a rescue attempt and froze him again for the next chapter. Once, out of curiosity, I put warm water in the container instead of cold. I imagined that the small quantity of warm water would defrost the entire freezer and spoil all the food therein. I was quite wrong (sadly) and even more surprisingly the water actually seemed to freeze quicker than it normally did (being a very impatient child I’d check on the freezing process many times until it was done). Since it made no sense at all that warm water would freeze faster than cold I just thought I was mistaken and carried on playing.

But you know what? Believe it or not – and I’m pretty sure you won’t – warm water DOES freeze faster than cold water. It goes against all rational thinking, but it’s absolutely true!

First described by Aristotle back in 350BC, this curious effect had long been forgotten until it was re-discovered in the 1960′s and called the Mpemba effect after the youngster who came across it. I read about this phenomenon from a book called, I kid you not: “How to Fossilise Your Hamster: And Other Amazing Experiments For The Armchair Scientist” (pictured right). It’s published by New Scientist and is filled with interesting experiments you can do at home including demonstrating that hot water can freeze faster than cold (the optimal test is to fill two ice cube trays with water, one at 5ºC and the other at 35ºC and put them in the freezer – you’ll find the latter freezes first even though the former reaches 0ºC first).

The even more curious thing about hot water freezing faster than cold water is that there’s no scientific explanation as to why. There are plenty of theories (and no, it’s not because the thermostat in your freezer goes into overdrive as the water is hot making it cool faster – you can do this outside if your Winter climate is cold enough and the same thing still happens) but none that have been unequivocally proven to be correct. Can you think of a reason?

It just goes to show that even in the 21st century with all our miracles of modern technology that something as seemingly inert and simple as water can be shrouded in mystery. Now, time to head to the pet shop for a hamster to fossilise…

My move from Movable Type to WordPress (the software that powers this site, barring the forum) just over a year ago has turned out to be a great choice with hindsight. At the time I liked the look and extensibility options of WordPress and the fact that a vibrant community had built up around it so I switched and I’ve never looked back.

Ever since then I’ve become a bit of a WordPress evangelist to friends and have used it to build a few sites and encouraged other people I know to do the same. I like to keep an eye on the next version as it’s being developed and have a local copy on my computer that I play with. Early through the 2.7 development process it became clear to me that 2.7 was going to be very good. Things like threaded comments, paged comments, sticky posts, auto-updates, bulk editing and above all the revamped administration interface so impressed me that I started using the bleeding edge builds on this site. I’ve been working in the software industry a long time and have learned to steer clear of beta builds of applications I depend upon (particularly Microsoft ones I have to say) – I’ve been burned too many times to count. But with WordPress I felt differently, and it’s all about the people who work on it and the way it’s developed.

Coming from a corporate development background as I do I’d always assumed that popular open source projects would mean a lot of people pulling in different directions and therefore require a lot of management overhead to filter out the noise and move the product onwards. I assumed that outside of the more rigid “need to make money out of this” corporate environment open source projects would tend to bumble along rather than stride along. But watching the WordPress development process has shown me that I was quite wrong and pretty much the opposite is true.

The more people who use a particular piece of software the more they’ll want it to do this little thing that nobody else would use but they absolutely want and will moan and complain if it doesn’t (I get plenty of that with John’s Background Switcher and that’s nowhere near as popular as something like WordPress). Or you get passionate people who love the product but want to pull it in different directions and won’t back down. A handful of these people can result in a lot of bickering and momentum slows. In the corporate world you’re either a slave to these people and have to create some Frankenstein’s monster of a product to please everybody (making compromises) along the way or they can be ignored completely which is easier as the development process isn’t publicly visible like an open source project is.

What I like about WordPress is that there are a bunch of talented people, passionate about what they do working on it. Matt steers the ship and can have the final say on something that needs the final say, anybody can contribute their suggestions, ideas, bug fixes and so forth and rather than having battles as to what direction WordPress goes in, there’s always the option of “if you don’t like it, fork it and go your own way”. This was how WordPress itself started, as a fork of b2. If someone comes up with a great idea that improves WordPress then there’s every chance it’ll make it into the product. Since the type of person who contributes to the development of WordPress will be passionate and care about the product, they want to make it better for everybody. And as the development process is open to all, there’s no excuse to not be connected to its evolution.

So where was I before I went off on a tangent? Oh yes, installing the bleeding edge version of WordPress 2.7 here. I could watch the development of 2.7 unfold in front of my eyes and if I found something wrong I could raise a bug report or even submit a fix (as could anybody else) and knowing the quality, dedication and passion of the people working on it and seeing how great it was going to be, I wanted to start using it as soon as I could. And you know what? WordPress 2.7 is even better than I thought it would be!

99% of the people who use WordPress no doubt have little interest in its development (quite rightly, being users rather than developers) and the first they know about a new version is either when it’s released or when they read posts prior to release discussing new functionality. Some may moan and complain about releases being too frequent or changes that they didn’t think were necessary (like another redesign less than a year after the last one), but when you see the amount of work, care and thought that goes into each release and the reasoning behind all the decisions (such as the latest redesign making it a platform to take WordPress far further than was possible before), it’s clear to me that they’re doing the right thing and WordPress is in good hands. And if you don’t like it, you can always fork it and take it in your own direction. But I wouldn’t recommend it as you’ll find out just how hard it is to create successful software that people will love. Software like WordPress.

Anyway, if you’ve never used WordPress, go and take a look and if you’re already a user, read all about the new version here. Quite simply, it rocks! Oh yes, and open source isn’t bad either!

While out in my garage doing a weights session to get over my latest footballing injury (it’s official, I now have two dodgy knees) I heard an interesting article on Radio 5 live. A 23 year old lad called Arton Baleci was doing an experiment to see if he can turn himself (a self confessed ‘average’ footballer) into a professional footballer good enough to play in the English Premier league (arguably the best league in the world).

Being a professional footballer is the dream of many a young lad but as anybody who’s played football to a decent level knows, the difference between someone who can stand out at Sunday league or top amateur level and a professional who plays in the Conference (the lowest of the professional leagues) can be vast.

My friend Stu used to play semi-pro and when he was a youngster he went to an England schoolboys training camp (or something like that). He said some of the kids there were amazingly talented and he felt they were a level up from himself (he’s modest though so I take it with a pinch of salt). And yet how many of these kids made it in the game, even in the lower leagues? Not one. To play in the Premier league which is filled with world class players you can’t just be a decent footballer, you have to be a great footballer.

So how can a 23 year old recent graduate think he’s got a chance of going from being out of breath running for a bus, having not played competitive football in years to being able to get a pro contract for a team in the top football league in the world in a year? Well, perhaps not surprisingly, he’s got a plan.

He’s surrounding himself with top coaches so that he can get himself to the standard of fitness required of a professional footballer (which at 23 and looking at his physique I don’t think will be a problem so long as he keeps his determination). He’ll be using the latest scientific techniques to speed up his ability to learn the footballing skills he’ll need to make it as a player. He’ll be analysing the attributes of what makes a top player and using the latest techniques (both physical and psychological) to get into the right mindset and make those attributes his own. He’ll be using the latest sports science combined with his determination to see if it’s possible. He’s the guinea pig in his own experiment to see how much we understand what “that something special” is that separates Wayne Rooney from his classmates at school and see if it’s possible to learn how to do what came naturally to him.

It’s definitely possible to make a good player into a great player through the right type of training and sheer hard work over many years as real-life lower league professional footballer – Gavin Strachan – talks about here. But to take a non-professional footballer right to the top in such a short space of time sounds like a bridge too far. Had he set his target on just getting a professional contract then I’d say he’s got a pretty good chance since more often than not it’s the mental strength and determination that separates the lads who get dropped by clubs from those who get pro contracts. But the Premier league, I suspect, will be beyond him in such a short space of time.

Having said that, he’d never get the publicity if he wasn’t setting his sights high and frankly I’d love to be proven wrong. Not only would it give hope to a lot of kids who’ve not made it and want a second chance, but it could take football and other sports to a higher level in the future. Just imagine what the training techniques that can take a regular guy to the top could do for someone with natural talent and exceptional pace as a result of lucky genetics!

Anyway, I’ll certainly be following his progress over the coming year and if like me you wish you’d been the next Paul Scholes then you should too. He’s documenting his journey at The Beautiful Aim and has a YouTube channel too. Good luck Arton!