RMS Queen Elizabeth 2 will depart from Southampton on her final trans-Atlantic crossing which will be followed by her final round the world cruise. She will depart amid fireworks and fanfare this evening along with her replacement, MS Queen Victoria who will accompany her to New York.

For those interested, QE2 was laid down at the John Brown Shipyard in Clydebank, Scotland on July 5th 1965 and she was launched on September 20th 1967 by HM The Queen. In the 1980s she saw service as a troop ship during the Falklands conflict during which time she was painted grey for camouflage purposes. In her service life, she made in excess of 800 trans-Altlantic crossings.

After completion of her final voyage, she will be decommissioned and taken to Dubai where she will become a floating hotel, much of her 1960s decor being restored. Personally, I almost feel that I’d rather see her scuttled or broken up than be moored as a permanent reminder of Great British industry and engineering which no-longer exists. It’s worth noting that the new MS Queen Victoria is an Italian-built ship.

You can view the Bridge webcam of the QE2 during her final voyage.

Just a quick update on the delayed launch of Space Shuttle Atlantis on STS-122.

NASA now believe they’ve isolated the ECO sensor fault to the connectors between the External Tank and the Orbiter. Their intention is to swap the connectors out at the pad and to try for a launch on the 24th of January. They hope to have the new connectors installed by next Thursday but the launch date is still a movable feast depending on how the work goes.

And now for something completely different…

The by now famous Kajetokun has made and presented this fabulous fight-scene video on Youtube. The video features a long, tracking fight-scene from the 2005 Tony Jaa Thai action film “Tom Yum Goong”. The catch is that the audio has been entirely replaced for humorous effect with music and samples from video games.

The samples you hear are from Capcom vs SNK 2, Fatal Fury: Mark of the Wolf, King of Fighters and Little Fighters 2.

The music is from Hokuto no Ken.

If anyone wants me, I’ll be out buying Tom Yum Goong on DVD

Oil has been traded for the first time ever on NYMEX (New York Mechantile Exchange) at over $100/bbl.

There was a single trade at over $100US before the trading price fell back to $99.46. Tensions in Nigeria and Algeria have been cited as contributing to the high price and I’d also guess that Turkey’s cross-border raids into Iraq and the imminent start-up of a nuclear reactor in Iran are also contributing to the high price speculation.

Even though the traded price is at an historic high, there doesn’t seem to be any immediate lifting of the price-pressure so we could see further trading at over $100/bbl in the near future.