Old Data

From Slashdot:

A team of researchers at the University of Southampton have demonstrated a way to record and retrieve as much as 360 terabytes of digital data onto a single disk of quartz glass in a way that can withstand temperatures of up to 1000 C and should keep the data stable and readable for up to a million years.

Sounds awesome! Now word on the read/write speeds, though.

And why, exactly, would we want to save data longer than the human race? So our alien overlords could find out what our Facebook status was on July 14, 2112?

Still Standing

From The Atlantic:

When NASA launched the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter in 2009, of course scientists were hoping the spacecraft would add to the knowledge we have of our sole natural satellite -- its geography, topography, weather, and so on. But one question many were hoping the LRO would answer had little to do with the moon's environment: What had become of the Apollo sites, left behind by the humans who visited the surface between 1969 and 1972? 

For forty-odd years, the flags have been exposed to the full fury of the Moon's environment -- alternating 14 days of searing sunlight and 100° C heat with 14 days of numbing-cold -150° C darkness. But even more damaging is the intense ultraviolet (UV) radiation from the pure unfiltered sunlight on the cloth (modal) from which the Apollo flags were made. Even on Earth, the colors of a cloth flag flown in bright sunlight for many years will eventually fade and need to be replaced. So it is likely that these symbols of American achievement have been rendered blank, bleached white by the UV radiation of unfiltered sunlight on the lunar surface. Some of them may even have begun to physically disintegrate under the intense flux. 

From the LROC images it is now certain that the American flags are still standing and casting shadows at all of the sites, except Apollo 11. Astronaut Buzz Aldrin reported that the flag was blown over by the exhaust from the ascent engine during liftoff of Apollo 11, and it looks like he was correct!

Pretty cool, if you ask me.  And what's even cooler - and something that I keep forgetting - is that the entire span of the Apollo moon missions that actually saw man walking on the moon was only three years. 


See the LROC website here.

Flying with the Falcon

Awesome.

Thanks to Dave P. for sending this.

Goodbye Blurry Images

From Adobe MAX:

A sneak peek of a new Photoshop plugin that can dramatically unblur a blurry image.  And this after I've spent so much time weeding those blurry shots out of my photo library, too.



Wow.  Just...wow.

click here if you're seeing this on Facebook: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xxjiQoTp864&feature=player_embedded#!

Get Your Bellini Fix - Relavent Style

Be sure to check out the latest issue of Relavent magazine and my buddy, Jason Bellini's (aka Sketch the Journalist) article Entitled "Gene 'Malice' Thornton Finds God."

Kudos to Bellini!

Nature's Laser Floyd

Timescapes Timelapse: Learning to Fly from Tom Lowe @ Timescapes on Vimeo.

Simply amazing. Beautiful photography. Beautiful movement. Amazing angles. And great music.

Be sure to check out Timescapes.org for more videos.

Huge thanks to Angus for showing me this!

Next Step- Cyborgs...

From Wired:

For years, the NFL Combine has been vilified as a host for a series of workouts that don’t accurately measure a football player’s impact on the field. Now, one company has potentially changed that with an electronic shirt that tracks everything from heart rate to g force of acceleration.

Damn that's cool.

Huge thanks to Matt for sending this link.

The Ice Book

The Ice Book (HD) from Davy and Kristin McGuire on Vimeo.

Absolutely breathtaking.

Huge thanks to Matt for sending me this.

Homemade Spacecraft

Homemade Spacecraft from Luke Geissbuhler on Vimeo.

This seems like something I would be likely to try. Amazing.

Do yourself a favor and read the comments.

Lightsaberpalooza

Thanks to Ron.

Frickin' LASERS!

From CBS News:

The U.S. Navy has used a a laser weapon to shoot down four unmanned aerial vehicles in a test that rings up memories of Ronald Reagan's "Star Wars" missile defense shield in the 1980s.

The successful test of the Laser Weapon System off the coast of California was announced during the Farnborough International Air Show, which is taking place this week in England.

The technology, jointly developed with Raytheon, used industrial strength lasers, is more than just your run-of-the-mill PR exercise. In its write-up of the technology, Scientific American correctly notes that the shoot-down of the drones over water constitutes an advance over previous Raytheon tests which focused on static targets.

Hell, yeah...

Three for the price of none

From Space.com:

If you live in the northern hemisphere, go out any night this week an hour or so after sunset and look at the western sky to catch a planetary triple play starring Venus, Saturn and Mars.

The first thing skywatchers will see — weather permitting — is the brilliant planet Venus, slightly north of west, in the constellation Gemini. Look for Gemini's twin first magnitude stars, Pollux and Castor, just above Venus.

As the sky gets darker, the planet Mars can be spotted to Venus' left as it appears in the constellation Leo very close to the bright, first magnitude star Regulus. Further still to the left will be Saturn shining in the western part of the constellation Virgo.

This sky map shows how to spot all three planets as they appear across a 71-degree angle in the night sky.

I'm Getting a New Dog

I want it to be white with brown spots and floppy ears.

Polar Clock for Snow Leopard

Up until OS X Leopard, my favorite utility of all time was Pixel Breaker's Polar Clock. But the Leopard upgrade broke it and so I've gone a couple of years now without it.

But on a whim, I checked the Pixel Breaker website this morning and found.... drumroll... Polar Clock for Snow Leopard!!!!!

It's a free screen saver available for download, and I absolutely love it.

And there's even an iPhone version now, too. And yes, there's a Windows version too (but something so beautiful just doesn't belong on a crappy old PC.)

Thanks, Pixel Breaker.

The Manliest Way to Cook Bacon ... EVER!

... with a machine gun.

You need bacon, tin foil, a 7.62mm German Rheinmetall MG 3 machine gun from the 1950s, and around 200 rounds of ammunition. Simply wrap the bacon around the barrel, and fire away.

From Eater National.

Click through to the original Reddit post and see the best comment I've ever seen on a blog post: "Your identity is no longer secret on the internet. Anyone can look up "awesome" in the dictionary and see your picture."

Major thanks to Matt for sharing this!

Insects Wet and Wild

From the UK Mail:

Incredible and beautiful images of insects covered in water. I know he says these shots were taken close to his home in Poland, but word is that it was actually somewhere near Daytona on Spring Break.





See the whole set here.

Speak & Spell Emulator

I spent countless hours with both my Speak & Spell and Speak & Math when I was little. I ran across this today when trying to see if they still sold them for my kids...

A Speak & Spell Emulator!

You can either click on the keys on the screen or use your keyboard to interact. Awesome.

Jealousy

About ten years ago, I got to work for several days on a video shoot with Gene Cernan, the last man ever to walk on the moon. I still count it as one of the greatest experiences of my life.

This morning I got an e-mail from my cousin, who works in Bahrain in the hotel industry. He got to meet both Neil Armstrong (the first man to walk on the moon) AND Jim Lovell (of Apollo 13).

Flat. Out. Awesome.





Thanks to Bassem for sharing.

Real Life Fortress of Solitude

Today must be Superman day, kids. Buckle up.

Past meets present.

Really, really cool idea.



via Inspire Me Now