Thursday, April 19, 2012

Man Flies a Boeing 737 in His Garage

From Mercury News. “James Price of Pleasanton has built a flight simulator out of the nose of a former Lufthansa fleet Boeing 737…”

Friday, April 13, 2012

Your Next Boat

The Adastra super yacht.  From Mail Online.


  • The Adastra is so hi-tech that you can even control it with your iPad 
  • Its range is 4,000 miles, enough to go from the UK to New York in a single trip without refueling 
  • The 42m yacht has a maximum speed of 22.5 knots 


Saturday, April 07, 2012

Why Have I Disappeared from Facebook?

Or at least, why am I not responding?

I have a few FB accounts and it seems that FB has decided I need to provide a phone number to keep them active.  Right now I can't log into most of them without providing a cell phone number.  I'm generally put off by this whole development and mostly inclined not to provide any information like that and just leave FB, at least on those accounts, behind.

For anyone who wants to read what I have to say, the good news is that I usually only post on FB an echo of what I post here.  You can always see what I have to say by reading this blog.  You always could.

Similarly, I've provided easy and effective ways to contact me.  You can, for example, use those to comment on or follow up on my postings here.

What I am missing out on are some postings and pictures by folks on the locked FB accounts, and even occasional messages.  Right now I can't reply to any of them and can't see many of them.

For most of the time I've not been a fan of FB and I'm less a fan than ever right now.  Who knows, though, they may yet emerge as the preferred way to communicate and stay in touch.  I expect the future holds some interesting surprise that I haven't imagined.

In the mean time, if you're looking for me, I'm still here where I've been the whole time.  That's the nice thing about centering communication, at least the outbound kind, on one's own blog.  You always have control of it and it can persist beyond the limits and misdirections of other services.

New Look

Well, now I've gone and done it.  For the first time in some six years (I think) I've changed the look of the site here.  I may make more changes over the coming days as I sort this out.

The site was looking a little old and, frankly, I didn't really like the current version of the look.   I did like the fonts, colors and general layout.

However, I'm clearly a fan of the lighter and more open looks and this one is an example of that.   I like the days being grouped this way.

I spent some time poking around with the text font.  This is currently Open Sans (I think).

Ting

The new mobile phone service, Ting, looks interesting.

The Twelve Greatest Defunct Tech Magazines

... from Technologizer.   Memories.

Mac OS X Dtrace Scripts

I'm cleaning up my email notes and found this excellent article on Mac OS X Dtrace scripts from Brendan's blog.

Friday, April 06, 2012

Nice Balloon Flight Report

This is a nice balloon flight report and I like the 1/4-wave and yagi antennas.

Monday, March 26, 2012

Andy Ihnatko's Ipad Review

At the Chicago Sun-Times, here's Andy Ihnatko's full review of the iPad.

My favorite line has nothing to do with the iPad:  “Well, look, if you want your mind blown, go and watch the original Star Wars trilogy again while pondering the question ‘Is Artoo Detoo using The Force?’”

Thursday, March 08, 2012

Coronal Mas Ejection, Geomagnetic Storm Update

From spaceweather.com:

 A coronal mass ejection (CME) hit Earth's magnetic field on March 8th around 1100 UT. The impact was weaker than expected, sparking only a mild (Kp=5) geomagnetic storm. However, the storm could intensify in the hours ahead depending on electromagnetic conditions in the wake of the CME. High-latitude sky watchers should be alert for auroras

Wednesday, March 07, 2012

Electric Charges in a Molecule

via the BBC.

Nifty HDTV Antenna

for UHF.

The Bitcoin Story

I wondered where things are now with Bitcoin and went looking for a report.  This story at Wired is pretty good.

Remarkable Employees

I hate integer headlines, but this article at Inc was fascinating.

Smalltalk, Haskell, LISP

by Daniel Lyons.

Raspberry Pi

$35 and $25 mini computers.  The Verge.

Uh, that's “mini” in a new, modern sense, not in the PDP-11 sense.  I used to say that, soon, we'd have computers that you could actually lose. “Did you notice were I put the email server? I can't find it!”

Roku Interview

Jolie O'Dell from Venture Beat interviews Anthony Wood, CEO of Roku.

MIT Launches Android App Inventor

Android and me.

Wallit

Write on walls via augmented reality.  From Venture Beat.