Author: John

Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter is On The Way

MRO

On Friday the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter lifted off on a seven month journey to the red planet on a mission to see if there is any evidence of water.
Once in place the orbiter will not only conduct sub surface mapping and weather surveys, but will also be acting as a communications and navigations link for future missions.
The cameras on board will be able to detect a dinner plate sized object on the surface in order to assist in future landing site selection. It will also be the first link in the ‘Interplanetary Internet’ system that will link other space missions in a more efficient manner.

Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter

space, science, NASA, JPL,
Mars

Custom Car Emblems

Custom car emblems

I saw this on the MAKE Blog today, you too can have a professional grade custom car emblem. Each letter is between $1US ( a dot) and $3.99 (things like ‘@’ and a heart). A pretty good deal if your looking for that special something for your car. I guess you could use them on a plane – but the glue might not be rated for speeds over 80 knots.

Custom Car Emblems

cool, custom

A Reader For My PDA That Works!

reader

Tonight I was looking to add a copy of the latest Cory Doctorow novel to my PDA. Doctorow’s site has versions of his book in just about every format you could ever want, go take a look – it’s positively impressive.
I figured I’d have an easy time finding a format that would work on my PDA but I was sadly mistaken. At first I tried an HTML file, figuring the built in Internet Explorer would be able to load it but it barfed and locked up. Then I tried the Microsoft Reader, you know the LIT files that all the DRM junkies just love? Well it loaded it just fine and looked great but informed me that it could no longer display the book after page 14. Somehow, that makes sense in a Microsoft sort of way. Looks great but screws you on performance.
I didn’t even bother with the PalmOS PRC file, my Mobilpocket reader is a pain to use.
And a Pocket Word document is out of the question, the batteries will run out before it would ever load.
After almost giving up and forgetting the whole thing I spotted the Fictionbook 2 format one and a new reader called Haali Reader. What the heck, I’ll give it a try. So I downloaded the book and reader and ran it on the PDA and bingo, instant book. No problems with memory issues and it looks great! I throw a 2.2MB text file at it half expecting to need to reset it and to my amazement it works. I poke through the settings and discover that I can rotate the text for horizontal reading, auto scrolling, and bunches of other stuff.
Take a gander at the list of features:

* Loads plain text and XML files. (There were rumours that Haali Reader can open Microsoft LIT files. This is not the case. LIT format is not supported and will never be supported.)
* Cyrillic encodings support with autodetection.
* Last viewed position in file is saved on exit.
* ClearType support.
* Any font/size can be selected.
* Fullscreen and landscape mode.
* Colors can be adjusted.
* Text search.
* Dictionary support. Tapping a word opens a translation window.
* Automatic hyphenation (russian language only).
* Table of contents and bookmarks
* Multiple columns support (1-4)
* PRC/PDB files support (plain text and XML only, HTML is not supported).
* Builtin ZIP archives support.
* Autoscroll (controlled from keyboard/buttons only, settings are in Options->Buttons).

If you have a PocketPC go grab a copy of Haali reader, you won’t regret it.

Haali Reader – a book reader for Windows CE

cool, windowsce, pocketpc, reader, PDA

Clavius Moon Base

Moon Base Clavius

I found this while researching my Abandoned Spaceship and Moon Buggies post – this is a must read site, if only for the ‘Why a Conspiracy’ page.

Moon Base Clavius is an organization of amateurs and professionals devoted to the Apollo program and its manned exploration of the moon. Our special mission is to debunk the so-called conspiracy theories that state such a landing may never have occurred.

Clavius Moon Base – debunking the moon hoax

conspiracy, debunk, hoax, moon

Abandoned Spaceships and Moon Buggies

LM Site

Good. High time that the moon landing hoax nuts are put in their place. But wait, as they are ‘true believers‘ they will cry out about the obvious conspiracy that has taken place. The images will have been doctored, robotic dummy landers will have been landed (true, some people think that men did not go to the moon but the hardware did), or something even wilder will be the reason that the Apollo hardware is seen in the images. I’m hoping that they will get some high resolution images of the poles and prehaps find some nice places for future landings. We need a base up there.
(BTW, I’m putting this in the ‘paranormal’ catagory just because I don’t have much in there.)

The spacecraft’s high-resolution camera, called “LROC,” short for Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera, has a resolution of about half a meter. That means that a half-meter square on the Moon’s surface would fill a single pixel in its digital images.
Apollo moon buggies are about 2 meters wide and 3 meters long. So in the LROC images, those abandoned vehicles will fill about 4 by 6 pixels.

NASA – Abandoned Spaceships and Moon Buggies

Apollo, nuts, hoax, moon, NASA