5000 Channels and Nothing On TV

Lots of dishes

This is just wild. The guy gets like 5000 TV channels off his dozen or so antennas. Not too shabby. This reminds be of the bit I did a while back on TV DX’ing. That used just your normal TV receiver to pull in the distant stations, but this guy is using all sots of old small dish satellite receivers to tune in the transmissions that come in as they say, ‘free to air‘. That translates as he "gets them for free ’cause no one encrypts them". 100% legal and it happens all the time. Some networks don’t even bother to encrypt anything (GASP!)

You can do this stuff yourself, all you need are some dishes and a receiver that can pickup these un-scrambled transmissions. Pretty soon you’ll be grooving to news air checks and weird foreign shows. I’d like it because I might be able to receive ThaiTV. Not only would my wife like it but it might improve my weak grasp of the Thai language a little bit more.

[via Boing Boing] 

Dishing it out

Our Sun in 3D

STEREO Sun

Another link sent to me by secret agent Greg a few days ago. Its a space mission to send two probes in an orbit around the sun that will enable us to see the surface of it in 3D. On Earth you can’t do this very well because you can only get so far apart and when your at that maximum distance you have a whole lot of distorting air between you and your object of observation. Once these satellites are in place it will allow CME (coronal mass ejections) and other particle emission events with depth. Why is this a good thing? Well it will give us a much better chance of preparing for the problems that often occur when the sun has a little ‘gas’ and we all get washed with extra radiation. That can cause communications blackouts, power failures in big cities, satellites to die. And if your living in space or just visiting (think airline crews) it can be a health hazard. I for one can’t wait until images from these guys start showing up on Astronomy Picture of the Day.
 

STEREO spacecraft to image solar blasts in glorious 3-D

Earth Tags

 

 How many times has this happened to you? Your out walking the dog and you see a bright light in the sky and its coming towards you. Next thing you know your being kicked out of the saucer on some strange planet with no idea of how to get home! Turns out they just wanted Fido, that the good news. Bad news your can’t tell the locals where you came from. Well you could if you had one of these. This little lifesaver has all the info an intergalactic traveler needs to know to get back to good ‘ol Earth.

[via Neat-o-Rama]

Location Earth Tags

Champagne cork parachute

ChampiChute

Umm.. Yeah. Stock up on these for the Yew Year. Or better yet, as the animated GIF is better at telling how it works  than the patent papers, build your own. Ya know, nothing says ‘I’m a geek’ louder than a parachute on a champagne cork. Come to think of it, a cork parachute and a 2 liter bottle of something fizzy (I’ll go with baking soda and acid of choice for home chemistry, vinegar) should make for some weekend fun.

[via BoingBoing]

Champagne cork parachute