Search results

I promised to start this thread when construction began, but I've been too busy, and now the Grand Opening is only three days away! Here are some photos: I'll have more of the inside soon. I'd love to talk about equipment or business, or whatever anyone wants to discuss. Gotta go - I've got...

I almost never start new threads. And I'm sure I'll soon regret starting this one. But that's another matter. I'd like to dedicate this thread to the skeptics among us who have felt misunderstood, downtrodden, and wedgied. I'd like first to define some characteristics of skeptics, just to...

Boo!

The well-known record label, Deutche Grammaphon, best known for its extensive classical music collection, is finally opening an online music store! If you're interested, you can reach it here. NOTE: It doesn't officially open until Wednesday, November 28, 2007, so until then, you can...

Picture Test

The Mars Global Surveyor has found compelling evidence that there is still liquid water on Mars! Today! (Well, as recently as seven years ago, which, in geological terms, is the same as today.) The evidence is in the form of sedimentary deposits that have the tell-tale characteristics of...

Remember the scientist who lost his father and was determined to build a time machine so he could go back and meet with him again? The problem was that the "time-travel experiment" he proposed would, if anything at all, demonstrate simple time dilation, which is a phenomenon that isn't capable...

Does anyone here know of any software that will allow me to take jpg files from a digital camera and assemble them into a movie? I would like to do stop-motion animation, but digitally. I know the film equipment is available to do this, but c'mon, this is the 21st century! I thought if...

Are you Kirk? Are you Picard? Or are you a more mundane character, like Checkov, or Sulu? Take this test to find out. I took the test, and for all my years as a Star Trek fan, here's my reward: An Expendable Character (Redshirt) 95% :laugh: :laugh: :laugh: So there you have it. I've...

Okay, I know I promised everyone here that I'd never start another sucky thread, but this is just too remarkable to keep to myself. This video was brought to my attention by the Bad Astronomer. It's a video of David Attenborough with the Lyrebird. You can watch it here. Yes, it's for real.

Does anyone here have any Internet portals that you use and would recommend? News, local weather, local movie showtimes, and some configurability would be nice. I'll even consider a paid portal service, if it will completely eliminate the ads. I run Linux, so anything that requires...

Continue reading...

With the successful landing of the Discovery and her crew, I wanted to reflect on NASA's successful test flight. How better to do this than to successfully execute an EVA mission of our own? Given: You are in a space suit, orbiting the Earth outside of Discovery. You are untethered, unpowered...

I recently read about a challenge between Asimov and Clarke to write Science Fiction stories that would fit on a postcard. I decided to take up the challenge myself and came up with the following: ************************************ Another Mother By Brian Wells He had been the...

I'm not a coffee drinker, but my wife is, so we have a coffee maker - the brew-through-filter-into-a-pot variety. I was wondering if there's anything the coffee maker can do for me, a non-coffee drinker. is there anything else I can make with it that I would like? I can't modify it, at least not...

I should be posting this a month from now, but it's fresh in my mind, so what the heck. After watching about four classic Twilight Zone episodes on my TiVo before going to bed last night, I had a strange dream. In my dream, I was in one of those dreadful DotD situations, with brain-eating...

Although it's not polyphonic, this black hole has been singing for billions of years. Singing Black Hole Longitudinal pressure waves in interstellar gas is nothing new, but this is the first I've heard of a sustained pressure oscillation in deep space that could be regarded as sound...

The only link I can find for this story requires registration (WFAA.com), so I've pasted the relevant text here: FW man uses back of his resume to write threatening note during robbery 07/23/2003

A privately-funded space plane has been secretly built and is ready for high-altitude tests: Space Ship One I found its reentry characteristics the most interesting, with a maximum air speed of mach 3.5 (unlike the SST's mach 18). It's low-orbit and too small to be a payload lifter...

The author of this article postulates that the acceleration of the Universe’s expansion is itself accelerating: http://dsc.discovery.com/news/afp/20...76.79919832484 According to the theory proposed in this article, in the end, space will expand so fast that the very atoms that make up our...

A true workhorse, Pioneer 10, after over thirty years of space flight, has stopped phoning home at over 11 light-hours away. Pioneer 10 In light of the recent tragedy, let us not forget the astounding successes we've had, like Pioneer 10, the Hubble Space Telescope, and the unforgetable...

I’m compiling the world, waiting for my computer to come back, so I came up with a little astronomy quiz. True or False: * A waxing moon never shares the sky with a setting sun on the horizon. * A waning moon never shares the sky with a rising sun on the horizon. * A waxing moon...

Who played the elderly woman who replaced Jessica's housekeeper? I thought it might be Rose Marie from the old Dick Van Dyke show, but I deleted the show from my TiVo before I remembered to check the credits. Can anyone confirm her identity for me? Thanks. (I tried Fox's official site, but...

Actually, it's not mine. I got it for my wife who recently got a job that involves some travel. It's our first cell phone (yes, we've made a major leap into the 90s :)), and I couldn't be happier. I've seen PDA/cell phone devices before, but nothing that has an "always on" connection like the...

Boo! (Happy Halloween.) :)

A newly discovered tenth world, with the combined mass of all the asteroids put together, causes astronomers to rethink just exactly what a planet is: http://www.msnbc.com/news/818195.asp?0si=- Should Pluto be downgraded, or should the new world be upgraded?

As luck would have it, my hard disk died in my 2.5-year-old, standalone, 30-hour TiVo. Also, as luck would have it, Fry's recently had a sale on Western Digital 120 GB hard drives for $109. Also, as luck would have it, I had made a backup of my TiVo's hard disk image about a year ago for just...

Well, it’s been a while since I’ve taken on a DIY project that related to Home Theater, but I finally did something recently that some of you may be interested in. In our HT, we have two entertainment TiVos, a DSS receiver (not tied to a TiVo), a DVD player, a VCR, and two surveillance video...

Here's a remarkable little story about an inventer who had an inspriational idea and isn't quite finished running with it: Plama Gun I hope this guy gets some recognition for his efforts. I haven't seen a succession of ideas this cool in a long, long time.

A googolplex is ten to the power of a googol, and a googol is ten to the power of 100. Just to give you an idea of how big a googolplex is, there are not enough protons in the known universe to number a googolplex – and there are a LOT of protons in our universe. But is there a googolplex of...