Stuphology

SubText has been upgraded a couple times since I last posted.  I plan to upgrade the site, but I'm worried about losing setup or content.  I'll give it a whirl over the next week or so and see how it goes.

Dr.Z

I'm doing some housecleaning in the site, getting ready to actually start posting again.  I've been really, really distracted and busy, and once I stopped posting it was just impossible to get started again.  So...here I am, starting again.

I'm going to reslant the site a little bit.  I've been doing a lot of information security work - the reason for not posting here - and I've got a lot that I could post about that.  The problem is that the site isn't really setup to be about InfoSec...so, well, it's my site, so I guess I can write about anything I like.

I do plan to start up book reviews again.  The past month or so I've been able to squeeze in time to start catching up on my reading.  But general gadget-stuph, well, I don't know that I'll be able to pick that up again any time soon.

More later,

Dr.Z

EPOD this morning has a great picture of sundogs over a radome at the Halley Research Station in Antarctica.

Dr.Z

EPOD this morning has a fun picture of an airliner passing in front of the moon that could have appeared on the APOD page.  Fly me to the moon!

Dr.Z

This morning APOD has a great launch shot of the launch of the Phoenix mission to Mars.  Phoenix rising from a fiery nest ... not the most original thought.  I imagine everyone seeing the APOD page today will think the same thing.

Phoenix is a cool mission, literally, for although it begins in flame it is headed for the north polar region of Mars.  The target area has abundant water ice, which the lander will inspect and analyze.  Here's what the lander looks like.



And here's a link to the Phoenix mission site.

Dr.Z

I have always really liked astronomical art and science-fiction space art.  But actual, illustrative, astronomy art is especially appealing because it represents something real.  Apollo astronaut Al Bean's paintings are particular favorites.  Today APOD has a very neat illustration of HD 98800, a double-binary system with a dust disk.  It's an interesting illustration, but not what an actual observer would see, which detracts from it for me.  Still, it's fun.

Dr.Z

This is interesting.  Walk Score attempts to assign a value to the "walkability" of a given address.  It lets you plug in a street address and either a zip code or a city/state.  When I tried it with a zip code it got my location wrong, but it worked with city/state.  My house has a walk score of 34, which is understandable.  We live in a circular development a mile or so away from the main intersection in town.  My office gets a better score, 43, but for some reason counts the company library.  And there's a coffee shop in the next building up the hill, which I didn't know.  That's odd ... how does Google know about the company library?

Dr.Z

One of the issues I have with Galaxy Zoo is that most of the images are awful.  Of course, that's the reason that they need human help analyzing them, but I wish that every one in a while they would have an image as good as the picture of M83, the Southern Pinwheel, on APOD today.

Dr.Z

I think WD-40 is one of the coolest products ever invented.  It went straight from rocket-science R&D to, well, everywhere.  But  taking out your frustrations is not on the official 2000 uses list. 

Have you ever read the 2000 uses list?  Me either, until today, but I note that one of my favorite uses for it is not listed: as a white-board cleaner.  The stinky stuff you get as white board cleaner sort of takes the dust off, but the boards dry out and eventually start absorbing the marker ink.  The cleaner stuff does nothing about that.  If you use WD-40 instead, the board comes completely clean, like brand-new, doesn't dry out, and doesn't absorb ink.

Ah!  The web site has a "JobSite" tips section, a database of uses, and there is a white-board tip.  It's about reviving old white-boards, though.  Not quite the same thing.  I submitted white-board cleaner as a tip.

Did you know there's a WD-40 fan club?  Me neither.  I had to look, and it's a bit ... unusual.  Sort of forced, really, but fun.

Dr.Z

APOD's picture today commemorates the Apollo 11 landing.  Wired has also run an article.  At 4:18 EDT on July 20th, 1969, Eagle touched down in Mare Tranquilis.  28 years ago, American's reached the moon, and promptly lost interest.  The last spacecraft to reach the moon left on December 14th, 1972. 

I have something to say on that, but it'll be in an article later.

Dr.Z