Hubble decision

Hubble decision

I'm sitting here watching NASA TV, with the Big Damn Press Conference. They sure are taking their sweet time getting around to announcing the decision... OK Mike Griffin just started talking... and they definitely are going to add a Hubble servicing mission the shuttle launch manifest. I'm sure there will be lots of commentary about this among the various space blogs today, so I will be assembling summaries of these comments in an update or two later on.

Update: Well, most of the other space geek blogs have commented on the decision by saying only that the mission is going to happen. Astroprof points out what makes this Hubble repair mission different from other shuttle missions:

Missions to the International Space Station have the option of hanging around there until help arrives if the shuttle is seriously damaged in liftoff. That is not an option for missions to HST ... The Vehicle Assembly Building is large enough to support operations needed to prepare two shuttles for launch. NASA may choose to delay slightly the modifications necessary to pad 39B until after the HST servicing mission. That would permit a backup shuttle could be ready to launch on a rescue mission if needed.

The Hubble repair mission should happen sometime around May, 2008. If there are any problems that would prevent safe re-entry of the space shuttle performing that mission, a second shuttle would be dispatched on a rescue mission. That would mark the first time ever that NASA had two shuttles in orbit at the same time.

Technorati Tags: Space, NASA, Hubble

how bizarre is that

how bizarre is that

Well, it looks like my blog has gone back to normal. So, what did I do to fix it, you ask?

Absolutely nothing.

Yesterday, I still had no sidebar. Today poof there it is, like magic. Of course, by the time I post this, it could be all screwed up again, so what do I know?

I guess this means that I should start blogging regularly again.

Technorati Tags: Blog

Does this make sense to anyone?

Does this make sense to anyone?

Last year, Universal Studios enlisted the help of the Firefly fan base to promote the movie Serenity. Joss Whedon himself stated that if it wasn't for the Firefly fans' support, the movie would never have been made.

I was one of those fans, and I received a special invitation (along with a few thousand of my closest Browncoat friends) to review the film on my blog prior to full release. The film was further promoted - largely by the fan base - through the tactic of guerilla marketing.

And now, one of those fans, who goes by the online handle of 11th hour, has been emailed a cease-and-desist order by Universal Studios, along with a demand for US$9000 and threats of a $150000 lawsuit. This order is about original artwork that 11th hour sells based on Firefly and Serenity. In effect, she is still taking part in the guerilla marketing campaign, which so boosted the revenues Universal made from bums in the seats at theaters and sales of DVDs and other merchandise.

In other words, she has been doing for Firefly what Andy Warhol did for Campbell's Soup - promoting it through her original artwork. Whereas Warhol did the soup can image merely to create art for art's sake, 11th hour has been doing it to promote and hopefully increase Universal's Firefly and Serenity DVD sales.

Memo to movie studios that use guerilla marketing campaings, and use the fan base to promote your product: do not bite the hand that feeds you so very, very well. If you rely on the fans themselves to promote your work, then don't get all pissy if they actually, you know, promote your work. Instead, accept it for the free advertising that it is.

Otherwise, you may find yourself facing a backlash.

One of these days, I hope that movie studios, TV networks and the like realize that the internet is not taking revenue away from them, but is instead a potential cash cow that they are not utilizing effectively. Universal did use the internet very effectively last year through the essentially free promotion they got for the movie Serenity, but heavy-handed tactics like this have the potential to undo a lot of the effectiveness of such promotions in the future. After all, who wants to participate in free guerilla marketing for a film studio if they think it will only get them sued?

Technorati Tags: Movies, Firefly, Serenity

Life and water?

Life and water?

A new study suggests that the instruments on the Viking lander, which were supposed to look for the presence of life on Mars, apparently were not sensitive enough to detect life on Mars-like areas of the Earth which are known to have bacterial life. And the image below, taken by Mars Odyssey, shows what looks to be a lake on Mars.


Something tells me that we're not getting the whole story about the red planet, not by a long shot.

Update: This paper by Dr. Gil Levin goes into further detail about the shortcomings of the gas chromatograph mass spectrometer (GCMS), which have now been shown to be not sensitive enough to have found life even in Mars-like areas of Earth where life is known to exist. The GCMS results were used to discredit the results of the Labelled Release (LR) experiment on the Viking landers, which had indeed found evidence of microbial life. Since the LR experiment found evidence of microbial life and the GCMS was not sensitive enough to disprove the LR results, we must accept the results of the LR experiment: that there was indeed evidence of microbial activity on Mars in 1976. Whether that life is Martian or whether it piggybacked on the Viking landers themselves, I don't know.

Technorati Tags: Space, Mars

what a long strange trip it's been

what a long strange trip it's been

After spending three days tearing what's left of my hair out over the flakey behaviour of my blog template, I think things may slowly be progressing back towards normal. Well, relatively normal for this blog anyhow. I have been seriously considering moving everything from this blog over to the new Blogger Beta. Of course, that will require a ton of work to move 850+ blog posts, and many hours of fiddling with the template (as the Beta version handles style sheets very differently from regular old Blogger), and worst of all it would require changing the URL of the blog. The PITA factor for all of this would be huge, so I guess I'll see how things go over the next week or so, and make a decision next weekend.

In the meantime I hope to resume more regular blogging. Sorry that I haven't been posting too much stuff here lately; I have been sort of busy with real life. The last few weeks have been kind of crazy around here, but it looks like things are starting to return to the normal dull roar.

Technorati Tags: Blog

weird

weird

OK, I finally managed to republish the blog template, but I'm still getting strange problems with the way this blog displays. To make matters worse, I can't even access the archives, and it appears that I may have lost over three years of blogging. This is starting to edge beyond aggravating. Hopefully I can get this straightened out very soon.

Update: In desperation, I have completely wiped out my blog template and replaced it with one of the Blogger-supplied ones. It looks like I'm going to have to tinker with this over the weekend. What a pain in the posterior.

Update 2: It looks like Blogger's servers are having problems interpreting scripts. I have a lot of java scripts on this blog, with the various cartoons and sudoku puzzle and Google ads and blogrolls. I'm going to fire off an email to the folks at Blogger and see if they can get it figured out.

Technorati Tags: Blog

what in the bloody hell

what in the bloody hell

Strange things have been happening lately on this blog. Sometimes the footer (sudoku puzzle, comic strips) doesn't show up. Sometimes there is only a partial sidebar. Sometimes the sidebar doesn't display at all. This started happening about a week or so ago. Have other Blogspot blogs been experiencing similar problems? Has Google AdSense changed their scripts completely? Has a coronal mass ejection fried Blogger's servers? Do I ask enough stupid questions?

I hadn't made any changes to the blog template before these weird problems started showing up; I did notice that the sudoku website had changed their scripts slightly, and I fixed that today. However, even with that fix in place I am getting intermittent errors in the display of the blog. It wouldn't be so bad if the errors were consistent, but there seems to be no rhyme or reason to it; one minute the blog looks fine, and ten minutes later it is missing half the content. What gives?

Update: Apparently the original problem occurred when the sudoku puzzle page changed their script. Then when I installed the fix to that, Blogger stalled while it was halfway through publishing the new template. I am considering switching over to Blogger Beta to get around this, but I've seen some horror stories about losing all the html in the template. I'll keep fighting with it for now, and then I may bite the bullet and go beta.

more bizarreness: I finally managed to republish the entire blog, but there are still weird things going on. I have viewed the source code for the main page, and sometimes the source code suddenly ends in the middle of the comic strips, sometimes it ends in the middle of the buttons in the sidebar, sometimes it ends in other random spots... and where the source code ends changes at random, without my having made any changes at all to the blog template. If I click on an individual post, I can see the cartoons and the whole sidebar - sometimes. This is starting to really freak me out.

Technorati Tags: Blog

Straight talk from Burt Rutan

Straight talk from Burt Rutan

The legendary aircraft designer (and creator of the X-Prize-winning Space Ship One) spoke at the 2005 National Space Society meeting. The embedded video is his 52-minute speech. He doesn't pull many punches. He also says a lot of things that I've said before on my blog, only better. Take an hour and watch this, you'll be glad you did.


(hat tip to Brian Dunbar)

Technorati Tags: Space, NASA, Space Shuttle, Moon, Private Spaceflight, Video

Amazing tool

Amazing tool

This physics-enabled whiteboard could revolutionize the way Physics is taught:


Now, as cool as that is, it obviously has lots of room for improvement. Imagine using something like this for designing things in 3D...

hat tip to Jay Manifold

Technorati Tags: Science, Computers, Video

The Cab Ride

The Cab Ride

My cousin Carl sent me this today. I have no idea who wrote it, or if it is even a true story - and I don't care if it is or not.

Twenty years ago, I drove a cab for a living. When I arrived at 2:30a.m., the building was dark except for a single light in a ground floor window. Under these circumstances, many drivers would just honk once or twice, wait a minute, and then drive away. But I had seen too many impoverished people who depended on taxis as their only means of transportation. Unless a situation smelled of danger, I always went to the door. This passenger might be someone who needs my assistance, I reasoned to myself.

So I walked to the door and knocked. "Just a minute", answered a frail, elderly voice. I could hear something being dragged across the floor. After a long pause, the door opened. A small woman in her 80's stood before me. She was wearing a print dress and a pillbox hat with a veil pinned on it, like somebody out of a 1940s movie. By her side was a small nylon suitcase. The apartment looked as if no one had lived in it for years. All the furniture was covered with sheets. There were no clocks on the walls, no knickknacks or utensils on the counters. In the corner was a cardboard box filled with photos and glassware.

"Would you carry my bag out to the car?" she said. I took the suitcase to the cab, then returned to assist the woman. She took my arm and we walked slowly toward the curb. She kept thanking me for my kindness. "It's nothing", I told her. "I just try to treat my passengers the way I would want my mother treated". "Oh, you're such a good boy", she said.

When we got in the cab, she gave me an address, and then asked, "Could you drive through downtown?" "It's not the shortest way," I answered quickly. "Oh, I don't mind," she said. "I'm in no hurry. I'm on my way to a hospice".

I looked in the rear-view mirror. Her eyes were glistening. "I don't have any family left," she continued. "The doctor says I don't have very long." I quietly reached over and shut off the meter. "What route would you like me to take?" I asked.

For the next two hours, we drove through the city. She showed me the building where she had once worked as an elevator operator. We drove through the neighborhood where she and her husband had lived when they were newlyweds. She had me pull up in front of a furniture warehouse that had once been a ballroom where she had gone dancing as a girl. Sometimes she'd ask me to slow in front of a particular building or corner and would sit staring into the darkness, saying nothing.

As the first hint of sun was creasing the horizon, she suddenly said, "I'm tired. Let's go now". We drove in silence to the address she had given me. It was a low building, like a small convalescent home, with a driveway that passed under a portico. Two orderlies came out to the cab as soon as we pulled up. They were solicitous and intent, watching her every move. They must have been expecting her.

I opened the trunk and took the small suitcase to the door. The woman was already seated in a wheelchair. "How much do I owe you?" she asked, reaching into her purse. "Nothing," I said.

"You have to make a living," she answered. "There are other passengers," I responded. Almost without thinking, I bent and gave her hug. She held onto me tightly. "You gave an old woman a little moment of joy," she said. "Thank you."

I squeezed her hand, and then walked into the dim morning light. Behind me, a door shut. It was the sound of the closing of a life. I didn't pick up any more passengers that shift. I drove aimlessly lost in thought. For the rest of that day, I could hardly talk. What if that woman had gotten an angry driver, or one who was impatient to end his shift? What if I had refused to take the run, or had honked once, then driven away?

On a quick review, I don't think that I have done anything more important in my life. We're conditioned to think that our lives revolve around great moments. But great moments often catch us unaware-beautifully wrapped in what others may consider a small one.

People may not remember exactly what you did, or what you said, but they will always remember how you made them feel.

You won't get any big surprise in 10 days if you send this to ten people. But, you might help make the world a little kinder and more compassionate by sending it on. Thank you, my friend...

Life may not be the party we hoped for, but while we are here we might as well dance.

Technorati Tags: Inspiration

Madeline Albright versus North Korea

Madeline Albright versus North Korea

David Zucker, the guy behind the Airplane movies, made this ad (which was subsequently rejected by the Republican party):

Technorati Tags: Moonbats, Video, Humor

Sleep Well Tonight

Sleep Well Tonight

North Korea has just conducted a successful nuclear weapon test. Anyone want to bet that Kim Jong-Il has an "accident" soon?

Update: According to the Associated Press, quoting a state-run South Korean geological institute, the bomb was only the equivalent of 550 tons of TNT, which is a very small nuke. In comparison, the bomb dropped on Hiroshima in World War 2 was about 15 kilotons, about 27 times more powerful than the one the North Koreans just tested. Apparently the NK nuke fizzled.

Update 2: From President Bush's statement:

Last night the government of North Korea proclaimed to the world that it had conducted a nuclear test. We're working to confirm North Korea's claim. Nonetheless, such a claim itself constitutes a threat to international peace and security. The United States condemns this provocative act. Once again North Korea has defied the will of the international community, and the international community will respond.

Technorati Tags: Warfare, Nuclear, North Korea

Zooming in on Victoria Crater

Zooming in on Victoria Crater

Regular readers of my blog will know that I am not fond of NASA. However, every once in a while NASA does do something really cool, and I am compelled to give due credit. Recently the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter started sending back pictures of Mars, including a spectacular shot of Victoria Crater, alongside which the Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity currently sits. The image file is huge - 2048 by 15178 pixels, nearly 27 megabytes - so I took that file and created a short video zooming in on Opportunity. It is truly amazing what NASA accomplished with this orbiting camera.


Technorati Tags: Space, NASA, Mars, Opportunity, Mars Exploration Rover, Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, Video

Apollo 11, the untold story

Apollo 11, the untold story

I spotted this fascinating video on From The Earth To The Moon, and just had to share it too. I never knew how close the Apollo 11 astronauts had come to disaster in their successful mission until I saw this video. It's well worth 47 minutes of your time.


Technorati Tags: Space, NASA, Apollo, Moon