I upgraded to WordPress 1.5.1.3 to help keep security up to scratch. I apologize for any temporary snafus. Polls seem not to work properly in the brave new world, I’ll have to figure out why sometime soon.
It would also appear I’m having difficulty with referer spammers today. I’m researching solutions to this problem.
To the referer spammer who has hit me 490 times in the last hour or so 3714 times in the last day, screw you.
Bad Behavior is a step in the right direction.
Blogging lately feels pointless.
Which of course it is, but it used to not feel so pointless.
Grump.
Well, last year I recorded a simple quicktme of the fireworks using my little Nikon 4500 from Jack London Square. This year, I decided to take out my new JVC MiniDV camcorder, and trundled it down to Pinole to try the same. I brought a tripod, set it up in manual mode with a best guess, and gave it a shot. Here is the finale rendered in Windows Media (around 8 megabytes).
Yes, yes, bitch at me all you like, that’s the easiest format for me to put it in. Get VLC or mplayer.
Okay, the link above was dead. Here’s the same video now uploaded onto youtube:
Check out this movie of the impactor as viewed from the flyby spacecraft. Cool.
Need some audio material? Try the Colonial Williamsburg Past to Present Podcasts. Or, you could just download The Declaration of Independence, available from Project Gutenberg as etext #1.
Tonight the Deep Impact space probe impacted Comet Tempel 1. I’m watching the coverage life on NASA TV. We can expect to see a photo from the flyby space craft to be all over the front pages tomorrow. Congratulations to all those rocket scientists. Cool stuff.
Got a few pennies lying around? Try building some of these impressive structures. Have lots of dollars? Try this page instead.
Hey, you need to keep pages like this around when you are bored.
Need a kooky craft project for geeks? Look no further than Project Cryo, a spiffy mod to your mouse to… well… go have a look.
Courtesy of the Make blog, here are some instructions on building a very simple refracting telescope. I’ve done something like this before by scavenging lenses from broken binoculars I find a flea markets and mounting them into lengths of PVC pipe. Of course real telescope makers grind their own mirrors. 🙂
I just checked my latest Libsyn Stats and downloads are through the roof. I am getting reports that sites like Dawn and Drew are down, servers have melted all over the podcasting sphere. Thus far this site which is hosted on a GoDaddy server has kept up and we have seen over 300,000 individual hits to this site alone today.
I know that at least 6500 people on iTunes have downloaded the newest show so this is significant traffic. Be patient with the downloads as servers are getting hammered worldwide.
I’ve been hammered too. 17 people used iTunes to download brainwagon radio in the last 24 hours! Woohoo! Let the pidgeons loose!
Well, it is O’Connor who is going to be the first to vacate a position on the Supreme Court, not Chief Justice Rehnquist.
O’Connor to Retire From Supreme Court
If you thought that the nominations for other judges were ugly, stay tuned for this wild ride.
Right next to Pixar is a little outfit called Fantasy Junction that deals in customized and rare automobiles. Occasionally there are trucks parked outside delivering odd automobiles. When I rounded the corner this morning, these guys were pushing this little racer out around back, and I snapped a quick picture from my cameraphone.
Lifehacker is rapidly becoming one of my favorite blogs. They have all sorts of good info that seems strangely timely, like the following link on how to get the best pictures of fireworks.
Where your host tries to shake off his morning jolt with some gadget news and a brief bit about some weekend fireworks in space.
Links from the show: