brainwagon

A while ago I mentioned John Pultorak’s efforts to build a replica of the Apollo Guidance Computer. CNET is running a picture fo the completed unit, four years in the making. Next on his list: a digital watch, constructed entirely from recycled aluminum cans.

I watch a fair number of crime drama shows. Early on, I really liked CSI. It had some fairly interesting characters, and tried to present some interesting bits of forensics in a stylized dramatic way. But now that it has branched off into three different shows, it simply makes me wince. The problem is a […]

NEWS.com.au | Giant squid ‘taking over world’ According to scientists, squid have overtaken humans in terms of total bio-mass. That means they take up more space on the planet than us. The reason has been put down to overfishing of other species and climate change. Or, it could be Lord Cthulhu, rumbling in the underwater […]

While chatting with Tom over lunch, I was reminded of a guy who built his own Apollo Guidance Computer Replica. Tom was the guy who got me to write an emulator for the PDP-1 (he wrote one as well) so that we could run the original Spacewar! on a PC, so this was right up […]

In itself, meteorites are not uncommon, but what’s pretty cool is that the Mars rover Opportunity managed to land close to a basketball sized one lying on the surface of Mars. You can read more in NASA’s press release. CMU developed a project to find meteorites in Antartica using an autonomous robot that could search […]

The ESA/JPL has released the tiny image you see to the right and provided us with some background, but this image is as big as it gets: you can’t seem to find a higher resolution image anywhere online. Sigh. Do they only have a camera phone onboard?

The ESA is reporting that the Huygens lander survived it’s descent to Titan, and is transmitting data. According to JPL, the first images should be received around 11:45 PST. Kick ass! As soon as pictures are available, I’ll link ’em up here. Update: In what quite possibly have been the singularly most dull and boring […]

The Cassini probe has taken some awfully nice pictures, including this one of the moon Iapetus. The equatorial ridge is really very odd. The most unique, and perhaps most remarkable feature discovered on Iapetus in Cassini images is a topographic ridge that coincides almost exactly with the geographic equator. The ridge is conspicuous in the […]

Boing Boing showed the photo to the right of the Millau viaduct in France: the highest bridge ever constructed. Yet the more interesting fact to me was the satellite used to get that image: a box only 60cm x 60cm x 80xm named Proba.

Need a ballad dedicated to Willebrord van Roijen Snell? Look no further than the Snell’s Law Song. Found via the MASSIVE search engine.

On Christmas Eve the Huygens lander successfully disconnected from the Cassini orbiter and is set for a landing on Titan on January 14th. There is a good article published by the IEEE Spectrum on how Swedish engineer Boris Smeds saved the $300 million dollar mission by detecting an undetected problem in the telemetry system which […]

I call bullsh*. Shuttle astronaut John Young made the following claim: The statistical risk of humans getting wiped out in the next 100 years due to a super volcano or asteroid or comet impact is 1 in 455. How does that relate? You’re 10 times more likely to get wiped out by a civilization-ending event […]

Gizmodo had a link to a flexible book scanner, basically a sheet of plastic filled with organic photodiodes and phototransistors that act as a scanner. Chasing down links for a meatier description, I found Semiconductor International – Organic Devices on Flexible Substrates Advance – 11/1/2004 – Semiconductor International – CA476270 In other work to be […]

Ever wonder how they hope to digitize millions of books? Try looking at this film showing a book scanning robot working for archive.org. You can get more real information from the manufacturer’s website, albeit in the form of a bit of a sales pitch.

This story has been making the circuit, but this Register article is the first that I’ve seen which has any real detail. As part of my interest in telescope design, I’ve developed a passing interest in camera lens design, and I was uncertain just how this would work. Basically the idea is that two different […]