capital city of ireland
ok , so it isn't really the capital of Ireland in purely factual terms , but it's my home town, and we Corkonians like to think that it is. If you're ever thinking of visiting Ireland, drop by on the board of this site, and you'll get lots of help on where to stay, where to have a pint of Murphy's (the local equivalent to Guiness), and where the best gigs/clubs/nightlife/restaurants are.
it's the best guide to a city in Ireland that i've come across - and the board is a live , breathing, active , tumult of stuff , so there's always somebody who will answer your questions. well worth visiting.
update: found some really nice pictures of Cork here , here , and here
Wednesday, March 31, 2004
the real capital city of ireland
switching to a mac
Jeremy Zawodny is moving to a Mac Powerbook
He's "sick of doing things the hard way" - i suppose he does have a point. As one's career progresses, you have less time for general hackery. A Mac just works. It's a no brainer.
Me? i'm too-ing and fro-ing between getting a Powerbook - maybe i'll kill two birds and get a thinkpad AND a powerbook. Debian on the thinkpad, powerbook running OS X.
Of course, some Gentoo advocate will pop up and say to Jeremy "emerge mplayer" , but i dont think that's what Jeremy wants - he doesnt want to go through the install of Gentoo on a laptop for starters. He can go to his local Fry's , buy a Powerbook, power it up, and it just works. There's a different attitude to wanting something to work versus something that's hackable. Both are equally OK , as long as it doesnt involve the sign of the beast.
"rudest pub" googlebomb
The Register has this article on recent googlebombs including one for rudest pub promoted and initiated on Matt Armstrong's "Paste" blog.
Tuesday, March 30, 2004
Mars Express confirms methane in the Martian atmosphere
Mars Express - Worlds biggest postcard
"It measures 24 metres by 1.35 metres and shows a 3700-kilometre long, 166-kilometre wide strip of Martian landscape in south-north direction"
Mars Express - Colour picture of Gusev crater
Fun with the CLI
This article describes the little known sound-related rec and play commands, sox, and a brief mention of using "nice" to make runaway processes more, errr, nice to your cpu.
Johnson space center dumps Windows for Linux
"We cannot have second thoughts about using Linux, as I had the great pleasure of converting our last Windows server to Linux a couple years ago," said Dan Smith, an administrator with the Intelligent Systems Lab at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston.
"There is just not enough budget to use Windows," said the Johnson Space Center's Smith. "It cost an arm and a leg to equip a Windows machine with what is standard load on most major Linux distros."
"In short, converting to Linux has allowed our lab to go from saying, 'Sorry, we do not have funding to provide that' to saying, 'We can do that.'"
Monday, March 29, 2004
Sunday, March 28, 2004
Terraforming Mars
Interesting article on an upcoming scientific conference about the feasibility of terraforming Mars.
Methane detected in Martian atmosphere
The leader of the ground based astronomy team, Michael Mumma of the Goddard Space Flight Center, when asked if the methane was biological in origin, said 'I think it is, myself personally.'"
Saturday, March 27, 2004
Chernobyl revisited
A bike ride through Chernobyl
Some people bungee jump. Other people do base jump parachuting.
This girl rides a motorbike through the scene of the biggest nuclear accident of all time.
Lots of fascinating pictures showing the ghost town, permanently frozen in time.
update: Big discussion about this on Slashdot Links to bit torrents and mirrors mentioned in the chat.
Nasa to test scramjet
Nasa will test a Mach 7 scramjet today. It is hoped this technology could one day dramatically reduce the length of long-haul passenger flights and make it much cheaper to launch space payloads.
Friday, March 26, 2004
Blurring the boundaries
What do you get when you mix Jay Zee's hiphop "Black Album" with the Beatles "White Album"? You get DJ Dangermouse's "Grey Album", which was mentioned on the UK's Channel 4 news and subject to numerous "cease and desist" letters from record company lawyers.
You can download it from Illegal Art.org.
update: you can also get the album from Banned Music.org
Tuesday, March 23, 2004
NASA - Salty seas were on Mars
In a dramatic press conference today, NASA announced evidence of a former salty sea shoreline on Mars. Suddenly, the possibility of discovering fossils on Mars isn't so far fetched. As usual, Slashdot have a big discussion on this ground-breaking announcement over here.
Passport to Nowhere
Slashdot on Microsoft Passport, and how it's failed to really take off
The competing "Liberty Alliance" has only produced " a large amount of PDF files".
Saturday, March 20, 2004
Andy Kessler - "Hack This Please"
"There is a new breed of users out there, computer-literate consumers who don’t think twice about altering the look, feel and functionality of a product. Those billions of embedded computers have turned business on its head. The Henry Ford school of “one size fits all” or the Colgate school of 40 choices of toothpaste are now both obsolete. Give us one size that we can alter how we wish.
You see, the software in all those billions of little computers in our stereos and cars and cell phones and appliances are just itching to be updated. Not by companies, but by customers. That’s how they’ll get what they want. Mods, hacks, whatever you want to call them are the ultimate customization. "
Learning Irish
Practice lessons, and a PDF document on "How the language works"
Kevin's Mars 3D page has a gallery of 3D red-blue anaglyph images, created from the stereo pair images posted up by NASA.
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