Lavonardo

Another glorious astronomy picture of the day.

This time of a solar eclipse as viewed from the moon.

[ via pinseri. ]

Didn’t miss the weekend’s big astronomic event on account of playing table hockey and refusing to smoke cigars. No, missed it on account of plentiful clouds.

Fortunately, the skies were actually clear somewhere, and this amazing animated .gif of the eclipse is the healing salve for us deprived of seeing the moon descend into the darkness of umbra.

Today’s headlines from Link City Bugler:

• Shark Pictures. The variety among the species is great (and got incidentally discussed at length today on a non-coffee break).
• Cross-platform widgets. Something to look into once I finish my first.
• Shadow of the Colossus. Yet another quality wikipedia article. Yet another game I haven’t even started.
• Lunar eclipse. A full lunar eclipse. At night. On a weekend. March 3rd, visible in Finland. Count me in.
• Slimline Classics. For the busy reader who wants to test the waters beyond Jackie Collins/Clive Cussler/Jari Tervo.
• What’s so special about this number? Many things, as the 400+ kilobyte page explains (and restricts itself to the first ten thousand numbers).

Randomly selected surfing destinations for the selective traveller.

• An amazing collection of geographically alternate earths. A lot of science, very little fiction, pretty maps. Worth a peep.
• If nothing else, Joel Kotkin launches half a dozen new words in his article on superstar cities.
• A nice selection of textbook disclaimers (yes, this is an anti-intelligent design page).
• Kickassclassical, for those awkward moments when you cannot recognize a piece if classical music featured in media (odds are 2.21 to 1 that it’s Carmina Burana anyway).
• JPG magazine, looks like best-of-flickr on paper. Which is not a bad thing at all.
• Angry Alien produly presents: 30 second editions of popular movies, as acted by animated bunnies. The hotel room wrestling scene of Borat is deeply disturbing even in this format,
• Boo hoo, bad microsoft, allegedly turning e-mail back five years by replacing the HTML-renderer in Outlook. Here’s a clue: no HTML in e-mail. Have two, actually, they’re pretty small.

For those about to click.

• IBM has published a gentle introduction of the wonders of virtualization.
• The collected wisdom of lifehackery is out in book form.
• The D programming language, somewhere beyond C, but not in the same direction as C++.
• Tony vs. Paul (which goes to show that stop motion is still a viable technology).
• Map of Gotham City, straight off the pages of Batman.
• A truly scary article on ultra-right wing mercenaries running wild in Iraq.
• The weather in Helsinki sucks, we’ve established that much recently. Space weather is much more interesting.
• Of the 365 days of 2006, the Internet Explorer was unsafe for 286 of them.

Jason Kottke has listed the cream of the crop of his 2400 links remaindered last year. Most still as interesting as on the day of posting.

A small batch this time:

• Searchblog, John Battelle’s take on things.
• Bad Astronomy, good blog, and interesting articles.
• Blake Ross, the man behind firefox.

A recent announcement by an irish company called Steorn has raised lots of eyebrows. They claim that they have accomplished nothing less than the invention of an eternal source of energy. In their own words:

We have developed a technology that produces free, clean and constant energy. This means never having to recharge your phone, never having to refuel your car. A world with an infinite supply of clean energy for all.

Quite a bold statement, right?

To back up their invention, they have now issued a challenge to the science community at large to pick their proposed microgenerator-based idea apart. In public. The challenge was issued in this week’s economist, and it has brought in the crowds - both of scientists and lookenpeepers in general. Ought to be entertaining.

On the other hand, the finnish company claiming to have invented an universal compression algorithm has been met with appropriate disbelief. The whole exercise smells like a guerrilla marketing stunt that got out of hand.

[ Steorn-link via kasa. ]

First batch of links for august.

• Onion has a great Wikipedia-spoof. Obviously, july 25th was the 750th anniversary of the US independence.
• Stephen Colbert, a Daily Show sidekick, famously graduated to have his own show (with a slight
  right-wing bias). After coining the term “truthiness”, he’s now beginning to use wikiality as a new tool to advance the incoherent agenda.
• Turns out that there are cheaper alternatives to the almighty Photoshop to play around with high dynamic range images. As pointered by pinseri, hdrsoft’s products sure merit taking them out for a spin.
• Panography is something I haven’t tried out yet. Apart from a four-to-six image single direction panoramas with the aid of Canon’s photostich-application. But that’s obviously just a sliver of the cake, as shown in the relevant flickr-group.
• Just discovered: a finnish blog of nothing more than book reviews, and they’re looking for additional authors.
• Ok, ok, so blogging and journalism both intersect AND differ, perhaps these five things no longer need to be repeated. Or perhaps they will. Over and over again.
• The Los Angeles Times is not a newspaper I’ve read, on paper or on the web. But they sure seem to have an interesting series about the state of the oceans ongoing. Props to Matti for the link. Definitely interesting, and the article seems unencumbered by any DRM (unlike the New York Times, sadly).
• The annual O’Reilly-organized Open Source Convention is over in Portland. And, as usual, the presentations can be downloaded right now.

To contrast the featherweight (but certainly enjoyable) books read lately, grabbed Martin Rees’ Just Six Numbers to finally read. Owned the book for several years, but thus far it has eluded attempts to read.

As per its title, it concentrates on “just six numbers”. Six numbers that define the fundamentals of the universe (like the ratio between strong and weak electromagnetic forces). Six numbers that have been tagged with specific symbols. Six numbers, of whose explanations I expect to miss a decent chunk.

Also, the author has one of the coolest titles. An Astronomer Royal is just so much more expressive than a “Chief Scientist” employed by NASA.

Or a mojito, if you’re so inclined.

• William Gibson’s Alien III-script. Which, obviously, wasn’t used.
• An annotated list of non-errors in the english language. Now I finally understand what “splitting an infinitive” really means.
• An interesting article on community sites as games.
• Kyle MacDonald traded up his one red paperclip, and now owns a house. In Saskatchewan, Canada, but a house nonetheless.
• This year’s annual transhumanism-conference will be organized in Helsinki.
• On the very same weekend as Finncon 2006, the biggest finnish speculative fiction-occasion.
• Minutes from the very first Linux file system workshop are available (and now for free at lwn.net).
• A Chinese company claims that it has cracked the Skype protocol.

Some things to check out in case the games get boring.

• Zork over IP, which goes to show that no matter what the platform, a Z-machine implementation will soon be ported to it.
• Moleskine has expanded its product range to city guidebooks.
• The deepest hole ever drilled into the crust of Gaia.
• This must be the biggest page on the web, after all it covers the deep sky in some 8.1 nonillion pixels. Something to scroll through in a long-winded and badly ventilated meeting.
• A draft of a history of interactive fiction.
• Future of pinball is a forthcoming document of Williams’ Pinball 2000 project. A project that was supposed to bring the game into the 21st century, but was instead untimely shut down.

Gotta hand it to the guy who’s the voice of Fry. Not many people get featured twice on slashdot on the same day.

The initial report of a whole new season of sorely missed Futurama proved to be too optimistic. Fortunately the show will be de-canned, but in the form of four movies.

In other words, really liked this quote from the same site the other day:

NASA is reporting that two years into its 90-day mission, …

So, despite the steady decline of the comments and lapses in selection, there’s still life in the original link pointer. Which is important in the age of stiff competition from del.icio.us and digg.

Google expanded their mapping service to cover Mars.

But it seems to be missing the canals, and I couldn’t find Dejah Thoris’ palace either. Perhaps she’s just getting ready for Jon Favreau’s movie adaptation of the ERB classic.

And the famous face in Cydonia (at 40.75N, 9.46W, and available as a tagged object) seems less prominent on the maps than in the theories spouted by those convinced that it is a monument of extraterrestrial nature.

Up, like the albedo after snowfall:

• Decided to join Ursa, the finnish astronomical society in 2006. For the membership fee you get a good magazine, discount on books and the ability to visit the observatory. Here’s hoping for clear winter nights.
• It’s now official, Big Boys like bloggers. Lessee how this affects the salary negotiations in the spring.
• The years are now back in the RSS feed.

Down, like the temperature:

• Skipped the Helsinki bloggers’ christmas party. All work and no play, you know the rest.
• There’s a distinct shortage of calendars in Helsinki shops. Proper calendars, that is, like the ones by National Geographic. Amazon, thankfully, is able to fulfil the hankering for great scenery on the cubicle wall for the next year.
• SiteMeter seems to be undergoing some hiccups.

EDIT 26.8.2008: Not all the links have survived.

In the shade of the copyright debacle, do not smile when clicking on these. It would not be appropriate:

• A gloriously long interview with Jon Stewart. The book mentioned, America is a great introduction to the history and civic life of the great nation - an inbetween the lines it illustrates many things that are wrong with both.
• Bunch of semi-interesting links on O’Reilly’s Radar. Not a bad new-tech blog at all.
• One of the things often referred to in the previous is Web 2.0. It’s an interesting, albeit complex and hard-explain thing. Discover had an elementary article about the subject.
• The october issue of Aponogeton is out.
• The magnificently rural bothnian translation of the Lord of the Rings seems to have stalled. But the completed chapters are very worthy indeed.
• Brian Greene’s view on the most famous equation of them all.
• Whedonesque, for those that bow to the new master.

EDIT 25.8.2008: As usual, some of the links are guaranteed not to work.

Two collections of geocidal alternatives: Sam’s Archive and Exit Mundi.

I prefer the former, but it’s always good to have an alternate point of view. Even if it’s as bleak as the primary one.

Went to see a half-hour presentation about Canada projected on the walls of the parliament house. A lot of patriotic backpatting, but well-done and occasionally amusing (the best use of “eh?” in a long while). The pictures did not come out that well - really could have used a tripod, or better and more stable things to lean on.

The moon was hanging low, but did not succeed in getting a good shot of that, especially one that would adequately prove or disprove the moon illusion theory.

The Science magazine puts forth a set of big topics indeed, ranging from astronomy to psychology. First fifth of them explored at length, the rest only get a sentence or two worth of a problem statement.

Would probably make good summer reading, have to check whether the bookstores stock this baby.

Fact of life #216: you invariably end up supporting something stupid, sooner or later.

Scott Berkun has taken the trouble to discover why, and what to do about it. Good schtuff, and the other essays on the site seem interesting as well.

… because they can always go back.

Anyway, seems that they’ve been adding psychoactives in the Massachusetts groundwater. Anyway, I expect a report from this occasion. With pictures. And paradox-inducing explanations.