Videos: Awesome Chemistry, Pacman, Wedding FAIL

The Awesome of Chemistry


Science!


Pacman Ghosts Discuss TV




...and because it's just not Friday without some FAIL,

Wedding Photo FAIL



Have a great weekend!

Demonstrable Generally Works Better

Sometimes I find myself just being me and think it's a good idea to lay it out to let my readers get a little insight into who I am.

It's 11:30pm. I'm watching "How the Universe Works" (Black Hole episode), beginning a book to bone up on my PHP ninja coding skills, and drinking a Miller Lite. (and pausing in the midst of it all to blog)

Is that too much? Or refreshing?

Cheers!

Friday Videos: Grizzly Bear, Regeneration, FAIL

If you've never heard of Grizzly Bear, take a minute and check this out. The video is a little odd (meaning I love it) and vocals are fantastic.




Regenerating bodies from New Scientist. Always something to drop your jaw, those guys.




...and an obvious, thoughtless end to the week: Backflip fail.



Have a good one!

Astronauts: Inspiration

There are some things that are above words:



There is something about being outside of the world, outside Earth, that can - possibly - make us take pause.

Let us - all of us - take another look. Just one more. And build a world where we look at things a little differently, a little more objectively. Be bigger than our differences. Be bigger than our qualms.

Just be bigger. Drive the conversation, don't be driven by it.

Guide the wisdom. Don't be sucked in with easy outs.


Being stronger means working harder. Being wiser means thinking longer. The easy path is no path at all; everyone's already doing that one.

If you want to make a difference, you need to make it different.

So make it different. Change the angle. Change the outlook. Make that difference.

The hard part is that that will be your day. And tomorrow, you'll have to do it again.

But that's also the beauty in it.

Be that.

Wednesday Twitter Headlines: Security, XLIV, Space, Teens

No! No celebrity news this week! Not one blip about Fall Out Boy or Lady Gaga. Not one!

Unsecured Twitter?

But this week Twitter did say: "I's been haxed!

"A red flag was first raised on Twitter's end when it noticed an abnormally high number of followers for certain accounts. This prompted the company to investigate and eventually reset the passwords for anyone following those suspicious accounts. Twitter noted that although torrent sites have been around a while, this is the first time it's seen an attack using this angle."

It was a custom-built, torrent site back door, password reset phishing scam. W00t! As always, Twitter kinda has it under control.


Beer! I Mean Super Bowl XLIV

And if you've been waiting with baited breath to see what's going on with tweeting and Super Bowl XLIV, your wait is over: Super Bowl XLIV Earns an Official Twitter Hashtag: #SB44. I'd give you a blockquote on this one but that's the whole story. Not that this is actually news. I went to a conference this past December where a half dozen of us tweeted the event. We had a hashtag too.

Note to media: A hashtag is not earned. You don't have to file with the IRS or anything. You just make it up, let people know, and start using it.


Um, Teens and, um, Twitter

And I also noticed an abnormally large number of stories covering the fact that teens still aren't showing Twitter the love that they show Facebook. Also, this is not news, just like it wasn't news last August when I talked about it.

Maybe I need to start a blog on Twitter headlines that aren't news.


Not Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation

And this one's a little older than a week, but: Tweets From Spaaaaaaace!

NASA has set up an impressive wireless connection that provides astronauts on International Space Station with Internet access so they can surf the Web, e-mail their friends and family back home, and even send Twitter messages.

Flight Engineer T.J. Creamer started using the connection this morning by sending the first tweet originating from the space station.

Sweet. Question: Is a tweet that you're going to the bathroom more interesting if you're going in a suction-powered space toilet on the ISS?

Answer: Yeah!


So what did you learn from Twitter this week? I'm always happy to read your feeback!

Tech Geek Thursday: Anti-Gravity, Alien Arms, LHC

An Anti-Gravity Emdrive?

Okay, so the video's not that exciting, but perhaps we're looking at the Stage0 of the Jetson's flying car!



Granted, it's got some scary military things going on for it (click the link in the subject title) but at the least, a Skywalker speeder?


Aliens (the movie) Robot Arms!

Panasonic-owned firm Activelink Co. built this robotic exoskeleton called a Dual Arm Power Amplification Robot. The Activelink slogan is delightedly science fiction-esque: "Creating a New Human Machine Age." According to the company, "Using Robotic Technology equipment anybody can become a superman. We are bringing this dream one step closer to reality." They should hire Sigourney Weaver as the Activelink spokesperson.

...so everything Ellen Ripley said was right...

LHC Breaks (because of) Bread

Here's one for the books. CERN's Large Hadron Collider has once again been shut down. No catastrophic helium leak or failing magnets this time. The culprit? A speck of bread, which officials believe was originally part of a larger baguette. To make it all the more ridiculous, it's thought that the piece of bread was dropped into the works by a bird.

The morsel found its way into the doomsday device's outdoor machinery, sparking a temperature differential that triggered an automatic shutdown sequence. I know, I know — I'm sure that ruins all the images you had of a bird navigating the LHC's 17-mile-ring like a Death Star trench run, but there it is.

Yay Science!

Wednesday Twitter: Meteor, Spies, Death!

Happy 5 Billionth!

Happy Birthday to you! Happy birthday...wait. That's not right. Twitter hits 5 billion tweets - or 10,000 if you only include the intelligible and not-spam. Either way, congrats!


Orionid Meteor Shower

The shower peaks tonight! Best time is reportedly 1am wherever you are. "'That’s when the patch of Earth you are standing on is barreling headlong into space on Earth’s orbital track, and meteors get scooped up like bugs on a windshield,' said Robert Roy Britt on Space.com." And, of course, don't forget #meteorshower!


Spies Like Us

Well, they don't tweet but the CIA will read yours - and your blog! Surprised? You shouldn't be. From Carnivore and probably before to wiretaps, communications have been monitored in the US under the auspices of national security for ...well, as long as there have been communications, probably. And this stuff is public. I would venture to guess it's a waste of money to filter what has now become 5B tweets, but our government has always been good at that.


Oh Noes! Celebs! Not Again!

Someone was all "RIP Kanye West" and BLAMMO it was like everywhere on Twitter and then DaRealAmberRose was all "Its in extreme poor taste to have that as a trendy topic. It's totally disrespectful to make up a story like this where all human" so I guess Kanye ain't dead. Or its trendy human where or something.

Meghan McCain wasn't really a celeb until she decided to post a "spontaneous" twitpic of her cleavage ...and an Andy Warhol biography. Crazy? You bet! But not as hot as this week when Pink decided to let her 600K (!) followers suggest what she dress up for for Halloween. Yowza! I don't know what's nuttier: Pink's dilemma or that someone writing for MTV still thinks Octomom is "topical."


*sigh* Does everything eventually become E!?

Monday Inspiration: The Universe

As a tech geek and armchair scientist, I often find inspiration in science. Today's inspiration is based on that, and gives us a little perspective. When you get tied down to a computer or an office or even a city, a reminder that we are only a small part of the universe, a universe that is HUGE, can help us remember that maybe our problems and issues aren't so incredibly large.

Or, like Zaphod Beeblebrox, you may just imagine that as a microscopic dot on a microscopic dot you are the most important thing in it. Either way, enjoy the Hubble Ultra Deep Field. If this does not inspire awe, I do not know what can.

Friday Video Roundup: NASA, Kitteh, Fred

LCROSS Mission

Yay, we're blowing up the moon! Actually, you don't see anything on the video from this morning. It's a shame it wasn't a little more spectacular because of all the hype it got. I hope NASA gets some seriously good data.




Sneezing Cat

I offer you a sneezing cat to reflect my home life. I, my wife, and my daughter - along with our two cats - apparently have a cold. I've never seen cats sneeze so much and I've had them for over 7 years.

Our dog is somehow unaffected.




And Fred Gives Advice

Again, from my daughter, only to shield you from the hell that is the She Wolf video. Feel free to put in the ear plugs or smash your computer monitor.

Carl Sagan - A Glorious Dawn Remix

A fantastic, beautiful, chilling, geeky mash-up.

Thursday Tech: Cameras, Books, and Hubble

This week in technology, we're hitting some serious issues on cameras, books, and a sweet treat on Hubble.

Front LCD
After years of MySpace angle shots, camera phone trial-and-fail, chrome convex lens companion and even the Pre mirror, someone grew a brain on this one: why doesn't anyone put an LCD in the front of the camera? Dur.



Brilliant!

I now expect much more savvy MySpace/Facebook angles.


Book Scanning
If you wanted to scan a book, what would current technology lead you to do? Well, you'd have to open, flatten, and scan each page.

But not any more! Engadget is reporting on a new book-scanning proof-of-concept.

Basically, flip through an entire book - fast - and the 1,000 fps camera will adjust for light and digitize the work. As long as the character recognition is up to par, we've got a winner!


Hubble 3D
I hope you got your helmet on, 'cause your mind's about to get blown!

"Over the course of 10 full days, photons that had been traveling for over 13 billion years finally ended their journey on the detector of humanity's most powerful telescope."



Seriously, if a grain of sand at arm's length revealing 100,000,000 galaxies, each with billions of stars doesn't set your armhairs on end, doesn't drop you into a sense of stunned awe, I'd be surprised. I don't know what else, what other idea or thought, can humble a person that thoroughly.