Gammatron

Constant updates on the status of the mission.

8:04:43 AM  #  

My computers, VCR, and cable TV box are all smart enough to deal with the end of daylight savings time, but my Oregon Scientific radio-synced clock still hasn’t fallen back. Nice.

11:59:35 PM  #  

Updates on recently completed missions and upcoming flights.

11:09:36 PM  #  

See also: official mission patch [45k jpeg]

11:04:55 PM  #  

Current reports for various projects, but mostly for the International Space Station.

11:03:34 PM  #  

NOAA’s artic resources include a great photo galery, maps, and tons of scientific information.

12:51:10 PM  #  

Comparison of the Canon D30 digital SLR body against the EOS 1V using Fuji Provia 100F film and the same lens. Looks like digital quality is on par with film - but when will the price equalize?

12:48:41 PM  #  

Much better than the one I logged way back when [1999.12.19]; this one has all the entries on one big page, sorted alphabetically by identifier code. Easiest to use you browser’s Find feature to locate a particular city.

8:40:35 AM  #  

Longish article describing the mathematics that prove that the electoral college is actually a good thing and increases the power of individual voters.

…individual voting power is higher when funneled through districts–such as states–than when pooled in one large, direct election. It is more likely, in other words, that your one vote will determine the outcome in your state and your state will then turn the outcome of the electoral college, than that your vote will turn the outcome of a direct national election.

3:11:28 PM  #  

Supposedly the world’s first interactive banner ad.

12:37:30 PM  #  

You need to print this out or look at it with an image viewer, because it’s sideways (unless you like neck pain). Technical details of the time code broadcast by WWVB.

12:34:33 PM  #  

Nice animated .gif sequence of lightning striking a plane at take off.

10:38:36 PM  #  

Weird applet-toy. Pick a word, it gives you some synonyms. Pick one of those, and it begins trying to build graphical relationships between them. For entertainment purposes only.

10:33:55 PM  #  

Not really a search engine, but more like a searchable reference desk. xrefer indexes a slew of reference works (encyclopedias, dictionaries, etc [list]) and serves the content from their own site rather than pointing you to some other site which may or may not be there anymore.

6:21:09 PM  #  

An proof-of-concept prototype satellite will carry a 450MHz G4 running MacOS X. The interesting part is that the satellite will be assembeled in orbit by an astronaut and literally thrown into orbit. By doing it this way a lot of extra complexity needed for a pre-assemebled satellite to survive launch stresses can be removed, making the device much lighter and cheaper. The article doesn’t go into the specifics of what kind of information the satellite will host, but it will use the 802.11b wireless standard (AKA AirPort).

6:05:48 PM  #  

.geo is a proposed new top-level domain which would be structured to let browsers find information based on latitude and longitude. At first it seems simple, but reading the executive summary, you quickly see that it’s actually pretty complicated.

9:42:30 PM  #  

A big honkin’ domed graphics output device that looks like a personal IMAX theater… the parabloic shape maximizes radiation absorbtion by the viewer.

8:00:24 PM  #  

NORAD provides data about various satellites (including Mir and ISS) in a standard format called a Two-Line Element [faq]. This data can be used by some software packages [sathunt] to predict satellite fly-overs, though there are web-based services that do all the work of collecting the TLEs for you and are generally much easier to use [heavens-above].

1:27:33 PM  #  

This script will give you a list of GPS satellites visible from a given location at a given time. More for entertainment than any practical use.

1:21:18 PM  #  

Excellent description of the GPS time system, which is, contrary to popular belief, not exactly synchronized with UTC.

The GPS epoch is 0000 UT (midnight) on January 6, 1980. GPS time is not adjusted and therefore is offset from UTC by an integer number of seconds, due to the insertion of leap seconds. The number remains constant until the next leap second occurs. This offset is also given in the navigation (NAV) message and your receiver should apply the correction automatically. As of January 1, 1999, GPS time is ahead of UTC by thirteen (13) seconds.

1:18:18 PM  #  

A supplement to GPS to increase accuarcy, reliability, and integrity using a network of ground stations and geostationary satellites along with the GPS constellation.

The WAAS will improve basic GPS accuracy to approximately 7 meters vertically and horizontally…

More information is available from Stanford University [qv].

1:05:07 PM  #  

Why GMT/UTC/Get etc is called “zulu” time. Seems mostly credible, but every once in a while the author throws something in that makes me wonder…

10:21:35 PM  #  

Exactly what it sounds like - these guys take belt sanders and race them. There are “stock” and “modified” classes. Annoying JavaScript page transitions.

Some people have tried mounting a router motor (25000 rpm) to a sander. This unfortunately does not seem to work but makes for some pretty awesome burn outs on the start line.

9:52:10 PM  #  

This page looks exactly like it did the first time I saw it in 1995. You know it’s ancient because there are .au format audio clips. The shockwave game is fun, though.

Wesley Willis is a Chicago area musician who has done solo work, and has recorded with a band known as The Wesley Willis Fiasco. Wesley’s sole mission in life is to rock the hell out of you.

8:02:08 PM  #  

All kinds of wierd colors and shapes are available now. Highlights:

• 99 minute CD-Rs (good technical info, but ordering appears broken)
• black, pink, yellow, blue and green CD-Rs (available in a variety pack!)
• shaped CDs (I don’t think these guys sell these as CD-Rs, just pressed CDs in quantity)

5:53:47 PM  #  

Follow-up to my paranoid concerns about privacy in electronic toll collection systems (directly below) - this long, mostly boring article puts some (but certainly not all) of those fears to rest. Apparently, at least some toll authorities are doing it right:

The system can be set up with numbered accounts à la Swiss banks. This is the method used for the Dallas North Tollway. The number does not have to be associated with an individual’s name, Social Security number, registration number, or license plate number. The account can be maintained with cash deposits, and a monthly statement—if desired—can be sent to an anonymous post office box.

10:19:01 PM  #  

Lots of information on electronic toll collection and traffic management (not that I’ve ever seen any effective traffic management). The main attractions are a comprehensive list of toll facilities [qv] and a list of service centers [qv] so you can get one of those cruise cards or whatever they call them in your area. I haven’t read too much on the potential for “customer profiling” inherent in these devices; I’m sure it would be easy for the toll collectors to find out you go through the toll booth at 9:30 every morning, and I’m sure they’d be happy to accomodate any law enforcement request for such information if they aren’t already piping it directly to some FBI database.

10:10:26 PM  #  

I hate to put this right next to something so serious, but we’re all mature enough to handle it (I hope).

Who will receive this retribution:
professional athletes who do cocaine off the buttocks of prostitutes, Starbuck’s Coffee executives and that guy sitting to your left.

11:26:35 PM  #  

Zbigniew Libera’s mindblowing, disturbing, and controversial work - a set of
sculptures of a World War II Nazi Concentration Camp made of Lego bricks.

This is censorship all over again . . . I created this work to inspire discussion, not to suppress it.

* * *

If you ask anyone about Lego, they will say it is pure goodness. We all love Lego. [Libera] shocks us–but also really makes us think–by combining the most horrible of our realities with the innocence of a child’s play.

* * *

I found the pictures. The article is very enlightening. I just hope in the future, people will realize that we need to discuss what happened openly, and how we feel about it. Before too awfully long, the people who were once in Concentration camps, will be gone, and we will have to rely on the memories and books to depict the truth. I’m glad you put this on your website. I plan on letting all my friends know about it so they can come view it.

11:06:27 PM  #  

Is it possible that the electron was unknowingly split over
thirty years ago?

A lone researcher says he can cut an electron in two. If he’s right, quantum physics is dead.

10:51:44 PM  #  

Nice table-ized periodic table, but it’s a little too big for easy printing. Since I don’t have a printer, I guess that doesn’t really matter.

7:41:40 PM  #  

7:40:14 PM  #  

Practical advice on packing light. Mainly focused on travel abroad.

1:03:59 PM  #  

Excellent for keeping up with the current shuttle mission if you can’t watch NASA-TV 24 hours per day.

12:26:35 PM  #  

This CGI script purports to rate web pages based on information content. It’s primary metric is the ration of words inside hyperlinks to total words in the document, so it’s pretty simplistic.

12:22:40 PM  #  

Finally - epinions has added a “top rated
products” feature to rank competing products within a given category [eg]. Now I don’t have to look at each individual product to see if it is generally praised or panned!

5:10:20 PM  #  

Excellent doctoral thesis on optical phase conjugation, with concise background information [qv] and comprehensive in-depth discussion [qv].

4:05:20 PM  #  

I saw this DVD/MP3 player appliance thingy at the Atlanta Linux Showcase this morning, and at first I was pretty excited - 30GB disk, wireless keyboard, and ethernet, with TiVo-esque capabilities. However, the video demo they were showing was absolutely horrible - blatantly obvious color banding, choppy video with lots of dropped frames, and the picture was not even close to properly aligned with the TV screen. The product should retail for around $500 and be available “by the end of the year maybe, or first quarter next year” according to their marketing people.

3:56:58 PM  #  

Comprehensive and up-to-date.

11:38:18 PM  #  

Excellent tool for managing your Beowulf cluster. You can see it in action this weekend at the Atlanta Linux Showcase.

9:12:27 PM  #  

Deconstruction of CueCat marketing propaganda, a revealing record of the CueCat’s lack of success in finding websites and “special offers” as advertised, a funny letter to Digital Convergence, and some CueCat links.

9:10:51 PM  #  

The Stargazer is used to lauch the Pegasus rocket [qv], which can carry small payloads to low Earth orbit. It is also the “mother ship” for the X-34 [qv] rocketplane.

5:28:22 PM  #  

Spent all day at the Cobb Galeria setting up for
the Atlanta Linux Showcase. The Compaq
booth is looking pretty sweet; we’ve got a lots of Alphas, a sweet Alpha
Beowulf-in-a-rack, and iPaq handhelds running X instead of WinCE. Great
giveaways too!

9:26:07 PM  #  

This site showcases the printed program for Stanley Kubrick’s film, 2001: A Space Odyssey. My thanks go to Mark Hodgson for the loan of his copy. The program was available in UK cinemas, accompanying the first release of 2001, circa 1968.

9:06:07 PM  #  

The first picture has a CueCat, a Dremel, and a can of Miller High Life… wacky hijinx are sure to follow.

9:03:57 PM  #  

If your motherboard doesn’t have probes for monitoring your CPU temperature, you can roll your own.

9:02:08 PM  #  

Why is it that Nokia’s US website looks like it was designed by a high-schooler with “Internet Starter Kit” while their worldwide site looks much more professional? It’s bad enough that they keep all the good phones for themselves for months before releasing them on the unwashed masses of US consumers. This 3310 has instant messaging built-in, and even has canned smileys.

Put some passion into your messages - say it with a smiley :-) These friendly little fellows can now be found ‘pre-canned’ in the Nokia 3310. Just select the smiley you want to use from the ready-made collection to add some personality to your messages ;o)

10:25:34 PM  #  

Differential GPS is a system for broadcasting supplimental corrections over
marine beacon frequencies to improve the accuracy of GPS readings.

5:22:00 PM  #  

The buck stops here for GPS technical discussion. Fifty-one pages of every minute detail of GPS inner workings. Lots of formulas, if you’re into that kind of thing.

5:18:29 PM  #  

Concise details of the message format GPS satellites broadcast.

5:14:15 PM  #  

This is a real working radar system for your PC, which connects via USB. It is intended for marine use, but I think it would work great mounted on top of my car. It integrates with GPS devices and the software can overlay the radar image on top of maps, navigational charts, etc. Lots of other cool marine electronics on this site, including autopilots.

5:09:31 PM  #  

This graph shows the dramatic difference in GPS accuracy before and after selective availability was turned off back in May.

11:26:58 PM  #  

Astrophotographer Jason Ware has a great image galery, and sells most of his work in 8×10 and 16×20 prints.

11:22:39 PM  #  

Explanations of all those bewildering options in your PC BIOS.

6:13:42 PM  #  

I haven’t been too interested in getting a hand-held GPS unit until I saw what this one can do:

src="/images/2000/10/05/sunmoon.jpg" width="297" height="505"/>

Now if we can get this functionality into a pager-sized device that does POP3 email, I’ll cough up some dough.

5:05:32 PM  #  

Good debunking of the “never end a sentence with a preposition” crap. Also, this page uses the old-school amazon.com logo to link
to books. (BTW, the links still work!)

10:37:32 PM  #  

Words that don’t appear in the dictionary, but should. Originated by Rich
Hall, IIRC. This list is fairly complete, but poorly organized; it appears it
was once alphabetical, but fell into disorder. I did, however, find what I was
looking for:

Icision (ih sih’ zhun) - n. Delicate operation performed on
Neapolitan-flavored ice cream in which one entire flavor is precisely and
systematically removed.

10:12:16 PM  #  

I got my Photon Micro-Lights today, one red and one blue. They are absoulutely awesome - very bright, tiny and easy to operate. Two thumbs up!

11:20:22 PM  #  

The house at the bottom right of this page is about a mile from my office,
at the southeast corner of one of the busiest intersections in town. I can’t
imagine why it wasn’t torn down years ago and replaced with a strip mall (not
that I’m complaining - it’s much nicer than any strip mall I’ve seen).

11:09:22 PM  #  

If the real world were more like the Fisher-Price world, we’d
have happier dogs and more people bleeding to death on the freeway asphalt.

9:58:22 PM  #  

Lots of info on many popular 2D bar code systems. I really
need to hook up that damn CueCat and fool around with it, though I’m sure it would barf on any of the bar codes on this page.

9:53:56 PM  #  

Excellent quick introduction to the history and
current status of the Strategic Oil Reserve.

9:51:11 PM  #  

This map is a lot easier to read than the
USNO map I logged a few days ago, mostly because of its color coding. It doesn’t
come in PDF or PostScript versions, though, so it may not be as nice for
printing large copies.

9:48:04 PM  #  

This is a device that plugs into the bottom of your Palm and
has a PS/2 port on it so you can use any PS/2 keyboard to type directly into
your Palm. I just don’t see the point of this, though; for a few bucks more you
could get one of those folding keyboards that would be a lot easier to carry
around with you.

9:45:12 PM  #  

I still haven’t seen the much-hyped 99 minute CD-Rs.

9:42:45 PM  #