Digital Chum - Virtual fish guts and other nonsense

Coolness

The sky finally clears!

Jul 29th, 2009
by Dan.
2 comments

Celestron AstroMaster114 Last night was the first time I got to use my new telescope that I got from Telescopes.com. It was delivered on July 17th and, with one exception, the sky has been cloudy every… single… night! Finally, last night, there were enough clear spots that I could get a nice view of the moon and the detail. The view, even without a filter, was terrific. Megan was pretty excited about it, too (Lori took a look and said she saw footprints. Ha!).

The moon was probably only about one-third full, but there were lots of craters visible with great resolution. I used a 20mm eyepiece to position everything (about 50x magnification) and then switched to a 10mm eyepiece (100x) to get more detail. I almost expected to see the LRO cruising around the moon!

I’ll be taking a drive with the telescope to a much darker location with less light pollution soon, so I’m hoping to get an even better moon view and some great views of a planet or two… if I can find them. I’m still not fluent with the whole astronomical coordinate language yet, so that’s going to be tough for awhile.

I’m really looking forward to a clearer night with a fuller moon.

I did think it was cool…

Jul 4th, 2009
by Dan.
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phlatball I remember seeing the Phlat Ball on television awhile ago. It’s a Frisbee kind of thing that turns into a ball when you throw it. So you throw it just like you would a Frisbee, but you get to catch a ball. The commercial had all kinds of cool shots of the ball transforming and I thought, Wow, that looks cool!

Well, I saw it in action today and it’s very clever. When you collapse it, there are two internal suction cups that hold it flat in its Frisbee configuration, but when you throw it, the spin releases the suction cups and it turns into a ball. This is all well and good, but what you really end up with is a Frisbee that rolls away if you don’t catch it. This is annoying, but it’s even more annoying if you’re playing on a hill.

A+ for intent and potential coolness. C for practical usage.

Burn Notice to the rescue!

Jul 1st, 2009
by Dan.
4 comments

burnnotice After writing the last post about Rush Limbaugh, I got a bit of a sickening feeling in my stomach and realized that today’s post made three in a row about Rush. That’s both depressing and unacceptable. So in order to remedy that sad state of affairs, I figured it’d do a quick write-up of Burn Notice, a spy/drama/action/comedy television show that is in its third season. The accompanying photo is way better than a bloated Rush face, too.

I got hooked watching Burn Notice a few months ago when I happened to catch a couple episodes on USA Network. It had a great Miami Vice meets Beverly Hills Cop kind of style. Netflix hooked me up with the Season 1 and Season 2 DVD’s and Hulu provided me the opportunity to completely catch up with this season.

Sadly, now I have to wait a week (or longer) between episodes.

The show, however, kicks ass. I frequently find myself laughing out loud… and then sitting on the edge of my seat… and then getting a little choked up. The mood mixing is done very well and the style of the show is such that it’s a visual treat as well.

Though there is an over-arcing storyline, each episode generally contains a standalone storyline as well, making it very easy to pick up in the middle and still understand most of what’s going on. The characters have phenomenal chemistry. Jeffrey Donovan and Gabrielle Anwar constantly have a cool, sexual tension heat while Donovan and Bruce Campbell have great buddy charisma. Sharon Gless, who plays Donovan’s mother, is a perfect mix of doting, overprotective mother and nagging bitch. Mix all that up with the spy back story and Donovan’s informative voiceover narrative and you’ve got a terrific show that is a delight to watch.

And you learn lots of pretend spy stuff. ;-)

Cool on a Galactic Level

Jun 23rd, 2009
by Dan.
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The Arches ClusterWhile perusing Tom’s Astronomy Blog, I saw a post about the Arches Cluster, which is near the center of our galaxy, a mere 25,000 light years away. Pictures of space always fascinate me, but this picture comes with information that takes “fascinate” to a whole new level.

The Arches Cluster is a small (relatively speaking), dense cluster of huge baby stars. The new picture from the European Organization for Astronomical Research‘s Very Large Telescope is “one of the sharpest views ever of the Arches Cluster.” Check out the press release to see more details of the photo of this area of our galaxy. It’s breathtaking.

From the press release:

“With the extreme conditions in the Arches Cluster, one might indeed imagine that stars won’t form in the same way as in our quiet solar neighbourhood,” says Pablo Espinoza, the lead author of the paper reporting the new results.”However, our new observations showed that the masses of stars in this cluster actually do follow the same universal law”.

In this image the astronomers could also study the brightest stars in the cluster. “The most massive star we found has a mass of about 120 times that of the Sun,” says co-author Fernando Selman. “We conclude from this that if stars more massive than 130 solar masses exist, they must live for less than 2.5 million years and end their lives without exploding as supernovae, as massive stars usually do.”

For reference, the most massive known star is the Pistol Star, with a mass of about 200 times that of our sun. That’s in our galaxy. The biggest known star in diameter is VY Canis Majoris with a solar radius of about 18,000 – 21,000 (that’s 18 – 21 thousand times bigger than our sun). It’s also in our galaxy. Outside our galaxy, we can see other galaxies, but not much of their contents… at least not directly.

Seeing those stars in the Arches Cluster is fascinating for me, but for an astronomer, it’s got to be the stuff of dreams. There are lots of stars to study, but this formation is unique.

Our galaxy (the Milky Way, for those of you who haven’t kept up) contains an estimated 200 to 400 billion stars. The observable universe probably contains more than 100 billion galaxies.

That’s a lot of stars.

The Bacon Lance

Jun 19th, 2009
by Dan.
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Okay, so it’s not like I (and the enlightened contingent of humanity) don’t know that bacon isn’t the world’s most awesome meat, but until today, even I didn’t fully comprehend the heights of awesomeness that bacon could reach.

Now I know.

Behold, the bacon lance… a torch made of bacon that burns so hot it can cut through a steel pan. Yes, you read that correctly. It’s a cutting torch… made of bacon.

baconlance001

Ummm… wow. You can watch the video below (or at the link above) of the bacon lance’s construction.

My favorite quote: “It turns out that ordinary American bacon does not have the structural integrity that’s necessary for this applicaiton so I’m using an engineering grade of bacon which is known as prosciutto.”

“Engineering grade”… R0XX0R!

Sadly, at the end of the article, there’s a warning which says, “Theodore Gray is trained in lab safety. Don’t try this at home.”

So much for my weekend plans.

We are very tiny

Jun 16th, 2009
by Dan.
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I came across this video this weekend and wanted to share it. I’ve seen static images with size comparisons of the planets in our solar system, our sun, and other starts in our galaxy, but this video makes it significantly more dramatic.

It also uses the music from Disney’s movie The Black Hole, which, despite it’s scientific shenanigans with physics, is just a fun, fun movie.

(For the best effect, click the “HD” button and then make it full screen. Good stuff!)

Uber-cool Astronomical Sciencey Stuff!

May 7th, 2009
by Dan.
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Galaxy NGC 3021I found this article on DiscoverMagazine.com today about how fast our universe is expanding… and how astronomers figure this kind of thing out. After reading the whole thing, I was in awe… for two reasons.

First, the size and content of our universe is just completely mind-blowing. Carl Sagan’s “billions and billions” quote seems to understate it to an extreme degree. Just looking at a single galaxy and trying to wrap my head around how many stars it contains… and that just one of those stars (among billions) is like our Sun, one infinitesimally small fireball in a whirling mass of billions of similar fireballs… and that our tiny planet revolves around one such tiny star… it makes my head hurt.

Second, that there are people on this planet who have the intellectual wherewithall to actually measure the distance between galaxies and the speed of universal expansion by using supernovas and the pulsating brightness of stars. I mean, I can’t really grasp the idea of how small we are in just a galaxy (one of billions) without misfiring neurons in my brain causing me physical pain, but these guys are discussing the expansion of the universe, pulsating Cepheid variables, type I supernovae, and dark energy. I imagine them doing it casually over a beer or two at their local pub, but I’m sure they work exceptionally hard in labs and observatories and classrooms. Either way… wow.

So kudos to astronomers… misfiring neurons never felt so good!

Awesomeness

Apr 13th, 2009
by Dan.
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Central Station in Antwerp, Belgium…

Off to Vancouver

Mar 31st, 2009
by Dan.
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StargateWednesday, a couple friends and I are heading off to Vancouver for the official Stargate convention. It’s a wonderfully geeky time and it’s sure to be a blast.

We’re going in serious style this year… flying first class, taking a limo to the hotel, staying in the hotel’s largest suite on the exclusive executive floor… what could be better!?

Okay… I’m sure you can think of a few things, but you can dream about them all you want while I chow down on my free breakfast at the exclusive Opal Lounge on the exclusive 18th floor. Nyah!

This is Outstanding!

Feb 26th, 2009
by Dan.
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MermaidWETA Workshop, the company that did all the crazy weapons and armor for the Lord of the Rings movies, fulfilled a double-amputee’s dream by creating a mermaid tail for her so she could swim. Aside from it looking very cool and letting the woman swim quite well, it’s a great thing that WETA took it upon themselves to do it for the woman. I love hearing about stuff like this.

Thanks to spajadigit at Infidelicacy for the link!

Almost Cooler than Bacon

Jan 31st, 2009
by Dan.
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Forget the jet ski or the jet boat or any of that so-last-week silliness. This is what I need.


(Thanks to Infidelicacy for bringing this to my attention)

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