Archives for April 2008

The risks; the rewards: Phoenix Mars Lander movie

NASA have moved away from boring videos to exciting trailers for the Mars mission. Watch the trailer: it’s superb.

How to watch the colossal squid webcast

Te Papa website links for watching the colossal squid webcast

Instructions for watching the video stream of Te papa dissecting a colossal squid. Shows how to use VLC to watch a live stream.

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Ellen speaks about gay jokes

Ellen de Generes is known for her humour, but sometimes she speaks in deadly earnest about serious topics, as she does in this video. She talks about a teenage boy who was killed for sending a valentine to another boy, and makes the connection between (anti) gay jokes at one end of a spectrum and […]

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Kielder Forest has a new observatory

Even England has a few rare locations with dark sky, one of them being Kielder Forest, which now sports a new observatory for both professional and amateur astronomers. There an interesting, though brief video on this page — (the pre-roll ad froze Flock for me, but I was able to view the video after restarting […]

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We need reductions all over

There’s a lot to worry about these days (when isn’t there?). The globe is warming thanks to carbon and other emissions, our lake levels are low leading to potential power shortages this winter, species are going extinct and pollution is rampant. It seems fairly obvious that we all need to ‘reduce, recycle and re-use’ as […]

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Dogs who dance

Saturday is dog training day. We’re learning to do some fun agility: jumping through hoops, running through a tunnel, and weaving through poles. We also learn some trick such as shaking hands, and rolling over, and recently we’ve been attempting the first stages of dog dancing. We don’t aim to compete, but it’s all good […]

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International Year of Astronomy 2009 has a trailer

Phil Plait at Bad Astronomy Blog pointed to the trailer for the International Year of Astronomy in 2009. It’s really inspiring. Having relinquished some of my voluntary obligations to make some extra free time in my life, I’m hoping I’ll be able to focus a bit more on astronomy this year and next. Much has […]

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A walk at the Ataturk Memorial

I tried to take the dogs to Lyall Bay for a walk this afternoon. It didn’t work out, because there were so many people there I couldn’t find anywhere to park. I drove on around the coast a little and we went up to Ataturk Memorial instead. When we arrived I realised how appropriate the […]

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Do you want more sci-fi on NZ TV? Sign here

New Zealand television is full of weight-loss, home-selling, survival, talent show garbage. The amount of sci-fi has been in steady decline over recent times, and when they do show it, it tends to be in strange time slots. We need more quality sci-fi on TV! Read It’s high time Sky got the Sci-Fi channel – […]

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I’m being back-scattered

I opened my email this morning to find dozens of spams trapped by Google’s spam filter and dozens more by the Postini spam filtering service. Over the last 12 hours or so I’ve received about 400 or 500 emails ‘bounced’ from emails purporting to have been sent out by me. Apparently my sender names (all […]

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Going wireless in a wired motel

I’m in a motel in Hamilton, where there’s a wired Internet connection. Luckily I brought an ethernet cable with me. I plugged in and was instantly online. All credit to them for that. However, wired connections seem so archaic, and I also brought an Airport Express with me to see if I could go wireless. […]

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Who are the experts in document accessibility on the Mac?

I recently received an email from an acquaintance: I would love to talk with you about ways of making accessible documents using a Mac. …in partnership with the Blind and Low Vision Education Network, and local and central government, [we have] embarked on a project called Secondary Sight, whose long-term goal is an online, personalised […]

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