It’s almost been a decade since the 2003 release of Return of the King, the 3rd movie in the Lord of the Ring trilogy. I The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey is slated to be released this December. It’ll be the first of three films that make the prequel to The Lord of the Rings. I’ve been a fan of the books for many years, and even read some of Tolkien’s denser fare, like the Simarillion, which recounts the creation myth for Middle Earth.
This is pretty cool, the NASA Academy of Program/Project and Engineering Leadership (APPEL) has released a free iBook and ebook PDF about space junk. This is the official page for the NASA Orbital Debris and Risk Mitigation iBook on the NASA website.
Debris from the collision between Iridium 33 (green) and Cosmos 2251 (red) spread very quickly. These images show that within a few hours of the collision, the evolution of a debris cloud was already apparent along the orbital planes of both satellites.
Tech sites have been abuzz with a potential launch of an Apple iWatch. I keep reading how such a device may be used, what sensors could be included in the first release, what data may be recorded, and who might have been hired to support its use.
As vague as these reports have been, one thing is clear to me. iWatch is not a watch and it’s not a phone on your wrist, it’s a sensor platform with a display. The only reason it has watch in its name is to fool you into putting it on. iPhone wasn’t a phone, you just needed an excuse to buy one.
Some friends of ours went to Gettysburg last weekend for some much needed quality time, relaxation and checking out the sites. We live a short (1.5-2 hour) drive from Gettysburg, and decided a visit sounded apropos, given the November 19 anniversary of the Gettysburg Address and the release of “Lincoln” in theaters across of the nation. After a short dive into the Series of Tubes, we learned we could easily fill our Saturday afternoon and evening without too much expense beyond gas so on we went…
I recently learned about a computer demonstration dubbed “The Mother of All Demos” given 40 years ago by Douglas Engelbart at the Fall Joint Computer Conference in San Francisco. Douglas showed off the NLS computer to a crowd of 1000 computer pros. The demo of this system given on December 9, 1968 is now considered one of the most important in modern computing history.
Let’s go to Mars! This video shows how I used Photoscan to generate a 3D model from stereoscopic images taken on Mars by the NASA Curiosity Rover.
