Recently in Geektronics Category

It's like sitting at the control deck of a starship; in front of you floats a steel plate, roughly a metre squared, suspended perfectly at the horizontal by pneumatic cylinders driven by a compressor in the next room; to the right, a pair of flat panel displays offer up a digital control panel of mind numbing complexity, a small box covered in green-glowing buttons dismisses its size by looking very important, and twin multi-gigahertz computers controlled via bluetooth add to the technoarray with their steady hum and sheer bulk; to the left, a squat panel of eight illuminated switches flanks a rack of heavy black steel that carries four cylinders; two Helium-Neon lasers, each about a foot and a half long and two inches in diameter, a single diode laser nestled beneath them, and to their right, an argon laser, five full inches in cross-section and mounted by a fuck-off-huge cooling fan.

And in the middle, sat square on the steel plate, and connected to the flanking equipment by a quarrel of fibre optic cabling and wire is the photomultiplier, the centre of this mechanical universe; behold, the confocal microscope, all £190 000 of it. And I am taking it for a test drive.

I like that I can be left to assess $350 000 worth of scientific wizardry all on my own. Put me behind the wheel of a car worth three hundred and fifty times less, and I'd feel far more concerned about doing something wrong -- perhaps because doing something wrong in a car is more likely to involve my neck -- but there are no cars here; on my planet, the poofs are armed with lasers.

My favourite aeronautical-engineering endeavour gets its first vehicular tryout today, after last year's successful test of a scramjet engine by Queensland University; NASA's unmanned X-43A, a hypersonic scramjet-powered research aircraft designed to fly at speeds of up to Mach 10, which is pretty zippy (7650 mph ish), will be dropped from a B52 bomber off the California coast at some time after 12:00 PST (20:00 here) according to NASA's schedule, after which they hope to send it to Mach 7 (5000 mph). NASA TV will have a live feed here.

Things like this always explode. And they want to turn it into mass-transport technology? I'd like to be able to bite my tongue over the following words, but... not in my lifetime.

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EDIT: Well that was just about the coolest thing I've ever seen. It didn't explode, reaching Mach 5 before the data stream failed, thereafter coming back online as it dropped back to Mach 1 before wiping out in the Pacific; the onboard computer will reveal all when recovered. Feeds included all the pre-launch checks, live views of the rudder tests on both the vehicle and the rocket it sat upon, the exciting ignition sequence ("On my mark... five... four... three... !"), flyby shots from the F18s, and plenty of footage of the B52 itself; that mechanical marvel is sex on wings. Somehow, I don't ever see myself in the cockpit of one of those -- well, I do, I just can't -- but vicarious living isn't entirely lacking in satisfaction. Wicked.

My body temperature is 102.5 F; I feel rough. Grrr, perfect timing.

If you believe that Pluto is a planet - and rest assured that this is contested to the day - then we have another addition to Solar system, an icy blob called Sedna. Welcome!

"Hey everyone, my name's Sedna and I'm an alcoho..."

If not, then we just have ourselves an extraordinarily large KBO with an exceptionally large heliocentric orbit. Excitement. More relevant to me is my new Seagate hard disc; just installed on top of the IBM drive that originally shipped with my baby (Apple doesn't just do computers); works a charm, and ohso quietly zippy. How long does a hundred and sixty gigs last these days anyway?

Apparently Apple has it in mind to open a shop in London. Yay, if only so that I can see the unaffordably wonderful, full product line in person. Of course, they chose an odd place to open it; a marginally less stuffy bit of street would better suit their corporate image, but hey, re-model Regent Street from the inside out, why not? Welcome to the United Kingdom.

The pre-Christmas audio-snippet (180 kb). Now, before I come to my senses...

What I like most about G o o g l e is probably the one thing that slows it down, if only a smidgen; their crazy, multi-coloured logo, as most anyone will know, changes to reflect particular calendar-events, some of which are pretty obscure on the world-circuit; since the engine is my homepage, these novel logos are usually the first things to greet me over breakfast on those days when someone, somewhere, has something to celebrate, or remember. Trivial, yes, but a sensitive detail that usually brings a smile to my face. What wasn't cute about that Chinese New Year sheep?

My fortnightly Apple eNews flopped - albeit metaphorically - through my inbox this morning, announcing the popular release of the G5 in the United States. It is released in the civilised world a little later in August, but that's pretty fair, as European and Japanese technology can be withheld from the Americas for suspiciously long periods - one-upmanship against the super-power? Who knows, but doubt it; the greater market economies are too complex for something that petty*.

In any case, if any of you wins the lottery and feels like buying someone less-well-off something really stunning, souped up and generally kickass, then buy them one of these. I really want one too, but am probably too proud to accept your charity. What? No! You've really offended me now. Take your sleekly designed powerhouse of data-crunching, metasexually-charged, ohmygoodness, stone-me-now-with-slaked-pigiron piece of voluptuousness-incarnate and go away!

Sigh. A 64-bit processor based on IBMs server-grade 64-bit POWER4 lies at the heart of this new desktop range; it's a first for the home user, the architecture of which allows for a tremendous leap in memory capacity, bus-speed, and sex appeal. I don't really care whether the machine is the fastest PC out there, as is claimed, though for it's price, it probably is - my 733 Mhz G4 is faster than a 3 GHz Pentium on some fronts, so I'd not be hard pressed to accept that the G5 is, in practice - the point is that Apple have finally come up with a new flagship range more in keeping with what people expect of them, and one which is more readily expandable.

Some saw the company's announcement of the G5 as a pyrrhic event, but not everything need be based on outdoing the competition; more deserved attention seems to be garnered by serving the needs of a faithful clientele, and I am more than happy with the quiet confidence that they impart through the development of a fine product range. Just release Panther already.

*Ack! The Germans and French didn't support our bid for a legitimate attack on Iraq - trade embargo! Trade embargo!

I was diverted by this example of a learning software; a programme which plays 20 questions, and which adapts its database to address inaccuracies in its guessing. It guessed my first item incorrectly, but came close, and got the second quite easily; don't try to be a smartass, or in fact, do.

I saw T3 on Sunday; this software doesn't worry me, but it's amusing to draw the comparison. The Vingean singularity (a theoretical point after which man's technology will outgrow the need for intervention by its creator, being able to exist and replicate itself independently) is probably a ways away, though who knows what the military are playing with...

Somewhat impressed at the initial reception that the new iTunes store received, I am now officially amazed. It would seem that they have come up with a genuinely workable formula.
If only the service would come our way; in the UK, you can view and listen to store content - the exclusive tracks have blown me out of the water too - but not purchase. Yet. HELLO!