According to this space shuttle tracking site, the space shuttle and ISS will be passing over NC at 60 degrees elevation at 19:36 local time. It may not be dark enough for a sighting but it may be in range to receive radio signals. Cool.
I just watched the shuttle crew enter the ISS, with the familiar nautical ringing the bell and the words “space shuttle discovering, arriving.”
Rocket Roll (YouTube)
The Phenomenauts
Spent some time on Rigel 9,
Walkin’ waist deep in the Rigel slime,
Slid fifty feet into a Rigel hole,
Bent my fender but I still know how to
Rocket Roll
–(Rocket Roll!)
Rocket Roll!
–(Rocket Roll!)
Rocket Roll.
–(Rocket Roll)
Some of you people may be out of control,
But I wanna see the rest of you Rocket Roll!
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Anyone know what this is? It’s a spot between Poole Road and New Bern Avenue.
It looks like a remnant of some now-defunct factory or something.
Could it be that the non-stop rain of the past four days is coming to an end? One can only hope. I’m ready for the sun!
News comes today that the N&O cut 78 positions today.
I’m going to miss my daily newspaper when it’s gone.
This is just shocking, I tell you. Shocking! Who would’ve thought it?
Bone tests on teenage Chinese athletes have shown that thousands had faked their age, often in order to keep competing in junior events.
A study in the southern province of Guangdong found one in five had lied, with some discovered to be seven years older than their registered age.
On another note, maybe I need to have a “China” category on MT.Net.
Yesterday’s space shuttle launch finally motivated me to dust off my DVB-S card and set up satellite reception in our new home. I’d put it off for almost a year, thinking the tree cover in our back yard was too extensive to find a good shot at the sky. It turns out I discovered a very nice spot right on our back deck, so Travis and I spent a little time building a temporary stand for a dish, aiming it, and threading the cable back into our network closet. After a few duh moments where I shook off the cobwebs covering my knowledge of DVB-S, I got reception of the NASA channel – only three hours after the shuttle launched! Better late than never.
Even so, I wasn’t able to get Myth to pull down video for some reason. The dvb-utils applications can tune (and capture) the streams just fine, but Myth just shows a blank screen – even though it can tune the channel and see a signal from the transponder. I don’t know what else I can tinker with to get Myth working with it but I’ll keep hacking at it.
The total lack of sunshine this weekend has made things look darker than they usually do, but I swear this non-stop rain is doing more than that. I swear I can practically see the leaves popping out on the trees and bushes. I think last week’s warm spell coupled with this rain is waking nature from its long winter slumber.
Our Netflix movie lats night was Double Indemnity, the 1944 film noir classic starring Fred MacMurray, Barbara Stanwick, and Edward G. Robinson.
Wow, what a brainy, clever movie. Sixty-five years after it was made, it still stands up. Well, aside from watching the main character stop at a drive-in for a bottle of beer, and the mention that a mansion with a commanding view of Los Angeles costs almost $30,000.
The ACC Tournament started today and practically the whole office was consumed with watching it. Someone sent out a link to an Internet stream of it but I didn’t bother clicking on it, thinking it would be one of those horrible, unwatchable “buffering … buffering…” experiences
Then a co-worker announced he had it going in his cube. I walked over to see the game on TV clear as day.
“Where’s the antenna?” I asked him.
“There’s no antenna,” he replied. “That’s from the Internet stream.
Whoa! I couldn’t believe my eyes. It seemed pixel-perfect.
It turns out the streaming was done by a company called Swarmcast, using a swarm-type technology that predates BitTorrent. Unlike BitTorrent, Swarmcast allows viewers to watch their shows instantly rather than having to wait for the whole download. It was an impressive demonstration that had me marveling the rest of the afternoon.
Interestingly, Swarmcast began life as an open-source application, and Boing Boing’s Cory Doctorow was onboard in its early existence. Neither one applies today, however. I scoured the Internets today in search of Swarmcast’s once-GPLed code but could find no trace of it.
I’m now looking at the apps mentioned in Wikipedia’s Peercasting page to see what other tools might offer the same experience. This “swarm streaming” stuff has me hooked!
