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Archive for category: Generally Geeky

Technology out of control?

July 31, 2012
July 31, 2012

Is it just me, or does anyone else think that in some ways, we are letting our tech get out of hand???

I’m an acknowledged lover of most things tech (the geekier, the better, that’s my motto much of the time), but I can admit to being somewhat resistant to certain new trends. I’m referring to the increasing amounts of social media interfacing that’s being packed into the newest cars coming off the production lines, both stateside and abroad. Excuse me, but personally, I do NOT want my car telling all of my Facebook friends exactly where on the Interstate I happen to be at a given point in time, and I most certainly do not want it telling the local authorities how fast I am driving around the Charlotte Motor Speedway… uh, I mean I-485. (Some of us here clearly think that these are one and the same, but I suppose that is irrelevant to this rant.) Nor do I want my spouse’s Volvo placing itself in a Google+ circle with every other car in the condo parking lot, or tweeting to strange 18-wheelers that are on our tail. Call me old-fashioned here, but I will settle for the fact that my Chevy truck starts every time I turn the key, and does an admirable job in the western Carolina mountain snow if I happen to be in the area during the winter and kick the trans into 4WD. I do NOT want it talking to Facebook. EVER.  The trend just seems rampant of the kind of technology that we’ll someday regret. Perhaps it’s due to the flashbacks of the out-of-control NX-5s chasing Will Smith in the tunnel in the movie, “I, Robot.” Although I will admit, when I first saw that film, I sooooo wanted the Audi that Smith was driving. Still do…

 

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NASA will pay you $5,000 to eat really bad food, and you get to spend 4 months in Hawaii! (seriously)…

July 20, 2012
July 20, 2012
NASA will pay you to eat really bad food, and you get to spend 4 months in Hawaii!  (Seriously, I’m NOT making this up, and it’s all in the name of scientific research.) As part of its four-month simulated mission to Mars, NASA is looking for volunteers. And no, you won’t be spun around in a gravity simulator until you throw up, nor will they confine you to a tin can the size of your kitchen for weeks to see if you lose your sanity (they’ve already done that sort of testing, and it’s called the International Space Station). No, NASA wants to fly you to Hawaii to study the human limitations of really bad food.
According to a story at Mashable.com, NASA is looking for paid volunteers that can put up with space food for a simulated four-month trip to Mars. Study participants will get to sample a wide variety of dried packaged foods that probably taste like cardboard, while NASA researchers record the participants’ reactions. The goal of your tax dollars at work here is to measure whether the participants can avoid “menu fatigue.” Apparently, menu fatigue is a NASA technical term meaning, “if I have to eat these crackers and processed cheese for one more lunch, I am going to whup sombody’s…” well, you get the idea.
Now before you begin packing for Hawaii, you should know about the qualifications. You must have a bachelor’s degree, either in math, engineering, biological or physical science, or computer science. You can’t be a smoker, and (if selected) you must be prepared to live astronaut-style in tiny rooms with limited bathing and shower facilities alongside total strangers who are likely to work your last nerves.
On the plus side, you get an expenses-paid four-month stay in Hawaii, with airfare, lodging, and meals (if you can go so far as to call them “meals”) included, along with the $5,000 stipend. There’s also R&R time built into the study, so you could take up surfing while your friends back in the continental US are helping pay for all this with their taxes. Still interested? You can apply at http://manoa.hawaii.edu/hi-seas
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The certified ‘geeks of the day’ award goes to…

July 20, 2012
July 20, 2012

I built go-karts as a kid, and a moon rocket that, on launch, caught fire and burned in the Jamaica, New York driveway of my childhood home. (When Dad got home from a hard day of bolting wings onto Navy jets out at Grumman Aerospace, he was not amused by the burn stains my little imitation of Saturn-V had left in the driveway, but I digress). Anyway, a group of San Francisco Bay area high school students have used the cockpit of an old piper Cherokee, a pile of computer hardware, a bunch of LCD screens and some fierce programming skills to build a simulator of, of all things, a Battlestar Galactica Viper of the 1970s-era TV show “Battlestar Galactica.”

The basic idea is, they mounted the cockpit section of a small plane, a Piper PA-28 Cherokee, to a platform that can rotate 360° across two axes. They added flight controls driving motors that spin the cockpit, along with LCD screens to simulate what you would see from a Viper’s cockpit (if a Viper existed). This has got to be one of the geekiest things ever constructed in the history of man, and yes, I’m envious- wish I’d had this in my driveway at age 15. Check it out on mashable at http://mashable.com/2012/03/22/battlestar-galactica-viper-simulator/.

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