Monday, September 14, 2009
Tuesday, September 8, 2009
Thursday, September 3, 2009
Wednesday, September 2, 2009
Some Stuff: Wednesday, September 2, 2009
The very talented astrophotographer Ralf Vandebergh has captured an astonishing view of the International Space Station: The image was taken on August 29, before the current Discovery mission, and shows the station gleaming in sunlight.
Rumours are circulating this moring that Marvel is looking at converting Jon Favreau's Iron Man 2 into 3D. On top of that, they're considering converting Iron Man 1 to 3D and re-releasing it a bit earlier. Favreau and Downey are teaming up again for a movie called "Cowboys and Aliens".
IMAX has booked J.J. Abrams' Star Trek for a re-release this weekend in 85 theaters around the US and Canada. Star Trek will run for another two weeks until Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs opens on September 18th.
In a recent interview with Sam Worthington on the set of the forth coming “Clash of the Titans” he offered these tidbits…"What these guys and Louis [Leterrier] have set out to do is raise the richter [scale] to 11, in the sense of, the scorpions are the size of dump trucks, Medusa is a lot quicker and a lot more scarier, and the whole world itself is… big and epic in scope."
Is there a scientific way o tell how bad a fart is?
Oh yes! Now there is…For their senior project, two Cornell University computer-engineering whizzes recently built a machine that does just that. After learning in class how breathalyzers work, Robert Clain and Miguel Salas assembled a fart detector from a sensitive hydrogen sulfide monitor, a thermometer and a microphone and wrote the software that would rate the emission. A “slight perturbance in the air” near the detector sets it to work measuring the three pillars of fart quality: stench, temperature and sound. Temperature, Clain explains, is critical. The hotter a fart, the faster it spreads. “It beeps faster if it’s a high ranker, and a voice rates it on a scale of zero to nine,” he says. “If it ranks a nine, a fan comes on to blow it away. It even records the noise so you can play it back later
Want to know if there’s been an outbreak of H1N1 in the neighborhood? There’s an app for that. Outbreaks Near Me is a location-aware application for the iPhone based on the free HealthMap epidemiological web service, which allows users to access disease-outbreak information. Unlike the web-based service, users can contribute signs that public health trouble is afoot in what the organization is calling "participatory epidemiology." The founder of HealthMap says what he's envisioning with Outbreaks Near me is "...say you're in a clinical setting as a patient or clinician and seeing lots of unusual cases of something. You’d be able to note that down and submit it into the system."
Some Stuff: Tuesday, September 1, 2009
1972: American Bobby Fischer won the international chess crown in Iceland, defeating Boris Spassky of the Soviet Union.
The Walt Disney Company is buying Marvel Entertainment Inc. for $4-billion (U.S.) in cash and stock, bringing characters like Iron Man and Spider-Man into the family of Mickey Mouse and WALL-E. Marvel shares jumped 26 per cent, shortly after the market opened. Disney shares fell 1.8 per cent. In all, Disney now owns some 5,000 Marvel characters Marvel will still remain in creative control over their own company. But now have some great resources like PIXAR and the incredible pool of Disney artists available to them. On the down side this could mean less graphicness.
Fox has announced that they're moving forward on rebooting the Fantastic Four franchise . The producer behind Poseidon, I Am Legend and Hancock has been hired to oversee the reboot as producer. The studio has also hired Michael Green a co-executive producer on "Heroes" who also co-wrote the Green Lantern movie, to write the new screenplay.
Sly Stallone has signed on for another Rambo movie that will chronicle John Rambo's battle against human traffickers and drug lords near the U.S.-Mexico border.
Yesterday, officials in Uganda announced that they're launching a new social networking website later this month. It's called FriendAGorilla.org, and it'll allow users to track to the movements of MOUNTAIN GORILLAS.
According to Ugandan officials, once users pay the $1 fee to sign up, they'll be able to watch live video feeds of mountain gorillas in the wild, and they'll even be able to track the gorillas' movements by GPS.
Plus, they'll receive weekly updates alerting them of new births, and other gorilla-related info. --"Once you befriend a gorilla, you will be interacting with your gorilla friend on a weekly basis, and you will get updates on the movement of your gorilla friend."
I told you about this back in April, but given it’s back to school time I thought I’d bring it up again. AT&T's Family Map plan, allows users to see their child's location on a detailed map with the street address via computer or cell phone. Parents also can receive text messages or e-mail updates at certain times of the day to ensure their child has made it home from school,
