Dirk L'Orange is Writing...

Recently, I heard news that Venus and Jupiter would be in close proximity to the Moon and didn't think much about it. This is, until I caught sight of it the other night after coming home in the early evening the other night. I decided to pull out my camera and try to get some good images of this... I don't have a good enough understanding of how my camera works or really a good enough lens to take a proper photo, but I did the best I could with what I did know.

I took photos a bunch of photos and played around with the exposures and came up with a couple that are okay. The first, is a shorter exposure that shows the moon pretty much in focus and the two planets look like specks on the image. In the longer exposure, the moon appears more blurry (it's actually over exposed) and the planets appear as small discs. Remember that the brighter of the two planets is venus. See below.

Posted by PoS at 11:37 PM | Permalink

That's right. It's a valid question?

Which side are you on in the evolution debate. The side of Evolution or the side of stupid?

Gallop did a poll, which you can read here. But from my point of view there's just a lot of stupid out there.

Posted by PoS at 7:01 PM | Permalink

And he's right... again.

Or see it on YouTube.

Posted by PoS at 8:10 PM | Permalink

A couple of images to go along with the audio.

Apollo 8, Earth Rise	Apollo 17, Full Disc

Click here, to see the time lapse image of the earth from the Galileo Space Probe.

Listen Now:

Part 2, Earth Day (Length - 13:03)

If you would like to download it to listen later, right click here, and select the appropriate menu choice to save to your computer.

Posted by PoS at 11:39 PM | Permalink

Mrs. PoS and I got to go see Al Gore give his presentation on global warming this past Saturday night at the Nokia Theater in Grand Prairie. I was able to bring in my iPod with voice recorder attachment and record the entire speech. Rather than tell you about the evening in general, instead I've decided to edit the presentation into several parts and present them here, for you to listen.

On a side note, I was in about the 15th row from the stage so the sound quality is not great, I recorded in mono, not stereo because it would take up less space on my iPod, but the actual presentation is very clear. Obviously, I cannot bring you the images to go along with the slides, but what I am hoping to do, is make it sort of a downloadable podcast with some images edited in.

One last note, the breathing you hear at the very beginning is mine, but it doesn't last very long. In some cases you can hear the people around me making comments.... some are funny, some aren't. Enjoy.


Listen Now:

Part 1, Introduction (Length - 13:45)

Posted by PoS at 11:49 PM | Permalink

... and other interesting (or not so interesting topics).

As if it wasn't bad enough that Pluto was reclassified as a "dwarf planet" and then thrown a into a couple of new (pretty much made up) classification as a "trans-Neptunian" object (a celestial object that crosses the orbital path of Neptune). Now, to add insult to injury, Pluto has been stripped of its name, according to the NewScientist.com news service:

Pluto will henceforth be known as minor planet 134340 Pluto, according to a new designation by the International Astronomical Union's Minor Planet Center.

Next!!!!

My brother-in-law doesn't realize when he calls that we actually DON'T have an answering machine at home, but instead, we have voicemail.


Listen Now:

So, while he's calling out ma to answer the phone, little does he realize that he's just speaking into a computer somewhere on the internet while his mother continues with her day unaware that her son needs her.

Posted by PoS at 10:45 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Darren and I have been talking, and we've both realized we've got some computer equipment we really don't need anymore. We were thinking, instead of just junking this stuff in a closet forever, or getting rid of it in a possibly wasteful way, why not offer it to others for trade or for free so that it gets reused?

He's got a few things, and I've got a few...off the top of my head I've got:
a four port hub
a ps/2-vga kvm switch (if I still have it)

other stuff - I'll update with more...hopefully darren will too...be sure to post what you've got!

[UPDATE: Darren's Stuff for trade/giveaway.]

1. 2x512 MB (that's 1 gb to you scottie!) 184-pin PC3200 DDR400 DIMM
2. 2x512 MB (that's 1 gb to you scottie!) 168-pin PC133 DIMM
3. SATA/150 PCI card (for connecting a SATA HardDrive to an IDE Motherboard.

I'm sure there's some other stuff I can find as well... laters.

[UPDATE 2: One More Item From Darren.]

4. Netgear RT311 Internet Access Gateway Router.
5. Microsoft SideWinder Precision 2 Joystick (USB)
6. iRock FM Transmitter.

Posted by The Observer at 10:37 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

This evening I saw this little news item that you might be interested in:

SEATTLE - Microsoft Corp. acknowledged Wednesday that it needs to better inform users that its tool for determining whether a computer is running a pirated copy of Windows also quietly checks in daily with the software maker.

Posted by PoS at 1:37 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)