This Place is Taken

Thursday, August 30, 2012

Does Bad Weather Affect Cloud Computing?

Does Bad Weather Affect Cloud Computing?:
Can rains and thunder-storms affect cloud computing?
Last year, a retired high-ranking official of the Indian government managed to convince a TV reporter that bad weather can actually disrupt cloud based services. His argument was that your computer makes a connection to the cloud (the “physical cloud” that turns into rain) and thus cloud services won’t work as expected in the absence of clouds.
The hilarious video recording quickly went viral on YouTube and here’s short version of the same but with English subtitles.
51% says bad weather can interfere with cloud computing
It turns out that the concept of “cloud computing” is indeed confusing to a majority of users. A recent survey commissioned by Citrix has found that most Americans associate the tech term “cloud” with the actual physical cloud.
When asked what “the cloud” is, a majority responded it’s either an actual cloud, the sky or something related to the weather. Only 16% said they think of a computer network to store, access and share data.
Technically speaking, they have a valid point as extreme weather conditions can result in power outages, floods at data centers directly affecting the cloud services.
And such things have happened in the past. Here’s a video  (via @Mikko) of Vodafone’s data center that was hit by torrential rains.
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Digital Inspiration @labnolThis story, Does Bad Weather Affect Cloud Computing?, was originally published at Digital Inspiration on 30/08/2012 under Tech Notes.

Sunday, August 26, 2012

Neil Armstrong has died at 82 Today

Neil Armstrong has died at 82 Today:
NEIL Armstrong, the first man to set foot on the moon, has died aged 82 from complications after heart surgery.
Armstrong was a quiet self-described nerdy engineer who became a global hero when as a steely-nerved pilot he made "one giant leap for mankind" with a small step on to the moon. The modest man who had people on Earth entranced and awed from almost a quarter million miles away has died. He was 82.
Armstrong died following complications resulting from cardiovascular procedures, a statement on Saturday from his family said. It didn't say where he died.
Armstrong commanded the Apollo 11 spacecraft that landed on the moon July 20, 1969, capping the most daring of the 20th century's scientific expeditions. His first words after setting foot on the surface are etched in history books and the memories of those who heard them in a live broadcast.
Herald Sun Digital Pass
"That's one small step for (a) man, one giant leap for mankind," Armstrong said.
In those first few moments on the moon, during the climax of heated space race with the then-Soviet Union, Armstrong stopped in what he called "a tender moment" and left a patch commemorate NASA astronauts and Soviet cosmonauts who had died in action.
"It was special and memorable but it was only instantaneous because there was work to do," Armstrong told an Australian interviewer in 2012.
Armstrong and Edwin "Buzz" Aldrin spent nearly three hours walking on the lunar surface, collecting samples, conducting experiments and taking photographs.
News_Image_File: Armstrong on the Moon
"The sights were simply magnificent, beyond any visual experience that I had ever been exposed to," Armstrong once said.
The moonwalk marked America's victory in the Cold War space race that began October 4, 1957, with the launch of the Soviet Union's Sputnik 1, an 83kg satellite that sent shock waves around the world.
Although he had been a Navy fighter pilot, a test pilot for NASA's forerunner and an astronaut, Armstrong never allowed himself to be caught up in the celebrity and glamour of the space program.
"I am, and ever will be, a white socks, pocket protector, nerdy engineer," he said in February 2000 in one of his rare public appearances. "And I take a substantial amount of pride in the accomplishments of my profession."
A man who kept away from cameras, Armstrong went public in 2010 with his concerns about President Barack Obama's space policy that shifted attention away from a return to the moon and emphasised private companies developing spaceships. He testified before Congress and in an email to The Associated Press, Armstrong said he had "substantial reservations," and along with more than two dozen Apollo-era veterans, he signed a letter calling the plan a "misguided proposal that forces NASA out of human space operations for the foreseeable future."
Armstrong's modesty and self-effacing manner never faded.
When he appeared in Dayton in 2003 to help celebrate the 100th anniversary of powered flight, he bounded onto a stage before 10,000 people packed into a baseball stadium. But he spoke for only a few seconds, did not mention the moon, and quickly ducked out of the spotlight.
He later joined former astronaut and Senator John Glenn to lay wreaths on the graves of Wilbur and Orville Wright. Senator Glenn introduced Armstrong and noted it was 34 years to the day that Armstrong had walked on the moon.
"Thank you, John. Thirty-four years?" Armstrong quipped, as if he hadn't given it a thought.
At another joint appearance, the two embraced and Senator Glenn commented: "To this day, he's the one person on Earth, I'm truly, truly envious of."
Armstrong's moonwalk capped a series of accomplishments that included piloting the X-15 rocket plane and making the first space docking during the Gemini 8 mission, which included a successful emergency splashdown.
In the years afterward, Armstrong retreated to the quiet of the classroom and his southwest Ohio farm. Mr Aldrin said in his book "Men from Earth" that Armstrong was one of the quietest, most private men he had ever met.
In the Australian interview, Armstrong acknowledged that "now and then I miss the excitement about being in the cockpit of an airplane and doing new things."
At the time of the flight's 40th anniversary, Armstrong again was low-key, telling a gathering that the space race was "the ultimate peaceful competition: USA versus USSR. It did allow both sides to take the high road with the objectives of science and learning and exploration."
Senator Glenn, who went through jungle training in Panama with Armstrong as part of the astronaut program, described him as "exceptionally brilliant" with technical matters but "rather retiring, doesn't like to be thrust into the limelight much."
Derek Elliott, curator of the Smithsonian Institution's US Air and Space Museum from 1982 to 1992, said the moonwalk probably marked the high point of space exploration.
The manned lunar landing was a boon to the prestige of the United States, which had been locked in a space race with the former Soviet Union, and re-established US pre-eminence in science and technology, Mr Elliott said.
"The fact that we were able to see it and be a part of it means that we are in our own way witnesses to history," he said.
The 1969 landing met an audacious deadline that President Kennedy had set in May 1961, shortly after Alan Shepard became the first American in space with a 15-minute suborbital flight. (Soviet cosmonaut Yuri A Gagarin had orbited the Earth and beaten the US into space the previous month.)
"I believe this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before the decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to Earth," president Kennedy had said. "No single space project in this period will be more impressive to mankind, or more important to the long-range exploration of space; and none will be so difficult or expensive to accomplish."
The end-of-decade goal was met with more than five months to spare. "Houston: Tranquility Base here," Armstrong radioed after the spacecraft settled onto the moon. "The Eagle has landed."
"Roger, Tranquility," the Houston staffer radioed back. "We copy you on the ground. You've got a bunch of guys about to turn blue. We're breathing again. Thanks a lot."
The third astronaut on the mission, Michael Collins, circled the moon in the mother ship Columbia 96km overhead while Armstrong and Aldrin went to the moon's surface.
In all, 12 American astronauts walked on the moon between 1969 and the last moon mission in 1972.
For Americans, reaching the moon provided uplift and respite from the Vietnam War, from strife in the Middle East, from the startling news just a few days earlier that a young woman had drowned in a car driven off a wooden bridge on Chappaquiddick Island by Senator Edward Kennedy. The landing occurred as organisers were gearing up for Woodstock, the legendary three-day rock festival on a farm in the Catskills of New York.
Armstrong was born on August 5, 1930, on a farm near Wapakoneta in western Ohio. He took his first plane ride at age 6 and developed a fascination with aviation that prompted him to build model airplanes and conduct experiments in a homemade wind tunnel.
As a boy, he worked at a pharmacy and took flying lessons. He was licensed to fly at 16, before he got his driver's licence.
Armstrong enrolled in Purdue University to study aeronautical engineering but was called to duty with the US Navy in 1949 and flew 78 combat missions in Korea.
After the war, Armstrong finished his degree from Purdue and later earned a master's degree in aerospace engineering from the University of Southern California. He became a test pilot with what evolved into the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, flying more than 200 kinds of aircraft from gliders to jets.
Armstrong was accepted into NASA's second astronaut class in 1962 - the first, including Glenn, was chosen in 1959 - and commanded the Gemini 8 mission in 1966. After the first space docking, he brought the capsule back in an emergency landing in the Pacific Ocean when a wildly firing thruster kicked it out of orbit.
Armstrong was backup commander for the historic Apollo 8 mission at Christmastime in 1968. In that flight, Commander Frank Borman, and Jim Lovell and Bill Anders circled the moon 10 times, and paving the way for the lunar landing seven months later.
Aldrin said he and Armstrong were not prone to free exchanges of sentiment.
"But there was that moment on the moon, a brief moment, in which we sort of looked at each other and slapped each other on the shoulder ... and said, 'We made it. Good show,' or something like that," Aldrin said.
An estimated 600 million people - a fifth of the world's population - watched and listened to the landing, the largest audience for any single event in history.
Parents huddled with their children in front of the family television, mesmerised by what they were witnessing. Farmers abandoned their nightly milking duties, and motorists pulled off the highway and checked into motels just to see the moonwalk.
Television-less campers in California ran to their cars to catch the word on the radio. Boy Scouts at a camp in Michigan watched on a generator-powered television supplied by a parent.
Afterward, people walked out of their homes and gazed at the moon, in awe of what they had just seen. Others peeked through telescopes in hopes of spotting the astronauts.
In Wapakoneta, media and souvenir frenzy was swirling around the home of Armstrong's parents.
"You couldn't see the house for the news media," recalled John Zwez, former manager of the Neil Armstrong Air and Space Museum. "People were pulling grass out of their front yard."
Armstrong, Aldrin and Collins were given ticker tape parades in New York, Chicago and Los Angeles and later made a 22-nation world tour. A homecoming in Wapakoneta drew 50,000 people to the city of 9000.
In 1970, Armstrong was appointed deputy associate administrator for aeronautics at NASA but left the following year to teach aerospace engineering at the University of Cincinnati.
He remained there until 1979 and during that time bought a 125ha farm near Lebanon, where he raised cattle and corn. He stayed out of public view, accepting few requests for interviews or speeches.
"He didn't give interviews, but he wasn't a strange person or hard to talk to," said Ron Huston, a colleague at the University of Cincinnati. "He just didn't like being a novelty."
Those who knew him said he enjoyed golfing with friends, was active in the local YMCA and frequently ate lunch at the same restaurant in Lebanon.
In February 2000, when he agreed to announce the top 20 engineering achievements of the 20th century as voted by the National Academy of Engineering, Armstrong said there was one disappointment relating to his moonwalk.
"I can honestly say - and it's a big surprise to me - that I have never had a dream about being on the moon," he said.
From 1982 to 1992, Armstrong was chairman of Charlottesville, Virginia-based Computing Technologies for Aviation Inc., a company that supplies computer information management systems for business aircraft.
He then became chairman of AIL Systems Inc., an electronic systems company in Deer Park, New York.
Armstrong married Carol Knight in 1999, and the couple lived in Indian Hill, a Cincinnati suburb. He had two adult sons from a previous marriage.

Why it's so hard to find a photo of Neil Armstrong on the moon

Why it's so hard to find a photo of Neil Armstrong on the moon:
OK, Neil Armstrong is dead. Clearly, that’s a page-one story for most of you.
Here’s one thing I do not want to see on page one tomorrow: Arguably the most famous picture taken in the history of mankind.

One reason I don’t want to see it: That’s not Neil. That’s Buzz Aldrin.
The second reason I don’t want to see it: Because NASA manipulated that photo before it was released to the public, back in 1969.
Evidently, Neil shoots pictures the same way my wife does: He cuts off people’s heads. Here’s the actual, unedited frame of that picture, which NASA calls AS11-40-5903:

NASA retouchers added black sky to the top of the picture. That might not seem like a big deal to you — especially when you’re on deadline tonight — but, believe me, it is. Many newspapers have ethical guidelines in place that specifically warn against using handout pictures that were manipulated by the source.
In fact, now that you know this picture was manipulated by the source, I’d urge you to have it removed from your photo archives. Permanently.
Read more about that picture and its history straight from NASA itself here.
In fact, if you’re hoping to use a picture of Armstrong on the moon tonight: Rots of Ruck to you. Amstrong and Aldrin only walked on the moon for about two-and-a-half hours that night in 1969. Most of the time, Armstrong carried the primary camera. Aldrin carried a camera but was assigned to shoot specific, technical things.
The result: Lots of pictures of Aldrin. But hardly any of Neil.
There’s this one, in which Neil passed in front of Buzz as Buzz was shooting the solar wind experiment.

Nice shot of Neil’s ass, perhaps. But nothing you’d want on page one tonight.
Here, Buzz was shooting the landscape immediately in front of the lunar lander. Neil happened to be retrieving equipment from the storage pods.

That’s Neil. On the moon. But hardly a picture you’d want to use.

One of the more famous visuals that came back from Apollo 11 was a time-lapse video — one frame per second — of Neil and Buzz raising the flag on the surface of the moon. If you freeze the frames and zoom way, way in, you can see Neil. Here he is, raising the gold-coated sun visor of his helmet…

…and here he is, a moment later. This is the only picture we know about in which you can see Neil Armstrong’s face while he’s on the moon.

But again: The quality sucks.
One idea: Use this picture of Neil shot immediately after his historic walk on the moon.

The official NASA archives caption to that picture says:
Buzz took this picture of Neil in the cabin after the completion of the EVA [the moon walk]. Neil has his helmet off but has not yet doffed his “Snoopy” cap. The circuit breaker panels are illuminated, and a small floodlight is on at the lower right. A circuit breaker chart has been fixed up on the wall with gray tape, below the rendezvous window in the cabin roof.
Find the high-rez version of that picture here.
Another idea: Use this picture of Armstrong taking during training at the Manned Spacecraft Center in Houston on April 22, 1969.  You can clearly see Neil through his visor.

That picture is a NASA shot — therefore, it’s free to use — and available via the Apollo archive web page. Find the high-resolution version here.
If you can get by with a black-and-white shot from July 11, 1969 — just five days before liftoff. this has long been one of my favorite pictures of Neil Armstrong, also practicing for his moonwalk. You can just about see him thinking: Damn… That IS a long step.

In 2003, Armstrong said via e-mail about this picture:
I really don’t have the foggiest idea of what I was doing. I don’t think it had anything to do with simulation. If I were simulating a mission phase, I would have the helmet on and suit pressurized. On the other hand, if it was only five days before flight, I would not be wearing the suit unless it was for a purpose.
Find the high-rez version of this picture here.

UPDATE – 6:10 p.m.
I’ve already found a few people using the famous NASA picture of an Apollo 11 footprint on the moon.
The pictures are from this sequence. Here are the undedited frames:
   
 
If you use this, be advised: 1) The original is a black-and-white picture. So any color version you see has been manipulated. 2) The sun is at the right of this shot (look for the shadow along the leg). So the shadow should be in the bottom (heel) portion of the footprint. The most common version I see of this on the wires has the shadow at the top. Which is upside-down.
And 3) That’s not Neil Armstrong’s foot. That’s Buzz Aldrin’s.
For more information: Look for pictures AS11-40-5876 through AS11-40-5880 on the Apollo 11 image archive.

UPDATE – 7 p.m.
Also: The whole “Good luck, Mr. Gorsky” thing? Never happened.

Find NASA’s extensive Apollo 11 photo archives here, here and here.
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Sunday, August 12, 2012

Chill out, listen to some rain

Chill out, listen to some rain:
reveal
Hi there, I love listening to rain, it's great. Whether it be relaxing, studying, working or falling asleep.
If you enjoy this site and want more types of rain and new features developed, please show your support by dropping your details below (no spam we're cool). Enjoy the rain - Neil
P.S. thanks for checking my site out, you're awesome.
Want to say hi? You can email me here.
copyright © 2012 raining.fm
Raining.fm is a small project by myself Neil Lockwood,
I am based out of Australia, I live with my beautiful fiance Amy and my two amazing sons Caden and Tate, I would like to dedicate this site to them.
During the week I work in web design and development at Div Party and love to work on passion projects such as this. In the evenings you can catch me getting pwned on Battlefield 3 (PC) and smashing it up with the bronzies in Starcraft 2 ;p
I would like to thank the following people for their awesome work, without whom this project would have taken waaay longer.
Original Photo's "Venice Rain 2" and "Venice Rain 3" courtesy of my mate Lachie Millard © 2012, check the rest of his amazing work on his website
Original Photo "Tompkins Sq. Park" by Unknown useage license here
Original Photo "Water on Wood" by Darren Brooks useage license here
Original Photo "pitch" by Rashida S. Mar B. useage license here
Original Photo "Raindrops in pond with waterlily" by Fokko Muller useage license here
Original Audio sample from Arctura useage license here
Jay Salvat for his awesome background slideshow
William Paoli for his slick slideout plugin
Jack Moore for this very modal
Special shout outs to hackernews and stackoverflow for the constant feed of knowledge and inspiration. I hope you enjoy raining.fm
Neil

Saturday, August 11, 2012

Did Usain Bolt REALLY run 100m in 9.63 seconds?

Did Usain Bolt REALLY run 100m in 9.63 seconds?:
Usain Bolt won gold in the 100m sprint at the London Olympics, clocking 9.63 seconds... but Albert Einstein has something to say about all this? Featuring Tony Padilla - twitter.com Website: www.numberphile.com Numberphile on Facebook: www.facebook.com Numberphile tweets: twitter.com Videos by Brady Haran Brady's other channels include: www.youtube.com (Chemistry stuff) www.youtube.com (Physics and astronomy) www.youtube.com (Space stuff) www.youtube.com (Science and behind the scenes) www.youtube.com (Food science) www.youtube.com (Big science facilities) www.youtube.com (Favourite scientists) www.youtube.com (Academic look at the Bible) www.youtube.com (Modern language and culture) www.youtube.com (Philosophy stuff)
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