Archive for the Category News

 
 

Farewell to a great one.

Last night, novelist and satirist, Kurt Vonnegut, passed away at the age of 84. I’m grateful that I had the opportunity to hear him speak at my grad school graduation less than 2 years ago. Though he was a bit saucy and perverse in his speech, it was still quite enjoyable. His wit and sarcastic commentary on the progression of American society will be greatly missed.

Using human-power to generate engergy

HONG KONG — A health club here is hoping that a car battery, some StairMasters and dozens of gym rats can help ease the world’s energy problems.

Interesting article with lots of promise for the future. Now, all we need to do is convince state governments to pass legislation that allows people to roll back their power meters and get paid for their energy production by the energy companies. I know that NJ allows that and people are actually paid fairly for the energy they put back on the grid, but AZ only allows a small percentage of what you produce to go back onto the grid.

[via slashdot]

There will be a full Lunar Eclipse tonight

According to NASA, there will be a Lunar Eclipse tonight that is going to be visible from almost all populated land on the Earth. Check out the article on nasa.com for more information and check back later for pictures (I’ll have my camera with me all day!).

Until I have photos from the eclipse tonight, enjoy some pictures of the full moon from last night.

[via slashdot]

UPDATE:
No eclipse for you, one year!… well, not quite according to a few sites I’ve found on the internet. According to one site that belongs to the military (Astronomical Applications?), the next lunar eclipse will be in late August. The data sheet that the site has on the eclipse seems to point to Tucson being in a VERY good position to view the event (though at 3 in the morning roughly). Another site with a much broader amount of data on future eclipses is Hermit Eclipse; that site has predicted dates for eclipses as far in advance as 2020. NASA’s lunar eclipse page is also quite interesting and informative and even predicts eclipses out to 2100AD!

Since Tucson wasn’t in the path of some good lunar eclipse views, enjoy these pictures from Flickr of people who were much more fortunate to be able to take eclipse pictures.

Happy New Year!

Happy New Year. Welcome to 2007!

Absence…

I’ve been strangely absent from blogging recently, with only one highly cynical post in the last few months.

Well, it’s all for a good reason.

I’ve been putting in some “free” hours at work (and at home) on a new project. For once in the last year and a half, fun and work are not mutually exclusive. I’ve been working on a DARPA “Challenge” with a few other companies. The goal is to build an autonomous robot that can navigate though a city, avoid hitting cars, light poles, pedestrians, pot holes, etc… and do it as quickly as possible.

I can’t talk much about it, or anything else I do at work, but it’s teaching me a heck of a lot more about engineering that my current position. I get to play with LADAR units, play with MATLAB, design programs to interface with hardware, and watch a robot be built. All in all, things like this keep a engineer happy.