As long as you can blame anything on some unseen deity, you don't ever have to be responsible for your own behaviour.
Marco
Blogging about tech, RC cars, astronomy, photography, rocketry
I guess this quote is fitting here:
You develop an instant global consciousness, a people orientation, an intense dissatisfaction with the state of the world, and a compulsion to do something about it. From out there on the moon, international politics looks so petty. You want to grab a politician by the scruff of the neck and drag him a quarter of a million miles out and say, 'Look at that, you son of a bitch.'
Edgar Mitchell, Apollo 14 astronaut
(via The Verge)
My first and favorite astronomy application on the iPhone just got better: it now supports Siri for querying astronomical items, e.g. "Where is Saturn tonight", or "Find the Big Dipper".
Find more info about Pocket Universe on the Craig Design website and follow the author on Twitter for updates. Or just go to iTunes and purchase right away (€2,39)
It's not just Apple that posted record sales figures in their Q4 2011 results, but also Microsoft. Well, at least their Entertainment & Devices Division reported excellent sales:
The Entertainment & Devices Division posted revenue of $4.24 billion, an increase of 15% from the prior period. The Xbox 360 installed base now totals approximately 66 million consoles and 18 million Kinect sensors. Xbox LIVE now has 40 million members worldwide, an increase of 33% from the prior year period.
Pretty good.
Voila, I now set up my main domain to point towards the scriptogr.am hosted blog. And the great guys at scriptogr.am got RSS working as well on custom domains, so now I should be able to use ifttt.com to crosspost this to my Twitter and Facebook.
1.. 2.. 3.. GO!
The amazing movie shows the Eagle Nebula from the early 1995 Hubble image of the Pillars of Creation through to the latest multi-wavelength composite images. M16, The Eagle Nebulae on Youtube
It's slowly coming together but my TLR 22 RC Buggy set is near completion. Well, as far as parts go. I still need to find time to build it. But until I have the batteries I can't race anyway, so I still have some time to mentally prepare the process. Thanks to PK Racing I'm also saving a bit of money on my purchases. Instead of the earlier mentioned Losi 13.5T combo I now have a HobbyWing 8.5T combo that, although it isn't sensored, performs a lot better. And costs €60 less!
I will try to post the full build report and of course first driving experience here.
It is final. In about a week (or two) I will be moving my blog to be hosted solely on scriptogr.am. Why you ask? First of, I very much like the simplicity of it, using markdown files as source. Secondly, with the combination of scriptogr.am and dropbox I will have my posts not only on a server, but also locally. Which is then backed up again to my Backblaze account. Thus, triple safety.
All that is now needed is the ability to change the HTML layout, but I think Jeremy Swinnen @_s42, who will design my new template can work with what scriptogr.am offers already.
Stay tuned.
The Team Losi Racing 22 RC Buggy needs some more parts to be able to race it of course. Since the kit doesn't come with a motor, servo, receiver, transmitter and some other stuff. Luckily I already own a Spektrum DX3c transmitter and SR300 receiver, so I can save the cost for that. However, there are some pretty costly parts that I did order a few moments ago:
- 7.4V 3800mAh 2S2P 60C LiPo - two of course
- 1/10 13.5T brushless combo - 13.5T sensored motor, ESC and programmer
- Schumacher U6557 and U6558 mini spike front & rear tires
- LOSA7396R and LOSA7202S Losi rear & front tires
- GT Power 6 Amp charger
- Savox SC-1257TG servo
- foam inserts
- LPI 18T 48 pitch pinion gear
Sigh, that's a lot. But I expected racing to be a big initial investment.
Here is a picture of the TLR22 in the default TLR colors. Mine will have different colors of course:
Today I received my Team Losi Racing 22 RC Buggy. Just handling the box feels awesome. You notice there has been a lot of attention to detail and finish, not unlike Apple. This weekend will be a weekend of SpaceTweetup gatherings in Cologne, so I won't be able to actually start building the 22 until the coming week. Once I start the building process I will detail every step of construction.
In other news, as most of you know by now Bibble Labs has been acquired by Corel last year. The Bibble team has been working on a major update and the culminating result is called Aftershot Pro. At first sight you may think it looks a lot like Bibble, which is true, but under the hood there have been a lot of changes. The biggest change is the complete rework of color management, all cameras have been reprofiled for this. It is immediately clear that this has a huge impact on the quality of your results.
As for our book the Bibble Survival Guide, Andreas and I are currently working on a new Aftershot Survival Guide, which will include improved content aimed towards Aftershot Pro users.