Month: April 2004

It’s finally done. Mental Chinook is 3D driving game made in Macromedia Director for my production management class. Comments are encouraged.

You may have noticed your Windows operating system telling you it has updates today. This Techweb Article summarizes the revisions.

Microsoft took it on the security chin Tuesday as it released April’s round of security vulnerabilities. The total number of vulnerabilities in the four security bulletins tallied an astounding 20 separate flaws in Windows and Outlook Express.

“This is simply an unprecedented number of vulnerabilities,” said Vincent Gullotto, the vice president of Network Associates’ AVERT research team.

April’s mega collection includes 20 new vulnerabilities, 8 of which are rated as “Critical,” the most dire assessment in the Redmond, Wash.-based developer’s four-level ranking system. Sixteen of the 20 vulnerabilities can be exploited remotely, the most dangerous type of bug because hackers can conduct an attack over the Internet.

I’m in the process of updating right now.

Apparently so is everyone else.

As readers of my blog know, lately I’ve been reading Stephen Hawkings’ book, The Universe in a Nutshell. That’s why I was particularly interested in this NASA project which although it has had funding since 1964 is soon to lift-off.

Awaiting the right conditions and containing the world’s most accurate gyroscopes, Gravity Probe B is set to test Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity. The experiment aims to measure a weaker and even stranger effect called “frame dragging”, a warping of space-time by the gravity and angular momentum of a spinning body.

In principle, it is possible to measure [frame dragging] by monitoring the spin axis of a gyroscope orbiting the Earth. The axis should change its orientation relative to that of a distant star.

Once we can measure the effect in the Solar System, says Kip Thorne, a gravitational physicist at the California Institute of Technology, “we can definitely understand how the same phenomena are working in the distant Universe and around black holes,” which cause much stronger warping.

I can’t say for sure what exactly this project will do for the average Joe, but here is an impressive list of previous NASA spinoff technologies.

True or False? The Urban Myth’s board game thoroughly researches all of its “facts”.

False.

I remember reading about the rumor that Mr. Ed was actually a zebra on Snopes.com and finding myself at a loss for words, when it was so obviously not true. But it’s SNOPES! They are the best source for urban legend debunking, how can it not be true? Now I know. So the moral of the story is, don’t believe everything you hear or read just because it comes from a reliable source – even Snopes.com.

I’m in Medicine Hat for the Easter weekend. I took along Stephen Hawkings book, “The Universe in a Nutshell”, which Anna-Maria gave me for my birthday, to read in the car. This morning I was explaining The Twins Paradox to Tracie, my brother’s wife – they are also here visiting. The Twins Paradox goes something like this:

In the theory of relativity each observer has his own measure of time… One of a pair of twins (a) leaves on a space journey during which he travels close to the speed of light, while his brother (b) remains on Earth.

Because of (a)’s motion, time runs more slowly in the spacecraft as seen by the earthbound twin. So on his return the space traveler (a2) will find that his brother (b2) has aged more than himself.

Although it seems against common sense, a number of experiments have implied that in this scenario the traveling twin would indeed be younger.

Tracie responded, “So if you fall in love with someone 30 years younger than you, you can use this to come back and be the same age.” I told her I was impressed that she so quickly picked up on the most obviously practical application that this concept enables us to do.

Eye jewellery? Words can’t describe how insane I believe these people to be.

Via MeFi:

“What you are hearing is Nickelback’s “Someday” in your left speaker and “How you remind me in the right”. All of those left shocked please raise their hands.”

I’ve never understood what the big fascination with Nickelback is anyway. I mean I’m happy for them being somewhat of locals making it to the big time, but for some mysterious reason I just don’t dig their music. I don’t think it’s just that their music is formulaic either, it’s probably just the old argument that the music from your highschool days is going to end up being your favorite no matter when you grew up.

It also makes me wonder, is a band still a one-hit wonder if all of their next hits are just subtle reworkings of their first hit?

My brother is into photography. He has been the photo-editor at the Gauntlet Newspaper (The University of Calgary’s Student Run Paper) for the past few years and always has a few good tips. Anyway he told me that you can really improve your pictures with a steady cam tripod but they usually run between $600 and $1500. Well today I found a site that shows you how to build your own Steady-Cam for about $14 (I’m guessing that’s USD).