Jeff Milner

Via Plastic Quicklink:

Does anyone see anything strange about the first stop on Vanilla Ice’s new massive five city tour? Those of you unfamiliar with the proud history of Gallaudet University can click on their web page.

Have you ever been splashed by a car while riding your bike or walking out in rainy weather? I hope you didn’t do what this guy did, slashing some 2000 tires as pay-back. He’ll be cooling his heels in jail for the next 16 months.

Recorder Stephen Lennard said: “In December last year, motivated by frustration and anger at what you considered to be the inconsiderate manner of motorists as experienced by you as a cyclist and a pedestrian, you embarked on your astonishing and extraordinary campaign.

The New York Times writes about the dangers of careless blogging. Maybe that’s why lately I’ve been refraining from writing too much about my everyday life. Then again maybe I just don’t get out much and therefore don’t have much to write about – no I like that first reason better.

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.