SpaceShipOne Almost to the X Prize!

On Wednesday, SpaceShipOne completed its first of two required flights to win the $10 million X Prize. The X Prize was set up to jump start the space tourism industry and provided a handsome sum to whoever can create a spacecraft that can:

  • Privately finances, builds & launches a spaceship, able to carry 3 people to 100 km (62.5 mi)
  • Returns safely to Earth
  • Repeats the launch with the same ship within 2 weeks

The flight of SpaceShipOne on Wednesday was its first flight in the X Prize race. It lifted of from the Mojave Desert in California and reached an altitude of 337,500 ft. The next flight is tentatively scheduled for this coming Monday Oct. 4th.

You can check out a video of the flight here. There is quite a bit more information about the X Prize and the different teams involved at the X Prize Site. Who knows what’ll happen after someone wins the prize. Maybe we’ll be a step or two closer to taking a quick trip to space… which sounds like fun to me!

New iMac G5 Live In Person

On Friday I was able to see (and touch) one of the new iMac G5 all-in-one computers in person. The Campus rep had one in the computer demo area. I have to say that the pictures don’t do it justice. Just like its predecessor iMac (iLamp) you really don’t get a feel for it until you’ve seen it up close. I think I have to say that I like this iMac better than the previous generation. I never really liked the iLamp model. It just never felt right to me. It just felt awkward with the LCD on an arm.

The new G5 iMac feels much more solid and not as awkward. It’s all in one piece without a weird rounded base. The ports on the back are all in one place and easy to access. You could even hang this one on a wall. The cooling vents are on the top and bottom so there are not issues with hanging it. It uses a standard VESA mount to connect to the included stand, so it should be compatible with any universal VESA arm or stand (Apple sells the adapter kit).

All in all, I think this new generation of iMac is a definite improvement over the previous iLamp version. It just feels more complete.

Toilet Technology

For all of you guys out there (ladies you can tune this post out unless you use one of these) that have issues hitting the bowl at night. There’s now a brilliat new device to help you out… The Jonny Glow!

This dazzlling pice of technology is apparently a ring of (obviously waterproof) glow tape that you put around the bowl of your toilet to give you someting to aim for in the dark. No more peeing on the floor!

A testimonial from Morton Heidbecker St. Louis, MO on their website:

Then, as desperation set in, I spotted in the distance an ethereal, seraphic glow. Then I realized it was an even more heavenly sight — the gentle shine of Jonny Glow beckoning me, as a light house to a storm tossed sailor!

Jonny Glow even has a great theme song.

The iPatch

Arrrrrrrr! If only I had seen this in time for my International Talk Like A Pirate Day festivities! Oh well, I guess there is always next year… Arrrrrr!

iPatch

New Firefox, Thunderbird, and the Suite – Big Day for Mozilla

FirefoxIt was a big day for the Mozilla Foundation with a new release of Thunderbird 0.8, Firefox Preview Release 1.0, and Mozilla Suite 1.7.3.

This preview release of Firefox is the first of probably two before the full 1.0 release in a few month in 4th quarter of 2004. Download it and try it out (find some bugs) so that Firefox can be the best browser it can be.

Also be sure to check out the new Spread Firefox community marketing campaign. If you know anyone still using IE… have them take the 5 day Firefox Challenge.

What’s New:
Thunderbird

  • Global Inbox
  • Comprehensive Data Migration
  • RSS Integration
  • Improved Privacy Controls
  • Improved Quick Search
  • Other New Features…

Firefox

  • Live Bookmarks (RSS Agregator/Reader)
  • Improved Find
  • Managing Annoyances and Protecting Security
  • Better Bookmarks
  • Strong Encryption For Passwords Available
  • Improved Compatibility for IE users
  • Better System Integration for GNOME users
  • A load of bug fixes
  • Many more…

Mozilla Suite

  • Security Fixes

It’s recommended that if you were using any previous versions of this software that you updated to the newest versions not only for all the freat new features/fixes, but the newest version also fixes a recent security vulnerability.

Confirmed: Apple and Grapefruit Mentos available in the US

mentosI found Green Apple and Pink Grapefruit Mentos at a grocery store up the street (I’d been tipped off they were available). They had several displays, that said “available for a limited time only.” I’ll need to stock up. Maybe they’re just test marketing them. If that’s the case…

EVERYONE GO BUY GRAPEFRUIT OR APPLE MENTOS! BUY LOTS! (I’ve got N. Liberty covered!)

Flickr

flickr logo Flickr is a really cool service that does a million and one things with your photos. You can upload them and store them and trade them and chat with them and add them to a blog and look at other people’s and… and… It has a really slick flash interface. Flickr uses “tags” to categorize images. They’re kind of like photo key words. One of the really cool things about Flickr is that you can check out the most popular tags on this page (the larger the word, the more popular the tag). You can also view all tags. It’s kind of fun to poke around and see what other people have put up there. If you find a tag that you like, you can subscribe to the RSS feed and receive images in your aggregator whenever a new one is added that fits your tag. If you grab the RSS feed from sunset, you could have some nice pictures pop up when you’re reading your daily feeds.

Who Ya Gonna Call?

There is a nice looking proton pack for sale on eBay. I’ve seen this before on eBay. I don’t know if they didn’t sell it, or this is another one. Still, it’s pretty cool!

After doing a little digging, it seems to be a different seller. The previous listing is still available at the builder’s site. You can also check out the build diary. This is one impressive prop… if only I had $700 lying around, I could be Egon Spangler for Halloween!

Crazy Stuff Out There!

I was looking around at some random stuff on the web and decided to take a look at rathergood.com. They’re the people who put together that weird Quizno’s commercial w/the singing hairballs. It was actually based on this movie, which I personally like better. They’ve also got some fun singing kittens, pandas and ????’s. I decided to use a handy little Google tool and click the “similar pages” link to the site and found some even more interesting things.

Ebaumsworld.com had a pretty funny box transformers movie on it.

If you’ve got a fast internet connection, and nothing to do for a little while check out the similar links. Just goes to show that you can find anything and everything out there on the web!