The Ig Nobel Prizes are given out every year to “honor achievements that first make people laugh, and then makes them think”. You may have heard of them already for rewarding prizes to, let’s say, unusual achievements. This year is no different. There was research into dung beetles, confirmation that people think they’re more attractive when they’re drunk and many other things. Science Friday devoted almost an hour to the 2013 awards and it’s well worth listening to. The lecture and 24/7 talks at the start were excellent and I love how they enforce the time limit on speakers. Miss […]
Tech
Privacy: Don’t let Gmail show images by default
Recently Gmail started caching all images sent to its users and by default will now display them when you look at your email. At first glance it seems like a good idea. It protects your IP address, stops the sender dropping cookies in your browser and possibly speeds up image loading for you. What it doesn’t do is stop the sender knowing that you opened the email. Your privacy is at risk if you enable this. Marketing efforts just became a lot easier. A carefully crafted image filename will let the sender know that a particular user viewed his spam […]
Games
Bring ’em back alive!
This was to be an oh so glorious rescue. I built the rover described here, with some modifications of my own: Larger fuel tank, extra rockets. I tested it on Kerbin. It was able to land without parachutes from 4,000m. Everything was perfect for the rescue of two would-be-rescuers from a previous mission and the Kerbonaut they were going to rescue. I landed successfully only 3km or so away from their location on the Mun. It was a hair raising landing as it was inside a crater, after the sun had set. Pitch black. I knew it was highland area […]
Games
The Snow is cold on Duna
Dondorf Kerman is the first Kerbal on Duna and he was busy. Unfortunately he totally misjudged how thick the atmosphere was and broke three landing gear struts and two of his engines! Luckily he was able to repair the landing gear but he wouldn’t be going home. Meanwhile Huddun Kerman was determined to save his friend Dondorf but was having teething problems with his rescue vehicle. Getting into Kerbin orbit was proving harder than he thought. With no rescue in sight, brave Dondorf decided to fly to the north pole of Duna and explore the snowy hills. On the way […]
Games
I hated Gravity until I saw this
The movie Gravity came out in Ireland about a month after it opened in the US so I desperately avoided any references to it until I saw it in 3D a few weeks ago. Some bits of it were really good, the 3D effect of things blowing up were spectacular but Hollywood really took liberties with some aspects of orbiting the earth. That bit where Kowalsky races to rescue Stone and tells her to shine her torch seemed so far fetched. The violence she suffered when she was ripped off the shuttle sent her spinning off at great velocity. How […]
Youtube
Lucky Escape for Skydivers
When two planes collide it was lucky everyone had parachutes on. They all survived, even the pilots. One plane landed but the other pilot had to bail out. I think I read he had to use a reserve parachute to escape. This is an extended 1080p version of the grainy video that was out a few weeks ago. It has footage from multiple Gopro cameras mounted on the helmets of the divers. Amazing that nobody was injured or killed.