Off you go… into the purple yonder!

Google is installing 1.6 megawatts of solar panels at their Mountain View campus.
Awesome.

Amazon Web Services is offering two relatively new services: ubiquitous storage via S3 and ‘elastic’ computing via EC2. The Cardbox folks have an in-depth analysis of S3 online, and Smugmug uses an S3 backend.This is very interesting. If it wasn’t for all the problems with the S3 contract, I would consider using this.
Now; that being [...]

I received this e-mail today:
MBNA Logo
Dear customer!
Due to high fraud activity we constantly increasing security level both for
online banking and card transactions. In order to update our records you are
required to call MBNA Card Service number at 1-800-976-5713 and update
information on your MBNA card.
This is free of charge and would not affect any transactions [...]

I’ve been greatly enjoying my 770 this summer. It’s the perfect tool to debug (wifi) networking issues in a big building with wifi – no more need to lug a bulky laptop around. Awesome.
The other night I was visiting a friend in Cambridgeport and needed to look something up online, quickly. I opened up my [...]

So I’ve ordered parts for a new server, and half of them got here today. It’ll be a nice machine – Tyan S2881-based, Opteron 265, 2GB of ECC ram, 2x 74GB WD Raptors and 2x 320GB Seagate drives.
And if I can get one last thing solved, it’s going to be running LinuxBIOS. All I need [...]

I’m in Berkeley for 2 days. I’m using my host’s SBC internet connection. Out of curiosity I did a quick traceroute to www.gnu.org (in Boston):
$ traceroute www.gnu.org
traceroute to gnu.org (199.232.41.10), 30 hops max, 40 byte packets
1 10.xx.xx.xx (10.xx.xx.xx) 0.943 ms 0.897 ms 0.851 ms
2 obfuscated.snfc21.sbcglobal.net (xx.xx.xx.xx) 8.286 ms [...]

OK, this is way cool: Google Mars. If you’ve ever read Red Mars by Kim Stanley Robinson, some of the names of geological formations should be familiar. Check out Olympus Mons – 21 km (!) above… above what actually? How do they determine the ’sea level’ if there is no sea?

Our tea kettle broke. It’s an electric model. I took it apart, and sure enough, the heating element inside that was supposed to have a 10 Ohm resistance now has an infinite resistance.
So I thought I’d get a replacement part, and I’d be all set. Google’s my friend, right? Forget it. I couldn’t find spare [...]

OK, today I learned a most impressive German word from a Spanish friend. In German, when you want to say ‘receding hairline’, you say Geheimratsecken. It sounds mysterious, doesn’t it? Litterally, it means ‘the corners of the secret council’. How cool is that!

I remember this day, 20 years ago. Rest in peace, astronauts.