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My greatest strength and my greatest weakness: I’ll do anything with a friend; I’ll do nothing on my own.

The last space shuttle launched yesterday, July 8th, 2011. I watched the launch on UStream. It’s rather amazing that I watched a live video feed from low earth orbit on my computer.

I had a big Space Shuttle poster over my bed when I was a kid, I saw the Challenger disaster in high school, felt and saw motions moving away from the Shuttle. And experienced the mind boggling Hubble Deep Field and Hubble Ultra Deep Field  which was made possible, in part, by the Space Shuttle. I look forward to continued space discovery by mankind!

Hubble Deep Field

Hubble Ultra Deep Field

Everyone knows about the very real dangers to astronauts and satellites that come from the Van Allen Radiation Belt, so I don’t need to talk about that.

While watching the Space Shuttle launch yesterday, and surfing, I came across this  plan to clear the Van Allen Belt of dangerous high energy electrons and protons! “…Preliminary analyses indicate that a HiVOLT System can reduce the MeV particle flux in the inner electron belt to 1% of its natural levels within about two months….”

Talk about terraforming! Right here on Terra!

RIP Van Allen Belt, 3.5 billion BC – 2050AD

Pick 3 crazy words to google for… like “Dynamite Sledgehammer Festival”

Ask a crazy question and get a Very Bad Idea for an answer.

(via)

local version:

more…
http://www.trutv.com/video/most-shocking/dynamite-dummies.html

This weekend I spent some time studying math with Schuyler. Highlights included

• Spending 20 minutes discussing exactly why negative 2 times negative 2 equals 4.
• finally realizing (I remember getting this wrong in high school and never learning it correctly) this one little tidbit about reducing fractions with fractional exponents. (hint, remember that if you’re using two different constant bases, those are not like terms!)
• spending an hour and a half hacking on one fairly simple problem and then BAM! getting it right and knowing why it was right.
• After 5 hours of sitting in chairs, we were both exhausted.

• @tjic thanks for pointing out the article. As for "the law", the judge has lots of leeway and it doesn't "really" matter if a 71 year… in reply to tjic #
• @tjic old get 25 years or 150. So he had to…. hey wait, read the article, it explains it pretty well. I want to know why no body else… in reply to tjic #
• @tjic in the firm has gotten in big trouble! David's Friehling wikipedia article is the first one I've seen that is out of date in a very in reply to tjic #
• @tjic long time… because he hasn't gone to frigging jail. PS. Twitter is a horrible communication medium. in reply to tjic #

This Thursday night, world famous Matt will be in Oakland!

Let’s dance!

PLACE: Inside the Gazebo in Lake Merritt Park
DATE: Thursday, July 7th
Time: 7pm

Here’s a Google map of the location:
http://tinyurl.com/6c48yao

Facebook invite:
http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=184616298258481

The photo at the bottom of this email shows exactly where to meet. You
can also view the image here:
http://tinypic.com/r/2ylvdol/7

more deets:
Continue reading ‘I Know Where The Hell Matt Is!’ »

(stolen from)

Discuss.

If you think the following would be a good idea, write a +1 Reply to my post in Suggest a Google Labs Feature.

Subject:Sending email creates a followup calendar item

Sometimes I want to be reminded to followup on an email that I send. I propose that users be able to create Google Calendar items that are automatically populated with email contents.

The best thing is that most of this functionality is already available using the Google Calendar Event Publisher!

Here is proposed functionality:

Next to the email “Send” button, there is a “Send and Calendar” button.
When the “Send and Calendar” button is pushed, first, the email is sent, then a Calendar item is created and displayed.

* The original email Subject is made into the Calendar item Subject, with a prefix of “Followup: ” added.
* The original email Body is made into the Body of the Calendar item.
* The date on the Calendar item is set to a changeable value, n days in the future.
* That’s it. All other Calendar defaults are left the same.

It is then up to the author to either “Save” or “Discard” this new “Followup calendar” item.

I would so love this feature. Please pretty please!

weeks ago graffiti scumbags tagged our street. Some of it got cleaned up, some not. So I went to the gas station across the street to ask if they could clean up the graffiti urine stains on their property. I spoke with the attendant for a little while, showed him where the new tags were. This is not a new problem. He pointed to the alley behind the station and said how they had just painted over the whole alley, covered in graffiti. I had to say it looked nice.

A lot of the new graffiti was on the backside of this small billboard. We exchanged many pleasantries, “I totally understand that it’s a never ending battle with those jerks…” So yesterday I looked out my window and the billboard was being taken down! The attendant told me, “I talked to the boss. He gets paid to have that billboard up, but he called and had it removed anyway. It’s better for the neighborhood that way.”

+1 for the the 76 Gas Station on the corner of 24th & Valencia (1298 Valencia)

Unsurprisingly, I don’t have any photos of the now removed billboard. Here is a bad artist’s rendering:

And here’s a “before” picture from Google Maps, Thanks Steven