Nice view up there

Update: Edited the embed because the original video was removed.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ip2ZGND1I9Q

 

When commercial space tourism becomes attainable (but not necessarily affordable), I’m going to have to see this for myself.

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Be nice to your servers

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tDacjrSCeq4

Yelling at your servers can measurably negatively affect their performance. No joke. Make sure to treat your servers with respect, and keep it quiet in the datacenter!

Perhaps there is a “brown note” for disks (“rust note”?) – some harmonic that destroys their performance; although based on what we think is happening (disk heads being thrown off track), we think this has more to do with shock force than resonance. I’m sure there are disk vendor engineers out there who know all about this (Bryan links to a good reference in his blog entry).

[Source: Sun Microsystems Blog (now Oracle)]

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Monocopter

Modeled after falling maple seeds, this tiny autonomous monocopter has one asymmetric wing and rotates along it’s center of mass to produce lift. On-board camera at about 5:40 into the video, Hack A Day suggested using the microcontroller to take a snapshop at the same position of rotation to make one stable video.

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Ares I-X Launch Video

NASA‘s launch of the Ares I-X, the experimental prototype of the new launch vehicle. Pay special attention to around 0:45 into the video and look at the USS (Upper Stage Simulator) – where you can see the effects of the Prandtl-Glauert Singularty, where the sudden massive drop in pressure in the cone of the sonic wave causes water to condense out of the air into a visible vapor cone! Here’s to returning to the moon!

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