The Windkey and the Lamplighter

This is the coolest thing I’ve seen all day. I want a metric ruler to wear on my wrist!
It’s the perfect complement to the stainless steel “Brass” rat.
Sadly, they are currently out of stock (and they’re also $40) or I’d be giving them as Christmas (or your winter-holiday-of-choice) presents to all my hardware-hacking and sewing friends.

Dixon's Aerial pencil, with text in a font described by H&FJ as "open Lombardic capitals with terminal lightning bolts"

Wordsplosion! had a link to Hoefler & Frere-Jones’ blog entry about grawlix, which was right next to an entry about the cool typefaces used on pencils. Here’s another one from http://www.brandnamepencils.com/ :

Pencil with reverse leading quotes!

Somehow, my current writing implements just aren’t as beautiful to look at. I wish I worked in a fashion that made pencil a reasonable alternative. I even do my crosswords in pen.

On the other hand, though, I do have a lovely new pen—a Pilot Extra Fine RazorPoint in purple to match my new iPod.

I could not stop laughing when I saw this on Wordsplosion!, so here it is for you:

Is it really a choice?

This is where I’d fall. Very wet. (Click on the image to find out where you’d go.)

Thanks to BadAstronomy for the pointer!

There’s been too much complaining on this blog recently, at least from me. But I have good news! Finally, I can indulge my desire to watch Martian weather.

The Mars Express Visual Monitoring Camera isn’t a scientific instrument—no pointing control, no focus adjustment, only “basic exposure controls”—but it was included on Mars Express to monitor the ejection of the Beagle 2 lander in December 2003. The camera performed well—the lander didn’t. In 2007, ESA turned the camera back on to capture low-resolution images of Mars, including some neat crescent shots and global images that the scientific instruments and other satellites aren’t positioned to capture. They did tests and focusing all throughout 2007, and the “Mars Webcam”, as it’s been nicknamed, went live today.

This is way cool. Also, it’s a live satellite that can be used to train ops engineers:
“VMC activites are unique in that the camera is operated by the Flight Control Team, and not a team of scientists. This gives operations engineers, particularly junior members, a chance to learn and practice command generation, planning, and other skills normally done at the Science Operations Centre.”

This is going right up with the VolcanoCam(1) on my list of things to go in my virtual windowframe(2).

(1) OMG, the VolcanoCam is now in HD! I love the USDA Forest Service.
(2)And thanks to Ryan Hoagland for putting up a website that I could link to when I wanted to explain what I meant by virtual window. Wherever and whomever you are, Ryan, you rock.

And the Child spake and the tribes of Nato immediately loosed the Caveats that had previously bound them. And in the great battle that ensued the forces of the light were triumphant. For as long as the Child stood with his arms raised aloft, the enemy suffered great blows and the threat of terror was no more.

From the Gospel of our President and Savior Barack Obama according to his Apostle Media.

I’ve been playing an addictive CCG on Facebook, called PackRat. It’s a lot of fun—steal/trade cards from people who are listed as your friends on Facebook (all trades are “stealing”, where your success in stealing the card you want depends on the card you’re dropping.) and make sets, or buy cards from the marketplace, which is shared with all players.

The game, however, is not what has my attention right now. It’s the ads.
Facebook advertisers appear to have my age, gender, and location (based on my net connection—when I was behind a firewall that connected in LA, I suddenly got LA-centric ads instead of Boston-centric ones.) as well as potentially other data. So, what do Facebook’s advertisers think of me?

They think:

• I want to learn Spanish. (Seriously. “26 year old girls are learning Spanish”)
• I want an MBA (possibly from Dubai)
• I may want to earn money from home answering surveys.
• I care if I have a “celebrity twin”
• I may have bad credit or be in debt or want new credit cards.
• I enjoy online auctions for gadgets or jewelry
• I either have small children or am otherwise interested in “frilly diaper covers”

I think I’m glad I’m not the person Facebook’s advertisers think I am.

This case will hold exactly $1,000,000 in $100 bills.

Just in case you ever need to carry around $1,000,000, and have $500 or $600 extra for the case.

Thanks to How Much is Inside? for a well-wasted lunchbreak.

This is the funniest thing I’ve read today. A space geek and a skeptic attended a conspiracy-theorist’s press conference, and wrote about it.

That’s not the funny part. (Though it is funny.)
The funny part is him talking about the hate-mail he got afterward from *other* conspiracy theorists.

Another writer speculated that because I referred to movies and videogames in my article, I must be under 40 years old. Well, you see, I used to refer to vaudeville stars and Victrola artists in all my writings, but then I realized that this did not make me, you know, groovy, as the Generation Y kids say these days. So I started adopting references to contemporary movies and video games to seem more “with it” and “hip,” by jiminy.

and

Some of the messages accused me of being pompous and assuming that I’m superior to them. To which my response is: I do feel superior… to them. I mean, there are lots of people I don’t feel superior to: my mom, Stephen Hawking, my parents’ dog (smart dog—she just knows stuff), and, well, a whole bunch of people. But if you believe that Nazis and Freemasons run the space program and have been covering up extraterrestrial structures on the Moon, or if you believe vastly complicated conspiracy theories that are based upon no evidence that would pass peer review by a panel of fifth-graders, then, yes, I have my doubts about your intelligence, or at least your reasoning abilities. And I wouldn’t trust you with my car keys.

Anyway, rather than me reposting large chunks of his article here, or sending them to a friend in IM while trying not to laugh out loud in my office and upset my officemate, y’all should just go read his article. Have fun, and don’t give the monkey your car keys.

Over at Starts with a Bang! they have a fun game:
Look at the pictures, and decide whether it is of Arizona or Mars.
Click here for the pictures, scroll down for the answers
I got all but three—this is hard!

Thanks to Carnival of Space #48