NASA Fans Plan Shuttle Launch Tweetup

About 100 NASA fans have converged on Cape Canaveral for today's launch of the shuttle Atlantis, with plans to tweet the event providing a virtual play by play. "I'll be uploading stuff as it happens," promised Steve Wake, 38, a computer programmer who flew in from Denver. "On launch day, who knows? I may be too excited about everything else to even think about doing that stuff. When it's over with, I'm sure I will."

NASA invited it's Twitter followers to make the trek with 100 slots, and 50 backup positions, filling up in less than 20 minutes on Oct. 16th. The tweeps will represent 21 states, the District of Columbia, and five countries, including Morocco and New Zealand. Each of which are traveling at their own expense.

Weather is expected to be excellent for the launch schedules for 2:28 p.m. local time.

Source: USA Today

Microsoft Bans Modded Consoles From Xbox Live

Microsoft has banned as many as 1 million users consoles from the Xbox Live service for having modified consoles which allow them to play games they have copied. The users themselves have not been banned, only the modified consoles, users can play on the service if they purchase a new unmoded console. "We can assure you that if an Xbox Live member follows the Xbox Live terms of use, purchased a retail copy of Modern Warfare 2 and played the game on an unmodified Xbox 360, no action will be taken," the firm said. I wonder why it's taken them this long to take such actions?

Source: BBC

Bing Adds New Features

Trying to make further gains on the two search leaders Google and Yahoo!, Microsoft's Bing team have announced the inclusion of results from Wolfram Alpha and a few other changes. According to the NYTimes Bits Blog "Over the next few weeks, Bing will also add a handful of other features and revamp existing ones in what Microsoft calls a “rolling update.” They include localized results for weather and events, a revamped shopping section and an updated preview feature, which lets users see a snapshot of a Web page directly on the search results page. A video describing each of the features is available here."

Even so, it will be a hard slog for Microsoft.

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 Released

The holiday season is officially underway with the release of what is expected to be this years blockbuster game, and maybe the biggest selling game of all time. Tuesday was the launch of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, the must have game for this holiday season. The fifth game of the console series has been highly anticipated and will likely show up under a lot of Christmas tress, if anyone can wait that long. The game industry however has not been immune to the global economic downturn as many believed it would be and is starting to feel the pain. Game developers are saying that they will be aiming for more spread out release dates in the coming year, rather than focusing solely on the holiday season. Most of us will be glued to the consoles and won't notice a thing, there is nothing like COD on an HDTV with the surround sound cranked!

Source: CBC

iPhone/iPod Touch Owners Rickrolled By ikee Worm

A self-propagating program believed to be the first iPhone worm, that changes an iPhone's (or iPod Touch's) wallpaper to a picture of Rick Astley with the message "ikee is never going to give you up", has been unleashed in Australia. Known as "ikee" the worm only affects devices that have been jail-broken, have had SSH installed (a program that allows users to make changes to the phone's file system), and who's owners have not changed the default root password after installing SSH.

"What's clear is that if you have jail-broken your iPhone or iPod Touch, and installed SSH, then you must always change your root user password to something different than the default, 'alpine'," wrote Graham Cluley of security firm Sophos.

"In fact, it would be a good idea if you didn't use a dictionary word at all."

Source: BBC

Back To Civilization

I'm back! The people of Rankin Inlet are certainly a tough breed, I would never be able to stand the conditions under which they live. Perhaps I'm just soft from living South of the treeline but wow! Thirty below most of the time I was there and winds to boot. On Friday awoke to blowing snow which had the locals abuzz, they cherish their winter months the way we cherish summer. Had a warm reception at the airport when I arrived, met by two folks representing our client, and the lodge keeper. If you ever find yourself in Rankin, stay at Nanuq Lodge... trust me, it's an experience you'll not forget. Sorry for not posting but the internet connection was slow at best, dare I say less than dialup.

Thanks goes out to Page, Annamarie, Brad, Cindy, Jim, and the folks in the office for making the trip comfortable and productive.

Taking Social Media Rejections To Heart

If you feel the sting of a "defriending" or "unfollowing" you are apparently not alone. In this world of ever expanding online social networks it seems rejection cuts equally as deep as it does in the real world. CNN's Breeanna Hare takes a look at how feelings get hurt in social media circles in this interesting article.

"People tend to think that these relationships are trivial and not very deep, but this is what we're moving towards, having a lot of our communications play out over the Internet," Purdue University social psychologist Kip Williams said. "That's the way it's becoming; this is how we interpret our worth. People care how many [online] friends they have."

To quote Brad Paisley "I'm so much cooler online"

Traveling Novemeber 2nd to 7th

My day job will be taking me to Rankin Inlet in Nunavut the week of November 2nd to 7th. As a result I may not be posting regularly, this is for several reasons:

• I will be busy with my clients; and
  
• Connectivity is a big question mark at the moment.

As I type this the temperature in Rankin Inlet is -24 degrees Celcius a huge change from the +16 we had here in Charlottetown yesterday, though that was higher than we would expect here on Halloween. I am very much looking forward to capturing a few photographs, hopefully the Northern Lights and perhaps some wildlife, and expect that my host accommodations, the Nanuq Lodge will provide a memorable stay.

Their website leads me to believe that there may be some very interesting coversations/stories from the proprietors:

"Your Hosts.
John Makayak Hickes was born at Pistol Bay, near Whale Cove, and lived near Rankin Inlet, beyond where the Con Shed is located. After years in Churchill and Ottawa, John returned home to share his warmhearted hospitality with guests. John grew up on the land and has a deep understanding of Inuit culture and the history of Kivalliq. A co-owner in Sila Lodge, John has a background in hospitality, training, and natural history interpretation. His special joys are his kennel of sled dogs and teaching youth about dog handling.

Page Burt has worked as staff naturalist with Bathurst Inlet Lodge since 1973, and lived in Yellowknife and Rankin Inlet. A biologist, Page divides her time between Outcrop Ltd., and Nanuq Lodge, looking after projects which include vegetation baseline studies, communications,
tourism consulting and bookings and service to the guests of Nanuq Lodge. Page is a specialist in arctic natural history and author of Barrenland Beauties, a colour field guide to arctic plants."

I'll post what I can, when I can. Perhaps some photos or video and some thoughts on this northern community located on Hudson Bay. Here are some interesting facts:

The local wildlife includes:

Polar Bear – Top of the Northern Food Chain. Largest of all bears. Skilled hunters – mainly hunting marine mammals. Sizes range from: males – 350 to over 650 kg and females from 150 to 250 kg. Colour varies from pure white to creamy yellow.

Wolves – Has a complex social hierarchy. Larger than a sled dog. Usually white colour in this area. But closer to the treeline, the colour varies.

Foxes – Arctic Fox can change colours with the seasons, from white or bluish-gray during the winter to yellowish- white & brown in the summer. Foxes usually live a nomad life & travel alone. Foxes home range is 16 to 25 sq. km.
Red Fox or Cross Fox – larger than Arctic Foxes. Has started traveling to the Arctic since the 1940s and has increased steadily ever since. Foxes usually live a nomad life & travel alone.

Wolverine – one of the larger species of the weasel family. The wolverine has a muscular body, strong legs & short bushy tail. The wolverine is widely known to stand up to Polar Bears, to raid traps and raid cached food.

Walrus – marine mammal, lives in packs, has 2 long tusks. The male tusks are larger than the female tusks. Males usually weigh up to 800 kg and females up to 500 kg.

Whales – mostly Beluga Whales in this area, occasional Bowhead whales or Narwhales. Beluga whales migrate from Churchill, MB during the summer, and return there in the fall.

Caribou – Have adapted to the cold. Usually travel in herds. Main source of food for Inuit. Available throughout the year. Main diet: lichen, moss & mushrooms.

Birds – Canada Geese, Snow Geese, Bunting, Peregrine Falcon, Gyr Falcon, Raven, Seagull, Owls, Loons, Sandhill Cranes, Swans, Arctic Terns and in recent years Red Robins.

Fish – Arctic Char, Trout, Greyling, and Rock Cod

Siksik – Arctic Ground Squirrel is a social animal that live in colonies. They live in burrows, which have many entrances. These burrows can be hindered by permafrost.

Wish me luck!

NASA Running Tests On Spider Monkeys

For the first time in decades NASA is working with primates as part of the preparation for space missions. This time around spider monkeys are being exposed to radiation similar to that which a human might be exposed to when traveling to Mars.

"We realized there was a need for this kind of work," Jack Bergman, a behavioral pharmacologist at Harvard Medical School's McLean Hospital in Boston, told Discovery News.

"There's a long-standing commitment on the part of NASA to deep space travel and with that commitment comes a need for knowing what kinds of adverse effects deep space travel might have, what are the risks to astronauts," Bergman said. "That's not been well assessed."

The animals will not be destroyed after the experiments but will rather be cared for at a veterinary hospital, with no further experiments to be preformed on them.

Chimpanzees were sent into space prior to the first human attempts in order to test the Mercury capsules.

Source: Discovery News.

Icann Approves non-Latin-script Domain Names

With about one half of current internet users speaking languages with non-Latin scripts, the internet regulator Icann, The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, has approved a move to support domain names in Arabic, Chinese and other scripts.

"Of the 1.6 billion internet users today worldwide, more than half use languages that have scripts that are not Latin-based," said Icann president and CEO Rod Beckstrom earlier this week.

"So this change is very much necessary for not only half the world's internet users today but more than half, probably, of the future users as the internet continues to spread."

The work required to support the change is described as a "fantastically complicated technical feature"

Source: BBC News