Category — technology

The Space shuttle launch was just delayed for the day due to weather.
It looks like the next attempt will be for tomorrow at 6:51pm. The Major reasons for this scrubbing of the launch attempt are due to lightning in the area which the shuttle cannot take off in, as well as not being able to land if there is a launch abort during the initial stages of the shuttle launch. At this time the NASA team is busy preparing to remove the crew from the orbiter and reset the launch procedures for a launch tomorrow evening. Photo Courtesy of NASA.

And I miss my opportunity to finally see a Shuttle launch. The closer we get to the last of the launches, the more and more I am realizing that if I do not take the opportunity to try to get to one, it will be over before I realize it, and I’ll never see one. Yesterday I was realizing that if I did everything right, I could just make it in time to see todays launch. Unfortunately, I found out around 2am this morning as I was racing across south Georgia, that a leak is forcing a delay to this particular launch. I guess I’ll just have to come back at a later time. The one good thing is that I was able to get bumped to an earlier flight back home, so I’ll be able to take a nap in my own bed later this morning. I am writing this sitting at the Orlando airport, and will be departing at 6:15. The following is the text of NASA’s official press release about the delay.

The launch of space shuttle Endeavour’s STS-127 mission to the International Space Station is on hold due to a leak associated with the gaseous hydrogen venting system outside the external fuel tank. The system is used to carry excess hydrogen safely away from the launch pad at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. At 12:26 a.m. EDT Saturday, managers officially scrubbed the launch for at least 96 hours.

The earliest the shuttle could be ready for liftoff is June 17, however there is a range conflict on that date with the scheduled launch of the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter/Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Fla. 

Mission managers will hold a meeting at 2 p.m. Sunday to discuss the repair options and Endeavour’s launch attempt opportunities. A news conference will follow the meeting’s conclusion and will air live on NASA Television and the agency Web site.

After many attempts to delay the DTV transition, President Obama signed the delay into law on Feb 11th, 2009, The transition was originally supposed to take place on February 17th, 2009. This transition had been planned for a long time, and there was a major failure to educate the public and prepare everyone for this transition to take place. So, because the public is not ready, what are we to do? Howabout we delay the transition? well, yes, and no. The transition delay has been approved, however they botched the delay, and instead of just delaying the entire transition… they did this:

Congress did not require stations to continue broadcasting in analog after February 17th, and stations may choose to complete their transition, and stop broadcasting in analog, before June 12th. – FCC Website

Talk about a way to get everyone all messed up. Fortunately it appears that the first stage of the transition went well. Many stations will be required to not just turn off there analog transmissions when they do the switch, but also switch transmission lines and frequencies of their digital transmissions at the same time, leading to several reasons for the stations to want to switch before June 12th:

1. Pre-Scheduled tower work and staffing for the transition
2. Decrease in power consumption requirements for transmission services
3. Pre-existing property agreements for those switching transmitter locations

Not to mention all of those who participated in the FCC’s spectrum auction that would like to be able to occupy their newly purchased spectrum sooner rather than later.

A total of 641 of television stations took advantage of the flexibility afforded them by law to transition to digital broadcasting as of Tuesday. Nearly two-thirds of the nation’s 1800 full-power commercial stations chose to continue broadcasting analog signals so that consumers unprepared for the transition can take advantage of the additional time afforded by the new DTV Delay Act to prepare. The law extended the deadline from Feb. 17 to June 12. – FCC Web site

This has all been added on top of the already super-confusing state of what consumers need to know about the DTV transition. Almost everyone I have talked with is in some way confused about what this transition means to them. Here is the lowdown.

• This transition ONLY effects those people who receive their Television signals over-the-air from an antenna. Either from an antenna on the roof or “rabbit ears”
• This transition will NOT affect you if you receive your television signals from the cable company, your telephone company or a satellite provider no matter what type of television you use or if you use a cable box or not.
• This transition does NOT mean you need to buy a new TV
• This transition does NOT mean you need to get cable if you didn’t have it before
• This transition does NOT mean you need to upgrade to “digital cable”
• If you have a television, and use an antenna to receive your local stations, you MUST have an ATSC tuner to continue your reception after those stations turn off the older analog transmitters.
• Most new televisions have an ATSC tuner built in.
• You can get an external ATSC tuner to use with your current television, at a relatively low cost (or for free if you were lucky enough to get a coupon).

Should be easy enough, right? Well, Its been kind of frustrating to see commercials for our local cable company saying that if you sign up with them, they will take care of the DTV transition for you… which they will, but if you don’t have cable currently, a converter box is going to be MUCH cheaper than signing up for even the most basic of cable packages. Also, I have heard several sales people at retailers trying to pitch that you MUST buy a new television in order to continue getting television, regardless of how you get it, even if you are already a cable subscriber. I find this sort of deception toward the public repulsive at best.

Ok, so some of you may know about what APRS tracking is. APRS stands for Automatic Position Reporting System, which runs using Amature radio, GPS, and a network of interconnected stations that relay position reports around the world. I have had all of the pieces nessisary to set up and connect a APRS tracking station for quite some time, but have yet to finally get it integrated and set up in an easy to use package. Sometime soon I’ll take a few pictures and detail how I put together my system for everyone to look at. In the meantime, you can now go to http://www.tz42.com/findken.html to see where my lastest position report has come from. I figured that this was the perfect time to put the system online, as we are in the midst of a trip to NH to visit with some friends for the weekend. My plan is to mount the system in the truck, so that whenever I am off on a job I can turn the system on, and you can all see where I am at. There is a nice embedded system for display that uses google maps, play around with it, you can zoom right in close, and be sure to click on the icon for my car, which will give you information about when the position report was last updated and more information (like speed and direction of travel). Let me know what you think! Oh, and I am also currently testing out Google latitude, which I will have a review for shortly, if you are using it, add me (ken at tz42 dot com) I’d like to see if anyone else is using it.

Today is the 25th anniversary of the Macintosh computer, so in honor of this historic day (ok, historic to me), So I decided to put together this list of the many different Macintosh computers that I have owned over the years.

First off, is the Macintosh SE, which was introduced in March of 1987, and originally had two floppy drives, one megabyte of RAM, and a 9 inch Black and white monitor. The model that we had was the upgraded version with an SuperDrive (FDHD) floppy drive, an internal 20 megabyte hard drive, and one megabyte of RAM. We later upgraded the RAM to 4 Megabytes, and added an external SyQuest cartridge based external hard drive, as well as eventually an external CD-ROM drive and Zip Drive.

Click here for the full specs from Lowendmac.com

Next came the Performa 5200/75 TV. Which might be a little hard to find out there, but yeah, we had one. The most interesting thing about this particular computer was that it had a built in NTSC tuner, so the entire computer became a television when needed. It also could function as a CD Player, considering that it actually contained a built in CD-ROM drive as well. This computer originally released in April of 1995, this was a long overdue upgrade for us considering how long we had stuck it out with the SE. Click here for the full specs

Around about the same time came my first Powerbook, which was also my first computer that was completely my own. Unfortunately this computer happened to be the Powerbook 190cs, much slower than the 5200 that we had at home. This computer I continued to use for the first two years of college as well. This model was introduced in August of 1995. Kind of amazing to think that I was actually using this computer actively up until the summer of 1999, when I got my next computer. Click here for the full specs 

During the summer after my freshman year of college (1999), I finally saved up enough money to buy a “real” computer, and bought the PowerMac G3 Blue and White, otherwise known as “Yosemite” the original specs of this machine, it had a 350Mhz G3 processor, 64Mb of RAM, and a 6 gig hard drive. This machine was such a good machine however, that It still is running as my home backup server, though it has been upgraded quite a bit. Currently this machine has a 550Mhz G4 processor, 1.25Gb of RAM, and several hard drives totaling over 250Gigs of hard drive space. Still an excellent machine, and still running almost ten years later. Click here for full specs from www.lowendmac.com

This machine was Alina’s first Mac During College, and in fact is still running at her mothers house and used daily for email and web surfing. Based upon the original iMac, this is the iMac DV SE (Digital video, Special edition) which came with a built in DVD Drive, as well as a unique graphite case. First introduced in July of 2000. Click here for full specs.

This next machine was the Powerbook 3400c, which when it was introduced in Febuary of 1997 was the fastest laptop in the world. While we were living in Vermont, I bought two of these, one for my parents and one for myself second hand from someone who specializes in refurbished older Mac laptops. I used it for a couple of years, as this was something to use to replace my venerable 190cs that had continued as my primary laptop for many years past its useful life. This machine is currently sitting in a closet waiting to get resurrected, as the PRAM battery is dead, the screen refuses to stay in one color mode, and for some reason it is stuck with the caps-lock in the on position. Click here for full specs.

During our final year in Vermont (2003), we finally decided to buy a new computer for Alina, (though I get to use it on occasion. This being our first major purchase together. The Powerbook G4 12inch was and still is Apple’s smallest full featured laptop produced, it weighs under 5 pounds and yet has a 1ghz processor 1.25gigs of RAM, and a DVD burner. An excellent computer, this laptop is still going strong, despite several nocks and scrapes. The G4 12inch was introduced in August of 2003. Click here for full specs from www.lowendmac.com 

I’m not really sure if this counts as a Mac of mine, however my parents had an iBook G3 for several years, which was mostly destroyed in a house fire in 2003, I rescued the iBook, replaced the melted keyboard, and continued to use it for an additional 3 years, burn marks and all. Unfortunately this computer was one of many that suffered from the infamous iBook motherboard failure problems, and died finally due to those problems, and not damage suffered by the fire. Click here for full specs. 

And Finally we arrive at my current Mac. I am currently the proud owner of a 2007 MacBook Pro 15inch, 2.2Ghz, 2gigs of RAM and 160gig internal hard drive, with a Dual Layer DVD+-R Drive. This was the first laptop by Apple to incorporate LED technology into the display, which is much brighter and clearer than previous laptop models. Although the new unibody MacBooks are interesting, I am quite happy with this computer for the time being. Click here for full specs from www.lowendmac.com. 

So after my many years of owning macs, I am hoping there will be many more to come in the future.