Wednesday, January 30, 2002

Clearest Photo Ever Of Horsehead Nebula Amazing photo. I remember when I was a kid I picked up an Isaac Asimove book on astronomy, with the horsehead on the cover. I remember diving into that photo. This has amazing depth. [via Slashdot] Even though I knew the search was in vain, I didn spend several long winter evenings here in the Bay Area looking through my telescope, trying to find that nebula in Orion. I don't know if it's even possible to see with the eye, or if it's something you can only photograph. The dimmest thing I ever saw from my backyard was the Crab Nebula. It was a very difficult find: it's not near any bright stars, so the star hop was pretty complicated. And when I found it, it was very much a faint fuzzy. 9:48:46 PM     Introduction to XSLT. I'm glad to see this; I spent a lot of last Sunday screwing around wtih XSLT and, alas, didn't get done what I wanted to do; as far as I could see, I was doing everything right, but just couldn't get results. Maybe this will help. [XML and metadata news] The weekend wasn't a total loss technically, though. I used Andromeda to set up a home streaming MP3 server, on eval. So now I can stream MP3s to any machine in the house or office from the server, no problem. It was really easy to set up. I had been meaning to write something to read the ID3 tags and display MP3s, but when it's this easy to set up -- and the author is asking only $20 -- why bother. 9:43:42 PM     SF Chronicle: Search Me. Put simply, the search and directory firms have put their futures in question by flouting time-tested business practices that require an absolutely clear separation between editorial content and advertising. Most search and directory firms are now paying mere lip service to those rules. [Tomalak's Realm] 9:39:16 PM     CNET NEWS.COM Perspectives - Time to rewrite the DMCA. U.S. Rep. Rick Boucher says the law is flawed and has tipped the copyright balance toward complete protection and away from information availability. 9:36:57 PM     Skipping Dot Net: Open Source Databases Linkfest.  [Scripting News] 9:33:26 PM     It'll have to be a big killer asteroid: "If A collision with an asteroid is going to finish us off, it will have to be a lot larger than anyone thought, according to a controversial new study of the impact that wiped out the dinosaurs." From The New Scientist. I guess that's good news. It's interesting to me that a theory -- an impact killed the dinosaurs -- that was controversial not all that long ago, has become quite accepted, so that the question now is how instead of whether. 9:00:27 PM

© Copyright 2002 Steve Michel. Last update: 1/30/2002; 11:21:07 PM. This theme is based on the SoundWaves (blue) Manila theme.