Battlestar Makes it to the Top Ten

An excellent Top Ten List from the Letterman Show: Reasons to Watch the Final Season of Battlestar Galactica.

I especially like that Tricia Helfer (Caprica Six) is #6.

BSG Last Supper

Take a look at this Battlestar Galactica Last Supper.

An Astronomer on Mars

Cool image of the Earth and Moon as seen from the HiRISE instrument aboard the Mars Reconnaissance Explorer in orbit around Mars. You can see a better version of the photo and read the whole story here.

This reminds me of the somewhat famous image taken by the Voyager I spacecraft as it was headed outward in the 70s.

At the Planetary Society I found a gallery of photos of the Earth taken only from Spacecraft. Check it out!

Ultimate Secure Home

George alerted me to this over-the-top, off-the-grid, most secure home ever. Here's an excerpt from the website for the Ultimate Secure Home:

"Strategically located in the awesome San Juan mountains of Southwest Colorado, this patented steel-reinforced concrete earth home was built to withstand almost any natural or man-made disaster you can name. It is more secure, safe, and functional than any conventional house could ever be, yet still has a level of comfort that one might not expect to find in an underground home."

It is completely off the grid, relying on solar power for all the electrical needs. It has a safe room (i.e., "bomb shelter"), and is hardended against almost anything.

In an apocalyptic mood? Get it now for just $495,000.

Another Million-dollar Idea

George alerted me to someone else's million-dollar idea: The Million Dollar Home Page. This Reuters story gives all the details, but the bottom line is that some college student found an easy way to make a million.

21-year old Alex Tew wanted to make money to pay the bills, and decided to create a web page 1000 pixels high and 1000 pixels wide. He then sold advertising space on the page, with each pixel selling for $1. For a spot 10 by 10, you would pay $100 (and there is still space available).

I don't know if readers are flocking to the site, but enough advertisers have that Alex won't be having any trouble paying the tuition.

Catch the WildCam while you can!

National Geographic's well-done website is currently featuring an amazing experience: A 24-hour webcam which monitors a water hole in Africa: The WildCam.

Pete's Pond is a large watering hole in Botswana, which is frequented by all kinds of wildlife. I've spent hours and hours working at my computer while the streaming, real-time video from the pond plays on my desktop.

Geographic only plans to keep the live stream active on their site until December 8th, so please take a look while you can. They use an ordinary color camera during the day, and use an infrared camera at night.

The site tells you what time it is in Botswana, and they have some wonderful archive footage available.

I've snapped a few photos from the live feed when it was particularly interesting, and included a few here.

Visit the Wild Cam.

Elephants at night

Baboon

Zebras

more Elephants

Google Maps on the Moon

Yep, today is the 36th anniversary of Neil Armstrong's famous first step on the Moon. I can't believe that almost 40 years later, the U.S. has no functioning craft to even get us into Low Earth Orbit... oh well.

It's a cool day to commemorate, and Google has gone a step further than their usual special logo: They've created a special version of Google Maps for the Moon! It shows you the landing sites for the Apollo missions, and a special surprise if you zoom in all the way.

Enjoy.

moon.google.com


p.s. Google Moon is part of the Google Copernicus Project. These guys are forward-thinking!