Going along with the 7-11 and Kwik-E-Mart post from earlier, Rebecca turned us into Simpsons characters.
Everyone’s doing it, and you can go to The Simpsons Movie website to do it, too.
Google Maps, not bombs
I’ve been known to spend hours with a map, just studying where roads go. It’s something I’ve done since being a kid, trying to pass those hours away as we made our way on one of many road trips that usually ended at some relatives. That landed me the role of navigator on many excursions because I learned how to read maps that well.
So naturally, I can get lost into the depths of Google Maps, and there was something really interesting, at least to me, that I discovered last night.
The Nevada Test and Training Range[wiki] has a large portion of the range mapped now by Google Maps satellites(and apparently it’s even cooler in Google Earth). Now this gets even more interesting to me because I’m enthralled, like many, with the whole Area 51[wiki] phenomenon. It’s not so much the UFOs as it is the fact that the perimeter to the range is patrolled by unmarked vehicles and signs boast the use of deadly force being authorized if you are caught trespassing.
I’ve seen enough “declassified” aerial photos to have spotted the area from pretty far away to have spotted it, and you can get pretty far down to the Groom Lake base. For years, they said nothing was there. Now they play the hand that they have nothing to hide, but who knows what top secret technology is developed when the satellites aren’t looking.
I parsed through other parts of the range because I was curious to see if there were any sites of the range being used for target practice. After all, that is where the U.S. military can go play with live ammunition and get real experience dropping bombs.
Speaking of bombs, this is where nukes were tested for years, above and below ground. Looking around for evidence of massive blast sites, I found this.
What made that crater, I can’t be sure. You can be assured that the area is massive though. Some quick and rough calculations come up with this being just over 400 meters in diameter. Whatever went boom there was a sizable explosive.
For the sake of comparison, I pulled up a shot of downtown Vancouver to compare the blast zone with an area that I am more familiar with. The important element in doing this was to bring it up at the same aspect ratio as well, which I think I did successfully. Honestly, I found it fairly stunning.
Essentially, the blast zone at the Nevada Test Site is the same size as BC Place[wiki], and that’s not the only crater that I picked on. That’s just something I did as a quick comparison, and it gives you a very eerie feeling about what goes on in a place that is so closely monitored and guarded. As to if this is the result of a nuclear bomb is unclear, but the idea of it being non-nuclear isn’t comforting either.
I know that I’m late to the party on this news, but the discovery is new to me. If you take the time to poke through what you can see, because there are still some areas that are low resolution or simply “not available” for satellite view, you’ll find some interesting stuff.
Gonna wash that horse right out of my hair
I know that it’s good for the health of your hair or something, but this is oddly amusing. When shopping for groceries, it’s good to know that you can also find shampoo for your horse, especially around downtown Vancouver. Making a mental note on that one.
Getting my Alaska fix
I have a really good friend who did something even more crazy than my relocation to Vancouver. Paul one upped me and trekked to Alaska last fall, just as winter was setting in. The one thing he constantly says is how incredibly beautiful it is there, and I think that says a lot for him to say that without experiencing summer yet.
He seems to have a good gig up there, helping coordinate things at the Alaska Teen Media Institute. Paul took his radio producing talents and shares his creative expertise with the kids he works with. That might make some of you worry, but I think he’s got a handle on things.
This piece by one of his students nabbing an interview with the band OK Go is pretty good. I always wonder what it’s like to grow up in the great white north, especially where it’s much more north and whiter than Vancouver. Yes, I know that usually implies Canada, but Alaska seems more like another world to me than Canada ever has. Still, it’s on my lists of places in the world that I want to visit for the simple sake of saying I’ve been there, and I’d consider living there if they keep giving land away as if it’s the 1800’s.
Calling shenanigans
The premise of this post is this. I scan a lot of RSS feeds, and today is April Fools’ Day[wiki]. So my plan is to spot things, list them here if I think they are a load of crap, and we’ll let the cards fall as they may. Feel free to post comments to give the rest of us heads up or give us a ruling as to if it’s true or total bunk.
Why might I do this? Because it’s just as fun to try and solve the equation as it is to play the prank. Also, I got completely hosed by Father Roderick last year with his prank, and he’s a priest! A clever Dutchman, but I’m doing my best to not get nailed this year. Still, I appreciate a good joke, but his was a tad too much on the pulling at heart strings end of the stick.
So here we go, a total roll of the dice. Check back for updates on this little experiment.
» Google is pulling their usual stunt. Rebecca has it posted on her site, but it’s pretty comical. Oh the geeky humor. Status: shenanigans
Google TiSP (BETA) is a fully functional, end-to-end system that provides in-home wireless access by connecting your commode-based TiSP wireless router to one of thousands of TiSP Access Nodes via fiber-optic cable strung through your local municipal sewage lines. [google]
» John Chow made a post on March 31st detailing his last blog post ever, mainly because he apparently sold his company, is dirt rich, and now going to travel the world. If that be the case, then all the best with not catching ebola, bird flu, or Montezuma revenge in whatever portion of the world that your travels take you. And I say that lovingly. Status: shenanigans
Starting tomorrow, I will be on permanent vacation. I have sold my company, TTZ Media Inc., to a Toronto based Internet Venture Company. The sale closed yesterday. I cannot disclose the sale price but it is enough that the interest on the money alone would put me in the top 1% income bracket. [johnchow]
» Maybe Robert Scoble is a natural at randomly finding people using interesting gadgets at random areas of the SF area, but this post from today seems all too fishy to me. It makes sense, but holy crap is it a long post about some new Apple gadget that is supposed to make reading RSS feeds as hip as walking down the street with white ear buds crammed in your ears. However, if true, then I guess that’s neat. Status: shenanigans
Back to what I saw: today we were eating at Sam’s Chowder House in Half Moon Bay when I saw someone down on the beach using a device I didn’t recognize. Being a geek I quickly ran down to the beach to see what it was. Turns out he was an Apple executive (he asked me not to name him) and tried to hide the device when I came near, but I eventually talked him into showing it off to me. [scobleizer]
Leave a comment if you see something else worth calling shenanigans on.
Blog: Ikea Hacker
I showed this to Rebecca this morning before she left for work, and she asked me where I had discovered Ikea Hacker. For the life of me, I cannot remember. I’ve been reading it for the past few months, enjoying the neat creations that people have cobbled together to make there own breed of Swedish furniture. It’s something I am really curious about doing myself, but even I scare myself with the possible monstrosities I could create.
It was this recent post that came through to me this morning that really peaked my love for this blog. Take an Ikea desk, computers, throw some cable management at it, and holy crap is my mind full of ideas now. That’s the brilliance of this site. My courage is getting stronger to try something crazy myself.
True that some of the posts are nothing spectacular, but I can always use some sources of inspiration to get me going again. The desktop PC of Rebecca’s sits on this little Ikea workstation that we got from some of our good friends. They were pretty impressed when I mounted our network router underneath the bottom shelf with some twist-ties. Now I have all sorts of ideas. Just need more ties.
Lessons in quick thinking
The cheese fell between the counter and the fridge.
This is what you do so you don’t hurt your back or pinch your fingers while trying to get the cheese you sent flying across the counter and into that tight space between said place. Don’t ask me to explain how. The cheese grater just slipped.
Doing stuff like this always takes me back to the days of KRUI where this type of rigging was far too common, if not being too far from an exact replica. We called it “ghetto engineering”. This is a testament to those quick thinking skills that still exist today.
1,000 Photos on Flickr
Amazing what tickles your pickle when you’ve had a long day, not drank enough water, and had only one beer with fish and chips. 1,000 pictures, right on the money. Even after uploading everything I have today, what’s the chances of that happening? Neat.
Not exactly Mordor
An incredibly geeky thing to say, but what an ominous photo. It’s not quite the eye of Sauron, but the Vancouver Webcam does produce some nice shots, don’t you think?
Max Headroom: TV pirate
A story that I caught over on BoingBoing has me fascinated. The basic low down is that one night in November of 1987, a couple of TV stations in the Chicago area were hijacked of their signals. This means that someone had the right knowledge and equipment to pull off this amazing stunt. For a brief period of time, people were treated to a guy in a Max Headroom[wiki] mask with a moving background and garbled audio.
You can see the event transpire on WTTW[wiki] as it actually aired during an episode of Doctor Who[wiki] via this YouTube link. I know that if I would have caught this in 1987, when I was nine, I would have been creeped out. Below is a CBS news report detailing the event[wiki].
The fine for a prank like this from the FCC isn’t cheap, and the “masked man” was never found. Getting onto WGN[wiki] is what really blows my mind. Even though that attempt didn’t last very long, you’d have to be close by to get it to work. However, you think someone would notice a bunch of people hauling large pieces of broadcasting equipment around. Also, you can see in both of these video examples that there was at least another person who helped pull this off. Curious that after nearly twenty years, the secret has remained safe.
The BoingBoing post goes on to point to other links that further the background of this story, and I’ll post them here as well because they are nothing short of incredible pieces of underground history. Damn Interesting has an article about the event itself, especially a closer look at the audio from the signal hijack of WTTW. Signaltonoise offers further background on the incident involving Captain Midnight’s hijacking of HBO in the year prior[wiki], which the CBS report mentions above.
I instantly sent this to my former chief engineer at WSUI because he eats up this stuff just like I do. Jim has some experience dealing with the realm of TV as well as radio, and we both worked in tandem with a bunch of TV guys. Of course, he still does.
“This would be much tougher now a days. With the digital links in place the pirate would have to shell out bigger dollars for the digital modulator. Sometimes hackers do find a way to edge into this stuff on the cheap. I kind of remember the hubbub of the day.”
– Jim
As much as TV is changing to a more IP delivered system, you know that this will inspire someone to try something just as daunting. They go to great lengths to keep those systems closed, but nothing is ever secure enough to someone who really wants to stir something up. Just look at what happened during an airing of a press conference with Dick Cheney on CNN in November of 2005. A producer exercised their feelings about him by slapping a big “X” graphic on his face during the live feed, and CNN dropped the producer when it was discovered to not be an accident or technical error.
The human will is a marvelous thing, and this is the most incredible element in all of this. Fines and security won’t stop someone who really wants to stir things up. I would bet that this got a lot harder to do, especially after 1987.