mssv

  • Space Exploration Act

    ·

    1–2 minutes

    ·

    A new bill entitled the Space Exploration Act of 2002 has been introduced to set forth a strict timetable for NASA to accelerate reuseable space vehicle development and see a Man on Mars by 2022 (and no, it hasn’t been enacted yet).

  • Sid Meier

    ·

    1–2 minutes

    ·

    Sid Meier (creator of the Civilization games) had this to say about massively multiplayer games: “It’s a new, exciting, but at the same time repelling world. I don’t know. Really.” Absolutely.

  • Scrabble

    ·

    1–2 minutes

    ·

    Played Scrabble at the pub last night – got 309 points, most of which came from oxygen, squadron (used all seven letter – extra 50 points) and fazed (triple word score).

  • Earth and Beyond

    ·

    1–2 minutes

    ·

    A good example of mini-story events in mmoe – in its review of Earth and Beyond Online, Gamespot talks about a scripted event controlled by a game employee in the guise of an NPC. Clever stuff.

  • Writing

    ·

    1–2 minutes

    ·

    Something popped into my head today as I was scribbling down some notes during a supervision: does the fact that I write with a pencil (as opposed to a pen or biro) affect my writing style, and on a higher level, my method of thinking? Pencils provide a much less constrained and linear way of…

  • MGS

    ·

    1–2 minutes

    ·

    Getting a stereo view of Mars – the boys at NASA are pretty damn clever; they’re planning to obtain 3D images of areas the Mars Global Surveyor has already covered by pointing the spacecraft off-nadir (so it doesn’t point directly down).

  • I Wish I knew

    ·

    1–2 minutes

    ·

    Correction to an earlier post: It seems I made a common mistake when I said that the Barry Norman film night tune (I Wish I Knew) was first written by Nina Simone. It was in fact first written and performed by the Bill Taylor Trio. Thanks to Tom for pointing this out.

  • Reasons to be cheerful

    ·

    1–2 minutes

    ·

    Reasons to be cheerful: People on Metafilter liked my post about aerogel (inspired when I saw these pretty photos). I’m very pleased about this – Metafilter is being swamped with too much news culled from CNN, Slashdot, Kuro5hin and other web news portals these days, so I thought the readers might like a change and…

  • Hamid Karzai

    ·

    1–2 minutes

    ·

    Ask a question to Hamid Karzai – this is why BBC Online is the best news website.

  • Shake phone

    ·

    1–2 minutes

    ·

    Transmit a handshake through your phone – while I have the utmost respect for the guys at MIT Media Lab, I fail to see the point of this invention.