RIP Arthur C. Clarke

Renowned science fiction author Arthur C. Clarke passed away either today or yesterday, depending on your point of view. (Yesterday I'd have said "today or tomorrow," which would have been even stranger.) He is well-known for his work on "2001: A Space Odyssey," as well as for conceiving of geostationary satellites.

These are the quotations listed on his Wikipedia page:

Clarke's three laws

1. "When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong."
   
2. "The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible."
   
3. "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."
   

"Life is just one big banana. Science fiction allows us all to peel open the reality and discover the yellow truth inside."

"The truth, as always, will be far stranger."

"Sometimes I think we're alone in the universe, and sometimes I think we're not. In either case the idea is quite staggering."

"How inappropriate to call this planet Earth, when clearly it is Ocean."

Of UFOs: "They tell us absolutely nothing about intelligence elsewhere in the universe, but they do prove how rare it is on Earth."

"Somewhere in me is a curiosity sensor. I want to know what's over the next hill. You know, people can live longer without food than without information. Without information, you'd go crazy."

"We should always be prepared for future technologies, because otherwise they will come along and clobber us."

Of his epitaph: "I've often quoted it: 'He never grew up; but he never stopped growing.'"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_C._Clarke

Nighttime Shuttle Launch

The nice thing about staying up late to do homework is getting to see things like the nighttime launch of the Space Shuttle Endeavour. "2 minutes until the release of the hold." I don't even know what that means.

http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/nasatv/index.html?param=public

Earth

I noticed a little while ago that the #1 result on Google for Earth is... Google Earth. It's not even Google bias--Live Search and Yahoo agree. What does that say about us?

P.S. http://www.ted.com/talks/view/id/224

StarWars.com: 10 Star Wars Superweapons

I just finished Fury, so I've been reading up on some stuff that would've been too spoilery to read first. Take, for instance, this:

Star Wars: Expanded Universe | Checklist: 10 Star Wars Superweapons

There's just one spoiler, but it's pretty big. But if you don't care, it's a hilarious read.

Also: The Force Unleashed looks awesome. Too bad DMM can't be applied to *EVERYTHING*... yet. I love the glass shattering and sucking guys out into the vacuum. Sounds like a great gameplay mechanic for Battlefront III. ;)

MSNBC: What to do with tax rebate?

This is sort of interesting...

10 Tips: What to do with tax rebate? - 10 Tips- msnbc.com

Happy Thanksgiving!

Gobble gobble. :)

GO RED SOX!!!

WORLD CHAMPIONS!!!

I'm going to the parade tomorrow. Ought to be fun. :)

Harry Potter VII

I just finished the final Harry Potter book. Pretty good. I won't say more than that. :)

Happy 4th of July, 787, etc.

I'm out of school now. Haven't been updating much recently. Oh well. :)

Happy late 4th of July!

Boeing 787

The Boeing 787 is pretty cool. Check it out:

http://www.newairplane.com/

They're officially launching it on 07/08/07. How appropriate. :)

So, on the eve of its launch, it's fun to look back on the launch of the 707.

http://www.aviationexplorer.com/707_roll_video.htm

Pretty cool! :)

Fun Days

Friday was May 4th.
May the Fourth be with you!

Saturday was 05/05.
Cinco de Mayo!

Sunday was 05/06/07.
How come nobody pointed this out? At 08:09:10 it would have been especially exciting. And I missed it! :(
...but Sunday was only 05/06/07 if you're going MM/DD/YY. I generally go DD/MM/YY, so I suppose I'll wait until 05/06/07 -- that is, June 5.

New Computer Update: Nice Vista Touches

As I use Vista more, I notice more and more nice little touches. Long Zheng has blogged about a couple nice ones, and here are a few more. (Note that some have been mentioned in the comments over there. Hey, I can't be completely original...)

Calendar Zooming

Click once on the clock, and it brings up a calendar. No, not the date settings, but a real calendar. Mr. Zheng mentioned that, but what he didn't mention was that if you click on the month, it zooms out to show the whole year. If you click the year, it zooms out to show the decade. Click once more, and it'll show the whole century. All with nice animation.

Also: multiple time zones; clock that doesn't look like Windows 95
What could be improved: link to open in Windows Calendar; show next appointment from Windows Calendar

Gigantic Icons

Hold Ctrl and scroll when you're at the desktop to make your icons tiny or huge... really huge. Depending on what you have on there, there are some really nice-looking icons. Allows for a pretty slick looking, uncluttered desktop. And it encourages me to keep my desktop clean. :)

WinKey + Number

Shortcut for Quick Launch shortcuts. WinKey + 1 for the first shortcut, WinKey + 2 for the second, etc. Not sure if this is new in Vista, but it sure is handy.

Per-Application Volume Mixer

For when I want to leave my music at the volume it is, but turn down AIM and IE.

Also: sound icon changes depending on volume
What could be improved: bug where blank app controls show up en masse; fixed just by closing and re-opening mixer

Auto Scroll in Folder Tree

No horizontal scroll bar needed. Vista scrolls to the right or left automatically as you navigate.

Breadcrumb Folder Navigation

I mentioned this earlier, but really, it's great. Y'know, with the little drop-down arrows between each folder name.

Previous Versions

Right-click a file, click Properties, and then Previous Versions. Great if you save over something you need by accident.

Also: delete a file by accident? Previous Versions still has it archived

Copy File Animation

It's really cool. And glowy. Try it. I actually started at it for a full minute or more, admiring its beauty.

Flip 3D

Especially in Flip 3D. That particular feature may not worth the hype, but it's not as useless as I initially thought. When I have a ton of stuff open at once, as I tend to, it's nice for finding a particular document or folder window because I immediately recognize it visually.

Also: just plain looks cool, especially with video; live thumbnails in Alt+Tab and upon hovering on a taskbar item

Reliability and Performance Manager

Keep track of errors and application failures, as well as your system performance as a whole. Nice.

InkBall

Fun game, though I still miss Pinball.

I'll add more as I remember them...

200th Post: Random Links

I hereby celebrate my 200th post on this blog with a few random links that've caught my eye.

1) Live Search: I was about to go to the CIA World Factbook, but on a whim I tried "population density of india" and it worked.
http://search.live.com/results.aspx?q=what+is+the+population+density+of+india%3F&form=QBRE

2) Colbert's Google Bombing successful: Colbert declared "greatest living american"
http://www.google.com/search?q=greatest+living+american&rls=com.microsoft:*:IE-SearchBox&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&sourceid=ie7&rlz=1I7DKUS

3) Wal-Mart to put their weight behind HD-DVD?
http://news.digitaltrends.com/talkback184.html

And finally....

4) iPod Killer
http://www.dilbert.com/comics/dilbert/archive/dilbert-20070420.html

Vista Thoughts, Remote Assistance, and Fun Links

So I've been using Windows Vista for a couple weeks now, and so far it's working great. It's running on a Dell XPS 410, a computer that basically replaced a Dell Dimension XPS T600. Funny, I had never known the XPS nameplate had been recycled from an old Dimension line.

Both Vista and Office 2007 have been working great. A few notes on each:

Vista

• I love search!!! It's everywhere in Vista, including the Start menu, and when you hit Start it has cursor focus automatically. And it searches basically instantly, which, while now the norm in modern desktop search programs and elsewhere, is immensely gratifying to someone who never really bought into that whole market.
  
  So opening MS Word is as easy as typing WinKey + "word" + Enter, which takes me all of half a second. And becauses it indexes not only files and programs and all that stuff but also IE Favorites and History, opening starwars.com is as simple as WinKey + "starwa" + Enter.
• The Sidebar is quite handy.
• I love breadcrumb navigation in Windows Explorer...
• The much-advertised Flip 3D, aside from being incredibly satisfying, is actually kind of handy because it gives you a much better sense of what you're flipping through and thus makes it easier to find a window if you've got a ton of stuff open at once, like I usually do.
• Seeing live video play in Flip 3D, Alt-Tab thumbnails, or taskbar thumbnails is truly a "wow" moment.
• But Search remains the REAL wow moment.
• Little things like a taskbar calendar that doesn't make you change the date if you just want to see what May looks like, or the per-application volume mixer, or the transparency effects, or ultra-high-res icons, really add up to a much nicer overall experience
• But Search is the nicest experience.
• My desktop has never looked better thanks to aforementioned high-res icons and the fact that you can resize desktop icons by holding Ctrl and scrolling your mouse's scroll wheel.
• Voice command is incredible. In IE you can just say the name of a link and it'll click it. Or in Solitaire, say "2 of Clubs" to click the 2 of clubs, and then "3 of hearts" put it on the 3 of hearts. You can do literally anything with it, as far as I can tell. Sure, it's not always faster than keyboard and mouse, but sometimes it is.
• I love the general emphasis on tagging and metadata throughout Vista.
• Did I mention I love search?

Office 2007

• It's just so.... so easy...
• I actually use formatting styles for the first time ever.
• I love macros. Not that that's new.
• All the design templates have finally been updated from the old 90's-era relics.
• Sadly, traditional Word Art is still there and ugly as ever
• But it's been replaced in part by new, much much better text styling
• Images can be given nice reflections and everything in a matter of seconds
• There's just too much to mention it all
• Some old rarely-used functions can be hard to find now, and one or two are actually gone. They won't be missed by many... but I'm still kind of sad they're gone. But literally, one or two things. That basically nobody ever used.
• Every once in a while, evidence of the old Word 2003 UI comes and mars the experience a bit.

Note that for both Office 07 and Vista, you need to actually use it for a little while to really appreciate everything.

Remote Assistance

It's been in Windows since before XP, but today I'm using it to help my brother on a Spanish menu publication while he's working on one computer and I'm still working at the other. I don't understand why Support teams can't start using this. Though, for all I know, maybe they do. But I must say, it's a real "wow" moment, and it's not even new! In the slightest! Oh, the gems that lay hidden due to overwhelming UIs and lack of discoverability...

Fun Links

Just a few quick things to end on:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/bonniegrrl/sets/72157600031506494/show/
http://www.on10.net/Blogs/laura/techfest-07-playanywhere-meets-playtogether/
http://www.on10.net/Blogs/tina/first-official-look-at-the-xbox-360-spring-dashboard-update/
http://blogs.msdn.com/oldnewthing/archive/2005/04/12/407562.aspx
http://blog.wired.com/defense/2007/04/soldierportable.html
http://theforce.net/latestnews/story/Star_Wars_101_105039.asp
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/18096644
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7S9SpdCZeg0

New Computer, Pt. 2

And this is one of my first acts on the new computer! :)

New Computer

We just got a new computer, so this is my last post on this one--indeed, my last act on this one, aside from turning it off--before it's moved to the old folks' home (aka the basement). Farewell, computer. You have served us well.

Nineteen

Nineteen years ago today, my parents got married, on March 19. Nineteen months later, I was born on October 19. And Star Wars Episodes I and III came out on May 19.

Nineteen also happens to be the smallest Higgs prime for squares and cubes that has an index among Higgs primes that is less than its index among primes overall (because 17 is not a Higgs prime). Wait, what??

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/19_%28number%29

SATs, R2-D2, MS Ad Comparison

SATs

I just finished taking the SATs around 2:15 today. Well, that was fun. I must say, the best question was certainly--

Wait. I guess I'm not allowed to say that. Too bad, it was a pretty awesome question. :)

And then there was this other really puzzling one where--

Never mind. Move along.

R2-D2
http://www.theforce.net/topstory/story/R2D2_Mailboxes_Confirm_Rumors_104142.asp
http://www.engadget.com/2007/03/09/usps-goes-postal-with-r2d2-mailboxes/

I was just watching Episode IV last night. And R2 is certainly awesome. And I have a feeling he basically plans everything that happens. (All right, not everything, but a lot--finding Luke, reuniting him with Obi-Wan, etc....) He is, after all, just about the only guy who has a clue, at least once Obi-Wan "becomes one with the Force" and all. He saw everything. Funny how he's the guy we can't understand, and he knows everything.

MS Ad Comparison
http://www.istartedsomething.com/20070310/windows-tv-ads/

P.S.
Worms is a great game.

Flags of Our Fathers & ESB SE turns 10

Yesterday we saw Flags of Our Fathers... on the 62nd anniversary of the battle of Iwo Jima. Whoah, eh? Total coincidence. :)

In other news, today marks the 10th Anniversary of the release of Star Wars: Episode V - The Empire Strikes Back Special Edition! Hoorah!

Tophtucker.com v5.0 is going online!

The first parts of Tophtucker.com v5.0 are going online now! I have some space issues, so I'm trying to do some spring cleaning at the same time. In any case, the new home page is now live, with more to follow in the next few minutes. :)

Super Bowl Ads

Yeah, I know, this is really late. But anyway--while overall I didn't think this year's Super Bowl had a ton of great standout ads, I'd just like to say that I loved all three Coke ones. "Vending" in particular is fascinating if you watch carefully... actually, there are a few kinda creepy aspects of it if you pay attention. Watch and see if you know what I mean. ;)

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/16566275/