Archive for the ‘interesting stuff’ Category

Google Tech Talks

Tuesday, October 10th, 2006

Do you know Google Tech Talks?

Google Tech Talks are talks held by various people at the Google site for the Google staff. Various people like professors, postgraduates, researchers, developers and even buddhists.
And what do those Googlers do? Friendly as they are they tape the whole thing and load the videos up to their video service. I recently watched a few of those TechTalks and was very impressed as the talks are sophisticated, entertaining and interesting at the same time. Just like a good university lecture should be. (more…)

Music from Scrubs

Friday, October 6th, 2006

A few days ago I had the idea to create a list of all songs that occur in Scrubs. But as it is with the Internet, such a list exists already: scrubs.mopnt.com/music.
Most of the songs are great, and I’m very thankfull for what they did/are doing with this list, I would have never been able to create such a detailed and completed list. (more…)

Wallpapers

Thursday, October 5th, 2006

Some Wallpapers created from self-made pictures.

paris_at_night street_light_at_railroad_station
“Paris at night” & “Street light at railroad station”
The first one is a wallpaper made from 4 pictures that were taken from the Tour Monparnasse in Paris. It’s called “Paris at night”. (more…)

BarCamp Nuernberg

Tuesday, September 26th, 2006

Ever heard of “BarCamp“?

In case you are uninformed and not up to date (like me a few days ago) let me explaing and enlighten you: It’s an international network of conferences (or should I say unconferences?). The specialty about BarCamps is that they basically take the open source idea and expand it into tech conferences. (more…)

Radio Stations

Monday, September 25th, 2006

Today I present three great (Internet) radio stations. One is located in Munich, Germany, one in Paris, France and one in Vienna, Austria. They all play the newest alternative and independent Rock-, Pop-, Electro, and Dancemusic. As they are located in different places in Europe one can hear a wide variety of music.

(more…)

(Semiprofessional) Space Travel

Thursday, September 21st, 2006

Slashdot recently had an item about “Space On a Shoestring” reporting about three engineering students at Cambridge University who have planned to put a rocket into space for only Ã?â??Ã?£1000. They have sent their first space ship already to an altitude of 32km with the help of a helium balloon.Althoughh people argue, that that’s exactly what helium balloons are for (so whats special about it?), I think what they did is pretty cool. Not only because they have brought back those beautiful pictures but also because I’m sure they have learned quite a lot while preparing and realizing their mission.
What’s interesting is that in connection with this project, people are mentioning a lot other similar projects. I was quite impressed by all of them:

  • The “High Altitude Glider Project” launched 5 times from 2001 to 2003. And they are planning to do it again: A Canadian Boffin – It’s not quite flying, closer to falling with style.
  • The Stabilo Project, a professional European science project to create a “suborbital manned system”. They are using a solar balloon to overcome the first 22.000m. Then they launch the “hydrogen peroxide (85%) monopropellant rocket engine” to travel the rest of the way.
  • Another project is the STRAPLEX project. It’s a program by the University of Porto that “offers students the possibility to send experiments for educational purposes into the stratosphere using balloons filled with Helium”.

Further information on the topic of high altitude balloons is provided here (Designing a High Altitude Balloon) and here (AMSAT & High Altitude Balloons), as Cherita Chen mentioned on slashdot.
And on the topic of “layers of atmosphere”, check out this wikipedia article. And there you can also read something about the difference between sub-orbital and orbital spaceflights.