Saturday, July 21, 2012

Legos, military bases, Sesame Street, oh my!

Some of the idiocracy of Mitt Romney’s tax situation…

From one of the greatest toys probably ever made, a look inside the LEGO vault of every set ever made

While negotiations between Consolidated Edison and the local utility worker union continue, managers and other staff have been pulled in to perform break/fix and maintenance duties

The author of Encyclopedia Brown, has died. Donald Sobol was 87.

The Pentagon’s new generation of secret military bases, taking over for the larger well-known bases

As the NBC/Microsoft partnership resulting in MSNBC comes to an end, here’s a look back at some coverage from their very first day 16 years ago.

The Sesame Street team has caught onto viral videos, and made a parody of Call Me Maybe

The Justice Department apparently sues an anonymous ISP which sued over the National Security Letter it received

Wednesday, July 18, 2012

Hot Weather and More Storms

The nuts and bolts of high-speed rail

As if it needed being said, Matt Smith is a pretty awesome guy.

LCD Soundsystem played their last show in April of last year, but why exactly did they quit?

The Firefly cast and crew celebrate their 10th anniversary in a special panel at the San Diego Comic-Con

An article highlights the life and career of the oldest currently-serving priest in New York City

The Washington Metro is now successfully connected from the middle of the East and West Falls Church stations through to Tysons, after the last track span is put into place.

Why is it hard to make friends over 30?

NSA Mimics Google, Pisses Off Senate

Monday, July 16, 2012

Futuristic Robots and Archaic Satellites

The Men Who Stare at Computers

A look inside the Olympic Village and what happens…after hours.

50 years of satellite communication technology has come. Coincidentally, it’s been 50 years since the Starfish Prime nuclear test

While Amtrak has proposed a $151 billion plan for the Northeast Corridor, one blogger has ideas for how to do HSR at 10% of the cost.

Navigating the new health care reform law and the general US healthcare system, one patient at a time.

The story behind porting the Windows NT kernel to ARM as a replacement for Windows CE and Windows Embedded

Ozo, a short film about a monkey, and Robbie, a short film about a futuristic NASA robot

Saturday, July 14, 2012

Changing for the (better?) future

Boeing has announced an order of 75 737-MAX airplanes for Air Lease Corporation, for a worth of about $7.2 billion. Their new 787 Dreamliner appears to be a hit, and has the looks to prove it.

DC/NOVA continues to clean up after the derecho from June 29th, and attention turns to the power services that exist in the area with primarily above-ground lines, as well as failures in the area 911 system.

Amtrak released an updated proposal for high speed rail in the North East Corridor, with tentative completion by the 2040’s. Included in the proposal is an underground expansion to Union Station in DC. Here’s how it could spur a “golden age” in the Northeast.

The end of an era: BBC World Service moves to a new home

Virginia will apparently be ending the 2012 budget year with a surplus, but there may be some strings attached.

Saturday, July 7, 2012

Flashback and Catch-up

The aftermath of the June 29th derecho continues, as power companies are still repairing connections (July 1, previous) to customers. NOAA summarizes the storm.

The California High Speed Rail (HSR) line is getting off the ground.

Colorado has some mean wildfires, and they’ve done lots of damage this year.

Using GPS to visualize routes around the world is oddly fascinating

Growth of the Loudoun/Fairfax area in the past 30-40 years has been dramatic, and NASA has the aerial photography to back it up.

Well, it appears the Higgs Boson is the real deal. However, what if the technology required to discover it were in the continental United States?

The economy is recovering…sort of…I guess?

Cisco’s proposal for cloud management of home routers backfired, and they backpedaled after the attempt.

Not to flash too far to the back, but this video of all Shuttle launches is quite fantastic.

Wednesday, July 4, 2012

No evidence of mermaids, says US government

It appears Apple is utilizing some higher-end IBM and Oracle servers in their North Carolina datacenter

A playground for adults!

Nuclear reactors restart after the Fukushima incident, accompanied by protests

Government still attempts to regulate some parts of cybersecurity, no matter how flawed the bill might be

Governments and utilities attempt to clean up after the June 29th derecho stormed through the eastern US leaving millions without power

A perspective on thin clients and why they should die. Not, however, what I think about them.

Otters and Benedict Cumberbatch, hedgehogs and Martin Freeman

You can rest assured, there is no evidence of mermaids. We promise.

Sunday, July 1, 2012

Derecho Hits the DMV area

A Story about WWII that China Would Like You to Know

Characters from The Muppets banter while cameras are tested – hilarity ensues

Pennsylvania Avenue from 1903 has items that look both oddly similar and different than it does today

The Affordable Care Act appears to be a tax, not a mandate, and will expand health coverage of Americans

Apparently disabling user accounts in Active Directory doesn’t disable their access to Exchange mail accounts. Who knew?

A giant derecho hits the DC/Maryland/Virginia area during record-breaking heat, leaving approximately 2M without power and some without clean water. Restoration could take days, according to Dominion, Pepco, and others. It also causes problems with the Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud.