Monday, March 21, 2005

Black Hole

Some boffin reckons to have created a black hole.

Sky News : Don't Panic! Black Hole Made On Earth

So it absorbed the jets of particles and then evaporated all within 10 million billion billionths of a second (1/10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 th Seconds 1x10-25 s). I'd like to see the camera that detected that.

Friday, March 18, 2005

The Einstein@Home Starsphere Screensaver

Like SETI@Home but for something that is actually of scientific use and likely to happen, The Einstein@Home Starsphere Screensaver has a number of elements related to current efforts to detect gravitational radiation from periodic sources such as pulsars.

The primary element of the screensaver is a rotating celestial sphere showing the known constellations, along with the current zenith positions of three gravity wave detectors. Also shown are the positions of the known pulsars and supernovae remnants, and a marker indicating the positions being searched as the calculations proceed. When the graphics are shown in a separate window (not as a screensaver) the user can control the display with the mouse and keyboard.

When the graphics are displayed in a separate graphics window (rather than as a screensaver) you can control the display with the mouse and keyboard. To zoom in or out or rotate the starsphere hold down the appropriate mouse button and move the mouse up and down or left and right.

Thursday, March 17, 2005

XBOX Uber Gaming

Why do Microsoft give the XBox the capability to do 5.1 surround sound and then not advertise the fact or provide a cable to let you do it? Well, until recently anyway. Earlier this month they gave offical sanction to this little number from Spherex but it costs $500 and is't available in the UK... yet

Some of the bits you need to do it yourself for an awesome increase in graphics quality and sound are:

This Joytech Xbox Digital AV Cable

A Decoder with an optical input like this one from Creative
Decoder DDTS-100 - Dolby Digital EX, DTS-ES, Pro Logic II & DTS Neo:6

And some 5.1 speakers like these

There are other systems available but "without optical input, you cannot enjoy aural features like Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround Sound. Instead, you'll be treated to simulated surround sound through a circular-surround algorithm."

Oh yeah, and some games that actually produce 5.1 output like Halo 2 or just about any DVD.

Thursday, March 10, 2005

Neko The Kitty

Have just discovered (oh ok, been shown) Neko the Kitty and am slowly working my way through the archives. here is one of my favourites form way back in December 2003. I wonder if Jeff watched Firefly.

Windows 10 Start Menu disappeared

Recently noticed (after a Windows 10 Update) that my st6art menu had disappeared and the Cortana search was retuinring results but not letti...