the bradlands » technology

Private rocket launch partially successful

bradlands — Thu, 22 Mar 2007 04:13:11 +0000

Here is an awesome blog about the launch of a rocket from California, to 200 miles above the earth, by a private corporation called spaceX. Its pretty awesome and I see it as the future of space exploration. So far most of space exploration has been done by governments, and governments aren’t known for being the most efficient and cost effective about projects like this and aren’t known for being great at driving down costs. However competing businesses will make space exploration more and more attainable and less and less expensive.

On the video in the article you can see live footage of the entire launch and footage from a cameras on the rocket looking back down towards earth. Its absolutely amazing to watch it get 200 miles into space in just over 5 minutes and see the curve of the earth come into view in the upper left hand corner of the camera. The video ends when they lost contact with it and they believe that the second stage malfunctioned and the rocket lost its stability. However it is considered a great success because its first stage separated successfully, which is what most people were worried would fail. There is a second video on the blog from their first attempt, when the rocket flew for a few seconds and then crashed into the ocean.

Google Shared Items Below

bradlands — Fri, 02 Feb 2007 16:40:30 +0000

I have talked about how great Google reader is before, and Google has an additional feature for Google reader that I have just implemented. Google reader allows you to tag any item you want in any blog as a shared item. Google then places that single blog entry that you tagged as an entry into your shared items page. So as you are reading through all the blogs you keep an eye on, with one click you can place any good blogs on your own page. Others can then click to that page and see what blog entries you think were good.

An additional feature for shared items is that you can put the RSS feeds from your shared items page on your blog, which I have done below. If you scroll all the way to the bottom of thebradlands.com you can see the latest five items from the blogs I read that I think were good.

This way I will keep an eye on all the blogs in the world, and all you have to do is click by thebradlands to see the good stuff. Googaliscious. By the way if you like this, but think it would be better suited somewhere else on thebradlands besides at the bottom of the main page, just let me know and I’ll move it around to wherever looks best.

Better then steepandcheap?

bradlands — Thu, 01 Feb 2007 15:56:38 +0000

I can’t imagine anything being better then steepandcheap, but the goat claims that geartrade.com just might be. Another offshoot of backcountry.com (bless their souls), the idea behind geartrade.com is that everything returned to backcountry.com gets sold there, and basically every items price gets reduced by 1/365th every day. After a year, every item would cost $1 if its not bought already. Looks like a great idea if you know what you want and have some time to wait for its price to drop. Just don’t wait too long or someone else will snatch it. You can also buy and sell used equipment there sort of like eBay, with no listing fees.

Snowboard innovations

bradlands — Fri, 26 Jan 2007 17:25:54 +0000

I found this blog at GetOutdoors to be very interesting. Watching the two minute history of snowboarding and seeing things like this come out, its kind of neat to see just how young snowboarding is, and its nice to see there is still room for innovation. Click on the picture below to open it up full size and check out the details of this new thinking. I would not be at all surprised if all snowboards soon adopted this thinking.

Colts win the superbowl

bradlands — Thu, 25 Jan 2007 21:36:27 +0000

According to accuscore the Colts win the super bowl by about 3 points and both teams score in the 20s. The only hope they give the Bears is if their special teams comes through big time.

Google Groups Make-over

bradlands — Wed, 24 Jan 2007 20:49:23 +0000

Amazingly Google has done it again. They have given Google groups a make over and turned it into an extremely useful tool for any group. It now provides way more then just a news group. It provides a home page that would serve very well for most groups. It also allows members of the group to create other pages that are linked to from the home page, and there is a folder where group files such as pictures can be uploaded and quickly accessed. Here is a tour that Google provides.

I tried out some of the features with the Next Gen Men group that I am a member of and uploaded the pictures from Saturday mornings habitat project and added a very brief report of the project as a page. Pretty neat. Its very easy to maneuver around, is very well organized, and looks great.

Out with the MSM

bradlands — Wed, 17 Jan 2007 20:23:08 +0000

The next big thing since uTube and Google video is Skypes new internet TV called Joost. Google wants something like this for Google video which is why it bought uTube, but it seems that Skype beat them to it. I am excited for the potential of internet TV because I think it will be an area which a lot of different players can get into. Bloggers will be the first ones to move into this space and hopefully they can get a foothold before the big networks take over.

The one problem I have with what Skype is offering is that it requires you to download and install something in order to watch. I think this will limit the number of people who give it a try and thus will limit how quickly it catches on. I predict that very soon Google will come out with uTube TV that allows views to simply click to their website in order to view endless hours of streaming media, interspersed with very short 15 second commercials.

No matter what happens I am always excited for whatever is new, and look forward to seeing where it takes us. By the way I have never been a big TV person except with sports, so my big hope is that it takes us to a place where every college will have their own channel and you can catch every sports event by NC State, online and for free. (College TV is already offering something like this, but the quality is really poor and you need to pay for it.)

The way a chair lift works

bradlands — Fri, 12 Jan 2007 16:43:46 +0000

I have always been interested in how things work. As a kid one of my favorite books was “The Way Things Work” by David Macaulay with the mamoths explaining everything. So naturally every time I go skiing and ride the high speed quad I am always wondering how the heck it works. Well I looked up chair lifts and found out that the high speed types are actually detachable from the cable. When the chair gets to the boarding point then the chair is detached from the cable and moved slowly along while the cable continues to run at high speed. Very interesting. Here is an explanation with photos.

In thinking about it I thought that detaching the chairs would be one way to do it, but I thought that that would be way to risky and I figured that they must have a lever that pulled out the slack in the rope between the chairs while the chairs were moved slowly around. Does anyone know if there are high speeds lifts designed like this? If not then feel free to make offers for a license for my idea.

Apple does it again

bradlands — Wed, 10 Jan 2007 17:17:32 +0000

The iPhone really does look cool. The only two negatives are its price, which probably wont go down, and it is only offered with Cingular. However hopefully this will inspire new thinking and things like this will come available with Verizon soon. I am due for an upgrade in August… we’ll see =)

Now that I have an iPod

bradlands — Fri, 29 Dec 2006 13:30:28 +0000

Maybe this will come in handy. Via The Goat, via Gizmodo, via Lifehacker. Basically its a solar recharger for your nano for when you are backpacking.

I really don’t know if I would bring my iPod backpacking. It is definately lightweight, but it just doesn’t seem right to let something come between you and the outdoors. However when I am hiking, especially alone, I always get songs in my head, and it would be nice to be able to hike with a sound track. We’ll have to wait and see when the time comes. I am guessing that I bring it next time and see how much it actually gets used.