A larger and brighter than normal full moon will greet Cinco de Mayo revelers on the night of May 5th 2012. Known as the “Super Moon” or perigee moon, this full moon is at perigee, which means it is about 50,000 kilometers closer to the Earth than when it is on the other side of the oval orbit at apogee.
Now 14% bigger and 30% brighter!
Well at least the ‘super moon’ appears that way in the sky. Full moons have been feared throughout history as bad omens. Will standing under bright moon beams make you moon mad? Or do you picture yourself lounging in the Lunar Shire?
Filmed in 1984, this long lost video clip pits the early machinery of Apple against the established “Blue Blob” of IBM and the PC era.
The Apple 1944 commercial features a lot of inside jokes to rally the Apple troops of the 1980’s. Troops can be seen gambling with memory chips as poker chips, paratroopers are jumping into enemy territory with giant Apple CRT computers, and zombie like workers are chained to their IBM based PCs. At over 8 minutes long, Apples lost 1944 commercial is really a mini-film that plays a bit like the classic 80’s military spoof Stripes, with Bill Murray.
Insanely Great! Go get ’em, Blue Busters!
Victory is sounded with the “Hello I am Macintosh” greeting of the Apple hardware that replaces the old school IBM PC. Modern history since 1984 has shown that the battle has been largely won by Apple.
Why?
Because they possessed “The most powerful weapon on Earth, an idea whose time has come!” Ideas like the iPod, the iPad, iTunes, the Mac Book Air and other slick, stylish Apple products.
An awesome SiliconCali sunset filtered through the incoming marine layer (fog) taken with the Google Samsung Galaxy Nexus camera
Though the SiliconCali area can be an expensive place to live and work, it has many great opportunities for dramatic photography. I don’t always have my heavy duty SLR camera with me but usually have my phone. Luckily I was able to capture this fleeting SiliconCali sunset shot with the Google Samsung Galaxy Nexus camera.
A fun weekend video for all the Star Wars fans out there. The Stormtrooper Shuffle. A parody of LMFAO’s Everyday I’m Shufflin’ Party Rock Anthem video. Check out the lightsaber limbo. Better get low or get singed!
Students in the New Media Department at the University of Lethbridge in Alberta, Canada put this animation together. The ULeth motto is “Fiat Lux”, Latin for “Let there be light”. Maybe it should be “Let there be lightsabers”
Installing it may require a few extra steps if you don’t already have the correct xdg-utils package installed on your system.
I tried using the xdg-utils that Red Hat has available through the Red Hat subscription, but they are too new and for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6. I’m using Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 in this case to preserve compatibility with some older software packages that we use.
The various xdg-utils packages installed fine but Google Earth wouldn’t install.
You’ll get an error resolving dependencies like this:
Error resolving dependencies from the linux Google Earth rpm, needed to revert to an earlier xdg-utils package for the install to work.
I tried a few different versions of the xdg-utils package but the Google Earth install always failed with the same error until I used this one:
xdg-utils-1.0.2-2.el5.noarch.rpm that I found at this link:
Finally Google Earth installed successfully on linux and I could spin the globe and use all the features of Google Earth on a powerful Red Hat linux workstation.
You may have to try a few different xdg-utils packages to find the one that will work with your Linux operating system and version of Google Earth.
Running Google Earth from your Red Hat Linux Desktop
The Google Earth linux package installs by default in the /opt/google/earth/free directory.
[root@linuxbox free]# pwd
/opt/google/earth/free
You can navigate to the “free” directory and then click on the Google Earth icon to open the application:
Some quick notes on Google Earth controls
Besides scrolling around with the mouse, you can use the scroll wheel to zoom in and out of the globe.
You can also use keyboard controls to move around the globe.
Use the plus and minus keys (+, -) to zoom in and out.
If you hold down the shift key while scrolling, you can tilt the earth down to a ground-level view.
Pressing the “u” key on the keyboard resets your view to a top down bird’s eye view.
Pressing the “n” key resets the North orientation to North up.
A few screenshots of Google Earth running on Red Hat Linux
The extreme terrain of the Himalayas has many peaks over 6000 meters like this one as well as a few really tall peaks over 8000 meters.Google Earth has the option to show current weather conditions around the globe.
The many faces of Google Earth
Google Earth showing sun shading of the day and night sides of planet EarthGoogle MarsGoogle Mars view of Olympus Mons, the tallest peak in the Solar System.Google MoonGoogle Sky view of the Owl Nebula or M97
All of the different globes can be selected in Google Earth using the yellow icon that looks a little like the planet Saturn:
Have fun exploring the Earth and the rest of the galaxy with the many faces of Google Earth!
If any readers are old enough to remember the old BBS days before browsers, web pages and broadband WiFi connections, here’s a nostalgic throwback with a modern twist.
Snapshot of masswerk.at's rendition of Google's search engine if it was an old school BBS.
The BBS or Bulletin Board System, predated today’s speedy, graphical based internet using ASCII art and text based navigation. This rendition of what Google would have looked like in the 80’s by mass:werk actually works with live search data. (At least when the servers aren’t overloaded) Check out this video by Squirrel-Monkey.com that mass:werk based this working Google BBS on: http://youtu.be/O8vCEg5k_d4
This excellent video from Business Model Generation explains the essentials of generating a business model for your current business or the idea for your next enterprise:
So if you need to re-structure your current business model or make a business model for the idea that’s itching to get out of your brain and into the real world this 2 minute video is a good place to start.
If you are interested in more details information on start up business models, they have some excellent tools to help you find your way around.
A rare severe thunderstorm hits the Bay Area bring lightning strikes, heavy rain and hail to the area. Most of California is facing a bit of a drought so the pitter patter of rain drops hitting the roof is a welcome sound.
San Francisco Bay Area Weather radar from the National Weather Service.
Weather radar screenshot from NOAA’s National Weather Service site at weather.gov. A good site for reliable weather information without all the annoying flash ads and those ridiculous “One weird trick to ….” ads that plague Weather.com. Weather.gov isn’t ad supported because you’ve already paid for the site whether your use it or not. If you pay federal taxes in the United States, you’re helping to keep weather.gov running. Use it while you can! If you want to see the full loop of radar all over the United States check out this mosaic of all NOAA weather radars in the continental US. Happy weather watching!
I’m enjoying the sound of some much needed rain here in Silicon Cali. It’s been a very dry winter here. Most of the rain and snow has been stuck up north all winter long. Just in case you aren’t lucky enough to be here enjoying the rain in Silicon Cali, you can always see the current weather conditions in the valley with the weather widget on the right side of the page just below the tag cloud.
Or if you are running Windows 7, you can use the Windows 7 Weather Widget or ‘Gadget’ as Microsoft calls them:
To get the Windows 7 weather gadget, just right click on your screen background and choose the weather gadget. You’ll have to use the settings to set it up for the area of your choice. The two different weather widgets obviously don’t get their data from the same source, but they both offer a quick graphical update of weather conditions that is mostly accurate.
