Here is a good video explanation of the Hubble Ultra Deep Field image with some depth added. It makes me wonder what would happen if we made a telescope that had a hemisphere view and set it to view the entire universe for a year, instead of a speck of sky for 11 days.
On BoingBoing the guest blogger Lee Billings is doing a great job of summarizing what’s been recently discovered from the Kepler mission. Kepler is a space telescope like Hubble, also named after an astronomer. Its purpose is to stare at a small patch of sky for several years looking for planets around the stars in its field of view. There are two main ways of seeing these planets, the direct and indirect methods (sounds like something from Roman Holiday…). The indirect method looks at the star to see if it wobbles, meaning it has something gravitationally bound to it pulling it to a side as the planet orbits it. The direct method basically looks for eclipses. It watches for when planets transit in front of the star, dimming it. This several year survey of this one patch of sky has recently yielded the first results, biased towards small stars with planets orbiting close to it, and thus their “years” are significantly less than an Earth year. That said, planets are ridiculously common it seems, something we suspected for a long time but now have direct observations of. Here is Lee’s interview with one of the involved astronomers.
So I want to know what happened. These were to be the cars of tomorrow! They were aiming for new designed, efficiency, and new features. Explain the cars of the 70s and 80s after seeing this:
This is really neat! I’m glad I don’t live down there anymore but sometimes you can see how amazing it can be.
Seems like the only time I post here is when I update the look of the site. Well, that’s going to change. So, the updates: I graduated (for the last time I think), bought a house, got laid off, got a better job, and started disc golfing. Been a good few years!
 On Halloween 2008 |
 Five days later |
So I haven’t actually posted something new here in a while, if you discount updating the previous entry umpteen times with new pictures. That got a bit unwieldy so I moved it up to it’s own page above (look up there at the top) and hide the entry that was here. Speaking of which this site was overhauled too. It was past time for a new look. I was never 100% sold on the previous theme I downloaded so this time I just made one of my own. I’m happy with it again. It’s not complete yet. I need to put the dynamic stuff back in, the background color changing with the time of day and the top image. Currently both are fixed to what you see. This weekend I hope to have the time to do it right. There will be fewer colors and the top image at the top will match the color of the page instead of being random. And I’m going to get rid of a bunch of the less then stellar images. The stellar ones are mostly from the Astronomy Picture of the Day, linked above. I’ve massively abbreviated everything up there, but it’s all still there plus lots of new stuff.
One of the big reasons I haven’t had time for this much neglected site is school. I’m into my final year of Mechanical Engineering. I only have my senior design class this semester. Or rather I did until I thought “hey I’ve got LOTS of free time, I should learn Mandarin!” so now I’m taking Mandarin too. Additionally I’m also relearning/refreshing Spanish and French and maybe, sort of considering Tagalog too. Tagalog likely won’t happen for me this year though. The senior project is great though. We’re designing a replacement for the MIT Handiboard. That may have been a good system at one point but it’s certainly seen better days: it’s too slow, big, heavy, error prone, and expensive. Our system will be small, lightweight, under $50 (preferably about $30), modular, and completely open. You can buy one or roll your own. We should have the beginings of a prototype here in the next week or so. Controlling a robot will come a few days/weeks after that. World domination commences with the new year. As it stands we have more demo ideas then time, effort or money will allow and we’re still coming up with more ideas. Come Design Day in mid-April we’ll hopefully steal the show!
The FE is finally over. In case you somehow missed it, that’s the 8 hour engineering test I had to take in order to graduate, and later on become a P.E. Turns out that the studying for it was far worse then the test. Two 4 hour sessions today, 120 questions in the morning and 60 more in the afternoon. I hope I passed, I don’t want to have to go back.
The robot is nearly complete. It just needs software now to make it work well. I got the sensors soldered and wired up and tested the thing walking. It turns left ok, but on the right, it’s going to walk off the competition course. Speaking of which the competition is this coming Thursday, April 17th, 12-3pm, Saltaire Room in the Union at school. The races start at 1pm.
School is nearly over, other then the robot competition I have 1 lab left (until graduation no less), one presentation I need to start on solar concentrators (which I can do in my sleep now), 2 assignments and 4 finals. Not much at all, relative to what the rest of the semester has been like. 5 engineering classes and working wasn’t a bright combonation. Oh well, after April 30th, I’ll have 3 classes until I graduate, and I seem to already have an engineering job lined up, a year away. No too bad. Now if it could just be a solar/energy job in Santa Cruz/San Francisco with ….. Guess I shouldn’t get greedy.
Senior project will either be making a one wheel balancing rechargeable electric skateboard, or replacing the horrible Handyboard for the University of Utah. I’m sure then those MIT kids designed it, it was good, but computers have come a ways since then. Weird that I’ll be designing circuits for my ME senior project. Guess I really am going to finally graduate with that CS/EE/ME/ChemE degree I wanted when I first started college. Who knew?! Yeah, the ChemE part, I’m looking at adding some chemistry/eng classes in the fall. I’m a glutton for punishment it seems, plus taking 1 class will be a grand, 2 classes is only $1250, might as well.
It’s finally Spring Break, and for the first time I actually need the break! This semester is killing me, between 16 credits, 2 labs, 2 projects, and working. I went into work today, the power was out, so I left after a bit. When I got home I accidently slept for four more hours. If I could do that when classes are on, that’d be great! Tonight it seems like everyone is busy with family, work, concerts or other stuff. I should be working on one of the two projects I wanted to get going on, but I just can’t seem to find the effort to work on either of them.