The Night Sky Guy

Sample Entry:

The North American peak for the Leonid metoer shower has passed earlier this morning. I camped out in my light polluted Montreal suburban backyard between 4 and 6 am and caught sight of 9 Leonids streaking across the starry skies. These numbers are surely quite a bit lower than what really was happening in the overhead sky, simply because of the artificially bright sky blocking most of the show. I was only able to see the very brightest. International numbers are still waiting to be updated to see what observers around the globe saw- stay tuned. Also waiting to see what the BIG second outburst will produce in Asia later this afternoon our time.

In any case the Leonids I saw were super fast shooting stars that had definite colour to them – green, yellow and blue. I managed to snag one neat snapshot of a brief short meteor coming straight out of the head of Leo, the lion constellation. The image below also shows the planet Mars, and even a satellite pass – which turns out to be an old Russian rocket booster Cosmos 2234, launched in 1993 and now tumbling around Earth 850 km in altitude. The night sky was busy!

Skirmisher

Sample Entry:

In the late 1960s, Philips commissioned Edward Ihnatowicz, so chosen because nobody could pronounce his name, to make a "something like a robot, like a giant, like something that could shrink people’s testicles when they see it" thing. Edward gave life to the instruction by making Senster, a robotic sculpture that "interacted" with visitors with its sound and movement sensors. It was controlled by a Philips P9201 computer with only 8K of core memory. The robot was installed at the company’s Evoluon showplace in Eindhoven between 1970 and 1974.

Green Diary

Sample Entry:

A new energy-efficient house that is capable of providing energy to the grid is being constructed outside of Malmo, Sweden. The house amalgamating energy preservation, energy revitalization and energy generation is a result of joint efforts by Karin Adalberth, a doctor of building physics and E. ON, a local green utility company. Dubbed as "Villa Akarp", the positive net energy dwelling will invest into buying energy from the utility during winters and will sell electricity to the grid during summers.