It's been a year since my sister, old man and I moved to Sydney after living in Singapore and Malaysia since the mid 1990s. To celebrate, I went on an unabashedly touristy photo trip across the Sydney Harbour Bridge and around Kirribilli.
Aside from the cold, the weather could not have been better, and the colour of the water was absolutely stunning. Had a great time :).
This post originally appeared on the Annexe, in a post series pointlessly documenting every train I took.
Darn! HDR didn't make it trippy like that earlier one today!
M14 from Circular Quay to Bardwell Park
Cleanliness: Great!
This post originally appeared on the Annexe, in a post series pointlessly documenting every train I took.
T106 from Kingsgrove to City Circle
Cleanliness: Nice, and new plushie seats!
This post originally appeared on the Annexe, in a post series pointlessly documenting every train I took.
Trippy!!!
S60 from Bardwell Park to Kingsgrove.
Cleanliness: Spilled coffee!
Links shared from del.icio.us today:
Atlantis launched this morning, and the Space Shuttle program were a symbol of America's scientific prestige, of yesterday. It's all been said already, but I want to go on record too.
After World War II, the Soviets and Americans developed their respective (and initially German derived) rocket technologies to target each other as ICBMs, not the stars. With the launch of Sputnik and the resulting achievement it had in capturing people's minds and imaginations (and the propaganda potential it had), the Space Race began in earnest. Within two decades, the Soviets had launched a satellite and placed a man in space, and the Americans had put men on the moon.
The Space Shuttle was an attempt starting in the 1970s to develop a reusable launch craft. Six were built in total, and from the 1980s to this morning, they carried out 135 successful missions. Two ended with the deaths of 14 brave astronauts, and their sacrifice has not been forgotten.
(Photo by Robert Scoble, viewed on Google+ moments after the launch and later on his blog. Thank you for the Creative Commons licence Robert, and for sharing the experience).
Once the symbol of what the "Free World" can accomplish, in 2011 we find ourselves with a battered and crumbing United States. While the rich continue to reap the benefits of their congressional puppets, the rest of the economy is in shambles. A decade of pointless wars and two cowardly presidents refusing to end them has bankrupted their government, leaving little for programs that help people, let alone advancing scientific and medical research.
The Space Shuttle program ended this morning, and along with it any permanent plan for Americans to regularly launch manned space missions. I wasn't as upset at the end of the shuttles themselves as I was of this fact.
Of course this doesn't mean the end of space exploration in our lifetimes, other countries are stepping up to the plate and filling the vacuum of imagination. The Russians can continue to launch Americans into space, and there's no doubt the Chinese will be sending their own people up. As far as I know the ESA and JAXA are also continuing to receive funding.
I'm also confident that with a forward thinking government, America can regain what she's lost here. We have the technology, expertise, financing, imagination and love in the world to feed, educate, house and employ everyone, and give them all internet access so they can watch our astronauts land on Mars and other places in the heavens. I fundamentally believe this, and I'm not often this blunt, but if you don't agree, you're Wrong™.
Now if you'll excuse me, I'm off to read those massive photo coffee table space books my parents bought me when I was a kid.
Just watched the live launch of the Space Shuttle Atlantis on NASA TV. Congratulations to the entire team for a safe take-off and successful orbit.
The last flight in the programme. Beautiful. Bittersweet. I cried like a baby. Safe trip.
This post originally appeared on the Annexe.
The economics of crop circles. Fifty formations a year appear in Britain’s fields, most less elegant than this. A costly problem for farmers can be a big boon for local economies.
This post originally appeared on the Annexe.
THIS.
Want to feel insignificant? Want to feel unique in the universe? Watch the video. Humans should feel privileged to even exist. Humans should be impressed they continue to exist in such a HUGE universe. As humans, our lives are governed by our actions in the universe. Make every moment matter. This video will expand your mind.
With the launch of their Google+ social network, Google have now allowed webmasters to have the +1 buttons on their pages. Should I use them?
From http://www.google.com/webmasters/+1/button/:
Add +1 to your pages to help your site stand out. +1 buttons let people who love your content recommend it on Google search
Aside from having pages ranked with these buttons appearing on their new Google+ profiles, it's clear Google plans to use these to influence their search results. The potential ethical dilemma this introduces is for another post.
I've eschewed (gesundheit) having external, dynamically loaded JavaScript here since this site's inception because of privacy and speed concerns, but this is the first time I've had an inkling of questioning my decision.
Given these +1 buttons are appearing in all their search results, would it make much practical difference allowing you to click here too? Either way, it's an optional process you're entering into, I'd just be making it a bit easier to share on sites such as Google+.
I'm not sure. What do you think?
This wouldn't the first time I've let people share my posts with another service; until the latest site redesign I had a beautifully simple, static Bookmark on del.icio.us link that worked like this:
<a href="http://del.icio.us/post?url=[PERMALINK]&title=[TITLE]">Bookmark This on Del.icio.us</a>
Then there were the ways you could allow people to subscribe to your blog in various blog platforms, such as Google Reader:
<a href="http://www.google.com/ig/add?feedurl=//rubenerd.com/feed/">Google Reader</a>
Many of my concerns would be alleviated if Google had a similar, GET request mechanism for +1 instead of relying on JavaScript. This would be cool:
<a href="http://plus.google.com/share?url=[PERMALINK]&title=[TITLE]">+1</a>
I suppose they're doing some verification in that JavaScript to prevent click fraud, and to tie a vote to a particular Google account; but then again the del.icio.us link essentially achieved the same thing while being static, provided you were logged into your del.icio.us account.
Oh well, I suppose I'd need JavaScript after all if I wanted to implement this.
