E-ink at 400x

This is the Kindle Screen at 400x magnification, taken by Keith Peters with his USB microscope.  He also has some pictures of the iPad, Newspaper, Magazines, and Books at similar magnification.  Pretty cool.

The part of our Sun will be played tonight by a single pixel

Via reddit.  (click image to enlarge)

These images are always created by taking pictures of our sun then scaling them up and changing the color.  It makes me wonder though: are really big stars are actually round?  there seems to be some evidence that at least Betelgeuse is not.

The Willis Ave Bridge on the Hudson

The replacement for the Willis Ave Bridge was floated down the Hudson River yesterday, from it’s building facility up north of Catskill NY.  To get something like this down river they had to weld 2 barges together, and use 3 tugs to keep it on track.

The whole event, for the few of us that came out for it, was great.  I ended up chatting and joking with 3 other completely random folks near where the AP had set up their video camera.  It was that perfect sense of community, even though no one knew each other, we were there for a common event.  Even when there were discussions around the walkway, which is our local contentious issue, and it was clear that people had different points of view, it was a level of civil and jovial discourse that just doesn’t exist in politics any more.  It was refreshing and wonderful.

A perfect way to end a day in the office.

Walkway Over the Hudson at Sunset

I took this before fireworks this year on the 4th of July, and quite like how it turned out.  I love a good sunset.

The Big Picture: Oil Spill Landfall

There are consequences to the blind cult of “drill baby drill”.  It will be at least August (if even then) before well is stopped up.  More from the Big Picture.

Victory vs Pandemic

Pandemic is a really amazing game.  Instead of players playing against each other, you are playing against the game mechanics to try to cure the world of 4 diseases that are breaking out in different geographies.  Difficulty level can be adjusted by setting the frequency of the outbreaks.

The noob level of pandemic is 4 epidemics.  Susan and I can pretty much beat every instance of that.  Last night we managed our first victory at the 5 epidemic level (after a fare number of losses).  For anyone that knows the game, they’ll notice we were at our final outbreak level when we won.

Earth Hour 2010 in Pictures

The Big Picture has another great photo essay on Earth Hour 2010, with some of the big cities that decided to turn off their lights for one hour on Saturday.  Some of the images are amazing, as you can actually see the stars start to show up (like on the acropolis).

Light Pollution has taken the stars and the milky way away from a majority of Americans, as well as becoming a health hazard.  Hopefully this creates some more awareness on the issue.

The Edible Christmas Tree

Our christmas tree this year.  Everything on the tree (minus lights) is edible, as per tradition.

Deimos, Moon of Mars

This is just incredible.  This moon of mars is basically just little asteroid, so to have pictures this clear is completely new science. 

Ubuntu, not just for Linux

From Napa, CA