Space shuttle Discovery maakte deze week zijn allerlaatste vlucht. Het toestel werd op de rug van een boeing 747 naar zijn laatste bestemming in Washington gevlogen. Daar zal de Discovery worden tentoongesteld in het National Air and Space Museum. De space shuttle vertrok vanaf Kennedy Space Center.

Voordat de shuttle vertrok naar Washington DC maakte het eerst nog een laatste vlucht langs de Space Coast, het deel van de kust van Florida dat van Cape Canaveral tot het meer zuidelijk liggende Palm Bay strekt. De shuttle is in deze gemeenschappen niet uit de lokale cultuur weg te denken. Het verkeer op de snelweg die langs het strand loopt zat zoals bij elke shuttle launch volledig vast, mensen stopten spontaan de auto langs de weg en liepen het strand op, en burgers die er wonen stonden buiten, om deel uit te maken van deze historische gebeurtenis.   

Ook in Washington DC, het nieuwe huis van de shuttle, staan mensen overal op straat. De shuttle landde op Dulles Airport. Elke landing van een normale 747 is geweldig, laat staan deze 747 met Discovery als passagier.

De laatste vlucht van Discovery was een historische ervaring, al is het voor velen met gemengde gevoelens, met name voor de Space Coast bewoners en de rest van Centraal Florida. Ook de andere drie overgebleven spaceshuttles, de Enterprise, de Endeavour en de Atlantis worden in de VS tentoongesteld. De Atlantis komt bij het Kennedy Space Center zelf te staan.

Doe mee aan de discussies over de space shuttle en de volgende uitvinding van de mensheid. Niets is onmogelijk, dat heeft het spaceshuttleprogramma overduidelijk bewezen. Bezoek de nieuwsgroep sci.space.shuttle!

Strolling around the alt.food.sushi newsgroup, I found a tutorial for making sushi. This is a great how-to for beginners wanting to learn how to make sushi and enjoy it at the comforts of their own home. Its incredibly affordable and easy to do. Learning to make sushi at home is a great way to show off to all your friends too.

Check out the sushi tutorial here.

alt.tv.game-shows has some great chatter of remembering game shows hosted on the Nickelodeon Network. Some of my favorites back in the day were Legends of the Hidden Temple, Double Dare, and Wild and Crazy Kids. You don’t realize how old you are until you start remembering shows that haven’t aired for a decade like they were here yesterday!

Other game shows on different networks that I thought were awesome is Supermarket Sweep, and Press Your Luck. The Price is Right is also a great one, but only when Bob Barker was the host. =)

I think the only exciting game show nowadays is Minute it to Win it. Definitely keeps you off of your seat.

What was your favorite game show?

Deze week werd van 14 tot 16 maart Innorobo gehouden in Lyon Frankrijk. Innorobo is de grootste robotbeurs in Europa. Dit jaar kwamen meer dan honderd exposanten uit 11 verschillende landen bijeen om kennis en expertise te delen over hoe robots in de toekomst hulp kunnen bieden. Er waren meer dan 150 robots te bewonderen.

Mocht je het gemist hebben dan is er volgend jaar vast een nieuwe kans om Innorobo te bezoeken. Ondertussen kan men via de web site www.innorobo.com alsnog een beetje meeproeven van deze ervaring. In 2011 werd de beurs voor het eerst gehouden. Vanwege het succes was de beurs dit jaar nog uitgebreider. Of, voor wie het ervoor over heeft om ‘iets’ verder te reizen, de Robotics Asia 2012 beurs staat gepland voor 10-12 juli. Meer info over deze beurs is beschikbaar via www.roboticsasia.org/2012/.

Hoe dan ook, genoeg materiaal voor uitgebreide discussies. Doe mee op Usenet in de nieuwsgroepen alt.binaries.robotics en  comp.robotics.misc.

this from rec.food.cooking just a couple of days ago…poor Frank G. was broke, in Germany on a Sunday (where they apparently also do not have grocery on Sundays) and had 30 minutes to make a fab dinner for a date….

SUBJECT: help!

Hi!
Shops are closed today (Germany! – forgot to go shopping yesterday) and
a girlfriend wants to come for a visit in half an hour and I just got:
5 potatoes,
3 onions,
3 tomatoes,
a citron,
3 apples,
3/4 cucumber,
1/2 camembert,
a tin of sardines,
1/3 package spiral pasta and half a package of sweet cream.
Also some sweet mustard, butter, olive oil, some herbs and spices.
Any idea?
Thanx
–
Frank G

Luckily for Frank, within a few minutes a fellow netizen posted:

Boil pasta
Saute onions in oil, add sardines, some of the cream and some herbs,
perhaps some mustard.
Toss pasta in onion/sardine/cream sauce.
Plate pasta.
Dice tomatoes, strew on top of pasta.

For dessert, bake apples with some shredded citron, butter, sugar and
spice; top with remaining cream.

In the end all worked out great for Frank!

Just wanted to say ‘Thank You!’ for your help yesterday evening (UTC+1).
In the end we were cooking together!
Your ideas inspired us for the following dinner:

Salad:
Tomatoes, cucumber and camembert with a vinaigrette made of white
balsamico, mustard, salt, coloured pepper, dill, parsley and olive oil.
On top some diced toast fried in butter.

Pasta:
In butter sauted onions, salt, white pepper, thymian, honey and sweet
cream with the spiral pasta plated. On top breaded and fried sardines.
Decorated with a piece of citron and parsley.

Dessert:
‘S Viemeister’s baked apples’ filled with raisins, honey and butter,
some citron and cinnamon. There was no cream left, so we served it with
some cherry jam.

First we had some pinot grigio and later mocca and cognac
In the end it was a nice evening!!!

Thank you!
(Need to go shopping now…)

Head over to rec.food.cooking to see what else happened to Frank and to engage in the very active conversation about “Weird food laws”. It never occurred to me that Germany had no grocery shopping on Sundays…

The official trailer for the long awaited and eagerly anticipated film The Hobbit: the Unexpected Journey, is here and it gives us a tantalizing taste of what looks to be quite a formidable and awesome installment to the Lord of the Rings series – A we dive right back into the action with Gandolf and Bilbo Baggins as they embark on a fantastic quest together to find a special treasure, looks to be anything but dull with the shady re-appearance of the oh so lovable Smigel!

A group of some of our favorite celebs have gotten together to take action and put an end to FAMINE, a man made problem that every human being would agree should not exist today – it’s 2011 F**K Really? Go to one.org – stop FAMINE today.

Het is weer bijna zover. Ieder jaar op 31 oktober is het Halloween, een feestdag die vooral in Ierland, het Verenigd Koninkrijk, de Verenigde Staten en Canada wordt gevierd. Kinderen verkleden zich die dag en bellen savonds aan bij de huizen in de buurt die versierd zijn of het licht aan hebben en roepen “trick or treat”. De bewoners geven de kinderen dan snoepjes. Jonge volwassenen gaan soms naar Halloweenfeesten. In Nederland wordt het feest steeds meer populair in de afgelopen jaren. Ook in Nederland worden er tegenwoordig steeds meer Halloweenfeesten georganiseerd in bijvoorbeeld discotheken en clubs. En Halloween is voor sommige pretparken het nieuwe hoogseizoen geworden! Op parkplanet.nl/halloween staan alle feiten over Halloween 2011 op een rijtje.

Voor voorbereidingen en discussies over Halloween, ga naar alt.halloween.boo

Linus Torvalds was really bored one evening and was looking for something to create, something that would be free that could be shared everywhere. Being an avid programer and geek extraordinaire he decided he might want to try his hand at improving the operating system mini unix or (minix), he had already seen the desktop market flooded by Microsoft Windows and Steve Jobs at Apple had created the Mac OS operating system – Linus wanted to create something anyone could use that would be cool and free, thus one night, exactly 20 years ago today Linix was born with a short but amazingly significant post to the Usenet newsgroup comp.os.minix asking, “What would you like to see most in minix?” Little did Linus know that such a simple query would lead to such an explosive out pouring of ideas creating a bubble of inovation that still continues to grow today. What began as a little hobby for a super geek, would soon become what some techno geeks might argue was the achievement of a lifetime, the creation and growth of the Linix kernel – the core and brain of the free Linux operating system that makes it go. Today Linix is made up of contributions from 1000s of other computer geeks that share Linus’s passion for computers and making them go. Some may even refer to Linus Torvalds as the father of the open source software movement because he created a culture where other coders could be open to create and share and build something great together, something they could look back on and say, “Hey we did that, and boy was that cool!” Today Linix is made up of contributions from folks everywhere, I bet Linus had no idea that one little Usenet post was going to spark the growth of one of the neatest most collaborative free software movements ever. Thanks Linus – we love you for incredible and free software

Could cell phone batteries be a thing of the past? Well a team of mechanical engineers at the University of Winconsin says, “You Betcha!” Well, not exactly in those words, we are paraphrasing a little But the team has created a magic device that stores up a charge just by the user walking around and doing their everyday stuff. The charge that is created and stored in the user’s shoes is enough to power a laptop or a even a mobile phone. Until now, engineers have not been able to create enough power to make our larger more fun power hungry devices go. With these new charging devices you may soon be working off those extra pounds and recharging your iPod at the same time as you can as the power will grow and flow as you move down the street.