http://psychogeeks.com Ramblings of an armchair astronomer and inveterate geek Fri, 04 Apr 2008 06:04:00 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en IC2948 is the less-than-spectacular catalogue number for a nebula in the constellation [[wp:Centaurus]]. The more popular name is the Running Chicken Nebula. Steve Crouch, an avid astro-photographer in the Canberra Astronomical Society, took the image below and asks, "Can everyone see the running chicken?". Well, can you? My imagination is that ... http://psychogeeks.com/astronomical-running-chickens-173/ For quite a few years I have been contributing to the ABC Science forums, particularly the ABC Self Service Science forum. Over the years the forums have accumulated quite a few answers to questions on topics from quantum physics to belly-button fluff, but finding them can be a problem ... http://psychogeeks.com/self-service-science-search-160/ Over at Seth's Blog: A shortage of digital coaches Seth points out something that I have often considered and think has some merit. As an IT literate guy I frequently find myself explaining to others how even the simplest IT things can be done more efficiently (or effectively) with small changes ... http://psychogeeks.com/digital-coaches-159/ A short while ago I posted images taken of the Tvashtar volcano on Io. The images were snapped by the New Horizons mission to the [[wp:dwarf planet]] [[wp:Pluto]]. Some months have passed since those images were taken, and the mission's imaging team has had time to assemble some ... http://psychogeeks.com/154-154/ Swinburne University, my alma mater, has recently started publishing podcasts covering research programs at the university. It is often very difficult to keep abreast of research goings-on without keeping a constant reading program of appropriate journals. Even a lot of the journal articles I do read are ... http://psychogeeks.com/podcasts-for-science-geeks-147/ I recently blogged about a great source of used books: Better World Books. I used them again to purchase a copy of [[isbn:0201633612|Design Patterns]] and was presented with another excellent book replete with a bookmark. That's not really the topic of this entry... but I am getting there ... http://psychogeeks.com/science-projects-in-a-small-world-144/ When I look back on my childhood one of the things that I remember fondly is having free and easy access to books. My mother always made sure there were books in the house and, for a small country town, [[wp:Kilkivan, Queensland|Kilkivan]] had well stocked community and school libraries. ... http://psychogeeks.com/a-better-world-through-books-142/ If you've ever listened to a [[wp:Free Software]] bigot ranting about the evils of software patents, monopolies, and the like you might be forgiven for wondering what it's all about. Surely these are fringe views and there is not much to it for the bulk of us? One of ... http://psychogeeks.com/free-software-what-is-it-about-139/ Television viewing has changed quite a lot in my household since I started using a MythTV box. I no longer worry about what is on and when...I just turn on the box and look at the stuff it has remembered to record for me when I feel like ... http://psychogeeks.com/mythtv-acpi-wakeup-132/ The image to the left was taken by the [[wp:adaptive optics]] team at the Keck Observatory during 2005. It shows a distant [[wp:Kuiper Belt]] object known at that time as 2003 UB313, and a small companion object. Despite poetic naming not being an astronomy strong point the discoverers of ... http://psychogeeks.com/eris-puts-on-weight-124/